Number 28 was a small building, the ground floor raised three steps up from street level, with two more floors above that. To the side of the main door were three nameplates. The first said: aurelio lapècora, import-export, ground floor; the second: orazio cannatello, notary; the third: angelo bellino, business consultant, top floor. Using the keys Montalbano had taken from Lapècora’s study, they went inside. The front room was a proper office, with a big nineteenth-century desk made of black mahogany, a small secretarial table with a 1940s Olivetti typewriter on it, and four large metal bookcases overflowing with old files. On the desk was a functioning telephone. There were five chairs in the office, but one was broken and overturned in the corner.
In the back room . . . The back room, with its now familiar dark green walls, seemed not to belong to the same apartment. It was sparkling clean, with a large sofa bed, television, telephone extension, stereo system, cocktail trolley with a variety of liqueurs, mini-fridge, and a horrendous female nude, buttocks to the wind, over the couch. Next to the sofa was a small end table with a faux art nouveau lamp on top, its drawer stuffed with condoms of every kind.
“How old was the guy?” Galluzzo asked.
“Sixty-three.”
“Jesus!” said the policeman, giving a whistle of admiration.
The bathroom, like the back room, was dark green and glistening, equipped with built-in blow-dryer, bathtub with shower-hose extension, and full-length mirror.
They returned to the front room, rummaged through the desk’s drawers, opened a few of the files. The most recent correspondence was more than three years old.
They heard some footsteps upstairs, in the office of the notary, Cannatello. The notary wasn’t in, they were told by the secretary, a reed-thin thirtyish young man with a disconsolate expression. He said the late Mr. Lapècora used to come to the office just to pass the time. On the days when he was there, a good-looking Tunisian girl would come to do the cleaning.
Oh, and, he almost forgot, over the last few months Mr. Lapècora had received fairly frequent visits from a nephew, or at least that’s how Mr. Lapècora introduced him the one time the three had met at the front door. He was about thirty, tall, dark, well-dressed, and he drove a metallic gray BMW. He must have spent a lot of time abroad, this nephew, because he spoke with an odd sort of accent. No, he couldn’t remember anything about the BMW’s license plate, hadn’t paid any notice.
Suddenly the thin young man assumed the expression of somebody looking at the ruins of his home after an earth-quake. He said he had a precise opinion about this crime.
“And what would that be?” asked Montalbano.
It could only have been the usual young lowlife looking for money to feed his drug habit.
They went back downstairs, where Montalbano called Mrs. Lapècora from the office phone.
“Excuse me, but why didn’t you tell me you have a nephew?”
“Because we don’t.”
o o o
“Let’s go back to the office,” Montalbano said when they were just around the corner from headquarters. Galluzzo didn’t dare ask why. In the bathroom of the dark green room, the inspector buried his nose in the towel, breathed deeply, then started riffling through the little cupboard beside the sink. He found a small bottle of perfume, brand-name Volupté, and handed it to Galluzzo.
“Here, put some of this on.”
“Where?”
“Up your ass,” came the inevitable reply.
Galluzzo dabbed a drop of Volupté on his cheek, and Montalbano stuck his nose next to it and inhaled. That was it: the very same scent, the color of burnt straw, that he’d smelled in Lapècora’s study. Wanting to be absolutely certain, he repeated the gesture.
Galluzzo smiled.
“Uh, Chief, if anybody saw us . . . who knows what they’d think?”
The inspector didn’t answer, but walked over to the phone.
“Hello, signora? Sorry to disturb you again. Did your husband use any kind of perfume or cologne? No? Okay, thanks.”
o o o
Galluzzo came into Montalbano’s office.
“Lapècora’s Beretta was registered on the eighth of De-cember of last year. Since he didn’t have a license to carry a gun, he was only allowed to keep it at home.” Something, the inspector thought, must have been troubling him around that time, if he decided to buy a gun.
“What are we going to do with the pistol?”
“We’ll keep it here. Listen, Gallù, here are the keys to the office. I want you to go there early tomorrow morning, let yourself in, and wait there. Try not to let anyone see you.
If the Tunisian girl hasn’t found out what happened, she should show up tomorrow according to schedule, since it’s Friday.”
Galluzzo grimaced.
“It’s unlikely she hasn’t heard.”
“Why? Who would have told her?”
It looked to the inspector as if Galluzzo was desperately trying to back out.
“I don’t know . . . Word gets out . . .”
“Ah, and I don’t suppose you said anything to your brother-in-law the reporter? Because if you did—”
“Inspector, I swear, I haven’t told him anything.” Montalbano believed him. Galluzzo wasn’t the type to tell a boldfaced lie.
“Well, you’re going to Lapècora’s office anyway.”
o o o
“Montalbano? This is Jacomuzzi. I wanted to notify you of our test results.”
“Oh God, Jacomù, wait a second, my heart is racing.
God, what excitement! . . . There, I’m a little calmer now.
Please ‘notify’ me, as you put it in your peerless bureau-cratese.”
“Aside from the fact that you’re an incurable asshole, the cigarette butt was a common stub of Nazionale without filter; there was nothing abnormal in the dust we collected from the floor of the elevator, and as for the little piece of wood—” “It was only a kitchen match.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m speechless, breathless—in fact, I think I’m about to have a heart attack! You’ve delivered the murderer to me!”
“Go fuck yourself, Montalbano.”
“It’d still be better than listening to you. What did he have in his pockets?”
“A handkerchief and a set of keys.”
“And what can you tell me about the knife?”
“A kitchen knife, very used. Between the blade and the handle we found a fish scale.”
“Didn’t you pursue that any further? Was it a mullet scale or a cod scale? Keep investigating, don’t leave me hanging!”
“What is wrong with you anyway?”
“Jacomù, try to use your brains a little. If we were in the Sahara desert and you came to me and said you’d found a fish scale on a knife that had been used to kill a tourist, then the thing might, I say might, mean something. But what the fuck could it possibly mean in a town like Vigàta, where out of twenty thousand inhabitants, nineteenthousandninehun-dredandseventy eat fish all the time?” “And why don’t the other thirty?” asked Jacomuzzi, stunned and curious.
“Because they’re newborn babies.”
o o o
“Hello? Montalbano here. Could I please speak with Dr.
Pasquano?”
“Please hold.”
He had just enough time to start singing: E te lo vojo dì i>
che sò stato io . . .
“Hello, Inspector? The doctor’s very sorry, but he’s performing an autopsy on the two men found goat-tied in Costabianca. But he said to tell you that as far as your murder victim is concerned, the man was bursting with health and would have lived to be a hundred if somebody hadn’t killed him first. A single stab wound, dealt with a firm hand. The incident occurred between seven and eight o’clock this morning. D’you need anything else?”
o o o
In the fridge he found some pasta with broccoli, which he put in the oven to warm up. As a second course, Adelina had made him some roulades of tuna. Figuring he’d had a light lunch, he felt obliged to eat everything. Then he turned on the television and tuned in to the Free Channel, a good local station where his red-haired, Red-sympathizing friend Nicolò Zito worked. Zito was commenting on the killing of the Tunisian aboard the Santopadre as the camera zoomed in on the bullet-riddled wheelhouse and on a dark stain in the wood that was probably blood. All of a sudden Jacomuzzi appeared, kneeling down and looking at something through a magnifying glass.