The Sicilian Method Read online

  “I stood there without moving, then headed for the door, still in total darkness, opened it, went out and down the stairs . . .”

  “Did you run into anyone?”

  “No, nobody. Then I walked over to my car, got in, and drove here.”

  Montalbano realized that, despite the mugful of coffee he’d drunk, he was in no condition to ask Mimì the questions he needed to.

  “Excuse me just a minute,” he said, getting up and leaving the room.

  He went into the bathroom, turned on the cold-water tap, and put his head under it. He stayed that way for a minute, cooling his brain off, then dried himself and went back into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, Mimì, but why did you come here?” he asked.

  Mimì Augello looked at him in astonishment.

  “So what should I have done, in your opinion?”

  “You should have done what you didn’t do.”

  “Namely?”

  “Since, as you said yourself, there was nobody in the apartment, you should have turned on the light and not run away.”

  “Why?”

  “So you could look for other details. For example, you told me there was a dead man on the bed. But how, in your opinion, did he die?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I got so scared I ran away.”

  “That was a mistake. Maybe he died a natural death.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What makes you think the poor guy was murdered? Since you described him as all dressed up and lying on top of the bed, it’s possible the man came home, felt really bad, and had just enough time to lie down and die, maybe from a heart attack . . .”

  “Okay, but what’s the difference?”

  “There’s a world of difference. Because if you were dealing with a man who died of natural causes, that’s one thing, and we at the police can pretend we know nothing about it; but if the man is a murder victim, that changes everything radically, and it is our duty to intervene. But, before replying, Mimì, think it over carefully. Try to concentrate and tell me if you had any sense, even the slightest inkling, of whether the man was murdered or died on his own.”

  Mimì struck a pose, brow furrowed, elbows on the table, and head in his hands.

  “Try to draw on your lifetime of experience as a cop,” Montalbano urged him.

  “Well, frankly,” said Mimì after a pause of a few seconds, “I did notice something, though just barely. It might just be the power of suggestion, I dunno . . .”

  “Try telling me anyway,” Montalbano encouraged him.

  “I could be wrong, but when I went up to him to touch his forehead, I thought I smelled something strange and sickly sweet.”

  “Maybe blood?”

  “What can I say . . . ?”

  “That’s not enough,” said Montalbano, getting up.

  At that moment, however, he froze, staring at Augello, who still had his face buried in his hands.

  Then he leaned across the table, grabbed Mimì’s right arm, twisted it, quickly looked at it, then thrust it back at him so that it struck him in the face.

  Mimì was shocked.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Look at your right cuff.”

  Mimì did as told.

  The edge of the sleeve’s cuff had a faint red streak. Clearly blood.

  “See? I was right!” Augello burst out. “And that answers your question: He was murdered.”

  “Before going any further, I need some information,” said Montalbano.

  “Well, here I am.”

  “First of all: Was that the first time you’d gone to meet this woman at her home?”

  “No,” said Mimì.

  “How many times, my son?”

  “At least six, four of them good ones.”

  “And what does ‘good’ mean?”

  “Salvo, it means . . . well . . .” replied Mimì, somewhat resentfully, “it means ‘good’ in the sense of . . . complete. Know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do. And the other two times?”

  “Let’s just say they were partial and exploratory. But, Salvo, what do these questions have to do with anything? Do they seem so important to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you asking me them?”

  “It’s an alternative option. Haven’t you realized that?”

  “Alternative to what?”

  “At this hour of the night, I’m faced with two options: babbling away as I’ve been doing or bashing you in the face. Therefore I advise you to answer my questions and stop making a fuss.”

  “Okay,” said Mimì, resigned.

  “Are you sure that during all this coming and going to and from her place, nobody ever noticed you?”

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “What’s this lady’s name?”

  “Genoveffa Recchia.”

  Montalbano started laughing heartily.

  Mimì got upset.

  “What the fuck is so funny?”

  “I was just thinking that if she ever rang the station, Catarella would surely end up calling her something like ‘Jenny the Wreck.’”

  “All right,” said Mimì Augello, getting up. “I’m leaving. Have a good night.”

  “Come on,” said Montalbano. “Don’t get pissed off. Sit down and let’s continue our discussion. What does this Genoveffa do?”

  “Let me inform you, first of all, that she goes by ‘Geneviève.’”

  Montalbano started laughing again.

  Mimì looked at him sullenly, but kept on talking.

  “Secondly, as far as what she does, Geneviève is a housewife.”

  “So, apparently, poor thing, since she gets bored during the day, finds a way to amuse herself at night.”

  Mimì’s gaze turned darkened further.

  “You’re wrong all down the line. Geneviève is very active and involved in many things. For example, she runs a theater workshop for kids.”

  “Does she have any?”

  “Kids? No.”

  “And what’s her husband do?”

  “He’s a doctor at Montelusa hospital, and works the night shift every Thursday.”

  “So you have one night per week for your nocturnal escapades?”

  Mimì rolled his eyes to the heavens for help in the face of Montalbano’s incessant mockery.

  Apparently his prayers were answered, because the inspector then asked: “Do you by any chance know the name of the dead man?”

  “Yes, I looked at the doorbell on the landing. His name is Aurisicchio.”

  “Know anything else about him?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Silence fell.

  “What’s wrong? Did you lose your voice?” Mimì asked anxiously.

  “The fact is, you’ve created a big problem for me.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “How are we going to swing it so that we come to learn, officially, that there’s a murder victim in that apartment?”

  “I think I have an idea,” said Mimì.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “What if the man committed suicide?”

  “It’s a possibility, but that wouldn’t change anything.”

  “Of course it would! It would change everything, because if the man killed himself, we, the police, can forget about him until someone discovers the body.”

  “Mimì, leaving aside your deep sense of humanity, your brilliant idea actually complicates things. The only thing to do at the moment, in my opinion, is to arrange things so that, in one way or another, we come to know that there’s something strange in that apartment, requiring us to go and have a look.”

  “And that’s just it.”

  “At an
y rate,” Montalbano continued, “bear in mind that the first person to set foot in that apartment has to be you, Mimì, and you have to do everything within your power to touch as many things as you can with your bare hands.”

  “Why?”

  “My friend, between pushing open the shutters when entering the apartment, grabbing the chair to keep it from falling, and turning the inside lock on the front door, do you realize how many fingerprints you left in that place?”

  Mimì turned pale.

  “Matre santa! If this ever gets out, that’ll probably be the end of my marriage and career. What can we do?”

  “For the time being, your only choice is to get the hell out of here. I’ll see you at the station this morning at eight. Is that okay with you?”

  “It’s fine with me,” said Mimì, getting up and heading for the door.

  Montalbano didn’t see him out; he went back into the bedroom and looked at the clock: almost four a.m. What to do now? He didn’t really feel like going back to bed, but he didn’t feel like getting dressed, either.

  By now the coffee had kicked in.

  All he could do was stay up and go for a walk along the water’s edge at daybreak. And so, just to ward off any unexpected bouts of sleepiness, he went and prepared a second mug of espresso.

  2

  He walked along the wet sand for over half an hour.

  He hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt or jacket, and so the light, early-morning breeze that had risen made him shudder with cold.

  He kept on walking for a while, but then the wind suddenly picked up and the dry sand began to swirl and stick to his skin. It was time to go back.

  As soon as he turned around, a sheet of newspaper flying through the air struck him in the face and wrapped it up like a fish at the market.

  He removed it and instinctively began to read.

  It was the front page of the Giornale dell’Isola from the day before.

  In the faint morning light he read the front-page headline: ALARMING EMPLOYMENT FIGURES.

  The subhead went:

  SICILY THE REGION WITH THE LOWEST EMPLOYMENT RATE IN EUROPE: BELOW 40%.

  Then, to the right, another headline:

  WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF WE EXIT THE EURO ZONE?

  In the middle of the page was the announcement:

  NEW SECURITY MEASURES TAKEN AGAINST TERRORISM.

  As he was rolling the sheet into a ball, the inspector stopped. At the bottom of the page was another headline saying that the name of the comic who’d founded the Vaffanculo Day party would no longer appear on their emblem but only that of the movement itself. Big deal.

  Dress it up however you like, a pig is always a pig, he thought.

  They would keep on saying NO to everything, in the hope of one day gaining power and ending up like everyone else.

  Montalbano hoped he would never see the day.

  He finished rolling up the ball of paper and tossed it into the sea. Reading all that bad news made him feel unclean.

  He wanted to rid himself of the feeling at once. Despite the fact that cold shivers were shaking his body every few seconds, he looked around and, seeing there wasn’t a soul about, took off all his clothes and stepped naked into the water. He very nearly had a heart attack, but withstood the shock, and when he was chest-high in the sea, he started swimming.

  * * *

  —

  At eight o’clock that morning, Montalbano and Augello took one look at each other and realized things were hopeless.

  Without saying a word, they headed side by side into the little room with the coffee machine.

  They drank two cups each, and then, still silent and standing one beside the other like a pair of carabinieri, they went back into Montalbano’s office.

  They sat down face-to-face and stared at each other for a long time in silence.

  Then Montalbano asked: “Have you come up with a solution for discovering the body?”

  “Nah, nothing so far.”

  “But we can hardly just leave it there until it turns into a skeleton. Let’s call Fazio and see if he can think of something.”

  “Wait a second,” said Augello, giving a start. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea for Fazio to know what happened to me last night. My reputation is at stake.”

  “Gimme a fucking break, Mimì! Your reputation’s already a public disgrace!”

  “Oh, all right,” said Augello, resigned. “Go ahead and call him.”

  Montalbano picked up the receiver and said to Catarella: “Get me Fazio, would you, Cat?”

  “’E ain’t onna premisses yet, Chief, bu’ I wannit a tell yiz ’at a lady jess called all upset an’ tremblin’ an’ she said—”

  “You can tell me about it later, Cat. For now, get me Fazio, on the double.”

  “Straightaways, Chief, bu’, ya see, ’iss lady was all upsit an’ said—”

  “I told you to get me Fazio!”

  “Whate’er ya say, Chief.”

  Seconds later the phone rang.

  “Hello, Chief, it’s Fazio.”

  “Are you on your way here?”

  “No, Chief, I’m on duty at the labor unions’ demo.”

  Montalbano intoned a litany of curses.

  “And when can you wriggle away?”

  “This is gonna take at least another two hours, Chief.”

  The inspector hung up. Fazio wasn’t going to be any help.

  The door suddenly flew open and crashed cataclysmically against the wall. Catarella appeared with his hands in the air.

  “I gotta beg yer partin’, Chief, bu’ yisterday I putta bitta erl onna door ’inches ’cuzz ’ey was squeakin . . .”

  “What is it, Cat?”

  “Chief, I wannit a tell yiz ’at a cleanin’ lady housekipper awriddy call twice all upsit an’ tremblin’—”

  “Why trembling, Cat? Can you see her?”

  “No, Chief, I can’t see ’er, bu’ when she talks ’er voice is all a-tremblin’.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “An’ so this lady, ’oos name is Giusippina an’ som’n like Lo Voi or Lo Vai, says ’at when she went to clean up ’er boss’s ’ouse, she foun’ ’im layin’ down dead on ’is bed mattress all dead ’n’ all—”

  “Stop right there,” said Montalbano. “You can tell this lady we’re on our way. Thanks, you can go now.”

  “Holy shit, what luck!” Augello bellowed as soon as Catarella left the room. “The solution came all by itself. Somebody found our corpse. So what do we do now?”

  “Now, Mimì, you and I are going to get in the car and go to the site of your nocturnal exploits.”

  * * *

  —

  Fifteen minutes later they parked in front of number 20, Via Umberto Biancamano.

  Mimì got out first and led the way for Montalbano.

  They stopped outside the front door.

  “I repeat, you must touch everything you possibly can while we’re in the apartment, and for starters, just to overdo it, go and ring the buzzer.”

  Mimì pressed his forefinger long and hard on the button with the name Filippo Aurisicchio next to it.

  No answer.

  He tried again, keeping the buzzer pressed even longer.

  Nothing.

  “But the cleaning lady must be there! Why doesn’t she answer?” asked Mimì.

  “Maybe the buzzer doesn’t work.”

  At that moment the front door opened. A man of about forty stopped in the doorway.

  “Do you need to come in?”

  “Yes, thank you,” replied Montalbano.

  The man let them in, then went out as the front door closed automatically with a loud crash.

  “This time we’ll take the elevator,” said Montalbano.

 
Mimì, who now knew what he had to do, opened the elevator door and made sure to push the button for the third floor.

  When they arrived, just to leave as many possible and imaginable fingerprints, he rang the doorbell to the apartment with his thumb.

  Once again, there was no reply.

  “Maybe this cleaning lady is running some appliance and can’t hear us.”

  A few minutes later Mimì rang again, this time with his middle finger, but there was only silence by way of reply.

  The two became convinced that the only person in the apartment was probably the dead man.

  “Maybe the cleaning lady got too scared to wait with the corpse and is waiting for us somewhere else. Call Catarella and ask,” said the inspector.

  Mimì took out his cell phone.

  “Hey, Cat, did the cleaning lady say where she was waiting for us?”

  “Yeah, righ’ where the moider ’appened. At nummer toity-eight, Via Almarmaro.”

  “What the hell are you saying, Cat? The murder was in Via Biancamano.”

  “I don’ know nuttin’ ’bout no Mancabiano. The lady tol’ me asplicitly it was Via Almarmaro, nummer toity-eight.”

  “But there isn’t any Via Almarmaro in Vigàta.”

  “Wait a seckin’ an’ I’ll take anutter look at the piece o’ paper. I’ll spill it out f’yiz.”

  In the end Mimì was able to grasp that Cat was talking about Via La Marmora. Montalbano watched him turn so pale it was frightening. He got worried.

  “What happened? What did Catarella say?”

  “What the hell are we gonna do now?”

  “What does that mean, ‘What the hell are we gonna do now’? Speak!”

  “Salvo, Catarella’s corpse is not the same as ours. There are two of them. One here, and the other in Via La Marmora.”

  “Holy shit!” said the inspector, this time leading the way himself.

  * * *

  —

  As they were driving along, Mimì said: “So we’re back to square one, with the colossal hassle of trying to figure out how to discover our dead guy.”

  “Mimì, your dedication to law enforcement really touches my heart! We have two killings on our hands at the same time, and all you can think about is covering your own ass. For the moment, stop worrying about it. Our dead guy is already dead, and he won’t be moving from his bed anytime soon.”