“Have you tried calling him?”
“Yes, I’ve tried his home phone and his mobile. There’s no answer. I even went to his house. I rang and rang the doorbell, then decided to go inside.”
“You have the keys to your brother’s place?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find there?”
“Everything was in perfect order. I got scared.”
“Does your brother suffer from any illness?”
“Not at all.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“He’s an informer.”
Montalbano balked. Had ratting on others become an established profession, with a year-end bonus and paid vacations as with Mafia turncoats, who had fixed salaries? He would clear this up in a minute.
“Is he often on the move?”
“Yes, but he works within a limited area. Basically he doesn’t go beyond the boundaries of the province.”
“So do you want to declare him a missing person?”
“No…I don’t know.”
“I should warn you, however, that we can’t get moving on it right away.”
“Why not?”
“Because your brother is an independent adult, healthy in body and mind. He might have decided to go away for a few days of his own accord. Understand? And, in the end, we don’t know whether—”
“I understand. What do you suggest I do?”
As she was asking this, she finally looked at him. Montalbano felt a sort of heat wave run through his body. Those eyes were exactly like a deep, violet lake that any man would gladly dive into and drown in. It was a good thing Signorina Michela almost always kept those eyes lowered. In his mind Montalbano took two strokes and swam back to shore.
“Well, I would suggest you go back to your brother’s place and have another look around.”
“I already did, yesterday. I didn’t go inside, but I rang the doorbell for a long time.”
“All right, but maybe he’s in no condition to come to the door.”
“Why would that be?”
“I dunno…maybe he slipped in the bathtub and can’t walk, or has a very high fever—”
“Inspector, I didn’t just ring the doorbell. I also called out to him. If he’d slipped in the bathtub, he would have answered. Angelo’s apartment is not that big, after all.”
“I’m afraid I must insist you go back there.”
“I won’t go back alone. Would you come with me?”
She looked at him again. This time Montalbano suddenly found himself sinking, the water coming up to his neck. He thought about it a moment, then decided.
“Listen, I’ll tell you what. If you still haven’t heard from your brother by seven o’clock this evening, come back here to the station, and I’ll accompany you.”
“Thank you.”
She stood up and held out her hand. Montalbano took it but couldn’t bring himself to shake it. It felt like a piece of lifeless flesh.
Ten minutes later Fazio appeared.
“A seventeen-year-old kid. Went up to the terrace of his building and shot himself up with an overdose. There was nothing we could do, poor guy. When we got there, he was already dead. The second in three days.”
Montalbano looked at him dumbfounded.
“The second? You mean there was a first? Why didn’t any one tell me about it?”
“Fasulo, the engineer. But with him it was cocaine,” said Fazio.
“Cocaine? What are you saying? Fasulo died of a heart attack!”
“Sure, that’s what the death certificate says. It’s what his friends say, too. But everybody in town knows it was drugs.”
“Badly cut stuff?”
“That I can’t say, Chief.”
“Listen, do you know some guy named Angelo Pardo, forty-two years old and an informer?”
Fazio didn’t seem surprised at the mention of Angelo Pardo’s profession. Maybe he hadn’t fully understood.
“No, sir. Why do you ask?”
“Seems he disappeared two days ago and his sister’s getting worried.”
“You want me to—”
“No, but later, if there’s still no news, we’ll see.”
“Inspector Montalbano? This is Lattes.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Family doing all right?”
“I think we discussed them a couple of hours ago.”
“Yes, of course. Listen, I’m calling to tell you that the commissioner can’t see you today, as you’d requested.”
“Look, Doctor, it was the commissioner who asked to see me.”
“Really? Well, it makes no difference. Could you come tomorrow at eleven?”
“Absolutely.”
Upon learning that he wouldn’t be seeing the commissioner, his lungs filled with air and he suddenly felt ravenous. The only solution was Enzo’s trattoria.
He stepped outside the police station. The day had the colors of summer, without the extreme heat. He walked slowly, taking his time, already tasting what he was about to eat. When he arrived in front of the trattoria, his heart fell to his feet. The restaurant was closed. Locked. What the hell had happened? In rage he gave the door a swift kick, turned around, and started walking away, cursing the saints. He’d barely taken two steps when he heard someone calling him.
“Inspector! What, did you forget that we’re closed today?”
Damn! He’d forgotten!
“But if you want to eat with me and my wife…”
He dashed back. And he ate so much that as he was eating he felt embarrassed, ashamed, but couldn’t help himself. When he’d finished, Enzo nearly congratulated him.
“To your health, Inspector!”
The walk along the jetty was necessarily a long one.
He spent the rest of the afternoon with eyelids drooping and head nodding from time to time, overcome by sleepiness. When this happened, he would get up and go wash his face.
At seven o’clock Catarella told him the lady from the morning had returned.
As soon as she walked in, Michela Pardo said only one word:
“Nothing.”
She did not sit down. She was anxious to get to her brother’s place as quickly as possible and tried to communicate her haste to the inspector.
“All right,” said Montalbano. “Let’s go.”
Passing by Catarella’s closet, he told him:
“I’m going out with the lady. If you need me for anything afterwards, I’ll be at home.”
“Will you be coming in my car?” asked Michela Pardo, gesturing toward a blue Polo.
“Perhaps it’s better if I take my own and follow you. Where does your brother live?”
“A bit far, in the new part of town. Do you know Vigàta Two?”
He knew Vigàta Two. A nightmare dreamed up by some real-estate speculator under the influence of the worst sorts of hallucinogens. He wouldn’t live there even if he were dead.
2
Luckily for him and the inspector—who never in a million years would have spent more than five minutes in one of those gloomy six-by-ten-foot rooms defined in the brochures as “spacious and sunny”—Angelo Pardo lived just past the new residential complex of Vigàta Two, in a small, restored nineteenth-century villa three stories high. The front door was locked. As Michela was unlocking it, Montalbano noticed that the intercom had six nameplates on it, which meant that there were six apartments in all, two on the ground floor and four on the other floors.
“Angelo lives on the top floor and there’s no elevator.”
The staircase was broad and comfortable. The building seemed uninhabited. No voices, no sound of televisions. And yet it was the time of day when people were normally preparing their evening meal.
On the top-floor landing, there were two doors. Michela went up to the one on the left. Before opening it, she showed the inspector a small window with a grate over it, beside the steel-plated door. The little window’s shutters were locked.
“I called to him from here. He would surely have heard me.”
She unlocked first one lock, then another, turning the key four times, but did not go in. She stepped aside.
“Could you go in first?”
Montalbano pushed the door, felt around for the light switch, turned it on, and entered. He sniffed at the air like a dog. He was immediately convinced there was no human presence, dead or alive, in the apartment.
“Follow me,” he said to Michela.
The entrance led into a broad corridor. On the left-hand side, a master bedroom, a bathroom, and another bedroom. On the right, a study, a kitchen, a small bathroom, and a smallish living room. All in perfect order and sparkling clean.
“Does your brother have a cleaning lady?”
“Yes.”
“When did she last come?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Listen, signorina, do you come visit your brother here often?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question flustered Michela.
“What do you mean, ‘why’? He’s…my brother!”
“Granted, but you said Angelo comes to your and your mother’s place practically every other day. So, I suppose you come to see him here on the off days? Is that right?”
“Well…yes. But not so regularly.”
“Okay. But why do you need to see each other when your mother’s not around?”
“Good God, Inspector, when you put it that way…It’s just something we’ve been in the habit of doing since we were children. There’s always been, between Angelo and me, a sort of…”
“Complicity?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
She let out a giggle. Montalbano decided to change the subject.
“Shall we go see if a suitcase is missing? If all his clothes are here?”
She followed him into the master bedroom. Michela opened the armoire and looked at the clothing, one article at a time. Montalbano noticed that it was all very fine, tailored stuff.
“It’s all here. Even the gray suit he was wearing the last time he came to see us, three days ago. The only thing missing, I think, is a pair of jeans.”
On top of the armoire, wrapped in cellophane, were two elegant leather suitcases, one large and the other a bit smaller.
“The suitcases are both here.”
“Does he have an overnight bag?”
“Yes, he usually keeps it in the study.”
They went into the study. The small bag lay beside the desk. One wall of the study was covered by shelves of the sort one sees in pharmacies, enclosed in sliding glass panels. And in fact the shelves were stocked with a great many medicinal containers: boxes, flasks, bottles.
“Didn’t you say your brother was an informer?”
“Yes. An informer for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Montalbano understood. Angelo was what used to be called a pharmaceutical representative. But this profession, like garbagemen turned “ecological agents” or cleaning ladies promoted to the rank of “domestic collaborators,” had been ennobled with a new name more appropriate to our elegant epoch. The substance, however, remained the same.
“He used to be…still is, actually, a doctor, but he didn’t practice for very long,” Michela felt obliged to add.
“Fine. As you can see, signorina, your brother’s not here. If you want, we can go.”
“Let’s go.”
She said it reluctantly, looked all around as if she thought she might, at the last moment, find her brother hiding inside a bottle of pills for liver disease.
Montalbano went ahead this time, waiting for her to turn off the lights and lock the double-locked door with due diligence. They descended the stairs, silent amid the great silence of the building. Was it empty, or were they all dead? Once outside, Montalbano, seeing how disconsolate she looked, suddenly felt terribly sorry for her.
“You’ll hear from your brother soon, you’ll see,” he said to her in a soft voice, holding out his hand.
But she didn’t grasp it, only shaking her head still more disconsolately.
“Listen…your brother…Is he seeing any…doesn’t he have a relationship with anyone?”
“Not that I know of.”
She eyed him. And as she was eyeing him, Montalbano swam desperately to avoid drowning. All at once the waters of the lake turned very dark, as though night had fallen.
“What’s wrong?” asked the inspector.
Without answering, she opened her eyes wide, and the lake turned into the open sea.
Swim, Salvo, swim.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated between strokes.
Again she didn’t answer. Turning her back to him, she unlocked the door, climbed the stairs, reached the top floor but didn’t stop there. The inspector then noticed a recess in the wall with a spiral staircase leading up to a glass door. Michela climbed this and slipped a key in the door, but was unable to open it.
“Let me try,” he said.
He opened the door and found himself on a terrace as big as the villa itself. Pushing him aside, Michela ran toward a one-room structure, a sort of box standing practically in the middle of the terrace. It had a door and, to one side, a window. But these were locked.
“I haven’t got the key,” said Michela. “I never have.”
“But why do you want…?”
“This used to be the washroom. Angelo rented it along with the terrace and then transformed it. He comes here sometimes to read or to sun himself.”
“Okay, but if you haven’t got the key—”
“For heaven’s sake, please break down the door.”
“Listen, signorina, I cannot, under any circumstances…”
She looked at him. That was enough. With a single shoulder thrust, Montalbano sent the plywood door flying. He went inside, but before even feeling around for the light switch, he yelled:
“Don’t come in!”
He’d detected the smell of death in the room at once.
Michela, however, even in the dark, must have noticed something, because Montalbano heard first a sort of stifled sob, then heard her fall to the floor, unconscious.
“What do I do now?” he asked himself, cursing.
He bent down, picked Michela up bodily, and carried her as far as the glass door. Carrying her this way, however—the way the groom carries the bride in movies—he would never make it down the spiral staircase. It was too narrow. So he set the woman down upright, embraced her around the waist, wrapping his hands around her back, and lifted her off the ground. This way, with care, he could manage it. At moments he was forced to squeeze her tighter and managed to notice that under her big, floppy dress Michela hid a firm, girlish body. At last he arrived in front of the door to the other top-floor apartment and rang the doorbell, hoping that there was someone alive in there, or that the bell would at least wake somebody from the grave.
“Who is it?” asked an angry male voice behind the door.
“It’s Inspector Montalbano. Could you open the door, please?”
The door opened, and King Victor Emmanuel III appeared. An exact replica, that is: the same mustache, the same midgetlike stature. Except that he was dressed in civvies. Seeing Montalbano with his arms around Michela, he got the entirely wrong idea and turned bright red.
“Please let me in,” said the inspector.
“What?! You want me to let you inside?! You’re insane! You have the gall to ask me if you can have sex in my home?”
“No, look, Your Majesty, I—”
“Shame on you! I’m going to call the police!”
And he slammed the door.
“Fucking asshole!” Montalbano let fly, giving the door a kick.
Thrown off balance by the woman’s weight, he very nearly fell to the floor with Michela. He picked her up again like a bride and started carefully descending the stairs. He knocked at the first door he came to.
“Who is it?”
“I’m a friend of your dad’s. Could you open?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mama and Papa told me not to open the door for anyone when they’re not home.”
Only then did Montalbano remember that before lifting Michela off the ground he’d slipped her handbag over his arm. That was the solution. He carried Michela back up the stairs, leaned her against the wall, holding her upright by pressing his own body against hers (in no way an unpleasant thing), opened the purse, took out the keys, unlocked the door of Angelo’s apartment, dragged Michela into the master bedroom, laid her down on the bed, went into the bathroom, grabbed a towel, soaked it with water from the bathroom faucet, went back into the bedroom, placed the towel over Michela’s forehead, and collapsed onto the bed himself, dead tired from the exertion. He was breathing heavily and drenched in sweat.
Now what? He certainly couldn’t leave the woman alone and go back up to the terrace to see how things stood. The problem was immediately resolved.
“There he is!” shouted His Majesty, appearing in the doorway. “See? He’s getting ready to rape her!”
Behind him, Fazio, pistol in hand, started cursing.
“Please go back home, sir.”
“You mean you’re not going to arrest him?”
“Go back home, now!”
Victor Emmanuel III had another brilliant idea.
“You’re an accomplice! An accomplice! I’m going to go call the Carabinieri!” he said, racing out of the room.
Fazio ran after him. He returned five minutes later.
“I managed to convince him. What on earth happened?”
Montalbano told him. Meanwhile he noticed that Michela was starting to regain consciousness.
“Did you come alone?” asked the inspector.
“No, Gallo’s waiting in the car.”
“Have him come up.”
Fazio called him on his cell phone, and Gallo arrived in a jiffy.
“Keep an eye on this woman. When she comes to, do not, under any circumstances, let her go up to the terrace. Got that?”
Followed by Fazio, he climbed back up the spiral staircase. It was pitch black on the terrace. Night had fallen.
The Paper Moon Page 2