The Potter's Field (16 page)

“Do you know the address of the house?”

“No.”

It was best not to give Fazio too much information. He was liable to discover that Mimì was renting it.

That afternoon, as he was coming back in to the station, he nearly collided with Mimì Augello, who was coming out in a hurry.

“Greetings, Mimì.”

“Greetings,” Mimì replied brusquely.

Montalbano turned around to look at him as he headed through the parking lot towards his car. Mimì seemed to be walking with his back slightly hunched.

At that very moment another car parked right beside Mimì's, and from it emerged a woman of more than considerable beauty.

But Augello didn't consider her at all. He didn't even look at her, in fact, but only started up his car and left.

How he had changed! Once upon a time, Mimì would most certainly have tried to strike up a conversation and make friends with a woman like that.

Five minutes after the inspector had sat down at his desk, the door flew open and slammed against the wall with such force that it frightened Catarella himself, the author of what should have been a simple knock.

“Man, whatta crash! Even scared me m'self, Chief! Ahhh Chief! Whatta woman!”

“Where?”

“Right 'ere, Chief. Inna waitin' room. Says 'er name's Dolorosa. I say it oughter be Amorosa! Says she wants a talk t'yiz poissonally in poisson. Jesus, whatta woman! Ya gotta have eyes t'see this one!”

She must be the woman the inspector saw get out of the car. A woman who puts even Catarella in a state like that, and Mimì doesn't deign to give her a glance? Poor Mimì! He was in a really bad way!

“Send her in.”

She didn't seem real. She was stunning, about thirty, dark and very tall, with long hair falling over her shoulders, big, deep eyes, a broad mouth, full lips siliconized not by a surgeon but by Mother Nature herself, perfect teeth for eating living flesh, and big hoop earrings, like a gypsy. Also gypsylike were her skirt and a blouse that swelled with two international-tournament-size bocce balls.

She didn't seem real, but she was. Man, was she ever real.

Montalbano had the impression he'd already met her somewhere, but then realized that it was because she looked like a Mexican movie actress from the fifties he'd seen in a recent retrospective.

When she entered, the office filled with a faint scent of cinnamon.

But it wasn't perfume that gave off that scent, the inspector thought. It was her skin. As she held out her hand to him, Montalbano noticed that she had extremely long fingers, disproportionately long, fascinating and dangerous.

They sat down, she in front, he behind the desk. The woman had a serious, worried air about her.

“What can I do for you, signora . . . ?”

“My name is Dolores Alfano.”

Montalbano sprang up towards the ceiling, and on his way back down, his left butt-cheek landed on the edge of the chair and he very nearly disappeared behind the desk. Dolores Alfano seemed not to notice.

So here, at last, personally in person, was the mysterious woman Fabio Giacchetti had talked to him about, the woman who, returning from an amorous tryst, nearly got run over by someone, perhaps on purpose.

“But Alfano is my husband Giovanni's surname,” she continued. “My maiden name is Gutierrez.”

“Are you Spanish?”

“No, Colombian. But I've been living in Vigàta for years, at Via Guttuso, 12.”

“So, what can I do for you, signora?” Montalbano repeated.

“My husband is away at sea, sailing on a container ship as first mate. We stay in touch through letters and postcards. Before leaving, he always gives me a list of his ports of call with arrival and departure dates, so he can receive my letters when he goes ashore. We also sometimes call each other with our satellite phones, but pretty rarely.”

“Has something happened?”

“Well, Giovanni embarked a few months ago on a rather long voyage, and after three weeks had gone by, he still hadn't written or phoned me. This has never happened before. So I got worried and called him. He told me he was in good health and had been very busy.”

Montalbano was spellbound as he listened to her. She had a bedroom voice. There was no other way to define it. She might say only “hello,” and immediately one imagined rumpled blankets, pillows on the floor, and sweat-dampened sheets smelling of cinnamon.

And the Spanish accent that came out when she spoke at length was like a spicy condiment.

“. . . a postcard from him,” said Dolores.

Lost in her voice, Montalbano had become distracted, his mind indeed on unmade beds and torrid nights, with perhaps some Spanish guitars playing in the background...

“I'm sorry, what did you say?” he said.

“I said that the day before yesterday, I got a postcard from him.”

“Good. So now you've been reassured.”

The woman did not reply, but pulled a picture postcard out of her purse and handed it to the inspector.

It showed the port of a town that Montalbano had never heard of. The stamp was Argentinean. On the back was written :
Doing great. How about you? Kisses, Giovanni
.

You couldn't very well say the captain was an expansive sort. Still, it was better than nothing. Montalbano looked up at Dolores Alfano.

“I don't think he wrote it himself,” she said. “The signature looks different to me.”

She took four other postcards out of her purse and passed them to Montalbano.

“Compare it with these, which he sent me last year.”

There was no need to resort to a handwriting expert. It was glaringly obvious that the handwriting of the last postcard was fake. And falsified rather carelessly at that. The old postcards also had a different tone:

“This last postcard I received,” Dolores continued, “brought back the strange impression I had after calling him on the phone.”

“Which was?”

“That it wasn't him at the other end. His voice was different. As if he had a cold. But at the time I convinced myself that it was because of the distortion of the cell phone. Now I'm no longer so sure.”

“And what do you think I should do?”

“Well . . . I don't really know.”

“It's sort of a problem, signora. The last postcard wasn't written by him, you're right about that. But that might also mean your husband didn't board the ship for any number of reasons and then had a friend write to you and send it so you wouldn't get worried.”

Dolores shook her head.

“In that case, he could have telephoned me.”

“True. Why didn't
you
call him?”

“I did. As soon as I received the card. And I called him twice after that. I even tried again before coming here. But his telephone is always turned off, nobody answers.”

“I understand your concern, signora, but...”

“So you can't do anything?”

“No, I can't. Because, you see, the way things are today, you aren't even in a position to file a missing persons report. Who's to say whether the situation isn't other than what you say it is?”

“But what could the situation be, in that case?”

“Well, I dunno. For example . . .” Montalbano started walking on eggshells. “Mind you, this is only a conjecture, but maybe your husband met somebody . . . You know what I mean? . . . Somebody who—”

“My husband loves me.”

She said it serenely, almost without intonation. Then she took an envelope out of her purse and withdrew the letter that was inside it.

“This is a letter he sent me four months ago. Please read it.”

Montalbano blushed, decided he'd seen enough, and gave the letter back to her.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought he saw, deep inside the woman's deep dark eyes, gone as fast as it had appeared, a flash of . . . irony? amusement?

“The last time he was here, how did your husband behave?”

“With me? The same as always.”

“Listen, signora, all I can do at this point is give you some, er, personal advice. Do you know the name of the ship on which your husband is sailing?”

“Yes, the
Ruy Barbosa
.”

“Then get in touch with the shipping company. Are they Italian?”

“No. Stevenson and Guerra is Brazilian.”

“Do they have a representative in Italy?”

“Of course, in Naples. His name is Pasquale Camera.”

“Have you got an address and telephone number for this Pasquale Camera?”

“Yes, I've got them right here.”

She took a piece of paper out of her purse and held it out to Montalbano.

“No, don't give it to me. It's you who has to call for the information.”

“No, I can't,” Dolores said decisively.

“Why not?”

“Because I don't want my husband to think that I . . . No, I'd rather not. Please, you do it.”

“Me? But, signora, as a police inspector I ca—”

“Just say you're a friend of Giovanni's and you're worried because you've had no news of him for a while.”

“Look, signora, I—”

Dolores leaned forward. Montalbano was resting his arms on the desktop. The woman laid her hands, hot as if with fever, on top of Montalbano's, her long fingers snaking inside the cuffs of his shirt, first caressing his skin, then clutching his wrists.

“Help me,” she said.

“All . . . all right,” said Montalbano.

They stood up. The inspector went to open the door for her and saw that half the police department was in the waiting room, all feigning indifference.

Apparently Catarella had passed the word about Dolores's beauty.

Once alone, the inspector took off his jacket, unbuttoned his cuffs, and rolled up his sleeves.

Dolores's fingernails had left marks on his skin. She had branded him. His skin burned a little. He sniffed his arms, which smelled slightly of cinnamon. Wasn't it best to settle the matter at once? And get this black leopardess out of his hair? The less he saw of her, the better.

“Catarella! Ring up this number in Naples for me. But don't tell them you're calling for the police.”

Multiplication table for eigh—. A woman picked up at once.