The Terra-Cotta Dog (20 page)

 
 
He left the commissioner's house pleased—with the anchovies
all'agretto
, but also because he'd managed to obtain a postponement of the recommendation of promotion. There was no rhyme or reason to the arguments he'd cited, but his superior politely pretended to accept them. Could Montalbano very well have told him that the mere idea of a transfer, of a change of habits, gave him a fever?

It was still early. His appointment with Gegè wasn't for another two hours. He dropped by the Free Channel studios, wanting to learn more about Alcide Maraventano.

“Extraordinary, isn't he?” said Nicolò Zito. “Did he suck milk from a baby bottle in front of you?”

“And how.”

“It's all a put-on, you know. He's just playacting.”

“What do you mean? He has no teeth.”

“You have heard of an invention called dentures, I presume? He owns a set, and they work perfectly well. I'm told he sometimes wolfs down a quarter of veal or a roast suckling goat when nobody's looking.”

“So why does he do it?”

“Because he's a born tragedian. Or comedian, if you prefer.”

“Is he really a priest?”

“He quit the priesthood.”

“And the things he says, are they true or made up?”

“You don't have to worry about that. His knowledge is limitless, and when he says something, it's better than gospel. Did you know he shot somebody about ten years ago?”

“Come on.”

“Really. Some thief broke into his house, on the ground floor. He bumped into a pile of books and they came crashing down, making an infernal racket. Maraventano, who'd been asleep upstairs, woke up, came down, and shot him with a muzzle-loading rifle, a kind of household cannon. The blast made half the village jump out of bed. When the smoke cleared, the robber was wounded in the leg, a dozen or so books were ruined, and the old man had a fractured shoulder from the gun's tremendous kick. The robber, however, maintained he'd entered the house not with any criminal intent, but because he'd been invited there by the priest, who at a certain point, for no apparent reason, picked up a rifle and shot him. And I believe him.”

“Whom?”

“The supposed thief.”

“But why would he shoot him?”

“I suppose you know what goes on inside the head of Alcide Maraventano? Maybe it was to see if the rifle still worked. Or just to make a scene, which is more likely.”

“Listen, before I forget, do you have Umberto Eco's
Treatise of General Semiotics
?”

“Me? Are you crazy?”

 
 
On his way to the car, which he'd left in the Free Channel's parking lot, Montalbano got soaked. It had started raining without warning, very fine drops but very dense. He got home with time to spare before the appointment. He changed clothes and sat down in the armchair in front of the TV, but then immediately got up again and went to his desk to fetch a postcard that had arrived that morning.

It was from Livia. As she'd informed him by telephone, she had gone to visit a cousin in Milan for ten days or so. On the glossy side, which showed the inevitable view of the cathedral, there was a luminescent trail of slime cutting the image in half. Montalbano touched it with the tip of his index finger: it was very fresh, and slightly sticky. He examined the desk more closely. A
scataddrizzo
, a large, dark-brown snail, was slithering across the cover of the Consolo book. Montalbano did not hesitate. The horror he'd felt after the dream, which he was still carrying around with him, was too strong. Grabbing the Vasquez Montalbán novel, which he'd already read, he slammed it violently down on the one by Consolo. Caught in between, the
scataddrizzo
made such a noise as it was being crushed that Montalbano felt nauseated. He then tossed the two novels into the garbage can. He would buy new copies tomorrow.

 
 
Gegè wasn't there, but the inspector knew he wouldn't be long. His friend was never late by much. The rain had stopped, but there must have been quite a storm at sea: large puddles had formed along the beach, and the sand gave off a strong smell of wet wood. He lit a cigarette. All at once, by the faint light of the moon that had suddenly appeared, he saw the dark shape of a car approaching very slowly, lights extinguished, from the opposite direction to where he'd come in, which was the same direction Gegè should have come from. Alarmed, he opened the glove compartment, took out his pistol, cocked it, and disengaged the car door, ready to jump out. When the other car came within range, he turned on his high beam all at once. The car was Gegè's, no doubt about that, but it might easily be somebody else at the wheel.

“Turn off your lights!” he heard someone shout from the car.

It was definitely Gegè's voice, and the inspector obeyed. They spoke one to the other, each in his own car, through their lowered windows.

“What the fuck are you doing? I nearly fired at you,” Montalbano said angrily.

“I wanted to see if they'd followed you.”

“If who'd followed me?”

“I'll tell you in a second. I got here half an hour ago and was hiding behind the jetty at Punta Rossa.”

“Come over here,” said the inspector.

Gegè got out of his car and into Montalbano's, almost huddling against him.

“What's wrong, you cold?”

“No, but I'm shivering anyway.”

He stank of fear. As Montalbano knew from experience, fear had a smell all its own, sour, yellow-green in color.

“Do you know who that was who got killed?”

“Gegè, a lot of people get killed. Who are you talking about?”

“Pietro Gullo, that's who, the one they drove to the Pasture after they killed him.”

“Was he a client of yours?”

“A client? If anything, I was
his
client. He was Tano the Greek's man, his collector. The same guy who told me Tano wanted to meet you.”

“Why so surprised, Gegè? It's the usual story: Winner take all. They use the same system in politics. Tano's businesses are changing hands, so they're liquidating everybody who worked with him. You were neither an associate nor a dependent of Tano's. So what are you worried about?”

“No,” Gegè said firmly, “that's not how it is. That's not what they told me in Trapani.”

“So how is it, then?”

“They said there was an agreement.”

“An agreement?”

“Oh, yes. An agreement between you and Tano. They said the shoot-out was bogus, a sham, a masquerade. And they're convinced that the people who staged this masquerade were me, Pietro Gullo, and somebody else they're sure to kill one of these days.”

Montalbano remembered the telephone call he'd received after the press conference, when an anonymous voice had called him a “lousy fucking actor.”

“They feel offended,” Gegè continued. “They can't bear the thought that you and Tano spit in their faces, made them look like chumps. It means more to them than the weapons. Now you tell me:What am I supposed to do?”

“Are you sure they have it in for you too?”

“I swear to God. Why else did they bring Gullo all the way to the Pasture, which is my turf? You can't get any clearer than that!”

The inspector thought of Alcide Maraventano and what he'd said about codes.

It must have been a change in the density of the darkness, or a split-second glimmer seen out of the corner of one eye, but the fact is that an instant before the explosion of gunfire, Montalbano's body obeyed a series of impulses frantically transmitted by his brain: he bent over, opening the car door with his left hand, and hurled himself out while all around him was a thunder of gunshots, shattering glass, plates of metal flying apart, quick red flashes brightening the dark. Montalbano remained motionless, wedged between Gegè's car and his own, and only then did he realize he had his pistol in hand. When Gegè had come inside his car, he'd set it on the dashboard. He must have grabbed it by instinct. After the pandemonium, a leaden silence reigned. Nothing moved. There was only the sound of the agitated sea. Then, about twenty yards away, to the side where the beach ended and the hill of marl began, there was a voice:

“Everything okay?”

“Everything okay,” said another voice, this one very close.

“Make sure they're both finished, then we can go.”

Montalbano tried to picture the movements the man would have to make to verify that they were dead:
chuff, chuff
went his footsteps in the sodden sand. Now the man must be right beside the car; in a moment he would bend down to look inside.

Montalbano leapt to his feet and fired. A single shot. He clearly heard the thud of a body collapsing on the sand, then a gasping, a kind of gurgling, then nothing.

“Jujù, everything all right?” asked the distant voice.

Without getting back in his car, Montalbano, through the open door, put his hand on the high-beam switch and waited. He could hear nothing. He decided to try his luck and started counting in his head. When he got to fifty, he turned on the brights and stood straight up. Swathed in light, about ten yards away, appeared a man with a submachine gun in hand, frozen in surprise. Montalbano fired, the man immediately reacted, firing blindly into the dark. Feeling something like a tremendous punch in his left side, the inspector staggered, leaned his left hand against the car, then fired again, three shots in a row. The man in the lights sort of jumped in the air, turned around, and started running, as Montalbano saw the white beam of the headlights begin to turn yellow, his eyes clouding over, head spinning. He sat down on the sand, realizing that his legs could no longer support him, and leaned back against the side of the car.

He waited for the pain, and when it came it was so intense he started howling and crying like a child.

17

As soon as he awoke, he realized he was in a hospital room, and he remembered everything in minute detail: the meeting with Gegè, the words they exchanged, the shooting. Memory failed him only from the moment he found himself between the two cars, lying on the wet sand with an unbearable pain in his side. But it did not fail him completely. He remembered, for example, Mimì Augello's contorted face, his cracking voice.

“How do you feel? How do you feel? The ambulance is coming now, it's nothing, just stay calm.”

How had Mimì managed to find him?

Then, already in the hospital, someone in a white smock:

“He's lost too much blood.”

After that, nothing. He tried to look around. The room was clean and white. There was a large window, the daylight pouring through. He couldn't move; his arms were stuck full of IVs. His side didn't hurt anymore, however; it felt instead like a dead part of his body. He tried to move his legs but couldn't. He slipped slowly away into sleep.

He awoke again towards what must have been evening, since the lights were on. He closed his eyes at once when he saw that there were people in the room. He didn't feel like talking. Then, out of curiosity, he raised his eyelids just enough to see a little. Livia was there, sitting beside the bed in the only metal chair; behind her, standing, was Anna. On the other side of the bed, also standing, was Ingrid. Livia's eyes were wet with tears, Anna was crying without restraint, and Ingrid was pale, her face drawn.

Good God!
Montalbano said to himself in terror.

He closed his eyes and escaped into sleep.

 
 
At 6:30 on what he thought was the next morning, two nurses washed him and changed his medication. At seven the chief physician appeared, accompanied by five assistants, all of them in white smocks. The chief physician examined the chart appended at the foot of the bed, pulled the sheet aside, and began to touch him on his injured side.

“Seems to be coming along very nicely,” he declared. “The operation was a complete success.”

Operation? What operation was he talking about? Ah, maybe to remove the bullet that had wounded him. But it's not often a machine-gun bullet stays inside the body instead of slicing right through it. He would have liked to ask questions, demand explanations, but the words wouldn't come out. The doctor, however, seeing his eyes, guessed what questions the inspector was formulating.

“We had to perform an emergency operation on you. The bullet passed through your colon.”

Colon? And what the hell was his colon doing in his side? The colon had nothing to do with one's sides, it was supposed to be in the belly. But if it had to do with the belly, did this mean—and here he gave such a start that the doctors noticed—that from this moment on, for the rest of his life, he could eat only mush?

“. . . mush?” Montalbano finally managed to mutter, the horror of that prospect reactivating his vocal cords.

“What did he say?” the chief physician asked, turning to his assistants.

“I think he said brush,” said one.

“No, no, he said ambush,” interjected another.

They left arguing over the question.

 
 
At 8:30 the door opened and Catarella appeared.

“Chief, how goes it? How you feeling?”

If there was one person in the entire world with whom Montalbano felt dialogue was useless, it was Catarella. He didn't answer, but merely moved his head as if to say that things were a little less bad.

“I'm on guard here, over you, I mean. This hospital's a revolving door, people come, people go, back and forth and back and forth. Somebody could maybe come in immotivated with bad intentions, trying to finish the job they didn't finish. You know what I mean?”