IM7 Rounding the Mark (2006) Read online

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Author’s Note

  Notes

  Praise for Andrea Camilleri and the Montalbano series

  “The idiosyncratic Montalbano is totally endearing.”

  —The New York Times

  “Like Mike Hammer or Sam Spade, Montalbano is the kind of guy who can’t stay out of trouble.... Still, deftly and lovingly translated by Stephen Sartarelli, Camilleri makes it abundantly clear that under the gruff, sardonic exterior our inspector has a heart of gold, and that any outbursts, fumbles, or threats are made only in the name of pursuing truth.” —The Nation

  “Once again, violence is muted, complications rule, politics roil, but humor ... prevail[s] in the end. Italy is good to visit, even if only in print. And what better way to shorten a flight to Palermo than by gobbling this tasty snack along the way?”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “[Camilleri’s mysteries] offer quirky characters, crisp dialogue, bright storytelling—and Salvo Montalbano, one of the most engaging protagonists in detective fiction. . . . Montalbano is a delightful creation, an honest man on Sicily’s mean streets.”

  —USA Today

  “The Montalbano mysteries offer cose dolci to the world-lit lover hankering for a whodunit.” —The Village Voice

  “The reading of these little gems is fast and fun every step of the way.” —The New York Sun

  “Wittily translated from the savory Italian, Camilleri’s mysteries ... feature the sardonic Inspector Salvo Montalbano, whose gustatory adventures are at least as much fun as his crime solving.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Camilleri once again thrills with his fluid storytelling and quirky characters.” —Publishers Weekly

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  A PENGUIN MYSTERY

  ROUNDING THE MARK

  Andrea Camilleri is the author of many books, including his Montalbano series, which has been adapted for Italian television and translated into nine languages. He lives in Rome.

  Stephen Sartarelli is an award-winning translator. He is also the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Open Vault.

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  First published in Penguin Books 2006

  Translation copyright © Stephen Sartarelli, 2006

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in Italian as Il giro di boa by Sellerio Editore, Palermo.

  Copyright © 2003 Sellerio Editore.

  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.

  eISBN : 978-0-143-03748-4

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  1

  Stinking, treacherous night. Thrashing and turning, twisting and drifting off one minute, jolting awake and then lying back down—and it wasn’t from having scarfed down too much octopus a strascinasali or sardines a beccafico the evening before. No, he didn’t even have that satisfaction. The evening before, his stomach had twisted up so tight that not even a blade of grass could have slipped through. It had all started when dark thoughts assailed him after he’d seen a story on the national evening news. When it rains it pours—all’annigatu, petri di ’ncoddru—or, “rocks on a drowned man’s back,” as Sicilians call an unrelenting string of bad breaks that drag a poor stiff down. And since he’d been desperately flailing in storm-tossed seas for a few months now, feeling at times like he’d already drowned, that news had been like a big rock thrown right at him, at his head, in fact, knocking him out and finishing off what feeble strength he had left.

  With an air of utter indifference, the anchorwoman had announced, in reference to the police raid of the Diaz School during the G8 meetings in Genoa, that the public prosecutor’s office of that city had concluded that the two Molotov cocktails found inside the school had been planted there by the policemen themselves, to justify the raid. This finding, continued the anchorwoman, came after the discovery that an officer who claimed to have been the victim of an attempted stabbing by an antiglobalist during the same raid had, in fact, been lying. The cut in his uniform turned out to have been made by the policeman himself, to show just how dangerous these kids were, and it was now emerging that the only thing those young people were doing at the Diaz School was sleeping peacefully. After hearing this news, Montalbano had sat there in his armchair for a good half-hour, unable to think, shaking with rage and shame, drenched in sweat. He hadn’t even had the strength to get up and answer the telephone when it rang and rang. One needed only think a minute about this news—which the press and television were leaking out in dribs and drabs as the government watchfully looked on—and it became clear that his Genoese colleagues had committed an illegal action on the sly, a coldly calculated vendetta, fabricating false evidence into the bargain, the sort of thing that brought to mind long-buried episodes of the Fascist police or the Scelba period.

  Then he’d made up his mind and decided to go to bed. As he got up from the armchair, the telephone resumed its irritating refrain of rings. Without even realizing, he picked up the receiver. It was Livia.

  “Salvo! My God, I’ve tried calling you so many times! I was starting to get worried! Couldn’t you hear the phone?”

  “I could, but I didn’t feel like answering. I didn’t know it was you.”

>   “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing. Thinking about what I’d just seen on television.”

  “You mean what happened in Genoa?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. I saw the news, too.” She paused, then: “I wish I was there with you. Do you want me to catch a plane tomorrow and come down? That way we could talk in peace. You’ll see—”

  “Livia, there’s not much left to say at this point. We’ve talked it over many times these last few months. This time I’m serious. I’ve made my decision.”

  “What decision?”

  “I’m resigning. Tomorrow I’m going to go to talk to Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi and turn in my resignation. I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”

  Livia did not immediately react, and Montalbano thought perhaps they’d been cut off.

  “Hello, Livia? Are you there?”

  “I’m here. Salvo, in my opinion you’re making a big mistake to quit this way.”

  “What way?”

  “Out of anger and disappointment. You want to quit the police force because you feel betrayed, as if the person you trusted most—”

  “Livia, I don’t feel betrayed, I have been betrayed. We’re not talking about feelings here. I’ve always done my job honorably. With integrity. If I gave a crook my word, I kept it. And that’s why I’m respected. That’s been my strength, can you understand that? But now I’m fed up, I’m sick of it all.”

  “Please don’t yell,” said Livia, her voice quavering.

  Montalbano didn’t hear her. There was a strange noise inside him, as if his blood had reached the boiling point. He continued:

  “I never once fabricated evidence, not even against the worst criminals! Never! If I had, I would have been stooping to their level. And then you really could have said that this is a filthy job! Do you realize what happened, Livia? The people attacking that school and planting false evidence weren’t a bunch of stupid, violent beat-cops; they were commissioners and vice-commissioners, inspectors and captains and other paragons of virtue!”

  Only then did he realize that the noise he was hearing in the receiver was Livia sobbing. He took a deep breath.

  “Livia?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you. Good night.”

  He hung up. Then he went to bed. And the treacherous night began.

  The truth of the matter was that Montalbano’s malaise had set in a while back, when the television had first shown the prime minister strolling up and down the narrow streets of Genoa, tidying the flower boxes and ordering the inhabitants to remove the underwear hung out to dry on balconies and windowsills while his interior minister was adopting security measures more suited for an imminent civil war than for a meeting of heads of state: setting up wire fences to block access to certain streets, soldering shut the manholes, sealing the country’s borders, closing certain railroad stations, establishing boat patrols at sea, and even installing a battery of missiles. This was such an excessive display of defense, thought the inspector, that it became a kind of provocation. Then what happened, happened: one of the demonstrators got killed, of course, but perhaps the worst of it was that certain police units had thought it best to fire tear gas at the most peaceable demonstrators, leaving the most violent ones, the so-called “black bloc,” free to do as they pleased. Then came the ugly episode at the Diaz School, which resembled not so much a police operation as a wicked and violent abuse of power with the sole purpose of venting a repressed lust for revenge.

  Three days after the G8, as polemics raged all over Italy, Montalbano had arrived late to work. No sooner had he pulled up in his car and got out, than he’d noticed two painters whitewashing one of the walls outside the station.

  “Ahh, Chief, Chief!” cried Catarella, seeing him come in. “They wrote us some nasty things last night!”

  Montalbano didn’t immediately understand.

  “Who wrote to us?”

  “I don’t poissonally know them that writ ’em.”

  What the hell was Catarella talking about?

  “Was it anonymous?”

  “No, Chief, it wasn’t on nominus, it was onna wall outside. An’ ’at was why Fazio, foist ting this morning, called for the painers to come cover it up.”

  At last the inspector understood why the two painters were there.

  “What’d they write on the wall?”

  Catarella turned beet-red and attempted an evasion.

  “They wrote some bad words with black spray paint.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “Sleazeball cops,” replied Catarella, keeping his eyes lowered.

  “Is that all?”

  “No, sir. They also wrote ‘murderers.’ Sleazeballs and murderers.”

  “Why you taking it so hard, Cat?”

  Catarella looked like he was about to burst into tears.

  “’Cause nobody in here’s no sleazeball or murderer, startin’ wit’ you, sir, and endin’ wit’ me, the smallest wheel on the cart.”

  By way of consolation, Montalbano patted Catarella’s shoulder and headed towards his office. Catarella called him back.

  “Oh, Chief! I almost forgot. They also wrote ‘goddamn cuckolds.’ ”

  Imagine ever finding any obscene graffiti in Sicily without the word “cuckold” in it! The word was a guarantee of authenticity, a classic expression of so-called Sicilitude. The inspector had just sat down when Mimì Augello came in. He was cool as a cucumber, his face relaxed and serene.

  “Any news?” he asked.

  “Did you hear what they wrote on the wall last night?”

  “Yeah, Fazio told me.”

  “Doesn’t that seem like news to you?”

  Mimì gave him a befuddled look.

  “Are you joking or serious?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Well, then, swear to me on a stack of Bibles. Do you think Livia cheats on you?”

  This time it was Montalbano who gave Mimì a puzzled look.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “So you’re not a cuckold. And I don’t think Beba cheats on me, either. Okay, on to the next word: sleazeball. True, two or three women have called me a sleaze, I won’t deny it. But I bet nobody’s ever called you one, so that word doesn’t refer to you. Murderer, forget it. So what’s the problem?”

  “Well, aren’t you the razor wit, with your Sunday crossword-puzzle logic!”

  “Wait a second, Salvo. Is this somehow the first time we’ve been called bastards, sons of bitches, and murderers?”

  “The difference is that this time, it’s true.”

  “Ah, so that’s how you see it?”

  “Yes, it is. Explain to me why we acted that way in Genoa, after years and years without any incidents of that sort.”

  Mimì looked at him, eyelids drooping so low that they nearly covered his eyes, and said nothing.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” said the inspector. “Answer me verbally, not with that little ‘cop stare’ of yours.”

  “All right. But first I want to make something clear. I’m in no mood to pick any bones with you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I know what’s bugging you. The fact that all this happened under a government that you don’t trust and openly oppose. You figure the political leaders are up to their necks in this affair.”

  “Excuse me, Mimì, but have you read the newspapers? Have you watched the TV news? They have all said, more or less clearly, that at the time, there were people in the command rooms in Genoa that had no business being there: ministers, members of parliament, all from the same party. The party that’s always calling for law and order. Their law and their order, mind you.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means that part of the police force, the most fragile part—even though they think they’re the strongest—felt protected. So they went wild. And this, in the best of cases.”

  “Could there be any worse?”

  �
�Of course. Maybe we were manipulated, like marionettes on a stage, by people who wanted to conduct a kind of test.”

  “What kind of test?”

  “Of how people would react to a show of force. How many favorably, how many unfavorably. Luckily it didn’t go too well for them.”

  “Bah!” said Augello, unconvinced.

  Montalbano decided to change the subject.

  “How’s Beba doing?”

  “Not too well. She’s having a difficult pregnancy. She can’t sit up much and has to lie down most of the time, but the doctor says it’s nothing to be worried about.”

  After miles and miles of solitary walks along the jetty, hours and hours spent sitting on the rock of tears, contemplating the events in Genoa until his brain began to smoke; after eating what must have amounted to several hundred pounds of càlia e simenza; after countless nighttime phone conversations with Livia, the wound the inspector carried inside him was beginning at last to heal when he got wind of another brilliant police action, this time in Naples. A handful of cops had been arrested for forcibly removing some allegedly violent political activists from a hospital into which they’d been admitted. After bringing them to a barracks, the police treated them to a flurry of kicks and punches and a torrent of obscenities and insults. But what most upset Montalbano was the reaction of other policemen to the news of their colleagues’ arrest. Some chained themselves to the gate of the Central Police building in an act of solidarity; others organized demonstrations in the streets; the unions made some noise; and a deputy commissioner who in Genoa had kicked a demonstrator already on the ground was greeted as a hero when he came to Naples. The same politicians who’d been in Genoa for the G8 were behind this curious (though not so curious for Montalbano) semirevolt on the part of the forces of order against the judges who had issued the arrest warrants. And Montalbano couldn’t take it any more. This last, bitter morsel he just couldn’t swallow. One morning, as soon as he got to work, he called Dr. Lattes, chief of the Montelusa police commissioner’s cabinet. Half an hour later, Lattes informed him, through Catarella, that the commissioner could see him at twelve noon on the dot. The men at the station, who had learned to gauge their boss’s mood from the way he walked into the office each morning, realized at once that this was not a good day. And so, from the vantage point of Montalbano’s desk, the station seemed deserted that morning. No voices, no sounds whatsoever. Catarella was standing guard at the entrance door, and as soon as anyone came in, he opened his eyes wide, put his forefinger over his nose, and enjoined the intruder to silence.