“Thank you, Dr. Lattes.”
So that was that. Tomorrow he would tender his resignation. With a fond goodbye to, among others, the swimming dead guy, as Catarella called him.
That evening, phoning from home, he told Livia about the nurse’s testimony. By way of conclusion, just when the inspector thought he had reassured her completely, Livia let out a sigh full of doubt.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Jesus Christ!” snapped Montalbano. “You really won’t let go of it! You don’t want to accept the obvious!”
“And you’re too ready to accept it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that in the past, you would have checked out the veracity of that testimony.”
“In the past!” Montalbano fumed. What was he, old as the hills? Some kind of Methuselah? “I haven’t done any checks because, as I already said, the whole business is of no importance. And anyway . . .”
He broke off, the gears in his brain screeching to the sudden halt.
“And anyway?” Livia insisted.
What to do? Stall? Say the first idiocy that came into his head? Right! Livia would have caught on immediately. Better to tell the truth.
“Anyway, tomorrow I’m seeing the commissioner.”
“Oh.”
“I’m tendering my resignation.”
“Oh.”
A horrendous pause.
“Goodnight,” said Livia.
She hung up.
7
He woke up at the crack of dawn but remained in bed, eyes open and staring at the ceiling, which brightened ever so slowly with the sky. The faint light filtering through the window was clear and steady, not varying in intensity as when clouds were passing. It promised to be a beautiful day. So much the better. Bad weather wouldn’t have helped matters. He would be firmer, more decisive, when explaining the reasons for his resignation to the commissioner. Resignation. The word brought to mind an episode when he’d first joined the police, before coming to Vigàta . . . Then he remembered the time when . . . And that other time when . . . All at once the inspector understood why all these memories were flooding his brain. They say that when someone is about to die, the most important moments of his life pass before him as in a film. Was the same thing happening to him? Deep down, did he consider resignation a kind of death? He roused himself, hearing the telephone ring. He glanced at the clock. Eight o’clock already, and he hadn’t even noticed. Jesus, what a long film his life was! Worse than Gone with the Wind! He got up and answered the phone.
“Morning, Chief, it’s Fazio. I’m about to go out and continue my search . . .” (Montalbano was about to tell him to drop it, but changed his mind) “... and since I found out you’re meeting with the commissioner this afternoon, I prepared some papers for you to sign as well as some other stuff, and put them all on your desk.”
“Thanks, Fazio. Any news?”
“Nothing, Chief.”
Since he had to go the commissioner’s office in the early afternoon and wouldn’t have time to come home to Marinella and change, he had to get dressed up. He slipped the tie in his pocket, however; he would put it on in due course. It really bugged him to wear a slipknot around his neck first thing in the morning.
The stack of papers on his desk was in a precarious state of balance. If Catarella barged in and slammed the door, they would witness a replay of the Tower of Babel’s collapse. He signed for over an hour without once looking up, then felt the need for a little rest. He decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Out on the sidewalk, he stuck his hand in his pocket, searching for cigarettes and matches. Nothing. He’d forgotten them at home. In their place was the tie he’d selected, green with little red dots. He shoved it back in his pocket at once, looking around like a thief who’d just stolen a purse. Christ! How had such an ignoble tie found its way into his wardrobe? And why hadn’t he noticed its colors when he put it in his pocket? He went back inside.
“Cat, see if there’s anyone here who can lend me a tie,” he said as he passed him on the way to his office.
Catarella turned up five minutes later with three ties.
“Whose are they?”
“Torretta’s”
“The same guy who lent his glasses to Riguccio?”
“Yessir.”
He chose the one that least clashed with his grey suit. After another hour and a half of signing, he’d managed to finish the stack. He looked around for the briefcase in which he normally put his papers when he went to meetings. He turned his office upside down looking for it, cursing the saints, but to no avail.
“Catarella!”
“Your orders, Chief!”
“Have you by chance seen my briefcase?”
“No sir, Chief.”
He had almost certainly taken it home and left it there.
“See if anyone in the office—”
“Right away, Chief.”
He returned with two almost new briefcases, one black, the other brown. Montalbano chose the black.
“Where’d you get them?”
“Torretta, Chief.”
Had this Torretta opened some kind of emporium inside the police station? He thought for a minute about going to see him at his desk, then decided that he didn’t give a damn. Mimì Augello came in.
“Gimme a cigarette,” said Montalbano.
“I stopped smoking.”
The inspector looked at him, flabbergasted.
“Did your doctor forbid it?”
“No, it was my own decision.”
“I see. Have you switched to cocaine?”
“What’s this bullshit you’re saying?”
“It’s not bullshit, Mimì. Nowadays they’re passing very severe laws against smoking, practically persecuting smokers and copying the Americans yet again. But at the same time there’s more and more tolerance shown for cocaine addicts. After all, everybody uses the stuff, undersecretaries, politicians, businessmen . . . The fact is that if you smoke a cigarette, the guy next to you can accuse you of poisoning him with secondhand smoke, whereas there’s no such thing as secondhand cocaine. In short, cocaine causes less social damage than smoking. How many lines do you snort a day, Mimì?”
“Got your dander up today, I guess. Letting off steam?”
“A little.”
What the hell was happening? Catarella getting names right, Mimì turning virtuous . . . Inside the microcosm that was the Vigàta Police headquarters, something was changing, and this too was a sign that it was time to go.
“I have to go to a meeting at the commissioner’s this afternoon. I also asked to speak with the commissioner in private afterwards. I’m turning in my resignation. You’re the only one who knows. If the commissioner accepts it, I’ll tell everyone this evening.”
“Do whatever you want,” Mimì said rudely, getting up and heading to the door.
Then he stopped and turned around.
“For your information, I stopped smoking because it could hurt Beba and the baby on the way. As for resigning, you’re probably right to leave. You’ve lost your spark, your muscle tone, your irony, your mental agility, and even your meanness.”
“Fuck you, Mimì, and get me Catarella!” the inspector yelled as Mimì left.
Two seconds were all it took for Catarella to materialize.
“Your orders, Chief.”
“See if Torretta has a soft pack of red Multifilters and a lighter.
Catarella seemed unfazed by the request. He disappeared, then reappeared with the cigarettes and lighter. The inspector gave him the money and went out wondering if the Torretta Emporium had any socks, as he would soon be needing some. Once he hit the street, he felt like having a proper cup of espresso. In the café next to the station, the television, as usual, was on. It was twelve-thirty, time for the TeleVigàta midday news. Anchorwoman Carla Rosso’s talking head appeared, running through the news items in an order of importance based on the audience’s pr
eferences. First she reported on a drama of jealousy run amok, with an eighty-year-old man stabbing his seventy-year-old wife to death. Then came the violent crash of a tractor-trailer and a car with three passengers, all dead; an armed robbery at a branch of the Credito di Montelusa; an old tub with a hundred or so refugees spotted out at sea; and another case of piracy on the roads, where an immigrant boy, whom the authorities were unable to identify, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver.
Montalbano drank his coffee alone and undisturbed, paid, said goodbye, went outside, lit a cigarette, smoked it, stamped it out in the doorway of the station, greeted Catarella, went into his office, and sat down, when all of a sudden the café’s television appeared on the wall before him, with Carla Rosso’s talking head silently opening and closing its mouth as her words echoed inside the inspector’s head:
“An immigrant boy, whom the authorities were unable to identify . . .”
All at once he found himself back on his feet, hurriedly retracing his last steps, almost without knowing why. Or rather, he did know why, but didn’t want to admit it: the rational side of his brain was rejecting what his irrational side was telling him to do at that moment—that is, to obey an absurd presentiment.
“Did you forget something?” asked the barman, seeing the inspector rush in.
He didn’t even answer. They’d changed the channel. There was some sitcom on, and you could see the “Free Channel” logo in the corner.
“Turn it back to TeleVigàta, immediately!” the inspector said in a voice so cold and deep that the barman turned pale as he dashed to the set.
He’d arrived in time. The news was considered so unimportant that there weren’t even any images accompanying the report. Carla Rosso said that early that morning, a peasant on his way to work in his field had seen an unidentified car knock down a small, non-European boy. The man had phoned for help, but the boy was dead on arrival at Montechiaro Hospital. After which Carla Rosso, a smile slicing her face in two, wished everyone a good lunch and disappeared.
A kind of fight broke out inside the inspector’s body, pitting his legs, which wanted to leave in a hurry, against his brain, which insisted on a normal, easy gait. Apparently they reached a compromise, and as a result, as he headed back to the station, Montalbano looked like one of those mechanical dolls whose spring is beginning to unwind, making it lurch forward in fits and starts, first fast, then slow, then fast again.
He stopped in the doorway and yelled:
“Mimì! Mimì!”
“Somebody performing La Bohème today?” inquired Augello when he appeared.
“Listen closely. I can’t go to that meeting at the commissioner’s. You go. The papers you need to show him are on my desk.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. And give him my apologies. Tell him I’ll talk to him another time about that personal matter.”
“What excuse should I give him?”
“One of those excuses you’re so good at inventing when you don’t come in to work.”
“Want to tell me where you’re going?”
“No.”
Concerned, Augello lingered in the doorway and watched him leave.
Provided that the tires—by now smooth as a baby’s bottom—held the road, that the fuel tank didn’t spring an irreparable leak, that the motor could bear a speed greater than fifty miles per hour, and that there wouldn’t be much traffic, Montalbano figured he could make it to Montechiaro Hospital in an hour and a half.
At a certain point, as he was racing along full-throttle, in danger of crashing into a tree or another car—since he’d never in his life been a good driver—he felt utterly ridiculous. On what basis in fact was he doing what he was doing? There must be hundreds of little black boys in Sicily. What made him think the little kid run over by the car was the same one he’d taken by the hand on the wharf a few nights before? Of one thing, however, he was certain: to ease his conscience, he absolutely had to see that boy, otherwise the doubt would keep stewing inside him, tormenting him. If it happened not to be the same boy, so much the better.
It would mean that the family reunion, as Riguccio called it, had been a success.
At Montechiaro Hospital, the staff let Montalbano talk to one Dr. Quarantino, an affable, courteous young man.
“Inspector, when the boy got here he was already dead. I think he must have died upon impact. Which was very, very violent. So violent it broke his back.”
Montalbano felt something like a cold wind envelop him.
“He was hit in the back, you say?”
“Yes. The boy was probably standing at the side of the road when a car came up at high speed behind him and skidded out of control,” Dr. Quarantino hypothesized.
“Do you know who brought him here?”
“Yes. One of our ambulances, which was summoned by the Road Police after they rushed to the scene.”
“The Montechiaro Road Police?”
“Yes.”
He finally made up his mind to ask the question he hadn’t had the strength to ask thus far.
“Is the boy still here?”
“Yes, in the morgue.”
“Could I . . . could I see him?”
“Of course. Please follow me.”
They went down a corridor, got in an elevator, went underground, walked down another corridor much drearier than the previous one, and at last the doctor stopped in front of a door.
“Here we are.”
A cramped, cold, dimly lit room. A small table, two chairs, a metal shelf. Also metal was one of the walls, though in reality the wall consisted of refrigerated cells that slid out like drawers. Quarantino pulled one out. The little body was covered by a sheet. The doctor began to lift the sheet gently, and Montalbano first saw the wide-open eyes, the very same eyes with which the little boy had begged him to let him run away, to let him escape, when they were on the wharf. There was no doubt about it.
“That’s enough,” he said in a voice so soft it sounded like a breath.
He could tell, from the look Quarantino gave him, that his face had drastically changed expression.
“Did you know him?”
“Yes.”
Quarantino closed the drawer.
“Can we go?”
“Yes.”
But the inspector couldn’t move. His legs refused to budge; they were like two pieces of wood. Despite the cold inside the little chamber, he felt his shirt all drenched with sweat. Then he forced himself, getting dizzy in the process, and at last began to walk.
At Road Police headquarters they explained to him where the accident had occurred. Four kilometers outside of Montechiaro, along an unauthorized, unpaved road linking an unauthorized seaside village called Spigonella with another seaside village, also unauthorized, called Tricase. The road did not proceed in a straight line, but rather made long detours inland to service other unauthorized houses inhabited by people who prefered the air of the countryside to that of the sea. One officer was so kind as to make an extremely precise drawing of the route the inspector had to take to find the place.
Not only was the road unpaved, but one could clearly tell that it actually was an old goat path whose countless holes had been poorly and only partially filled. How could a car ever have driven down it at high speed without risking a breakdown? Was it being chased by another car? Rounding a bend, Montalbano realized he’d reached the right place. At the base of a mound of gravel to the right of the path was a small bouquet of wildflowers. He stopped the car and got out to have a better look. The mound looked gouged out on one side, as if from a powerful impact. The gravel was stained with large, dark splotches of dried blood. From where he stood, he could see no houses, only cultivated fields. Off to the side, about a hundred yards down the path, a peasant was hoeing. Montalbano walked towards him, having trouble keeping his footing on the soft ground. The peasant was about sixty, thin and bent, and didn’t bother to look up.
“Good afterno
on.”
“Good afternoon.”
“I’m a police inspector.”
“I figgered.”
How so? Better not to dwell on it.
“Was it you who put the flowers in the gravel?”
“Yessir.”
“Did you know that little boy?”
“Never seen ’im afore.”
“So why did you put those flowers there?”
“He was a creature of God, not no animal.”
“Did you see the accident happen?”
“I both seen it and didn’t see it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come over here and follow me.”
Montalbano followed him. After about ten paces, the peasant stopped.
“At seven o’clock this morning I was here, hoeing this spot right here. All of a sudden I hear this terrible scream. I look up and see a little kid run out from behind the bend. He’s runnin like a rabbit and screamin.”
“Did you understand what he was saying?”
“No sir. When he’s over there by that carob, a car come speedin really fast around the bend. The kid turned round to look and then tried to git off the road. Maybe he was tryin a come towards me. But then I din’t see ’im no more cause he’s hid behind that mound of gravel. Then the car swerved behind ’im, but I din’t see no more. I heard a kind of thud. Then the car went into reverse, went back out on the road, an’ disappeared around the next bend.”
Though there was no chance the man was mistaken, Montalbano wanted to make especially sure.
“Was that car being followed by another?”
“No sir. It was alone.”
“And would you say it deliberately swerved behind the boy?”
“I dunno if he did it ’liberately, but he swerved all right.”
“Did you manage to see the license plate number?”
“You kiddin? Have a look fo’ y’self an’ see if you c’n see over there.”
Indeed, it was impossible. The difference in elevation between the field and the road was too great.
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