IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009) (5 page)

The inspector decided it was best to get immediately to the point.

“I came—”

“—to talk about that girl who was killed, I figured that out right away, the moment you entered. What can I do for you?”

“You need to give me a hand.”

“I’m at your service, as usual.”

Montalbano pulled the two photographs out of his pocket and handed them to him.

“Nobody told us this morning that the girl had this tattoo,” said Nicolò.

“Now you know. And you’re the only journalist who does.”

“It’s a very artistic tattoo; the colors of the wings are beautiful,” Zito commented. Then he asked, “You still haven’t identified her?”

“No.”

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want you to air these photos on the evening news and broadcast them again during the evening update and on the late-night edition. We want to know anyone who knew a girl slightly over twenty with this kind of tattoo. You can say that anonymous phone calls are also welcome. Naturally you should give out the telephone number for here.”

“And why not the police station’s?”

“Have you any idea of the kind of mess Catarella might create?”

“Can I say at least that you’re handling the investigation?”

“Yes, at least until the commissioner takes it away from me.”

As he was heading back down to Vigàta, he noticed the beginnings of what promised to be one of those sunsets so beautiful as to seem fake or from a picture postcard.

It seemed best to head home to Marinella and enjoy it from the veranda, rather than to go back to the office. And hadn’t the angler predicted that it would rain for a week? He therefore had to take advantage of this last offering of the season.

But perhaps it was better to pass by headquarters, stick his head in to inform Catarella, and then cut out. It proved to be the utterly wrong decision.

“Ah Chief Chief! Iss Signora Picarella!”

“On the phone?”

“The phone? She’s right here, Chief! She’s waiting for you!”

“Tell her I just called and I’m not coming in to the office.”

“I already tol’ ’er that, Chief, all by m’self, but she said she’s gonna stay here all night if she has to, till you decide to come back!”

Ugh, what a pain in the ass and then some!

“Okay, tell you what. I’m going to go into my office. Wait five minutes, then send her in.”

The case of Arturo Picarella’s kidnapping had begun a week earlier. A rich, fifty-year-old wholesaler in wood, Picarella had built himself a beautiful villa just outside of town, where he lived with his wife Ciccina, who was famous all over town for throwing furious fits of jealousy, even in public, at her husband, who was equally well-known for his insatiable hunger for women. Their only son, who was married, worked as a bank teller in Canicattì and kept his distance, coming to Vigàta barely once a month to visit.

One night, around one o’clock, husband and wife were woken up by some noise on the ground floor. At first they heard footsteps, and then a chair being knocked over. Surely some burglars had broken in.

Then, after ordering his wife not to get out of bed and getting all dressed up, sport coat and shoes included, Picarella armed himself with the revolver he kept in the drawer of his bedside table, went downstairs, and immediately started firing blindly, feeling perhaps empowered to do so by the recent law on self-defense.

Shortly thereafter, a terrified Signora Ciccina heard the front open and close again. At that point she got up, ran to the window, and saw her husband, hands in the air, being forced into his own car by a masked man pointing a gun at him.

The car drove off, and Arturo Picarella had been missing ever since.

Such were the facts as recounted by an agitated Signora Ciccina.

It should be added that, along with Picarella, some five hundred thousand euros had also disappeared, withdrawn by the wood merchant from his bank the very day before, supposedly to close a deal about which nobody knew anything.

Ever since that moment, not a morning or evening went by without Signora Picarella coming to the station to ask, each time more angrily, if they had any news of her husband. The kidnapper had never come forth to demand a ransom, and Picarella’s car had not been found.

Once Mimì Augello and Fazio were assigned the case, however, they immediately formed a precise and very different opinion of how the kidnapping had gone.

It took them one glance to ascertain that Picarella had made sure to empty the entire cartridge into the ceiling, which looked worse than a colander. Meanwhile the burglar, apparently unarmed since he hadn’t returned fire, didn’t flee, but somehow managed to react and take possession of the firearm.

The front door, moreover, turned out not to have been forced, nor had the safe that was hidden behind a big photograph of Great-Grandfather Filippo Picarella, founder of the dynasty.

And why hadn’t the thief taken the three thousand euros that Signora Ciccina had left out on a side table, which her husband had given her that evening to pay a supplier the following day? And why hadn’t he grabbed the solid-gold snuff-box that had belonged to the great-grandfather and lay right there, for all to see, on top of the three thousand euros, holding them down?

And why, also, did Arturo Picarella—who, according to his wife’s statements, had been sleeping in T-shirt and underpants—get all dressed up very quickly before going downstairs to confront the burglar? By now, with their longstanding experience, Augello and Fazio took for granted that anyone who is woken up in the middle of the night by burglars normally gets straight out of bed and goes to confront the thieves however he may happen to be dressed, in pajamas, underwear, or naked. The wholesaler’s manner of behavior was at the very least extremely odd, if not downright suspicious.

Augello and Fazio had submitted a report to their superior which came to a conclusion that could in no way be revealed to Signora Ciccina. A conclusion supported, moreover, by ru mors circulating around town, according to which Arturo Picarella had lost his head over a stewardess he had met while flying back from Sweden, where he had gone to buy wood.

In short, the way Augello and Fazio saw it, Mr. Picarella, with the complicity of a friend, had staged a little scene, pretending to be kidnapped but in fact heading off for a few months to the Bahamas or the Maldives in the company of his lovely stewardess. Another detail not to be ignored: The passport of Arturo Picarella happened to be in the pocket of the sport coat he put on that fateful night.

“Inspector,” Signora Ciccina began after she’d been shown in, clearly restraining herself from yelling. “I’m telling you this only to ease my conscience: You should know that I’ve filed a statement with the minister.”

Montalbano understood not a thing.

“A statement with the minister?”

“Oh, yes.”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“About me? Why?”

“Because you are taking the disappearance of my poor husband very lightly!”

It took him a good hour to persuade her to return home. He swore to a pack of lies, saying that whole squads of policemen, some of them coming from afar, were scouring the countryside looking for Mr. Picarella.

So much for the sunset. When he got to Marinella, the sun had already long gone down. He flicked on the TV, tuned in to the Free Channel, and immediately saw the photograph of the dead girl’s tattoo on the screen. Nicolò Zito was doing what he had asked him to do.

Montalbano watched the newscast to the end. Four hundred Third World refugees had come ashore from Lampedusa only to be sent on to concentration—well, “first reception” camps. A branch of the Banca Regionale was robbed by three armed men. A fire had broken out in a supermarket, a clear case of arson. Some poor homeless wretch living on alms was beaten within an inch of his life by five youths who had decided to kill a little time that way. A fourteen-year-old girl was raped by—

He changed the channel, switching to TeleVigàta. And there was Pippo Ragonese, the political editorialist with a face like a chicken’s ass, speaking.The inspector was about to change the channel again when Ragonese mentioned his name.

“. . . thanks to the well-known inertia—and there’s no better way to define it, only worse—of Inspector Montalbano, we are certain that this new, horrendous crime discovered at the Salsetto will also remain unsolved. That poor girl’s murderer can sleep peacefully. Also unsolved, to date, is the peculiar kidnapping of businessman Arturo Picarella. And in this regard I cannot refrain from bringing to the attention of our viewers that Mrs. Picarella has complained to us about the discourteous treatment, to say the least, she has received from the above-mentioned Inspector Montalbano—”

He turned it off and went to open the refrigerator. His heart leapt at the sight of four mullets prepared as God had intended, ready for frying. Pippo Ragonese could go take it you-know-where. Montalbano slid them from the plate into a skillet, which he set over a burner. Then, to avoid a repeat of the previous evening, when Livia’s phone call had sent his meal to the dogs, he ran to unplug the telephone.

Seated outside on the veranda, he dispatched the mullets, which had come out well but not as crispy as Adelina was capable of making them. Since he still felt a little hungry, he searched the fridge and found half a dish of leftover caponata. Sniffing it carefully, he convinced himself it was all right, took it outside, and wolfed it down.

He plugged the phone back in.Then he wondered:
What if Livia had called and found no one at home?
Considering that seas were rough between them—with gale-force winds, in fact—Livia was liable to think that he had disconnected the phone precisely because he didn’t want to hear from her. It was best if he called her first. He dialed her number at Boccadasse, but there was no answer. And so he tried her cell phone.

Maybe she’d gone to the movies and would check in later.

He sat back down on the veranda to smoke a cigarette.

Unfortunately my relationship with Livia has reached a crossroads, and I must absolutely make a choice
, he thought, feeling himself overwhelmed by a wave of melancholy that immediately made his eyes glisten.

It took a great deal of courage to throw away years and years of love, trust, complicity. What he had with Livia was an out-and-out marriage, even if not sanctioned by the law or the Church. He felt like laughing whenever he heard bishops and cardinals make public proclamations against recognizing common-law marriage. How many marriages celebrated with the requisite priest and regalia had he seen last much less time than his arrangement with Livia?

On the other hand, maybe it took even greater courage to carry on in the situation they found themselves in now.

One thing was certain: They needed a clarification, of the ferocious, mutually flaying kind that draws blood. But that sort of clarification couldn’t be made over the phone; the voice alone wouldn’t suffice. Their two bodies also had to take part. One look would have told far more than a hundred words.

The telephone rang. He looked at his watch. It was eleven in the evening, and it must surely be Livia. As he was going to pick up, he was thinking he would suggest that she come down to Vigàta on the following Saturday.

“Inspector Montalbano?” said an old man’s voice he didn’t recognize at first.

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Headmaster Burgio.”

Good God, how long had it been since he’d heard from him! After the headmaster’s wife died, Burgio had moved to Fela, to the home of a daughter of his, a teacher.

How old was he these days? Ninety?

“Forgive me for calling so late,” said Burgio.

“Not at all! How are you?”

“I get by. I’m calling you because I saw the tattoo of the poor murdered girl on the Free Channel.”