IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009) (2 page)

Not having heard the door open, the inspector suddenly saw Adelina standing before him, staring at him, keys still in hand. Why had she come so early? Embarrassed, he instinctively turned towards the telephone to hide his privates. Apparently the male backside is considered less shameful than the front. The housekeeper quickly fled into the kitchen.

“Cat, wanna bet I know why you’re calling? A dead man was found somewhere. Am I right?”

“Yes and no, Chief.”

“Where am I wrong?”

“Iss a dead lady, Chief.”

“Listen, isn’t Inspector Augello around?”

“He’s a’ready atta scene o’ the crime, Chief. But the inspector jess called me now sayin’ to call you now, Chief, sayin’ as how iss bitter if you go there, too, Chief, poissonally in poisson.”

“Where was she found?”

“Atta Sarsetto, Chief, roundabout the ’Murcan bridge.”

That was far along the road to Montelusa. And the inspector had no desire to get behind the wheel.

“Send a car over to pick me up.”

“The cars’re all inna garage and can’t go nowheres, Chief.”

“They all broke down at the same time?”

“Nossir, Chief, they’s workin’ all right. But the fack is there’s no more money to buy gasoline. Fazio called Montelusa but they tol’ ’im to be patient ’cause the money’s onna way an’ll be here in a few days, but not much . . . So fer now only the flyin’ squad can drive, an’ Deputy Garruso’s escort.”

“His name is Garrufo, Cat.”

“ ’ Is name is what ’is name is. All ’at matters is you un nastand who I mean, Chief.”

The inspector cursed the saints. The police stations had no gasoline, the courts had no paper, the hospitals had no thermometers, and meanwhile the government was thinking about building a bridge over the Strait of Messina. But there was always plenty of gasoline for the useless escorts of ministers, vice ministers, undersecretaries, committee chairmen, senators, chamber deputies, regional deputies, cabinet chiefs, and underassistant briefcase carriers . . .

“Have you informed the prosecutor, Forensics, and Dr. Pasquano?”

“Yessir. But Dr. Quaspano got rilly rilly pissed off.”

“Why?”

“He says how since he ain’t bibiquitous, he can’t get to the scene for a couple a hours. Chief, could you asplain sumpin a me?”

“Sure, Cat.”

“Whass bibiquitous mean?”

“It means being in many different and faraway places at the same time. Tell Augello I’m on my way.”

He went into the bathroom and got dressed.

“Coffee’s ready,” Adelina informed him.

As soon as he walked into the kitchen, the housekeeper looked him up and down and said:

“You know you’re still a good-lookin’ man, signore?”

Still?
What was that
still
supposed to mean? Montalbano darkened. But then Montalbano Two immediately appeared.

Better change the subject.

“Why’d you come early today?”

“ ’ Cause I gotta catch a bus to Montelusa to go talk to Judge Sommatino.”

He was the judge overseeing the prison where Pasquale, the younger of the housekeeper’s two sons, was being “detained.” Pasqualino was a habitual offender whom Montalbano himself had arrested twice, and for whose firstborn son the inspector had been made godfather at the baptism.

“ ’ Parently the judge is gonna put inna good word so’s he can come a home for house arrest.”

The coffee was good.

“Lemme have another cup, Adelì.”

Since Dr. Pasquano was going to be arriving late, he might as well take his time.

In the days of the Greeks, the Salsetto had been a river. Later, in the days of the Romans, it became a brook, then a rivulet by the time of Italian unification, and later still, in the Fascist era, a stinking little trickle, before finally becoming, with the advent of democracy, an illegal dumping ground. During the Allied invasion in 1943, the Americans built a metal bridge over the now-dried-up riverbed, but one night a few years later the span disappeared, having been entirely dismantled between sunrise and sunset by iron thieves. The spot, however, had retained the name.

The inspector pulled up in a clearing where there were already five police cars, two private vehicles, and the van for transporting corpses to the morgue. The squad cars all belonged to Montelusa Central Police; of the private cars, one belonged to Mimì Augello, the other to Fazio.

“How come in Montelusa they’ve got gasoline up the ass and we don’t have a drop?” the inspector asked himself aloud, feeling annoyed.

He chose not to answer.

Augello came up as soon as he saw him get out of the car.

“Mimì, couldn’t you have scratched your balls by yourself ?”

“Salvo, I’m not going to play your game anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, if I hadn’t had you come here, later you’d be driving me crazy saying, Why didn’t you tell me this, why didn’t you tell me that . . . ?”

“What’s the corpse like?”

“Dead,” said Augello.

“Mimì, a quip like that is worse than a shot in the back. Fire off another, and I’ll shoot you in self-defense. I’ll ask you again: What’s the corpse like?”

“Young. Barely more than twenty. Possibly foreign. And she must have been beautiful.”

“Have you identified her?”

“Are you kidding? She’s completely naked and there aren’t any clothes about, not even a handbag.”

They walked to the edge of the clearing.

A sort of narrow goat path led down to the dump some thirty feet below. Right at the bottom of the path stood a group of people, among whom the inspector recognized Fazio, the chief of Forensics, and Dr. Pasquano, who was bent over what looked like a mannequin. Prosecutor Tommaseo, on the other hand, was standing in the middle of the path and spotted the inspector.

“Wait, Montalbano, I’ll be right there.”

“What’s going on? Is Pasquano here?” said Montalbano.

Mimì gave him a confused look.

“Why wouldn’t he be here? He got here half an hour ago.”

Apparently the doctor’s blow-up at poor Catarella had all been for show.

Pasquano was famous for having a nasty disposition, and he was very keen on being known as an impossible man. Sometimes he took great pleasure in hamming it up just to maintain his reputation.

“Aren’t you coming down?” asked Tommaseo, panting as he climbed up.

“What for? You’ve already seen her yourself.”

“She must have been very beautiful. Fantastic body,” said the prosecutor, eyes glistening with excitement.

“How was she killed?”

“A bullet to the face from a high-caliber revolver. She’s absolutely unrecognizable.”

“Why do you think it was a revolver?”

“Because the guys from Forensics can’t find the shell.”

“What happened, in your opinion?”

“Why, it’s obvious, my friend! Plain as day! Clearly, the couple pulls up in the clearing, gets out of the car, takes the path down to the dry riverbed, which is more secluded. The girl takes her clothes off and then, after sexual intercourse . . .”—he stopped, licked his lips, and swallowed at the thought of intercourse—“the man shoots her right in the face.”

“And why would he do that?”

“I dunno. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“Listen, was there a moon?”

Tommaseo gave him confused look.

“Well, it wasn’t a romantic encounter, you know, there wasn’t any need for moonlight, they were just there to—”

“I think I know what they were there to do, sir. What I meant was that, since these past few nights there hasn’t been any moonlight, we should have found two corpses, not one.”

Tommaseo now looked utterly lost.

“Why two?”

“Because climbing down that path in total darkness, they would certainly have broken their necks.”

“But, what are you saying, Montalbano? Surely they had a flashlight! Of course they’d planned the whole thing out! Well, unfortunately I have to go now. I’ll be hearing from you. Good day.”

“Do
you
think that’s the way it went?” Montalbano asked Mimì after Tommaseo had gone.

“If you ask me, it’s just another of Tommaseo’s sexual fantasies! Why would they go down into a dump to have sex? It stinks so bad down there you can’t even breathe! And there are rats big enough to eat the flesh off your bones! They could have easily done it right here, in this clearing, which is famous for all the fucking that goes on every night! Have you had a look around at the ground? It’s a sea of condoms!”

“Did you point this out to Tommaseo?”

“Of course. But you know what he answered?”

“I can imagine.”

“He said that it’s possible those two went to fuck in the dump because it was more thrilling to do it surrounded by shit. A taste for depravity, get it? The kind of thing that only enters the mind of someone like Tommaseo!”

“Okay. But if the girl wasn’t a professional whore, it’s possible that, with all the cars in this clearing and all the trucks passing by, she—”

“The trucks that go to the dump don’t come through here, Salvo. They discharge their stuff on the other side, where there’s an easier descent that somebody made specifically for heavy vehicles.”

Fazio’s head popped up at the top of the path.

“Good morning, Chief.”

“Are they going to be here much longer?”

“No, Chief, another half an hour or so.”

The inspector didn’t feel like seeing Vanni Arquà, chief of Forensics. He felt a visceral antipathy towards him, and the feeling was entirely mutual.

“Here they come,” said Mimì.

“Who?”

“Look over there,” replied Augello, pointing towards Montelusa.

Over the dirt path connecting the provincial road to the dump there rose a big cloud that looked just like a tornado.

“
Matre santa
, the press!” exclaimed the inspector.

Obviously somebody from the commissioner’s office had spilled the beans.

“I’ll see you guys at the office,” he said, racing towards his car.

“I’m going back down,” said Augello.

The real reason he hadn’t gone down into the dump was that he didn’t want to see what he would have had to see. Augello had said the corpse was of a girl barely more than twenty years old. It used to be that he felt afraid of dying people, while the dead made no impression on him. Now, however, and for the past few years, he could no longer bear the sight of people cut down in their youth. Something inside him utterly rebelled against what he considered an act against nature, a sort of ultimate sacrilege, even if the young victim had been a crook or a murderer in turn. To say nothing of children! The moment the evening news displayed the mangled bodies of little children, killed by war, famine, or disease, he would turn off the television at once . . .

“It’s your frustrated paternal instinct,” was Livia’s conclusion, stated with a good dose of malice, after he had confided this problem to her.

“I have never heard of frustrated paternal instincts, only frustrated maternal instincts,” he had retorted.

“Well, if it’s not frustrated paternal instincts,” Livia insisted, “maybe it means you have a grandfather complex.”

“How can I have a grandfather complex if I’ve never been a father?”

“What’s that got to do with it? Ever heard of an hysterical pregnancy?”

“It’s when a woman has all the signs of being pregnant but isn’t.”

“Right. And you’re having an hysterical grandfatherhood.”

Naturally the argument had ended in a nasty squabble.