The Sicilian Method Page 10

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause I already went to see him myself.”

  “And so? Do I have to pull the words out of you with pliers?”

  “Nah, Chief, the fact is that Sciacchitano has been in the hospital for the past week. And he’s pretty far gone, according to his wife.”

  Montalbano threw up his hands, then asked: “And what can you tell me about the other debtor? The woman?”

  “Yeah, Saveria di Donato. I still haven’t had the time. You’ll have to be patient till tomorrow.”

  Then Fazio left, too.

  Montalbano went to the window and smoked a cigarette. Then he sat back down and rang Scimè.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir. Montalbano here.”

  “It’s always a pleasure, Inspector. Thank you so much for calling.”

  “Thanks for what? I’m calling because I have a favor to ask of you . . .”

  “Well, I’d really been hoping to hear from you. I need to talk to you.”

  Montalbano remained silent.

  Scimè the lawyer continued. “I was just about to call you, believe me. I’m just so upset over my friend’s death. There are so many questions I can’t find any answers for . . .”

  Montalbano was in the same situation.

  “And so?” he asked.

  “And so can we meet?” asked the lawyer.

  “Of course. When?”

  “This evening? After dinner?”

  The inspector couldn’t have asked for more. This way he could chow down without any disturbance.

  “Perfect. Would you like to come to the station?”

  “Whatever you think is best. Otherwise, if we don’t want to be disturbed, we could also meet at our place. There won’t be anyone here.”

  It was as if the man could read his mind.

  “Perfect. So, nine-thirty at Trinacriarte.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much,” said Scimè.

  “Not at all. Thank you,” said the inspector, hanging up.

  * * *

  —

  He never found out whether it was Inspector Montalbano who needed information on the case, or Salvo the man who needed desperately to hear the woman’s voice again.

  “Ciao, Antonia, it’s Montalbano. Am I interrupting?”

  “No. What is it?”

  A moment of silence.

  “No . . . I just wanted to ask you . . . was it you who took Catalanotti’s cell phone?”

  “No. If we’d taken it, you would know. In fact, we left his computer there just so that you could work on it.”

  “So where do you think the cell phone could be?”

  “Apparently the killer took it away with him. Any other questions?”

  A couple of seconds of silence.

  “At the moment . . .” said Montalbano.

  “Then good-bye,” said Antonia, hanging up.

  Matre santa, was that woman ever rude!

  Just to bother her a little more, Montalbano redialed the number.

  “I’m sorry, Antonia, one last question . . .”

  There was a slight note of forbearance in the woman’s reply.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “But didn’t all that ricotta give you indigestion?”

  She laughed, at long last!

  “Come on, stop wasting my time,” she said, and hung up.

  But Montalbano had scored a point in his favor: Antonia’s voice had sounded a little less surly. For his part, on the other hand, that strange feeling in the pit of his stomach felt more, not less, intense.

  * * *

  —

  He went home early.

  Adelina had defied Livia’s instructions, cooking up, in fact, a very fine, indeed heavenly, casserole of pasta ’ncasciata.

  The evening air was coolish, but tolerable, and so he set the table on the veranda and gobbled up enough pasta for two and more.

  He cleared the table in a hurry. Feeling weighted down, he went onto the beach and began jogging along the water.

  After less than three minutes of this, however, he had to stop, out of breath and feeling the pasta jumping up from his belly and into his throat.

  And so he turned to go back home, head hanging as if he’d been to a funeral with Livia leading the ceremony.

  * * *

  —

  Scimè was waiting for him outside the door of the Trinacriarte warehouse. After an exchange of greetings, the lawyer led him into the backstage area where, again through an arrangement of wooden screens, two bathrooms, four dressing rooms, and a rather spacious office had been created. On the door of the latter was a sign saying MANAGEMENT.

  Scimè dug a pair of keys out of his pocket, opened the door, turned on the light, showed the inspector inside, and invited him to sit down in a chair in front of the desk. He himself sat down in the chair behind the desk.

  Montalbano was about to open his mouth, but the lawyer spoke first.

  “I am so grateful to you for calling me, Inspector. Now I have a chance to talk about Carmelo’s death.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Montalbano, “but didn’t you all talk about it among yourselves?”

  “No, we’ve busied ourselves mostly with practical matters and haven’t been able yet to face what actually happened—that our friend was brutally murdered.”

  “And how do you explain it?”

  “Inspector, all I can really tell you is my impressions . . . You mustn’t take what I say as anything more than suggestions, conjectures . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that, just tell me straight out.”

  “I had the feeling that our reticence to discuss the matter was due to a sort of mutual suspicion. As if every one of us was convinced that it was someone from our troupe who had killed Carmelo and so thought it best not to broach the subject.”

  “Excuse me, but was there any friction in your company between him and the others—any heated arguments, for example?”

  “Of course there were, Inspector, but it was always stuff that had to do exclusively with our theater work, and it certainly wasn’t ever violent enough to justify murder.”

  “Well, tell me about it anyway.”

  “I’m not entirely sure about it . . .”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s all . . . well, it was all just impulsive stuff . . . But not off the wall, though. Do you know anything about the theater, Inspector?”

  “I’ve seen a few plays.”

  “That’s not enough. You should know that I got a degree from the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, and worked for two years with Gassman.”

  He stopped for a second, grinned, and then added: “Vittorio, that is. It was the legendary epoch of the avant-garde theater all over the world, and at the time you could see some astonishing productions, outstanding for the stage presence of the actors, their use of their bodies, the extraordinary versatility of their voices . . . Sorry to go into such detail, but it’s absolutely essential that I explain to you that the method that Catalanotti devised for putting an actor in a condition to perform took all those theatrical theories based essentially on the emotions to their extreme conclusions . . .”

  Montalbano stopped him.

  “Lo Savio already mentioned that to me.”

  Scimè grimaced.

  “Of course, Inspector, but, you see, Rosario never went so far as to audition for Carmelo, so he never went through the experience. Whereas I did.”

  “Then tell me about it.”

  “First of all, I should tell you that the test the actor had to take was never given here, but at an unexpected location. I, for example, was taken, by him, to an uninhabited apartment, an environment I was entirely unfamiliar with. And that’s not all. It was night, and pitch-black. The moment we wen
t inside, without saying a word to me, he disappeared. After feeling confused for about five minutes, I started calling his name. But Carmelo didn’t answer. So I started moving about and tried to turn on the light. I flipped the switch, but nothing came on. I managed to stagger over to the door but was unable to open it, because it was locked. I still remember the terrible sense of uneasiness I felt, which turned slowly into out-and-out terror. Then I found a chair and sat down in it. Moments later I heard a very strange rustling sound, as if there was something moving along the floor. I thought, for whatever reason, that it might be rats coming towards me in a threatening manner, then I actually started hearing squeaks that grew louder and louder, and I couldn’t take it any longer and suddenly yelled in despair. I jumped up and stood on the chair. And at that moment the light came on. Carmelo was right there, standing beside the light switch, staring at me and looking all serious. ‘Why did you scream?’ he asked me at once. I answered that I’d imagined . . . but then I couldn’t speak anymore . . . ‘You imagined what?’ he asked. ‘Rats,’ I stammered. ‘Sit back down,’ he said, pulling up a chair for himself as well. He sat down in front of me and then began a sort of psychoanalysis, according to which those rats became a representation of my secret fears. He had—I now recognize—an uncanny ability to penetrate deep into one’s innermost, sometimes inadmissable, thoughts. To all intents and purposes, by the third audition—which was the worst one of all, and which I don’t want even to go into any longer—I’d decided not to work with him anymore.”

  A moment later, Montalbano, who’d been listening with great interest to the lawyer’s story, asked him: “Listen, can you tell me which were the actors Catalanotti preferred to work with?”

  “You know what, Inspector? After a while, nobody wanted to work with him anymore. That was another reason there were a lot of quarrels within the troupe.”

  “Did these disputes occur with anyone in particular?”

  “Yes, Inspector, with me. Things got very tense between us. Carmelo wanted to include in our group some people he’d met by chance and who’d shown themselves to be willing to go along with his experiments. Even people with no experience of the theater at all, but whom he needed anyway for his production—like Maria, whom you saw the other evening. Those of us in the troupe were totally against introducing random, throwaway elements into the group. I remember one time when he brought in a young girl, saying, ‘I’ve found the real Ophelia!’ She was little more than a child, Inspector, clearly with serious mental problems. We were speechless. There was no way she could take the stage. But, right up to the end, he stubbornly insisted that she was Ophelia, and the rest of us were incapable of understanding anything . . . The upshot, of course, was that we ended up never staging Hamlet.”

  Scimè paused.

  “Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

  “I would love a little whisky, but I doubt you—”

  “Actually, I do have some,” said Scimè, getting up, opening a small cabinet, and taking out two glasses and a bottle. He filled both glasses halfway, and before he could resume speaking, Montalbano asked:

  “Tell me something. Lo Savio said that Catalanotti was getting ready to stage a new production. Do you know what it was?”

  “Of course, Inspector. My introduction may have given you the idea that Carmelo only ever wanted to produce masterpieces and Greek tragedies. But that wasn’t at all the case. He chose mostly twentieth-century drama. Said he found the bourgeois world fascinating. In fact, he was working on a British play by J. B. Priestley, Dangerous Corner. The author was noted for his excellent creations in the para-detective genre.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “It means the works seem to have mystery plots but in reality are profound investigations into the soul of contemporary man.”

  Montalbano reflected that there was no such thing as a good cop who wasn’t also able to dig deep into the human soul.

  Then he asked: “Do you know if there’s a copy of this play available here?”

  “We should have one around here somewhere.”

  Scimè got up and opened another shelf packed full of scripts. He poked around for a long time, then finally found what he was looking for on top of a stack of papers.

  “Here it is,” said Scimè. “But please be sure to give it back, because it’s the only copy we own.”

  “Of course,” said Montalbano.

  Scimè went on: “I’m sorry we’ll never see that production.”

  “When will you resume the rehearsals for The Tempest?”

  “That’s another problem. Because we’re unable—” The lawyer interrupted himself, took a deep breath, and then said, “The fact of the matter is that we’ve been avoiding one another.”

  “Do you know what kind of work Catalanotti did for a living?”

  “He didn’t work. He lived on private means. He was a relatively rich man. He owned houses and warehouses. If I’m not mistaken, he’d inherited from his mother and was able to manage the estate rather well . . .”

  “And there was nothing else?”

  “You know, Inspector, we were never actually friends outside the theater, so, as far as I know, no, there was nothing else. Why do you ask?”

  “Because my findings show that he was also a moneylender.”

  Scimè seemed stunned. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened his eyes wide. He was unable to speak. Then, little by little, he regained his composure. Taking a sizable sip of whisky, he grinned at the inspector.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Montalbano.

  “I’m thinking that, for us, at least, this is good news.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a moneylender is certainly going to have a lot of enemies, and so the killer could easily be someone from outside our circle.”

  Montalbano changed the subject.

  “Do you have a photo album of the actors?”

  “Of course!”

  Scimè opened a drawer in the desk and extracted a large album, which he handed to the inspector.

  Montalbano started leafing through it.

  There were photos of all eighteen members of the company. Among the eight women there wasn’t anyone with blond hair, which meant that Catalanotti’s dinner companion at Enzo’s was not part of Trinacriarte. He closed the album, gave it back to Scimè, and asked him: “Tell me, in your opinion, who among these actors and actresses had the most intimate relationship with Catalanotti? I’m only asking you to save time. I could summon everyone into my office, but I’m sure there’s no point. I would like to limit the investigation to those who were closest to him.”

  “There are two actors, a man and a woman, who worked on a production staged by Carmelo, Beckett’s Happy Days, and they remained fairly close to him afterwards.”

  Scimè reopened the album and pointed them out.

  “Here they are. They’re Eleonora Ortolani, a character actress, and Ernesto Lopez, a colleague of mine, a fellow lawyer.”

  Montalbano made a mental note of both, then asked: “You told me that you yourself were not actually friends with Catalanotti, but do you by any chance know if he had any romantic attachments?”

  “He probably did, but I don’t know of any.”

  “He never talked about that sort of thing with you?”

  “No, Inspector. Carmelo never let anyone get in a position to ask questions he might not want to answer. Maybe Eleonora or Ernesto could tell you more.”

  Montalbano, thinking the conversation was over, was about to get up when Scimè asked: “Have you got another ten minutes or so?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The lawyer’s face changed completely. A big, toothy smile appeared as his eyes sparkled with contentment. Bending down, he opened the drawer on the left-hand side and took out three albums, all thicker than the one still on the tabl
e.

  “I wanted to show you some photos of my bygone youth.”

  He stood up, went over, and sat beside Montalbano, then opened the first album to the first page. In the middle was a photo of Vittorio Gassman with the dedication: To my dear friend, Antonio.

  On the second page was another photograph, this one of Scimè dressed up as a page.

  “That,” he said, “was taken during my performance exam at the academy. I was playing Page Fernando.”

  Montalbano studied the picture carefully. Scimè was very young in it, just a boy; almost nothing in the face he was looking at belonged to the lawyer’s current face. After this introduction, three-quarters of the Italian theater world of the prior half century filed before the inspector’s eyes. When, a good hour later, they finally got to the third album, Montalbano was in the throes of a deep depression.

  He didn’t own a single picture of himself as a youngster. Not one.

  And so he had nothing with which to compare his present-day face. No doubt his youthful face would have been just as unrecognizable as Scimè’s.

  * * *

  —

  He slept little, but well.

  His chat with Scimè had awakened the desire to kick the investigation into high gear, to give it a jolt of energy of a sort he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  As he was whistling in the shower, the springlike rebirth he felt inside had called forth, to his surprise, amid the fog of the hot water, an image of Antonia, as naked as him.

  He turned off the tap and literally ran out of the bathroom.

  9

  He was drinking his customary mug of espresso when he got the idea to ring Fazio, who answered at once.

  “What’s up, Chief? Something happen?”

  “No, no, no cause for alarm. I merely want you to call two people in for questioning. I’ll see the first one at nine and the second one at eleven.”

  “And who are they?”

  “Ernesto Lopez, who apparently is a lawyer, and Eleonora Ortolani.”

  “Have you got their phone numbers?”