Angelica's Smile

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Should I go and call Tavella?”

  “No, let him stew in his own juices a little. He’s seen that we dealt with La Cosulich and Maniace in a few seconds. And now he’s wondering why we’re not calling him. The more nervous he gets, the better.”

  “Chief, could you explain to me how you thought of him right away?”

  “You told me that Tavella was drowning in debt because of his gambling addiction. And you also told me that Pirrera was a loan shark. What’s in the basket?”

  “Ricotta,” said Fazio.

  “And that’s what they want us to think. Whereas, in this particular basket, there’s no ricotta but something else.”

  Fazio leapt up in his chair.

  “So you think that . . .”

  “. . . that Tavella is the perfect scapegoat. But I could be wrong. Are there any bars open at this hour?”

  “In the immediate neighborhood, no. But if you just want a coffee, Catarella has a machine. It’s pretty good.”

  After the coffee, Montalbano told Fazio to go and get Tavella.

  He was a man of about forty, slender, well dressed, with curly hair, glasses, and a few slight tics.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Tavella. I’m sorry to make you wait, but I had to verify a few things first.”

  Tavella sat down and adjusted the creases on his trousers. Then he touched his left ear twice.

  “I don’t understand why—”

  “You’ll understand soon enough. And please have the courtesy to refrain from making comments. Just answer my questions, and we’ll be done with all this sooner. Where are the keys to your car?”

  “This gentleman here told us we had to—”

  “Ah, yes. Fazio, go and get them.”

  Before leaving, Fazio looked at him, and Montalbano looked back. They immediately understood each other.

  “Where do you work, Mr. Tavella?”

  “At City Hall, in the Property Office. I’m an accountant.”

  “Did you go to work this afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was given permission to take the afternoon off to give my wife a hand at home. This evening all our friends were coming over for our weekly game of bridge.”

  “I see.”

  Fazio returned with the keys. There were two of them, attached to a metal ring.

  He set them down on the desk.

  “Have a good look at them, sir. Are those your car keys?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tavella stood up halfway from his chair to look at them more closely.

  He touched his left ear twice.

  “Yes, those are mine.”

  “One is for the ignition, and the other’s for the trunk, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Now, can you explain to me why this ignition key doesn’t have your fingerprints on it?”

  Tavella balked. He opened and closed his mouth. He felt an urgent need to adjust the crease in his trousers. And to touch his left ear four times.

  “That’s not possible! How could I have come here without using my key?”

  “By using a different key. Put it on the desk, Fazio.”

  Fazio put on his gloves, pulled out a plastic bag, took the key from it, and set it down on the desk beside the other two.

  “The one you see here on the key ring was put there by Fazio before you came in.”

  “I’m not understanding anything anymore,” said Tavella, touching his left ear eight times. “So how is it you have this other key of mine?”

  “It was found on the roof of the Pirreras’ building, which was burgled today. Which I’m sure you know about.”

  Tavella turned as pale as a corpse. Then he leapt to his feet, trembling all over.

  “It wasn’t me! I swear! My extra keys are at home!”

  “Please sit down. And try to stay calm. Where do you keep them?”

  “Hanging on a hook near the front door.”

  Montalbano held out the telephone to him.

  “Does your wife drive?”

  “No.”

  “Then call her and ask her if the extra set of keys is still there.”

  Tavella’s hands were trembling so badly, he misdialed the number twice. Fazio intervened, while the ragioniere’s ear was being massacred.

  “What’s the number?”

  Tavella told him, and Fazio dialed it and passed him the receiver.

  “Hello, Ernestina? No, nothing’s happened, I’m still at the police station. Just a slight misunderstanding, it’s nothing. Yes, I’m fine, there’s nothing to worry about. But I want you to do me a little favor. Go and see if the extra set of car keys is in the usual place.”

  Tavella’s forehead was drenched in sweat. His left ear had turned redder than a red pepper.

  “They’re not? Did you have a good look? Okay, thanks, I’ll see you later.”

  He set down the receiver and threw up his hands, dejected.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “So therefore you don’t know how long they’ve been missing.”

  “But I wasn’t paying any attention! They were there, with the others, the keys to the attic, the keys to the cellar . . .”

  “Please answer me sincerely, ragioniere.”

  “And what have I been doing up to now?”

  “Do you owe Pirrera money?”

  Tavella didn’t hesitate for a second.

  “Yes. It’s no secret, everybody knows!”

  “Do your friends know?”

  “Of course!”

  “How much do you owe?”

  “It started out as a hundred thousand euros, and now that’s become five hundred thousand.”

  “So Pirrera’s a loan shark?”

  “You be the judge. He’s been sucking the blood of half the people in town for thirty years!”

  A tremendous, inexplicable—or perhaps all too explicable—weariness suddenly came over the inspector.

  “Mr. Tavella, unfortunately I have no choice but to detain you.”

  The poor man buried his face in his hands and started crying.

  “Believe me, I have no choice. You have no alibi, your car key was found at the scene of the crime, and you have a plausible motive for detesting Pirrera . . .”

  The inspector’s anger at having to follow abstract rules, and the sorrow he felt for this poor man who surely considered himself innocent, made him feel sick.

  “You can tell your wife now, if you like. And tomorrow you can call your lawyer. Fazio, please take care of things.”

  He dashed out of the room, as if he might suffocate if he stayed in his office for another second.

  Passing in front of Catarella, he noticed he was still engrossed in the computer.

  “Still playing the same game?”

  “Yeah, Chief.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Bad. Bu’ my partner, ’oo’s me m’sself, ’z comin’ a help.”

  Something inside the inspector began to rebel.

  Why on earth did he have to go exactly by the book?

  When had he ever done so before?

  He dashed back into his office.

  Fazio’s hand was on the receiver, and he was about to call the ragioniere’s wife.

  Tavella was still crying.

  “Fazio, lemme have a word with you.”

  Fazio joined him in the hallway.

  “I’m gonna send the guy home.”

  “Okay, but . . .”

  “I want you to write a report saying our holding cell is not usable due to prior flooding.”

  “But it hasn’t rained for a month!”

  “That’s precisely why it�
��s ‘prior.’”

  Montalbano went inside.

  “Mr. Tavella, I’m going to let you go home to your wife, but I want you here tomorrow morning at nine with your lawyer.”

  He left the room before the stunned Tavella could start thanking him.

  15

  His appetite was completely gone.

  He set himself up on the veranda in the usual fashion.

  By now it was clear that Mr. Z was one of the names on the list.

  He not only knew the life story of everyone on the list, but also their habits and daily routines.

  It was anybody’s guess how long ago Mr. Z had got his hands on Tavella’s keys. Probably one evening when he’d gone there to play bridge!

  But why had Mr. Z—who, if he really was one of the names on the list, was a man above suspicion and fairly well off—decided to become the leader of a burglary ring?

  In an anonymous letter, he’d written that he didn’t touch any of the loot from the robberies, leaving all the booty to his accomplices.

  So why did he do it? For fun? Right!

  Clearly he was looking for something of great importance to him.

  And he’d found it, if the burglaries were over now.

  Mr. Z wasn’t looking for some random thing, but for something in particular.

  And therefore he knew where this thing was.

  The only burglary that Mr. Z was really interested in was the last one, of the Pirrera home.

  To the point that he’d planted evidence against Tavella.

  Which was a sort of curtain falling at the end of the performance.

  All the previous burglaries had only served to pay the work of the band. And to throw the police off the trail.

  Was it possible Mr. Z, like Tavella, owed money to Pirrera?

  Or did Pirrera have something of interest to Mr. Z in his safe?

  And there were other considerations concerning Mr. Z to be made as well.

  All the people on the list had known one another for years and spent time together.

  Why did Mr. Z suddenly decide to start robbing his friends at a certain point in time, and not before or after?

  What triggered this chain of events?

  What new development had led him to become a criminal?

  Also: How had he known how to get in touch with a band of burglars? It’s not like they’re out for hire on the open market; it’s not as if you can just go to the employment exchange and say:

  “Excuse me, I need three professional burglars.”

  At any rate, he resolved to call Pirrera in the morning and squeeze him hard.

  He’d just lain down in bed when his thoughts turned back to Angelica.

  There was something in her composure, when he’d informed her that Pennino and Parisi had nothing to do with the anonymous letter, that had struck him.

  She’d remained completely indifferent.

  Whereas he’d been expecting another reaction entirely.

  Angelica had seemed spent, burned out, to him.

  It was as though the whole affair had nothing to do with her anymore.

  Maybe the bank’s management had decided to transfer her after all?

  At last he fell asleep.

  But he slept for barely half an hour before he suddenly woke up.

  A sharp, troubling thought had come into his mind and prevented him from staying asleep.

  No, it wasn’t a thought, but an image.

  What was it?

  He strained his brain trying to remember.

  Then it came back to him.

  Catarella in his closet, playing his computer game.

  What did that have to do with anything?

  Then he remembered perfectly how Catarella had explained the game:

  The game cossitts o’ doin’ a most damage y’can do to the apposing couple, who’d be the avversary, bu’ also tryin’ a proteck y’r own partner from danger.

  What did it mean?

  In some obscure way he sensed that these words were very important.

  But in regard to what?

  He racked his brains till daybreak.

  Then, at the break of dawn, a little light entered his brain as well.

  And he shut his eyes at once, as if to keep that light out.

  It really hurt, that light.

  It was like a knife blade stabbing him painfully in the heart.

  No. It wasn’t possible.

  And yet . . .

  No, it was absurd to think such things!

  And yet . . .

  He got up, unable to remain in bed any longer.

  Mygodmygodmygodmygodmygod . . .

  Was he praying?

  He put on his bathing suit.

  He opened the French door to the veranda.

  Mygodmygodmygodmygodmygod . . .

  The early-morning fisherman hadn’t arrived yet.

  The air was cool. It gave him goose bumps.

  He went down to the beach and dived into the water.

  So much the better if he got a cramp and drowned.

  Mygodmygodmygodmygodmygodmygod . . .

  He went into the kitchen, still dripping wet, made his usual mug of black coffee, and drank the whole thing.

  The ringing of the telephone was like a burst of machine-gun fire.

  He looked at his watch. Barely six-thirty.

  “Chief? Fazio here.”

  “What is it?”

  “A murder.”

  “Where?”

  “Along a dirt road in the Bellagamba district.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “If you want I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “All right.”

  He decided not to tell Fazio about the unbearable thought he’d had. First he needed positive confirmation.

  “Who reported it?”

  “A peasant whose name Catarella didn’t quite get.”

  “Did he give any details?”

  “Nothing. He said the body was in a ditch right next to a large boulder with a black cross painted on it.”

  “Did Catarella tell the guy to wait for us?”

  “Yessir.”

  They found the boulder with the black cross on it without any problem.

  All around was utter desolation. Not a single house to be found anywhere, but only clumps of sorghum and wild weeds as far as the eye could see, and a few sickly trees. The only living beings were grasshoppers as big as your finger and flies in such dense swarms that they looked like black veils in the air. Not even any dogs barking.

  Most importantly, the man who’d found the body wasn’t there either.

  Fazio pulled up, and they got out of the car.

  “The guy’s gone,” said Fazio. “He did his duty but doesn’t want any trouble.”

  The dead man was in a ditch that ran alongside the dirt road.

  He lay belly-up, eyes wide open and mouth twisted into a sort of grimace.

  He was bare chested, had a great deal of hair on his chest and arms, but still had his trousers and shoes on. No visible tattoos.

  Montalbano and Fazio crouched down to have a better look.

  He was about forty, with a few days’ stubble on his face.

  They could see two wounds, despite the million and more flies swarming around them.

  The left shoulder was bluish and puffy.

  Fazio put on some plastic gloves, lay down with his stomach on the ground, and gently turned the body over.

  “The bullet must still be in his body. But the wound is infected.”

  The other wound had devastated his neck.

  “That’s an exit wound, on the other hand,” said the inspector. “They must have shot him from behind,
through the base of the skull.”

  Fazio repeated the operation.

  “You’re right.”

  He then stuck his hand under the corpse’s pelvis.

  “There’s no wallet in the back pocket. Maybe he kept it in his jacket. In my opinion he’s been dead for a few days already.”

  “I agree.”

  Montalbano heaved a long sigh. Now began the tremendous pain-in-the-ass of the prosecutor, the Forensics team, the coroner . . . He wanted to get out of that depressing place as soon as possible.

  “All right, go ahead and call the circus. I’ll keep you company until they get here, but then I’m leaving. Tavella’s coming in this morning.”

  “Oh, right. Ugo Foscolo’s coming too—you know, the doorman—to see if he recognizes . . .”

  Montalbano had a flash of inspiration.

  With nothing to justify it.

  “Have you got his phone number?”

  “Whose?”

  “Foscolo’s”

  “I do.”

  “Call him at once, tell him to come here, and let him have a look at the corpse.”

  Fazio looked perplexed.

  “Chief, what makes you think—”

  “I don’t know. It’s just something that came into my head, but we’ve got nothing to lose by trying.”

  Fazio made the phone calls he had to make.

  But another hour passed before Dr. Pasquano, the coroner, showed up.

  The doctor looked around.

  “Nice place, here. Really cheerful. They never leave us a body, say, in a discotheque or an amusement park . . . I wonder why that is? . . . Looks like I’m the first to arrive.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, I spent the whole night at the club and I’m so tired it’s eating my flesh . . .” Pasquano exclaimed in irritation.

  “Did you lose?”

  “Mind your own goddamn business,” the doctor replied in his customary, gentlemanly way.

  Apparently he’d lost. And badly.

  “And when do you think his honor the prosecutor will deign to arrive?”

  “He was the first one I called,” said Fazio, “and he said he’d be here in an hour at the most.”

  “If he doesn’t crash into a telephone pole first,” said Pasquano, growing more and more agitated.