“No, it wasn’t. I distinctly remember calling it.”
“And of course you don’t know what floor it was on.”
“I’ve thought about that, Inspector. Based on the amount of time it took to arrive, I’d say it was on the fifth floor. I think I calculated right.”
It didn’t add up. All decked out, Mr. Lapècora . . .
“What was his first name, by the way?”
“Aurelio, but he went by Arelio.”
. . . instead of taking the elevator down, took it up one floor. The gray hat meant he was about to go outside, not to visit someone inside the building.
“What did you do next?”
“Nothing. Seeing that the elevator had arrived, I opened the door and saw the dead body.”
“Did you touch it?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve got experience with that sort of thing.”
“How did you know the man was dead?”
“As I said, I have experience. So I ran to the grocer’s and called you, the police. Then I went and stood guard in front of the elevator.”
Mrs. Cosentino came in with a steaming cup.
“Would you like a little coffee?”
Montalbano accepted and emptied the demitasse. Then he rose to leave.
“Wait a minute,” said the security guard, opening a drawer and handing him a writing pad and ballpoint pen.
“You’ll probably want to take notes,” he said in response to the inspector’s questioning glance.
“What, are we in school or something?” he replied rudely.
He couldn’t stand policemen who took notes. Whenever he saw one doing so on television, he changed the channel.
o o o
In the apartment next door, Signora Gaetana Pinna, with the tree-trunk legs, was waiting. As soon as she saw Montalbano, she pounced.
“Did you finally take the body away?”
“Yes, ma’am. You can use the elevator now. No, don’t close your door. I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Me? I got nothin’ to say.”
He heard a voice from inside the flat, but it wasn’t so much a voice as a kind of deep rumble.
“Tanina! Don’t be so rude! Invite the gentleman inside!” The inspector entered another typical living room–dining room. Sitting in an armchair, in an undershirt, with a sheet pulled over his legs, was an elephant, a man of gigantic proportions. His bare feet, sticking out from under the sheet, looked like elephant feet; even his long, pendulous nose resembled a trunk.
“Please sit down,” the man said, apparently in a talkative mood, motioning towards a chair. “You know, when my wife gets ornery like that, I feel like . . . like . . .”
“Trumpeting?” Montalbano couldn’t help saying.
Luckily the man didn’t understand.
“. . . like breaking her neck. What can I do for you?”
“Did you know Mr. Lapècora?”
“I don’t know nobody in this building. I been livin’ here five years and don’t even know a friggin’ dog. In five years I ain’t even made it as far as the landing. I can’t move my legs, takes too much effort. Took three stevedores to get me up here, since I couldn’t fit in the elevator. They put a sling around me and hoisted me up, like a piano.” He laughed, rather like a roll of thunder.
“I knew that Mr. Lapècora,” the wife cut in. “Nasty man.
He couldn’t be bothered to say hello, like it caused him pain.”
“You, signora, how did you find out he was dead?”
“How’d I find out? I had to go out shopping and so I called the elevator, but nothing happened. It wouldn’t come.
I guessed somebody musta left the door open, which these rude people’s always doing ’round here. So I went down on foot and saw the security guard standing guard over the body.
And after I went shopping, I had to climb back up the stairs and I still haven’t caught my breath!”
“So much the better. That way you’ll talk less,” said the elephant.
o o o
the cristofoletti family said the plaque on the door of the third apartment, but no matter how hard the inspector knocked, nobody opened up. He went back to the Cosentino flat and rang the doorbell.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“Do you know if the Cristofoletti family—” Cosentino slapped himself noisily on the forehead.
“I forgot to tell you! With all this business about the dead body, it completely slipped my mind. Mr. and Mrs.
Cristofoletti are both in Montelusa. She, Signora Romilda, that is, had an operation, woman stuff. They should be back tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Montalbano took two steps on the landing, turned around, and knocked again.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“Earlier you said you had experience dealing with dead people. What did you mean?”
“I worked as a nurse for a few years.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
o o o
He went down to the fifth floor, where according to Cosentino the elevator had been waiting with the already murdered Aurelio Lapècora inside. Had he perhaps gone up one flight to meet someone who then knifed him?
“Excuse me, ma’am, I’m Inspector Montalbano.” The young housewife who had come to the door—
about thirty, very attractive but unkempt—put a finger to her lips, her expression complicitous, enjoining him to be quiet.
Montalbano fell silent. What did that gesture mean?
Damn his habit of always going about unarmed! Gingerly the young woman stood aside from the door, and the inspector, on his guard and looking all around him, entered a small study full of books.
“Please speak very softly. If the baby wakes up, that’s the end, we won’t be able to talk. He cries like there’s no tomorrow.”
Montalbano heaved a sigh of relief.
“You already know everything, ma’am, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gullotta, the lady next door, told me,” the woman said, breathing the words in his ear. The inspector found the situation very arousing.
“So you didn’t see Mr. Lapècora this morning?”
“I haven’t been out of the house yet.”
“Where is your husband?”
“In Fela. He teaches at the middle school there. He leaves every morning at six-fifteen sharp.” He was sorry their encounter had to be so brief. The more he looked at Signora Gulisano—that was the surname on the plaque—the more he liked her. In feminine fashion, she sensed this and smiled.
“Will you stay for a cup of coffee?”
“With pleasure.”
o o o
The little boy who answered the door to the next apartment couldn’t have been more than four years old and was fiercely cockeyed.
“Who are you, stranger?” he asked.
“I’m a policeman,” Montalbano said, smiling, forcing himself to play along.
“You’ll never take me alive,” said the kid, and he shot his water pistol at the inspector, hitting him square in the forehead.
The scuffle that followed was brief, and as the disarmed child started to cry, Montalbano cold-bloodedly squirted him in the face, drenching him.
“What is this? What’s going on here?”
The little angel’s mother, Signora Gullotta, had nothing in common with the young mother next door. As a prelimi-nary measure she slapped her son hard, then she grabbed the water pistol the inspector had let fall to the floor and hurled it out the window.
“There! That’ll put an end to all this aggravation!” With a heartrending wail, the little boy ran into another room.
“It’s his father’s fault, always buying him these toys! He’s out of the house all day long, doesn’t give a damn, and I’m stuck here to look after that little demon! And what do you want?” “I’m Inspector Montalbano. Did Mr. Lapècora by any chance come up to your apartment this morning?”
“Mr. Lapècora? To our apartment? Why would he do that?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“I guess I knew the man, but it was never anything more than good morning, good evening . . . Not a word more.”
“Perhaps your husband—”