Rounding the Mark

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Where are you going?” asked Augello.

  “I’m going back home for a minute, then I’ll head out to Spigonella. But let me repeat: you’ll be working on your own, and so will I.”

  He left the room. Passing Catarella, he asked:

  “Cat, could you find out if Torretta has some wire cutters and a pair of thigh-high rubber boots?”

  He did. Wire cutters and boots.

  At home he put on a black turtleneck sweater, a pair of black corduroy pants, which he tucked into the boots, and a wool cap, also black, replete with pompom, which he put on his head. All he needed was a bent pipe in his mouth, and he would be a perfect replica of the generic sea dog one often sees in third-rate American movies. He went to the mirror to have a look at himself. All he could do was laugh.

  “Avast, old salt!”

  He got to the white-and-red house in Spigonella by ten, but instead of turning onto the road to the bungalow, he took the one he’d taken the first time with Fazio. For the final stretch, he turned the headlights off. The sky was overcast, and it was so dark he couldn’t see a blasted thing more than a step away. He got out of the car and looked around. To the right, a hundred or more yards away, the villa’s dark mass. Of his men, no sign at all. Nothing. Either they hadn’t arrived yet, or if they had, they’d blended in perfectly. Wire cutter in hand and pistol in his pocket, he walked along the edge of the cliff until he could make out the start of the staircase he’d spotted the first time he was there. It wasn’t as hard going down as the other staircase, either because this one was less steep, or because he felt reassured to know that his men were nearby.

  Halfway down the steps, he heard a motor rumbling. He realized at once that it was the dinghy, about to head out to sea. The sound was amplified by the silence and the grotto, which acted as an echo chamber. He froze. The water in front of the little harbor suddenly turned red. From where he stood, Montalbano didn’t actually see the signal light come on, since it was blocked by the tall rock in front of it. But that red reflection couldn’t mean anything else. He distinctly saw the dinghy’s silhouette pass through the reflection, though he couldn’t tell how many people were on board. Then the red glow vanished and the sound of the motor faded, turning into a flylike buzz that went on a long time before it disappeared. Everything was exactly as he’d imagined it. Resuming his descent, he had to refrain from singing at the top of his lungs. So far, he’d made all the right moves.

  His satisfaction, however, did not last long. Walking on the dry sand in those high boots immediately proved arduous. Ten more steps, in fact, would have broken his back; on the other hand, moving closer to the water’s edge, where the sand was wet and more compacted, would have been too dangerous, taking him too far out in the open. He sat down on the ground and tried to remove the first boot. It slid a little down his thigh, then stubbornly refused to budge past his knee. He stood up and tried again from an upright position. Worse yet. He started sweating and cursing. He finally wedged a heel between two rocks protruding from the wall and managed to free himself. He resumed walking, barefoot, holding the wire cutter in one hand and the enormous boots in the other. In the dark he failed to see a clump of weeds full of thorns and stepped right on top of it. At least a hundred thorns plunged gleefully into the sole of his foot. He felt discouraged. He had to face the facts: these kinds of operations were no longer for him. When he got to the edge of the moat, he sat down on the ground and put the boots back on, breaking into a cold sweat from the pain caused by the friction of the rubber against all the thorns.

  Lowering himself gently into the moat, he was pleased to find that he’d guessed right: the water came up to mid-thigh, barely half an inch below the top of the boots. Before him now stood the first of the midget monoliths that formed the little harbor, rising almost directly out of the rock face. Sticking the wire cutter in his belt, he groped the rock’s surface and found two protrusions to grab onto. He hoisted himself up with the strength of his arms. The rubber soles of the boots facilitated the climb with their traction. He slipped only once, managing to hang on with a single hand. Scaling the rock like a crab, he reached the wire fence, grabbed the wire cutter and, starting on the lower right, cut the first wire. A crisp, metallic crack rang out in the silence like a pistol shot, or so it seemed to him, at least. He held utterly still, not daring to move even a finger. But nothing happened. Nobody shouted, no one came running. Then, crack after crack—pausing cautiously between cracks—after half an hour he had managed to sever all the wires that were welded to the iron pole, which in turn was cemented into the rock face. He left only the top two wires uncut—one on the right, the other on the left—keeping the screen suspended and making it look like it was still intact. He would cut them in due time. For now, he had to get out of there. He left the wire cutter under the screen and, clinging to the upper part of the rock with both hands, he extended his body, searching for a foothold with his feet. Thinking he’d found one, he wedged the toes of his boots in the opening and let go. It was a mistake. The opening was not very deep and could not bear his weight. He slid down the rock, trying to halt the slide by using his fingers as claws. He felt like Sylvester the cat in one of his finest moments. He skinned his hands and plunged straight into the moat. But why didn’t Aristotle’s, er, Archimedes’ principle kick in? This principle said that a body immersed in liquid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of liquid displaced. Wasn’t that it? Whereas he had in no way been buoyed up. The only thing buoyed up was the water that came flying up over his head and fell back down on him, drenching his sweater and cheerfully flowing down between his cojones and into his boots. On top of this, his fall had sounded exactly like a beaching whale to him. He pricked his ears. Again, nothing. No voices, no sounds. Since the sea was a little rough, perhaps the watchman had thought it was merely a bigger wave splashing against the rocks. He climbed up out of the moat and lay down on the sand.

  What now? Count from one to a billion? Try to recite from memory every poem he knew? Think of all the possible ways to cook mullet? Start imagining all the reasons he would give to the commissioner and the public prosecutor for having worked on this case on the sly, without “the authorization of his superiors”? All of a sudden he felt a sneeze coming on, tried to suppress it, did not succeed, but blocked the burst by plugging his nose with his hand. He felt like he had a pint of water in each boot. All he needed now was a goddamn cold! On top of everything, he was beginning to feel chilled. He got up and started walking very close to the wall. Too bad if he had a backache tomorrow. After a hundred or so paces, he turned around. When he was back at the moat, he turned round again and retraced his steps. He went back and forth some ten times. Cold? Now he was hot and sweaty. He decided to take a brief rest and sat down on the ground. Then he lay down completely. Half an hour later, a troubling somnolence began to take hold of him. He closed his eyes, then reopened them after a brief spell, he couldn’t tell how long, bothered by the buzzing of a large fly.

  Fly? That was the dinghy returning! He quickly rolled towards the moat, slid into it standing up but hunched over. The buzzing became a rumble, and the rumble became a roar as the dinghy drew near. Then the roar stopped all at once. The dinghy was certainly now coasting on its momentum as it made its way through the canal and entered the grotto. Montalbano climbed up the rock without any difficulty, drawing strength and lucidity from the assurance that he would soon have the satisfaction he so desired. Once his head was at the level of the wire fence, he saw a great beam of light projecting out the entrance of the grotto. He also heard two men shouting angrily, and some children crying and whimpering, which wrenched his heart and turned his stomach. Hands sweaty and trembling, not from tension but from rage, he waited for the grotto to fall silent again. When he was about to cut the first of the fence’s two remaining wires, the light also went out. A good sign. It meant that the grotto was now empty. He cut the wires without precaution, one after the other, then let the large square of mesh tha
t remained in his hand slide down the rock before dropping it into the moat.

  He made his way past the two metal poles, then jumped down onto the sand, in the dark, from the top of the rock. A jump of over ten feet, and the Good Lord let him pull it off. In those last few minutes he felt a good ten years younger. He pulled out his pistol, cocked it, and went into the grotto. Total darkness and silence. He walked along the narrow quay until his hand felt the iron door, which was half-open. He went inside the hangar and quickly—as if he could see—reached the archway, passed under it, stepped onto the first stair, and stopped there. How come everything was so quiet? Why hadn’t his men started doing what they were supposed to do? A thought crossed his mind, and he began to sweat: what if they’d hit a snag and hadn’t arrived yet? And there he was, in the dark, gun in hand, looking like some dickhead dressed up as a sea dog! Why didn’t they get moving? Jesus Christ! Was this some kind of joke? Were Mr. Zarzis and his pals going to slip away, just like that? By God, no, even if he had to go up to the villa and raise the roof all by himself.

  At that very moment he heard, almost all at once, though muffled in the distance, a burst of pistol shots, machine-gun fire, and angry shouts whose words remained incomprehensible. What to do? Wait there or run up to the house and provide support for his men? The shootout continued overhead, fierce and sounding as if it was coming closer. Suddenly a very bright light came on at once in the stairway, hangar, and grotto. Someone was getting ready to escape. He distinctly heard some hurried steps coming down the staircase. In a flash the inspector ran back through the arch and ducked behind it, back to the wall. A second later, a man came huffing past, popping out with a kind of hop, exactly the way a rat comes out of a sewer.

  “Stop! Police!” Montalbano yelled, stepping forward.

  The man did not stop but merely turned slightly around, raising his left hand, which held a large pistol, and shot behind himself almost blindly. The inspector felt a fierce blow strike his left shoulder with such force that it turned his whole upper body around to the left. His feet and legs, however, remained in place, rooted to the ground. When the man had reached the door to the garage, Montalbano’s first and only shot struck him square between the shoulder blades. The man stopped, threw out his arms, dropped the pistol, and fell face-forward to the ground. The inspector approached slowly, unable to walk any faster, and with the tip of his boot turned the body over.

  Jamil Zarzis seemed to smile at him with his toothless mouth.

  Somebody had once asked him if he’d ever felt happy about killing another man. He’d said no. He didn’t feel happy this time, either. Gratified, yes. That was exactly the word: gratified.

  He knelt down slowly. His legs felt weak, and he had an overwhelming desire to sleep. Blood was pouring out of the wound in his shoulder and soaking his sweater. The shot must have made a big hole.

  “Inspector! Oh my god, Inspector! I’ll call an ambulance!”

  Montalbano’s eyes remained closed, but he recognized Fazio’s voice.

  “No ambulances. Why did you guys take so long to get started?”

  “We were waiting while they put the kids in a room, figuring we could move more easily that way.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Seven. It looked like a kindergarten. They’re all okay. We killed one of the men, and another surrendered. You shot the third guy. That pretty much covers it. Now can I call someone to give me a hand?”

  When the inspector regained consciousness, he was inside a car with Gallo at the wheel. Fazio was behind him with his arms around him, as the car bounced high along a road full of holes. They had removed his sweater and improvised a temporary bandage over the wound. He felt no pain from it; perhaps that would come later. He tried to speak, but on first try nothing came out, because his lips were too dry.

  “. . . Livia . . .’s flying in . . . this morning . . . Punta Raisi.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Fazio. “One of us will go pick her up, you can count on it.”

  “Where are you . . . taking me?”

  “To Montechiaro hospital. It’s the closest.”

  Then something happened that Fazio found frightening. He realized that the noise coming from Montalbano was not a cough or him clearing his throat. The inspector was laughing. What was there to laugh about in this situation?

  “What’s so funny, Chief?” he asked, concerned.

  “I wanted to screw . . . my guardian angel . . . by not going to the doctor . . . But he . . . screwed me . . . by sending me to the hospital.”

  Hearing this answer, Fazio got really scared. The inspector was apparently delirious. More terrifying still was the injured Montalbano’s sudden yell.

  “Stop the car!”

  Gallo slammed on the brakes; the car skidded.

  “Up there . . . is that . . . the fork in the road?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “Take the road to Tricase.”

  “But, Chief . . .” Fazio cut in.

  “I said take the road to Tricase.”

  Gallo started out slowly, turned right, and then almost at once Montalbano ordered him to stop.

  “Put on your brights.”

  Gallo obeyed, and the inspector leaned out the car window. The mound of gravel was no longer there. It had been used to level the road.

  “It’s better this way.”

  Suddenly, the wound began to hurt him terribly.

  “Let’s go to the hospital,” he said.

  They drove off.

  “Oh, Fazio, another thing . . . ,” he continued with great effort, running a dry tongue over his parched lips, “don’t forget . . . don’t forget . . . to tell Pontius Pilate . . . he’s at the Hotel Regina.”

  Madunnuzza santa! Now he’s raving about Pontius Pilate! Fazio humored him, as one does with the insane.

  “Of course we’ll tell him, Chief, of course. Just stay calm. I’ll do it myself, first thing.”

  It was too much of an effort to talk, to explain. Montalbano let himself go, falling into a half swoon. Fazio, all sweaty from the fright these meaningless words were giving him, leaned forward and whispered to Gallo:

  “Come on, for Chrissakes, step on it! Can’t you see the Chief’s not right in the head?”

  Author’s Note

  The names, characters, and situations represented in this novel are, of course, wholly invented.

  The statistics on the illegal immigration of minors into Italy, on the other hand, are drawn from an investigation by Carmelo Abbate and Paolo Ciccioli, published in the September 19, 2002, edition of Panorama, and the information on the human traffickers derives from an article published in the September 26, 2002, edition of the Italian daily, La Repubblica . The story of the phony death was likewise suggested to me by a news item (Gazzetta del Sud, August 17, 20, and 24, 2002).

  Notes

  1 octopus a strascinasali or sardines a beccafico: Octopus a strascinasali consists of small octopi (polipetti in Italian, purpiteddri or frajeddi in Sicilian) simply boiled in salted water, then dressed in olive oil and lemon juice. Sarde a beccafico is a famous Sicilian specialty named after a small bird, the beccafico (Sylvia borin, garden warbler in English), which is particularly fond of figs (beccafico means “fig-pecker”). The headless, cleaned sardines are stuffed with sautéed breadcrumbs, pine nuts, sultana raisins, and anchovies, then rolled up in such a way that they resemble the bird when they come out of the oven.

  1 the police raid of the Diaz School during the G8 meetings in Genoa: The G8 meetings held in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, were marred by unusual violence by the forces of order against protesters, culminating in the shooting death of a young man who had threatened a group of carabinieri with a fire extinguisher. Among the brutal police tactics was the nighttime raid of the Diaz School, where a number of protesters and independent journalists were staying. All of the details related by Camilleri in regard to this event, including his assertion that high functionaries of the police bureaucr
acy were involved in the Diaz raid, are true and well documented in the mainstream press. Many of those attacked by police during the raid, including British freelance journalist Mark Covell, were severely injured; others were taken from the school to a temporary detention center called Bolzaneto, where they were subject to further beatings and humiliation. Two separate trials against no fewer than seventy-three members of police, carabinieri, and prison officers were ongoing as of December 2005, with charges including abuse of authority and unlawful violence, as well as trespass, false arrest, inflicting or authorizing grievous bodily harm, not to mention fabricating the evidence intended to justify the raid at the Diaz School.

  2 as the government watchfully looked on: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon in his own right, is known to exercise tight control on the news and information propagated in private as well as state-owned media.

  2 brought to mind long-buried episodes of the Fascist police or the Scelba period: Minister of the interior during successive postwar governments from 1947 to 1953, Mario Scelba (1901-1991) was a fierce anti-Communist known for his brutal repression of demonstrations and his use of the police and antiriot squads to that end.

  6 Imagine ever finding any obscene graffiti in Sicily without the word “cuckold” in it! The Italian word for cuckold, cornuto, a common insult throughout the country, is a special favorite among southerners, Sicilians in particular.