The Shape of Water Page 5

  “So how are they supposed to let him know? By phone?”

  “It’s no joke. He told each one of them to give a different signal—I don’t know, like putting a green cloth in the window or hanging a piece of newspaper from the front door, things like that. He’s shrewd: that way he can see without being seen.”

  “Fine, but I think—”

  “Let me finish. From the way he spoke and acted, the people he approached concluded it was best to do as he said. Then we found out that some other people, at the same time, were making the same rounds in all the towns of the province, Vigàta included. Therefore, whoever lost that necklace wants it back.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. So why, in your opinion, should this interest me?”

  “Because the man told a certain receiver in Montelusa that the necklace might have been lost in the Pasture Sunday night or Monday morning. Does it interest you now?”

  “Up to a point.”

  “I know, it may be only a coincidence and have nothing whatsoever to do with Luparello’s death.”

  “Thanks anyway. Now go back home. It’s late.”

  The coffee was ready. Montalbano poured himself a cup, and Anna naturally took advantage of the opportunity.

  “None for me?”

  With the patience of a saint, the inspector filled another cup and handed it to her. He liked Anna, but couldn’t she understand he was with another woman?

  “No,” Anna said suddenly, putting down her coffee.

  “No what?”

  “I don’t want to go home. Would you really mind so much if I stayed here with you?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’m too good a friend of your father. I’d feel like I was doing him wrong.”

  “What bullshit!”

  “It may be bullshit, but that’s the way it is. And anyway, you seem to be forgetting that I’m in love, really in love, with another woman.”

  “Who’s not here.”

  “She’s not here, but it’s as if she were. Now don’t be silly and don’t say silly things. You’re unlucky, Anna; you’re up against an honest man. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  ~

  He couldn’t fall asleep. Anna had been right to warn him that the coffee would keep him awake. But something else was getting on his nerves: if that necklace had indeed been lost at the Pasture, then surely Gegè must also have been told about it. But Gegè had been careful not to mention it, and surely not because it was a meaningless detail.

  6

  At five-thirty in the morning, after having spent the night repeatedly getting up and going back to bed, Montalbano decided on a plan for Gegè, one that would indirectly pay him back for his silence about the lost necklace and his joke about the visit he’d made that afternoon at the Pasture. He took a long shower, drank three coffees in succession, then got in his car. When he arrived in Rabàto, the oldest quarter of Montelusa, destroyed thirty years earlier by a landslide and now consisting mostly of ruins refurbished higgledy-piggledy and damaged, ramshackle hovels inhabited by illegal aliens from Tunisia and Morocco, he headed through narrow, tortuous alleyways toward Piazza Santa Croce.

  The church stood whole amid the ruins. He took from his pocket the sheet of paper Gegè had given him: Carmen, known in the real world as Fatma Ben Gallud, Tunisian, lived at number 48. It was a miserable catojo, a small ground-floor room with a little window in the wooden door to allow the air to circulate. He knocked: no answer. He knocked harder, and this time a sleepy voice asked:

  “Who that?”

  “Police,” Montalbano fired back. He had decided to play rough, catching her still drowsy from the sudden awakening. Certainly Fatma, because of her work at the Pasture, must have slept even less than he. The door opened, the woman covering herself in a large beach towel that she held up at breast level with one hand.

  “What you want?”

  “To talk to you.”

  She stood aside. In the catojo there was a double bed half unmade, a little table with two chairs, and a small gas stove. A plastic curtain separated the toilet and sink from the rest of the room. Everything was so clean and orderly it sparkled. But the smell of the woman and her cheap perfume so filled the room that one could hardly breathe.

  “Let me see your residence permit.”

  As if in fear, the woman let the towel fall as she brought her hands to her face to cover her eyes. Long legs, slim waist, flat belly, high, firm breasts—a real woman, in short, the type you see in television commercials. After a moment or two, Montalbano realized, from Fatma’s expectant immobility, that what he was witnessing was not fear, but an attempt to reach the most obvious and common of arrangements between man and woman.

  “Get dressed.”

  There was a metal wire hung from one corner of the room to another. Fatma walked over to it: broad shoulders, perfect back, small, round buttocks.

  With a body like that, thought Montalbano, I bet she’s been through it all.

  He imagined the men lining up discreetly in certain offices, with Fatma earning “the indulgence of the authorities” behind closed doors, as he had happened several times to read about, an indulgence of the most self-indulgent kind. Fatma put on a light cotton dress over her naked body and remained standing in front of Montalbano.

  “So . . . your papers?”

  The woman shook her head no. And she began to weep in silence.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the inspector said.

  “I not afraid. I very unlucky.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you wait few days, I no here no more.”

  “And where did you want to go?”

  “Man from Fela he like me, I like him, he say Sunday he marry me. I believe him.”

  “The man who comes to see you every Saturday and Sunday?”

  Fatma’s eyes widened.

  “How you know?”

  She started crying again.

  “But now everything finish.”

  “Tell me something. Is Gegè going to let you go with this man from Fela?”

  “Man talk to Signor Gegè, man pay.”

  “Listen, Fatma, pretend I never came to see you here. I only want to ask you one thing, and if you answer me truthfully, I will turn around and walk out of here, and you can go back to sleep.”

  “What you want to know?”

  “Did they ask you, at the Pasture, if you’d found anything?”

  The woman’s eyes lit up.

  “Oh, yes! Signor Filippo come—he Signor Gegè’s man—tell us if we find gold necklace with heart of diamond, we give it straight to him. If not find, then look.”

  “And do you know if it was found?”

  “No. Also tonight, all girls look.”

  “Thank you,” said Montalbano, heading for the door. In the doorway he stopped and turned round to look at Fatma.

  “Good luck.”

  So Gegè had been foiled. What he had so carefully neglected to mention to Montalbano, the inspector had managed to find out anyway. And from what Fatma had just told him, he drew a logical conclusion.

  ~

  When he arrived at headquarters at the crack of dawn, the officer on guard gave him a look of concern.

  “Anything wrong, chief ?”

  “Nothing at all,” he reassured him. “I just woke up early.”

  He had bought the two Sicilian newspapers and sat down to read them. With a great wealth of detail, the first announced that the funeral services for Luparello would be held the following day. The solemn ceremony would take place at the cathedral, officiated by the bishop himself. Special security measures would be taken, due to the anticipated arrival of numerous important personages come to express their condolences and pay their last respects. At latest count they would include two government ministers, four undersecretaries, eighteen members of parliament between senators and deputies, and a throng of regional deputies. And so city police, carabinieri, coast guard agents, and tr
affic cops would all be called into action, to say nothing of personal bodyguards and other even more personal escorts, of which the newspaper mentioned nothing, made up of people who certainly had some connection with law and order, but from the other side of the barricade atop which stood the law. The second newspaper more or less repeated the same things, while adding that the casket had been set up in the atrium of the Luparello mansion and that an endless line of people were waiting to express their thanks for everything the deceased had dutifully and impartially done—when still alive, of course.

  Meanwhile Sergeant Fazio had arrived, and Montalbano spoke to him at great length about a number of investigations currently under way. No phone calls came in from Montelusa. Soon it was noon, and the inspector opened a file containing the deposition of the two garbage collectors concerning their discovery of the corpse. He copied down their addresses, said goodbye to the sergeant and the other policemen, and told them they’d hear back from him in the afternoon.

  If Gegè’s men had talked to the whores about the necklace, they must certainly have said something to the garbage collectors as well.

  ~

  Number 28 Gravet Terrace was a three-story building, with intercom at the front door. A mature woman’s voice answered.

  “I’m a friend of Pino’s.”

  “My son’s not here.”

  “Didn’t he get off work?”

  “He got off, but he went somewhere else.”

  “Could you let me in, signora? I only want to leave him an envelope. What floor is it?”

  “Top floor.”

  A dignified poverty: two rooms, eat-in kitchen, bathroom. One could calculate the square footage the minute one entered. Pino’s mother, fiftyish and modestly attired, showed him in.

  “Pino’s room’s this way.”

  A small room full of books and magazines, a little table covered with paper by the window.

  “Where did Pino go?”

  “To Raccadali. He’s auditioning for a part in a play by Martoglio, the one about St. John getting his head cut off. Pino really likes the theater, you know.”

  Montalbano approached the little table. Apparently Pino was writing a play; on a sheet of paper he had lined up a column of dialogue. But when he read one of the names, the inspector felt a kind of shock run through him.

  “Signora, could I please have a glass of water?”

  As soon as the woman left, he folded up the page and put it in his pocket.

  “The envelope?” Pino’s mother reminded him when she returned, handing him his water.

  Montalbano then executed a perfect pantomime, one that Pino, had he been present, would have admired: he searched first in the pockets of his trousers, then more hastily in his jacket, whereupon he gave a look of surprise and finally slapped his forehead noisily.

  “What an idiot! I forgot the envelope at the office! Just give me five minutes, signora, I’ll be right back.”

  Slipping into his car, he took out the page he’d just stolen, and what he read there darkened his mood.

  He restarted the engine and left. 102 Via Lincoln. In his deposition Saro had even specified the apartment number. With a bit of simple math, the inspector figured that the surveyor/garbage collector must live on the sixth floor. The front door to the block was open, but the elevator was broken. He had to climb up six flights of stairs but had the satisfaction of having guessed right: a polished little plaque there read BAL

  DASSARE MONTAPERTO. A tiny young woman answered the door with a baby in her arms and a worried look in her eye.

  “Is Saro home?”

  “He went to the drugstore to buy some medicine for the baby, but he’ll be right back.”

  “Is he sick?”

  Without answering, she held her arm out slightly to let him see. The little thing was sick, and how: sallow, hollow-cheeked, with big, already grown-up eyes staring angrily at him. Montalbano felt terrible. He couldn’t stand to see children suffer.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “The doctors can’t explain it. Who are you, sir?”

  “The name’s Virduzzo. I’m the accountant at Splendor.”

  “Come on in.”

  The woman felt reassured. The apartment was a mess, it being all too clear that Saro’s wife was too busy always attending to the little boy to look after the house.

  “What do you want with Saro?”

  “I believe I made a mistake, on the minus side, on the amount of his last paycheck. I’d like to see the stub.”

  “If that’s all you need,” said the woman, “there’s no need to wait for Saro. I can get you the stub myself.

  Come.”

  Montalbano followed her, ready with another excuse to stay until the husband returned. There was a nasty smell in the bedroom, as of rotten milk. The woman tried to open the top drawer of a commode but was unable, having only one free hand to use, as she was holding the baby in her other arm.

  “I can do it, if you like,” said Montalbano.

  The woman stepped aside, and the inspector opened the drawer and saw that it was full of papers, bills, prescriptions, receipts.

  “Where are the payment envelopes?”

  At that moment Saro entered the bedroom. They hadn’t heard him come in; the front door to the apartment had been left open. The instant he saw Montalbano rummaging in the drawer, he was convinced the inspector was searching their house for the necklace.

  He turned pale, started trembling, and leaned against the doorjamb.

  “What do you want?” he barely managed to articulate.

  Frightened by her husband’s obvious terror, the woman spoke before Montalbano had a chance to answer.

  “But it’s Virduzzo, the accountant!” she almost yelled.

  “Virduzzo? That’s Inspector Montalbano!”

  The woman tottered, and Montalbano rushed forward to support her, fearing the baby might end up on the floor together with his mother. He helped sit her down on the bed. Then he spoke, the words coming out of his mouth without the intervention of his brain, a phenomenon that had come over him before and which one imaginative journalist had once called “that flash of intuition which now and then strikes our policeman.”

  “Where’d you put the necklace?” he said.

  Saro stepped forward, stiff from struggling to remain standing on his pudding-legs, went over to his bedside table, opened the drawer, and pulled out a packet wrapped in newspaper, which he threw on the bed. Montalbano picked it up, went into the kitchen, sat down, and unwrapped the packet. The jewel was at once vulgar and very fine: vulgar in its design and conception, fine in its workmanship and in the cut of the diamonds with which it was studded. Saro, meanwhile, had followed him into the kitchen.

  “When did you find it?”

  “Early Monday morning, at the Pasture.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “No, sir, just my wife.”

  “And has anyone come to ask if you found a necklace like this?”

  “Yes, sir. Filippo di Cosmo came. He’s one of Gegè Gullotta’s men.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said I hadn’t found anything.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “Yes, sir, I think so. Then he said that if I happened to find it, I should give it to him right away and not mess around, because it was a very sensitive matter.”

  “Did he promise you anything?”

  “Yes, sir. A deadly beating if I found it and kept it, fifty thousand lire if I found it and turned it over to him.”

  “What did you plan to do with the necklace?”

  “I wanted to pawn it. That’s what Tana and I decided.”

  “You weren’t planning to sell it?”

  “No, sir, it didn’t belong to us. We saw it like something somebody had lent to us; we didn’t want to profit from it.”

  “We’re honest people,” said the wife, who’d just come in, wiping her eyes.

  “What were you go
ing to do with the money?”

  “We wanted to use it to treat our son. We could have taken him far away from here, to Rome, Milan—

  anywhere there might be doctors who know something.”

  They were all silent a few moments. Then Montalbano asked the woman for two sheets of paper, which she tore out of a notebook they used for shopping expenses. Holding out one of the sheets to Saro, the inspector said:

  “Make me a drawing that shows the exact spot where you found the necklace. You’re a land surveyor, aren’t you?”

  As Saro was sketching, on the other sheet Montalbano wrote: I the undersigned, Salvo Montalbano, Chief Inspector of the Police Department of Vigàta (province of Montelusa), hereby declare having received on this day, from Mr. Baldassare “Saro” Montaperto, a solid-gold necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, also solid gold but studded with diamonds, found by Mr. Montaperto around the area known as “the Pasture” during the course of his work as ecological agent. In witness whereof, And he signed, but paused a moment to reflect before adding the date at the bottom. Then he made up his mind and wrote, “Vigàta, September 9, 1993.” Meanwhile Saro had finished. They exchanged sheets.

  “Perfect,” said the inspector, looking over the detailed drawing.

  “Here, however, the date is wrong,” Saro noticed.

  “The ninth was last Monday. Today is the eleventh.”

  “No, nothing wrong there. You brought that necklace into my office the same day you found it.

  You had it in your pocket when you came to police headquarters to tell me you’d found Luparello dead, but you didn’t give it to me till later because you didn’t want your fellow worker to see. Is that clear?”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “Take good care of this statement.”

  “What are you going to do now? Arrest him?”

  asked the woman.

  “Why? What’s he done?” asked Montalbano, standing up.

  7

  Montalbano was well respected at the San Calogero trattoria, not so much because he was police inspector as because he was a good customer with discerning tastes. Today they fed him some very fresh striped mullet, fried to a delicate crisp and drained on absorbent paper. After coffee and a long stroll on the eastern jetty, he went back to the office. Fazio got up from his desk as soon as he saw him.