IM10 August Heat (2008) Page 16

  His voice had turned shrill. Montalbano was afraid that, two more words and the guy would have started moaning and saying ah, ah, ah, just like in a porn flick.

  It was already becoming a habit. Before going to Enzo’s trattoria, he changed his clothes and gave the sweaty ones to Catarella.Then, after eating—though he ate little, having almost no appetite—he felt sort of listless and decided to go home to Marinella.

  Miracle of miracles! Four garbage collectors had nearly finished cleaning the beach! He put on his bathing suit and dived into the sea in search of relief from the heat.Afterwards he dozed off for an hour.

  By four o’clock he was back at the station. But he didn’t feel like doing anything.

  “Catarella!”

  “Whattya need, Chief?”

  “Don’t let anyone into my office without alerting me first, is that clear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Oh, and, did anyone call from Montelusa about the questionnaire?”

  “Yessir, Chief, I sennit over to ’em.”

  He locked the door to his room, stripped down to his underpants, threw the papers that were on the armchair onto the floor, pulled it up next to the minifan, which he turned in such a way that it blew onto his chest, and then sat down, hoping to survive.

  An hour later the telephone rang.

  “Chief, iss a marshal called La Caña says ’e’s wit’ da Finance Police.”

  “Put him on.”

  “I can’t put ’im on, seeing as how the beforementioned marshal is ’ere poissonally in poisson.”

  God, and he was practically naked!

  “Tell him I’m on the phone, wait five minutes, then let him in.”

  He got dressed in a hurry. His clothes were exactly the same as when he’d just stretched them out to dry, still saturated with heat. He opened the door and went out to meet Laganà, brought him into the office, sat him down, and locked the door. He felt embarrassed to find the marshal dressed in a suit that looked like he’d just picked it up from the cleaners.

  “Would you like anything to drink, Marshal?”

  “No thanks, Inspector.Whatever I drink only makes me sweat.”

  “Why’d you put yourself out? You could have phoned—”

  “Inspector, nowadays it’s better not to say certain things over the phone.”

  “Maybe we ought to use little folded-up pieces of paper, like Provenzano.”

  “They’d probably get intercepted, too.The only way is to talk in person and, if possible, in a safe place.”

  “I think it’s safe here.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  The marshal slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, extracted a sheet of paper folded in four, and handed it to Montalbano.

  “Is this what you were interested in?”

  It was the receipt from Ribaudo Enterprises for some innocent pipes and some safety railings, delivered on July 27 to the Spitaleri construction site in Montelusa. It was signed by Filiberto Attanasio, the watchman.

  Montalbano felt heartened.

  “Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for. Did anyone notice?”

  “I don’t think so. This morning we seized two crates of documents. As soon as I found that receipt, I had it photocopied and brought it here to you.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Marshal Laganà stood up. So did Montalbano.

  “I’ll see you out.”

  As they were shaking hands in the main entrance to the station, Laganà said with a smile:

  “There’s no point in my insisting that you say nothing to anyone about how that document was obtained.”

  “Marshal, you’re offending me.”

  Laganà hesistated a moment, turned serious, and then said in a low voice:

  “Be careful how you deal with Spitaleri.”

  “Federico? Montalbano here.”

  Inspector Lozupone seemed truly happy to hear from him.

  “Salvo! What a pleasant surprise! How are you?”

  “Fine. And you?”

  “Fine, thanks. Do you need anything?”

  “I’d like to speak with you.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “In person.”

  “Is it urgent?”

  “Fairly.”

  “Look, I’ll definitely be in my office until—”

  “Better outside somewhere.”

  “Ah.We could meet at the Caffè Marino at—”

  “Not in public.”

  “You’re starting to frighten me, Salvo.Where, then?”

  “Either at my place or yours.”

  “I have a curious wife.”

  “Then come to my house in Marinella.You know where it is.Ten o’clock tonight okay with you?”

  At eight, as the inspector was leaving the office, Tommaseo called. He sounded disappointed.

  “I want a confirmation from you.”

  “I confirm.”

  “Excuse me, Montalbano, but what are you confirming?”

  “Ah, well, I don’t know what, but if you’re asking me for a confirmation, I’m ready to give you one.”

  “Even if you don’t know what you’re supposed to confirm?”

  “I see, you don’t want a generic confirmation, but a specific one.”

  “I’d say so!”

  Every now and then he liked to fuck with Tommaseo’s head.

  “Then tell me what it is.”

  “That girl, Adriana, today . . . among other things, she was even more beautiful. I don’t know how she does it; she’s like the essence of woman. Whatever she says, whatever she does, one is left utterly charmed and . . . ah, never mind, what was I saying?”

  “That one is left utterly charmed.”

  “My God, no, I was just saying that incidentally. Ah, yes, Adriana told me her sister had once been assaulted, luckily without consequences, by a young German who later died in a railway disaster in Germany. I’m going to mention this at the press conference.”

  Railway disaster? What the hell had Tommaseo understood?

  “But no matter how much pressure I put on her,” the prosecutor continued, “she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me any more, claiming that it was pointless for me to continue interrogating her, since she and her twin sister never confided in each other and, she added, often quarreled so violently that their parents did all they could to keep them apart. In fact, the day Rina was murdered, Adriana wasn’t even in Vigàta. So, since the girl told me you questioned her yesterday, my question to you is, did she also tell you she didn’t get along with her sister?”

  “Absolutely! She said they even came to blows two or three times a day.”

  “So it’s pointless to call her in for further questioning?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Obviously Adriana got sick and tired of Tommaseo and made up that lie, knowing she could count on the inspector’s complicity.

  Adriana phoned him at home around nine that evening.

  “Can I drop by in about an hour?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have an engagement.”

  And if he hadn’t, what would he have answered?

  “Too bad. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that my aunt and uncle are here from Milan. I told you about them; they were the ones who lived in Montelusa.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “They came down for the funeral.”

  He’d completely forgotten about it.

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow morning. They’re leaving immediately afterwards. Don’t make any engagements for tomorrow evening; I’m hoping my nurse friend can come.”

  “Adriana, I have a job that—”

  “Try to do your best. Oh, Tommaseo called me in for questioning today. He was positively drooling as he stared at my tits. And to think that I’d put on a reinforced bra for the occasion. I told him a lie, just to get him out of my hair, once and for all.”

  “I know what you told him. He phoned me to ask if
it was true that you and Rina couldn’t stand each other.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I confirmed it.”

  “I knew I could count on you. I love you. See you tomorrow.”

  He ran into the bathroom and got into the shower before Lozupone arrived. Those three words, I love you, had immediately made him break out in a drenching sweat.

  Lozupone was five years his junior, a man of powerful build and pithy speech. Not the sort to set tongues wagging, he was honest and had always done his duty. Montalbano, therefore, had to proceed carefully with him and choose the right words. He offered him a whisky and sat him down on the veranda. Luckily a light wind was blowing.

  “Salvo, get to the point.What do you have to tell me?”

  “It’s a delicate matter, and before making any moves, I want to talk to you about it.”

  “Here I am.”

  “These days I’ve been busy working on the homicide of a girl . . .”

  “Yes, I’ve heard mention of it.”

  “And I happened to interrogate a builder named Spitaleri, whom you also know.”

  Lozupone seemed to react defensively.

  “What do you mean, I know him? I only know him because I investigated the accidental death of a mason at one of his construction sites in Montelusa.”

  “That’s just it. I wanted to know more about this investigation of yours.What conclusion did you come to?”

  “I think I just said it a second ago: accidental death.The worksite, when I went there, was up to code. I had it reopened after it had been shut down for five days. Laurentano, the prosecutor, was pressing me to hurry up.”

  “When were you first called?”

  “On a Monday morning, after the mason’s body was found.And I repeat, all the safety measures were in order.The only possible conclusion was that the Arab, who’d had a bit too much to drink, climbed over the protective railing and fell. And, in fact, the autopsy showed that there was more wine than blood in his body.”

  Montalbano balked, but didn’t let Lozupone see. If things had really happened the way Lozupone said and Spitaleri maintained, then why had Filiberto told a different story? Most importantly, wasn’t there the receipt from Ribaudo’s proving that the watchman was telling the truth? Wasn’t it better to shoot straight with Lozupone and tell him what he, Montalbano, thought about the matter?

  “Federì, didn’t it ever occur to you that maybe, when the mason fell, there wasn’t any protection and that the railing was put up on Sunday? So that, when you came on Monday morning, everything would be in order?”

  Lozupone refilled his glass with whisky.

  “Of course it occurred to me,” he said.

  “And what did you do?”

  “What you yourself would have done.”

  “Namely?”

  “I asked Spitaleri what firm supplied him with his scaffolding. And he said Ribaudo’s. So I reported this to Laurentano. I wanted him to question Ribaudo, or to authorize me to question Ribaudo. But he said no. He said that for him, the investigation ended there.”

  “Well, the proof you were looking for from Ribaudo I managed to procure myself. Spitaleri had the materials sent that Sunday at dawn, and he assembled it with the help of the worksite foreman Dipasquale and the watchman Attanasio.”

  “And what do you intend to do with this proof?”

  “Give it either to you or to Prosecutor Laurentano.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Montalbano handed him the receipt. Lozupone looked at it and handed it back.

  “This doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Didn’t you see the date? July the twenty-seventh was a Sunday!”

  “You know what Laurentano might say to you? First, that given the ongoing working relationship between Spitaleri and Ribaudo, it wasn’t the first time Ribaudo furnished materials to Spitaleri on a Sunday. Second, that the material was needed because on Monday morning, they were supposed to begin construction on several new floors of the building. Third: Would you please explain to me, Inspector Montalbano, how you happened to get your hands on this document? To conclude, Spitaleri gets off and you, and whoever gave you the document, take it up the ass.”

  “But is Laurentano in on this?”

  “Laurentano?! What are you saying? Laurentano only wants to advance his career.And if you’re going to get ahead, rule number one is to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Montalbano felt so enraged that he blurted out:

  “And what does your father-in-law Lattes think about it?”

  “Lattes? Don’t stray too far, Salvo. Don’t piss outside the urinal. My father-in-law has certain political interests, it’s true, but he’s certainly never said anything to me about this Spitaleri business.”

  Go figure why, Montalbano felt satisfied with this answer.

  “And so you surrender?”

  “What, in your opinion, should I do? Start tilting at windmills like Don Quixote?”

  “Spitaleri is not a windmill.”

  “Montalbà, let’s be frank. Do you know why Laurentano doesn’t want to let me go any further? Because when he puts Spitaleri and his political protectors on one side of his personal scale, and the dead body of an anonymous Arab immigrant on the other, which way do you think the scale tips? The death of the Arab was given three lines of coverage in only one newspaper.What do you think will happen if we go after Spitaleri? A pandemonium of television, radio, newspapers, interpellations in parliament, pressure, maybe even blackmail. And so I ask you: How many people, among us and among the judges, have the same scale in their offices as Laurentano?”

  16

  He felt so furious that he stayed out on the veranda to finish the bottle of whisky, specifically intending, if not to get drunk, then at least to numb himself enough to be able to go to bed.

  After thinking it over, with a cool head and without getting too carried away, he realized Lozupone was right. He would never succeed in screwing Spitaleri with the evidence that had seemed so important to him.

  And then, supposing Laurentano did find the courage to take action and some heedless colleague of his did manage to bring the case to trial, any lawyer could pick apart that evidence in the twinkling of an eye. But was it really because the evidence was negligible—it still was evidence, after all—that Spitaleri would not be found guilty? Or was it because in today’s Italy, thanks to laws that increasingly favor the rights of the accused, what was lacking above all was a firm resolve to send anyone who committed a crime to prison?

  But why, on the other hand, had the inspector had from the start, and continued to have, such a great desire to do harm to the developer? Because he was guilty of a building violation? Come on! If that was the case, then he should have something against half the population of Sicily, since the illegal constructions nearly outnumbered the legal ones.

  Why had somebody died at one of his worksites?

  And how many so-called accidents in the workplace were there that weren’t accidents at all, but genuine homicides by the employers?

  No, there was another reason.

  It was Fazio’s report that Spitaleri liked underage girls, and his own conclusion that the builder was a sex tourist to boot, that had made him develop a sort of violent aversion to the man. He couldn’t stand the kind of people who took airplanes from one continent to another to go exploit poverty and material and moral misery in the most ignoble manner possible.

  Someone like that, even if he lived in a palace in his home country, traveled first class, stayed in ten-star hotels, and ate in restaurants where a fried egg costs a hundred thousand euros, remained a wretch deep down in his soul, more wretched than the bastard who robs churches of their alms boxes or children of their lunch bags not because he’s starving but for the sheer pleasure of doing so.

  And men of that ilk are surely capable of the vilest, most loathsome sorts of acts.

  At last, after some two hours, his eyelids started to droop. There was one finger of
whisky left in the glass. He knocked it back and it went down the wrong way. As he was coughing, he remembered something Lozupone had said.

  Which was that the autopsy had confirmed that the Arab had drunk too much, and had fallen for this reason.

  But there was another possible hypothesis.

  That the Arab, when he fell, had not died. He was only mortally wounded, and therefore able to swallow. And Spitaleri, Dipasquale, and Filiberto had taken advantage of the situation and forcibly plied him with wine. Then left him there to die alone.

  They were capable of such an act, and the idea must have occurred to the one most capable of all, Spitaleri.And if things actually had happened the way he was imagining, it wasn’t just he, Inspector Montalbano, who was being thwarted, but justice itself, indeed the very notion of justice.

  He didn’t sleep a wink all night.The rage in his body had redoubled the heat. He sweated so much that around four o’clock in the morning he got up and changed the bed-sheets. But all for naught: Half an hour later they were as drenched as the ones he had just changed.

  By eight o’clock he could no longer bear to stay in bed. Restlessness, nerves, and the heat were driving him crazy.

  It occurred to him that Livia, on a boat out on the open sea, must be having a better time of it than he was. So he tried calling her on her cell phone.A recorded woman’s voice informed him that the phone of the person he’d called was turned off and that, if he wished, he could try calling back later.

  Naturally, at that hour the young lady was either sleeping or too busy helping her dear cousin Massimiliano to maneuver the boat! He suddenly felt itchy all over and started scratching himself until he bled.

  Looking for a solution, he hopped down from the veranda and onto the beach. The sand was already hot and he risked burning the soles of his feet. He went for a long swim. Far from shore the water was still cool. But the refreshment didn’t last long. In the time it took him to return to the house, he was already dry.