The Dance of the Seagull im-15

by Andrea Camilleri

  The glow of the floodlights whitened the western sky. It looked as if they were shooting a film.

  If only it were a film! the inspector thought.

  But it was a true story. The intermittent beam of the lighthouse at the end of the jetty allowed him to reach the flat rock without breaking his neck or falling into the sea. He sat down, cigarette already lit.

  He had to make a decision, any decision whatsoever, before Mimì arrived. Because when he talked to him, he would need strong arguments to pull him over to his side. But there were only two possible decisions to make: either jump neck-deep into this affair and risk coming away defeated and subject to disciplinary action, controversy, and rebukes, or extract themselves and sit back and watch how the others wriggled out of it. Tertium non datur.

  For example, he could say to himself:

  “You’re fifty-seven years old, in the twilight of your career: why would you want to get entangled in an affair that could bring you to a bad end?”

  Or he could say:

  “You’re fifty-seven years old, in the twilight of your career, and therefore have nothing to lose. Give it all you’ve got.”

  No, no, no, said Montalbano Two. He was right the first time. He’s no longer the right age to play the hero and start tilting at windmills.

  What windmills? These are real monsters! Montalbano One rebelled.

  Of course they’re real monsters, and fierce, too. And that’s exactly why he should step aside. He’s no longer strong enough to fight them. It’s not cowardice or anything like that. He must simply realize that he’s no longer able to pull it off.

  But the letter was addressed to him! Manzella was asking him personally to intervene! He can’t back out!

  Can we think rationally about this? Manzella didn’t even know Montalbano. He wrote to him because he thought he would be the person assigned the investigation. It’s not a personal request, can’t you get that through your head?

  Then what, in your opinion, should he do?

  He should go to the commissioner, tell him the whole story, and give him the letter.

  And what, again in your opinion, will the commissioner do?

  Almost certainly pass it on to the Secret Service.

  Which would be the same as tossing it into the wastepaper basket. And flushing three dead bodies and an attempted murder down the drain.

  In short, a fox in the henhouse and a wolf outside. And speaking of animals, what was that story about sheep he’d read in Don Quixote?

  Ah, yes. Sancho starts telling Don Quixote the story of a shepherd who has to get his three hundred sheep across a river. He ferries them over one at a time in a little boat, begging Sancho to keep track of the crossings and warning him that if he makes a mistake, the story will end. And indeed Sancho slips up and is no longer able to keep telling Don Quixote the story to the end. Little surprise that Montalbano couldn’t tell Camilleri how the story would end!

  However, after another fifteen minutes of thinking and rethinking, mulling and remulling, he reached a decision. By his calculations, Augello wouldn’t be back for another forty minutes or so. So he had a little time. It took him ten minutes to get to the western wharf. The activity hadn’t yet reached its peak, and there were only four trawlers unloading their hauls. The bulk of the night’s catch would be arriving much later. Rizzica was standing in front of storehouse number three, talking with somebody. But as soon as he recognized the inspector, he came towards him.

  “You lookin’ for me?”

  “No. And we’ll be seeing each other tomorrow, if I’m not mistaken. I believe Inspector Augello asked you to come in.”

  “Yessir, but since you’re here, I’d like to talk.”

  “So let’s talk.”

  Rizzica headed for that place of piss and turds whose stench had already once made Montalbano nearly faint.

  “No, not there,” said the inspector. “Let’s go out to the end of the wharf.”

  “All right,” the other consented.

  “What do you have to tell me?”

  “Inspector, I want to tell you straightaway just to get it off my chest. I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “When I came to you an’ reported my suspicions. I was wrong.”

  “So it wasn’t true the captain and crew of that fishing boat were involved in drug trafficking?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then why are they sometimes late coming back to port?”

  “Inspector, that boat is jinxed. There’s a lot o’ boats, not just trawlers, even ships, that are born under a bad star. An’ they carry the hex with ’em wherever they go. I had the engine changed, an’ now iss never late anymore. So . . .”

  “You’ll have to come into the station anyway, I’m sorry. We’ll set down in writing what you have to say, file a report, and then you can leave.”

  They’d reached the last storehouse, almost at the end of the wharf. There the floodlights weren’t on, and there wasn’t anyone about.

  “Who does this warehouse belong to?”

  “Me.”

  “Why’s it closed?”

  “Inspector, I only use this warehouse when there’s really big hauls an’ the other warehouses aren’t enough. Tonight I’s already told that the haul isn’t so big.”

  Therefore that was the warehouse they took Fazio to, right after shooting him.

  Inspector Montalbano, since you’ll probably be assigned the investigation if they kill me, and they probably will, I hope that, if you are as good as people say, you’ll be able to find this letter easily. This all started when, at an unusual sort of gathering in Montelusa, I met Giovanna Lonero, a thirty-year-old transsexual. Since I felt immediately attracted to her, she confided to me that she lived in almost total isolation in an apartment in Vigàta, at the disposal of her lover, whose name she refused to tell me. She only went out at night, and when her lover was away on business. I was able to get her cell phone number, but she didn’t want mine because if her man ever found it, she could get in a lot of trouble. After that night, I called her almost every day, but her cell phone was either always turned off or she just wouldn’t answer. Finally she answered once and said she really wanted to see me, she had been thinking about me a lot, but didn’t dare let herself be seen out and about with me or any other man at all. She agreed to come to my place the next day around midnight. And so we discovered we lived very close to each other (at the time I lived in Via della Forcella, and she in Via delle Magnolie), and therefore she wouldn’t need to take her car, which might have attracted attention. She arrived on time and stayed with me until five o’clock in the morning. This first encounter was followed by many more. At this point I must confess that I own a large telescope that I use to spy on people in the intimacy of their homes. One night, totally by chance, I pointed it towards the outer part of the western wharf at the port, during the busy period when they unload the fishing trawlers and load the catch onto refrigerator trucks and into the cold storage houses. After that time, every so often I would look away from the lit-up windows of the nearby apartment houses and watch the traffic on the wharf. And that was how I happened to witness a scene that looked very strange to me. There was a refrigerator truck stationed in a much less busy spot, in front of the last storehouse at the end of the wharf, and I saw four large crates being unloaded very hurriedly from this truck and then reloaded onto a trawler that immediately went off to dock inside the harbor. Meanwhile the refrigerator truck had been loaded with crates of fish and then left. Three nights later, as I was watching the same scene unfold, Giovanna arrived. She also wanted to have a look, but then immediately stepped back in horror and said: “Oh my God, that’s Franco!” The tall, slender man of about forty was her lover, Franco Sinagra. She was upset, as if the man could see her in turn in my room. She didn’t want to stay, and left not long after. Several times when we got together after that, I tried very hard to find out a little more from her. Meanwhile I got down to work on my own,
and someone from my social circle (it’s a very gossipy circle) told me that Franco Sinagra was the surviving representative of the Mafia family of the same name and was forced to keep his relationship with Giovanna extremely secret because strict conformity with so-called normal behavior was still the rule among mafiosi. On top of this he was married to the daughter of a boss from Rivera, and his father-in-law would have never forgiven him. In short, if the whole affair ever became known, he risked losing everything, all his power and wealth. Giovanna also told me he was a stingy man who had a sort of tic; that is, he needed to appropriate everything that came within his reach, to own it himself. He had even taken away two little pieces of cheap jewelry of Giovanna’s, after which she nicknamed him “the Thieving Magpie.” Anyway, little by little, I came on my own to the logical conclusion that whatever the sort of traffic he was involved in, it had to be something extremely important, if a Mafia chief was directing operations instead of some lackey. Inspector, at this point I have no qualms about admitting to you that Giovanna and I realized we were in love. If the word “love” bothers you in this context, then replace it with the word “passion.” And that was how I hatched a plan, without ever telling her, to eliminate Franco Sinagra so I could have Giovanna all to myself. I also managed, from hints and suggestions from her, to figure out what the mysterious traffic involved: they were ferrying chemical weapons provided by the Russian Mafia to an Arab country. Involved in the traffic were two trawlers owned by a certain Rizzica, who knows everything. But there’s more: Giovanna let slip that the person pulling the strings in the whole affair was the Honorable Alvaro Di Santo, currently Undersecretary of Foreign Commerce. One night she told me that Franco was supposed to be flying to Rome the following day. She was pleased with the prospect of being completely free to spend a few nights with me. I immediately disappointed her. I told her that the following day I also had to go away, to Palermo to see my mother, who was unwell. Without arousing her suspicion, I got her to tell me at what time Franco’s flight was supposed to be leaving Palermo. I was so taken up by my plan, Inspector, that I didn’t realize the possible consequences of my actions. To make a long story short, I took the same flight and, in Rome, didn’t once let him out of my sight. And I had a stroke of luck: I managed to take a picture of him with my cell phone, in a restaurant on the outskirts of town, together with Honorable Di Santo, whom I was able to identify from a photo in a copy of the parliamentary directory I had gotten my hands on. Then, using a camera with a telephoto lens that I’d borrowed, I photographed Franco in action with his crates. But one unlucky day a friend of mine revealed to me that while we were away (while Franco and I were away, that is), Giovanna had gone out to enjoy herself in Fiacca. In a fit of jealous rage, I decided to call Fazio and informed on everybody, including Giovanna, and broke off all relations with her. I even changed my address. But with Fazio I sort of had to beat around the bush, because Giovanna then suddenly reappeared in my life. But I found her somehow different from before. I thought: Is she sincere or is she hiding something from me? Maybe she will have to answer this question herself, Inspector, when I can no longer hear her.

  Filippo Manzella

  P.S.: the photos are in a safety deposit box in my name at the Vigàta branch of the Banca dell’Isola.

  Mimì finished reading the letter, laid it down on the desk, and then pushed it with his index finger towards the inspector. While reading, he hadn’t had the slightest reaction, and even now he was cool as a cucumber.

  “First of all,” he began, “I’d like to know how you came into possession of this letter.”

  Mimì was speaking Italian, a bad sign. Maybe he wasn’t as calm as he appeared. Montalbano realized he’d made a mistake in giving him the letter without a word of explanation. He improvised a modified version of what he had planned to tell him. It seemed more logical.

  “I got a call from Fazio when I was in a restaurant. He’d just remembered an address that Manzella had given him. I finished eating and went there. And that’s where I found the letter, which was—”

  “Stop glossing over the details. I’m a cop just like you. Got that? Was the door unlocked?”

  “No.”

  “So how’d you get in?”

  “Well, I had a key that happened—”

  “When are you gonna stop feeding me bullshit?” Augello interrupted him.

  The inspector decided it was best to tell him everything.

  “Were you armed?”

  “No.”

  “You know, with all the respect due a superior, I must say you’re a perfect idiot. Sinagra could have left someone there to guard the place.”

  “Fine, but the fact is, he didn’t. Can we talk reasonably?”

  “About what? The letter? There’s nothing to talk about. Now you’re going to put it back in the envelope, give me the key that you happened to have, and so on and so forth, and I’m going to go back and put it back in the picture frame.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then you are going to officially order me to go and investigate what happened in that house, and I will discover that Manzella was murdered there. I’ll call Forensics and arrange things so that Arquà, or someone in his place, finds the letter. Never in a million years will he turn it over to me, and despite my insistence he’ll take it directly to the commissioner, at which point we can walk away whistling. As expected.”

  “Pilatus docet, in short,” Montalbano said bitterly.

  “It really gets on my nerves when you speak Latin.”

  “And what do you think the commissioner will do?”

  “I couldn’t fucking care less.”

  “I don’t like your line of reasoning, Mimì.”

  “Oh, no? You’re the one who taught me to look at things concretely!”

  “Why, aren’t the things stated in the letter concrete?”

  “Of course they’re concrete! But totally useless. There isn’t a single bit of evidence that would hold up.”

  “What are you talking about? Tomorrow Rizzica’s coming, and we’re gonna put the screws on him. He’s neck-deep in this. The warehouse where the truck stops is his, the trawlers are his, and—”

  “How do you know the warehouse is his?”

  “He told me himself. I ran into him a few hours ago at the port, and he even told me that when he comes in today, he’s going to explain how it was all a misunderstanding and that the real problem was with the trawler’s motor.”

  “You see? When he found out they’d shot one of us, the guy shat his pants and came up with an alibi. And he’ll have no trouble defending himself. He’ll start screaming: ‘But I was the first person to report that something seemed fishy! Why else would I notify the police?’ And bear in mind that he’s more afraid of Sinagra than we are.”

  “We can try another approach. We can organize a stakeout, and the minute the refrigerator trucks arrive with Sinagra, we burst in and—”

  “—and get the case taken away from us immediately. Can you imagine them leaving an investigation into chemical weapons traffic with an Arab country in the hands of a small-time police inspector and his even smaller-time assistant? No way. The spooks’ll come in, the good ones and the bad ones, and two days later—”

  “—Undersecretary Di Santo’ll come on TV and say it was all a big mistake and the substances were actually medicines for the children of Darfur.”

  “I see you’re starting to catch on.”

  “Yes, but the photographs—”

  “Salvo, assuming you even get permission to open that deposit box, assuming the photos are even there, and assuming the judge lets you keep them for more than two seconds, those photos don’t mean a fucking thing!”

  “What are you saying? An undersecretary eating at the same table with a mafioso of the caliber of Franco Sinagra?”

  “Oh, right! What a scandal! How shameful! No matter what they do, our elected representatives don’t give a fuck anymore about public opinion! They take drugs,
frequent whores, rob, steal, cheat, sell themselves, commit perjury, make deals with the Mafia, and what happens to them? The newspapers talk about it for, oh, three days maybe? Then everybody forgets about it. But you—you who exposed the scandal, they won’t forget about you, nosirree, you can count on that, and they’ll make you pay for it.”

  “We could ask Tommaseo for authorization to listen to Sinagra’s phone conversations with—”

  “—with the Honorable Di Santo? But what fucking world do you live in, anyway? Nowadays there isn’t a single judge who’ll grant you that authorization, and he couldn’t do it even if he wanted to, because these people know how to shield themselves. He would have to ask for the authorization of parliament first, and then hope and pray they granted it!”

  Montalbano listened to all this with a sort of mounting fatigue. Because these were words he himself might have said. But he realized that to continue to talk to Mimì would be a waste of breath. He would never manage to make him change his position. The best thing was to send him home to bed. He sat there for a few moments in silence, as if reflecting on what Mimì had said, then leaned forward, took the envelope, put the letter back inside, and handed it to Augello, who put it in his pocket.

  “Tomorrow morning, no later than eight, I want you to go to Via Bixio. Take Gallo along, and leave Galluzzo with me here.”

  “All right. But sleep easy. It couldn’t have been done any other way.”

  In the light of ignoble common sense, no, it couldn’t have been done any other way. The argument Mimì had just made was his own, yes, but it was only the first part of the argument that he, in Mimì’s place, would have made.

  The second part, in fact, would have begun as follows: Granted all of the above, what can we do now to screw them all, from the Honorable Di Santo to Franco Sinagra, without having to take it up the you-know-what ourselves? That was the question.

  He would have to find the answer all by himself. By coming up with an idea that it scared him even to think about. Dropping everything was not an option.