The Snack Thief (26 page)

escape. As I do when I take refuge here. But the moment I go
back home, I immediately lose half of the benefit. The fact of
your fathers dying is real, but you refuse to confirm it by seeing
it in person. Youre like the child who thinks he can blot
out the world by closing his eyes.

Professor Liborio Pintacuda, at this point, looked the inspector
straight in the eye.

When will you decide to grow up?

20

As he was going downstairs for supper, he decided he would
head back to Vig the following morning. Hed been away
for five days. Luicino had set the table in the usual little
room, and Pintacuda was already sitting at his place and waiting
for him.

Im leaving tomorrow, Montalbano announced.

Not me. I need another week of detox.

Luicino brought the first course at once, and thereafter
their mouths were used only for eating. When the second
course arrived, they had a surprise.

Meatballs! the professor exclaimed, indignant. Meatballs
are for dogs!

The inspector kept his cool. The aroma floating up from
the dish and into his nose was rich and dense.

Whats with Tanino? Is he sick? Pintacuda inquired
with a tone of concern.

No sir, hes in the kitchen, replied Luicino.

Only then did the professor break a meatball in half with
his fork and bring it to his mouth. Montalbano hadnt yet
made a move. Pintacuda chewed slowly, eyes half closed, and
emitted a sort of moan.

If one ate something like this at deaths door, hed be
happy even to go to Hell, he said softly.

The inspector put half a meatball in his mouth, and with
his tongue and palate began a scientific analysis that would have
put Jacomuzzi to shame. So: fish and, no question, onion, hot
pepper, whisked eggs, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs. But two other
flavors, hiding under the taste of the butter used in the frying,
hadnt yet answered the call. At the second mouthful, he recognized
what had escaped him in the first: cumin and coriander.

Koftas! he shouted in amazement.

What did you say? asked Pintacuda.

Were eating an Indian dish, executed to perfection.

I dont give a damn where its from, said the professor.
I only know its a dream. And please dont speak to me
again until Ive finished eating.

Pintacuda waited for the table to be cleared and then suggested
they play their now customary game of chess that,
equally customarily, Montalbano always lost.

Excuse me a minute; first Id like to say good-bye to
Tanino.

Ill come with you.

The cook was in the process of giving his assistant a serious
tongue-lashing for having poorly cleaned the pans.

When you do that, they end up tasting like yesterdays
food and nobody can tell what theyre eating anymore.

Listen, said Montalbano, is it true youve never been
outside of Sicily?

He must have inadvertently assumed a coplike tone, because
Tanino seemed suddenly to have returned to his days as
a delinquent.

Never, Inspector, I swear! I got witnesses!

Therefore he could never have learned that dish from
some foreign restaurant.

Have you ever had any dealings with Indians?

Like in the movies? Redskins?

Never mind, said Montalbano. And he said good-bye
to the miraculous cook, giving him a hug.

In the five days hed been awayas Fazio reported to him
nothing of any importance had happened. Carmelo Arnone,
the man with the tobacco shop near the train station, had
fired four shots at Angelo Cannizzaro, haberdasher, over a
woman. Mimugello, who happened to be in the area, had
courageously confronted the gunman and disarmed him.

So, Montalbano commented, Cannizzaro came away
with little more than a good scare.

It was well known to everyone in town that Carmelo
Arnone didnt know how to handle a gun and couldnt even
hit a cow at point-blank range.

Well, no.

He hit him? asked Montalbano, stunned.

Actually, Fazio went on to explain, he hadnt hit his target
this time either. One of the bullets, though, after striking
a lamppost, had ricocheted back and ended up between Can-
nizzaros shoulder blades. The wound was nothing, the bullet

had lost all its force by then. But in no time the rumor had
spread all over town that the cowardly Carmelo Arnone had
shot Angelo Cannizzaro in the back. So Cannizzaros
brother, Pasqualino, who dealt in fava beans and wore glasses
with lenses an inch thick, armed himself, tracked down
Carmelo Arnone, and shot at him, missing twice. That is, he
missed both the target and the identity of the target. Deceived
by a strong family resemblance, he had mistaken
Carmelos brother Filippo, who owned a fruit-and-vegetable
store, for Carmelo himself. As for missing the target, the first
shot had ended up God-knows-where, while the second had
injured the pinky on the left hand of a shopkeeper from
Canicatthod come to Vig on business. At this point the
pistol had jammed, otherwise Pasqualino Cannizzaro, firing
blindly, would surely have wrought another slaughter of the
innocents.

Ah and, also, there were two robberies, four purse snatchings,
and three cars torched. Routine stuff.

There was a knock at the door, and Tortorella came in
after pushing the door open with his foot, arms laden with a
good six or seven pounds of papers.

Shall we make good use of your time while youre
here?

Tortoryou make it sound like Ive been away for a
hundred years!

Since he never signed anything without first carefully
reading what it was about, Montalbano had barely dispatched
a couple of pounds of documents when it was already
lunchtime. Though he felt some stirring in the pit of his

stomach, he decided not to go to the Trattoria San Calogero.
He wasnt ready yet to desecrate the memory of Tanino, the
cook directly inspired by the Madonna. The betrayal, when it
came, would have to be justified, at least in part, by abstinence.

He finished signing papers at eight that evening, with
aches not only in his fingers, but in his whole arm.

By the time he got home, he was ravenous; in the pit of his
stomach there now was a hole. How should he proceed?
Should he open the oven and fridge and see what Adelina
had made for him? He reasoned that, if going from one
restaurant to another could technically be called a betrayal, to
go from Tanino to Adelina certainly could not. Rather, it
might be better defined as a return to the family fold after an
adulterous interlude. The oven was empty. In the fridge he
found ten or so olives, three sardines, and a bit of Lampedusan
tuna in a small glass jar. On the kitchen table there was
some bread wrapped in paper, next to a note from the housekeeper.

Since you didna tell me when you was commin back, I
cook and cook and then I gotta thro alla this good food away.
Im not gonna cook no more.

She didnt want to go on wasting things, clearly, but
more importantly, she must have felt offended because he

hadnt told her where he was going (All right, so Ima just a
maid, sir, but sommatime you treeta me jes like a maid!).

He listlessly ate a couple of olives with bread, which he
decided to accompany with some of his fathers wine. He
turned the television on to the Free Channel. It was time for
the news.

Nicolto was finishing up a commentary on the arrest
of a town councilman in Fela for embezzlement and
graft. Then he moved on to the latest stories. On the outskirts
of Sommatina, between Caltanissetta and Enna, a
womans body had been recovered in an advanced state of
decomposition.

Montalbano bolted upright in his armchair.

The woman had been strangled, stuffed into a bag, and
thrown into a rather deep, dry well. Beside her they found a
small suitcase that led to the victims identification. Karima
Moussa, aged thirty-four, a native of Tunis who had moved to
Vig a few years earlier.

The photo of Karima and Frans that the inspector had
given Nicolpeared on the screen.

Did the viewing audience remember the Free Channels
report on the womans disappearance? No trace, meanwhile,
had turned up of the little boy, her son. According to Inspector
Diliberto, who was conducting the investigation, the
killer might have been the Tunisian womans unknown procurer.
There nevertheless remained, in the inspectors opinion,
numerous details to be cleared up.

Montalbano whinnied, turned off the TV, and smiled.

Lohengrin Pera had kept his word. He stood up, stretched, sat
back down, and immediately fell asleep in the armchair. An
animal slumber, probably dreamless, like a sack of potatoes.

The next morning, from his office, he called the commissioner
and invited himself to dinner. Then he called police
headquarters in Sommatino.

Diliberto? Montalbano here. Im calling from Vig.

Hello, colleague. What can I do for you?

I wanted to know about that woman you found in the
well.

Karima Moussa.

Yes. Are you absolutely certain about the identification?

Without a shadow of a doubt. In her bag, among other
things, we found an ATM card from the Banca Agricola di
Montelusa.

Excuse me for interrupting, but anyone, you see, could
have put

Let me finish. Three years ago, this woman had an accident
for which she was given twelve stitches in her right arm
at Montelusa Hospital. It checks out. The scar was still visible
despite the bodys advanced state of decomposition.

Listen, Diliberto, I just got back to Vig this morning
after a few days off. Im short on news and found out about
the body on a local TV station. They reported you still had
some questions.

Not about the identification. But Im certain the
woman was killed and buried somewhere else, not where we
found her after receiving an anonymous tip. So my question
is: Why did they dig her up and move the body? What need
was there to do that?

What makes you so sure they did?

You see, Karimas suitcase was soiled with bodily waste
from its first period alongside the corpse. And in order to
carry the suitcase to the well where it was found, they
wrapped it in newspaper.

So?

The newspaper was only three days old. Whereas the
woman had been killed at least ten days earlier. The coroner
would bet his life on it. So I need to figure out why she was
moved. And I have no idea; I just cant understand it.

Montalbano had an idea, but he couldnt tell his colleague
what it was. If only those fuckheads in the secret services
could do something right for once! Like the time
when, wanting to make people believe that a certain Libyan
airplane had crashed in Sila on a specific day, they staged a
show of explosions and flames, and then, in the autopsy, it
was determined that the pilot had actually died fifteen days
earlier from the impact. The flying cadaver.

After a simple but elegant dinner, Montalbano and his superior
retired to the study. The commissioners wife withdrew
in turn to watch television.

Montalbanos story was long and so detailed that he
didnt even leave out his voluntary crushing of Lohengrin
Peras little gold eyeglasses. At a certain point, the report
turned into a confession. But the commissioners absolution
was slow in coming. He was truly annoyed at having been
left out of the game.

Im mad at you, Montalbano. You denied me a chance
to amuse myself a little before calling it quits.

My dear Livia,

This letter will surprise you for at least two reasons. The
first is the letter itself, my having written it and sent it. Unwritten
letters Ive sent you by the bushel, at least one a day. I
realized that in all these years, Ive only sent you an occasional
miserly postcard with a few bureaucratic, inspectorly
greetings, as you called them.

The second reason, which will delight you as much as
surprise you, is its content.

Since you left exactly fifty-five days ago (as you can see, I
keep track), many things have happened, some of which concern
us directly. To say they happened, however, is incorrect;
it would be more accurate to write that I made them happen.

You reproached me once for a certain tendency I have to
play God by altering the course of events (for others) through
omissions great and small, and even through more or less
damnable falsifications. Maybe its true. Actually, it most certainly
is. But dont you think this, too, is part of my job?

Whatever the case, you should know at once that Im

about to tell you of another supposed transgression of mine,
one that was aimed, however, at turning a chain of events in
our favor, and was therefore not for or against anyone else. But
first I want to tell you about Frans.

Neither you nor I have even mentioned his name since
the last night you spent in Marinella, when you reproached
me for not having realized that the boy could become the son
we would never have. Whats more, you were hurt by the way
I had the child taken from you. But, you see, I was terrified,
and with good reason. He had become a dangerous witness,
and I was afraid they would make him disappear (or neutralize
him, as they say euphemistically).

The omission of that name has weighed heavily on our
phone conversations, making them evasive and a little loveless.
Today I want to make it clear to you that if I never once mentioned
Frans before now, it was to keep you from nurturing
dangerous illusions. And if Im writing to you about him
now, it is because this fear has subsided.

Do you remember that morning in Marinella when
Frans ran away to look for his mother? Well, as I was
walking him home, he told me he didnt want to end up in an
orphanage. And I replied that this would never happen. I
gave him my word of honor, and we shook on it. I made a
promise, and I will keep it at all costs.

In these fifty-five days Mimugello, on my request, has
been calling his sister three times a week to see how the boy is
doing. The answers have always been reassuring.