Death at Sea: Montalbano's Early Cases

by Andrea Camilleri

  “So you think there was a burglary?”

  “I don’t think it! There was a burglary! A thousand lire disappeared!”

  “And did you give your son another thousand lire?”

  “Of course! An’ it was all the money I had! Now I don’t know how I’m gonna make it to the end of the month!”

  Very carefully, Montalbano suggested an explanation.

  “Isn’t it possible your son might have faked a burglary because he—”

  Signora Nunziata understood at once.

  “Wha’ss goin’ through your head? My son is extremely honest! One time, he found a wallet in the street an’—”

  “Okay, okay. Was anything else missing?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Did your son hear any strange noises during the night?”

  “The boy’s like a corpse when he’s asleep.”

  “Had the lock on the front door been forced?”

  “Never!”

  “What floor do you live on?”

  “The ground floor.”

  “Were the windows—”

  “The windows all have iron bars.”

  “Do you have any idea how the thief might have got in?”

  “It was a woman.”

  “Who was?” Augello asked again, newly distracted.

  “The thief. In my opinion, it was a girl thief.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I know who it is!”

  “And who would that be?”

  “That would be ’Ntonietta Sabatino, a big slut who lives on the second floor and who I think does it with Peppi, an’ if y’ask me, that sonofabitch of a son of mine gave her the key so she could come and see him when I’m not around, an’ so she took advantage and screwed him out of a thousand lire!”

  “But, signora, you have no proof whatsoever that—”

  “I don’t need no proof, I know wha’ss wha’, an’ iss azackly the way I’m tellin’ you, an’ you gotta believe me!”

  Montalbano couldn’t take any more.

  “Listen, Mimì, please accompany the lady into your office and take her statement. But be sure the complaint is against an unknown party, I mean it.”

  * * *

  After taking the woman’s statement, Mimì went back into Montalbano’s office.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re looking at an absolute novelty in the history of criminology.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Does it seem normal to you for a burglar always to steal only a thousand lire? What is he, some kind of fixed-rate burglar?”

  “What do you think you’ll do?”

  “Nothing, for the time being. Let’s wait for the next burglary and see. A burglar who takes only a thousand lire a pop isn’t exactly going to be on easy street. He has no choice but to keep burgling.”

  Events did not prove him wrong. Three days later, a Monday, a certain Beniamino Dimeli came in to the station at around noon.

  He was a well-groomed man of about fifty, impeccably dressed and scented with cologne, quick to bow and flash a toothy smile.

  “I’m terribly embarrassed to waste your time with something so silly, but since it’s my custom to obey the law, I think it’s only right that everyone should obey it.”

  He smiled. If he was expecting applause from Montalbano or Augello, he was disappointed. But he didn’t show it.

  “I’m here to report a burglary,” he said.

  “Of a thousand lire?” Montalbano asked him hopefully.

  Dimeli looked at him in shock.

  “If it had only been a thousand lire, I would never have—”

  “I’m sorry. Please tell us everything.”

  “I’m from Montelusa, and I still live there. But I also have a small house on the seashore, just past the Scala dei Turchi.”

  Montalbano gave him a dirty look. So this was the owner of that big, horrendous house recently and clearly illegally built up there with no regard whatsoever for laws, rules, restrictions, and other related impediments.

  “I sometimes use it on weekends in the winter. We go—”

  “You and your family?” asked Augello.

  “No, I’m not married. I go there with three or four friends on Friday evenings, and my friends usually leave at the break of dawn on Monday morning, because they have to go to work. Since I don’t have any fixed schedule and have to lock up the house, I always leave later.”

  “What line of work are you in?” Montalbano asked.

  “Me? I . . . have a private income.”

  “I see. Tell me something. Is it only men who come with you on these weekends?”

  “Yes,” said Dimeli, smiling. “But I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. We’re all old friends and now and then we like to amuse ourselves playing a bit of poker far from prying eyes.”

  “For high stakes?”

  “We can afford it.”

  “So tell us what happened.”

  “Last night we stopped playing at around four a.m., and my friends decided to leave right then and there. As for me, I locked the doors and windows and, half an hour later, I was already asleep. When I woke up around nine, I realized I’d been robbed.”

  “What did they steal?”

  “I’d left my winnings on the table, after counting them. Exactly one hundred thousand lire. This morning, there was only eighty thousand.”

  “Are you sure you counted carefully?”

  “Quite sure. And I don’t understand how the burglar got inside, or why he didn’t take it all.”

  2

  “So, naturally you weren’t woken up by any strange noises or anything suspicious?”

  “No, absolutely not. And I assure you, I’m a very light sleeper, and it doesn’t take much to wake me up.”

  For no apparent reason, Montalbano got it in his head to continue this line of questioning.

  “And before?”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “Did you notice anything unusual before going to sleep? You know, something that may seem of no importance to you can be quite crucial to us.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He paused ever so briefly, then added: “But . . .”

  “But?”

  “Well, now that you’ve got me thinking about it . . . When I walked my friend Giovanni, who was the last to leave, out to his car, and Giovanni turned on the headlights, I clearly saw a man at the edge of the water.”

  “Was he fishing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Nothing. He was just standing there. I got a pretty good look at him because Giovanni didn’t leave immediately; we kept discussing the last game. He was a rather tall man, with slightly hunched shoulders . . . With one hand he was holding up a bicycle by the handlebars . . .”

  “A bicycle?”

  “Yes. And he had a cap on his head.”

  * * *

  In the four days that followed, there were four more burglaries.

  They couldn’t figure out how the burglar was getting inside people’s homes. He seemed able to pass through walls, like a ghost.

  And he burgled in proportion to what his victims had to offer. If they were poor, he never took more than a thousand lire; if they were well-off, he would steal twenty or thirty thousand lire, but never more than that.

  The last person to be robbed, one Signor Osvaldo Belladonna, said that he’d gone to bed after midnight, but had first opened the window to air the room out a little. Looking onto the street, he’d seen a man in a cap chaining his bicycle to a lamppost.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Augello.

  “What do you want to do?” Montalbano snapped at him. “Arrest every man in t
own who wears a cap and rides a bicycle? Post guards outside every house?”

  He’d been silent and surly for days, to the point that Livia was threatening to go home to Boccadasse. Not having the slightest idea how to catch the burglar put him in a bad mood.

  “No, but . . .” Augello insisted.

  “But what? If you have any ideas, then take over the case!”

  Fazio walked in.

  “So, how’s your father?” Montalbano and Augello asked almost in unison.

  “In pretty good shape. They did every kind of test imaginable in Palermo, but he has to remain under observation and take a whole bunch of medications. Any new developments here?”

  Montalbano didn’t answer. It was up to Augello to tell him about all the burglaries. When he had finished, Fazio sat there, lost in thought.

  “So?” the inspector prodded him.

  “I just bet . . .” Fazio said under his breath.

  “Talk louder,” said Montalbano.

  “Could I call my father?” Fazio asked, still lost in thought.

  “Go ahead.”

  Fazio got up and dialed the number. He seemed excited, to the point that he forgot to turn on the speakerphone.

  “Papa? Hi, it’s me. Listen, do you remember the time you told me about a house burglar, a master lockpicker? . . . What was his name? Michele Gangitano? And he always got around by bicycle and was always wearing a cap on his head . . . Yeah, yeah . . . Any idea what ever became of him? Oh, he was sentenced to five years? Okay, thanks, Papa. Yes, yes, lots of love.”

  He set down the receiver and said:

  “They must have released him. I’ll go try and confirm. I’ll be right back.”

  He went out. Montalbano and Augello sat there staring at each other and didn’t say a word until Fazio returned, smiling.

  “It’s definitely him. Michele Gangitano. He was released twenty days ago, after serving out his sentence.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” said Augello, repeating the usual refrain.

  Montalbano didn’t have to think twice.

  “Fazio, go and see where he lives and inform him that he must come in to the station at four o’clock this afternoon. And I want the both of you to be present, too.”

  “But you can’t arrest him,” said Augello.

  “That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “So why have him come here?”

  “Dunno.”

  * * *

  Michele Gangitano was quite punctual, arriving at four o’clock sharp. Montalbano had him come into his office at once. Augello and Fazio were already there with him.

  Gangitano was a tall, lanky man of about sixty, well-dressed, with slightly hunched shoulders and a melancholy air. He didn’t have a single hair on his head, as they saw when he doffed his cap, which he now held in his hands.

  He was perfectly calm and didn’t even seem curious to know why he’d been called in.

  “Please sit down,” said Montalbano, indicating the empty chair in front of his desk.

  Augello was in the other chair, while Fazio was sitting on the little sofa.

  “Signor Gangitano, aren’t you wondering why I called you in here?”

  “I am, but it’s not up to me.”

  “What’s not up to you?”

  “To be the first to speak. That’s up to you, sir.”

  Signor Gangitano was apparently too familiar with police stations, carabinieri headquarters, and courtrooms not to respect the rules of procedure.

  “I called you in here because I wanted to meet you. I’ve heard about you, and so I became curious.”

  Nobody was expecting what Gangitano said next, with a forced smile that came out looking more like a grimace.

  “And I wanted to meet you, too. I heard a lot about you in prison.”

  “Good things or bad?”

  “As with any other man.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Some said good things, some said bad. But more said good things, including some people you’d arrested yourself.”

  “Speaking of which, can you tell me what you were convicted of? I haven’t seen the documents. Burglary?”

  Gangitano looked surprised.

  “Burglary? Why do you say that? Who told you that? I was never convicted of burglary.”

  Montalbano felt bewildered. And without even looking at them, he already knew that Augello and Fazio were sitting there in shock.

  “Never?”

  “Never! You can look at my police record if you don’t believe me. But I can tell you myself everything that’s on it. I’ve got four convictions. The first was when I was a hot-blooded youth of twenty and got in trouble for brawling, a silly scuffle over a girl; the second was for embezzlement; the third for false testimony; and the fourth and last, when I was forty-five, for something that would take too long to explain.”

  “Tell me about it anyway.”

  “My brother-in-law, a father of two—”

  “I’m sorry, but do you mean your wife’s brother or your sister’s husband?”

  “My sister’s husband. I’ve never been married. Can I continue?”

  “Yes, sorry for interrupting. Go on.”

  “My brother-in-law, who was a stonemason, fell from a scaffold and was permanently paralyzed. But the contractor claimed that it was my brother-in-law’s fault for not being careful, whereas in fact there were no safety measures taken at all at the work site. The judge, as it turns out, was having an affair with the contractor’s wife and upheld his claims. So my brother-in-law was reduced to begging on the streets. Or limited to the little that I could pass on to him. So one day I waited outside the courthouse for the judge, and when he came out I bashed his face in.”

  “So you were reacting to an injustice?”

  “That’s absolutely right.”

  “And do you find it right, for example, for someone who has honestly earned a little money to be robbed?”

  Gangitano squirmed a little in his chair, and his mood seemed to change from melancholy to distress.

  “Are you, er, speaking academically?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then my answer is: It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On the burglar’s intentions, on his reasons for taking money that is not his.”

  “Explain.”

  “If somebody steals for the pleasure of it or to get money to throw around, then it’s wrong. But if somebody steals to get the little bit he needs to eat or to help someone else in need, and not one lira more, then, I’m sure you’ll understand, that changes everything.”

  “And you yourself will understand that, even if that changes everything for you, it changes nothing in the eyes of the law. A thief is still a thief.”

  “And that’s the injustice of the justice system. Which, even when it grants you extenuating circumstances, still sends you to prison. All that changes is the amount of time you’re inside. A judge once claimed that judges are like medical doctors: They treat the ills of society just as the doctors treat the ills of people’s bodies. And I started laughing.”

  “Why?”

  “Inspector Montalbano, there is no penal code for illnesses. Every sick person is a separate case. And the doctor treats him according to how the illness manifests in the body he’s treating. And the medicine he gives to one person will be different from the medicine he gives to another who is suffering from the same illness. Whereas the law is the same for everyone.”

  “No, Gangitano, that’s not what that statement means.”

  “I know what it means. But will you still tell me the law is the same for everyone if I tell you my brother-in-law’s story all over again?”

  The inspector figured it was best to change the subject.

  “What’s y
our judgment of the sentences you were given?”

  “There’s nothing for me to judge. I screwed up and I paid for it, that’s all there is to it.”

  “So should I conclude that you harbor no desire for revenge against the criminal justice system for your jail time?”

  “For my jail time, no. But, still speaking academically, if I were by chance to do anything illegal, I wouldn’t be doing it out of spite or vendetta.”

  “I thank you for coming in. I am sure we’ll meet again,” said Montalbano, standing up.

  “It’s been very interesting for me, too. And, like you, I’m also certain we’ll meet again.”

  “Fazio, please show Signor Gangitano out,” the inspector said as he held out his hand to the visitor.

  Gangitano shook it, gave a half bow to Augello, and left with Fazio.

  “So what did you gain from that?” asked Mimì.

  “Knowing your adversary is always a point gained. Gangitano’s a shrewd, intelligent man, and not violent . . .”

  “But he bashed a judge in the face!”

  “Mimì, let me tell you something in confidence, man to man: I would have done the same thing. On top of that—and this is very important—he doesn’t steal simply for the thrill of defying chance.”

  “Why is that so important?”

  “Because it means he’s methodical, and a creature of habit. That is, he’s not a hothead who acts on impulse.”

  Fazio came in.

  “What did you think?” he asked.

  “I can say only one thing: I’ll be very sorry the day I arrest him.”

  3

  “Aside from how sorry you’ll feel,” said Augello, “at this point we’re in a position to cure him of his bad habit. We can grab him whenever we want.”

  Montalbano looked at him with a mocking smile.

  “Oh, yeah? How?”

  “Easy. And I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it yourself. Fazio, you’ve seen where he lives?”

  “Yeah, when I went to get him to bring him here. I had to go in person, since he hasn’t got a phone. He lives in a kind of old garage in Via Lampedusa, at number eighteen.”