The Smell of the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  The girl didn’t answer the question; she knew that the inspector had understood. And she smiled. Or, rather, she gave one to imagine she was smiling, as she kept her head bowed, as was only proper in the company of a stranger. The parrot and the sparrow contemplated their baby with satisfaction.

  At this point the girl raised her violet eyes and looked at Montalbano as though awaiting his questions. But in reality she was telling him something, quite clearly, without using any words:

  Don’t waste your time here, she was saying. I can’t talk. Wait for me downstairs.

  Message received, Montalbano’s eyes replied.

  The inspector decided not to waste any more time. He pretended to be surprised and put out.

  “So you really were already interrogated? And it was all put on the record?”

  “Of course.”

  “But why haven’t I seen anything?”

  “Don’t ask me. Ask Inspector Augello, who, aside from being totally conceited, is losing his head these days because he’s getting married.”

  And then there was light. What alerted him were the words “totally conceited,” which, in the presence of her old-fashioned parents, were definitely standing in for the word “asshole,” far more pregnant in meaning, as literary critics used to say. But absolute certainty came immediately after that. The girl had surely granted her favors (as one says in the presence of old-fashioned parents) and Mimi, having lain with the aforesaid girl, had then disposed of her by revealing that he was engaged to be soon married.

  He stood up. They all stood up.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

  They were all very understanding.

  “These things happen,” said the parrot.

  A small procession formed, with the girl at the head, the inspector next, then the father and behind him the mother. Watching the undulant movement in front of him, Montalbano felt green with envy towards Mimi. After opening the door, the girl extended her hand to him.

  “Pleased to have met you,” she said with her mouth. But her eyes said: Wait for me.

  He waited a little more than half an hour, the time Michela needed to doll herself up properly and get rid of the redness around her cute little nose. Montalbano saw her appear in the doorway and look around, whereupon he gave a light toot of the horn and opened the car door. The girl walked towards the car with an air of indifference, at a slow pace, but once she’d reached the car she hopped in quickly, shut the door, and said:

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Montalbano, who managed at that moment to notice that Michela had forgotten to put on a bra, put the car in gear and drove off.

  “I had to put up a fight. My parents didn’t want to let me go out; they’re worried I’ll have a relapse,” the girl said. Then she asked: “Where should we go to talk?”

  “You want to go to the police station?”

  “And what if I run into that asshole?”

  Thus were Montalbano’s worst (and best) suspicions confirmed in a single stroke.

  “Anyway, I don’t like police stations,” Michela added.

  “How about a café?”

  “Are you kidding? People gossip too much about me as it is. Although with you, I guess, there wouldn’t be any danger of that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re old enough to be my father.”

  It would have been better if she’d stabbed him. The car swerved slightly.

  “Down and out for the count,” said the girl by way of commentary. “It’s a strategy that often works to deflate ambitious old geezers. But it depends how you say it.”

  Then she repeated it in an even deeper, more gravelly voice:

  “You’re old enough to be my father.”

  She’d managed to instill her voice with a heady savor of taboo and incest.

  Montalbano couldn’t help but imagine her next to him in bed, naked, sweaty, and panting. This girl was dangerous. Not just beautiful, but a bitch.

  “So, where are we going?” he asked in an authoritarian tone.

  “Where do you live?”

  “There are people at my place.”

  “Married?”

  “No. Come on, are you going to make up your mind?”

  “I think I know a place,” Michela said. “Take the second road on the right.”

  The inspector quickly turned onto the second road on the right. It was one of those rare roads that still tell you immediately where they’re going to take you: out into the open country. And they tell you this by means of houses that grow smaller and smaller until they turn into little more than dice with a little patch of green around them; or by means of lampposts and telephone poles that suddenly no longer line up straight; or by means of the road surface, which suddenly begins to give way to grass. Finally even the white dice disappear.

  “Should I keep going?”

  “Yes. Soon you’ll see a dirt road on your left. But don’t worry about your car, it’s well maintained.”

  Montalbano turned onto the road and soon found himself in the middle of a kind of dense wood of monkey puzzle trees and clumps of weeds.

  “There’s nobody here today,” said the girl, “because it’s a weekday. You should see all the traffic on Saturdays and Sundays!”

  “You come here often?”

  “When I happen to.”

  Montalbano rolled down the window and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Do you mind... ?”

  “No. Let me have one too.”

  They smoked in silence. Halfway through his cigarette, the inspector started in.

  “All right, I’d like to get a better idea about how Gargano’s system worked.”

  “Make your questions specific.”

  “Where did you guys keep the money Gargano stole?”

  “Well, sometimes it was Gargano who would come in with the checks, and then either me or Mariastella or Giacomo would deposit them at the local branch of the Cassa di Credito. We’d do the same when the client came directly rectly to the office. Some time after that, Gargano started having the sums credited to his bank in Bologna. But the money didn’t stay there very long, either, as far as we knew. Apparently it ended up in places like Switzerland and Liechtenstein, I don’t know.”

  “Why’d he send it there?”

  “What a question! Because he was investing it, so it would earn more money. At least that’s what we thought.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  “That he was piling up all the cash abroad so he could screw everybody when the time was right.”

  “Were you also ...”

  “Screwed by him? No, I never gave him a cent. I couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. You met my dad. He did manage to screw us out of two months’ salary, however.”

  “Listen, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “Come on!”

  “Did Gargano ever try to sleep with you?”

  Michela burst into sudden, uncontrollable laughter, her violet eyes turning brighter as they began to sparkle with tears. Montalbano let her get it out of her system, wondering what was so funny about the question. Michela got hold of herself.

  “Officially, he was courting me. But he was also courting poor Mariastella, who was really jealous of me. You know, chocolates, flowers, that kind of thing.... But if I’d ever told him I wanted to sleep with him, you know what would have happened?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “He would have fainted. Gargano’s gay.”

  6

  The inspector looked stunned. This was something that had never even crossed his mind. But after recovering from his initial shock, he thought about it: Was the fact that Gargano was homosexual of any importance to the investigation? Maybe yes and maybe no. Mimi, however, had said nothing about it to him.

  “Are you sure? Did he tell you himself?”

  “I’m more than sure, even though he never mentioned it to me. It was clear from the start, the
first time we ever looked at each other.”

  “Did you point out this ... this fact, or, rather, this impression of yours, to Inspector Augello?”

  “Augello asked me certain questions with his mouth, but his eyes were asking something else. To be honest, I can’t really remember if I talked about it with that asshole or not.”

  “Excuse me, but why are you so down on Augello?”

  “Well, you see, Inspector, I slept with Augello, because I liked him. But before I left his house, he, with a towel over his dick, let me know that he was engaged and about to get married. Who the hell asked? He was so lame that I regretted ever sleeping with him. There you have it. I’d like to forget about him.”

  “Was Miss Cosentino aware that Gargano—”

  “Look, Inspector, even if Gargano had suddenly turned into some horrible monster—say, Kafka’s cockroach—she would have continued to worship him, lost in her loving raptures, and not noticed a thing. Anyway, I don’t think poor Mariastella can really tell the difference between a rooster and a hen.”

  She certainly was full of surprises, this Michela Manganaro. So now she was pulling out Kafka’s Metamorphosis?

  “You like him?”

  “Who, Gargano?”

  “No, Kafka.”

  “I’ve read everything from The Trial to the Letters to Milena. Are we here to talk about literature?”

  Montalbano absorbed the blow.

  “And what about Giacomo Pellegrino?”

  “Giacomo understood right away, of course, maybe even before I did. Because Giacomo’s also gay. And before you ask me, I can tell you I also mentioned this to Augello.”

  Him too? And he understood right away? The inspector wanted confirmation.

  “Him too?” he asked.

  The question came out with an intonation typical of a Sicilian comic, half shocked, half annoyed. He felt immediately embarrassed, because that wasn’t remotely his intention.

  “Him too,” Michela said with no intonation whatsoever.

  “It’s possible,” Montalbano began cautiously, as though walking through a field of antipersonnel mines, “... but it’s purely a hypothesis, I should point out ... that Giacomo and Gargano might have had a relationship that could be termed somewhat—”

  “Why are you talking like that?” said the girl, opening wide her beautiful violet eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” said the inspector, “I’m a little confused. I meant to say—”

  “I understood perfectly well what you meant to say. And the answer is: maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “Have you read that one too?”

  “No. I don’t like D‘Annunzio. But if I were to make my own hypothesis, as you call it, I would lean more towards the ‘yes’ than the ‘no.’ ”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Something, in my opinion, started between the two almost immediately. They would sometimes stand apart and whisper ...”

  “But that doesn’t mean anything. They might have been talking business.”

  “And looking into each other’s eyes that way? And then there were the ‘yes’ days and the ‘no’ days.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You know, it’s typical of lovers. If their last encounter went well, then the next time they see each other they’re all smiles and touchy-feely ... But if things didn’t go well, if they’d had a quarrel, then there’s a kind of chill, they avoid touching each other, looking each other in the eye. Gargano, whenever he came to Vigàta, would stay at least a week, and so there was plenty of time for ‘yes’ days and ‘no’ days. It would have been hard for me not to notice.”

  “Do you have any idea where they would meet?”

  “No. Gargano was a very private man. And Giacomo was also really reserved.”

  “Listen, after Gargano disappeared, did you ever hear from him again? Did he write or phone the office or make any kind of contact?”

  “You shouldn’t be asking me that; you should be asking Mariastella. She’s the only one left at the office. I never went back after I realized that some infuriated client might take things out on me. Giacomo was the smartest of all of us, since the morning Gargano didn’t come in, he didn’t show up either. He must have had an inkling.”

  “An inkling of what?”

  “That Gargano’d made off with all the money. You see, Inspector, Giacomo was the only one of us who understood anything about Gargano’s business dealings. He probably went to the bank the day before and found out that no funds had been transferred from Bologna to Vigàta. At which point he would have realized something wasn’t right, so he stayed away. At least that’s what I thought.”

  “And you were wrong, because the day before Gargano arrived, Giacomo left for Germany.”

  “Really?” said the girl, genuinely astonished. “To do what?”

  “Sent there on assignment by Gargano. For a stay of at least one month. To take care of some business.”

  “And who told you that?”

  “Giacomo’s uncle. The one looking after the construction of the house.”

  “What house?” asked Michela, completely confused.

  “You didn’t know Giacomo was building a house just off the road between Vigàta and Montelusa?”

  Michela put her head in her hands.

  “What are you saying? Giacomo scraped by on his salary of two million two hundred thousand lire. That much I know for certain!”

  “Maybe his parents—”

  “His parents are from Vizzini and get by on the chicory in their garden. Listen, Inspector, this whole story you’ve just told me doesn’t make any sense. It’s true that every now and then Gargano used to send Giacomo off to clear up certain problems, but it was always unimportant stuff, and it always involved our own affiliates. I seriously doubt he would ever send him to Germany on important business. As I said, Giacomo knew more than the rest of us, but there was no way he could operate on an international level. He’s not old enough, and secondly—”

  “How old is he?” Montalbano interrupted.

  “Twenty-five. And, secondly, he has no experience. No, I’m convinced he pulled out that excuse with his uncle because he wanted to disappear for a while. He knew he couldn’t handle all the infuriated clients.”

  “So he goes into hiding for a whole month?”

  “Bah. I don’t know what to think,” said Michela. “Give me a cigarette.”

  Montalbano gave her one and lit it. The girl smoked it in short drags, without opening her mouth, visibly agitated. The inspector didn’t feel like talking either, so he put his brain on automatic pilot.

  When she’d finished smoking, Michela said in her Marlene voice (or was it Garbo dubbed?):

  “Now I have a headache.”

  She tried to open the window but couldn’t.

  “Allow me. Now and then it gets stuck.”

  He leaned over the girl and realized too late that he’d made a mistake.

  Michela’s arms were suddenly wrapped around his shoulders. Montalbano’s mouth opened in astonishment, and that was his second mistake. Michela’s mouth over- whelmed his half-open one and began a sort of meticulous exploration thereof with her tongue. Montalbano momentarily succumbed, then got hold of himself and executed a painful unsticking maneuver.

  “Behave.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said with a glint of amusement deep in her violet eyes. He turned on the ignition, put the car in gear, and drove off.

  But that “behave” had not been addressed to the girl. It was addressed to that part of his body which, upon solicitation, had not only promptly responded but actually intoned in a ringing voice the patriotic anthem that goes: The tombs shall open, the dead shall rise....

  “Maria santissima, Chief! What a scare I got! I’m still shaking all over, Chief! Look at my hand. See it trembling, see it?”

  “I see it. What happened?”

  “The c‘mishner called poissonally in poisson and axed for you. I tole ‘i
m you’s momintarily absint an’ as soon as you got back I’d a tell you he wants a talk t‘you. But then he axed, the c’mishner did, to talk to the rankling officer.”

  “The ranking officer, Cat.”

  “Whatever is, is, Chief All ‘at matters is we unnastand each other. So I was saying as how Inspector Augello’s matrimoniously engaged to be married soon an’ so he’s on leavings, an’ you know what the c’mishner says to me then? He says: ‘I don’t give a damn.’ Just like that, Chief! So I says, since Fazio ain’t here neither, there ain’t no rankling nobody. And then he axed me what my name is an’ so I says Catarella. So then he says, ‘Listen, Santarella,’ and I wanna make a point and put ‘im right, so I says, ‘My name’s Catarella.’ And y’know what the c‘mishner said then? He said: ‘I don’t give a damn what your name is.’ Just like that. He was outside himself, the c’mishner was!”

  “Cat, we’re gonna be here all night at this rate. What’d he want?”

  “He tole me to tell you you got twenty-four hours to give ‘im the answer you’re asposta give ’im.”

  The Italian mail permitting, the c’mishner would receive the pseudo-anonymous letter the next day. That would calm him down.

  “Any other news?”

  “Nuthin’ at all, Chief.”

  “Where’s everybody else?”

  “Fazio went over to Via Lincoln for a brawl, Gallo’s at the Sciacchitano store ’cause there was a little holdup there—”

  “What do you mean, ‘little’?”

  “I mean the holder upper’s a little boy, thirteen years old, with a gun as big as my arm. An’ Galluzzo’s at the place where they found a bomb this morning that never bombed, and Imbrò and Gramaglia went to—”

  “Okay, okay,” said Montalbano. “You were right, Cat. All quiet on the western front.”

  And as he went into his office, Catarella scratched his head. “It’s not too quiet in the Westerns I seen, Chief!”