Was it the door or the phone? He looked at his watch: past eleven, too early for Mimi.
“Hello? Sinagra here.”
Balduccio Sinagra’s faint voice, which always sounded ready to break like a spider’s web in a gust of wind, was unmistakable.
“If you have anything to say to me, Sinagra, call me at the station.”
“Wait. What’s wrong, you scared? This phone’s not bugged. Unless yours is.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to tell you that I feel bad, really bad.”
“Because you haven’t heard from your beloved grandson Japichinu?”
It was a shot fired straight at the balls. And for a moment, Balduccio Sinagra remained silent, long enough to absorb the blow and catch his breath.
“I’m convinced that my grandson, wherever he is, is better off than I am. ‘Cause my kidneys don’t work no more. I need a transplant, or I’ll die.”
Montalbano said nothing. He let the falcon fly in ever smaller, concentric circles.
“But do you know,” resumed the old man, “how many patients like me need this operation? Over ten thousand, Inspector. While waiting for your turn, you have all the time in the world to die.”
The falcon had stopped circling and was now ready to swoop down on the target.
“And then you have to be sure that the surgeon operating on you is good, dependable ...”
“Someone like Dr. Ingrò?”
The inspector had reached the target first; the falcon had dawdled too long. He’d managed to defuse the bomb Sinagra had in his hand. And he would not be able to say, yet again, that he had manipulated Inspector Montalbano like a marionette at the puppet theater. The old man’s reaction was authentic.
“My compliments, Inspector,” he said, “my sincerest compliments.”
And he continued:
“Dr. Ingrò is the right man. But I’m told he had to close down his hospital here in Montelusa. Seems he’s hot in the best of health himself, poor man.”
“What do the doctors say? Is it serious?”
“They don’t know yet.They want to be sure before they decide on a treatment. Bah, we’re all in the hands of the Lord, dear Inspector!”
He hung up.
At last the doorbell rang. He was making a pot of coffee.
“There’s nobody watching the villa,” Mimi said as he came in. “And until a little over half an hour ago, when I left to come here, he was alone.”
“Somebody may have gone there in the meantime.”
“If so, Fazio will call me from his cell phone. But you’re going to tell me right now why you’re suddenly so fixated on Dr. Ingrò.”
“Because they’re still keeping him in limbo.They haven’t decided whether to let him continue working or kill him like they did the Griffos and Nenè Sanfilippo.”
“So the doctor’s mixed up in this too?” asked Mimi in astonishment.
“He’s mixed up in it, all right,” said Montalbano.
“Says who?”
A tree, a Saracen olive tree. This would have been the correct answer. But Mimi would have thought him insane.
“Ingrid phoned Vanya, who’s scared out of her wits because there are certain things she doesn’t understand. For instance, the fact that Nenè knew the doctor really well but never said anything to her. Or the fact that her husband, when he caught her in bed with her lover, didn’t get angry or upset. He only got worried. And just this evening, Balduccio Sinagra confirmed it all for me.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Mimì. “What’s Sinagra got to do with this? And why would he turn informer?”
“He didn’t turn informer. He told me he needed a kidney transplant, and said he agreed when I mentioned Dr. Ingrò’s name. But he also said the good doctor wasn’t in the best of health. You told me the same thing, remember? Except that the word ‘health’ has different meanings for you and Balduccio.”
The coffee was ready. They drank it.
“You see,” the inspector resumed, “Nenè Sanfilippo wrote the whole story, and quite clearly at that.”
“Where?”
“In the novel. He starts out by copying the pages of a famous book, then tells his own story, then adds another passage from the famous novel, and so on. It’s a story about robots.”
“It’s science fiction, which is why I thought—”
“You fell into the trap set up by Sanfilippo. His robots, which he calls, say, Alpha 715 or Omega 37, are made of metal and circuits, but they think and feel just like us. Sanfilippo’s robot world is a carbon copy of our own.”
“What does the novel say?”
“It’s the story of a young robot, Delta 32, who falls in love with a female robot, Gamma 1024, who is married to a world-famous robot, Beta 5, who knows how to replace broken robot parts with new ones. The surgeon robot—that’s what we’ll call him—is a man, sorry, a robot, who’s in constant need of money, because he has a mania for expensive paintings. One day he incurs a debt he’s unable to pay. And so a criminal robot, a gang leader, makes him an offer. That is, they’ll give him all the money he wants, on the condition that he perform clandestine transplants on clients of their choosing, first-rate clients from all over the world, rich and powerful people who don’t have the time or the desire to wait their turn. The doctor robot then asks how it will be possible to get the right spare parts in good time. They tell him this isn’t a problem: they know how to find the spare parts. How? By scrapping a robot that meets the requirements and removing the part they need. The scrapped robot is then dumped into the sea or buried underground. We can serve any client, says the leader, whose name is Omicron 1. All over the world, he explains, there are people imprisoned, in jails and special camps. And we have a robot in every one of these camps. And near every one of these camps, there is a landing strip. Those of us you see here, Omicron 1 continues, are just a tiny part of the whole. Our organization is at work all over the world; it’s become globalized. And so Beta 5 accepts. Beta 5’s requests will be relayed to Omicron 1, who will in turn convey them to Delta 32, who, using a highly advanced Internet system, will communicate them to the ... let’s call them operative services. And that’s where the novel ends. Nenè didn’t have a chance to write the conclusion. Omicron 1 wrote it for him.”
Augello sat there a long time, thinking. Apparently the full significance of what Montalbano had just told him hadn’t dawned on him yet.Then he understood, turned pale, and said in a low voice:
“Baby robots, too, naturally.”
“Naturally,” the inspector confirmed.
“And how does the story continue, in your opinion?”
“You must start from the premise that the people who organized the whole affair bear a terrible responsibility.”
“I’ll say. The death of—”
“Not just death, Mimì. Life, too.”
“Life?”
“Of course.The lives of those who’ve been operated on. They’ve paid a horrific price, and I’m not talking about money. I mean the death of another person. If this ever came out, they’d be finished, whatever their position, whether at the top of a government, economic empire, or banking conglomerate. They’d lose face forever. Therefore, the way I see it, things went as follows: One day, somebody finds out about the love affair between Sanfilippo and the doctor’s wife. As of that moment, Vanya becomes a danger to the entire organization. She represents the potential link between the surgeon and the criminal organization. The two things must remain absolutely separate. What to do? Kill Vanya? No, that would put the doctor right in the middle of a murder investigation, which would be plastered all over the newspapers ... The best thing is to close down the Vigata headquarters. But first they inform the doctor of his wife’s infidelity. He should be able to tell, from Vanya’s reaction, whether she’s wise to anything. Vanya, however, knows nothing. She’s sent back to her native country. The organization then cuts off all the roads that might lead to her: the Griffos, the Sanfilippos ...”