“Why would she do that?”
“Mimi, try to think for a minute. What are you going to do after you’re married? Stay in Vigata while Rebecca stays in Pavia?”
“C‘mon, get it straight! Her name is Rachele. No, she hasn’t requested a transfer. That would be premature.”
“But, sooner or later, she’ll have to, won’t she?”
Mimi took a deep breath, as if preparing to dive underwater.
“I don’t think she will.”
“And why not?”
“Because we’ve decided that I should be the one to ask for a transfer.”
Montalbano’s eyes turned into a serpent’s: motionless, gelid.
Now a forked tongue’s gonna dart out of his mouth, thought Augello, feeling himself bathed in sweat.
“Mimi, you’re a motherfucking sonofabitch. Last night, when you came to my house, you sang only half the Mass. You talked to me about marriage, not about reassignment. Which for me is the more important of the two. And which you know perfectly well.”
“I was going to tell you, Salvo, I swear it! If not for your crazy reaction, which threw me for a loop ...”
“Mimi, look me in the eye and tell me the whole truth: have you already put in your request?”
“I have, but—”
“And what did Bonetti-Alderighi say?”
“He said it would take a little time. And also that ... never mind.”
“Speak.”
“He said he was pleased, and that it was high time that band of mafiosi at Vigàta Police—his exact words—started to break up.”
“And what’d you do?”
“Well ...”
“Come on, out with it.”
“I took back the request that was on his desk. I told him I needed to think it over.”
Montalbano sat there in silence for a spell. Mimi looked like he’d just walked out of a shower. The inspector then gestured towards the stack of pages Catarella had brought him.
“This is everything that was in Nenè Sanfilippo’s computer. There’s a novel and a lot of letters—let’s call them love letters. Who better than you to read this stuff?”
4
Fazio rang to give him the name of the man who’d driven the bus from Vigàta to Tindari and back: one Filippo Tortorici, son of Gioacchino and ... He stopped himself in time. Even over the telephone, he could sense the inspector’s growing exasperation. He added that the driver was out on a job, but Mr. Malaspina, with whom he was compiling a list of the people who’d gone on the excursion, had assured him he would send Tortorici on to police headquarters as soon as he got back, which would be around three in the afternoon. Montalbano looked at his watch: he had two free hours.
He automatically headed towards the Trattoria San Calogero.The owner put a seafood appetizer in front of him, and, without warning, the inspector felt a kind of pincer close the opening to his stomach. It was impossible to eat. In fact, the sight of the squid, baby octopus, and clams nauseated him. He sprang to his feet.
Calogero, the waiter-owner, came running up, worried.
“Inspector, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Calò, I just don’t feel like eating anymore.”
“Don’t turn your nose up at that appetizer, Inspector. It doesn’t come any fresher!”
“I know. Please give it my apologies.”
“You don’t feel so good?”
An excuse came to mind.
“Ah, I don’t know. I feel a little chill, maybe I’m coming down with the flu.”
He left, knowing this time where he was headed. To the lighthouse, to sit down on the flat rock beneath it, which had become a kind of rock of tears. He had sat there the day before as well, when he couldn’t get that friend from ‘68 out his head, what was his name, he couldn’t remember. The rock of tears. And he had once shed tears in earnest there, liberating tears, when he first learned that his father was dying. Now he was back there again, because of another end foretold, over which he would shed no tears, but which deeply saddened him. An end, yes, that was not an exaggeration. It didn’t matter that Mimi had withdrawn his request for a transfer. The fact remained that he had submitted it at all.
Bonetti-Alderighi was a notorious imbecile, and he brilliantly confirmed this when he called the inspector’s police department a “band of mafiosi.” In reality it was a team, tightly knit and compact, a well-oiled machine, where every little cog had a function and—why not?—a personality of its own. And the belt that made the whole mechanism run was none other than Mimi Augello. One had to recognize the problem for what it was: a crack, the beginning of a break. The beginning of an end. How long would Mimi be able to hold out? Another two months? Three? Eventually he would give in to Rebecca’s tears and pressure—that is, Rachele’s tears and pressure—and then, good-bye, it was nice knowing you.
“And what about me?” he asked. “What the hell am I doing?”
One of the reasons he so feared promotion and the inevitable transfer was the certainty that he would never again be able, anywhere else, to put together a team like the one he’d managed, miraculously, to assemble in Vigata. But even as he was thinking this, he knew that it wasn’t the real reason for what he felt at that moment, the truth behind his suffering—There, goddamn it, you’ve finally managed to say the word! What, were you ashamed? Go on, repeat it: suffering. He was very fond of Mimi. He considered him more than a friend, rather like a kid brother, and this was why his pre-announced abandonment had hit him right in the chest with the force of a gunshot. The word “betrayal” had flitted through his brain for a moment. And Mimì’d had the gall to confide in Livia, utterly certain that she would never—Christ!—say a word to him, her man. And he’d even mentioned his possible transfer to her, and even this she withheld from him, complicitous in every respect with her friend Mimi! What a pair!
He realized that his suffering was turning into senseless, stupid rage. He felt ashamed. What he was thinking at that moment wasn’t really him.
Filippo Tortorici showed up at three-forty-five, a bit out of breath. He was a scrawny little man somewhere in his fifties, with a little crest of hair in the middle of his head and bald everywhere else. He looked exactly like a bird Montalbano had once seen in a documentary on the Amazon rain forest.
“What did you want to talk to me about? My boss, Mr. Malaspina, ordered me to come here right away but didn’t give me no explanation.”
“Were you the driver for the Vigàta- Tindari excursion last Sunday?”
“Yessir, I was. When the company organizes these tours, they always turn to me. The customers ask for me personally They want me for their driver. They trust me. I’m calm and patient.You have to understand them; they’re all old and have a lot of needs.”
“Do you do these tours often?”
“In the warm season, at least once every couple of weeks. Sometimes we go to Tindari, sometimes to Erice, sometimes to Siracusa, sometimes—”
“Is it always the same passengers?”
“There’s about ten who’re always there. The rest are different.”
“As far as you know, were Alfonso and Margherita Griffo on Sunday’s excursion?”
“Sure they were! I’ve got a good memory! Why do you ask?”
“Don’t you know? They’ve disappeared.”
“O Madunnuzza santa! What you mean, disappeared?”
“They haven’t been seen since they went on the tour. It was even mentioned on television. They said the son was desperate.”
“I didn’t know, I really didn’t.”
“Listen, did you know the Griffos before the excursion?”
“No, never seen ‘em before.”
“So how do you know the Griffos were on the bus?”
“Because before we leave, the boss always gives me the list of passengers. And before we leave, I call roll.”
“And do you do it again for the return trip?”