“Buffoon!” Montalbano shouted, then switched the channel to TeleVigàta, the station where Galluzzo’s brother-in-law Prestìa worked. Here, too, Jacomuzzi made an appearance, except that he was no longer on the fishing boat; now he was pretending to take fingerprints inside the elevator where Lapècora had been murdered. Montalbano cursed the saints, stood up, threw a book against the wall. That was why Galluzzo had been so reticent! He knew that the news had spread but didn’t have the courage to tell him. Without a doubt it was Jacomuzzi who’d notified the journalists, so he could show off as usual. He couldn’t live without it. The man’s exhibitionism reached heights comparable only to what one might find in a mediocre actor or some writer with print runs of a hundred and fifty copies.
Now Pippo Ragonese, the station’s political commenta-tor, appeared on the screen. He wanted to talk, he said, about the cowardly Tunisian attack on one of our motor trawlers that had been peacefully fishing in our own territorial waters, which was the same as saying on the sacred soil of our homeland. It wasn’t literally soil, of course, being the sea, but it was still our homeland. A less fainthearted government than the current one in the hands of the extreme left would certainly have reacted more severely to a provocation that—Montalbano turned off the television.
o o o
The agitation he felt at Jacomuzzi’s brilliant move showed no signs of passing. Sitting on the small veranda that gave onto the beach and staring at the sea in the moonlight, he smoked three cigarettes in a row. Maybe Livia’s voice would calm him down enough so he could go to bed and fall asleep.
“Hi, Livia. How are you?”
“So-so.”
“I’ve had a rough day.”
“Oh, really?”
What the hell was wrong with Livia? Then he remem bered their phone call that morning, which had ended on a sour note.
“I called to ask you to forgive me for my boorishness.
But that’s not the only reason. If you only knew how much I missed you . . .”
It occurred to him that he might be overdoing it.
“Do you miss me, really?”
“Yes, a lot, really.”
“Listen, Salvo, why don’t I catch a plane on Saturday morning? I’ll be in Vigàta just before lunchtime.” He became terrified. Livia was the last thing he needed at the moment.
“No, no, darling, it’s such a bother for you . . .” When Livia got something in her head, she was worse than a Calabrian. She’d said Saturday morning, and Saturday morning it would be. Montalbano realized he’d have to call the commissioner the next day. Good-bye, pasta in squid ink!
o o o
Around eleven o’clock the next morning, since nothing was happening at headquarters, the inspector headed lazily off to Salita Granet. The first shop on that street was a bakery; it had been there for six years. The baker and his helper had indeed heard that a man who owned an office at number 28
had been murdered, but they didn’t know him and had never seen him. As this was impossible, Montalbano became more insistent in his questioning, acting more and more the cop until he realized that to get to his office from his home, Mr. Lapècora would have come up the opposite end of the street. And in fact, at the grocer’s at number 26, they did know the late lamented Mr. Lapècora, and how! They also knew the Tunisian girl, what’s-her-name, Karima, good-looking woman—and here a few sly glances and grins were exchanged between the grocer and his customers. They couldn’t swear by it, of course, but the inspector could surely understand, a pretty girl like that, all alone indoors with a man like the late Mr. Lapècora, who carried himself awfully well for his age . . . Yes, he did have a nephew, an arrogant punk who sometimes used to park his car right up against the door to the shop, so that one time Signora Miccichè, who tipped the scales at a good three hundred pounds, got stuck between the car and the door to the shop . . . No, the license plate, no. If it had been one of the old kinds, with pa for Palermo or mi for Milan, that would have been a different story.
The third and last shop on Salita Granet sold electrical appliances. The proprietor, a certain Angelo Zircone (as the sign said outside), was standing behind the counter, reading the newspaper. Of course he knew the deceased; the shop had been there for ten years. Whenever Mr. Lapècora passed by—in recent years it was only on Mondays,Wednesdays, and Fridays—he always said hello. Such a nice man. Yes, the appliance man also used to see the Tunisian girl, and a fine-looking girl she was. Yes, the nephew, too, now and then. The nephew and his friend.
“What friend?” asked Montalbano, taken by surprise.
It turned out that Mr. Zircone had seen this friend at least three times. He would come with the nephew, and the two of them would go to number 28. About thirty, blondish, sort of fat. That was about all he could tell him. The license plate? Was he kidding? With these license plates nowadays you couldn’t even tell if someone was a Turk or a Christian . . . A metallic gray BMW. If he said any more, he’d be making it up.
The inspector rang the doorbell to Lapècora’s office. No answer. Galluzzo, behind the door, was apparently trying to decide how to react.
“It’s Montalbano.”
The door opened at once.
“The Tunisian girl hasn’t shown up yet,” said Galluzzo.
“And she’s not going to. You were right, Gallù.” The policeman lowered his eyes, confused.
“Who leaked the news?”
“Jacomuzzi.”
To pass the time during his stakeout, Galluzzo had orga-nized himself. Having seized a pile of old issues of Il Venerdì di Repubblica, the glossy Friday magazine supplement of the Rome daily that Mr. Lapècora kept in orderly stacks on a shelf with fewer files, he had scattered them across the desk-top in search of photos of more or less naked women. After tiring of looking at these, he had applied himself to solving a crossword puzzle in a yellowed old magazine.
“Do I have to stay here all frigging day?” he asked dejectedly.
“I’m afraid so. You’ll have to make the best of it. Listen, I’m going in back, to take advantage of Mr. Lapècora’s bathroom.”
It wasn’t often that nature called so far off schedule for him. Perhaps the rage he’d felt the previous evening upon seeing Jacomuzzi playing the fool on television had altered his digestive rhythms.
He sat down on the toilet seat, heaving his customary sigh of satisfaction, and at that exact moment his mind brought into focus something he’d seen a few minutes earlier but had paid absolutely no attention to.
He leapt to his feet and raced into the next room, holding his pants and underpants at half-staff in one hand.
“Stop!” he ordered Galluzzo, who, in fright, turned pale as death and instinctively put his hands up.
There it was, right next to Galluzzo’s elbow: a black R in boldface, carefully cut out of some newspaper. No, not some newspaper, but a magazine: the paper was glossy.
“What is going on?” Galluzzo managed to articulate.
“It might be everything and it might be nothing,” replied the inspector, sounding like the Cumaean sibyl.
He pulled up his trousers, fastened his belt, leaving the zipper down, and picked up the telephone.
“Sorry to disturb you, signora. On what date did you say you received the first anonymous letter?”
“On the thirteenth of June of last year.” He thanked her and hung up.