IM2 The Terra-Cotta Dog (2002) Read online

  Tano the Greek gave a short bow, and there wasnt the slightest hint of provocation or mockery in the gesture. Montalbano automatically returned the greeting. Tano threw his head back and laughed.

  Were like two Japanese warriors, the kind with swords and breastplates. What do you call them?

  Samurai.

  Tano opened his arms, as if wanting to embrace the man standing before him.

  What a pleasure to meet the famous Inspector Montalbano, personally in person.

  Montalbano decided to dispense with the ceremonies and get straight to the point, just to put the encounter on the right footing.

  Im not sure how much pleasure youll get from meeting me, sir.

  Well, youve already given me one.

  Explain.

  You called me sir. Thats no small thing. No cop, not a single oneand Ive met a lothas ever called me sir.

  You realize, I hope, that Im a representative of the law, while you are a dangerous fugitive charged with several murders. And here we are, face-to-face.

  Im unarmed. How about you?

  Me too.

  Tano threw his head back again and gave a full-throated laugh.

  Im never wrong about people, never!

  Unarmed or not, I have to arrest you just the same.

  And I am here, Inspector, to let you arrest me. Thats why I wanted to see you.

  He was sincere, no doubt about it. But it was this very sincerity that put Montalbano on his guard, since he couldnt tell where Tano wanted to go with this.

  You could have come to police headquarters and turned yourself in. Here or in Vig, its the same thing.

  Ah, no, dear Inspector, it is not the same thing. You surprise me, you who know how to read and write. The words are not the same. I am letting myself be arrested, I am not turning myself in. Go get your jacket and well talk inside. Ill open the door in the meantime.

  Montalbano took his jacket from the olive tree, draped it over his arm, and entered the house behind Tano. It was completely dark inside. The Greek lit an oil lamp and gestured to the inspector to sit down in one of two chairs beside a small table. In the room there was a cot with only a bare mattress, no pillow or sheets, and a glass-fronted cupboard with bottles, glasses, biscuits, plates, packets of pasta, jars of tomato sauce, and assorted tin cans. There was also a wood- burning stove with pots and pans hanging over it. But the in- spectors eyes came to rest on a far more dangerous animal than the lizard sleeping in the glove compartment of his car: this was a veritable poisonous snake, a machine gun sleeping on its feet, propped against the wall beside the cot.

  Ive got some good wine, said Tano, like a true host.

  All right, thanks, replied Montalbano.

  What with the cold, the night, the tension, and the two- plus pounds of mostaccioli he wolfed down, he felt he could use some wine.

  The Greek poured and then raised his glass.

  To your health.

  The inspector raised his own and returned the toast.

  To yours.

  The wine was something special; it went down beautifully, and on its way gave comfort and heat.

  This is truly good, Montalbano complimented him.

  Another glass?

  To avoid the temptation, the inspector gruffly pushed the glass away.

  Lets talk.

  Lets. As I was saying, I decided to let myself be arrested

  Why?

  Montalbanos question, fired point-blank, left the other momentarily confused. After a pause,Tano collected himself:

  I need medical care. Im sick.

  May I say something? Since you think you know me well, you probably also know that Im not someone you can fuck with.

  Im sure of it.

  Then why not show me some respect and stop feeding me bullshit?

  You dont believe Im sick?

  I do. But dont try to make me swallow this bullshit that you need to be arrested to get medical help. Ill explain, if you like. You spent a month and a half at Our Lady of Lourdes Clinic in Palermo, then three months at the Gethsemane Clinic of Trapani, where Dr. Amerigo Guarnera even operated on you. And although things today are a little different from a few years ago, if you want, you can find plenty

  of hospitals willing to look the other way and say nothing to the police if you stay there. So its not because youre sick that you want to be arrested.

  What if I told you that times are changing and that the wheel is turning fast?

  That would be a little more convincing.

  You see, when I was a little kid, my fatherwho was a man of honor when the word honor still meant some- thingmy father, rest his soul, used to tell me that the cart that men of honor traveled on needed a lot of grease to make the wheels turn, to make them go fast. When my fathers generation passed on and it was my turn to climb aboard the cart, some of our men said: Why should we keep on buying the grease we need from the politicians, mayors, bankers, and the rest of their kind? Lets make it ourselves! Well make our own grease! Great! Bravo! Everyone agreed. Sure, there was still the guy who stole his friends horse, the guy who blocked the road for some associate of his, the guy who would start shooting blindly at some other gangs cart, horse, and horseman . . . But these were all things we could settle among ourselves.The carts multiplied in number, there were more and more roads to travel. Then some genius had a big idea, he asked himself: Whats it mean that were still traveling by cart? Were too slow, he explained, were getting screwed, left behind, everybody else is traveling by car, you cant stop progress! Great! Bravo! And so everybody ran and traded in their cart for a car and got a drivers license. Some of them, though, didnt pass the driving-school test and went out, or were pushed out.

  Then we didnt even have the time to get comfortable with our new cars before the younger guys, the ones whod been riding in cars since they were born and whod studied law or economics in the States or Germany, told us our cars were too slow. Now you were supposed to hop in a race car, a Ferrari, a Maserati equipped with radiophone and fax, so you could take off like a flash of lightning. These kids are new, brand- new, they talk to cell phones instead of people, they dont even know you, dont know who you used to be and if they do, they dont give a fuck. Half the time they dont even know each other, they just talk over the computer. To cut it short, these kids dont ever look anyone in the eye. As soon as they see you in trouble with a slow car, they run you off the road without a second thought and you end up in the ditch with a broken neck.

  And you dont know how to drive a Ferrari.

  Exactly. Thats why, before I end up dead in a ditch, its better for me to step aside.

  But you dont seem to me the type who steps aside of his own choosing.

  Its my own choosing, Inspector, all my own, I assure you. Of course, there are ways to make someone act freely of his own choosing. Once a friend of mine who was educated and read a lot told me a story which Im gonna repeat to you exactly the way he told it, somethin he read in a German book. A man says to his friend: Want to bet my cat will eat hot mustard, the kind thats so hot it makes a hole in your stomach? But cats dont like mustard, says his friend. Well,

  I can make my cat eat it anyway, says the man. Do you make him eat it with your fist or with a stick? asks the friend. No sirree, says the man, he eats it freely, of his own choosing. So they make the bet, the man takes a nice spoonful of mustard, the kind that makes your stomach burn just to look at it, picks up the cat and wham! shoves it right up the animals ass. Poor cat, feeling his asshole burn like that, he starts licking it. And so, licking it up little by little, he eats all the mustard, of his own choosing. And that, my friend, says it all.

  I see what you mean. Now lets go back to where we started.

  I was saying I want to be arrested, but Im going to need some theatrics to save face.

  I dont understand.

  Let me explain.

  He explained at great length, drinking a glass of wine from time to time. In the end Montalbano was satisfied with Tanos reas
ons. But could he trust him? That was the question. In his youth, Montalbano had a great passion for card- playing, which he had luckily grown out of; for this reason he now sensed that Tano was playing him straight, with unmarked cards. He had no choice but to put his faith in this intuition and hope that he was not mistaken. And so they meticulously, painstakingly worked out the details of the arrest to ensure that nothing could go wrong. When they had finished talking, the sun was already high in the sky. Before leaving the house and letting the performance begin, the inspector gave Tano a long look, eye to eye.

  Tell me the truth.

  At your command, Inspector.

  Why did you choose me?

  Because you, as you are showing me even now, are someone who understands things.

  As he raced headlong down the little path between the vineyards, Montalbano remembered that Agatino Catarella would now be on duty at the station, and that therefore the phone conversation he was about to engage in promised at the very least to be problematic, if not the source of unfortunate and even dangerous misunderstandings. This Catarella was frankly hopeless. Slow to think and slow to act, he had been hired by the police because he was a distant relative of the formerly all- powerful Chamber Deputy Cusumano, who, after spending a summer cooling off in Ucciardone prison, had managed to reestablish solid enough connections with the new people in power to win himself a large slice of the cake, the very same cake that from time to time was miraculously renewed by merely sticking in a few new candied fruits or putting new candles in the place of the ones already melted.

  With Catarella, things would get most muddled whenever he got it in his headwhich happened oftento speak in what he called Talian.

  One day he had shown up with a troubled look.

  Chief, could you by any chance be able to give me the name of one of those doctors called specialists?

  Specialist in what, Cat?

  Gonorrhea.

  Montalbano had looked at him open-mouthed.

  Gonorrhea? You? When did you get that?

  As I remember, I got it first when I was still a lil thing, not yet six or seven years old.

  What the hell are you saying, Cat? Are you sure you mean gonorrhea?

  Absolutely. Had it all my life, on and off. Its here and gone, here and gone. Gonorrhea.

  In the car, on his way to a telephone booth that was supposed to be near the Torresanta crossroads (supposed to be, that is, unless the receiver had been torn off, the entire telephone had been stolen, or the booth itself had disappeared), Montalbano decided not to call even his second-in-command, Mim Augello, because he was the typehe couldnt help itwho before anything else would inform the newsmen and then pretend to be surprised when they showed up at the scene. That left only Fazio and Tortorella, the two sergeants or whatever the hell they were called nowadays. He chose Fazio, since Tortorella had been shot in the belly not long before and hadnt yet fully recovered, feeling pain now and then in the wound.

  The booth was miraculously still there, the phone miraculously worked, and Fazio picked up before the second ring had finished.

  Fazio, are you already awake at this hour? Sure am, Chief. Less than a minute ago I got a call from

  Catarella. What did he want? He was speaking Talian so I couldnt make much sense

  of it. But if I had to guess, Id say that last night somebody cleaned out Carmelo Ingrassias supermarket, the great big one just outside of town. They used a large truck or tractor- trailer at the very least.

  Wasnt there a night watchman? There was, but nobody can find him. Were you on your way there now? Yes. Forget it. Phone Tortorella immediately and tell him to

  fill Augello in. Let those two take care of it. Tell them you cant go, make up whatever bullshit you can think of, say you fell out of bed and hit your head. No: tell them the carabinieri came and arrested you. Better yet, call them and tell them to notify the carabinieriits small potatoes, after all, just some shitty little robbery, and theyre always happy when we bring them into our cases. Now listen up, heres what I want you to do: notify Tortorella,Augello, and the carabinieri about the theft, then round up Gallo, GalluzzoJesus Christ, I feel like Im running a chicken farm hereand German and bring them all where I tell you to go. And arm yourselves with submachine guns.

  Shit! Shit is right. This is a big deal and we have to handle it

  carefully. No one is to whisper even half a word about this, especially Galluzzo with his newsman brother-in-law. And tell that chickenhead Gallo not to drive like hes at Indianapolis. No sirens, no flashing lights. When you splash and muddy the waters, the fish escapes. Now pay attention and Ill explain where youre to meet me.

  They arrived very quietly, not half an hour after the phone call, looking like a routine patrol. Getting out of the car, they went up to Montalbano, who signaled them to follow him. They met back up behind a half-ruined house, so that they could not be seen from the main road.

  Theres a machine gun in the car for you, said Fazio.

  Stick it up your ass. Now listen: if we play our cards right, we just might bring Tano the Greek home with us.

  Montalbano palpably felt that his men had ceased to breathe for a moment.

  Tano the Greek is around here? Fazio wondered aloud, being the first to recover.

  I got a good look at him, and its him. Hes grown a mustache and beard, but you can still recognize him.

  How did you find him?

  Never mind, Fazio, Ill explain everything later. Tanos in a little house at the top of that hill. You cant see it from here. There are olive trees all around it. Its a two-room house, one room on top of the other. Its got a door and a window in front; theres another window to the top room,

  but thats in back. Is that clear? Did you take that all in? Tanos only way out is through the front, unless he decides in desperation to throw himself out the rear window, though hed risk breaking his legs. So heres what well do: Fazio and Gallo go in back; me, Germanand Galluzzo will break in the door and go inside.

  Fazio looked doubtful.

  Whats wrong? Dont you agree?

  Wouldnt it be better to surround the house and tell him to surrender? Its five against one, hed never get away.

  How do you know theres nobody inside the house with Tano?

  Fazio shut up.

  Listen to me, said Montalbano, concluding his brief war council, its better if we bring him an Easter egg with a surprise inside.

  3

  Montalbano calculated that Fazio and Gallo must have been in position behind the cottage for at least five minutes. As for him, sprawled belly-down on the grass, pistol in hand, with a rock pushing irksomely straight into the pit of his stomach, he felt profoundly ridiculous, like a character in a gangster film, and therefore could not wait to give the signal to raise the curtain. He looked at Galluzzo, who was beside him Germanas farther away, to the rightand asked him in a whisper:

  Are you ready?

  Yessir, answered the policeman, who was a visible bundle of nerves and sweating. Montalbano felt sorry for him, but couldnt very well come out and tell him that it was all a put-onof dubious outcome, it was true, but still humbug.

  Go! he ordered him.

  As though launched by a tightly compressed spring and almost not touching the ground, in three bounds Galluzzo reached the house and flattened himself against the wall to the left of the door. He seemed to have done so without ef

  fort, though Montalbano could see his chest heaving up and down, breathless. Galluzzo got a firm grip on his submachine gun and gestured to the inspector that he was ready for phase two. Montalbano then looked over at Germanwho seemed not only serene, but actually relaxed.

  Im going now, he said to him without a sound, exaggeratedly moving his lips and forming the syllables.

  Ill cover you, Germannswered back in the same manner, gesturing with his head towards the machine gun in his hands.

  Montalbanos first leap forward was one for the books, or at the very least a training manual: a decisive, ba
lanced ascent from the ground, worthy of a high-jump specialist, a weightless, aerial suspension, and a clean, dignified landing that would have amazed a ballerina. Galluzzo and Germanwho were watching him from different perspectives, took equal delight in their chief s bodily grace. The start of the second leap was even better calibrated than the first, but something happened in midair that caused Montalbano, from his upright posture, to tilt suddenly sideways like the tower of Pisa, then plunge earthward in what looked truly like a clowns routine. After tottering with arms outstretched in search of a nonexistent handle to grab onto, he crashed heavily to one side. Instinctively, Galluzzo made a move as if to help him, but stopped himself in time, plastering himself back against the wall. Germanlso stood up a moment, but quickly got back down.

  A good thing this was all a sham, the inspector thought.

  Otherwise Tano could have cut them down like ninepins then and there. Muttering some of the pithiest curses in his vast repertoire, Montalbano began to crawl around in search of the pistol that had slipped from his hand during the fall. At last he spotted it under a touch-me-not bush, but as soon as he stuck his arm in there to retrieve it, all the little cucumbers burst and sprayed his face with seeds. With a certain melancholy rage the inspector realized hed been demoted from gangster-film hero to a character in an Abbott and Costello movie. No longer in the mood to play the athlete or dancer, he covered the last few yards between him and the house with a few quick steps, merely hunching forward a little.

  Montalbano and Galluzzo looked one another in the eye without speaking and agreed on the plan. They positioned themselves three steps from the door, which did not look very resistant, took a deep breath and flung themselves against it with their full weight. The door turned out to be made of tissue paper, or almosta swat of the hand would have sufficed to push it openand thus they both found themselves hurtling inside. The inspector managed by some miracle to come to a stop, whereas Galluzzo, carried forward by the violence of his thrust, flew all the way across the room and slammed his face against the wall, crushing his nose and ending up choking on the blood that started to gush violently forth. By the dim light of the oil lamp that Tano had left burning, the inspector was able to appreciate the Greeks