The Smell of the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  In some ten minutes’ time, all that was left of Snow White, Happy, Grumpy, Dumpy, Sleazy, Snoopy, Duck, and Bumful, or whatever the hell they were called, was a litter of tiny colored fragments. Montalbano, however, still didn’t feel satisfied. Also near the unfinished gazebo, he discovered some cans of spray paint. Picking up the green, he wrote the word ASSHOLE four times in big block letters, once on each side of the house. After which he rescaled the front gate, got back in his car, and drove home to Marinella, now feeling completely sober again.

  Back home in Marinella, he spent half the night putting his house back in order after the havoc he’d created looking for the notary’s receipt. Not that it really need have taken all that time, but the fact is, when you empty out all your drawers you find a great many old, forgotten papers, some of which demand, almost by force, to be read, and you inevitably end up plunging deeper and deeper into the vortex of memory, as things that for years upon years you’d done all in your power to forget begin to come back to you. It’s a wicked game, memory, one that you always end up losing.

  He went to bed around three in the morning. But after getting up at least three times to drink a glass of water, he decided to bring a pitcher into the bedroom, setting it on the nightstand. Result: By seven o’clock his belly was as though pregnant with water. It was a cloudy morning, and this increased his nervous agitation, which was already at the high-water mark from his bad night. The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver with determination.

  “Don’t be breaking my balls, Cat.”

  “Is not who you tink, signore, is me.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Don’ you rec’nize me, signore? Is Adelina.”

  “Adelina! What’s the matter?”

  “Signore, I wanted a tell you I can’t come today.”

  “That’s okay, don’t—”

  “An’ I can’t come tomorrow neither, an’a day after that neither.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My younges’ son’s wife was rush to the hospital with a bad bellyache and I gotta look after ‘er kids. There’s four of ’em and the oldest is ten and he’s a bigger rascal than ’is dad.”

  “It’s okay,Adelina, don’t worry about it.”

  He hung up, went into the bathroom, grabbed a small mountain of dirty laundry, including the sweater that Livia had given him, the one all caked with sand, and threw everything into the washer. Unable to find a clean shirt, he put on the same one he’d worn the previous day. He thought he’d have to eat out for at least three lunches and three dinners, but he swore to himself he would resist temptation and remain faithful to the San Calogero. Thanks to Adelina’s phone call, however, his bad mood was now overflowing, convinced as he was of his inability to take care of himself or his house.

  At the station there seemed to be dead calm. Catarella didn’t even notice his arrival, involved as he was in a phone conversation that must have been rather trying, since from time to time he would wipe his brow with his sleeve. On his desk he found a scrap of paper with two names on it, Giacomo Pellegrino and Michela Manganaro, and two corresponding telephone numbers. He recognized Mimi’s handwriting and immediately remembered that these were the names of the employees of King Midas Associates, along with, of course, Mariastella Cosentino. Mimi, however, hadn’t added their addresses, and the inspector preferred to talk to people face-to-face.

  “Mimi,” he called.

  Nobody came. The guy was probably still in bed or drinking his first cup of coffee.

  “Fazio!”

  Fazio showed up at once.

  “Isn’t Inspector Augello here?”

  “He’s not coming in today, Chief, and not tomorrow or the next day, either.”

  Just like his housekeeper, Adelina. Did Mimi likewise have grandchildren to look after?

  “And why not?”

  “What do you mean, why not, Chief? Have you forgotten? He’s on marriage leave, starting today.”

  It had completely slipped the inspector’s mind. And to think it was he who’d introduced Mimi—even if it was, in a sense, for unmentionable reasons—to his future wife, Beatrice, a fine, beautiful girl.

  “So when’s he getting married?”

  “In five days. And don’t forget, ’cause you’re supposed to be Inspector Augello’s witness.”

  “I won’t forget. Listen, are you busy?”

  “I’ll be with you in a second. There’s some guy here, Giacomo Pellegrino, who came in to report some acts of vandalism against a small villa he just now finished building.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “Okay, take care of it and come back.”

  So he, Montalbano, was the vandal. Hearing his exploits described that way, here, inside the police station, he felt a little ashamed of himself. But how could he ever set it right? He couldn’t very well go over to Fazio’s room and say: “Listen, Mr. Pellegrino, I’m very sorry, I’m the one who—”

  He stopped. Giacomo Pellegrino, Fazio had said. That was one of the names Mimi had written down with the phone number on the piece of paper in front of him. He quickly committed Pellegrino’s phone number to memory, got up, and went into Fazio’s office.

  His sergeant, who was writing something down, glanced up at Montalbano. They barely looked at each other, but they understood. Fazio kept writing. What was it Mimi had said about Giacomo Pellegrino? That he was a young guy, a graduate in business economics. The man sitting in front of Fazio’s desk looked like a shepherd and must have been at least sixty. Fazio finished writing, and then Pellegrino, with some difficulty, signed the paper. Business economics, my eye. This guy’d never got out of third grade. Fazio took the report back from him, and at this point the inspector intervened.

  “Did you leave your telephone number?” Montalbano asked.

  “No,” said the man.

  “Well, it’s always better to have it. What is it?”

  The man dictated it to Fazio, who wrote it down. It wasn’t the same. It seemed more like a number from the Montereale area.

  “Are you from around here, Mr. Pellegrino?”

  “No, I’ve got a house near Montereale.”

  “So why did you have a house built between Vigata and Montelusa?”

  He’d just put his foot deep in his mouth, and he realized this at once. Fazio hadn’t told him where the villa was located. And indeed the sergeant began staring at the inspector, his eyes narrowing to tiny little slits. But Pellegrino probably thought the two cops had already discussed things when Fazio was called out of the room; he did not seem suprised by the question.

  “It’s not mine. It belongs to my nephew, one of my brother’s boys. He’s got the same name as me.”

  “Ah!” said Montalbano, feigning astonishment. “Now I get it. Your nephew’s the young man who worked for King Midas Associates, right?”

  “Yessir, that’s him.”

  “I’m sorry, but why are you reporting the crime instead of your nephew, who’s the owner?”

  “Mr. Pellegrino has power of attorney,” Fazio cut in.

  “I guess your nephew works too much and can’t look after—”

  “No,” said the man. “I’ll tell you what happened. About a month ago, on the same morning that son of a bitch Gargano was supposed to come back—”

  “What, did he take your money too?”

  “Yessir, he did, everything I owned. The morning before that, my nephew came out to Montereale to tell me Gargano’d called him and ordered him to go to Germany for some business. His plane was leaving from Palermo at four in the afternoon. My nephew told me he’d be away for at least a month and asked me to look after the construction. . He should be back any day now.”

  “So if I need to talk to him I won’t find him in Vigàta?”

  “No sir.”

  “Do you have an address or a phone number in Germany where I can reach your nephew?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  5


  Why was it that ever since Garzullo the land surveyor, rest his soul, came into the Vigàta office of King Midas, revolver in hand, threatening to commit a massacre, the inspector couldn’t make a move without running into someone or something connected in one way or another to ragioniere Gargano? As he was contemplating this string of coincidences of the sort that one finds both in secondrate detective novels and in the tritest everyday reality, Fazio came in.

  “Awaiting your orders, Chief. But please explain one thing for me first. How did you know where Pellegrino’s villa was? I never told you. Care to tell me, for curiosity’s sake?”

  “No.”

  Fazio threw his hands up. The inspector had decided to play it safe. With Fazio, it was better to be cautious. The guy was a true cop.

  “And I also know that they broke all the windows on the ground floor, smashed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to dust, and wrote ‘asshole’ on all four walls,” the inspector added. “Am I right?”

  “You’re right. They used a sledgehammer and a can of green spray paint they found at the house.”

  “Terrific. So what do you make of that? Think I talk to spirits? Have a crystal ball? Have magical powers?” asked Montalbano, getting more and more enraged with each question.

  “No sir. But there’s no need to get angry.”

  “But of course I get angry! I drove by there this morning. I wanted to see how the olive tree was doing.”

  “Was it doing well?” Fazio asked with a hint of irony. He knew about the tree as well as the rock on the jetty, the two places where his boss sometimes sought refuge.

  “It’s not there anymore. They chopped it down to make room for the house.”

  Fazio turned very serious, as though Montalbano had just informed him of the death of someone very dear to him.

  “I understand,” he said softly.

  “You understand what?”

  “Nothing. Got any orders to give me?”

  “Yes. Now that we know that Giacomo Pellegrino is living it up in Germany, I’d like you to find me the address of this Miss or Mrs. Michela Manganaro who worked for Gargano.”

  “I’ll have it for you in a minute. Want me to go first to Brucale’s and buy you a new shirt?”

  “Yeah, thanks, and get me three while you’re at it. But how’d you guess I needed shirts? Now you’re the one with magical powers who talks to spirits!”

  “No need to talk to spirits, Chief I can see you didn’t change your shirt this morning, and you really should have, ’cause one of the cuffs is stained with dried paint. Green paint,” he emphasized with a little smile, going out.

  Miss Michela Manganaro lived with her parents in a ten-story public housing unit near the cemetery. Montalbano thought it best not to forewarn her of his coming, either by telephone or even via the intercom. He’d just finished parking the car when he saw a man coming out the main door.

  “Excuse me, could you tell me what floor the Manganaros live on?”

  “Fifth floor, damn it all!”

  “What have you got against the Manganaros?”

  “For a week now the elevators only go up to the fifth floor. And I live on the tenth! I have to climb those stairs twice a day! They’ve always been lucky bastards, those Manganaros. Just imagine, a few years ago they even won the numbers!”

  “Did they win much?”

  “Small potatoes. But can you imagine the self-satisfaction?”

  Montalbano went into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator went up and stopped at the third floor. He tried everything, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Forced to climb up two flights of stairs, he consoled himself with the thought that at least he’d been spared the other three.

  “Whoozat?” an elderly woman’s voice called out from behind the door.

  “Montalbano’s the name. I’m a police inspector.”

  “What do you want from us?”

  “I need to talk to your daughter Michela. Is she at home?”

  “Yes, but she’s lying down. Got a touch of the flu. Wait just a minute while I call my husband.”

  There followed a shout that momentarily startled Montalbano.

  “Filì! Com’ere! There’s some guy here says he’s a police inspector!”

  Apparently he hadn’t succeeded in convincing the lady, to judge by that “says.”

  Then, still behind the locked door, the woman said:

  “Talk loud ‘cause my husband’s deaf!”

  “Whoozat?” said a man’s voice this time, sounding irritated.

  “I’m with the police, open up!”

  He’d yelled so loudly that, even as the Manganaros’ door remained stubbornly closed, the other two doors on the landing opened, and two spectators, one at each door, appeared: a little girl of about ten who was eating a morning snack, and a man of about fifty in a sleeveless undershirt with a patch over his left eye.

  “Speak louder, Manganaro’s deaf,” was the friendly advice of the man in the undershirt.

  Even louder? He did a few breathing exercises to ventilate his lungs, as he’d once seen a champion underwater diver do, and, having stored as much air as possible, he yelled:

  “Police!”

  He heard doors open simultaneously on the floors above and below, as some agitated voices began to ask:

  “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

  The door to the Manganaro flat opened very very slowly, and then a parrot appeared. Or that, at least, was the inspector’s first impression. Long, yellow nose, purple cheeks, big, dark eyes, loud green shirt, and a tiny crest of red hair on his head.

  “Come in,” the parrot muttered. “But please be quiet, my daughter’s asleep. She doesn’t feel so good.”

  He showed the inspector into an incongruously Swedish-looking living room. Perched on a stand was Mr. Manganaro’s twin brother, who at least had the honesty to remain a bird and not pass himself off as a man. Manganaro’s wife, a kind of injured sparrow accidentally or maliciously riddled with buckshot who dragged her left leg, entered the room carrying with difficulty a tiny tray with a demitasse of coffee.

  “It’s already got sugar,” she said, sitting down and making herself comfortable on the little sofa.

  It was obvious her curiosity was eating her alive. She probably didn’t have many opportunities to amuse herself, and she was settling in to enjoy this one.

  Seeing how things are, thought Montalbano, what kind of daughter-bird is going to come from a cross between a parrot and a sparrow?

  “I informed Michela. She’s getting up and will be right in,” twittered the sparrow.

  But where did she dredge up that voice she called her husband with? Montalbano wondered. Then he remembered reading in a travel book about certain tiny birds that could wail like sirens. The lady must belong to that species.

  The coffee had so much sugar in it that the inspector’s mouth turned sticky. The first to speak was the parrot, the one disguised as a man.

  “I know why you wanna talk to my daughter. ‘Cause of that goddamn son of a bitch Gargano. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” yelled Montalbano. “Were you also a victim of Gargano’s sch—”

  “Nahhh!” said the man, violently thrusting his right arm forward and clapping his left hand into the hollow of the elbow.

  “Fili!” his wife scolded him, using her second voice, the one from the Last Judgment.

  The windowpanes made a tinkling noise.

  “Do you think Filippo Manganaro would be so stupid as to fall for Gargano’s little shell game? You know, I didn’t even want my daughter to go work for that swindler!”

  “You knew Gargano before all this?”

  “No, but I didn’t need to know him ‘cause they’re all swindlers: the banks, bankers, stock marketeers, everybody who works with money. They can’t help it, man, it’s the way things are. If you want, I’ll explain it to you. You by any chance ever read a book called Capital, by Marx?”

  “Pa
rts of it,” said Montalbano. “Are you a Communist?”

  “Hit it, Turì!”

  The inspector, not understanding his reply, looked at him dumbfounded. Who was this Turi? He found out a moment later, when the man’s twin, the real parrot, whose name was apparently Turiddru, cleared his throat and started singing the “Internationale.” He sang it rather well, and Montalbano began to feel a wave of nostalgia well up inside him. He was about to compliment the bird’s teacher when Michela appeared in the doorway. At the sight of her, Montalbano’s jaw dropped. The last thing he expected was this strapping, rather tall brunette with violet eyes, beautiful and full of life, nose slightly reddened from the flu, wearing a miniskirt halfway up her slightly but perfectly plump thighs and a white blouse that barely contained a pair of full breasts imprisoned by no bra. A quick, wicked thought, like a viper darting through the grass, flashed into his mind. No question but that the handsome Gargano had wet his whistle, or tried to, with a girl like her.

  “Okay, I’m available now.”

  Available? She said it with a deep, slightly gravelly voice, Marlene Dietrich-style, which made Montalbano so hot and bothered that he could barely restrain himself from crowing like the professor in The Blue Angel. The girl sat down, pulling her skirt as much as possible towards her knees, looking demure, eyes downcast, one hand on her leg and the other on the armrest. It was the pose of a good girl from an honest, hardworking family. The inspector recovered the power of speech.

  “I’m sorry to make you get out of bed.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m here to ask you for some information on ragioniere Gargano and the agency where you used to work.”

  “Go ahead. But you should know I was already questioned by someone from your office. Inspector Augello, if I’m not mistaken. Although I must say, frankly, he seemed more interested in other things.”

  “Other things?”

  He regretted his question even as he was asking it. He’d understood what she meant. And he imagined the scene in his mind: Mimi asking question after question, as his eyes, meanwhile, were delicately removing her blouse, bra (if she was wearing one that day), skirt, and panties. No way Mimi could have resisted, face-to-face with a beauty like this one. He thought of Mimi’s future wife, Beatrice, and how many bitter pills the poor thing would have to swallow.