Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Stand up,” he said.

  But Rosanna shook her head. She wanted to stay right where she was, perhaps because that way she wouldn’t have to look Montalbano in the eye. Was she embarrassed to say what she had to say?

  “It wasn’t ’cause o’ what Cusumano done to me.”

  The inspector felt lost for a moment. Did this mean he’d got it all wrong, and all his fine reasonings were already headed south on a one-way ticket?

  “Why, then?”

  “’Cause o’ what he made me do.”

  And what did that statement mean? Because of something Cusumano had forced her to do when in his hands? Or because of what she’d been subjected to by others with Cusumano’s consent? He decided not to ask any questions just yet, but to wait.

  “They grabbed me one night after they seen me with a guy I went out with, whose name was—”

  “Pino Dibetta.”

  Surprised, the girl looked up for a moment, stared at him, then lowered her head again.

  “A car come, a guy got out—it was Cusumano—an’ he grabbed my arm an’ twisted it an’ made me get in. The car drove off, it was driven by a fat man with a big spot on his face . . .”

  “Ninì Brucculeri,” said the inspector. “Just so you know, I’ve arrested him. He tried to kill me last night. Go on.”

  “An’ they took me to a house in the country, an’ then Brucculeri got out an’ Cusumano punched me in the stomach an’ face to make me take my clothes off, an’ then he took his clothes off an’ did everything he wanted to all night an’ the nex’ morning too. Then, around noon, Brucculeri showed up, an’ Cusumano tol’ him I was all his, got dressed and left. An’ Brucculeri was worse than Cusumano. Nex’ morning at dawn he left too, but before he left he tol’ me that if I talked, if I tol’ anyone what happened, they would kill me, an’ then he punched me so hard I fainted. When I woke up I was alone. I washed myself ’cause there was a bad smell an’ then I went home. It took me three hours to get there, ’cause I coun’t walk. An’ as I was walkin’ home I swore to myself I would kill Cusumano, not ’cause he raped me, but ’cause he gave me away like a rag doll. But then four days later, when he was getting married—”

  “He was arrested and sentenced to three years.”

  “Yessir. An’ the whole time I’s thinkin’ how I was gonna kill him. I coun’t get him outta my head. You gotta kill him, you gotta kill him when he gets outta prison. The same words, day an’ night. Okay, but how? I was gettin’ desperate, the years going by an’ he’s about to get out an’ I ain’t done nuthin’. Then, one day—”

  “You meet Signora Siracusa at the market and she makes you an offer. You accept and go to work at her house. And so you meet her husband.”

  “Yessir. A skirt chaser. He wanted to take advantage of me, an’ at first I said no. Then he showed me his gun collection to impress me.”

  “The illegal guns, too, the ones in the secret drawer.”

  “Yessir. An’ so I did what he wanted.”

  “Did he give you the revolver himself?”

  “No sir. He just wrote me the request for the prison visit. But it wasn’t a mistake, like you said. ’Cause I din’t say nothin’, when we met. He did all the talking.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘What, you want another taste of my cock? Well, you can have some, soon as I get out of prison.’ An’ he started laughing, but he was scared.”

  “And so why did you go?”

  “What, you understand everything so far but not that? I went ’cause if I warn’t able to kill him, I could say it was when I visited him in jail that he tol’ me to kill the judge. Paper talks.”

  “Brilliant. Go on.”

  “Meanwhile, Siracusa was getting more relaxed wit’ me and showed me where he kept the key to the desk. So I stole a gun and loaded it, after he asplained me how to do it, just to show off.”

  There wasn’t much else to say. Montalbano leaned forward, took the girl by the arms, and made her stand up, as he stood up himself. Rosanna still had her head down.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She looked at him. Oddly, her eyes seemed less dark and hollow. Before, they’d been a deep, murky well at the bottom of which one easily imagined poisonous snakes slithering. Now he could look into them without discomfort. Or, at most, with only the discomfort of sinking pleasantly into them.

  “We have to make an agreement, you and me. I’m hoping to get you out of this mess without any charges against you. You’ll walk away free, while Cusumano’s going to do a few more years in jail, I promise. But you have to be ready to testify that Cusumano raped you. I’ll try to arrange things so it doesn’t come to that, but I have to know that you’re willing to do it.”

  Without warning, Rosanna embraced him and held him tight. She clung to him with her whole body. Montalbano sank into her warmth, her womanly scent. How good it felt to drown in that body! Independently of his will, his arms returned the embrace. They stayed that way, in silence, for a few moments. Only their breathing spoke.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Rosanna’s lips then said a short distance from his right ear.

  A little prayer in rhyme Montalbano had learned from the priests in boarding school came into head:

  Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony

  Who made the Devil flee from thee

  Let me be as hard as wood

  To fight his evil with good.

  He wasn’t quite sure whether the Devil had taken the form of the girl, but he certainly was starting to turn hard as wood, though probably not in the same sense as in the prayer. The only hope was to call for help.

  “Signora Fazio!” he cried in the voice of a turkey-cock.

  Rosanna released him at once.

  When he straggled back into the station, it was almost five. Fazio shot into his office as fast as a tetherball.

  “My wife called and said—”

  “Yes. I spoke for a long time with Rosanna, who finally decided to tell me the truth. She led us around by the nose, that girl, and took us exactly where she wanted us to go.”

  He thought for a moment of his father, who after taking one look at her had said: Don’t trust that woman.

  “But this afternoon,” he continued, “I guessed right and she couldn’t deny it any longer. Quite the opposite.”

  Fazio was dying to know.

  “I’ll just give a rough sketch, because we haven’t got much time,” said Montalbano.

  When the inspector had finished talking, Fazio was pale and in a daze. He had many things to say, but only asked the question that concerned him most.

  “Are we sure Rosanna will respect her promise to testify against Cusumano for rape?”

  “She swore to me she would.”

  Montalbano went out of the station and stood in front of the entrance. Almost at once the chauffeur-driven car of the Honorable Torrisi pulled up. He raced to open the car door, face beaming with a broad smile.

  “Your Honor! How wonderful to see you again!”

  Stepping out of the car, Torrisi gave him a perplexed look, confused by all this joviality. The man was a politician, after all, and certainly understood human nature. But this time he seemed not to know whether Montalbano was putting on an act or behaving sincerely. He didn’t reply. It was better to see how the situation developed. The inspector, for his part, continued the performance.

  “But why did you go out of your way, Your Honor? I meant it when I said I would gladly come to you!”

  Then, once inside, he yelled to all within earshot and nobody in particular:

  “Don’t put any calls through to me! I don’t want to be disturbed! I’ll be with the Honorable Torrisi!”

  But it wasn’t until Montalbano had him sit down in his own chair behind the desk—there was no talking him out of it—th
at Torrisi became finally convinced that the inspector was someone who could not only be approached, but possibly even bought. And perhaps even cheaply. Thus he decided not to waste any time. There probably wasn’t any point in wasting much breath over the man.

  “I’ve come to talk to you about an unpleasant affair—which, however, could, I believe, be resolved with a little goodwill.”

  “Goodwill on whose part?”

  “On everyone’s part,” Torrisi replied ecumenically, gesturing broadly with his right arm as if to include the whole world.

  “Then tell me what I can do for you, sir.”

  “I’ll get straight to the point. I was informed that the other evening your men burst into the home of a certain Antonio Brucculeri, known to his friends as Ninì. His home was searched and a firearm was found. And Brucculeri was brought here to the station. And all of this—as far as I know—without authorization, and without a warrant.”

  “That’s true. But we’re talking about an ex-convict who—”

  “Even ex-convicts have rights. An ex-convict is a human being like any other. He may have made some mistakes, but this doesn’t give anyone, much less you, the right to treat him as if he’s been branded for life and devoid of human dignity and rights. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Perfectly clear,” said the inspector, visibly embarrassed and wringing his hands. “Do you have any idea how we might get out of this sticky wicket . . . which I can only chalk up to my inexperience?”

  Montalbano inwardly congratulated himself. Sticky wicket! How the hell did he ever come up with that? And perhaps Torrisi too was congratulating himself, convinced that he now had the inspector in the palm of his hand.

  “I’m happy to see that you’re a reasonable man. Given the fact that there are no written records of the search, the confiscation of the weapon, and Brucculeri’s arrest, you can release him without worry. And in so doing, you will enjoy the tangible—and I mean tangible—gratitude of some people who matter around here. Besides, you yourself seem to realize that you did not act in accordance with the law.”

  “Yes, and I take full responsibility, but there’s still one thing I’m not sure about, which you, as a lawyer, might be able to help me with.”

  “By all means.”

  “When somebody shoots at me the way Brucculeri did the other night, should that be considered attempted murder or just a warning?”

  The politician shook his head, though smiling.

  “Such big words! Attempted murder! Come now, Inspector. You were in your car and dri—”

  “Let’s stop right there, sir. Who told you I was in my car? Perhaps the other man who was with Brucculeri and eating with him at the restaurant?”

  Torrisi became tongue-tied. The smile vanished. Ah, so with his great show of friendliness, this bastard was trying to set him up?

  “Car or no car, that’s an irrelevant detail.”

  “That’s true.”

  Montalbano got up from his chair, went over to the window, and started looking outside.

  “And so?”

  “I was trying to think how we might set things right. You said there were no written records, but that’s not true.”

  “So what’s been written?”

  “I had the confiscated weapon sent to Montelusa Police Central, along with the bullet recovered from the tire. There’s a written request for a ballistics exam with Brucculeri’s name on it as the owner of the gun.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “There may be a solution. You could persuade Brucculeri to admit to what he did, then you could defend him by saying he’d been drinking, he wasn’t himself and just wanted to play a nasty trick on me . . . That way the thing would end there and go no further.”

  The honorable politician’s eyes narrowed to little slits, and his ears perked straight up like a cat’s when it hears a slight rustle.

  “Why, is there some chance it could go further?” he asked.

  As though uncomfortable, the inspector—who was still standing at the window—looked down at his shoe tops.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Explain.”

  “Were you aware that, in connection with another affair, the telephone in that Racalmuto restaurant has been tapped over the last few months?”

  The inspector had blindly fired a great big whopper that had come to him just then. In shock, Torrisi swallowed it whole.

  “What the fuck!”

  And he leapt out of his chair, face beet red, on the verge of a heart attack.

  “And so,” Montalbano continued, “the order that Pino Cusumano gave to Ninì Brucculeri when the latter informed him of my presence at the restaurant was rec—”

  “Recorded?!” sputtered the honorable politician, choking in the grips of an asthma attack.

  “That young man is too impulsive,” Montalbano said with magnanimous understanding. “His father and grandfather ought to pay closer attention to him. One day he’s going to do something stupid and get himself in trouble. Nothing irreparable, of course, but still unseemly and shameful for the kind of family the Cuffaros are. Like what he did three years ago, when he raped an underaged girl.”

  A sudden gunshot in the room would have had less effect.

  “What did he do?!” asked the red-violet pepper that was once the Honorable Torrisi, loosening his tie and shirt collar.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No . . . We didn’t know!”

  He’d used the plural. Therefore even the family was unaware of this brilliant move by their beloved Pino.

  “The girl waited to become a legal adult before talking about it,” Montalbano continued. “She came here the other day and told me she’d been kidnapped, held prisoner, beaten and repeatedly raped by Pino Cusumano. Just three days before he got married.”

  “Is the offense still actionable?”

  “You’re a lawyer, have you forgotten your jurisprudence? Of course it’s still actionable, and officially prosecutable, since the victim was a minor at the time of the crime.”

  “Has she filed an official complaint?”

  “Not yet. But that’s up to me. I’m trying to spare the Cuffaro family a public scandal. Just imagine: the member of so respected and honorable a family, behaving like some common criminal! They might lose face forever! And the family’s enemies, who are rather numerous, will have a field day. And I even took into account the poor wife . . .”

  “What wife?” asked Torrisi, in a daze.

  “What wife, sir? Why, Cusumano’s wife! The one who hadn’t been able to enjoy the marriage bed for three whole years because her husband had been arrested on the church steps on their wedding day. You yourself mentioned it at the trial where I was called as a witness, remember? You claimed that Cusumano was speeding in his car because, once he was out of jail, he was in a rush to be with his wife, with whom he hadn’t yet been able to consummate—”

  “Yes, I remember,” Torrisi cut him off.

  “Well, there you go! I told myself that if the poor woman ever found out that her husband, barely three days before their wedding, had decided to celebrate his good-bye to bachelorhood by raping a fifteen-year-old . . . well, she just might not accept it, she just might leave home, she just might create a scandal . . . The end of a family! What is this? Eh? What is this?” he concluded on a questioning note, bringing both hands, cupped like artichokes, to his forehead, and agitating them.

  He’d played the part of shock and indignation superbly.

  “What is what?” the politician asked.

  “Don’t you understand, sir? Please let me explain. When the girl came to me and told me she’d been raped, I assigned one of my men to go with the utmost discretion and seek out Cusumano and make him talk to me. I wanted to hear his version of the story, don’t you see? But all I got by way of reply
, and as thanks for my deferential approach, was Cusumano ordering Brucculeri to shoot me. Now why was that? What kind of a way to act is that? The only explanation is that Cusumano lost his head when he found out that I was investigating the rape. Because if the story of the rape ever came out, Cusumano had more to fear from his family than from the law. He wanted me silenced. There is no other explanation. And this ill-advised gesture shows how untrustworthy, indeed how irresponsible Cusumano is. In fact, it might be best for the family if he goes to jail, where he can’t make any more trouble.”

  “Okay, okay. What do you intend to do?” Torrisi asked, in a sudden change of tone.

  The inspector’s intentions were now clear to him. The guy planned to screw Pino; there was no getting around it. And he’d fallen for the inspector’s little act like a fool.

  “Me?!” said Montalbano. “I don’t intend to do anything. At the most, I could give you a choice. I won’t combine the charges. Either attempted murder, or rape. The one or the other. Which is already a lot. It’s your decision.”

  He looked at his watch. It was six o’clock. He continued:

  “You have until eight-thirty this evening to tell me what you’ve decided. You correctly noted, earlier, that I haven’t played by the rules. You will therefore understand my haste to get back on the right track. Careful, though. A deal’s a deal. If Cusumano admits to the attempted murder in such a way as to give too many opportunities to the defense—to you that is—I will bring up the charge of rape.”

  The Honorable Torrisi raised his hand.

  “What is it?” asked Montalbano.

  “If there’s no mention of the rape investigation, what motive would Cusumano have had to tell Brucculeri to shoot at you?”

  “That, sir, is of no concern to me. You’ll have to think of a motive yourself. And you’d better think of a serious one, because I want to see Cusumano . . .”

  “. . . behind bars,” Torrisi concluded.

  There was nothing left to say. Montalbano opened the window.

  “I need to air this room out. Good-bye, sir. It’s been a great pleasure.”

  And so saying, the inspector flashed a broad, apparently cordial smile. The Honorable Torrisi stood up, said nothing, and had to open the door himself, since Montalbano had not budged from where he was standing.