“Get that woman out of here.”
“But she’s his mother, Chief.”
“She can go cry at home. She’s only in the way here. Who informed her? Did she hear the shot and come running?”
“No, sir. She couldn’t have heard the shot, since she lives in Via Autonomia Siciliana 12. Apparently somebody informed her.”
“And was she just sitting there, all ready with her black dress on?”
“She’s a widow, Chief.”
“All right, be nice, but get her out of here.”
Whenever Montalbano talked this way, it was hopeless. Fazio approached the two men, muttered something to them, and they dragged the woman away
The inspector walked up beside Dr. Pasquano, who was crouching over the victim’s head.
“Well?” he asked.
“Not well at all,” the doctor replied. And he went on, even more rudely than Montalbano: “Do I really need to explain what happened? They shot him once. Bull‘s-eye, in the middle of the forehead. The exit wound took out half his cranium in the back. See those little clots? They’re bits of his brain. Satisfied?”
“When did it happen, in your opinion?”
“A few hours ago. Around four, five in the morning.”
A short distance away, Vanni Arquà, the new chief of forensics, was examining the most ordinary of stones with the eye of an archaeologist who’s just discovered a Paleolithic artifact. Montalbano wasn’t fond of Arquà, and his antipathy was openly returned.
“Did they kill him with that?” asked the inspector, indicating the stone, a look of seraphic innocence on his face.
Vanni Arquà looked at him with undisguised disdain.
“Don’t be ridiculous! It was a firearm.”
“Have you recovered the bullet?”
“Yes. It ended up embedded in the wood of the front door, which was still closed.”
“And the shell?”
“Look, Inspector, I’m not required to answer your questions. The case is going to be handled by the captain of the Flying Squad. Commissioner’s orders. You’re to play only a supporting role.”
“What do you think I’m doing? You don’t call this support?”
Judge Tommaseo, the assistant prosecutor, was nowhere to be seen. They would have to wait before they could move the victim’s body.
“Fazio, why isn’t Inspector Augello here?”
“He’s on his way. He spent the night with friends in Fela. We called him on his cell phone.”
Fela? It would take him another hour to get to Vigàta. And in what condition! Dead tired and sleepless! Friends, right! He’d likely spent the night with some woman whose husband was out bumping his uglies somewhere else.
Galluzzo came up.
“Tommaseo just called. Asked if we could go pick him up in one of our cars. He crashed into a pole about three kilometers outside of Montelusa. What should we do?”
“Go get him.”
Nicolò Tommaseo rarely got where he wanted to go in his car. He drove like a dog on drugs. The inspector didn’t feel like waiting for him. Before leaving, he had a look at the corpse.
A kid barely twenty years old, in jeans and sport coat, with ponytail and earring.The shoes must have cost him his inheritance.
“Fazio, I’m going to the office. You wait for the judge and the Flying Squad captain. See you later.”
He decided to go to the port instead. Leaving the car on the wharf, he began walking slowly, one step at a time, along the eastern jetty, towards the lighthouse. The sun had risen bright red, apparently happy to have managed one more time. On the horizon were three black dots, motor trawlers returning late to shore. He opened his mouth wide and took a deep breath. He liked the smell of Vigàta’s port.
“What are you talking about? All ports have the same stink,” Livia once said to him.
It wasn’t true. Every harbor had a different smell. Vigata’s combined, in perfect doses, wet cordage, fishing nets drying in the sun, iodine, rotten fish, dead and living algae, and tar. With, deep in the background, a hint of petroleum. Incomparable. Before reaching the flat rock under the lighthouse, he reached down and picked up a handful of pebbles.
At the rock, he sat down. Gazing at the water, he thought he saw the face of Carlo Martello appear indistinctly before him. He angrily threw the handful of pebbles at it. The image broke apart, flickered, and vanished. Montalbano fired up a cigarette.
“Oh, Chief, Chief, Chief!” Catarella assailed him as soon as he came through the front door of headquarters. “Doctor Latte, the one with an s at the end, called three times! He wants to talk to you poissonally in poisson! Says it’s rilly rilly urgint!”
He could guess what Lattes, the chief of the commissioner’s cabinet, nicknamed “Caffé-Lattes” for his nervous, unctuous manner, had to say.
Commissioner Luca Bonetti-Alderighi, Marquis of Vill abella, had been explicit and severe. Montalbano never looked his superior in the eye, but always slightly higher; he was fascinated by the man’s hair, which was very thick, with a great big shock on top that curled back like certain human shit piles deposited in the open countryside. Noticing that the inspector was averting his gaze, the commissioner had made the mistake of believing he’d finally intimidated his subordinate.
“Montalbano, now that the new captain of the Flying Squad, Ernesto Gribaudo, has arrived, I’m going to tell you once and for alclass="underline" you’re going to play a supporting role from here on in. Your department will only handle little things; the big stuff will be handled by the Flying Squad in the person of Captain Gribaudo or his second-in-command.”
Ernesto Gribaudo, a living legend. Once, when glancing at the chest of a man who’d been killed by a burst of Kalashnikov fire, he’d declared the victim dead from a dozen stab wounds inflicted in rapid succession.
“Excuse me, Mr. Commissioner, could you give me a few practical examples?”
Luca Bonetti-Alderighi had beamed with pride and satisfaction as Montalbano stood before him on the other side of his desk, leaning slightly forward, a humble smile playing on his lips. Indeed, the inspector’s tone had been almost beseeching. The commissioner had him in the palm of his hand!
“Please be more explicit, Montalbano. What sort of examples do you mean?”
“I’d like to know what things I should consider little and what things I should consider big.”
Montalbano, too, was congratulating himself. His imitation of Paolo Villaggio’s immortal Fantozzi was succeeding marvelously.
“What a question, Montalbano! Petty theft, domestic quarrels, small-time drug-dealing, brawls, ID checks on im migrants, that’s the small stuff. Murders, that’s big.”
“Mind if I take notes?” Montalbano had asked, pulling a piece of paper and pen out of his pocket.
The commissioner had looked at him in bewilderment. And the inspector, for a moment, had felt frightened, thinking he’d pulled the other’s leg a little too hard and the commissioner had caught on.
But no. The commissioner had actually been scowling in disdain.
“Go right ahead.”
And now Lattes was about to reiterate the commissioner’s explicit orders. A homicide did not fall within his province. It was a matter for the Flying Squad. Montalbano dialed the cabinet chief’s number.
“Montalbano, old boy! How are you? Eh? And how’s the family?”
Family? He was an orphan and not even married.
“They’re all fine, thanks. And yours?”
“All well, by the Virgin’s good graces. Listen, Montalbano, on the matter of that homicide committed last night in Vigàta, the commissioner—”
“I already know, Dr. Lattes. It’s not my concern.”
“That’s not true! Who ever said that? I called you, in fact, because the commissioner actually wants you to take the case.”