Death at Sea: Montalbano's Early Cases Read online

  When he got back he left the order lifting the sequestration with Catarella and found Fazio waiting for him in his office.

  “Before anything else, you must answer a question: At what time do Cosentino’s boats put out?”

  “At two p.m.”

  “So they should reach their fishery by nine, fish until midnight, then return home, getting to the port of Vigàta around seven in the morning, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Now it’s your turn to talk.”

  “Cosentino’s office is on the road that runs along the edge of the port, at number twenty-two. It’s in a warehouse where they store spare parts and fishing nets. The actual office consists of a sort of loft that you reach by way of a narrow iron staircase. That’s where he’s got his radio. There’s also a bed, because sometimes Cosentino spends the night there.”

  “I’d bet the family jewels he’s going to spend the night there tonight. How can I get in there?”

  “Without authorization?”

  “Good guess.”

  “Chief, you must know that this could turn out badly for you.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “In back there’s a window that’s always half-open. But if you go, Chief, I’m going with you.”

  “No. At the most you can stay outside and be my lookout. I want you to post a guard outside the warehouse starting at seven o’clock tonight. As soon as Cosentino returns, you must inform me at home. Now go get Augello and come back.”

  When Mimì arrived, the inspector told him the conclusions he’d drawn and the plan he had in mind.

  “Just one observation,” Mimì said when he’d finished. “You haven’t the slightest idea what crime Cosentino and his men are committing. And, I’m sorry, but that’s not much to go on.”

  “Mimì, what’s certain is that they are committing a crime. What kind of crime, we won’t find out until we get our hands on those fishing boats. It’ll be like the surprise inside an Easter egg.”

  * * *

  Fazio’s call came in at eight, and at eight-thirty the inspector was pulling up behind Cosentino’s warehouse in a deserted alley. Before getting out, he took his pistol from the glove compartment and put it in his jacket pocket. Fazio was waiting for him.

  “Cosentino is inside and has locked the main door. This is the window here. It’s open enough to get through. I’ll give you a hand. Climb up onto my shoulders.”

  A moment later the inspector was sitting on the windowsill. Then he turned around and, grabbing onto the edge, slid down noiselessly.

  He was inside. The light was on. He could hear Cosentino talking to someone on the phone. Montalbano stood there and looked around. The warehouse wasn’t very big, but it was stuffed with crates, engine parts, and fishing nets. The loft area where Cosentino had his office was made of masonry and attached to the wall on the left-hand side of the building. It had a window that gave onto the interior of the warehouse. Montalbano was convinced that Cosentino wouldn’t be able to see him unless he looked out that window. Under the loft there were more crates, and the inspector decided that was the best place to go and hide. Cosentino was still talking over the phone. Montalbano moved very slowly and with great care. Finally, with a sigh he wedged himself between two crates. As soon as Cosentino had finished talking, a voice came over the radio.

  “Carlo III to home base. Carlo III to home base.”

  The voice was Sidoti’s.

  “I hear you, Carlo III.”

  “We’re at Ghabuz. Should all five of us start fishing?”

  “For the moment, yes.”

  What did that “for the moment” mean? That Cosentino was awaiting orders?

  This was going to take a while. Moving very slowly, Montalbano managed to sit down on the ground with his back against the wall. He heard Cosentino get up and was afraid he would come downstairs. Moments later, however, Cosentino sat back down. Every so often he heard him humming a tune. Ever so slowly, a dangerous sleepiness started to come over him. He defended himself by reciting in his mind whatever he could remember from the Orlando Furioso, and then The Iliad. He didn’t know how much time had passed. Then he heard Cosentino’s telephone ring. The man said: “Hello?” and then listened in silence. In the end he said, “Okay,” and hung up. A moment later he spoke over the radio.

  “Home base to Carlo III. Home base to Carlo III.”

  “Carlo III here, over. What’s the order?”

  “Pass the position I gave you over to Taibi; the Carlo II’s gonna pick up the stuff. When Taibi tells you he’s arrived, give me a call. It should take about an hour. Your four other boats should keep on trawling.”

  More time passed. Then Sidoti’s voice returned.

  “Carlo III to home base.”

  “Home base here, go ahead.”

  “Taibi informs me the Carlo II is at the buoy and starting the operation. He says he should be able to do it in half an hour.”

  “Okay, I’ll hail you in a few minutes to give you the instructions for Taibi.”

  Amidst the great silence the inspector distinctly heard Cosentino dialing a telephone number. Then he heard:

  “Hello? They’ve started the retrieval. I want to know what my trawler’s supposed to do with the stuff.”

  As Cosentino was listening to the answer, Montalbano stood up, took out his pistol, reached the foot of the iron staircase in a flash, and started climbing gingerly. Cosentino, sitting at a table with a radio and telephone on it, had his back to him.

  “All right,” said Cosentino, putting down the receiver.

  And at that moment he felt a gun barrel press against the back of his neck. He froze.

  “Turn around.”

  Cosentino turned, remaining seated, and as soon as he recognized Montalbano, his mouth dropped and stayed open.

  “Now listen closely. Nobody on the police force knows I’m here. So I can shoot and kill you and nobody would be any the wiser. After they find your body, I’ll be the one doing the investigation and I’ll blame the Sinagras. So you can consider yourself a dead man. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Cosentino nodded in affirmation. He was drooling, the saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you a question, and if you don’t answer it to my satisfaction, I’ll shoot you in the knee. And if you still don’t answer, I’ll shoot your other knee. And I’ll keep on going until you make up your mind.”

  Cosentino had turned a greenish hue.

  “What instructions were you given for the Carlo II?”

  “It’s . . . supposed to . . . stay close . . . to the buoy . . . which . . . a motorboat . . . ’ll be there . . . in about an hour and . . .”

  “And now you’re going to tell them the orders have changed and that the Carlo II should join the other four boats and they should all sail back to Vigàta. And they should put the stuff they picked up in the forehold. Now, you need to calm down before talking over the radio. Your voice has to sound the way it always does.”

  Cosentino obeyed.

  “Just out of curiosity, could you tell me what you retrieved from the bottom of the sea?”

  Cosentino opened his eyes wide in surprise.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Thirty kilos of heroin.”

  * * *

  He escorted Cosentino out of the warehouse. Fazio came running as soon as he saw them.

  “Have the reinforcements from Montelusa arrived?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then inform Inspector Augello that the five trawlers are returning to port and that in the forehold of the Carlo II he’ll find thirty kilos of heroin. Arrest all the crewmen; they’re armed and dangerous. And I’m turning Signor Cosentino over to you. Take him and put him in a holding cell.”
r />   “And what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going home to bed. I’m a little tired.”

  * * *

  He’d just spent a nasty afternoon fending off journalists wanting interviews when he had to dash off to Montelusa to receive first a tongue-lashing and then praise from the commissioner. After that he was summoned by the judge to explain everything. But he sang him only half the Mass.

  He got home at nine that evening, agitated and tired. But he had a good sleep, and showed up at the office the next morning in a good mood.

  “I need to talk to you,” said Mimì Augello, coming into his office.

  “So talk.”

  “Did you tell the judge you think Cipolla was guilty of involuntary manslaughter?”

  “I’m convinced he is.”

  “You’re wrong. I have two witnesses. Over the past month, Arnone’d been going at night to Cipolla’s house when he wasn’t there.”

  Montalbano thought about this for a moment.

  “You know what I say to you, Mimì? Never mind about the judge. He’ll decide for himself. In my opinion, Cipolla deserves a little help.”

  THE STOLEN MESSAGE

  1

  It was too late. He’d already half undressed and gone and sat on the veranda to smoke a last cigarette when he realized he no longer had so much as a drop of whisky in the house. Not that he wanted it so badly, of course. He would have been happy with just a finger’s worth, but the utter lack of it increased his desire.

  He tried to resist. What was he, an alcoholic or something? And yet, without the whisky, the cigarette he was smoking tasted downright insipid. In the end he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  Cursing the saints, he threw on some clothes as best he could, left the house, got in the car, and headed towards the bar outside of Marinella. But he’d forgotten that on Sundays it closed at nine, and so he had to continue on to Vigàta, as far as the Caffè Castiglione.

  As he was about to enter, a portly man of about fifty cut in front of him and ordered loudly to the bar girl:

  “A special coffee, Pamela!”

  “Sindona Special!” somebody sitting at a table called out.

  “Or a Pisciotta Special, which is the same thing,” said someone else.

  Everyone laughed except for the inspector and Pamela.

  For Pamela, it was probably because she hadn’t understood the reference. For Montalbano, it was because the quips sent his cojones into a spin.

  The poisoning of Michele Sindona, a banker, with a spiked coffee in his jail cell—exactly as had happened a few years earlier to Gaspare Pisciotta, the right-hand man of the infamous bandit Salvatore Giuliano—was the news of the day. By this expedient, the Italian-American banker, who was connected as much to the Mafia as to half the politicians in Italy, had been silenced forever.

  Had he talked, and revealed all the collusion between the banks, the Mafia, and the political system, it would have been worse than a maximum-force earthquake. And so they’d resorted to a not-quite-legal expedient for maintaining state secrets. And truth and justice be damned.

  “What’ll it be?” Pamela asked Montalbano lazily, while buffing the bar with a rag.

  She was a Milanese girl of twenty-five who had been working at the bar for about six months, a washed-out, slightly goatlike blonde, generally nondescript, with expressionless blue eyes like a doll’s, clearly an airhead but, to make up for it, one endowed with a considerable bust and a pair of generous, bouncy buttocks.

  When the inspector asked for an entire bottle of whisky, she remained speechless, opening her mouth wide in surprise, as if he’d asked for half the moon. She glanced at the shelf behind her, then at the inspector, and then again at the shelf. In the end she said:

  “I’ve only got a quarter bottle left of this whisky. It’s better if you ask at the cash register.”

  The cashier looked at his watch and grimaced.

  “Inspector, we’re about to close. It’s almost midnight, and I’ve got nobody to send to the warehouse. I’m sorry.”

  “Then give me the quarter bottle.”

  The calculations over the value of that quarter bottle became a little prickly. The cashier suggested they calculate by the number of shots, whereas the inspector said it should cost a quarter of the price of a whole bottle. When they finally reached an agreement, Montalbano paid up and went home, finding that his desire for whisky had completely vanished. He left the bottle on the table, smoked a cigarette while looking at the sea, then went to bed.

  * * *

  The next morning at the office went by in dead calm. He started signing papers, which were backed up so high it was frightening. At one o’clock he went out to eat at Calogero’s, then took a long walk along the jetty. He thought that if things continued this way, with nothing for him to do, it might be best for him to take a few days’ leave and go see Livia in Boccadasse. When he got back to the station, he chatted with Augello and Fazio about Sindona’s death. It seemed good ol’ Italy was destined never to change its fine, time-tested customs, no matter what government was in charge.

  It was already five o’clock when the internal phone rang. It was Catarella.

  “Chief, ’ere’d be a soitain Signor Valletta onna premisses wantin’ a talk t’yiz poissonally in poisson.”

  He didn’t know any Valletta, but with Catarella you could never be sure about people’s surnames.

  “Send him in. You guys can stay, if you want.”

  Augello said he had something to do; Fazio remained.

  Valletta’s real name was, naturally, Barletta, Totò Barletta; he was the guy who had recently taken over the Caffè Castiglione.

  “I’m worried an’ I don’ know what to do.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “Pamela, my bar girl, who normally comes in to work at two p.m., didn’t show up today.”

  To the inspector this didn’t seem like such a big deal. What could have happened to a girl so anonymous she barely seemed to exist?

  “Signor Barletta, the girl’s a legal adult, and to be honest, I don’t think being three hours late—”

  “But you have no idea how punctual an’ meticulous that girl is! She’s never a minute off! An’ if she ever happens to be a little late, she calls in to let us know. Nah, Inspector, ya gotta believe me. There’s somethin’ not right about this.”

  “Have you tried calling her yourself?”

  “Of course. The phone just rings and rings.”

  “Have you sent anyone over to Pamela’s house?”

  “I went there myself! I knocked, I called out, but nobody answered.”

  The girl was in good health, as the inspector had seen for himself the night before. But he asked anyway.

  “Does she have any kind of illness?”

  “She’s healthy as an ox.”

  “Does she have any women friends?”

  “I don’t know any.”

  “Do you know if she has a boyfriend, or someone who—”

  “No boyfriend, but all the men you could ask for. Single, married, young, old . . . She ain’t picky, she likes ’em all.”

  “Care to explain a little better?”

  “She changes men every coupla weeks at the most. Actually on average it lasts about a week. But it’s not for money. That’s just the way she is. You realize that, at this point, I should be asking half the people in town about Pamela. An’ my questions could make a few guys uncomfortable, if they’ve got a little family. Know what I mean?”

  Montalbano was sitting there, completely flabbergasted.

  What? That washed-out, ditzy, characterless blonde, who always seemed half-asleep, was some kind of legendary man-eater? He had trouble believing it.

  “Did you have some kind of argument with her?”

  “Me? Why do you ask?”<
br />
  “Well, as her work provider . . .”

  “No, no, we never had any arguments.”

  “Do you have any possible explanation for her absence?”

  “If I did, I woulda told you right away.”

  Montalbano decided to put an end to this.

  “Listen, for now it would be a bit premature, to say the least, to start looking for her. I’ll make you a deal. If by midnight tonight there’s still no sign of the girl, you can come back here tomorrow morning, and we’ll decide what to do.”

  Barletta seemed less than convinced as he left.

  “You know anything about this girl?” Montalbano asked Fazio.

  “The same things Barletta told you.”

  “Can you explain to me what these guys see in her?”

  “Apparently in bed she’s like some kind of inflatable doll, except that she’s alive. She never says no to anything. But then she gets bored fast. And when she tells some guy she’s had enough, that’s it. There’s no talking her out of it.”

  “Is it true she doesn’t do it for money?”

  “Chief, let’s get one thing straight. She doesn’t accept anything in cash, that’s true. She says she does it for her own pleasure. But give her a present, and she won’t turn it down. On the contrary. They say she’s got two safety-deposit boxes at the Banca dell’Isola. The girl’s found a gold mine in Vigàta!”

  “But this manner of dumping one guy and picking up the next, hasn’t it ever created tussles between any of the men frequenting her?”

  “There’s been a couple of incidents. The guys who got thrown out after she had no more use for them certainly weren’t happy about it. But there’s never been anything serious. Or, if there has, I haven’t heard about it.”

  “What do you think could have happened?”

  “Maybe she just ran off on some amorous fling and will be back in a couple of days. Or maybe she found someone she really flipped over. It sometimes happens to women like that.”