IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009)

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Should I tell him we’re with the police?” asked Fazio.

  “Not even if they torture you,” replied the inspector.

  Another carabiniere circled around the car. He, too, leaned down to the window.

  “Did you know that your left taillight is broken?”

  “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” said Fazio.

  “Did you know?” Montalbano asked a moment later.

  “Of course I knew. I noticed it this morning. But I couldn’t very well take the time to have it changed, could I?”

  The second carabiniere started whispering to the first. Who, for his part, began writing things on the clipboard he had been carrying under his arm until now.

  “I’m sure to get a fine this time,” Fazio muttered.

  “Do you get reimbursed for your fines?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Meanwhile, out of one of the carabinieri’s two cars stepped a marshal, who began to approach.

  “Goddammit!” Montalbano exclaimed.

  “What is it?”

  “Gimme a newspaper, gimme a newspaper!”

  “I haven’t got a newspaper!”

  “Then a road map, quick!”

  Fazio handed him a map, which Montalbano opened up completely, pretending to study it and practically covering his whole face. But then he heard a voice through the car window.

  “Excuse me, you!”

  He pretended not to have heard.

  “I’m talking to you!” the voice repeated.

  He had no choice but to lower the map.

  “Inspector Montalbano!”

  “Marshal Barberito!” replied the inspector, making a considerable effort to feign surprise and smile.

  “What a pleasure to see you!”

  “The pleasure’s all mine, I assure you,” said Montalbano, getting out of the car and shaking his hand.

  He felt, at that moment, that he could be included in the Guinness Book of World Records as champion of hypocrisy.

  “Headed anywhere interesting?”

  “To Fiacca.”

  Meanwhile the other two carabinieri had come closer.

  “For a case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give the driver back his documents.”

  “But . . . ,” said one of the carabinieri, who, upon realizing that the two were from the police, didn’t want to give up his bone.

  “No buts,” commanded Marshal Barberito.

  “Look, Marshal, if we’re at fault, we have no problem with—” began Guinness champion Montalbano, assuming the air of someone superior to the petty matters of existence.

  “You must be joking!” said Barberito, holding out his hand to him.

  “Th-thanks,” said Montalbano.

  He could barely refrain from exploding with rage.

  They drove off. After a long silence, Fazio made the only comment possible:

  “They made monkeys out of us.”

  Right outside the gates of Fiacca, Fazio’s cell phone rang. “It’s Catarella. What do I do, answer?”

  “Answer,” said Montalbano. “And let me hear, too.”

  “There’s not going to be another roadblock, is there?”

  “I don’t think so. The carabinieri have even less gasoline than we do.”

  “Come as close you can.”

  The inspector brought his head right up next to Fazio’s. But because of the potholes in the road, every now and then they knocked heads like two rams.

  “Hello, Catarella, what is it?”

  “Is the chief on the premises poissonally in poisson inside your car?”

  “Yes. Go ahead and talk so he can hear you.”

  “Ah, I’m so touched! Jesus, I’m rilly, rilly touched!”

  “Okay, Cat, try to calm down and talk.”

  “Ahh Chief Chief! Ahh Chief Chief! Ahh Chief Chief!”

  “Is this a broken record or something?” asked Fazio, who drove with his left hand while using his right hand to hold the cell phone within range of his ear and the inspector’s.

  “If he says ‘Ahh Chief Chief ’ three times it must be something really serious,” said Montalbano, feeling slightly worried.

  “You gonna tell us what happened or not?” said Fazio.

  “They found Picarella! Found ’im this morning! Passed on to a better life!”

  “Shit!” exclaimed Fazio as the car swerved, provoking a pandemonium of screeching tires and horn blasts from cars, motorbikes, and trucks going in both directions.

  “Holy fucking shit!” Montalbano hurled back.

  Fazio dropped the cell phone to gain better control of the car.

  “Pull over and stop,” said Montalbano.

  Fazio obeyed. They looked at each other.

  “Shit!” said Fazio, reasserting the concept.

  “So the kidnapping was for real!” said Montalbano, confused and bewildered. “It wasn’t a put-on!”

  “We were wrong about him, poor guy!” said Fazio.

  “But why did they kill him without first asking for a ransom?” Montalbano wondered.

  “Who knows?” muttered Fazio, who again repeated, in a soft, frightened voice: “Shit!”

  “Call up Augello and pass me the phone.”

  Fazio picked up the cell phone and dialed the number.

  “The telephone of the person you are trying to reach . . . ,” began the woman’s recorded voice.

  “He’s got it turned off.”

  “Matre santa,” said Montalbano. “Now if the commissioner kicks our asses and rakes us over the coals he’ll be right!”

  “And what am I gonna do with Signora Picarella? This is gonna turn out badly for all of us! The commissioner’ll probably have us out on the street selling chickpeas and pumpkin seeds!” said Fazio, beginning to sweat.

  The inspector, too, felt as if he was sweating. The matter was certainly bound to have serious, indeed grave, consequences.

  “Call Catarella again and ask him if he knows where Augello is. We have to come up with a plan of common defense immediately.”

  Since they weren’t moving, it was easier for Montalbano to listen.

  “Hello, Cat? Do you know were Inspector Augello is?”

  “Seeing as how Inspector Augello found hisself on the premisses herein at the station when we got the news that the beforementioned Picarella was found, he bestook hisself to the Picarella house wherein to talk . . .” (He went and faced the just-widowed Signora Picarella? Montalbano thought. Mimì’s a brave man!) “. . . with the same poisson,” Catarella concluded.

  Montalbano and Fazio looked at each other, speechless. Had they heard right? Had they really heard what they’d heard? If Picarella was dead, the same person with whom Mimì had gone to talk to could not humanly be Picarella. But Catarella had said “the same poisson.” The question was: What did Catarella mean by “same”?

  “Make him repeat it,” said Montalbano, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  Fazio spoke with the same caution one uses in talking to a raving madman.

  “Listen, Cat. I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer simply yes or no. Okay? Is that clear? Not one word more. Yes or no, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Did Inspector Augello go talk to Mr. Picarella, the man who had been kidnapped?”

  “All right,” said Catarella.

  Montalbano cursed, as did Fazio.

  “You’re supposed to answer yes or no, dammit!”

  “Yes!”

  “Then why did you say Picarella was dead?”

  “I din’t.”

  “What? Inspector Montalbano heard it, too, when you said that Picarella had passed on to a better life!”

  “Oh, yeah, I said that, sure.”

  “But why did you say that?”

  “But in’t it true? Before, when ’e was still kidnapped, ’is life was bad, an’ now ’e’s free so ’e got a better life.”

  “I—one of these days, I swear, I’m go
nna shoot that guy,” said Fazio, turning off his phone.

  “But the coup de grâce will be mine,” said Montalbano.

  “Shall we turn back?” asked Fazio.

  “No. Mimì was right to go immediately to Picarella’s. We, for our part, will continue on our way. But at the first bar we see, we’re going to stop and have a nip of cognac. We need it. This journey has been too full of adventure.”

  When they arrived in Fiacca it was already past eleven.

  They found Via Mario Alfano at once, a broad street with little traffic. The front door of the house was closed, but under the plaque was a buzzer with an intercom. Montalbano rang. A moment later, a woman’s voice answered.

  “Who is it?”

  “Chief Inspector Montalbano of Vigàta here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to speak with the notary.”

  “He’s busy. Please go into the waiting room. You’ll be called when it’s your turn.”

  They went into an anteroom with two doors on the left-hand wall, over one of which was a sign with the words “Waiting Room,” as one used to see in train stations. On the right were two other doors, over one of which was a sign saying “Office”; under this, in smaller letters, the words “Please do not enter.”

  At the far end of the room was a staircase leading upstairs, which must certainly be where the notary and his wife lived.

  Fazio opened the door to the waiting room, stuck his head inside, pulled it back out, and reclosed the door.

  “There’s about ten people waiting in there.”

  “As soon as someone comes out of the office, we’ll send word to the notary,” said Montalbano.

  A good ten minutes later, the inspector lost patience.

  “Fazio, try going up a few stairs and calling the wife.”

  Fazio climbed three steps and starting calling in a low voice.

  “Signora! Signora Palmisano!”

  “She’s not gonna hear you if you say it like that!”

  “Signora Palmisano!” Fazio repeated a little more loudly.

  No answer.

  “I think you should go upstairs and tell the wife we want to talk to her.”

  “And what if she gets scared at the mere sight of me?”

  “Try not to frighten her.”

  Fazio resumed climbing the stairs so cautiously that if Signora Palmisano did see him she was certain to take him for a burglar. Which would unleash further pandemonium to go with all the other pandemonium of the morning.

  13

  While waiting, could he smoke a cigarette? Montalbano took a look around and saw no signs forbidding it. To be honest, he didn’t see any ashtrays, either.

  What to do? He decided to light up a cigarette and, after smoking it, to put the butt in his jacket pocket. He had just taken the first puff when Fazio appeared at the top of the stairs:

  “Chief, come on up.”

  He extinguished the cigarette and slipped it into his pocket. When he was beside him, Fazio whispered:

  “She’s a very nice lady.”

  They’d barely taken two steps when Fazio stopped, took a deep breath, flared his nostrils, and said:

  “I smell something.”

  “Metaphorically speaking?” asked Montalbano.

  “No, sir, speaking for real.”

  Montalbano realized he hadn’t fully extinguished the cigarette butt and that his jacket was burning. But since he couldn’t very well present himself to the lady in his shirtsleeves, he limited himself, cursing, to slapping the pocket of his jacket to put out the budding fire.

  Ernesta Palmisano, sixtyish, well dressed, and without a hair out of place, showed them into an elegant living room. Montalbano was immediately dazzled by five or six bottles by Morandi and two women bathing by Fausto Pirandello.

  “Do you like them?”

  “They’re magnificent.Very beautiful.”

  “Then later I’ll show you a Tosi and a Carrà. They’re in my husband’s private study. Can I get you anything?”

  Fazio and Montalbano looked at each other and understood at once. It was their chance to see Katya.

  “Yes,” they answered in unison.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” replied the well-trained little chorus.

  “Unfortunately, I have to go make it myself because today the maid—”

  “Whaa . . . ?” Montalbano yelled, leaping to his feet.

  “Wha’d the maid do?” Fazio completed his question, also standing up.

  Signora Palmisano got scared.

  “Oh my God! What did I say?”

  “Please forgive me, signora,” said the inspector, trying hard to remain calm. “Is your maid a young Russian named Katya Lissenko?”

  “Yes,” replied the woman, bewildered.

  “What did she do?” asked the little chorus.

  “She didn’t come today.”

  More than sit back down, Montalbano and Fazio collapsed into their armchairs. They had gone to all this trouble for nothing. Signora Palmisano returned and also sat back down, completely forgetting about the coffee.

  “Did she phone to tell you she couldn’t come?” asked the inspector.

  “No. But this has never happened before. She has never missed a day. She’s always been very conscientious, punctual, and well organized . . . If only they were all like her!”

  “How long has she been in your service?”

  “For three months.”

  So she had moved to Fiacca right after working for Graceffa in Vigàta.

  “At what time was she supposed to come into work?”

  “At eight.”

  “Why haven’t you phoned her to find out why—”

  “I called her around nine, but nobody answered. There probably wasn’t anyone at home.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “She rented a small room from the widow Bellini, in Via Attilio Regolo 30.”

  “How did she end up working for you?”

  “She was recommended to us by Don Antonio, the parish priest at the church just down the street. But could you tell me why all the questions about Katya? Has she done anything wrong?”

  “Not that we know of,” said the inspector. “We’re looking for her because she might be able to give us some very important information about a case we’re working on, involving the murder of a Russian girl. Have you heard about it?”

  “No. When I hear news of murders on television, I immediately change the channel.”

  “You’re absolutely right. What kind of a person is Katya?”

  “She’s a very serene girl, a normal girl. I wouldn’t exactly call her lighthearted, or sad, for that matter. Every now and then she seems absent . . . distracted . . . as if following some unpleasant train of thought.”

  “Signora, I want you to think carefully before answering. Did you notice anything different in Katya in the last few days? I mean the period from Monday evening up to and including last night.”

  “Yes,” Signora Palmisano said at once, without needing to think it over.

  “What did you notice?”

  “When she came in Tuesday morning, she was very pale and her hands were shaking a little. I asked her what was wrong, and she replied that she’d received a phone call from her hometown . . . Schelkovo?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that she’d been given some bad news.”

  “Did she say what?”

  “No. And I didn’t insist, because I could see she didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did you notice anything else?”

  “I’ll say! Yesterday morning, when she got back from the post office, where my husband had sent her to mail some registered letters, she seemed quite upset. When I asked her why, she said she didn’t feel well. She said she’d sort of fainted and thought it must be because of the bad news, which she couldn’t get over. That was why I wasn’t too surprised when she didn’t show up this morning. I had promised myself
that if I couldn’t get her on the phone, I would go to see her this afternoon.”

  Without a doubt, contrary to what Graceffa said, Katya had definitely seen and recognized him. And she was afraid that he might return and get her into trouble.

  Signora Palmisano, who was a real lady, had no more questions. The inspector instead asked, as he was standing up:

  “Would you show me the other paintings?”

  “Of course.”

  There wasn’t a single law book in the notary’s private study. The shelves were full of novels of the highest quality.

  The landscape by Tosi was superb, but when standing before Carrà’s seascape, Montalbano was moved almost to tears.

  When leaving the Palmisano home, he noticed that the insufficiently extinguished cigarette butt had made a hole in his jacket pocket. Still taken by the beauty of the Carrà painting, he didn’t even feel like cursing.

  But why, in 2006, would a mayor still want to name a street after Atilius Regulus? The mysteries of toponymy. At number 30 Via Attilio Regolo they found a run-down, six-story building without an elevator, and the widow Bellini naturally lived on the sixth floor. They climbed the stairs slowly, yet were still out of breath when they arrived at her door.

  “Whoozzat?”

  The voice of an old woman.

  “Signora Bellini?”

  “Yes. Whattya want?”

  Montalbano had an inspiration: If he told her he was a police inspector, she was liable not to open for anything, not even cannon fire. The elderly, however, always allowed swindlers into their homes without any problem.

  “Are you retired, signora?”

  “Yes, I scrape by.”

  “We’re here to make you an interesting offer.”

  Fazio gave him a look of alarm.

  The door opened as far as the chain would permit. Signora Bellini looked them up and down as Montalbano and Fazio tried to assume as angelic an air as they could. The widow decided to remove the chain.

  “Come in.”

  The apartment was clean, the old furniture in the small living room so polished that it sparkled. All three politely sat down. Montalbano regretted not having a briefcase from which to pull out some papers.

  “Take notes,” Montalbano ordered Fazio.