Without the slightest suspicion, Ahmed Moussa walked into the trap. He even lit a cigarette, as he’d been told to do, so that they might better recognize each other. But Commendator Spadaccia, the cabinet chief, made a big mistake.” “He hadn’t warned the captain that it would not be a clandestine meeting, but an ambush,” said Montalbano.
“You could say that. The captain, as he’d been told to do, threw Ahmed’s papers into the sea and divided the seventy million lire the Arab had in his pocket with the rest of the crew. Then, instead of returning to Mazàra, he changed course. He had his doubts about us.” “Oh?”
“You see, we had steered our motor patrols away from the scene of the action, and the captain knew this. If that’s the situation, he must have thought, who’s to say I won’t run into something on the way back in—a missile, a mine, even another motor patrol that would sink my boat to destroy all trace of the operation? That’s why he came to Vigàta. He was shuffling the cards.” “Had he guessed right?”
“In what sense?”
“Was there someone or something waiting for the fishing boat?”
“Come now, Montalbano! That would have been a useless massacre!”
“And you engage only in useful massacres, is that it? And how do you plan to keep the crew quiet?”
“With the carrot and the stick, to quote again that writer you don’t appreciate. In any case, I’ve said everything I had to say.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean: that’s not everything. You have very cleverly taken me out to sea, but I haven’t forgotten those left behind on land. Fahrid, for example. He must have learned, from one of your informers, that Ahmed had been killed; but the fishing boat had docked at Vigàta, inexplicably—for him.
This troubled him. At any rate, he must now proceed to the second part of his assignment. That is, neutralizing, as you put it, Lapècora. So he shows up at the guy’s front door and, to his amazement and alarm, finds out that somebody got there first. And so he shits in his pants.” “I beg your pardon?”
“He gets scared, he no longer knows what is happening.
Like the captain of the fishing boat, he thinks your people are behind it. It looks to him like you’ve begun removing from circulation everyone who was in some way involved in the operation. For a moment, perhaps, he suspects it might have been Karima who did away with Lapècora. You may not know this, but Karima, under orders from Fahrid, forced Lapècora to hide her in his apartment; Fahrid didn’t want Lapècora to get any brilliant ideas during those critical hours.
Fahrid, however, didn’t know that once she’d carried out her mission, Karima had gone back home. In any event, at some point that morning, Fahrid met up with Karima, and the two must have had a violent argument in the course of which he told her that her brother had been killed. Karima then tried to escape. She failed, and she was murdered. She would have had to be eliminated anyway, at some later point, on the quiet.” “As I’d suspected,” said Lohengrin Pera, “you’ve figured it all out. Now I ask you to pause and think. You, like me, are a loyal, devoted servant of our state. And so—”
“Stick it up your ass,” Montalbano said softly.
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me repeat: you can take our state and stick it up your ass. You and I have diametrically opposed concepts of what it means to be a servant of the state. For all intents and purposes, we serve two different states. So I beg you please not to liken your work to mine.” “So now you want to play Don Quixote, Montalbano?
Every community needs someone to wash the toilets. But this does not mean that those who wash the toilets are not part of the community.”
Montalbano felt his rage growing; one more word would surely have been a mistake. He reached out with one hand, brought the dish of ice cream nearer, and began to eat. By now Lohengrin Pera had got used to the ritual, and once Montalbano started nibbling the ice cream, he stopped talking.
“Karima was killed, correct?” asked Montalbano after a few spoonfuls.
“Unfortunately, yes. Fahrid was afraid that—”
“I’m not interested in why. I’m interested in the fact that she was killed by the authority of a loyal servant of the state such as yourself. How would you call this specific case, neutralization or murder?” “Montalbano, you can’t use the standard of common morality—”
“Colonel, I already warned you once: do not speak of morality in my presence.”
“I merely meant that sometimes, the reason of state—”
“That’s enough,” said Montalbano, who had wolfed down the ice cream in four angry bites. Then, suddenly, he slapped his forehead.
“What time is it, anyway?”
The colonel looked at his wristwatch, a dainty, precious item that looked like a child’s toy.
“It’s already two o’clock.”
“Why on earth hasn’t Fazio arrived?” Montalbano asked himself, pretending to be worried. Then he added: “I have to make a phone call.”
He got up, went over to the phone on his desk two yards away, and started speaking in a loud voice so that Lohengrin Pera would hear everything.
“Hello, Fazio? Montalbano here.”
Fazio, drowsy with sleep, spoke with difficulty.
“Chief. What is it?”
“Come on, did you forget about the arrest?”
“What arrest?” said Fazio, at sea.
“The arrest of Simone Fileccia.”
Simone Fileccia had been arrested the day before, by Fazio himself. And, in fact, Fazio understood at once.
“What should I do?”
“Come pick me up at my place, and we’ll go get him.”
“Should I bring my own car?”
“No, better make it a squad car.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Wait.”
The inspector put his hand over the receiver and turned to the colonel.
“How much more time will this take?”
“That’s up to you,” said Lohengrin Pera.
“Be here in, say, twenty minutes or so,” the inspector said to Fazio, “not before. I have to finish talking to a friend.” He hung up, sat back down. The colonel smiled.
“Since we’ve got so little time, tell me your price immediately, if you’ll forgive the expression.”
“I come cheap, very cheap,” said Montalbano.
“I’m listening.”
“Two things, that’s all. Within a week, I want Karima’s body to turn up, and in such a way that there can be no mistake as to its identification.”
A billy club to the head would have had less effect on Lohengrin Pera. Opening and closing his mouth, he gripped the edge of the table with his tiny hands, as if afraid he might fall out of his chair.
“Why?” he managed to utter with the voice of a silkworm.
“None of your fucking business,” was the firm, blunt reply.
The colonel shook his little head from left to right and right to left, looking like a spring puppet.
“It’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know where she was . . . buried.”
“And who does know?”
“Fahrid.”
“Has Fahrid been neutralized? You know, I’m starting to like that word.”
“No. He’s gone back to Tunisia.”
“Then there’s no problem. Just get in touch with his playmates in Tunis.”
“No,” the midget said firmly. “The matter has been put to rest at this point.We have nothing to gain by stirring things up again with the discovery of a corpse. No, it’s not possible. Ask me anything you like, but that is one thing we cannot grant you. Aside from the fact that I can’t see the purpose of it.” “Too bad,” said Montalbano, getting up. Automatically, Lohengrin Pera also stood up, in spite of himself. But he wasn’t the type to give in easily.