The Dance of the Seagull Read online

  9

  He spoke in a faint, quavering voice, which to him was supposed to sound like that of a man at death’s door.

  “Montalbano here.”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  He audibly took a deep breath, then coughed softly twice.

  “What is it, Montalbano?”

  “I feel really really baa . . .”

  Another little cough.

  “I’m sorry, I’m having these regurgitations.”

  “Montalbano, for heaven’s sake!”

  “You’ll have to excuse me, but Dr. Gruntz performed a Super Scrockson on me. I couldn’t wiggle out of it. I begged him to postpone it, but he wouldn’t hear of it . . . And instead of a double, I got a super! Do you know what that means? He said I urgently needed one.”

  “And what does it mean?”

  “It means the effect of the super lasts double the double, so, until tonight, in other words.”

  “I haven’t understood a thing.”

  “I’m unable to move.”

  “Are you telling me you can’t come this afternoon?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but . . .”

  “Listen, Montalbano, you will get here either by your own means, or I’ll send an ambulance to fetch you!”

  “Mr. Commissioner, sir, it’s not a question of an ambulance, but of personal control . . . Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t dare get very far from a . . . er . . . comfort station”—how was it that when telling a lie, he often came up with fancy phrasings like that?—“for more than five minutes. The Super Scrockson is just ghastly, I can’t think of any other word for it. Just imagine, I gave up a button I’d swallowed in 2001! And not just that button, but also—”

  “Fine, I’ll expect you at nine o’clock sharp, tomorrow morning,” said the commissioner, who was clearly about to start throwing up.

  But how on earth could the commissioner swallow a two-bit puerile hoax like that? Perhaps because he considered the inspector a serious man, something of a pain in the ass, perhaps, but certainly not capable of such a thing. Montalbano didn’t know whether to gloat or feel insulted. He left the question hanging and went off to eat.

  As he entered the trattoria, he felt reasonably hungry, owing in part to the fact that he’d liberated himself, however temporarily, from his visit with the commissioner.

  “Listen, I just got a call on behalf of the commissioner,” Enzo said in a conspiratorial tone.

  “Was he looking for me?” Montalbano asked, flabbergasted and angry.

  So the commissioner hadn’t believed him that he was laid up at home, suffering from the effects of the Super Scrockson! Luckily Enzo answered in the negative.

  “No, sir. He’s gonna be comin’ here to eat. He’s got some friends with him who want to eat fresh fish. Reserved a table for six.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “In about half an hour.”

  Montalbano cursed the saints and shot to his feet as if he’d just sat on a viper. What if the commissioner caught him stuffing his guts with mullet and bream? Not only would he open an investigation, he would have him thrown off the police force! Then he really might have some sort of Super Scrockson performed on him!

  He made an immediate, and unavoidable, decision.

  “I have to go.”

  “And where you gonna eat?”

  “Look, Enzo, I’d rather fast than see the commissioner.”

  “But, Inspector, I can put you in the little room and not let anyone in!”

  “But how am I gonna leave after I’m done?”

  “Don’t you worry about that, I’ll take care of everything. There’s the back door.”

  He’d just finished the spaghetti alle vongole when the door to the little room opened and Enzo poked his head in.

  “They’re here.”

  Then he disappeared, only to return a few minutes later with the mullet. The inspector ate them with greater gusto than usual, precisely because he was enjoying them just a few yards away from the c’mishner, who imagined he was at home shitting his soul out.

  At two-thirty sharp he left for Fiacca with Gallo. But in his own car, since that morning they’d all received a second reminder from the commissioner to economize on gasoline.

  Less than two miles out of town they ran into a roadblock of the carabinieri. There was a line about ten cars long, stopped at the side of the road, the sort of thing that could waste half the day. Gallo pulled up at the end of the line.

  “Should we make ourselves known?” he asked.

  “No,” said Montalbano.

  Given the condition his car was in, if the carabinieri found out they were with the police, they would throw the book at him. He would have to pay a fine that even two months’ pay wouldn’t cover. A little while later, a corporal came up smiling, having seen who was at the wheel.

  “Ciao, Gallo.”

  “Ciao, Tumminello.”

  Montalbano felt reassured. If those two were friends, they wouldn’t lose any time answering their esteemed colleagues’ questions.

  “What’s the checkpoint for?” asked Gallo.

  “We were ordered to look for and arrest a short, fat man with a scar on his left cheek, coming from the direction of Fiacca.”

  The inspector felt like laughing. And he started talking to the corporal, lips smiling in a way that might be construed as mocking.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but if you’re supposed to stop someone coming from Fiacca, why stop us? We’re going towards Fiacca! Perhaps you should all do an about-face and start checking cars coming from the other direction. Otherwise this is like . . .”

  He stopped himself in time. What the hell had made him open his big mouth? Meanwhile he noticed that Tumminello’s expression had suddenly changed.

  “And who are you?” the carabiniere asked.

  “Ragionier Muscetta, pleasure.”

  “He’s a dear friend of mine who asked me to do him a favor and . . .” Gallo tried to explain.

  But the corporal wasn’t listening and continued:

  “Is this your car, Ragioniere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please finish your sentence, Ragioniere.”

  The guy was fixated on the ragioniere!

  “What sentence? I didn’t say anything that—”

  “No, you said, ‘Otherwise this is like . . .’ Now please finish.”

  “Well, I just meant that otherwise, it’s like . . . I dunno, it’s like we’re in a topsy-turvy world.”

  “No, you were going to say, ‘Otherwise, this is like one of those carabinieri jokes.’ Isn’t that right?”

  “Come now, I would never dare to—”

  “No, you wouldn’t dare? Not even you, Inspector Montalbano, sir?”

  Montalbano turned to ice.

  “You can go,” said the corporal.

  So the guy had recognized him at once and was only pulling his leg by calling him ragioniere! Meanwhile Tumminello had signaled to his colleagues to let the car through. After they had been driving some ten minutes in silence, Montalbano said:

  “I was of course about to say exactly what the corporal thought. Bright kid, that Tumminello.”

  “He’s someone who’s gonna go far. He’s getting a law degree.”

  They passed another roadblock where, unlike the first one, it was cars coming from Fiacca that were being stopped.

  “You see, I was right!” Montalbano said to Gallo. “The first checkpoint was totally useless.”

  “Chief, don’t you know the story of Michele Misuraca, from about six months ago?”

  “No.”

  “Misuraca caught his married daughter with her lover.
Since the husband was off in Germany, it was up to him to do something, and so he shot and killed the girl as her lover ran away. Misuraca got in his car and managed to get out of Fiacca just before the carabinieri put up the roadblocks. But then Misuraca returned and wasn’t stopped by the carabinieri because they were only checking the cars coming out of Fiacca. So Misuraca went back into town without any trouble, tracked down the lover, killed him, then turned himself in.”

  Montalbano made no comment.

  Gallo made up for the time lost at the roadblock, and by a few minutes to four, the inspector found himself in the hospital entrance lobby.

  He took two steps and then stopped, seized by doubt. Was the elevator to the left or the right?

  “Inspector!”

  He turned around. It was Angela, the nurse. The sight of her gladdened his heart.

  “How very kind of you,” he said. “I really wasn’t expecting . . .”

  “Expecting me to come? You’re right, I wasn’t going to, but then I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “With all the confusion there’s been here, I realized that without me, you’d never find your friend again.”

  “Why, what confusion?”

  “Around one-thirty, after all the visitors left, a man, a stranger, was noticed on the fourth floor, poking around suspiciously, opening and closing doors as though looking for someone.”

  “Sort of like me.”

  “Yes, but when a nurse asks you a question, you don’t run away with a gun in your hand.”

  “Did he shoot?”

  “No.”

  “Was he caught?”

  “They gave chase and saw him go out of the hospital, run across the parking lot, and disappear into the countryside.”

  “Was he sort of short and fat?”

  “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “The carabinieri told me, at a roadblock. And what happened next?”

  “The police had all the fourth-floor patients moved up to the sixth floor, which hadn’t been opened yet and is a lot easier to keep under surveillance.”

  Was it possible the man had come to kill Fazio? Possible, yes. After all, how many mafiosi had been liquidated in their hospital beds? But Montalbano wanted to be sure.

  “Were there any important patients on that ward?”

  “The Honorable Frincanato and Judge Filippone, who are both from the Antimafia Commission. One with a broken leg, the other with a fractured pelvis. The car they were in crashed into a tractor trailer. And they’ve both received death threats.”

  It was well known that there were plenty of doubts circulating about the supposed death threats received by Frincanato, whose statements held as much water as a bucket riddled with buckshot. Wicked rumors even had it that he wrote the anonymous letters himself to seem important. Judge Filippone, for his part, was someone who said yes when the majority said yes, and no when the majority said no. A puppet on strings. Imagine the Mafia risking one of their men to get one of those clowns! Growing worried, Montalbano became convinced that the gunman had come looking for Fazio.

  As soon as the elevator door opened on the sixth floor, the inspector found himself looking at two cops armed with machine guns. He immediately took out his badge, and they let him through. Outside of rooms 8 and 10 were two more cops with machine guns.

  Angela accompanied him as far as room number 14.

  “I wanted to let you know that I inquired and found out that Signor Fazio will be released in three days at the most. Tomorrow he’ll be allowed to get up on his feet for a few hours.”

  “That means you’ll have to be my guide six more times.”

  “You plan to come twice a day?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Day after tomorrow it’ll be hard for me to come meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll be on the surgery shift. So you’ll have to fend for yourself.”

  “I’ll manage,” said Montalbano. Then, out of the blue: “May I invite you to dinner?”

  Angela seemed neither surprised nor amazed. Beautiful as she was, she must have been used to being invited out all the time by men.

  “Why?”

  “To return the favor.”

  Angela started laughing. Then she said:

  “I’d be delighted to accept, but I already have an engagement . . . Nothing important, though. Could I give you a definite answer in a little bit? I’ll make a phone call and try to free myself up. If you don’t see me here outside the door when you come out at four-thirty, call me at this number.”

  She wrote the number down on a piece of paper, which Montalbano put in his pocket. Angela chuckled again, then turned her back and started walking away. The inspector stood there for a moment, watching her from behind. It was a beautiful sight. Then he knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said a woman’s voice.

  The first thing he saw upon entering the room was the dwarf nurse, the Sing-Sing prison guard. Then he noticed that Fazio was not lying down, but sitting up, with some pillows behind his shoulders and head. Signora Fazio wasn’t there.

  “Seven minutes,” the bulldog nurse said right off the bat.

  “You can’t start counting until you’ve left the room,” Montalbano retorted. Then to Fazio, who was smiling and happy to see him, he said:

  “Where’s your wife?”

  “I sent her home to rest,” the bulldog cut in, just as she was opening the door to go out. “Our patient is now on the road to recovery.”

  But before closing the door behind her, she repeated:

  “Seven minutes!”

  “Oh, fuck off,” Fazio said in a low voice.

  “Speaking of which, I have some good news for you,” said Montalbano. “Telling someone to fuck off is no longer a crime. As established by the Supreme Court of Appeals. Listen, do you know anything about what happened here at the hospital?”

  “They told me there was someone trying to get into the rooms of two Antimafia officials.”

  “Did they tell you who they were? Frincanato and Filippone.”

  “But they’re a couple of nobodies!” said Fazio, surprised.

  “Exactly. So I’m not convinced.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Did he come to your room?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything about a short, fat guy with a scar on his left cheek?”

  “Holy shit!” Fazio shouted.

  He turned pale as a corpse.

  “Do you know him?”

  “He was one of the guys who wanted to kill me.”

  “Just as I thought,” the inspector commented. And as Fazio was gesturing for him to hand him the glass of water on his bedside table, Montalbano continued:

  “So the man came armed to the hospital just for you, to finish what he’d started.”

  “Get me out of this place!” Fazio exclaimed, handing the empty glass back to him.

  “It’s unlikely the guy’ll be back. Calm down.”

  “Could I at least have a gun?”

  “Are you crazy? That Sing-Sing nurse’ll have you put in solitary!”

  Fazio looked totally confused.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. Let’s talk about what happened to you. It must have been a pretty big deal.”

  “Chief, in all good conscience, I don’t know whether it’s a big or a small deal. When those two—”

  “Wait. Let’s start at the beginning. We’ll break up the story in episodes, like they do on TV. Otherwise, at seven minutes a pop, I’ll never find out anything. Tell me about Manzella.”

  Fazio thought about it for a moment, then began.

  “Filip
po Manzella and I went to elementary school together here in Vigàta, then we lost track of each other. His father worked with the railways and got transferred. But then we met up again in the military. He was attending a dance school in Palermo, wanted to do classical ballet. And in fact he landed a job with the Teatro Massimo’s ballet company. Every so often, when . . . I had to go to Palermo . . . we . . . we’d meet.”

  Fazio was already tired.

  “Just rest now,” said the inspector.

  Fazio closed his eyes and said nothing for about half a minute. Then he was about to resume talking, but couldn’t manage.

  “Then . . .”

  He broke off, and was breathing heavily.

  “Just wait a little longer,” said Montalbano.

  “No, I can’t, the seven minutes’ll be up. Then we lost track of each other again. One day I ran into him in Montelusa. He’d changed.”

  “How?”

  “He was fatter. And he wouldn’t look me in the eye, not like he used to. He said he wasn’t dancing anymore, had got married, and that his wife was expecting. He said he didn’t work anymore and was living off an inheritance.”

  He took another pause. But by this point his speech was labored, with gaps between each word.

  “About two weeks ago I ran into him again in Montelusa. He was in a hurry. All he did was ask for my cell phone number. So I gave it to him, and then two days later, he called me.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He said he wanted me to look into a certain matter for him, said he thought it involved smuggling.”

  “That’s all he told you?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me about it?”

  “Chief, the whole thing seemed to me like some fantasy of his. Filippo used to like to make things up sometimes.”

  “Go on.”

  “So he kept on calling me, saying he was being watched, that maybe they’d figured out that he was on to them . . . But whenever I asked if we could meet so he could tell me the whole story, he’d become evasive and start stammering . . .”