Why bother to go to the station? he asked himself.
He didn’t have any pressing things to do; in fact, he didn’t have anything at all to do.Tommaseo was busy with his press conference;Adriana had her sister’s funeral to attend; the commissioner was probably too busy to look at the answers on the questionnaire he had sent to the different commissariats.And he, Montalbano, felt only like lolling about, but not at home.
“Catarella?”
“Atcher soivice, Chief.”
“Lemme talk to Fazio.”
“Straightaways.”
“Fazio? I’m not coming in this morning.”
“Don’t feel well?”
“I feel just fine. But I’m convinced that I’ll immediately feel bad if I come in to work.”
“You’re right, Chief. It’s stifling here. Nobody can breathe.”
“I’ll come in this evening around six.”
“Okay. Oh, Chief, could I borrow your minifan?”
“Be careful not to break it.”
Half an hour later, on the road to Pizzo, he stopped in front of the rustic cottage, the one the peasant lived in. He got out of the car and approached the house. The front door was open. He called out.
“Anybody home?”
At the window directly above the door appeared the same man whose earthenware pot Gallo had shattered with the car. From the way the man looked at him, the inspector could tell he didn’t recognize him.
“Whattya want?”
If he told him he was with the police, the guy might not let him in.
The homely clucking of some chickens behind the house came to his aid. He took a wild guess.
“Got any fresh eggs?”
“How many you need?”
It must not have been a big chicken coop.
“Half a dozen should do.”
“Come on in.”
Montalbano went in.
A bare room that must have served his every purpose. A table, two chairs, a cupboard. Against one wall, a small stove with a gas cylinder, and beside it a marble surface with glasses, dishes, a skillet, and a pot on top. Humble utensils worn out by time and overuse. Hanging on one wall was a hunting rifle.
The peasant came down the wooden stairs leading to the room above, which must have been his bedroom.
“I’ll go get ’em for you.”
He went outside.The inspector sat down in a chair.
The man returned with three eggs in each hand. He took two steps towards the small table, then stopped short. He stared hard at Montalbano as his face changed expression and paled.
“What’s wrong?” the inspector asked him, getting up.
“Aaaaahhh!” the peasant roared.
And with all his might he hurled the three eggs in his right hand at Montalbano’s head. Despite being caught by surprise, the inspector dodged two of them, whereas the third hit him on his left shoulder and broke, dripping down onto his shirt.
“Now I rec’nize ya, stinkin’ cop!”
“But listen—”
“Still the same story? Eh?”
“No, I came to—”
Of the other three eggs, one got him on the forehead, and two in the chest.
Montalbano was blinded. He brought his handkerchief to his eyes to wipe them clean, and when he was able to see again through his gluey eyelids, he noticed that the peasant was now holding his hunting rifle and pointing it straight at him.
“Get out of my house, fuckin’ cop!”
The inspector ran out.
His colleagues must have put the poor guy through a lot.
The stains had spread so far over his shirt that it looked one color in front and another in back.
He had to go back to Marinella to change clothes.There he found Adelina scrubbing the floor.
“Signò, what, somebuddy tro’ eggs at you?”
“Yes, some poor bastard. I’m going to go change.”
He washed himself with the hot water from the tanks on his roof, then put on a clean shirt.
“I’ll be seeing you, Adelì.”
“Signore, I gotta tell you I cannotta come tomorra.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause I’ma gonna go see my boy, the bigger one, who’s in jail in Montelusa.”
“How’s the younger one doing?”
“ ’E’s in jail too, but in Palermo.”
She had two sons, both delinquents, who were always in and out of jail.
Montalbano had sent them to jail a couple of times himself, but he still remained fond of them. He’d even been made godfather of one of them.
“Tell him I said hi.”
“I will. I wannata say that since I’ma not coming, I make a you somethin a eat.”
“Make me cold things, that way they’ll last longer.”
He headed back to Pizzo, bringing along his bathing suit this time.
He sped past the peasant’s cottage, worried that the guy might shoot at his car, then past Adriana’s house, the doors and windows of which were all shuttered, and pulled up at the illegal house.
Since he had the keys, he went inside, undressed, put on his bathing suit, went back outside, and descended the stone staircase to the beach. At this point there were few bathers, most of them speaking foreign languages. After August 15, Sicilians considered the summer season over, even if the heat was worse than before.
He retained a memory of clean, refreshing pleasure from the first time he had swum in those waters, when he came here with Callara. He dived into the sea and started swimming. He stayed in the water until the skin on his fingertips became wrinkled, a sign that it was time to return to shore.
His intention was to take a cold shower and go back home to eat whatever gift of God Adelina had prepared for him. But the climb up the staircase in the hot sun high overhead made him wilt, draining him of strength. Inside the house, he went straight into the master bedroom and lay down on the double bed.
It was two-thirty when he fell asleep and almost five when he woke up. The mattress bore the imprint of his naked body, a damp silhouette.
He stayed in the shower so long that he used up all the water in the tank. But since he wasn’t at home, and since the house wasn’t inhabited, he could do so without regrets.
When he went out to go to the station, he saw another car parked in front of the house. He thought he’d seen it before, but he couldn’t remember where. There was nobody around. Maybe they’d gone down to the beach.
Then he noticed that an electrical cable had been plugged into the outlet next to the door and ran around the corner of the house to the back. Surely it was to illuminate the illegal apartment downstairs.
Who could it be? Certainly not anyone from Forensics. He was sure it must be some journalist who had come on the sly to take photos of the “site of the atrocious crime,” and he felt suddenly overcome with rage.
How dared the brute?
He ran to his car, took his pistol out of the glove compartment, and slipped it inside his belt. Past the corner, the electrical cable continued along the wall, ran over the planks, and disappeared inside the window that served as an entrance to the illegal apartment.
He climbed lightly over the ledge and found himself in the bathroom. Cautiously craning his neck, he saw that the living room was illuminated.
That motherfucking photographer was surely hoping to get a scoop by taking pictures of the trunk in which the body had been found.
I’ll give you a scoop, asshole, the inspector thought to himself.
And he did two things at once.
First, he set off running towards the living room, yelling:
“Hands up!”
Second, he cocked his revolver and fired one shot in the air.
Now, either because the rooms were empty of furniture and amplified noise, or because the apartment was entirely covered in plastic, which didn’t allow sound to disperse, the shot sounded like a huge explosion, barely less than a high-tonnage bomb blast.
; The first person to take fright was Montalbano himself, who had the impression that the gun had exploded in his hand. Totally deafened by the blast, he burst into the living room.
In terror, the photographer had dropped his camera to the ground and, trembling all over, was kneeling down with his hands raised and his forehead on the ground. He looked like an Arab praying.
“You are under arrest!” the inspector said.“Montalbano’s the name!”
“Wha—wha—” the man whimpered, barely raising his head.
“Why? You want to know why? Because you broke the seals to come inside!”
“But—but—there weren’t . . .”
“There weren’t any seals!” said a quaking voice coming from it wasn’t clear where. Montalbano looked around but didn’t see anyone.
“Who said that?”
“I did.”
And from behind the plastic-wrapped stack of casings Callara’s head popped out.
“Inspector, you have to believe us: There weren’t any seals!”
At that moment Montalbano remembered that when chasing after Adriana he hadn’t had time to put them back.
“Must have been some young hoodlum who took them down,” he said.
There in the living room the big floodlamp made the air even hotter than it would normally have been. One could barely speak, as the throat felt immediately parched.
“Let’s get out of here,” said the inspector.
They followed him into the apartment above, drank big glasses of mineral water, then sat down in the living room with the French doors wide open.
“I got so scared I nearly had a heart attack,” said the man Montalbano had mistaken for a photographer.
“Me too,” said Callara. “Every time I set foot in this damned house something strange happens to me!”
“My name’s Paladino,” the man with the camera introduced himself. “I’m a builder.”
“But what were you guys doing here?”
Callara spoke first.
“You see, Inspector, since there’s not much time left to make the amnesty requests, and since just this morning Signora Gudrun’s papers arrived by courier, I pleaded with Mr. Paladino to start doing the things that need to be done—”
“And the first thing that absolutely needs to be done is to document and photograph the illegal construction,” Paladino cut in. “The photos will then be attached to the blueprints.”
“Did you finish photographing?”
“I need another three or four of the living room.”
“Let’s go.”
He went out with them, accompanied them as far as the window, but did not go inside. Instead he stopped to collect the tape that had ended up under the two planks, and set them aside.
“I’ll wait for you upstairs!”
He smoked two cigarettes while sitting on one end of the low wall along the terrace, in a spot where the sun wasn’t beating down.
Then Callara came out.
“We’re done.”
“Where’s Paladino?”
“Putting the equipment in the car. He’ll be back in a second to say good-bye.”
“If you need to come back here, let me know first.”
“Thanks. By the way, I need to ask you something, Inspector.”
“What?”
“When are the seals going to be taken down?”
“Are you in a hurry?”
“Well, sort of. I would like to set up a date with Spitaleri for digging the place out and restoring it. If I don’t reserve in time, that guy, with all the things he’s got going on . . .”
“If Spitaleri can’t do it, just find someone else.”
Paladino came back.
“We can go now.”
“I can’t look for anyone else,” Callara said.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“There’s a pledge in writing that I didn’t know about, which I found among the papers that arrived this morning from Germany.”
“Try to be a bit more specific.”
“It’s a standard agreement,” said Paladino.“Callara showed it to me.”
“What does it entail?”
This time it was Callara who spoke.
“It says that Angelo Speciale formally pledges to employ the firm of Michele Spitaleri to dig out and restore the outside and inside walls of the illegal apartment once amnesty is granted. And he also pledges not to turn to any other firms in the event that Spitaleri is busy with other jobs at the time, but to wait until he is available.”
“A simple contract,” said Montalbano.
“Yes, but properly executed, signed, and countersigned. And if one of the parties fails to uphold it, especially with a character like Spitaleri, they may have some big problems on their hands,” said Paladino.
“Excuse me, Signor Paladino, but have you come across this sort of thing before?”
“This is the first time. I’ve never seen an agreement like this written so far in advance. And I don’t quite understand it. I ask myself: What’s a two-bit job like this to someone like Spitaleri?”
“I’m sure,” said Callara,“it was Speciale who wanted this agreement. He knew he could count on Spitaleri, and that way there would be no need for him to be present at the moment the work got under way.”
“Did you see the date?”
“Yes, October 27, 1999.The day before Angelo Speciale left to go back to Germany.”
“Signor Callara, I’ll see to having the seals removed as soon as possible.”
In the meantime, he went and put the seals back up.Then he got in his car and left. But he braked after just a few yards.
The front door and two windows of Adriana’s house were open. Had the girl perhaps gone there looking for a little serenity after the gloom of the funeral?
The inspector felt torn. Should he go see her or continue on his way?
Then he saw an elderly woman, a housekeeper, no doubt, close the two windows, one after the other. He waited a bit longer. The woman appeared in front of the door, then locked it.
Montalbano put the car in gear and headed back to the station, a little disappointed and a little relieved.
17
“This morning I went to the funeral,” said Fazio.
“Were there a lot of people?”
“A lot, Inspector, all overcome with emotion, of course. Women fainting, women crying, former girlfriends from school with pale faces—the usual drama, in short. And when the coffin left the church, everyone started clapping. Can you tell me why anyone would clap for the dead?”
“Maybe because they thought she did the right thing by dying.”
“Are you kidding, Chief?”
“No. When do people clap their hands? When they’ve seen something they like. Logically speaking, then, it should mean: I am rather pleased you are finally no longer in my hair.Who among the family members was there?”
“There was the father, who was being held up by a man and woman who must have been relatives of his. Miss Adriana wasn’t there; she must have stayed home to help out her mother.”
“I have to tell you something you’re not going to like.”
And he told him about his meeting with Lozupone. When he had finished, Fazio showed no surprise at all.
“You’ve got nothing to say?”
“What am I supposed to say, Chief? I was expecting it. By hook or by crook, Spitaleri’s going to weasel his way out, now and forever, in secula seculorum.”
“Amen. Speaking of Spitaleri, I want you to do me a favor and give him a call. I have no desire to speak with him.”
“What do you want me to ask him?”
“If, that time he left for Bangkok on October the twelfth, he remembers what day he came back.”
“I’ll go do it right now.”
He returned about ten minutes later.
“I tried him on his cell phone, but he had it turned off. So I called his office, but he wasn’t in.The secretary, however, looked it
up in an old agenda and said Spitaleri definitely returned on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth. She even told me she herself remembered the day very well.”
“Did she say why?”
“Chief, that lady’s such a chatterbox she’s liable to go on talking all day if you don’t stop her. She said October the twenty-sixth is her birthday, and she was thinking Spitaleri wouldn’t remember, whereas Spitaleri brought her not only the orchid that Thai Airways gives to every passenger, but a box of chocolates. And there you have it.Why did you want to know?”
“Well, today I went to Pizzo to take a dip.As I was about to leave . . .”
And he told him the whole story.
“Which means,” he concluded, “that the following day he drew up this personal contract, maybe because he’d found out that Angelo Speciale was about to leave for Germany.”
“I don’t see anything odd about it,” said Fazio.“And I’m sure it was Speciale himself who asked for the contract, just as Callara says. By that point he trusted Spitaleri.”
Montalbano seemed unconvinced.
“There’s something that doesn’t make sense to me.”
The telephone rang. It was Catarella, terrified.
“Jesus Jesus Jesus! Iss the c’mishner onna line!”
“So?”
“He sounds crazy, Chief! Wit’ all doo respeck, he sounds like a rapid dog!”
“Put him on and go have yourself a nip of cognac, it’ll calm your nerves.”
He turned on the speakerphone and gestured to Fazio to listen in.
“Good day, Mr. Commissioner.”
“Good day, my ass!”
As far as he could remember, Montalbano had never heard Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi use an obscenity. Whatever the problem was, it must have been big.
“Mr. Commissioner, I don’t understand why—”
“The questionnaire!”
Montalbano felt relieved.Was that all? He gave a little smile.
“But Mr. Commissioner, the questionnaire in question is no longer in question.”
Ah, what fun it was to apply every now and then the teachings of the great master Catarella!
“What are you saying?”
“I’ve already taken care of it and sent it over to you.”
“Oh, you took care of it, all right! You really did take care of it!”
IM10 August Heat (2008) Page 17