The Snack Thief Read online

  The Snack Thief

  Andrea Camilleri

  The Snack Thief

  Inspector Montalbano [3]

  Andrea Camilleri

  Viking Press (1997)

  Rating:

  ***

  Tags:

  Mystery, Mystery & Detective, Andrea Camilleri, General, Fiction, Thriller

  Never has Inspector Montalbano's signature mix of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food been more compelling than in The Snack Thief. When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily's coast, only Montalbano, with his keen insight into human nature, suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished housecleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son is caught stealing other schoolchildren's midmorning snacks. But when Karima disappears, the young snack thief's life-as well as his own-is endangered when Montalbano exposes a viper's nest of government and international intrigue.

  The Snack Thief

  Inspector Montalbano [3]

  Andrea Camilleri

  Viking Press (1997)

  Rating:

  ***

  Tags:

  Mystery, Mystery & Detective, Andrea Camilleri, General, Fiction, Thriller

  Never has Inspector Montalbano's signature mix of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food been more compelling than in The Snack Thief. When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily's coast, only Montalbano, with his keen insight into human nature, suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished housecleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son is caught stealing other schoolchildren's midmorning snacks. But when Karima disappears, the young snack thief's life-as well as his own-is endangered when Montalbano exposes a viper's nest of government and international intrigue.

  THE SNACK THIEF

  A N D R E A C A M I L L E R I

  Translated by Stephen Sartarelli

  Viking

  THE SNACK THIEF

  v

  A LS O BY A N D R EA CA M I LLE R I The Terra-Cotta Dog

  The Shape of Water

  THE SNACK THIEF

  A N D R E A C A M I L L E R I

  Translated by Stephen Sartarelli

  Viking

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in 2003 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Translation copyright © Stephen Sartarelli, 2003

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Italian as Il ladro di merendine by Sellerio editore. © 1996

  Sellerio editore via Siracusa 50 Palermo.

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Camilleri, Andrea.

  [Ladro di merendine. English]

  The snack thief Andrea Camilleri ; translated by Stephen Sartarelli.p>

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4362-7199-1

  I. Sartarelli, Stephen, 1954– II. Title.

  PQ4863.A3894L3313 2003

  853'.914.dc21

  2003041090

  Set in Bembo

  Designed by Jaye Zimet

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmit-ted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, upoading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any others means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  THE SNACK THIEF

  01

  He woke up in a bad way. The sheets, during the sweaty, restless sleep that had followed his wolfing down three pounds of sardines a beccafico the previous evening, had wound themselves tightly round his body, making him feel like a mummy. He got up, went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and guzzled half a bottle of cold water. As he was drinking, he glanced out the wide-open window. The dawn light promised a good day.

  The sea was flat as a table, the sky clear and cloudless. Sensitive as he was to the weather, Montalbano felt reassured as to his mood in the hours to come. As it was still too early, he went back to bed and readied himself for two more hours of slumber, pulling the sheet over his head. He thought, as he always did before falling asleep, of Livia lying in her bed in Boccadasse, outside of Genoa. She was a soothing presence, propitious to any journey, long or short, “in country sleep,” as Dylan Thomas had put it in a poem he liked very much.

  No sooner had the journey begun when it was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. Like a drill, the sound seemed to enter one ear and come out the other, boring through his brain.

  “Hello!”

  “Whoozis I’m speaking with?”

  “Tell me first who you are.”

  “This is Catarella.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Sorry, Chief, I din’t rec’nize your voice as yours. You mighta been sleeping.”

  “I certainly might have, at five in the morning! Would you please tell me what the hell is the matter without busting my balls any further?”

  “Somebody was killed in Mazàra del Vallo.”

  “What the fuck is that to me? I’m in Vigàta.”

  “But, Chief, the dead guy—”

  Montalbano hung up and unplugged the phone. Before shutting his eyes he thought maybe his friend Valente, vice-commissioner of Mazàra, was looking for him. He would call him later, from his office.

  o o o

  The shutter slammed hard against the wall. Montalbano sat bolt upright in bed, eyes agape with fright, convinced, in the haze of sleep still enveloping him, that he’d been shot at. In the twinkling of an eye, the weather had changed: a cold, humid wind was kicking up waves with a yellowish froth, the sky now entirely covered with clouds that threatened rain.

  Cursing the saints, he got up, went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and lathered himself up. All at once the water ran out. In Vigàta, and therefore also in Marinella, where he lived, water was distributed roughly every three days.

  Roughly, because there was no way of knowing whether you would have water the very next day or the following week.

  For this reason Montalbano had taken the precaution
of having several large tanks installed on the roof of his house, which would fill up when water was available. This time, however, there had apparently been no new water for eight days, for that was the maximum autonomy granted him by his reserves.

  He ran into the kitchen, put a pot under the faucet to collect the meager trickle that came out, and did the same in the bathroom sink. With the bit of water thus collected, he somehow managed to rinse the soap off his body, but the whole procedure certainly didn’t help his mood.

  While driving to Vigàta, yelling obscenities at all the mo-torists to cross his path—whose only use for the Highway Code, in his opinion, was to wipe their asses with it, one way or another—he remembered Catarella’s phone call and the explanation he’d come up with for it, which didn’t make sense. If Valente had needed him for some homicide that took place in Mazàra, he would have called him at home, not at headquarters. He had concocted that explanation for convenience’s sake, to unburden his conscience and sleep for another two hours in peace.

  o o o

  “There’s absolutely nobody here!” Catarella told him as soon as he saw him, respectfully rising from his chair at the switchboard. Montalbano had decided, with Sergeant Fazio’s agreement, that this was the best place for him. Even with his habit of passing on the wildest, most unlikely phone calls, he would surely do less damage there than anywhere else.

  “What is it, a holiday?”

  “No, Chief, it’s not a holiday. They’re all down at the port because of that dead guy in Mazàra I called you about, if you remember, sometime early this morning or thereabouts.” “But if the dead guy’s in Mazàra, what are they all doing at the port?”

  “No, Chief, the dead guy’s here.”

  “But, Jesus Christ, if the dead guy’s here, why the hell are you telling me he’s in Mazàra?”

  “Because he was from Mazàra. That’s where he worked.”

  “Cat,think for a minute,so to speak . . . or whatever it is that you do: if a tourist from Bergamo was killed here inVigàta, what would you tell me? That somebody was killed in Bergamo?” “Chief, the point is, this dead guy was just passing through. I mean, they shot him when he was on a fishing boat from Mazàra.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “The Tunisians did, Chief.”

  Montalbano gave up, demoralized.

  “Did Augello also go down to the port?”

  “Yessir.”

  His second-in-command, Mimì Augello, would be de lighted if he didn’t show up at the port.

  “Listen, Cat I have to write a report. I’m not in for anyone.”

  o o o

  “Hello, Chief ? I got Signorina Livia on the line here from Genoa. What do I do, Chief ? Should I put her on or not?”

  “Put her on.”

  “Since you said, not ten minutes ago, that you wasn’t in for nobody—”

  “I said put her on, Cat . . . Hello, Livia? Hi.”

  “Hi, my eye. I’ve been trying to call you all morning.

  The phone at your house just rings and rings.”

  “Really? I guess I forgot to plug it back in. You want to hear something funny? At five o’clock this morning, I got a phone call about—”

  “I don’t want to hear anything funny. I tried calling at seven-thirty, at eight-fifteen, I tried again at—”

  “Livia, I already told you I forgot—”

  “You forgot me, that’s what you forgot. I told you yesterday I was going to call you at seven-thirty this morning to decide whether—”

  “Livia, I’m warning you. It’s windy outside and about to rain.”

  “So what?”

  “You know what. This kind of weather puts me in a bad mood. I wouldn’t want my words to be—”

  “I get the picture. I just won’t call you anymore. You call me, if you feel like it.”

  o o o

  “Montalbano! How are you? Officer Augello told me everything. This is a very big deal, one that will certainly have international repercussions. Don’t you think?” He felt at sea. He had no idea what the commissioner was talking about. He decided to be generically affirmative.

  “Oh, yes, yes.”

  International repercussions?

  “Anyway, I’ve arranged for Augello to confer with the prefect. The matter is, how shall I say, beyond my competence.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Montalbano?”

  “Yes, fine. Why?”

  “Nothing, it just seemed . . .”

  “Just a slight headache, that’s all.”

  “What day is today?”

  “Thursday, sir.”

  “Listen, why don’t you come to dinner at our house on Saturday? My wife’ll make you her black spaghetti in squid ink. It’s delicious.”

  Pasta with squid ink. His mood was black enough to dress a hundred pounds of spaghetti. International repercussions?

  o o o

  Fazio came in and Montalbano immediately laid into him.

  “Would somebody please be so kind as to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “C’mon, Chief, don’t take it out on me just because it’s windy outside. For my part, early this morning, before contacting Inspector Augello, I had somebody call you.”

  “You mean Catarella? If you have Catarella calling me about something important, then you really must be a shit-head, since you know damn well that nobody can ever understand a fucking thing the guy says. What happened, anyway?” “A motor trawler from Mazàra, which according to the ship’s captain was fishing in international waters, was attacked by a Tunisian patrol boat. Sprayed with machine-gun fire. The fishing boat signaled its position to one of our patrols, the Fulmine, then managed to escape.” “Good going,” said Montalbano.

  “On whose part?” asked Fazio.

  “On the part of the captain of the fishing boat, who instead of surrendering had the courage to run away. What else?”

  “The shots killed one of the crew.”

  “Somebody from Mazàra?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Would you please explain?”

  “He was Tunisian. They say his working papers were in order. Down around Mazàra all the crews are mixed. First of all because they’re good workers, and secondly because, if they’re ever stopped, they can talk to the patrols from the other side.” “Do you believe the trawler was fishing in international waters?”

  “Me? Do I look like a moron or something?”

  o o o

  “Hello, Inspector Montalbano? This is Major Marniti of the Harbor Office.”

  “What can I do for you, Major?”

  “I’m calling about that unfortunate incident on the Mazarese fishing boat, where the Tunisian was killed. I’m questioning the captain, trying to determine exactly where they were at the moment they were attacked, and to establish the sequence of events. Afterwards, he’s going to drop by your office.” “Why? Hasn’t my assistant already questioned him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there’s really no need for him to come here.

  Thanks for calling.”

  They were trying to drag him into this mess by the ear.

  o o o

  The door flew open with such force that the inspector jumped out of his chair. Catarella appeared, looking very agitated.

  “Sorry ’bout that, Chief. Door slipped outa my hand.”

  “If you ever come in like that again, I’ll shoot you. What is it?”

  “Somebody just now phoned that somebody’s inside an elevator.”

  The inkwell, made of finely wrought bronze, missed Catarella’s forehead but made such a noise when it struck the wooden door that it could have been a cannon shot.

  Catarella cringed, covering his head with his arms. Montalbano started kicking his desk. In rushed Fazio, hand on his open holster.

  “What was that? What happened?”

  “Get this asshole to explain to you this business about somebody stuck in an elevator. Let ’em
call the goddamn fire department! But get him out of here, I don’t want to hear his voice.” Fazio returned in a flash.

  “Somebody got killed in an elevator,” he said, brief and to the point, to preempt any further flying inkwells.

  o o o

  “Giuseppe Cosentino, security guard,” said the man standing near the open elevator door, introducing himself. “I was the one who found Mr. Lapècora.”

  “How come there’s nobody around? Where are all the nosy neighbors?” Fazio asked in amazement.

  “I sent them all home. They do what I say around here. I live on the sixth floor,” the security guard said proudly, adjusting the jacket of his uniform.

  Montalbano wondered how much authority Giuseppe Cosentino would have if he lived in the basement.

  The dead Mr. Lapècora was sitting on the floor of the elevator, shoulders propped against the rear wall. Next to his right hand was a bottle of Corvo white, still corked and sealed.

  Next to his left hand, a light gray hat. Dressed to the nines, necktie and all, the late Mr. Lapècora was a distinguished-looking man of about sixty, with eyes open in a look of astonishment, perhaps for having pissed his pants. Montalbano bent down and with the tip of his forefinger touched the dark stain between the dead man’s legs. It wasn’t piss, but blood. The elevator was one of those set inside the wall, so there was no way to look behind the corpse to see if the man had been stabbed or shot. He took a deep breath and didn’t smell any gunpow-der, though it was possible it had already dissipated.

  They needed to alert the coroner.

  “You think Dr. Pasquano is still at the port or would he already be back in Montelusa by now?”

  “Probably still at the port.”

  “Go give him a ring. And if Jacomuzzi and the forensics gang are there, tell them to come too.”

  Fazio raced out. Montalbano turned to the security guard, who, sensing he was about to be addressed, came to attention.

  “At ease,” Montalbano said wearily.

  The inspector learned that the building had six floors, with three apartments per floor, all inhabited.

  “I live on the sixth floor, the top floor,” Giuseppe Cosentino felt compelled to reaffirm.