Treasure Hunt Page 8

Montalbano immediately remembered his embarrassment with Ingrid and felt like chewing the kid out, but he controlled himself. After all, in his own way, the guy was trying to do him a favor.

  “But Pasquà, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Din’t you want a girl?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Ya said it y’self, Inspector!”

  “I did?! I didn’t say anything over the phone! I just hung up!”

  Pasquale paused for a moment, and then exclaimed:

  “That’s when the mistake was made!”

  “What mistake?”

  “My mistake, Inspector. I thought that, since you din’t say nothin’, you was okay wit’ it. An’ then you confirmed it when you called my house.”

  “I confirmed it?”

  “Yessir, you did. My wife tol’ me you said you urgently needed those things we was talkin’ ’bout. So I thought you meant the girls.”

  Want to bet this would end up with Montalbano apologizing? Perhaps it was best to change the subject.

  “How’s your mother doing?”

  “The fever’s gone down. But then she got all these little red spots. The doctor said iss from gettin’ so scared, but then they’ll go away.”

  “All right, then, I’ll be going now.”

  “So what am I s’posta do ’bout this?”

  “About what?”

  “About this stuff with the girls. Do you still need one or are you all set with the dolls?”

  Montalbano saw red.

  “Listen, Pasquà, I’m going to tell you once and for all. Mind your own fucking business! Got that?”

  “Whatever you say, sir,” said the youth, slightly offended.

  The inspector couldn’t very well go on keeping those goddamned dolls in his house. They were liable to create more trouble yet.

  But where to put them? He thought about this for a moment and at a certain point became convinced he’d found the solution. It was so perfect, he was amazed he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

  He would bury them in the sand, digging a grave for them beside the veranda.

  He opened the closet, grabbed a shovel, went out on the beach, chose the spot, looked around to see if anyone was walking by, and then started digging.

  It wasn’t easy, because the sand, being dry and very fine, kept sliding back down and refilling the hole. After fifteen minutes of this, Montalbano took off his shirt.

  It took him an hour of hard labor, but in the end he’d managed to dig a hole the right size. But he was dead tired. He must have drunk more than half a gallon of water.

  He went and pulled the first doll out from under the bed, but when he was about to go through the French door, he froze and cursed the saints. A mere ten or so yards away, just opposite the veranda, there was now a family, father, mother, and two small children, who’d just got out of their car. They were setting up a large umbrella.

  There was nothing to be done. They looked like they intended to stay for a while.

  He carried the doll into the entrance hall, went and got the other one and put it beside her, gave himself a thorough washing, got dressed, went outside, got in the car, and backed it up as close as he could to the front door, so that he could load the dolls into it without anyone noticing. If anyone spotted him from afar, they might start yelling that he was trying to hide dead bodies in his trunk.

  He realized too late, halfway to his destination, that the car in front of him was braking for a roadblock of the carabinieri up ahead. And so he was forced to stop suddenly. As a result, the car behind him slammed hard into his, and the trunk popped open. The woman driving got out in a huff, infuriated, caught a glimpse of what was in it, let out a long howl that sounded exactly like a ferryboat siren, and then fell lengthwise to the ground, unconscious.

  Upon seeing the woman collapse like an empty sack, the carabinieri, having no idea what this was about, started running to the two cars with their weapons drawn and shouting to everyone not to move.

  In the twinkling of an eye Montalbano, who had sprained his neck in the whiplash, as they call it, was forced to get out of the car with his hands raised.

  “The woman didn’t—” he began.

  “Silence!”

  A carabinieri corporal, who’d bent down to have a look inside the trunk, came towards the inspector, giving him dirty looks.

  Meanwhile two motorists had succeeded in rousing the unconscious woman. Who, the moment she came to, leapt to her feet, pointed a finger at Montalbano, and started wailing hysterically:

  “Murderer! Murderer!”

  The inspector didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he was certainly sweating bullets. Meanwhile an endless line of cars had formed behind them, and the number of onlookers getting out of their cars and running up to see what was happening was growing at the rate of five or six per second, at a rough guess.

  “Listen, I can explain . . .” he said, turning towards the corporal.

  The young officer raised a hand, enjoining him to remain silent.

  “You’re coming with us,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Trafficking pornographic materials.”

  “I’d like to explain. . . .”

  “You can explain at the station!”

  That was all he needed.

  To be hauled into carabinieri headquarters and there, once they discovered who he was, to become the miserable butt of their jokes, to the great delight of them all . . . No, this had to be avoided at all costs. It was better to try to resolve the matter at once, even if it meant lowering himself to the now ridiculous statement, “You don’t know who I am.”

  “Listen, I’m a chief inspector of police.”

  “And I’m the pope!”

  “Can I get my papers?”

  “Yes, but move very slowly.”

  By the time he got to the office his hair was standing on end from rage and a sprained neck, and his hands were trembling.

  “Jeezis, Chief! Wha’ happened?” Catarella asked in alarm.

  “Nothing, I had a little accident. Get Fazio for me.”

  “Chief, what happened?” Fazio repeated upon seeing him.

  “Nothing, some stupid woman bumped me from behind and the carabinieri nearly arrested me.”

  And he told him the whole story.

  “Why don’t you go have your neck looked at?”

  “Later, later. This bullshit was all I needed! Listen, the two inflatable dolls are in my trunk. Have Palmisano’s doll taken back to their house using the same chest as before. Then put the other one back in that chest and leave it in the garage for me.”

  “Okay, I’ll get on that right away.”

  At last he was rid of those two big pains in the ass.

  But he was mistaken.

  Those two big pains in the ass would continue to plague him from afar. Not even King Tut’s mummy was so jinxed! Half an hour or so later, in fact, he could no longer stand the pain in his neck, but among other things was in no condition to get behind the wheel of his car. And so he had Mimì Augello take him to the emergency room at Montelusa Hospital.

  As a result, about an hour later he came out with a big white collar around his neck, the kind that completely immobilize it and make you look exactly like Frankenstein when you walk.

  He returned to headquarters and spent a good fifteen minutes holed up in his office with the door closed, cursing the saints.

  He didn’t feel like going to Enzo’s for lunch with that contraption around his neck. And anyway, would he even be able to eat and drink normally without dirtying his shirt and the tablecloth like a three-month-old baby or a drooling, senile geezer? He had better do a solo test at home first.

  At that moment Catarella called him.

  “’At’d be summon onna phone wannin’ a talk t’yiz poissonally in poisson.”

  “Someone on behalf of another?”

  Catarella didn’t get the joke.

  “No, iss not a
half a poisson but a whole one, summon callin’ for yer frenn the Sweetish lady, Signura Sciosciostrommi.”

  It must be the young guy Ingrid had mentioned to him.

  “Put him on.”

  “Inspector Montalbano.”

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Arturo Pennisi, I hope I’m not disturbing you. Ingrid said to call around this time.”

  “Would you like to meet me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you got a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you prefer my house or my office?”

  “Whatever’s most convenient for you.”

  “Then come to the station this evening around seven. All right?”

  “Excellent. Thank you so much, you’re very kind.”

  He sounded like a nice, polite kid, this Arturo.

  Since he knew what there was in the fridge from his last check—that is, next to nothing—before leaving town he stopped at a grocer’s that was closing and bought fresh bread, black olives, tuna, salami, and prosciutto. When he got home, he set the table on the veranda and then sat down to eat.

  The collar kept his head raised and didn’t allow him to look down, which meant that he couldn’t see the plate in front of him. He had to push it about a foot forward, and the problem was solved. The same went for his glass. If he wanted to fill it, he had to do so with arms extended. The third thing he realized was that he couldn’t open his mouth very wide.

  But these obstacles were not so great that they would prevent him from eating in public. After clearing the table, he went and lay down to catch up on the sleep he’d lost the previous night. But he had trouble finding the right position for his head. When he woke up at four o’clock, he phoned the office. There was no news, and so he took it easy.

  When Catarella informed him that the kid was waiting for him, he’d already been bored stiff for a good two hours. But the dead calm had created a miracle: on his desk there were no longer several tons of papers to be signed, but barely a kilo. And he’d left that kilo there on purpose; the idea of sitting in his office with absolutely nothing to do terrified him.

  Arturo Pennisi looked exactly like a twenty-year-old Harry Potter.

  He even wore the same kind of glasses. He didn’t seem the least bit awkward. In fact it was he who spoke first, and he got straight to the point.

  “I asked Ingrid to introduce us because I’m very interested in your methods of investigation.”

  “Do you want to become a policeman?”

  “No.”

  “Are you studying criminology?”

  “No.”

  Montalbano gave him a questioning look, and the youth felt obliged to add:

  “I’m in my second year at the university, in philosophy. I want to become an epistemologist.”

  He seemed to have a clear idea of what he wanted, but he expressed it without the enthusiasm of the kids his age who’d already charted their course and wanted to follow it to the end.

  But, if he remembered correctly, wasn’t epistemology the philosophy of knowledge? What the hell did the philosophy of knowledge have to do with homicide?

  “But why are you so interested in my methods of investigation, as you call them?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. I’m interested in the way your brain functions when you’re conducting an investigation.”

  “Two plus two equals four.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “That’s a summary of how my brain functions.”

  For the first time, Harry Potter smiled.

  “Would you be offended if I said I don’t believe you?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I assure you—”

  “I hope you don’t mind if I insist. May I cite an example that directly concerns you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Ingrid told me how the two of you met.”

  “And so?”

  “For you, Ingrid should have represented the number four—that is, the sum of two plus two.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “She told me that she had been set up to appear like the prime suspect of a crime, or something like that, but that you, a police inspector, refused to lend credence to the evidence pointing to her guilt. Therefore in that case, you didn’t believe that two plus two equaled four.”

  Smart kid, no doubt about that.

  “Well, you see, in that case . . .”

  “In that case, if I may, you realized at a certain point in the investigation that blindly following a rule of arithmetic would lead you astray. So you took another path. And that’s what interests me. When and how this sort of deviation occurs in your mind. In short, how did your brain find the courage to abandon the solid ground of evidence and venture into the quicksands of hypothesis?”

  “Sometimes I can’t even explain it myself. But what, exactly, do you want from me?”

  “I would like for you to allow me to follow you from up close. I promise you I won’t be a bother. I wouldn’t interfere in any way, believe me. I would only observe you in silence.”

  “I don’t doubt that, but this is not a good time for it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because at the moment, I haven’t a single investigation ongoing. Tell you what: leave me a telephone number, and if anything interesting comes up, I’ll let you know.”

  The look of childish disappointment that came over Arturo’s face made the inspector feel sorry for him. He looked like a little boy who’d been denied some chocolate. The truth was that Montalbano really liked him. And it had been a while that he’d been feeling the need to talk to an intelligent person. So he wanted to give him a sort of consolation prize.

  “Listen, it’s true that something strange has been going on lately. But I should tell you straight off that it doesn’t involve a crime or anything.”

  The kid looked like a starving dog who spots a bone with meat still attached to it.

  “Anything’s fine with me.”

  Montalbano pulled out of his pocket the three small sheets of paper with the poems about the treasure hunt, but not the other pages with his solutions. He told him what had happened so far, concluding:

  “All right, these are the originals, which I want you to return to me. Solve one of the riddles on your own and then we can talk about it.”

  Arturo very nearly kissed his hands.

  The next day at the station it seemed as if absolutely nothing was going to happen, as had been the case for over a month. From eight o’clock in the morning until one—that is, over a five-hour period—Catarella received only one phone call, but even that was from someone who wanted to know what he had to do to enter the police force.

  At this point Montalbano, who’d been feeling very hungry since noon, realized he had a problem.

  Doing nothing the whole blessed day, lolling about, sitting in the office reading a whole year’s worth of Sunday supplements of the Milanese Corriere della Sera from 1920 that he’d bought from a street vendor, or staring fixedly at the wall in front of him in a state somewhere between yogic meditation and catatonia, plunged him into a sort of depressive melancholy. And so, as a way of warding off depression, his body instinctively began to feel a wolflike hunger that he was powerless to resist.

  That very morning he’d had to loosen the belt on his trousers by a notch, a sign that his waist had grown disturbingly in circumference. The immediate upshot was that he’d quickly taken all his clothes off again, removed his plastic collar, slipped on a bathing suit and gone for an hour-long swim despite the fact that the water was so gelid he’d nearly had a heart attack.

  At Enzo’s trattoria, though he’d resolved to keep within reasonable limits of gluttony, he cut loose with a dish of swordfish involtini and ordered a second helping, even though he’d already scarfed down a broad variety of seafood antipasti and a heaping plate of spaghetti alle vongole.

  A walk along the jetty t
herefore become a dire necessity, along with a little rest on the usual flat rock, accompanied by the requisite cigarette.

  Around six o’clock the phone rang. It was Catarella.

  “Chief, ’at’t be ’at kid ’at came yisterday, the one sint by Signura Sciosciostrommi.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Chief, I can’t put’im on ’cuz the subject in quession is onna premisses.”

  “Then show him in.”

  That way, he could chat with Arturo until it was time to go home.

  “I didn’t expect you back so soon,” said Montalbano.

  “Since I was in the area, I thought I’d try. Sorry I didn’t call before coming.”

  “But do you live in Montelusa or—”

  “No, I live in Vigàta. My parents live in Montelusa. I live alone in an apartment here in Vigàta. I like the sea.”

  Another point in the kid’s favor.

  “Have you had a chance to look at—”

  “Yes, I’ve solved the riddles. Pretty basic stuff.”

  He took the pages out of his jacket pocket, laid them down on the desk, and continued.

  “I didn’t go to the Marinella Bar, which I assumed to be pointless, but to make up for it I did find the wooden shack up on the hill, at the end of Via dei Mille, and I even went inside.”

  “Did you notice the unusual wallpaper?”

  Harry Potter smiled.

  “Your challenger certainly seems to be creating a cult of personality around you.”

  “Are all the photos still up?”

  “Yes, all of them. Why?”

  “I dunno, just wondering. Got any ideas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Well, it’s clear that your challenger wants things to appear a certain way. How shall I put it? He wants them to seem more innocent than they really are. In my opinion, the simplicity of the poetry, which you could even call stupidity, is intentional.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’m quite convinced. There’s a striking contrast between the disarming childishness of the little poems and the complex technological effort required to make those photos in the shack.”

  “Maybe there are two of them, one who writes the letters and the other—”