“Come out immediately, or I’m going to throw a hand grenade down there!”
Galluzzo and Di Grado looked at him, mystified. Hand grenade? Where? At that moment the raised hands and then the scarred face of Vittorio Carmona, killer and bodyguard, appeared.
“’Cuff him! He’s wanted for murder!” the inspector ordered.
Then Franco Sinagra popped out. He was in his underpants and carrying his clothes.
“You’re under arrest for ordering the murders of Filippo Manzella and Matilde Verruso, and for the attempted murder of Inspector Fazio.”
“Can I get dressed?”
“No.”
It was a day of bedlam. News reporters, TV cameras, telephone interviews, the commissioner pissed off because that asshole Arquà had turned over to him a hot letter that he should actually have given to Montalbano, and in so doing, got him into trouble, Tommaseo completely in the dark as to everything and going around saying it was thanks to him that Sinagra was seen on all the national television news programs in his underpants . . .
Around nine o’clock that evening, as the inspector was driving home to Marinella, the cell phone rang. It was Angela.
“Just a minute,” he said.
He pulled over to the side of the road before speaking again.
“Angela, thank you so much for everything. You were brilliant! You performed marvelously with Prosecutor Tommaseo! If not for you . . . How did you find out, anyway?”
“What do you mean, how did I find out? The TV news programs haven’t been talking about anything else! Why didn’t you call me?”
He’d quite simply forgotten.
“I’m sorry, Angela, but with all that was happening . . .”
“I understand.”
“Now you have nothing more to be afraid of. No one can blackmail and force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“You know, Salvo, I was thinking . . .”
“Tell me.”
“Don’t take it the wrong way. But, well, since there’s no longer any reason for us to see each other . . .”
A punch in the stomach. But of course she was right. What reason was there for them to see each other?
“. . . you won’t be coming to my place tonight.”
“Don’t be offended, Salvo. Try and understand me.”
“I’m not offended, I understand you perfectly.”
“I’m sorry, okay? And give me a ring whenever you like. Ciao.”
“Ciao.”
Sitting out on the veranda, with a touch of melancholy to keep him company, he tried to console himself with a dish—a huge one—of caponata.
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Author’s Note
Like The Wings of the Sphinx, this novel had its origin in a press clipping sent to me by my providential friend Maurizio Assalto, whom I thank warmly. And apparently it’s not entirely superfluous to declare that all the characters, situations, episodes, and places in this story belong to my imagination and not to the real world. But when one writes, even pure fiction, isn’t one’s reference always the real world?
Notes
Zingarelli’s a dictionary: Zingarelli’s is one of the standard dictionaries of modern Italian.
municipal police officer: What Italians call a vigile urbano is part of a different department of law enforcement from the commissariato, of which Montalbano is chief, and which handles criminal cases.
“madhouse!” “But weren’t they abolished?”: In 1978, the passage of Law 180 (also known as the Franco Basaglia Law, after the famous psychiatrist-neurologist who inspired it) technically abolished insane asylums in Italy. Among other things, it eliminated “dangerousness” as an acceptable reason for internment. It did stipulate, however, that “obligatory mental health treatment” (Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio, or TSO) must be applied to individuals whose “psychological disturbances are such as to require urgent therapy,” if such therapy is not voluntarily accepted by the persons in question. Care to the mentally ill would be provided by a variety of institutions, including outpatient clinics, community centers, and “residential” and “semiresidential” centers.
Law 180 was slow in being applied. The first Berlusconi government moved in 1994 to close the remaining sanatoriums still open. But, as it turns out, the current system makes available to patients far more psychiatric services than before; the “residential centers” are, in effect, psychiatric hospitals. The inflexibly coercive nature of the pre-1978 asylums has, however, been considerably diminished.
Ragionier Muscetta: Ragioniere is a largely meaningless title given to accountants whose specialization does not go beyond that provided by vocational school. A full certified accountant is called a contabile.
“like one of those carabinieri jokes”: The carabinieri are often the butt of jokes in Italy, always having to do with their lack of intelligence.
Monsieur Lapalisse: A reference to the legendary Jacques de la Palisse (1470–1525), a French nobleman and military officer active in Francis I’s Italian campaign, during which he was killed. His epitaph reads: Ci gît Monsieur de La Palice: S’il n’était pas mort, il ferait encore envie (“Here lies Monsieur de la Palisse: Were he not dead, he would still be envied”). This was originally misread—by mistake, presumably—as saying “. . . S’il n’était pas mort, il serait encore en vie” (“Were he not dead, he would still be alive”), due perhaps to the potential confusion between f and s in serif script. The misreading gave rise to a whole tradition of burlesque song variants, with similar tautological plays on words, such as Il n’eût pas eu son pareil / S’il avait été seul au monde (“He would have had no equals / Had he been alone in the world”). The many variants were brought together into La chanson de La Palisse by Bernard de la Monnoye in the early eighteenth century, though other versions exist as well.
“if I sing the song, i’ comes out Surrientino”: Neapolitan dialect for Sorrentino.
Via Piscio: i.e., “Piss Street.”
Tertium non datur: “No third possibility is given” (Latin).
Mimì was speaking Italian, a bad sign: i.e., instead of Sicilian.
Pilatus docet: “As Pilate teaches,” that is, it’s better not to dirty one’s hands (Latin).
Also by Andrea Camilleri
The Shape of Water
The Terra-Cotta Dog
The Snack Thief
Voice of the Violin
Excursion to Tindari
The Smell of the Night
Rounding the Mark
The Patience of the Spider
The Paper Moon
August Heat
The Wings of the Sphinx
The Track of Sand
The Potter’s Field
The Age of Doubt
To request Penguin Readers Guides by mail (while supplies last), please call (800) 778-6425 or e-mail [email protected]. To access Penguin Readers Guides online, visit our Web site at www.penguin.com.
* Richmond Lattimore translation.
Praise for Andrea Camilleri
and the Montalbano Series
“There’s a deliciously playful quality to the mysteries Andrea Camilleri writes about a lusty Sicilian police detective named Salvo Montalbano.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The books are full of sharp, precise characterizations and with subplots that make Montalbano endearingly human . . . Like the antipasti that Montalbano contentedly consumes, the stories are light and easily consumed, leaving one eager for the next course.”
—New York Journal of Books
“This series is distinguished by Camilleri’s remarkable feel for tragicomedy, expertly mixing light and dark in the course of producing novels that are both comforting and disturbing.”
—Booklist
“The novels of Andrea Camilleri breathe out the sense of place, the sense of humor, and the sense of despair that fills the air of Sicily.”
—Donna Leon
> “Hailing from the land of Umberto Eco and La Cosa Nostra, Montalbano can discuss a pointy-headed book like Western Attitudes Towards Death as unflinchingly as he can pore over crime-scene snuff photos. He throws together an extemporaneous lunch . . . as gracefully as he dodges advances from attractive women.”
—Los Angeles Times
“In Sicily, where people do things as they please, Inspector Montalbano is a bona fide folk hero.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Sublime and darkly humorous . . . Camilleri balances his hero’s personal and professional challenges perfectly and leaves the reader eager for more.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Camilleri is as crafty and charming a writer as his protagonist is an investigator.”
—The Washington Post
“Montalbano is a delightful creation, an honest man on Sicily’s mean streets.”
—USA Today
“Camilleri can do a character’s whole backstory in half a paragraph.”
—The New Yorker
“[T]he humor and humanity of Montalbano make him an equally winning lead character.”
—Publishers Weekly
Also by Andrea Camilleri
The Shape of Water
The Terra-Cotta Dog
The Snack Thief
Voice of the Violin
Excursion to Tindari
The Smell of the Night
Rounding the Mark
The Patience of the Spider
The Paper Moon
August Heat
The Wings of the Sphinx
The Track of Sand
The Potter’s Field
The Age of Doubt
To request Penguin Readers Guides by mail (while supplies last), please call (800) 778-6425 or e-mail [email protected]. To access Penguin Readers Guides online, visit our Web site at www.penguin.com.
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