The Dance of the Seagull (17 page)

“Who hasn’t been identified yet.”

“Right.”

A solemn fib, since all he had to do was pull the file out of the drawer, and Mimì would have known the man’s first and last names. The problem was that Montalbano couldn’t do or say anything, otherwise Angela was screwed.

“But,” the inspector continued, “we do know that one of the two men was our same Vittorio Carmona, since Fazio identified him immediately when I described him for him.”

“And then they killed the porter’s wife.”

“Exactly. Two killings—actually three, except that Fazio did it in self-defense—and an attempted murder that they’re going to try to make good on, I’m sure of it. Don’t you think that’s a lot?”

“A lot of what?”

“A lot of dead people, Mimì. And that’s the point. Too many killings for a simple case of drug trafficking. We’re not in Bolivia, after all.”

“And so?”

“And so there’s probably something really big at the bottom of all this.”

“If only we could know how Manzella found out about the whole thing and why he wanted to tell Fazio about it . . .” Augello started saying.

“Wait a minute,” said Montalbano.

He picked up the receiver.

“Catarella, has Forensics sent anything over to me?”

“Yessir, Chief. Jess right now. A litter.”

“Bring it to me, would you?”

As soon as Catarella brought it, he opened the envelope and handed the letter to Mimì.

“Is this written by a man or a woman?” asked Augello after reading it.

“I had the same question. So I asked Gargiulo to have a look at it, and he said it was definitely written by a man who wants to pass for a woman.”

“A transvestite? Transsexual?”

“Perhaps. Here, read this too.”

He opened the drawer, took out the letter from Manzella’s friend, the one with the photograph of the sailor, and handed it to him.

“There we go” was Mimì’s only comment.

“In my opinion,” said the inspector, “our friend Manzella, married and the father of an only son, at a certain point in his life discovered a completely different world. And he realized he was made for that world. It’s his own business and should be of no concern to us.”

“Relatively speaking,” said Mimì.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because just the other day Beba pointed out to me that if we were all like them, we would betray our purpose on earth, which is to procreate.”

“Who ever told you that’s our purpose in life? The Lord God himself, poissonally in poisson? Tell me the truth: Before you got married, when you were fucking everything that moved, didn’t you do everything within your power not to procreate? The human race could have become extinct for all you cared!”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Let’s just drop the subject, Mimì, it’s better that way. So, to continue. On a dark day for him, Manzella meets G. It’s love at first sight, if you’ll pardon the cliché and the pain it may cause you, great converted procreator that you are. They get together rather often, until Manzella discovers by chance, or perhaps because G tells him, that his friend is involved in some shady stuff. But he doesn’t want to lose him, and so he keeps his mouth shut. Until one day somebody tells him that G is cheating on him. And so he decides to take revenge and tells Fazio what’s going on. But then he has second thoughts and backtracks. He has his ups and downs. And ends up letting G know his intentions. G warns whoever he needs to warn, and they silence him. Make sense to you?”

“It’s a plausible hypothesis,” said Augello.

“It’s the only one possible,” said Montalbano, standing up. “But there’s no proof.”

“Where are you going?”

“To eat. But take care, Mimì. When you’re tailing the ambulance, ring me every fifteen minutes on the cell phone. Don’t forget that you can arrest Carmona whenever you like, since he’s a murderer and a fugitive from justice. But don’t forget that he’s also dangerous and won’t hesitate for a second to start shooting. And when he shoots, it’s not just to make noise.”

“All right then, if I can, I’ll let you listen to the shootout over the cell phone, to help pass the time,” said Mimì.

Actually the inspector had no intention whatsoever of going to eat. In fact, since what he had to do was something that didn’t appeal to him at all, his stomach felt so tight that not even a bread crumb could have passed his lips.

He was also certain that if he did eat, he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do afterwards.

There are things that cannot be faced on a full stomach. He knew this from past experience.

One time, when he’d had to watch Pasquano working on the corpse of a ten-year-old girl just after he’d finished eating, he spent a good fifteen minutes in the parking lot doubled over, throwing up his soul. It wasn’t what Pasquano was doing, which he was obliged to watch, that had made him sick. No, it was the way the doctor was cataloguing out loud the wounds the little girl had suffered (
deep cut in the left calf inflicted by the same blade that . . . broad laceration in the groin area probably produced by an object . . .
) and he had imagined—no, he had seen, actually seen the murder unfold, as if it were taking place right before his eyes, and he’d felt suffocated by the ferocity, the violence, the horrific bestiality . . .

Passing by Catarella, he greeted him and repeated the same fib he’d told Augello.

“I’m going to eat, but I’ll bring along my cell phone, so you can call me at any time.”

He went out, took three steps, then returned.

“Did Fazio’s wife bring back my gun?”

Catarella balked.

“Your gun? Signura Fazio? She’s gotta license?”

“I don’t think so.”

“An’ she walks aroun’ witta gun in her poisse?”

“C’mon, Cat, no need to drag things out, I got it, she hasn’t brought it in yet. But she will, and when she does, I want you to take it and give it to me when I return.”

What had made him think about the gun? Where he was going, it was 99 percent certain he wouldn’t need it. And yet . . .

He got into his car and headed for Via Bixio.

Another question: Why hadn’t he told Mimì Augello he’d found out the address of Manzella’s last place of residence and had even gone there?

It wasn’t something he needed to keep hidden so as not to compromise Angela. The girl had nothing to do with it. Fazio had told him the address as soon as it had come back to him. And so?

The reason was so simple that he found it right away.

If he’d told Mimì he’d been to Manzella’s place, Mimì would have asked him what he’d found there, and he would have had to say, yes, he’d gone inside but immediately run away.

He could imagine the look of astonishment on Mimì’s face.

“You ran away?! Why’d you do that?”

And he would have to tell him he got scared.

“You? Scared? Of what?”

“Nothing concrete, Mimì. Let’s just say I was metaphysically disconcerted.”

“Metaphysically what? What are you talking about?”

No, Augello would have thought he was going crazy.

Nor could he lie again and tell him he’d found out from Fazio where Manzella’s last place of residence was but hadn’t gone there yet because he wanted Mimì to go there with him. Augello knew him too well not to realize that the inspector would never have been able to resist the curiosity and would have rushed there at once, not giving a flying fuck about telling him or not.

So how was he going to get out of this?

Here’s how: he would tell Mimì that Fazio had rung him from the cell phone with the address as he was leaving the hospital or along the road to Palermo, because it hadn’t come back to him until then, and the inspector couldn’t tell Augello because he was part of Fazio’s escort.

Meanwhile he’d arrived in front of Manzella’s place.

16

He stopped and got out. The road seemed even more deserted than before, if that was possible. No one would notice him. And even if, in passing by, somebody saw some movement, they would have no reason to become suspicious, since the local television stations hadn’t announced that the corpse found in the well had been identified as Manzella.

The inspector didn’t immediately go through the gate, but stopped outside the house, establishing the exact location of the windows and memorizing the path he would have to take to reach them from the living room.

Then he made up his mind. He went down the little lane, opened the door with his false key, went in, closed it behind him, and without turning on the lights, without breathing, he proceeded, hand in front of him in the pitch darkness, straight to the first window and threw open the shutters. He stuck his head out and breathed deeply and long. The air was humid, the sky overcast. He was panting hard, as if after a long swim. Then he closed his eyes, turned around, and again holding his breath, went and opened the second window. Sticking his head out, he caught his breath again.

A light wind had started blowing, and the weather had suddenly changed, though it had been in a variable mood since morning. At any rate the wind helped. It would help the air flow between the two windows and get rid of the smell of blood. Still at the window, he fired up a cigarette and smoked it calmly to the end. When he’d finished, he put the butt in his pocket. One never knew. The gentlemen of Forensics might find it, and might even have it tested for DNA. And Arquà would have to reach the logical and inevitable conclusion that the person who’d killed Manzella was none other than him, in a fit of jealousy over a transvestite.

At last he felt ready to turn around and look into the living room.

But since he immediately saw, on the right, a staircase leading to the second floor, he decided to go and check out the rooms upstairs.

He went up and reached a tiny landing with three rooms with their doors wide open. He turned on the light on the landing. It was enough to allow him to see, without moving, but only turning his head, that the first door, the one right in front of him, gave onto a master bedroom, the second to a bathroom, and the third to another, smaller bedroom with a single bed, clearly for guests.

He started with the latter, going in and turning the light on. There was only a mattress and pillow on the bed, no sheets or blankets. A nightstand with lamp, two chairs, a small wardrobe. He opened it. There were sheets, a pillowcase, and two woollen blankets, all folded up, and nothing else. On the night he was murdered, Manzella must not have had any guests sleeping in that room.

The bathroom, on the other hand, was a shambles. Four bloodstained towels thrown helter-skelter on the floor, traces of blood on the sink, and even a bloody handprint on the wall of the shower stall. It was clear: Carmona and Sorrentino, to work Manzella over with the blades and tips of their knives, had taken their clothes off and then, after getting all covered with blood, had taken a shower and put their clothes back on. To cleanse themselves for human society as humans and not as the beasts they were.

He moved on to the master bedroom. And it became immediately clear to the inspector that Pasquano had been right when he said that the poor man had been surprised by the two killers while sleeping naked in bed. In fact, on a chair were a pair of trousers, folded up, a jacket, a shirt, and even a tie. Under the chair were a pair of shoes with the socks rolled up inside.

Manzella did not, however, spend the last night of his life alone, or at least not all of it. The pillows were both still indented from where the heads had lain, and the top sheet was dangling, half on the floor, all twisted up, while the bottom sheet had come partly off, exposing the mattress. Poor old Manzella was a man of fiery passion, as the porter’s wife had said.

There was no sign of the clothes of the person who had slept with him, and there was no blanket, either. It must have been the one they’d used to roll up the body and throw it into the well.

Montalbano approached the chair with the clothes on it and took a wallet out of the inside pocket of the jacket. Five hundred euros in bills of fifty, ID card, debit card issued by the Banca dell’Isola, credit card from the same bank, which must have been the one where Manzella kept his money. And nothing else. The inspector opened the drawer in the bedside table: empty. There wasn’t a single sheet of paper in that bedroom. The killers had taken everything, just to be safe.

But what had actually happened in there?

Montalbano didn’t have any trouble imagining it.

So, after writing the letter that Manzella never received because he’d moved out, G managed in one way or another to meet with him again and renew the relationship that Manzella had tried to break off.

G had to do this, because, having confessed that he’d spoken to his lover about the smuggling, and that the latter intended to inform the police, the smugglers let him live, on the condition that he assist them in the murder of Manzella. If he wouldn’t or couldn’t lead them to him, they would kill him.

And so G does and says what he has to do and say, and succeeds in getting invited a first time to the house in Via Bixio. As they say in novels about love—the kind that book reviewers like so much—the old flame was rekindled. The two made love, and G promised to come back the following night.

Which he does, and when Manzella falls asleep, exhausted, G picks up his clothes, goes downstairs very quietly, opens the door, lets in Carmona and Sorrentino, whom he’d alerted beforehand, and leaves. He’s done what he was supposed to do, and so they let him go free.

Could I make a parenthetical comment here?
the inspector asked himself.

Permission granted, he commented:

There are two possibilities: either G is a fool, believes the promise, and remains in Vigàta—and in this case we’ll soon find his bullet-riddled body abandoned somewhere—or else he’s shrewd and by now has already flown to northern Greenland, an area that, as everybody knows, has not yet been penetrated by the Sicilian Mafia, since it’s too cold up there.

End of parenthesis.

Carmona and Sorrentino go upstairs, wake Manzella up, and force him downstairs, naked as the day he was born. They don’t even let him put on his slippers, which were, in fact, still on the floor beside the bed.

And this meant that the moment had come, willy-nilly, for Montalbano, too, to go into the living room.

He stopped on the landing at the top of the stairs, counting the steps. There were sixteen.

He wished he had his pistol in his hand. Even though he knew it would have been useless, since there was nothing to shoot at. He felt the hair on his arms stand on end, as when one brushes past a television set that has just been turned off, no matter how hard he tried to control himself and kept repeating in his mind that there was nobody waiting for him in the living room . . .

Of course there was nobody! Nobody in flesh and blood, that is. What was this bullshit, anyway? What was he afraid of, a ghost? A shade? So he was starting to believe in ghosts at age fifty-seven and counting?

He descended two stairs.

A window shutter slammed hard, and he jumped in the air like a startled cat, so spooked he nearly lost his grip of the banister.

The wind had picked up.

With eyes closed, he dashed down the next four stairs. But then he suddenly lost heart and descended two more stairs, gripping the banister tightly and sliding his foot until it found emptiness, then slowly raising his leg and setting the sole of his shoe down lightly on the step below, exactly like someone partly or totally blind.

But what the hell was all this tension? He’d never felt this way before. Was it some sort of nasty joke of old age?

This time the shutters of the living-room windows slammed with a loud boom and closed simultaneously. Now the room downstairs was in darkness again.

How was that possible? the inspector wondered. If the wind was blowing from one direction, how could both windows slam shut at the same time?

He suddenly understood that there actually
was
someone waiting for him in the living room.

Someone who had the same body and face as him, and who had the same name: Salvo Montalbano. He himself was the invisible enemy he would have to face. The enemy who would force him to relive what had happened in that room, down to the smallest details . . .

Relive? Wrong word. He hadn’t witnessed Manzella’s slow, painful death. How, then, could he relive it? And, anyway, after all the murders of which he’d seen so many vestiges that it was sometimes more upsetting than if he’d witnessed the murders themselves, why did this one have such a strong effect on him?

He would never get out of this situation unless he saw it through to the end, of that he was immediately certain.

And for this reason, he began descending the remaining stairs with as decisive a step as he could muster.

He stopped again at the bottom of the staircase.

The room was not completely in darkness. The shutters were closed, but through the slats filtered blades of gray light that cast the trembling shadows of the windblown leaves on the trees outside. He wanted neither to reopen the shutters nor to light the lamps, but only to stand still for a moment until his eyes slowly adjusted.

To make space for the show they were about to direct, Carmona and Sorrentino had pushed all the furniture up against the wall. A buffet that had once had a small ceramic fruit bowl on it, which was now on the floor, shattered to pieces. Three chairs. A sofa. A small dining table, a sideboard with dishes and glasses. A television set.

There were two milky white things on the floor, near the table, which he couldn’t quite identify.

It couldn’t be. He realized immediately what they were but refused to believe it. He looked at them more closely, needing to convince himself that he’d seen correctly, as the disorder in the pit of his stomach, a knot of dense liquid, bitter and burning, began to rise into his throat, bringing tears to his eyes.

He started looking around the chair in the middle of the room and the dark circle of blood surrounding it.

The floor was made of terracotta, and he noticed that one tile, right in front of the chair, had been freshly splintered. If he’d had a knife handy, he could easily have extracted the bullet that, after passing through Manzella’s foot, had shattered the tile and buried itself in the ground.

Mimì was right.

They’d taken him out of bed and down the stairs, moved the furniture out of the way except for the chair in the middle of the room, sat him down . . . No, first they . . .
Go on, get it out, it’s better that
way.

They started asking him—surely slapping him around, and kicking and punching—what he’d told Fazio . . .

But he could only give them one answer: that he’d only hinted at the matter with Fazio, and hadn’t named any names . . . And those guys didn’t believe him, and at some point decided to get more serious.

“You used to be a ballet dancer, right?”

“Yes.”

“So dance, then.”

And one of them shot him in the foot. Then they forced him to stand up on one leg, the one with the uninjured foot, and made him dance around the chair.

“C’mon, dance, dance, an’ don’ make any noise.”

And so Manzella hopped around the chair on one foot, naked, at once comical and terrifying, emitting desperate cries that no one could hear . . .

And the inspector saw him dancing as if he were in the room with the others. The
danse macabre
looked like a scene in a black-and-white film, in the quivering light filtering through the shutters . . .

At that moment, what Montalbano was fearing would happen, happened.

As he was imagining the scene in his head, little by little Manzella’s naked, bloodied body began to transform itself, becoming slowly more hairy, and the floor was no longer tiled but made of sand, exactly like the beach at Marinella . . .

In a sort of burst of light, a blinding flash, he found himself as on that morning, watching the seagull perform its dance of death.

The bird, however, was not emitting the heartrending cry he’d heard that day. It now had a human voice, that of Manzella begging for mercy and weeping . . .

And he heard, quite clearly, the laughter of the other two having a good time, as they had done before . . .

The seagull by this point was on the threshold of death.

Manzella had fallen to the floor, unable to remain standing any longer, writhing as he tried to raise his head.

The seagull was now waving its beak back and forth, as if wanting to put something in a spot too high to reach.

The two men then went up to Manzella, lifted him off the ground, and started dragging him about the room, working him over with the knife as the blood spattered all over the walls and furniture . . .

But before doing this, they’d granted themselves another amusement . . .

Suddenly it all ended, perhaps because a gust of wind opened the windows again.

He found himself sitting on the stairs, eyes shut tight, face in his hands.

It was over. This was what he had so feared from the first moment he’d entered that room: that one reality would ineluctably superimpose itself on another. It wasn’t like a dream that comes back to you when you’re awake. No, it wasn’t something he’d already seen before, it was something entirely different, an aberration of reason, a momentary swerve, a short circuit that flung you into a world utterly foreign to you, as time scrambled the past, mixing events that happened on different days together into a single present . . .

Now he felt much calmer.

He opened his eyes and looked at the spot the seagull had pointed to with its beak.

There was a picture hanging on the wall, but he couldn’t quite tell what it depicted. It was too far away.

He stood up and went up to it. Four red roses. Painted as though photographed, horrendous. The kind one used to see on boxes of chocolates.