The Dance of the Seagull (19 page)

Filippo Manzella

P.S.: the photos are in a safety deposit box in my name at the Vigàta branch of the Banca dell’Isola.

Mimì finished reading the letter, laid it down on the desk, and then pushed it with his index finger towards the inspector. While reading, he hadn’t had the slightest reaction, and even now he was cool as a cucumber.

“First of all,” he began, “I’d like to know how you came into possession of this letter.”

Mimì was speaking Italian
, a bad sign. Maybe he wasn’t as calm as he appeared. Montalbano realized he’d made a mistake in giving him the letter without a word of explanation. He improvised a modified version of what he had planned to tell him. It seemed more logical.

“I got a call from Fazio when I was in a restaurant. He’d just remembered an address that Manzella had given him. I finished eating and went there. And that’s where I found the letter, which was—”

“Stop glossing over the details. I’m a cop just like you. Got that? Was the door unlocked?”

“No.”

“So how’d you get in?”

“Well, I had a key that happened—”

“When are you gonna stop feeding me bullshit?” Augello interrupted him.

The inspector decided it was best to tell him everything.

“Were you armed?”

“No.”

“You know, with all the respect due a superior, I must say you’re a perfect idiot. Sinagra could have left someone there to guard the place.”

“Fine, but the fact is, he didn’t. Can we talk reasonably?”

“About what? The letter? There’s nothing to talk about. Now you’re going to put it back in the envelope, give me the key that you happened to have, and so on and so forth, and I’m going to go back and put it back in the picture frame.”

“And then what?”

“And then you are going to officially order me to go and investigate what happened in that house, and I will discover that Manzella was murdered there. I’ll call Forensics and arrange things so that Arquà, or someone in his place, finds the letter. Never in a million years will he turn it over to me, and despite my insistence he’ll take it directly to the commissioner, at which point we can walk away whistling. As expected.”

“
Pilatus docet
, in short,” Montalbano said bitterly.

“It really gets on my nerves when you speak Latin.”

“And what do you think the commissioner will do?”

“I couldn’t fucking care less.”

“I don’t like your line of reasoning, Mimì.”

“Oh, no? You’re the one who taught me to look at things concretely!”

“Why, aren’t the things stated in the letter concrete?”

“Of course they’re concrete! But totally useless. There isn’t a single bit of evidence that would hold up.”

“What are you talking about? Tomorrow Rizzica’s coming, and we’re gonna put the screws on him. He’s neck-deep in this. The warehouse where the truck stops is his, the trawlers are his, and—”

“How do you know the warehouse is his?”

“He told me himself. I ran into him a few hours ago at the port, and he even told me that when he comes in today, he’s going to explain how it was all a misunderstanding and that the real problem was with the trawler’s motor.”

“You see? When he found out they’d shot one of us, the guy shat his pants and came up with an alibi. And he’ll have no trouble defending himself. He’ll start screaming: ‘But I was the first person to report that something seemed fishy! Why else would I notify the police?’ And bear in mind that he’s more afraid of Sinagra than we are.”

“We can try another approach. We can organize a stakeout, and the minute the refrigerator trucks arrive with Sinagra, we burst in and—”

“—and get the case taken away from us immediately. Can you imagine them leaving an investigation into chemical weapons traffic with an Arab country in the hands of a small-time police inspector and his even smaller-time assistant? No way. The spooks’ll come in, the good ones and the bad ones, and two days later—”

“—Undersecretary Di Santo’ll come on TV and say it was all a big mistake and the substances were actually medicines for the children of Darfur.”

“I see you’re starting to catch on.”

“Yes, but the photographs—”

“Salvo, assuming you even get permission to open that deposit box, assuming the photos are even there, and assuming the judge lets you keep them for more than two seconds, those photos don’t mean a fucking thing!”

“What are you saying? An undersecretary eating at the same table with a mafioso of the caliber of Franco Sinagra?”

“Oh, right! What a scandal! How shameful! No matter what they do, our elected representatives don’t give a fuck anymore about public opinion! They take drugs, frequent whores, rob, steal, cheat, sell themselves, commit perjury, make deals with the Mafia, and what happens to them? The newspapers talk about it for, oh, three days maybe? Then everybody forgets about it. But you—you who exposed the scandal, they won’t forget about you, nosirree, you can count on that, and they’ll make you pay for it.”

“We could ask Tommaseo for authorization to listen to Sinagra’s phone conversations with—”

“—with the Honorable Di Santo? But what fucking world do you live in, anyway? Nowadays there isn’t a single judge who’ll grant you that authorization, and he couldn’t do it even if he wanted to, because these people know how to shield themselves. He would have to ask for the authorization of parliament first, and then hope and pray they granted it!”

Montalbano listened to all this with a sort of mounting fatigue. Because these were words he himself might have said. But he realized that to continue to talk to Mimì would be a waste of breath. He would never manage to make him change his position. The best thing was to send him home to bed. He sat there for a few moments in silence, as if reflecting on what Mimì had said, then leaned forward, took the envelope, put the letter back inside, and handed it to Augello, who put it in his pocket.

“Tomorrow morning, no later than eight, I want you to go to Via Bixio. Take Gallo along, and leave Galluzzo with me here.”

“All right. But sleep easy. It couldn’t have been done any other way.”

In the light of ignoble common sense, no, it couldn’t have been done any other way. The argument Mimì had just made was his own, yes, but it was only the first part of the argument that he, in Mimì’s place, would have made.

The second part, in fact, would have begun as follows: Granted all of the above, what can we do now to screw them all, from the Honorable Di Santo to Franco Sinagra, without having to take it up the you-know-what ourselves? That was the question.

He would have to find the answer all by himself. By coming up with an idea that it scared him even to think about. Dropping everything was not an option.

18

He got up to go home when his cell phone rang. It was Angela.

“Listen, are you still at the station?” she asked.

“Yes, why?”

“I want to see you, even if it’s only for five minutes. I have something extremely important to tell you.”

She was scared, and her voice sounded choked. But he didn’t want to waste any time with her. He absolutely needed to go home to Marinella and reflect in peace.

“I already told you it’s not possible. Has something happened?”

“I’ve heard from that person I told you about.”

Carmona. Like all fugitives from justice, he came and went as he pleased without anyone, police and carabinieri included, ever recognizing him.

“What did he want?”

“To know if we were seeing each other tonight. I told him you were busy and we would see each other tomorrow. And then he told me I had to do something.”

“What was that?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone.”

She was very scared. Her voice was trembling.

“Try to stay calm. You can tell me tomorrow evening.”

“No. I absolutely have to tell you tonight, so that you can—”

“All right, listen, I can see you for five minutes, but let’s meet halfway between here and Fiacca, so I can get back to the station as quickly as possible. Have you finished your shift?”

“I got off fifteen minutes ago.”

“Do you know the Torrisi Motel? If we leave right now, we can meet there in forty-five minutes. Oh, and don’t get out of your car when you arrive, just wait for me in the parking lot. And make sure nobody follows you.”

While driving there, he was thinking not of what he would say to Angela, but of how to corner Sinagra and, by association, Di Santo with him. Because what Mimì had called to his attention was all well and good, but it was also true that everything has its limit. For example: it’s one thing to go out to eat with someone vaguely associated with the Mafia, and it’s another thing to be seen in the company of a mafioso publicly known to have ordered two murders and another attempted murder. Knowledge of the fact would make Sinagra’s arrest all the more sensational and the public disgracing of the honorable undersecretary all the more effective. So the problem came down to one thing only: how to screw Sinagra?

When the inspector pulled into the parking lot, which was almost entirely in darkness, he still hadn’t found an answer. He got out of the car. There were three other cars in the lot. One flashed its brights.

“Get in,” said Angela, opening the car door.

The moment he was inside, she threw her arms around him and gave him a long kiss.

“I’m not sure I wasn’t followed,” she said in a low voice as the inspector, still numb from the unexpected attack, was regaining consciousness. “So we should pretend we’re meeting here to . . .”

“Then let’s get into the backseat,” Montalbano suggested. “Like lovers who, even when they have only five minutes . . .”

They got out and went in back.

“Lie down,” Angela ordered him.

The inspector obeyed and, after climbing on top of him, with her left leg on the seat next to his and her right foot resting on the floor of the car, she held him tight. Montalbano couldn’t move.

“Carmona told me that tomorrow night I’m supposed to make you drink a lot and get very tired. And that when I see that you are in a deep sleep . . .”

The problem was that when she spoke in her present state of agitation, moving her hips one minute and her breasts the next, it had a devastating effect on the inspector.

“. . . when I see that you are in a deep sleep, I am supposed to go and open the door to let them in. But, are you listening to me?”

“Hmm?” said Montalbano.

At that exact moment he was reviewing in his mind Book I of
The Iliad
, “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus . . . ,”
^*
after having first tried to think in rapid succession of the last funeral he’d been to, two or three massacres, and an old woman who’d been murdered and quartered . . . But the girl’s weight, body heat, and breath were too much for him to blot out. He was making a superhuman effort to make what he was feeling, well, intangible.

“They want me to open—”

“Right, right, I got that. But why?”

“Carmona says they want to photograph you naked with me beside you, also naked. To blackmail you.”

“And why was it so urgent for you to tell me this?”

“Because I’m not convinced that all they want to do is take your picture. And also to let you know, so that you can maybe catch Carmona in the act.”

“You’re right. I’ll see what I can do, thanks.”

Detached, yes, but always polite, our Inspector Montalbano. Always
compos sui
(but why the hell was he thinking in Latin?), even when he had a beautiful young woman lying on top of him.

“And now, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I really have to go.”

Angela got off him, he sat up, and they got out of the car and kissed. Exactly like two lovers who had just released a little of their pent-up desire.

“I’ll ring you tomorrow,” the inspector said.

He waited for her to leave, then went into the motel.

“Excuse me, but could I use your bathroom?” he asked the porter, who knew him.

“Of course, Inspector.”

Locking himself inside, he took off his jacket and shirt, turned on the faucet, and put his steaming head under the running water.

Compromising photos, right! They would take those afterwards, since the way things would have gone would have been as follows: Carmona and his friend would have gone into his house with the camera and had Angela lie down next to him, naked. Then Carmona would have pulled out his gun and killed them both. Almost a repeat of what they did to Manzella. Then they would have arranged the corpses in more or less obscene poses and photographed them. The newspaper and TV headlines:
INSPECTOR MONTALBANO AND HIS YOUNG LOVER KILLED WHILE SLEEPING. A CRIME OF PASSION?
And then it would turn out that they were shot by some jealous ex-lover of Angela.

Everybody’d already seen the movie, but people never got tired of seeing it again.

But why were they aiming at him? Maybe Mimì was right. Maybe the Via Bixio house
was
under surveillance. Their suspicions must have been aroused when the inspector didn’t immediately call Forensics but had kept the whole business to himself. This silence got them worried and upset. They must have thought: If Montalbano was acting this way, it must mean he found something very damning to us in there. Better silence him before he takes any action.

And this meant he didn’t have much time left to neutralize Sinagra. By this point it was an open duel.

He needed to remain lucid for at least another two hours. He prepared the large espresso pot, and when the coffee bubbled up, he took the whole thing out to the veranda. The night was a little chilly, and he also felt chilled for his own reasons, as the weariness of the day began to make itself felt. But he didn’t put his jacket back on to go outside. The cold actually helped him to think. By now he knew Manzella’s letter by heart and could repeat it to himself word for word. Which was what he started to do, changing registers each time: first as a lament, then stressing practically every syllable, then pausing after each line. The fifth time through, one sentence in particular struck him:
a stingy man who had a sort of tic; he would appropriate everything that came within his reach . . . Giovanna had nicknamed him “the Thieving Magpie.”

The Thieving Magpie. What did it mean? Why did this seem so important to him? The phrase started repeating itself in his head, together with certain passages of Rossini’s music, the way it used to happen with old vinyl records when the needle would get stuck on a single syllable or note.

At last there was a flash of light.

A crazy thought, real loony-bin stuff, like betting everything he owned on the roulette wheel—no, better yet, like a sort of Russian roulette, a game of chance where if he got it wrong, he would be out of the police force the very next day. But he couldn’t think of anything else, and it seemed like the best option.

He studied it from every possible, imaginable angle. With a little luck, it might work. He looked at his watch. Two
A.M.

He got up, went into the house, and dialed Angela’s number. After calming her down from the fright he’d given her, he asked her:

“Do you have some old female relative that you can think of, say, over eighty, preferably a widow, half senile, who doesn’t live in Fiacca but is in the phone book?”

“Have you gone crazy?”

“Almost. Do you or don’t you?”

“Well, there’s Zia ’Ntunietta . . .”

“Excellent. Now listen to me very carefully.”

He then took a shower and went to bed. He slept soundly and peacefully, like a baby, until seven.

The telephone rang at seven-thirty, as planned. He’d barely had time to take a quick shower, shave, and drink a cup of coffee.

“Hello?”

“MontalbanothisisTommaseowhat’sthisbusinessabouta letterfromayoungwomanyouhaven’tanswered?”

The prosecutor spoke as if all the words were stuck together. He sounded quite agitated.

“What letter, sir?” Montalbano asked, feigning great surprise.

“A young woman with a very sensuous voice, among other things?”

Tommaseo stopped. He must have heard Angela’s voice again in his mind. Whenever a case had anything to do with women, the prosecutor lost his head.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go and get a drink of water.”

He returned a few moments later, speaking normally.

“. . . Her name is Antonietta Vullo, from Rivera, she says she sent you a letter in which she claims that a certain Franco Sinagra is holding a transsexual named Giovanna Lonero prisoner at his residence in Via Roma 28 and routinely and repeatedly torturing this man—I mean, er, woman. But you’ve done nothing about this letter. Why not?”

“To be honest, the whole story seemed a little far-fetched to me.”

“Look, I can tell you that Antonietta Vullo is in the Rivera phone book. She’s real. Did you call her up to check? No, right? Well, I did!”

Montalbano turned frosty.

“And what did she tell you?”

“An old woman answered the phone, she sounded senile. I couldn’t understand a word she said. She must be the girl’s grandmother. But she said she wasn’t there. At any rate, I’ve already sent you a search warrant, Montalbano.”

“Look, sir, this is a complicated matter. This Franco Sinagra is a Mafia boss with some very powerful friends.”

“You know what the girl said to me, Montalbano? That if we don’t immediately try to free this man—I mean, this transsexual—she will go straight to the newspapers and television. So, if the story turns out to be true, we’ll all be neck-deep in shit. Because we didn’t take a letter seriously even though it was signed by a real person with a real address. Speaking of which, do you still have it?”

“Nah, I threw it away.”

“It doesn’t matter. But it would be a serious breach of duty not to clear this up. Do you understand?”

“And what, sir, if the whole thing turns out to be the fantasy of a crazy girl? How will Sinagra react?”