The Paper Moon (11 page)

The following morning the alarm clock rang and Montalbano woke up, but instead of racing out of bed to avoid unpleasant thoughts of old age, decrepitude, Alzheimer’s, and death, he just lay there.

He was thinking of the distinguished schoolmaster Emilio Sclafani, whom he’d not yet had the pleasure of meeting personally in person, but who nevertheless deserved to be taken into consideration. Yes, the good professor was definitely worthy of a little attention.

First of all, because he was an impotent man with a penchant for marrying young girls—whether in first or second blush, it didn’t matter—who could have been, in both cases, his daughters. The two wives had one thing in common, which was that meeting the schoolteacher helped them to pull themselves out of difficult situations, to say the least. The first wife was from a family of ragamuffins, while the second was losing her way down a black hole of prostitution and drugs. By marrying them the schoolteacher was, first and foremost, securing their gratitude. We want to call a spade a spade, don’t we? The professor was subjecting them to a sort of indirect blackmail: He would rescue them from their poverty or confusion on the condition that they remained with him, even while knowing his shortcomings. So much for the kindness and understanding Elena talked about!

Second, the fact that he himself had chosen the man with whom his first wife might satisfy her natural, young-womanly needs was in no way a sign of generosity. It was, in fact, a refined way to keep her even more tightly on a leash. And it was, among other things, a way to fulfill, so to speak, his conjugal duty, through a third party appointed by him for that purpose. The wife, moreover, was supposed to inform him every time she met with the lover and even describe the encounter to him in detail afterwards. Indeed, when the schoolteacher surprised them during an encounter about which he had not been informed, things turned nasty.

After his experience with his first wife, the schoolteacher allowed the second wife freedom of masculine choice, without prejudice to the obligation of prior notification of the day and time of mounting (could you really put it any other way?).

But why, knowing his natural deficiency, did the distinguished professor want to get married twice?

Perhaps the first time he’d hoped that a miracle, to use Elena’s word, would occur, so we’ll leave it at that. But the second time? How is it he hadn’t become more savvy? Why didn’t he marry, for example, a widow of a certain age whose sensual needs had already been abundantly mollified? Did he need to smell the fragrance of young flesh beside him in bed? Who did he think he was, Mao Tse-tung?

Anyway, the inspector’s talk the night before with Paola the Red (speaking of whom, he mustn’t forget she wanted him to call her) had brought out a contradiction that might or might not prove important. Namely, Elena maintained she had never wanted to go out to dinner or to the movies with Angelo, to keep people from laughing at her husband behind his back, whereas Paola said that she’d learned of the relationship between Elena and Angelo from the schoolteacher himself. Thus, while the wife was doing everything she could to keep her hanky-panky from becoming the talk of the town, her husband didn’t hesitate to state flat out that his wife was engaging in hanky-panky.

The schoolmaster, moreover, had, according to Paola, seemed upset about the violent death of his wife’s lover. Does that seem right?

He got up, drank his coffee, took a shower, and shaved, but, as he was about to go out, a wave of lethargy swept over him. All of a sudden he no longer felt like going to the office, seeing people, talking.

He went out on the veranda. The day looked like it was made of porcelain. He decided to do what his body was telling him to do.

“Catarella? Montalbano here. I’ll be coming in late today.”

“Aahhh, Chief, Chief, I wanneta say—”

He hung up, grabbed the two sheets of paper Catarella had printed out and the little songbook, and laid them down on the table on the veranda.

He went back inside, looked in the phone book, found the number he wanted, and dialed it. As the number was ringing, he checked his watch: nine o’clock, just the right time to call a schoolteacher who was staying home from school.

Montalbano let the phone ring a long time and was about to lose patience when he heard someone pick up at the other end.

“Hello?” said a male voice, sounding slightly groggy.

The inspector hadn’t expected this and felt a little bewildered.

“Hello?” the male voice repeated, now not only slightly groggy but also slightly irritated.

“Inspector Montalbano here. I would like—”

“You want Paola?”

“Yes, if it’s not—”

“I’ll go get her.”

Three minutes of silence passed.

“Hello?” said a female voice the inspector didn’t recognize.

“Am I speaking with Paola Torrisi?” he asked, doubtful.

“Yes, Inspector, it’s me, thanks for calling.”

But it wasn’t the same voice as the previous evening. This one was a bit husky, deep, and sensual, like that of someone who…He suddenly realized that maybe nine in the morning wasn’t the right time of day to call a schoolteacher who, staying home from work, might be busy with other things.

“I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you…”

She giggled.

“It’s no big deal. I want to tell you something, but not over the phone. Could we meet somewhere? I could drop by the station.”

“I won’t be in my office this morning. We could meet later this morning in Montelusa. You tell me where.”

They decided on a café on the Promenade. At noon. That way Paola could finish at her own pace what she had started before being interrupted by his phone call. And maybe even allow herself an encore.

While he was at it, he decided to confront Dr. Pasquano. Better over the phone than in person.

“What’s the story, Doctor?”

“Take your pick. Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

“No, Doctor, I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I’ve already let Tommaseo know that I’ve done what I was supposed to do and that he’ll have the report by tomorrow.”

“What about me?”

“Have Tommaseo give you a copy.”

“But couldn’t you tell me—”

“Tell you what? Don’t you already know he was shot in the face at close range? Or would you rather I use some technical terms where you wouldn’t understand a goddamn thing? And haven’t I also told you that although his thing was exposed, it hadn’t been used?”

“Did you find the bullet?”

“Yes. And I sent it over to Forensics. It entered through the left eye socket and tore his head apart.”

“Anything else?”

“Do you promise not to bug me for at least ten days if I tell you?”

“I swear.”

“Well, they didn’t kill him right away.”

“What do you mean?”

“They stuck a big handkerchief or a white rag in his mouth to prevent him from screaming. I found some filaments of white cloth wedged between his teeth. Sent them down to the lab. And after they shot him, they pulled the cloth out of his mouth and took it with them.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“If it’s the last.”

“Why are you speaking in the plural? Do you think there was more than one killer?”

“Do you really want to know why? To confuse you, my friend.”

He was a mean one, Pasquano, and enjoyed it.

But this business of the rag crammed into Angelo’s mouth was not something to be taken lightly.

It meant that the murder had not been committed on impulse. I came, I shot, I left. And good night.

No. Whoever went to see Angelo had some questions to ask him, wanted to know something from him. And needed some time to do this. That was why they put him in a state where he’d be forced to listen to what the other was saying or asking him, and they would take the rag out of his mouth only when Angelo had decided to answer.

And maybe Angelo answered and was killed anyway. Or else he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer, and that was why he was killed. But why hadn’t the killer left the rag in his mouth? Perhaps because he was hoping to lead the police down a less certain path? Or, more precisely, because he was trying to create a false lead by making it look like a crime of passion—a premise which, though supported by the bird outside the cage, would have been disproved if the rag had been found in the victim’s mouth? Or was it because the rag wasn’t a rag? Maybe it was a handkerchief with personalized initials that could have led to the killer’s first and last names?

He gave up and went out on the veranda.

He sat down and looked dejectedly at the two pages Catarella had printed up. He never had understood a damn thing about numbers. Back in high school, he remembered, when his friends were already doing abscesses—no, wait, abscesses are something else, something you get in your mouth. So what were they called? Ah, yes. Abscissas. When his school-mates were doing abscissas and coordinates, he was still having trouble with the multiplication table for the number eight.

On the first page, there was a column of thirty-eight numbers on the left-hand side, which corresponded to a second column of thirty-eight numbers on the right-hand side.

On the second page, there were thirty-two numbers on the left and thirty-two numbers on the right. Thus the sum total of numbers on the left came to seventy, and there were seventy numbers on the right as well. Montalbano congratulated himself on this discovery, while having to admit to himself that the exact same conclusion could have been reached by a little kid in the third grade.

Half an hour later, he made a discovery that gave him as much satisfaction as Marconi surely must have felt when he realized he’d invented the wireless telegraph or whatever it was he invented. That is, he discovered that the numbers in the left-hand columns were not all different but consisted of a group of fourteen numbers each repeated five times. The repetitions were not consecutive but scattered as though at random within the two columns.

He took one of the two numbers in the left-hand column and copied it onto the back of one of the pages as many times as it was repeated. Next to it he wrote down the corresponding numbers from the right-hand column.

It seemed clear to him that while the number on the left was in code, the number on the right was in clear and referred to a sum of money. The total came to 596,000. Not much if it was in lire. But more than a billion lire if it was in euros, as was more likely. So the business dealings between Angelo and Signor 213452 came to that amount. Now, since there were another thirteen numbered gentlemen, and the corresponding numbers for each added up to about the same amount as those examined, this meant that Angelo’s business volume came to over 12, 13 billion lire, or 6, 6.5 million euros. To be kept, however, carefully hidden. Assuming everything conformed to his suppositions. It was not impossible that those figures meant something else.

His eyes started to fog over, having trouble focusing on the numbers. He was getting tired. At this rate, he thought, it would take him three to five years to crack the code of the songs, and by the time it was all over, he would surely be blind and walking around with a white stick and a dog on a harness.

He brought everything back inside, closed the door to the veranda, went out, got in his car, and left. Since he was still a bit early for his appointment with Paola, he crept along at barely five miles per hour, driving everyone who happened to be behind him crazy. Every motorist, when each managed to pass him, felt obliged to insult him. Thus, he was a(n):

faggot, according to a trucker;

asshole, according to a priest;

cornuto,
according to a nice lady;

ba-ba-ba-, according to a stutterer.

But all these insults went in one ear and out the other. Only one really made him mad. A distinguished-looking man of about sixty pulled up alongside him and said:

“Donkey!”

Donkey? How dared he? The inspector made a vain attempt to pursue the man, pressing on the accelerator until he was at twenty miles an hour, but then preferred slowing back down to his normal cruising speed.

Arriving at the Promenade, he couldn’t find a parking space and had to drive around a long time before he found a spot very far from the appointed place. When he finally got there, Paola was already sitting at a table, waiting for him.