The Safety Net Read online

  “So we’re all in agreement?” asked the prosecutor.

  “I’ve still got some lingering doubts,” said Liberati.

  “About what?” asked the inspector.

  “I ask myself why they decided to wear masks that were so recognizable. Why the two men laid claim to a brand, even while knowing that the real owners of the brand would inevitably deny they had anything to do with it.”

  “Well,” Marchica ventured, “probably because they wanted to throw us off the trail by leading us in a specific direction.”

  “Yes,” retorted Liberati, “but I still don’t understand. We would have followed the false lead for two or three days, but it was still going to come out that they weren’t part of Anonymous. Therefore . . .”

  Since everyone remained silent, being fully aware that none of them were in a position to dismiss Liberati’s doubts, Terranova decided it was a good moment to adjourn the meeting.

  They all said good-bye and left in a state of mild confusion.

  * * *

  “I’ll notifize Isspecter Augello ’at ya just arrived onna premisses,” Catarella said as Montalbano walked in.

  “Does he want to talk to me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “No need to trouble yourself. I’ll notarize him myself.”

  Halfway down the corridor, he stopped, knocked on the door to Mimì’s office, turned the handle, opened it, and, leaning into the room, asked:

  “Got something to tell me?”

  “Yes. Gimme two minutes, and I’ll come to you.”

  Montalbano had time enough to sit down and glance worriedly at the precarious balance of the huge pile of documents to be signed on his desk before Augello came in with some sheets of paper in his hand. He sat down opposite the desk and said:

  “What can you tell me about the meeting with the prosecutor?”

  “We came to the conclusion that Anonymous had nothing to do with the episode. I’ll spare you the details. And what about you? What have you got to tell me?”

  “Well, since it seems that all your attention has been on the two that entered the school, I’ve been devoting myself to the third figure in the . . . let’s call it the commando unit.”

  Montalbano looked him straight in the eye, a bit taken aback. Then he smacked himself in the forehead.

  “Damn, you’re right! You mean the third accomplice, the one that came and picked them up in a car?”

  “Exactly. The car, as you know, turns out to have been stolen in Montelusa, and it was found again in Montelusa, in the square outside the railroad station. Based on my research, I can say that the first time this car appeared in Vigàta was on the morning of the assault on the school, a little before nine-thirty. That’s what I was told by the waiter in the pizzeria outside the school. Apparently they were driving around, casing the area.

  “The second time it was seen was when the car stopped a block away from the school, but on the opposite side of the street. According to a credible eyewitness, two people got out of the car and started walking towards the school. Five minutes later, the driver got out of the car and went into the tobacco shop he’d parked in front of. The man—who was a youth of about twenty-five, of short, stocky build—went in and asked for a pack of cigarettes. Apparently he spoke with a Bolognese accent. Upon his request, the person who was in the shop, who is my witness, replied that it wasn’t a real tobacco shop, but had just been done up as one for the TV movie.

  “The kid got really confused and asked where the closest real tobacco shop was. My witness told him, and the kid replied that it was too far away and, racing out of the store, he went and sat in the car with the engine still running.

  “A few minutes went by, and then my witness thought he heard some gunshots, but he didn’t budge at first, because he thought it might be something to do with the TV movie. But when he saw the car suddenly shoot off like a rocket, cutting in front of all the other cars going in the same direction, he started to have some doubts, and decided it was best to stay inside his shop.”

  “Well done, Mimì,” Montalbano said quite sincerely.

  “But,” Mimì continued, “also thanks to my witness, we now have an Identi-Kit for all three men who formed the commando.”

  He set the three sheets of paper in his hand down for Montalbano to see. They contained artist’s reconstructions of the three men’s likenesses.

  “Forensics was able to reconstruct two likenesses from the testimony of Camastra, the custodian. The third is the one I’ve been telling you about. These likenesses have now been sent out to police commissariats all over Italy.”

  Montalbano thought of the thousands of photographs and artist’s reconstructions that made their way through all the commissariats of the republic without ever achieving the slightest results, but he didn’t want to disappoint Mimì.

  “Excellent work, Mimì,” he said.

  “Now,” Mimì continued, “since the checkpoints were set up less than half an hour after the shoot-out and got no results, I would like, if you’ll allow me, to try to reconstruct the path those three may have taken. I’ll look into the train and bus schedules, the flights . . .”

  “Yes,” said Montalbano, “go right ahead, you have my full blessing.”

  14

  After Mimì went out, he glanced at his watch. There was still an hour to go before he could leave the station, and so, sighing despondently, he reached out and took a number of papers from the pile to be signed. And he continued in this fashion until he thought he’d done enough, at which point he got up and was on his way out to his car, but then stopped outside the closet in which Catarella had his switchboard.

  Red in the face, Catarella was muttering to himself and insulting the computer.

  “Damn damn damn this horny-toed son of a bee!”

  “Who you cursing at, Cat?” asked Montalbano.

  Catarella looked up, saw the inspector, and, if it was possible, got even redder in the face, going from red-pepper to tomato-paste red.

  “Wha’, Chief? D’jou hear me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ya gotta ’scuse me, Chief, bu’ I loss my patience.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “Wha’ happened izzat at a soitan point, I’s jess typin’ som’n an’ ’en the machine et it! It was gone! An’ when I ast ‘help’ it jess takes me back to the same point!”

  “Cat, I’m afraid this is all beyond my ken.”

  “Be on yer wha’, Chief?”

  “I wish you the best of luck,” Montalbano then said, patting Catarella on the shoulder. And he went out.

  He’d taken three steps towards his car when his path was blocked by another car.

  “We came to get you!”

  It was Ingrid. In the passenger’s seat was the blond bear, the director of the TV movie, who greeted him with a nod and a smile.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Since it’s the last week of shooting, all the Vigàta personnel who took part in the production have organized a great big luncheon on the boats.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Montalbano. “Are we going out on the water to eat from the lunch boxes of the production team?”

  “Don’t be silly. The whole thing was organized by the fishermen of Vigàta and their families. And so—”

  “And so I’d be delighted to join you,” Montalbano cut her off, suddenly feeling his heart warm.

  The blond bear got out of the car and into the backseat, respecting the hierarchical order.

  Montalbano expressed his appreciation with a nod and sat down in front.

  * * *

  They pulled up at the dock and got out of the car.

  Montalbano felt wonderstruck and touched by what he saw. They’d even outdone the preparations for the feast of Our Lady of the Sea!

&nbs
p; The center of the harbor was teeming with trawlers, motorboats, sailboats, rowboats, and every manner of craft, all adorned with banners and bunting of the Italian and Swedish flags, and from the congregation came festive shouts and cries, greetings, and, above all—as the inspector’s nostrils were quick to note—the wondrous scent of fried fish. A small shallop awaited them at the dock. They climbed aboard, and five minutes later they reached the central boat, a large high-seas trawler. Montalbano and the blond bear were greeted with applause.

  “Come and sit down over here,” the ship’s captain said to them.

  A whole row of hot grills had been set up, one beside the other, on the stern of the ship, and were being constantly refed with mullet, prawns, baby octopus, anchovies, and sardines. The fishermen would then fill metal trays up with fish, salt the fish, and pass them on from hand to hand until they reached the other boats surrounding the main one.

  Beside the grills, in two great pots placed over a pair of gas burners, boiled the pasta water, while a large soup tureen full of sea-urchin pith was ready to receive the spaghetti.

  And, just to make sure nothing was missing, in an enormous skillet a number of oversized mullet, mackerel, and sole were quietly sizzling.

  * * *

  The feast was so satisfying for Montalbano that by the end he found himself embracing the blond bear, having reconciled himself to the constant pain-in-the-ass the TV movie had been for him.

  Then, after saying good-bye to everyone, he was about to step back down into the rowboat when Ingrid said:

  “Can I come back with you?”

  “But I’m not going into town. I’m just going to ask him to row me out there,” he said, pointing to his customary flat rock directly under the lighthouse.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ingrid. “I want to come anyway. I can walk back.”

  They got into the boat, and the boatman started rowing towards the rock. Halfway there, however, they spotted an empty bottle floating in the water beside the boat.

  “Grab it! Grab it!” Ingrid shouted to Montalbano.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe there’s a message inside,” she said, laughing. Ingrid was particularly sensitive to Sicilian wine.

  Just to play along, Montalbano reached down, grabbed the bottle, and turned it upside down. It was empty. Ingrid snatched it from his hands and, laughing, shook it violently and then threw it back into the water.

  The boatman pulled up at the flat rock.

  “If you put one foot on this rock in front of us, you’ll find it easier to climb from rock to rock until you reach the jetty.”

  “You get out first,” Montalbano said to Ingrid.

  As soon as she set her foot on the rock, she shrieked, lost her balance, and would have fallen into the sea if Montalbano hadn’t caught her in time.

  “Maybe it’s better if you go back in the boat,” said the inspector.

  “Yeah, maybe it’s better,” said Ingrid.

  She gave him a kiss, climbed back into the boat, and headed off.

  * * *

  He watched the boats slowly pull away from the big trawler, which then started up its engines and began to make its way out of the harbor. Perhaps to throw all the garbage they’d produced into the sea.

  Poor sea!

  Of course, compared to all the stuff discharged daily into that body of water—plastic waste, toxic runoff, sewage—that little bit of garbage wasn’t going to hurt the sea too much. And of course it had already suffered much more from the thousands and thousands of corpses of desperate souls who’d met their end on the water, hoping to reach Italian shores to escape from the wars at home or to try to earn a little daily bread.

  A dark cloud of melancholy began to descend on the inspector, but he forced himself to dispel it, since, after that tremendous pig-out, any tears he might shed would surely have been crocodile tears.

  Carried by the current, the empty bottle was now knocking rhythmically against the rock, pulled by the undertow. Montalbano sat there watching it.

  Little by little, the bottle came under the sway of another current, drifted away from the rock, and started to navigate towards the mouth of the harbor and the open sea beyond.

  The open sea.

  The open sea, and everything in it: ships, boats, garbage, corpses, surfing to their dubious destinations.

  The open sea.

  Why did one use the same terms—surfing, navigating—for the internet as for the sea?

  Certainly the World Wide Web served to connect millions of people to one another through their computers; but, just like the sea, the internet, if you don’t know it well, can take you down the wrong path, crash you against some unknown, possibly booby-trapped shoals. So the expressions were, in fact, appropriate. The sea and the net are places for everybody and nobody. Skillful navigators know how to sail safely to the right port. Those without skill might stray from their route and end up in the wrong port. But what kind of compass existed to guide you in your navigations across the internet? Well, the only compass was probably the very reason for which one put one’s questions to the computer: a desire for information, to look for new people, make new contacts, find answers. Maybe even to call for help.

  Right, the way Catarella asked for help from his computer.

  Help! SOS. Mayday, Mayday . . .

  How does one ask the internet for help?

  The inspector stopped for a moment to think. He stuck a hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded in four. He opened it and read:

  Citizens of the World, We are Anonymous.

  There has been some recent confusion in the media over something that happened in a Sicilian school.

  We must point out that one does not speak for all. Many do not speak for everyone.

  We are one. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.

  Anonymous is not interested in personalized appeals.

  Anonymous pays no attention to private requests.

  Anonymous cannot be labeled, accused, or used.

  Anonymous is a space in the cosmic consciousness.

  To attribute responsibility to Anonymous would be to attribute responsibility to the citizens of the world.

  No cosmic consciousness entered that Sicilian school.

  Anonymous is not interested in personalized appeals.

  Anonymous pays no attention to private requests.

  Anonymous cannot be labeled, accused, or used.

  All of which meant—and no one had paid any mind to this during the morning meeting—that Anonymous had refused to intervene in a personal matter, a private request. They didn’t want to be accused, labeled, or used. So there had indeed been a request for something. For help, perhaps?

  And if such a request was made, who could have made it?

  A flash went off in his brain.

  And a name appeared, which he immediately dismissed.

  Impossible. It was a crazy conjecture, totally off the wall. He, anyway, was a good navigator. Careful, though: On the open seas, across the great ocean one can run into pirates, or ships sailing under assumed names and flying flags of countries that don’t even exist. So how can one tell the real from the fake?

  No, no, no. Too complex. Too complicated. He should get the idea out of his head.

  He got up slowly from the rock and made his way back to the station.

  * * *

  “Did the computer give you the help you wanted?” he asked Catarella when entering.

  “Yessir, Chief, it did. The ’pewter was jest askin’ fer protection. It was scared a virus was gonna ’tack it. An’ so I ’adda hupdate the annie-virus.”

  Montalbano didn’t understand a word of this, and so changed the subject.

  “But where has Fazio gone to, anyway? I haven’t seen him in ages.”

>   “’E got back jess now,” said Catarella.

  “Send him to me.”

  * * *

  Two minutes later Fazio was sitting in front of the inspector’s desk.

  “So, did you meet with Inspector Augello’s son?”

  “Yes. And I was also able to talk with a schoolmate of his. Smart lads, both of ’em. One of these days they might just steal your job!”

  “Why? Wha’d they say?”

  “First of all, that the attackers seemed frightened by what they were doing. Which is something that nobody else had noticed. And second—and this is something that caught me completely by surprise—that during the chaos of the incursion, there was only one person who sat still on his bench, almost calm, but paying close attention to what was going on. And that person was Luigino Sciarabba.”

  “What? The computer whiz?”

  “That’s right. None other.”

  “Maybe he’s just a cold fish,” said Fazio.

  “Maybe. So, what have you got to tell me?”

  “Well, Chief, just as I’d done with the names on the class register, I went and dug up all the names of the teachers of class III B.”

  “And so?”

  “And so I know everything there is to know about them and their families.”

  “And the result?”

  “Chief, the whole class looks like something cooked up in a Swedish statistical laboratory. They’re all fine, upstanding individuals, involved in social causes, with families all in order, no vices, no weaknesses, no police records, and all with respectable jobs. And that’s not all! There’s nobody, no one at all, not even second cousins, with any blots on their records. It’s enough to drive a man crazy! I’ve been forming a question in my head that I’m embarrassed even to mention to you.”

  “If you’re so embarrassed you can cover your face with your hands when you tell me.”