“Thanks.”
Fazio didn’t answer.
“But you never came here with me,” the inspector continued.
Again Fazio said nothing.
“Will you give me your word?”
“Yes. But will you give me yours?”
“What for?”
“Promise me you’ll go see a doctor. As soon as possible.”
Montalbano swallowed this bitter pill.
“Promise,” he said, getting up.
He was convinced he would keep his word. Not because he feared for his health, but because one cannot break a promise made to one’s guardian angel. And he resumed the climb.
He had no problem driving along the still deserted streets, dogged by Fazio’s car behind him. There’d been no convincing his sergeant that he could easily make it home by himself. Slowly, as the sky began to brighten, the inspector began to feel better. The day looked promising. They went into his house.
“Jesus Christ! You’ve been robbed!” yelled Fazio as soon as he saw the state the rooms were in.
“No, it was me. I was looking for something.”
“Did you find it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a good thing you did, or you would have torn down the walls!”
“Listen, Fazio, it’s almost five. I’ll see you at the office sometime after ten, okay?”
“Okay, Chief. Get some rest.”
“And I want to see Inspector Augello, too.”
After Fazio left, the inspector wrote a note to Adelina, in block letters:
ADELINA, DON’T BE ALARMED. THE HOUSE HAS NOT BEEN ROBBED. PLEASE TIDY UP BUT DON’T MAKE ANY NOISE BECAUSE I’M SLEEPING. PLEASE MAKE ME SOMETHING TO EAT.
He opened the front door and stuck the note to it with a push-pin, so the housekeeper would see it before she came in. He unplugged the phone, went in the bathroom, took a shower, dried himself off, and lay down on the bed. The terrible bout of weakness had miraculously passed. In truth, he felt a bit tired, but no more than usual, and it had, after all, been a rough night, there was no denying it. He ran a hand over his chest, as if to check if the two terrible pangs had left some kind of mark, some kind of scar. Nothing. No wound opened, no wound healed. Before falling asleep, he had one last thought, with all due respect to his guardian angeclass="underline" was it really so necessary to see a doctor? No, he concluded. He really saw no need for it.
17
He showed up at the office at eleven, all slicked up and, if not smiling, at least not in a bearish mood. The hours of sleep had actually rejuvenated him. He could feel all the gears in his body working at maximum efficiency. Of the two terrible chest pains of the night before and the weakness that had followed, not a trace. In the doorway he nearly bumped into Fazio, who was coming out, and who, upon seeing him, stopped short and eyed him up and down. The inspector let him eye.
“You look good this morning,” was the verdict.
“I changed foundation cream,” said Montalbano.
“No, the truth of the matter is that you, Chief, have nine lives, like a cat. I’ll be right back.”
The inspector went and stood in front of Catarella.
“How do I look to you?”
“Whattya want me to say, Chief? Like a god!”
When you came right down to it, this much-maligned cult of personality wasn’t really such a bad thing.
Mimì Augello also looked well rested.
“Did Beba let you sleep last night?”
“Yes, we had a good night. In fact, she didn’t want me to come to work today.”
“Why not?”
“She wanted me to take her out, since it’s such a beautiful day. Poor thing, lately she never leaves the house anymore.”
“Here I am,” said Fazio.
“Close the door and we can begin.”
“I’m going to give a general summary,” Montalbano began, “even though you already know some of the details. If there’s anything that doesn’t make sense to you, let me know.”
He spoke for half an hour without interruption, explaining how Ingrid had recognized D’Iunio and how his parallel investigation into the African boy had slowly converged with the investigation of the nameless drowned man. Then he described what Fonso Spàlato had told him in turn. When he came to the point where Marzilla got scared shit-less after dropping off Jamil Zarzis and another man at the villa, he interrupted himself and asked:
“Are there any questions?”
“Yes,” said Augello, “but first I must ask Fazio to leave the room, count slowly to ten, then come back inside.”
Without a peep, Fazio got up, went out, and closed the door.
“The question is this,” said Augello, “when are you going to stop acting like an asshole?”
“In what sense?”
“In every sense, for Chrissake! Who do you think you are, the night avenger? The lone wolf? You’re a fucking police inspector! Have you forgotten? You reproach the police for not obeying the rules, and you’re the first to break them! You go out on a dangerous mission, and you bring along not one of us, but a Swedish lady! It’s insane! You should have informed your superiors of all these things, or at least filled us in, instead of going out and playing the bounty hunter!”
“So that’s what’s bugging you?”
“Why, isn’t that enough?”
“No, it’s not, Mimì. I’ve done worse.”
Mimì’s jaw dropped in horror.
“Worse?”
“And ten,” said Fazio, reappearing.
“To continue,” said Montalbano. “When Ingrid cut in front of Marzilla’s car, he thought we were his boss and were going to liquidate him, perhaps because at this point he knows too much. He pissed his pants as he begged me not to kill him. And without even realizing it, he blurted out his boss’s name: Don Pepè Aguglia.”
“The builder?” asked Augello.
“That’s him, all right,” Fazio confirmed. “There are rumors around town that he’s been loan-sharking.”
“We’ll take care of him very soon—tomorrow, in fact—but somebody should keep an eye him starting now. I don’t want him to slip away.”
“Leave him to me,” said Fazio. “I’ll put Curreli on his tail. He’s a good one.”
Now came the hard part of the story, but he had to tell it.
“After Ingrid brought me home, I decided to go back to Spigonella and have a look at the villa.”
“Alone, naturally,” Mimì said sardonically, stirring in his chair.
“I went there alone and I came back alone.”
This time it was Fazio’s turn to squirm in his chair. But he didn’t open his mouth.
“When Inspector Augello asked you to leave the room,” said Montalbano, turning to him, “it was because he didn’t want you to hear him calling me an asshole. Would you like to call me one, too? You could form a little chorus.”
“I would never dare, sir.”
“Well, if you don’t want to say it, I give you permission to think it.”
Reassured by Fazio’s silence and complicity, he described the little harbor, the grotto, and the iron door with the internal staircase. He also talked about the crabs that had eaten the flesh off Errera’s corpse.
“Okay, that’s the part that’s already happened,” he concluded. “Now we need to think about a course of action. If the information I’ve received from Marzilla is correct, tonight there will be more arrivals, and since Zarzis has taken the trouble to come this far, it means there’s new merchandise for him on the way. We have to be there the moment it arrives.”
“All right,” said Mimì. “But, whereas you know everything about this villa, we know nothing about either the villa or its surroundings.”