The Terra-Cotta Dog (7 page)

“Good. And if, after watching this particular MC, you get in your car, drive into a wall, and kill yourself, what am I supposed to do, in your opinion?”

“Arrest Mike Bongiorno,” the other said firmly.

He went back to the office feeling calmer. His encounter with the logic of Ernesto Bonfiglio had distracted and amused him.

“Any news?” he asked as he walked in.

“There's a personal letter for you that came just now in the mail,” said Catarella, repeating, for emphasis: “Person-al.”

On his desk he found a postcard from his father and some office memos.

“Hey, Cat! Where'd you put the letter?”

“I said it was personal!” Catarella said defensively.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you have to receive it in person, it being personal and all.”

“Okay. The person is here in front of you. Where's the letter?”

“It's gone where it was supposed to go. Where the person personally lives. I told the postman to deliver it to your house, Chief, your personal residence, in Marinella.”

 
 
Standing in front of the Trattoria San Calogero, catching a breath of air, was the cook and owner.

“Where you going, Inspector? Not coming in?”

“I'm eating at home today.”

“Whatever you say. But I've got some rock lobster ready for the grill that'll seem like you're not eating them, but dreaming them.”

Montalbano went inside, won over by the image more than the desire. Then, after finishing his meal, he pushed the dishes away, crossed his arms on the table, and fell asleep. He always ate in a small room with three tables, and so it was easy for Serafino, the waiter, to steer customers towards the big dining room and leave the inspector in peace. Around four o'clock, with the restaurant already closed, the proprietor, noticing that Montalbano was showing no signs of life, made him a cup of coffee, then gently woke him up.

6

As for the personally personal letter earlier announced by Catarella, he'd completely forgotten about it. It came back to him only when he stepped right on it upon entering his home: the postman had slipped it under the door. The address made it look like an anonymous letter: MONTALBANO—POLICE HEADQUARTERS—CITY. Then, on the upper left, the notice:
PERSONAL
. Which had then set Catarella's earthquake-damaged wits in motion.

Anonymous it was not, however. On the contrary. The signature that Montalbano immediately looked for at the end went off in his brain like a gunshot.

 
 
 
“You've fucked me royally this time, Cavaliere!” was Montalbano's only comment as he glared at the letter he had set down on the dining table. And dining, of course, was now out of the question. He opened the refrigerator only to pay glum homage to the culinary mastery of his housekeeper, a deserved homage, for an enveloping fragrance of poached baby octopus immediately assailed his senses. But he closed the fridge. He wasn't up to it; his stomach was tight as a fist. He undressed and, fully naked, went for a walk along the beach; at that hour there was nobody around anyway. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. Around four o'clock in the morning he dived into the icy water, swam a long time, then returned home. He noticed, laughing, that he had an erection. He started talking to it, trying to reason with it.

“It's no use deluding yourself.”

The erection told him a phone call to Livia might be just the thing. To Livia lying naked and warm with sleep in her bed.

“You're just a dickhead telling me dickheaded things. Teenage jerk-off stuff.”

Offended, the erection withdrew. Montalbano put on a pair of briefs, threw a dry towel over his shoulder, grabbed a chair and sat down on the veranda, which gave onto the beach.

He remained there watching the sea as it began to lighten slowly, then take on color, streaked with yellow sun-beams. It promised to be a beautiful day, and the inspector felt reassured and ready to act. He'd had a few ideas, after reading the cavaliere's letter; the swim had helped him to organize them.

 
 
“You can't show up at the press conference looking like that,” pronounced Fazio, looking him over severely.

“What, are you taking lessons from the Anti-Mafia Commission now?” Montalbano opened the padded nylon bag he was holding. “In here I've got trousers, jacket, shirt, and tie. I'll change before I go to Montelusa. Actually, do me a favor. Take them out and put them on a chair; otherwise they'll get wrinkled.”

“They're already wrinkled, Chief. But I wasn't talking about your clothes; I meant your face. Like it or not, you gotta go to the barber.”

Fazio had said “like it or not” because he knew him well and realized how much effort it cost the inspector to go to the barber. Running a hand behind his head, Montalbano agreed that his hair could use a little trim, too. His face darkened.

“Not one fucking thing's going to go right today!” he predicted.

Before exiting, he left orders that, while he was out beautifying himself, someone should go pick up Carmelo Ingrassia and bring him to headquarters.

“If he asks why, what should I tell him?” asked Fazio.

“Don't tell him anything.”

“What if he insists?”

“If he insists, tell him I want to know how long it's been since he last had an enema. Good enough?”

“There's no need to get upset.”

 
 
The barber, his young helper, and a client who was sitting in one of the two rotating chairs that barely fit into the shop—which was actually only a recess under a staircase—were in the midst of an animated discussion, but fell silent as soon as the inspector appeared. Montalbano had entered with what he himself called his “barber-shop face,” that is, mouth shrunken to a slit, eyes half-closed in suspicion, eyebrows furrowed, expression at once scornful and severe.

“Good morning. Is there a wait?”

Even his voice came out deep and gravelly.

“No sir. Have a seat, Inspector.”

As Montalbano took his place in the vacant chair, the barber, in accelerated, Chaplinesque movements, held a mirror behind the client's head to let him admire the finished product, freed him of the towel round his neck, tossed this into a bin, took out a clean one and put it over the inspector's shoulders. The client, denied even the customary brush-down by the assistant, literally fled from the shop after muttering “Good day.”

The ritual of the haircut and shave, performed in absolute silence, was swift and funereal. A new client appeared, parting the beaded curtain, but he quickly sniffed the atmosphere and, recognizing the inspector, said:

“I'll pass by later.” Then he disappeared.

On the street, as he headed back to his office, Montalbano noticed an indefinable yet disgusting odor wafting around him, something between turpentine and a certain kind of face powder prostitutes used to wear some thirty years back. The stink was coming from his own hair.

 
 
“Ingrassia's in your office,” Tortorella said in a low voice, sounding conspiratorial.

“Where'd Fazio go?”

“Home to change. The commissioner's office called. They said Fazio, Gallo, Galluzzo, and Germanà should also take part in the press conference.”

I guess my phone call to that asshole Sciacchitano had an effect
, thought Montalbano.

Ingrassia, who this time was dressed entirely in pastel green, started to rise.

“Don't get up,” said the inspector, sitting down behind his desk. He distractedly ran a hand through his hair, and immediately the smell of turpentine and face powder grew stronger. Alarmed, he brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed them, confirming his suspicion. But there was nothing to be done; there was no shampoo in the office bathroom. Without warning, he resumed his “barber-shop face.” Seeing him suddenly transformed, Ingrassia became worried and started squirming in his chair.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“In what sense do you mean?”

“Well . . . in every sense, I suppose,” said Ingrassia, flustered.

Montalbano shrugged evasively and went back to sniffing his fingers. The conversation stalled.

“Have you heard about poor Cavaliere Misuraca?” the inspector asked, as if chatting among friends in his living room.

“Ah! Such is life!” The other sighed sorrowfully.

“Imagine that, Mr. Ingrassia. I'd asked him if he could give me some more details about what he'd seen the night of the robbery, we'd agreed to meet again, and now this . . .”

Ingrassia threw his hands up in the air, inviting Montalbano, with this gesture, to resign himself to fate. He allowed a respectful pause to elapse, then:

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but what other details could the poor cavaliere have given you? He'd already told you everything he saw.”

Montalbano wagged his forefinger, signaling “no.”

“You don't think he told you everything he saw?” asked Ingrassia, intrigued.

Montalbano wagged his finger again.

Stew in your own juices, scumbag
, he was thinking.

The green Ingrassia started to tremble like a leafy branch in the breeze.

“Well, then, what did you want him to tell you?”

“What he thought he didn't see.”

The breeze turned into a gale, the branch began to lurch.

“I don't understand.”

“Let me explain. You're familiar, are you not, with a painting by Pieter Brueghel called
Children's Games
?”

“Who? Me? No,” said Ingrassia, worried.

“Doesn't matter. But you must be familiar with the works of Hieronymus Bosch?”

“No sir,” said Ingrassia, starting to sweat. Now he was really getting scared, his face starting to match the color of his outfit, green.

“Never mind, then, don't worry about it,” Montalbano said magnanimously. “What I meant was that when someone sees a scene, he usually remembers the first general impression he has of it. Right?”

“Right,” said Ingrassia, prepared for the worst.

“Then, little by little, a few other details may start coming back to him, things that registered in his memory but were discarded as unimportant. An open or closed window, for example, or a noise, a whistle, a song—what else?—a chair out of place, a car where it's not supposed to be, a light . . . That sort of thing. You know, little details that can later turn out to be extremely important.”

Ingrassia took a white handkerchief with a green border out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face.

“You had me brought here just to tell me that?”

“No. That would be inconveniencing you for no reason. I would never do a thing like that. I was wondering if you'd heard from the people who, in your opinion, played that joke on you, you know, the phony robbery.”