“Lass nite I seen you on TV, Chief.”
“What do you do, Cat, spend all your free time watching me on TV?”
“No, Chief, it was by accidint.”
“What was it, a replay of me naked? I must be getting good ratings!”
“No sir, you was drissed. I seen you past midnight on the Free Channel. You was on the docks, tellin’ two of our men to go back ’cause you could take care of things y’self. Man, what a thorty you got!”
“Okay, Cat, thanks. You can go now.”
He felt rather worried about Catarella. Not because he had any doubts about his sexuality, but because if he, the inspector, resigned—as he’d already decided to do—surely Catarella would suffer terribly, like a dog abandoned by its master.
Ciccio Albanese showed up around eleven-thirty, empty-handed.
“You didn’t bring the charts you mentioned?”
“If I showed them to you, would you understand them?”
“No.”
“So why should I bring them? It’s better if I explain things myself.”
“Tell me something, Ciccio. Do all of you trawler captains use maps?”
Albanese looked at him cockeyed.
“Are you kidding? In our line of work, we know our stretch of sea by heart. Some of it we learned from our dads, some of it we learned by ourselves. For the new stuff, we get some help from radar. But the sea’s always the sea.”
“So why do you use maps?”
“I don’t, Inspector. I look at ’em and study ’em ’cause it’s something I like to do. But I don’t bring ’em aboard with me. I prefer to rely on experience.”
“So, what can you tell me?”
“First of all, I gotta tell you that before coming here this morning, I went to see u zù Stefanu.”
“I’m sorry, Ciccio, but I don’t—”
“Stefano Lagùmina, but we all call him u zù Stefanu. He’s ninety-five years old, but his brain’s as sharp as anyone’s. U zù Stefanu don’t go out to sea no more, but he’s the oldest fisherman in Vigàta. He used to have a lateener before he got a trawler. Whatever the man says is gospel.”
“So you wanted to consult with him.”
“Yessir. I wanted to make sure my hunch was right. And u zù Stefanu agrees with me.”
“And what are your conclusions?”
“Here’s how I see it. The dead man was carried by a surface current that we all know well, and which runs east to west, always at the same speed. The spot off Marinella where you bumped into the body is where this current comes closest to shore. You follow?”
“Perfectly. Go on.”
“It’s a slow current. You know how many knots?”
“No, and I don’t want to know. And just between you and me, I don’t even know how many knots there are in a mile.”
“Well, a mile’s one thousand eight hundred fifty-one point eighty-five meters long. An Italian mile, that is. ’Cause in England—”
“Forget about it, Ciccio.”
“Whatever you say, Inspector. As I was saying, this current comes from far away. It’s not native. To give you an idea, we run into it way down at Capo Passero. That’s where it enters our waters, and then it hugs the coast up to Mazara. After that it goes its own way.”
And there you have it! This, of course, meant that the body could have been thrown into the sea at just about any point along the southern coast of Sicily! Albanese read the discouragement on the inspector’s face and came to his aid.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I have something important to tell you. A little before Bianconara, this current is cut off by another, stronger current going in the opposite direction. And so a body floating from Pachino over to Marinella would never actually get to Marinella because the second current would carry it into the Gulf of Fela.”
“So that means that my dead body’s story definitely begins after Bianconara.”
“Exactly, Inspector. You’ve understood everything.”
Thus the likely area of investigation was reduced to some sixty kilometers of coastline.
“And I now should tell you,” Albanese continued, “that I also talked to u zù Stefanu about the condition the body was in when you found it. I could see for myself: the man’d been dead at least two months. You agree?”
“Yes.”
“So I say: a corpse isn’t gonna take two months to float from Bianconara to Marinella. Maybe ten, fifteen days, at the most, if you figure in the speed of the currents and all.”
“And so?”
Ciccio Albanese stood up and held his hand out to Montalbano.
“That kind of question’s not for me to answer. I’m only a sailor. That’s where you come in, Inspector.”
A perfect assignation of roles. Ciccio didn’t want to venture into waters not his own. All Montalbano could do was thank him and accompany him to the door. After the captain left, the inspector called Fazio.
“Have you got a map of the province?”
“I’ll find one.”
After Fazio brought him one, he looked at it a moment and said:
“By way of consolation, I can tell you that, based on the information given me by Ciccio Albanese, the dead man you need to identify definitely hung out somewhere between Bianconara and Marinella.”
Fazio gave him a confused look.
“So?”
The inspector took offense.
“What do you mean, ‘So’? That greatly reduces the area we need to investigate!”
“Chief, everybody and his dog knows that the current starts at Bianconara! You don’t think I was gonna go all the way to Fela to start asking questions!”
“Okay, okay. The fact remains that we now know there are only five towns you have to visit.”
“Five?”
“Yes, five! You can look at the map and count them yourself.”
“Chief, there’s eight towns in all. On top of the five, you have to add Spigonella, Tricase, and Bellavista.”
Montalbano looked down at the map, then looked up again.
“This map’s from last year. How come they’re not on it?”
“They’re unauthorized towns.”
“Unauthorized towns? There probably are no more than four houses—”
Fazio interrupted him, shaking his head.
“No, Chief. They’re towns, really and truly. The owners of those houses pay property tax to the nearest municipality. They’ve got sewers, running water, electricity, and phone service. And every year they get a little bigger. Everybody knows those houses are never going to be torn down, because no politician wants to lose their votes. You know what I mean? So in the end they’re granted amnesty and authorization and everybody ends up happy. And that’s to say nothing of all the houses and cottages built on the beach! Four or five of them even have a kind of private entrance gate.”
“Get out of here!” Montalbano ordered, upset.
“Hey, Chief, it’s not my fault,” said Fazio, going out.
Late that morning, the inspector received two phone calls that aggravated his bad mood. The first was from Livia, who said she hadn’t been able to get an advance on her vacation time. The second was from Jacopello, Pasquano’s assistant.
“Is that you, Inspector?” he said straight off.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Montalbano, instinctively lowering his voice.
They were like two conspirators.
“Excuse me for talking this way, but I don’t want any of my colleagues to hear. I wanted to let you know that Dr. Mistretta moved the autopsy up to this morning, and he’s convinced that it was an accidental drowning. Which means that he won’t request those tests that Dr. Pasquano wanted done. I tried to persuade him to change his mind, but there was no way. If you’d made that bet with me, you’d have won.”
What now? How was he ever going to proceed officially? By ruling out homicide, that dickhead Mistretta’s report slammed the door on any possibility of investigation. And the inspector didn’t even have a missing persons report in hand. No cover at all. For the moment, that corpse was a nuddru ammiscatu cu nenti—a combination of nothing and naught. But, like the reader exhorted by Eliot in his lines on Phlebas, the drowned Phoenician in “Death by Water”—“Gentile or Jew / O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, / Consider Phlebas . . .”—Montalbano would keep on thinking of that nameless corpse. It was a matter of honor, for it was the dead man himself who, one cold morning, had come looking for him.