The Safety Net Read online

  A waiter brought water, bread, and a carafe of wine, and asked whether they wanted antipasti and, if so, what kind, since they had a choice of sixteen different imaginative preparations.

  “We’d like to try all sixteen,” said Montalbano.

  Meanwhile another waiter who moved like a ballet dancer poured out some sparkling wine.

  Taking his glass in hand, Montalbano stood up. Bewildered, Ingrid and the director did likewise.

  “I propose a toast,” the inspector said, in a tone befitting a grand occasion, “to the sistering of our two fine cities, and to the success of your film!”

  He smiled at the Swede, smiled at Ingrid, drank his wine, and sat back down.

  “Prosit!” said the other two, drinking and sitting down as well.

  The blond bear seemed impressed with the brief ceremony and started speaking very fast. The gist of his speech, in Ingrid’s translation, was that he was apologizing for not dressing up for their dinner, and for any inconvenience the filming may have caused the townsfolk. Montalbano granted him absolution with a half smile, and at that moment the waiters began serving the antipasti.

  “Explain to him that this is only the beginning. Afterwards there’s going to be a first and second course,” the inspector said to Ingrid.

  Despite his prior declaration of not being hungry, the blond bear filled his plate.

  At that exact moment the inspector’s cell phone started ringing in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  Montalbano pretended not to hear it, and kept on eating.

  “But isn’t that your cell phone . . . ?” asked Ingrid.

  “Mine? . . . Ah, you’re right. Excuse me for just a minute,” he said, pulling it out and bringing it to his ear.

  “Yes, Montalbano here.”

  Then, all at once, in a harsh tone:

  “And I had also asked you not to disturb me for any reason whatsoever during—”

  He stopped and listened.

  “Very serious? What? Excuse me just a minute.”

  He turned to his table guests.

  “I’m very sorry.”

  And he brought the phone back to his ear.

  “So tell me how serious.”

  He sat there listening for a moment, then shouted loudly:

  “No! No!!!”

  And he sprang to his feet with such violence that he knocked the chair he was sitting in to the floor.

  The result was that all the customers turned around to look at him as he kept on shouting.

  “But when did this happen? . . . How?! But is he in grave condition? Did they pump his stomach? Has his wife been informed? Try to keep the reporters away . . . Okay, okay, I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  He bent down to pick up his chair, set it back on its feet with a crash, and sat down. After wiping his face with a handkerchief, he poured himself half a glass of wine and drank it. His hands were trembling slightly.

  With a brusque movement, he pushed away the plate in front of him. He was frowning darkly.

  The blond bear had turned into a statue. Only his eyes were moving, darting back and forth between Ingrid and Montalbano.

  Under the table, the inspector knocked his knee against Ingrid’s, to get her to intervene.

  “But what happened?” she immediately asked.

  The inspector sighed before speaking.

  “It’s an extremely delicate matter.”

  “Oh, come on, tell me! Please?”

  “I’ll tell you, but it has to remain between the two of us. Okay?”

  He looked her in the eye.

  Ingrid translated his look: As soon as I leave, tell the Swede everything.

  “Okay.”

  “Mimì tried to kill himself.”

  Even though she knew perfectly well it was all a put-on, Ingrid’s jaw dropped.

  “Mimì?! Why?”

  Montalbano looked around and began speaking in a soft voice, practically into Ingrid’s ear.

  “Less than a year ago, following a traumatic experience, Mimì realized he could no longer . . . well, he could no longer go with a woman. He tried every possible remedy, to no avail. Shortly before the film crews came to town, he went to Berlin to be examined by a famous specialist . . . And he just now received the answer on which he’d placed all his hopes. No dice. He’ll never be the same as before. But now I have to go. You two should stay. Please give my apologies to the director.”

  He stood up, held out his hand to the Swede, who looked lost at sea, kissed Ingrid good-bye, and headed quickly for the door.

  Just before exiting the establishment, he turned around to look.

  Ingrid was talking excitedly with the director, who was listening attentively.

  She was almost certainly telling him the whopping lie he’d made up about Mimì, and, sure as death, the guy was gobbling it up, hook, line, and sinker.

  The first thing the inspector did when he got home was to take off his fancy suit and put on a pair of old jeans.

  Then, since there was no reason to carry on with his Hamletic doubts, he went and opened the refrigerator. Which proved woefully devoid of any sign of Adelina’s arts. In a single bound he lurched towards the oven and opened it.

  O wondrous sight! O scent of the sublime!

  Before him sat a casserole of pasta ’ncasciata, enough for four hungry stomachs.

  As the pasta was warming up, he set the table on the veranda.

  The phone rang. At that hour it could only be Livia. But it was Ingrid instead.

  “Where are you?” the inspector asked her.

  “In Vigàta. I just dropped the director off at his hotel.”

  “Did he buy it?”

  “I’ll say! But, you know what? You were great! You’re a fantastic actor! I very nearly thought you were being serious!”

  “Come on, tell me a little more.”

  “As soon as you left, I told him your little story about Mimì. He didn’t even give me time to finish before he was already on his feet begging me to drive him back to his hotel so he could make up with Maj. He had me driving a hundred miles an hour!”

  “Thanks for cooperating.”

  “Thanks my ass!”

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that I’m hungry as a wolf and the restaurant is closed now.”

  “There’s a remedy for everything. Just come over to my place.”

  Ingrid couldn’t believe it.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  She’d certainly earned a dish of pasta ’ncasciata, at the very least, thought the inspector, as he set another place at the table.

  * * *

  An extra ten minutes in the oven might just ruin the pasta, so he went into the kitchen and turned it off.

  Then he remembered that for the past two days Livia had been pouting and not answering his phone calls. True, he’d behaved badly, changing his mind about going to see her in Boccadasse. He’d been a complete asshole, in fact, but Livia was taking this too far, and the problem had to be resolved before it turned nasty.

  On the other hand, if she picked up, he had to be careful about what he said. It really wasn’t advisable to tell her the truth; it would only make matters worse. Nor could he say it had anything to do with work at the station, since he’d already told her it was all quiet. Then he had an idea. Which he turned over and over in his mind. It seemed to hold up. And was as appropriate as could be.

  He grabbed a chair, sat down, grabbed the phone, dialed Livia’s number. Ten rings, no answer. He called again. Livia answered on the ninth ring.

  “What do you want?”

  He didn’t get discouraged. He had to disarm her at once by appealing to her maternal instincts and overwhelming her with lies.

  “Livia, I beg you pl
ease to listen to me without interrupting, because I’m extremely tired, have a mild fever, haven’t had any dinner, and am already in bed.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Encouraging, no doubt about it. He boldly continued:

  “The other day I already had my ticket for Genoa when—”

  Livia couldn’t hold back.

  “—When something came up. And that’s what I won’t forgive you for, Salvo. You always give whatever comes up priority over me.”

  “You’re wrong. It wasn’t something that came up for me as a police inspector, but for me as a friend of Mimì Augello and Beba. In a terrible fit of jealousy, Beba attacked Mimì and sent him to the hospital.”

  “What?” asked Livia, stunned.

  “Look, you have no idea what an effort I had to make to reestablish peace between those two . . . Beba even wanted to get a lawyer . . . I sweated through I don’t know how many shirts and went crazy with the stress, but, in the end, I succeeded.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me anything about this sooner?”

  “You wouldn’t answer the phone or return my calls!”

  “That’s true. I’m sorry, darling, it was really silly on my part.”

  “Here I am!” Ingrid shouted, coming in from the veranda. “Is dinner ready?”

  The click of Livia hanging up in rage rang in Montalbano’s ear like a rifle shot.

  6

  He spent a useless morning at the station. He didn’t even have anyone to chat with, since he’d sent Mimì Augello in his place to a pain-in-the-ass meeting at the commissioner’s office, and Fazio’d had to dash off to the fish market because of a brawl.

  Somehow or other lunchtime arrived. He got to Enzo’s early. The big room was empty; the crew was still at work. And it must also have been early for ragioniere Butera, and so Montalbano ate slowly and blissfully alone in the back room.

  He took his stroll along the jetty, smoked his customary cigarette while sitting on the flat rock, then turned back.

  At three o’clock sharp, he rang the doorbell of Engineer Sabatello, carrying under his arm the box with the film reels and projector, which he’d brought with him from the station.

  The door was opened by a tall woman of about sixty, well-groomed, whose face broke into a smile upon seeing him.

  “Inspector Montalbano! What a pleasure! I’m Clara Sabatello. Please come in.”

  The inspector entered and heard a male voice call out:

  “Is that the inspector, Clara?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please bring him to me.”

  “Come,” said the woman. “Unfortunately, he stumbled yesterday and got a bad sprain, and today he can hardly move.”

  They went into a study with a desk, a small drafting table, a sofa, and two armchairs. Sabatello was on the sofa, his left leg extended and resting on a pouf, the foot wrapped up. Beside him were two sturdy canes.

  “You should have let me know,” said Montalbano. “We could have easily postponed . . .”

  “Postpone? For a trifle like this? I wouldn’t hear of it! Please sit down, and you, Clara, please go and make us two nice cups of coffee.”

  “I brought you back the reels and the projector,” said the inspector, taking the box and holding it out with both hands.

  “You don’t need them anymore?” the engineer asked with a note of disappointment in his voice.

  “I had them copied onto a DVD.”

  “Please put the box on the desk and come and sit down.”

  Montalbano settled into the armchair nearest Sabatello. Who smiled and said:

  “I’m all yours.”

  “Let me start by saying,” the inspector began, “that the story you told me, and the reels I watched repeatedly, have piqued my curiosity more than you can imagine.”

  “I was sure they would,” said Sabatello.

  “And so I decided to go and have a look at the villa. Not knowing its exact location, I asked ragioniere Butera, whom I believe you know, and who customarily eats at the same trattoria as I do. Butera in fact turned out to be a real gold mine of information on your family.”

  “I’m sure the man knows more about my family than I do,” said Sabatello.

  “So I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that the wall we see in the films is part of a small warehouse that used to stand about fifteen to twenty feet behind the villa, opposite the ground-floor bathroom window.”

  “The toolshed!” exclaimed Sabatello. “That’s where Papa used to keep everything he needed for maintaining the garden and the fields . . .”

  “I can also tell you,” the inspector continued, “that all the reels your father filmed were shot by placing the camera on the bathroom windowsill.”

  “What you’re saying is very interesting,” said Sabatello. “But it doesn’t answer the fundamental question: Why?”

  “You’re right. Answering that question won’t be easy. We need to know more. Butera mentioned to me the strong bond between your father and his twin brother, Emanuele. Do you remember anything about that?”

  “I wasn’t quite six years old when Zio Emanuele . . . when Zio Emanuele died, Inspector. But I still have some vivid memories of that time. For example, sometimes at the dinner table my uncle would refuse to eat. He would whimper, get all agitated, and push the plate away. And so Papa would then sit down between Mamma and his brother, put his arm around him, talk in his ear, bring the plate back in front of him, and, ever so slowly, my uncle would start eating. One day I got jealous and said I wasn’t hungry, just to see what Papa’s reaction would be.”

  “And how did he react?”

  “He looked at me coldly and said that if I didn’t eat the pasta at the very least, I was going to get a spanking.”

  “So Emanuele was entirely dependent on his brother?”

  “Entirely, for everything. Would you do me a favor? Could you please hand me that green album that you see there on the desk?”

  Montalbano got up, grabbed the album, handed it to him, and returned to his chair. Sabatello thumbed through it, then handed it back to the inspector, open to a certain page.

  “Have a look at the first photo. The man on the left is Papa, and the other man is Zio Emanuele.”

  Their faces were the same, identical. Same hairline, same nose, same mouth. Both faces were serious and looking at each other. Francesco’s eyes had an intense, warm, loving expression, whereas Emanuele had the eyes of a grateful dog happy just to be patted on the head by his master. The picture made a strong impression on Montalbano. He’d never seen that sort of look in a man’s eyes before. He shut the album and set it down on an arm of his easy chair.

  He didn’t quite know what to say. Sabatello spoke first.

  “They were that way even as children, according to my mother, who’d been told by my grandmother. They were inseparable, to the point that in town they were nicknamed ‘the Siamese Sabatellos.’ And you know what else? Papa had always wanted to be buried alongside Emanuele. And since the niches in the family vault were arranged one on top of the other, the whole thing had to be restructured.”

  “Forgive me for prying,” said Montalbano, “but your mother . . . She must have been a very generous woman . . . Didn’t she ever rebel against her situation, which sort of pushed her into the background?”

  “As far as I know, Mamma always accepted the situation. Which she must have already known about when they got engaged, actually. She herself told me, many years later, that she even quarreled with her parents, who weren’t terribly keen on the fact that Zio Emanuele was living in what used to be their villa.”

  Signora Clara came in, served the coffee, and then discreetly withdrew.

  “What do you remember about Emanuele’s suicide?”

  “Some vague, unfocused images. I’d gone off to kindergarten. My mother’d take
n me, since she knew how to drive . . . When Gasparino later came and picked me up, I—”

  “I’m sorry, who’s Gasparino?”

  “Gasparino Sidoti. He was our factotum and was about twenty years old at the time. He helped Papa in the yard, in the vegetable garden . . . Anyway, I remember the darkness, the shuttered windows, the drawn curtains, the contorted faces . . . Mamma hugged me and told me Zio Emanuele was dead, and then took me upstairs, into the guest room, ordering me not to come back downstairs for any reason. When she left I started crying. I was confused and scared . . . Not because my uncle had died—what did I know about death? But because of all the mysterious bustle about the house, and being left alone in that room . . . Then the door opened and Papa came in. The moment I saw him I felt reassured.”

  “It’s pretty normal,” Montalbano observed, “for a small child, left alone—”

  “No, I mean I felt reassured to see him looking untroubled. I remember that clearly.”

  “Do you mean resigned?”

  “No, no, he seemed untroubled, serene. His face wasn’t etched with terror like Mamma’s. It was normal. As if nothing at all had happened. He sat down, took me into his lap, and started speaking to me softly, the way he used to do with Zio Emanuele. And this made me happy, because I thought that now that my uncle was gone, all his attention would be focused on me . . .”

  “Do you remember what he said?”

  “No. I vaguely recall a few words . . . the necessity of life and the necessity of death . . . I was too small to understand, and maybe he didn’t even want to be understood . . . It was a kind of soliloquy . . .”

  “When did you learn that your uncle had committed suicide?”

  “Much later, when I was already sixteen. I happened to overhear a conversation between my mother and a cousin of hers from Palermo . . .”

  “What did she say?”

  “That Papa, Zio Emanuele, and Gasparino were at the villa that morning, and when Papa and Gasparino went to check on something in a field beside the villa, Zio Emanuele, left momentarily alone, went and got the revolver Papa kept in the bedside table and shot himself.”