The Dance of the Seagull (20 page)
“If you don’t find the wom—I mean, the transsexual—you’ll find something else, I’m sure of it. Can you imagine not finding anything in a mafioso’s—”
“All right, sir, if you put it that way . . . I guess I have no choice but to follow your orders.”
“As well you should, for once.”
“Zito? Montalbano here.”
“What’s up?”
“I want to return the favor you did for Fazio. I want you and a cameraman here in Vigàta at Via Roma, number 28, in half an hour. But don’t let yourselves be seen before I arrive.”
“But Via Roma 28 is Franco Sinagra’s house!”
“Exactly.”
“Holy shit!”
As soon as he hung up, the inspector rang the station and asked for Galluzzo. Once he’d given him instructions, he called Mimì.
“Are you at Via Bixio?”
“Yeah, it looks a massacre took place in there. I immediately called Forensics and am now outside waiting for them. I couldn’t stay inside.”
“Don’t tell me you felt metaphysically disconcerted!”
“Metaphysically, no. But did you see the condoms on the floor? Do you realize what they did to Manzella? Who are these animals anyway? Oh, and listen, I almost forgot to tell you: Arquà’s coming in person, know what I mean? What are you going to do?”
“I’m on my way to headquarters; Tommaseo’s looking for me.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s he want?”
“Dunno.”
The two squad cars arrived about twenty minutes later. Galluzzo, who was driving the first one, handed the inspector the warrant and let him in on the passenger’s side. The other car was driven by Lamarca, who was accompanied by another young officer, Di Grado.
“Do exactly as I do,” Galluzzo said to Lamarca.
As they entered Vigàta, Galluzzo put on the siren and started racing as if chasing a speeding car. Lamarca did the same. Pedestrians jumped onto the sidewalks, hurling curses and epithets at them as they passed. Total pandemonium, in short. Galluzzo came to a screeching halt in front of the house at number 28, Via Roma, then got out of the car with a machine gun in his hand while the inspector jumped out the other side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door of a car parked nearby fly open, and Zito and his cameraman came out. A window on the top floor of the house opened partway and was immediately closed.
Before ringing the doorbell, Montalbano gave Lamarca and Di Grado, also holding machine guns, the time to take up positions well in view of the TV camera. Meanwhile, a great number of rubberneckers started gathering round.
Come one, come all, ladies and gentlemen, to the great fireworks spectacular of the award-winning Salvo Montalbano & Co.! Who knows what you’ll see? Maybe the master pyrotechnist himself will get roasted to death in one of his own fireballs, but whatever happens, you can be sure to see a show you’ll never forget! Come one, come
all!
So, when ringing the doorbell, he heard its chimes as a cross between a Gloria and a Requiem.
“Who’s there?” asked a frightened female voice.
“Police! Open up!”
The door opened, and a woman of about thirty-five with black hair and big eyes appeared, a hot-blooded sort, but scared out of her wits.
“Are you Signora Sinagra?”
“Yes, but . . . my husband’s not here.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have a search warrant. Please let us in and then close the door immediately.”
She stood aside. The ground floor consisted of a large living room, a dining room, bathroom, and kitchen. They found nothing there.
Montalbano went upstairs, and the first thing he saw, inside a sort of study, was Manzella’s telescope in front of the window. On the desk was the case for the binoculars. For an instant, his knees buckled, and he grabbed on to Galluzzo to keep from falling.
“You feel okay, Chief?”
“I feel fantastic, Gallù!”
The triumphal march from Verdi’s
Aida
had started playing in his head. As he’d imagined, the thieving magpie hadn’t been able to resist the allure of the sparkling chrome telescope! And he’d dug his own grave.
In a small bedroom, they found a single bed unmade and still warm. But it was clear that two people had slept in the double bed in the master bedroom.
The inspector went back downstairs, sat down in an armchair, and fired up a cigarette. Signora Sinagra, sitting in front of him, had gone from pale to increasingly red in the face. She was starting to get angry, and with every noise the policemen made upstairs, she became more upset.
In the end she blurted out:
“Mind telling me what you’re looking for?”
In his mind, Montalbano flipped a proverbial coin. He’d already won, because Sinagra would have a very hard time explaining what Manzella’s telescope and binoculars were doing in his house. But he wasn’t satisfied yet. He wanted to have the man himself, Franco Sinagra, in his hands. The coin fell to the ground: heads. And so Montalbano decided to take another gamble.
“I have no problem answering that, signora. We’re looking for a woman.”
“A woman? What woman?” Signora Sinagra asked in shock.
“A transsexual named Giovanna Lonero, with whom your husband Franco has been in a relationship for some time, and who—”
“Ahhhhhhh!”
It was a sort of roar so loud and unexpected that Montalbano leapt to his feet. He could hear over his head the footsteps of the three men upstairs scrambling down the stairs to see what was happening.
“They tried to tell me! Ahhhhhh! They tried to tell me! Ahhhhh! An’ I’s too stupid to listen! Ahhhhh!”
“Calm down, signora, stop that!”
“That goddamn son of a stinking whore! Jesus, how disgusting! Yechhh! Ahhhhhh! With someone you don’ even know if iss a man or a woman! I’m gonna kill the stinkin’ bastard wit’ my own hands!”
They were unable to hold her back, and she dashed into the kitchen and moved an enormous refrigerator on wheels out of position. Montalbano immediately understood.
“Lamarca, take her into another room.”
Despite the fact that the young officer was strong and burly, he had a rather hard time dragging away the woman, who had stopped roaring and was now crying.
The inspector bent down to examine the floor carefully and noticed a few tiles that formed a sort of single block.
“This is a trapdoor. Galluzzo and Di Grado, try and see if you can open it.”
After fifteen minutes of trying, they still hadn’t succeeded. Montalbano then noticed a small button next to the electrical socket of the refrigerator. He pressed it with one finger, and the trapdoor opened without a sound. The classic Mafia rabbit hole with no escape. As Galluzzo and Di Grado pointed their machine guns, the inspector bent down towards the entrance and, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify the sound, said:
“Come out immediately, or I’m going to throw a hand grenade down there!”
Galluzzo and Di Grado looked at him, mystified. Hand grenade? Where? At that moment the raised hands and then the scarred face of Vittorio Carmona, killer and bodyguard, appeared.
“’Cuff him! He’s wanted for murder!” the inspector ordered.
Then Franco Sinagra popped out. He was in his underpants and carrying his clothes.
“You’re under arrest for ordering the murders of Filippo Manzella and Matilde Verruso, and for the attempted murder of Inspector Fazio.”
“Can I get dressed?”
“No.”
It was a day of bedlam. News reporters, TV cameras, telephone interviews, the commissioner pissed off because that asshole Arquà had turned over to him a hot letter that he should actually have given to Montalbano, and in so doing, got him into trouble, Tommaseo completely in the dark as to everything and going around saying it was thanks to him that Sinagra was seen on all the national television news programs in his underpants . . .
Around nine o’clock that evening, as the inspector was driving home to Marinella, the cell phone rang. It was Angela.
“Just a minute,” he said.
He pulled over to the side of the road before speaking again.
“Angela, thank you so much for everything. You were brilliant! You performed marvelously with Prosecutor Tommaseo! If not for you . . . How did you find out, anyway?”
“What do you mean, how did I find out? The TV news programs haven’t been talking about anything else! Why didn’t you call me?”
He’d quite simply forgotten.
“I’m sorry, Angela, but with all that was happening . . .”
“I understand.”
“Now you have nothing more to be afraid of. No one can blackmail and force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“You know, Salvo, I was thinking . . .”
“Tell me.”
“Don’t take it the wrong way. But, well, since there’s no longer any reason for us to see each other . . .”
A punch in the stomach. But of course she was right. What reason was there for them to see each other?
“. . . you won’t be coming to my place tonight.”
“Don’t be offended, Salvo. Try and understand me.”
“I’m not offended, I understand you perfectly.”
“I’m sorry, okay? And give me a ring whenever you like. Ciao.”
“Ciao.”
Sitting out on the veranda, with a touch of melancholy to keep him company, he tried to console himself with a dish—a huge one—of caponata.
Author’s Note
Like
The Wings of the Sphinx
, this novel had its origin in a press clipping sent to me by my providential friend Maurizio Assalto, whom I thank warmly. And apparently it’s not entirely superfluous to declare that all the characters, situations, episodes, and places in this story belong to my imagination and not to the real world. But when one writes, even pure fiction, isn’t one’s reference always the real world?
Notes
Zingarelli’s a dictionary:
Zingarelli’s is one of the standard dictionaries of modern Italian.
municipal police officer:
What Italians call a
vigile urbano
is part of a different department of law enforcement from the
commissariato
, of which Montalbano is chief, and which handles criminal cases.
“madhouse!”
“But weren’t they abolished?”:
In 1978, the passage of Law 180 (also known as the Franco Basaglia Law, after the famous psychiatrist-neurologist who inspired it) technically abolished insane asylums in Italy. Among other things, it eliminated “dangerousness” as an acceptable reason for internment. It did stipulate, however, that “obligatory mental health treatment” (
Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio
, or TSO) must be applied to individuals whose “psychological disturbances are such as to require urgent therapy,” if such therapy is not voluntarily accepted by the persons in question. Care to the mentally ill would be provided by a variety of institutions, including outpatient clinics, community centers, and “residential” and “semiresidential” centers.
Law 180 was slow in being applied. The first Berlusconi government moved in 1994 to close the remaining sanatoriums still open. But, as it turns out, the current system makes available to patients far more psychiatric services than before; the “residential centers” are, in effect, psychiatric hospitals. The inflexibly coercive nature of the pre-1978 asylums has, however, been considerably diminished.
Ragionier
Muscetta:
Ragioniere
is a largely meaningless title given to accountants whose specialization does not go beyond that provided by vocational school. A full certified accountant is called a
contabile
.
“like one of those carabinieri jokes”:
The carabinieri are often the butt of jokes in Italy, always having to do with their lack of intelligence.
Monsieur Lapalisse:
A reference to the legendary Jacques de la Palisse (1470–1525), a French nobleman and military officer active in Francis I’s Italian campaign, during which he was killed. His epitaph reads:
Ci gît Monsieur de La Palice: S’il n’était pas mort, il ferait encore envie
(“Here lies Monsieur de la Palisse: Were he not dead, he would still be envied”). This was originally misread—by mistake, presumably—as saying “. . .
S’il n’était pas mort, il serait encore en vie
” (“Were he not dead, he would still be alive”), due perhaps to the potential confusion between
f
and
s
in serif script. The misreading gave rise to a whole tradition of burlesque song variants, with similar tautological plays on words, such as
Il n’eût pas eu son pareil / S’il avait été seul au monde
(“He would have had no equals / Had he been alone in the world”). The many variants were brought together into
La chanson de La Palisse
by Bernard de la Monnoye in the early eighteenth century, though other versions exist as well.
“if I sing the song, i’ comes out
Surrientino
”
:
Neapolitan dialect for
Sorrentino
.
Via Piscio:
i.e., “Piss Street.”
Tertium non datur
:
“No third possibility is given” (Latin).
Mimì was speaking Italian, a bad sign:
i.e., instead of Sicilian.
Pilatus docet
:
“As Pilate teaches,” that is, it’s better not to dirty one’s hands (Latin).