IM03 - The Snack Thief Read online

  Montalbano turned off the television.

  The agitation he felt at Jacomuzzi’s brilliant move showed no signs of passing. Sitting on the small veranda that gave onto the beach and staring at the sea in the moonlight, he smoked three cigarettes in a row. Maybe Livia’s voice would calm him down enough so he could go to bed and fall asleep.

  “Hi, Livia. How are you?”

  “So-so.”

  “I’ve had a rough day.”

  “Oh, really?”

  What the hell was wrong with Livia? Then he remembered their phone call that morning, which had ended on a sour note.

  “I called to ask you to forgive me for my boorishness. But that’s not the only reason. If you only knew how much I missed you . . .”

  It occurred to him that he might be overdoing it.

  “Do you miss me, really?”

  “Yes, a lot, really.”

  “Listen, Salvo, why don’t I catch a plane on Saturday morning? I’ll be in Vigàta just before lunchtime.”

  He became terrified. Livia was the last thing he needed at the moment.

  “No, no, darling, it’s such a bother for you . . .”

  When Livia got something in her head, she was worse than a Calabrian. She’d said Saturday morning, and Saturday morning it would be. Montalbano realized he’d have to call the commissioner the next day. Good-bye, pasta in squid ink!

  Around eleven o’clock the next morning, since nothing was happening at headquarters, the inspector headed lazily off to Salita Granet. The first shop on that street was a bakery; it had been there for six years. The baker and his helper had indeed heard that a man who owned an office at number 28 had been murdered, but they didn’t know him and had never seen him. As this was impossible, Montalbano became more insistent in his questioning, acting more and more the cop until he realized that to get to his office from his home, Mr. Lapècora would have come up the opposite end of the street. And in fact, at the grocer’s at number 26, they did know the late lamented Mr. Lapècora, and how! They also knew the Tunisian girl, what’s-her-name, Karima, good-looking woman—and here a few sly glances and grins were exchanged between the grocer and his customers. They couldn’t swear by it, of course, but the inspector could surely understand, a pretty girl like that, all alone indoors with a man like the late Mr. Lapècora, who carried himself awfully well for his age . . . Yes, he did have a nephew, an arrogant punk who sometimes used to park his car right up against the door to the shop, so that one time Signora Miccichè, who tipped the scales at a good three hundred pounds, got stuck between the car and the door to the shop . . . No, the license plate, no. If it had been one of the old kinds, with PA for Palermo or MI for Milan, that would have been a different story.

  The third and last shop on Salita Granet sold electrical appliances. The proprietor, a certain Angelo Zircone (as the sign said outside), was standing behind the counter, reading the newspaper. Of course he knew the deceased; the shop had been there for ten years. Whenever Mr. Lapècora passed by—in recent years it was only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—he always said hello. Such a nice man. Yes, the appliance man also used to see the Tunisian girl, and a fine-looking girl she was. Yes, the nephew, too, now and then. The nephew and his friend.

  “What friend?” asked Montalbano, taken by surprise.

  It turned out that Mr. Zircone had seen this friend at least three times. He would come with the nephew, and the two of them would go to number 28. About thirty, blondish, sort of fat. That was about all he could tell him. The license plate? Was he kidding? With these license plates nowadays you couldn’t even tell if someone was a Turk or a Christian . . . A metallic gray BMW. If he said any more, he’d be making it up.

  The inspector rang the doorbell to Lapècora’s office. No answer. Galluzzo, behind the door, was apparently trying to decide how to react.

  “It’s Montalbano.”

  The door opened at once.

  “The Tunisian girl hasn’t shown up yet,” said Galluzzo.

  “And she’s not going to. You were right, Gallù.”

  The policeman lowered his eyes, confused.

  “Who leaked the news?”

  “Jacomuzzi.”

  To pass the time during his stakeout, Galluzzo had organized himself. Having seized a pile of old issues of Il Venerdì di Repubblica, the glossy Friday magazine supplement of the Rome daily that Mr. Lapècora kept in orderly stacks on a shelf with fewer files, he had scattered them across the desktop in search of photos of more or less naked women. After tiring of looking at these, he had applied himself to solving a crossword puzzle in a yellowed old magazine.

  “Do I have to stay here all frigging day?” he asked dejectedly.

  “I’m afraid so. You’ll have to make the best of it. Listen, I’m going in back, to take advantage of Mr. Lapècora’s bathroom.”

  It wasn’t often that nature called so far off schedule for him. Perhaps the rage he’d felt the previous evening upon seeing Jacomuzzi playing the fool on television had altered his digestive rhythms.

  He sat down on the toilet seat, heaving his customary sigh of satisfaction, and at that exact moment his mind brought into focus something he’d seen a few minutes earlier but had paid absolutely no attention to.

  He leapt to his feet and raced into the next room, holding his pants and underpants at half-staff in one hand.

  “Stop!” he ordered Galluzzo, who, in fright, turned pale as death and instinctively put his hands up.

  There it was, right next to Galluzzo’s elbow: a black R in boldface, carefully cut out of some newspaper. No, not some newspaper, but a magazine: the paper was glossy.

  “What is going on?” Galluzzo managed to articulate.

  “It might be everything and it might be nothing,” replied the inspector, sounding like the Cumaean sibyl.

  He pulled up his trousers, fastened his belt, leaving the zipper down, and picked up the telephone.

  “Sorry to disturb you, signora. On what date did you say you received the first anonymous letter?”

  “On the thirteenth of June of last year.”

  He thanked her and hung up.

  “Gimme a hand, Gallù. We’re going to put all these issues of this magazine in order and see if any pages are missing.”

  They found what they were looking for: the June 7 issue, the only one from which two pages had been torn out.

  “Let’s keep going,” said the inspector.

  The July 30 issue was also missing two pages; the same for the September 1 issue.

  The three anonymous letters had been composed right there, in the office.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Montalbano said politely.

  Galluzzo heard him singing in the bathroom.

  5

  “Mr. Commissioner? Montalbano here. I’m calling to say I’m very sorry, but I can’t make it to dinner at your house tomorrow evening.”

  “Are you sorry because you won’t be able to see us, or because you’ll miss the pasta in squid ink?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, if it’s something to do with work, I can’t really—”

  “No, it’s got nothing to do with work . . . It’s that I’m about to receive an impromptu twenty-four-hour visit from my . . .”

  Fiancée? That sounded downright nineteenth-century to the inspector’s ear. Girlfriend? At their age?

  “Companion?” the commissioner suggested.

  “Right.”

  “Miss Livia Burlando must be very fond of you to undertake such a long and tedious journey to see you for just twenty-four hours.”

  Never had he so much as mentioned Livia to his superior, who—officially, at least—should have been unaware of her existence. Not even when he was in the hospital, that time he’d been shot, had the two ever met.

  “Listen,” said the commissioner, “why don’t you introduce her to us? My wife would love that. Bring her along with you tomorrow evening.”

  Saturday’s feast was safe.
r />   “Is this the inspector I’m speaking to? In person?”

  “Yes, ma’am, this is he.”

  “I wanted to tell you something about the gentleman who was murdered yesterday morning.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes and no. I never spoke to him. Actually, I only found out his name yesterday, on the TV news.”

  “Tell me, ma’am, do you consider what you have to tell me truly important?”

  “I think so.”

  “All right. Come by my office this afternoon, around five.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, tomorrow, then.”

  “I can’t tomorrow, either. I’m paralyzed.”

  “I see. Then I’ll come to you, right away, if you wish.”

  “I’m always at home.”

  “Where do you live, signora?”

  “Salita Granet 23. My name is Clementina Vasile Cozzo.”

  Walking down the Corso on his way to the appointment, he heard someone call him. It was Major Marniti, sitting at the Caffè Albanese with a younger officer.

  “Let me introduce to you Lieutenant Piovesan, commander of the Fulmine, the patrol boat that—”

  “Montalbano’s the name, pleased to meet you,” said the inspector. But he wasn’t pleased at all. He had managed to dump that case. Why did they keep dragging him back in?

  “Have a coffee with us.”

  “Actually, I’m busy.”

  “Just five minutes.”

  “All right, but no coffee.”

  He sat down.

  “You tell him,” Marniti said to Piovesan.

  “In my opinion, none of it’s true.”

  “What’s not true?”

  “I find the whole story of the fishing boat hard to swallow. We received the Santopadre’s Mayday signal at one in the morning; they gave us their position and said they were being pursued by the patrol boat Rameh.”

  “What was their position?” the inspector inquired in spite of himself.

  “Just outside our territorial waters.”

  “And you raced to the scene.”

  “Actually it should have been up to the Lampo patrol boat, which was closer.”

  “So why didn’t the Lampo go?”

  “Because an hour earlier, an SOS was sent out by a fishing boat that was taking in water from a leak. The Lampo radioed the Tuono for backup, and so a big stretch of sea was left unguarded.”

  Fulmine, Lampo, Tuono: lightning, flash, thunder. It’s always bad weather for the coast guard, thought Montalbano. But he said:

  “Naturally, they didn’t find any fishing boat in trouble.”

  “Naturally. And me, too, when I arrived at the scene, I found no trace of the Santopadre or the Rameh, which, by the way, was certainly not on duty that night. I don’t know what to think, but the whole thing stinks to me.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of smuggling.”

  The inspector stood up, threw up his hands, and shrugged:

  “Well, what can we do? The people in Trapani and Mazàra have taken over the investigation.”

  A consummate actor, Montalbano.

  “Inspector! Inspector Montalbano!” Somebody was calling him again. Was he ever going to get to see Signora, or Signorina, Clementina before nightfall? He turned around; it was Gallo who was chasing after him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I saw you walking by so I called you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Galluzzo phoned me from Lapècora’s office. I’m going to buy some sandwiches and keep him company.”

  Number 23, Salita Granet, was directly opposite number 28. The two buildings were identical.

  Clementina Vasile Cozzo was a very well-dressed seventy-year-old lady. She was in a wheelchair. Her apartment was so clean it glistened. With Montalbano following behind, she rolled herself over to a curtained window. She gestured to the inspector to pull up a chair and sit down in front of her.

  “I’m a widow,” she began, “but my son Giulio sees to all my needs. I’m retired; I used to teach elementary school. My son pays for a housekeeper to look after me and my flat. She comes three times a day, in the morning, at midday, and in the evening, when I go to bed. My daughter-in-law, who loves me like a daughter, drops by at least once a day, as does Giulio. I can’t complain, except for this one misfortune, which befell me six years ago. I listen to the radio, watch television, but most of the time I read. You see?”

  She waved her hand toward two bookcases full of books.

  So when was the signora—not signorina, that much was clear—going to get to the point?

  “I’ve just given you this preamble to let you know I’m not some old gossip who spends all her time spying on what others are up to. Still, now and then I do see things I would rather not have seen.”

  A cordless phone rang on the shelf below the woman’s armrest.

  “Giulio? Yes, the inspector’s here. No, I don’t need anything. See you later. Bye.”

  She looked at Montalbano and smiled.

  “Giulio was against our meeting. He didn’t want me getting mixed up in things that, in his opinion, were no concern of mine. For decades the respectable people here did nothing but repeat that the Mafia was no concern of theirs but only involved the people involved in it. But I used to teach my pupils that the ‘see-nothing, know-nothing’ attitude is the most mortal of sins. So now that it’s my turn to tell what I saw, I’m supposed to take a step back?”

  She fell silent, sighing. Montalbano was starting to like Clementina Vasile Cozzo more and more.

  “You’ll have to forgive me for rambling. In my forty years as a schoolteacher, I did nothing but talk and talk. I never lost the habit. Please stand.”

  Montalbano obeyed, like a good schoolboy.

  “Come here behind me and lean forward; bring your head next to mine.”

  When the inspector was close enough to whisper in her ear, the signora raised the curtain.

  They were practically inside the front room of Mr. Lapècora’s office, since the white muslin lying directly against the windowpanes was too light to act as a screen. Gallo and Galluzzo were eating their sandwiches, which were actually more like half-loaves, with a bottle of wine and two paper cups between them. Signora Clementina’s window was slightly higher than the one across the street, and by some strange effect of perspective, the two policemen and the various objects in the room looked slightly enlarged.

  “In winter, when they had the light on, you could see better,” the woman commented, letting the curtain drop.

  Montalbano returned to his chair.

  “So, signora, what did you see?” he asked.

  Clementina Vasile Cozzo told him.

  When she’d finished her story and he was already taking his leave, the inspector heard the front door open and close.

  “The housekeeper’s here,” said Signora Clementina.

  A girl of about twenty, short, stocky, and stern-looking, cast a stern glance at the intruder.

  “Everything all right?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Oh yes, everything’s fine.”

  “Then I’ll go in the kitchen and put the water on,” she said. And she exited, in no way reassured.

  “Well, signora, thank you so much . . . ,” the inspector began, standing up.

  “Why don’t you stay and eat with me?”

  Montalbano felt his stomach blanch. Signora Clementina was sweet and nice, but she probably lived on semolina and boiled potatoes.

  “Actually, I have so much to—”

  “Pina, the housekeeper, is an excellent cook, believe me. For today she’s made pasta alla Norma, you know, with fried eggplant and ricotta salata.”

  “Jesus!” said Montalbano, sitting back down.

  “And braised beef for the second course.”

  “Jesus!” repeated Montalbano.

  “Why are you so surprised?”

  “Aren’t those dish
es a little heavy for you?”

  “Why? I’ve got a stronger stomach than any of these twenty-year-old girls who can happily go a whole day on half an apple and some carrot juice. Or perhaps you’re of the same opinion as my son Giulio?”

  “I don’t have the pleasure of knowing what that is.”

  “He says it’s undignified to eat such things at my age. He considers me a bit shameless. He thinks I should live on porridges. So what will it be? Are you staying?”

  “I’m staying,” the inspector replied decisively.

  Crossing the street, he climbed three steps and knocked at the door to the office. Gallo came and opened up.

  “I relieved Galluzzo,” he explained. Then: “Did you come from the office, Chief?”

  “No, why?”

  “Fazio phoned here asking if we’d seen you. He’s looking for you. Says he’s got something important to tell you.”

  The inspector ran to the phone.

  “Sorry to bother you, Inspector, but it seems we have a serious new development. Do you remember, yesterday, you told me to put out an all-points bulletin for this Karima? Well, about half an hour ago, Mancuso of the Immigration Bureau called me from Montelusa. He says he’s managed to find out, purely by chance, where the girl lives.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “She lives in Villaseta, at 70 Via Garibaldi.”

  “I’ll be right over, we’ll go together.”

  At the main entrance to headquarters he was stopped by a well-dressed man of about forty.

  “Are you Inspector Montalbano?”

  “Yes, but I’m in a rush.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you for two hours. Your colleagues didn’t know if you were coming back or not. I’m Antonino Lapècora.”