The Paper Moon (18 page)

“Oh, come on!” she said, even attempting a little smile that must have cost her a tremendous effort.

“We’re getting nowhere, Michela. If you carry on this way, I’m going to be forced to check the coffin. You know what that means? It means I’ll have to request a great many authorizations, the whole affair will become official, the strongbox will be opened, and everything you’ve done to save your brother’s good name will have been all for naught.”

It was perhaps at this instant that Michela realized the jig was up. She opened her eyes and looked at him for a moment. Montalbano instinctively grabbed the arms of the easy chair as if to anchor himself. But there were no stormy seas in those eyes, just a liquid expanse, yellowish and dense, slowly moving and seeming to breathe, rising and falling. It didn’t frighten him, but he had the impression that if he put his finger in that liquid, it would have been burnt down to the bone. The woman closed her eyes again.

“Do you also know what’s inside the box?”

“Yes, Michela. Cocaine. But not only.”

“What else?”

“There must also be the substance with which Angelo mistakenly cut the last part of the cocaine, turning it, without wanting to, into a deadly poison. And thereby causing the death of Nicotra, Di Cristoforo, and others whose secret supplier he was.”

The woman took off her kerchief and shook her head, making her hair fall onto her shoulders.

How did I ever not notice before that she had so much white hair?
the inspector asked himself.

“I’m tired,” Michela repeated.

“When did Angelo first start frequenting gambling dens?”

“Last year. He went out of curiosity. And that was the beginning of the end for him. The money he earned was no longer enough. So he accepted an offer somebody made to him: to supply important clients with large quantities. Given his profession, he could travel all over the province without arousing any suspicion.”

“How did you manage to discover that Angelo—”

“I didn’t. He told me himself. He never kept anything from me.”

“Do you know who made him this offer?”

“I do, but I’m not going to tell you.”

“Did he also tell you he’d adulterated the last batch of cocaine?”

“No, he didn’t have the courage.”

“Why not?”

“Because he did it for that slut Elena. He needed a lot of money to buy her other gifts and keep her close. And with this new system, he could double the amount of stuff they gave him and keep the difference for himself.”

“Michela, why do you hate Elena so much, but not the other women your brother went with?”

Before she answered, a painful grimace twisted her mouth.

“Angelo fell truly in love with that woman. It was the first time that happened to him.”

The moment had come. Montalbano summoned inside him everything there was to summon: muscles, breath, nerves. Like a diver at the edge of the diving board, an instant before taking the plunge. Then he jumped.

“Angelo was supposed to love only you, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

He’d done it. Penetrating that shadowy undergrowth of intertwined roots, snakes, tarantulas, vipers’ nests, wild grasses, and thorny brambles had been easy. He’d had no trouble entering the dark wood. But walking through it would take courage.

“But hadn’t you once been engaged? Weren’t you in love?”

“Yes. But Angelo…”

There, under a tree, he’d found the malignant plant. Beautiful to look at, but put a leaf in your mouth and it’s lethal.

“Angelo got rid of him, is that right?”

“Yes.”

There was no end to this sick forest and its stench of death. The farther in you went, the greater the horror you wanted neither to see nor to smell, waiting in ambush.

“And when Teresa got pregnant, was it you who persuaded Angelo to have the girl abort and set a trap for her?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody was supposed to interfere with your…your…”

“What’s wrong, Inspector?” she whispered. “Can’t find the right word? Love, Mr. Montalbano. The word is ‘love.’”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. On the surface of the yellowish liquid expanse, there were now large bubbles, popping as if in slow motion. Montalbano imagined the stink they gave off, a sickly-sweet smell of decomposition, of rotten eggs, of miasmas and fetid swamps.

“How did you find out Angelo’d been killed?”

“I got a phone call. That same Monday, around nine
P.M.
They told me they’d gone to talk to Angelo but had found him already dead. They ordered me to remove everything that might reveal the sort of work Angelo was doing for them. And I obeyed.”

“You not only obeyed. You also went into the room where your brother had just been killed and planted false evidence against Elena. It was you who staged that whole scene of the panties in the mouth, the unbuckled jeans, his member hanging out.”

“Yes. I wanted to be sure, absolutely certain, that Elena would be charged with the crime. Because she did it. When those other people arrived, Angelo was already dead.”

“We’ll see about that later. They may have lied to you, you know. For now, tell me: Do you know who it was that called you to tell you your brother was dead?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me his name.”

Michela stood up slowly. She spread her arms as though stretching.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, “I need a drink of water.”

She left the room and headed towards the kitchen, her shoulders more hunched than ever, feet dragging on the floor.

Montalbano didn’t know how or why, but all at once he got up and ran into the kitchen. Michela wasn’t there. He went out on the open balcony. A small light illuminated the area in front of the garage, but its dim glow was enough to reveal a kind of black sack, immobile, on the ground. Michela had thrown herself down below, without a word, without a cry. And the inspector realized that tragedy, when acted out in front of others, strikes poses and speaks in a loud voice, but when it is deep and true, it speaks softly and makes humble gestures. There: the humility of tragedy.

He made a snap decision. He’d never gone to Angelo’s apartment that evening. When the woman’s body was discovered, they would think she killed herself because she couldn’t get over the loss of her brother. And that was how it should be.

He closed the door to the apartment softly, terrified that His Majesty might catch him in the act. He descended the lifeless stairs, went outside, got in his car, and drove home to Marinella.

The moment he entered his house, he felt very tired. Great was the desire to lie down, pull the covers up over his head, and stay that way, eyes closed, trying to blot out the world.

It was eleven
P.M.
As he was taking off his jacket, tie, and shirt, he managed, like a magician, to dial Augello’s number.

“Salvo, are you crazy?”

“Why?”

“Calling at this hour? You’ll wake up the baby!”

“Did I wake him up?”

“No.”

“So why are you being such a pain in the ass? I have something important to tell you. Come right away, to my place.”

“But, Salvo—”

He hung up. Then he called Livia, but there was no answer. Maybe she’d gone to the movies. He undressed completely, went into the shower, used up all the water in his first tank, cursed the saints, was about to open the reserve tank but stopped. If they didn’t deliver any water during the night, how was he going to wash in the morning? Better play it safe.

Waiting for Mimì, he decided to busy himself cutting his toenails and fingernails. Just when he’d finished, the doorbell rang and he went to open the door, still naked.

“But I’m married!” said Mimì, scandalized. “You didn’t by any chance invite me over to see your butterfly collection, did you?”

Montalbano turned his back to him and went to put on a pair of underpants and a shirt.

“Will this take long?” asked Mimì.

“Fairly.”

“Then give me a whisky.”

They sat down on the veranda. Before drinking, Montalbano raised his glass:

“Congratulations, Mimì.”

“What for?”

“For solving the case of the wholesale dealer. Tomorrow you can strut your stuff for Liguori.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not at all. It’s too bad they killed him, but he betrayed the trust of the Sinagra family.”

“Who?”

“Angelo Pardo.”

Augello’s jaw dropped.

“The guy who was found shot with his dick hanging out?”

“The very one.”

“I was convinced it was a crime of passion. Women problems.”

“That’s what they wanted us to think.”

Augello twisted up his mouth.

“Are you sure of what you’re saying, Salvo? Do you have proof?”

“The proof is in a strongbox that you’ll find inside Angelo Pardo’s coffin. Go get authorization, open it up, grab the strongbox, open that, too—with the key that I’ll give you in a second—and inside you’ll find not only cocaine, but also the other stuff that turned it into poison.”

“Excuse me, Salvo, but who put the strongbox in the coffin?”

“His sister, Michela.”

“So she’s an accomplice!”

“You’re mistaken. She had no idea what her brother was up to. She thought the box—which she didn’t have the key to—contained personal items of Angelo’s, and so she put it in his coffin.”

“Why?”

“So that every now and then, in the afterlife, he could open it up, look at the things inside, and remember the good old days when he was alive.”

“Am I supposed to believe that?”

“You mean the story of the dead guy opening the strongbox now and then?”

“I mean the bit about his sister being unaware of her brother’s dealings.”

“No. Not you. But everyone else, yes.
They
are supposed to believe it.”

“And what if Liguori interrogates her and she ends up contradicting herself?”

“Don’t worry, Mimì. She won’t be interrogated.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just am.”

“Then tell me everything, from the beginning.”

He told him almost everything, but sang only half the Mass. He didn’t tell him that Michela was neck-deep in that shit, only knee-deep; he explained that Angelo’s need for money came from his gambling addiction, thus leaving Elena discreetly in the shadows; and he informed him that Customs Police Marshal Laganà and a colleague of his could provide him and Liguori with a host of useful information.

“But how did Pardo come to know the Sinagra family?”

“Pardo’s father was a big political supporter of Senator Nicotra. And the senator had introduced Angelo to some of the Sinagras. When the Sinagras found out that Pardo was hard up for cash, they got him to work for them. Angelo betrayed their trust, so they had him killed.”

“I thought I heard that some threads of women’s panties were f—”

“Just for show, Mimì, to muddy the waters.”

They talked a little while longer. Montalbano gave him Angelo’s keys, and as Mimì was saying good-bye, the telephone rang.

“Livia, darling?” the inspector asked.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Chief.”

It was Fazio.

“I just learned that Michela Pardo’s been found dead. A suicide. Threw herself off the balcony at her brother’s place. I’m at the station, but I have to go over there. Do you have the keys to the apartment?”

“Yes. I’ll send them over with Inspector Augello, who happens to be here with me.”

He hung up.

“Michela Pardo committed suicide.”

“Poor thing! What’ll we say? That she couldn’t get over the grief?” asked Augello.

“That’s what we’ll say,” said Montalbano.

In the four days that followed, nothing whatsoever happened. Mr. Commissioner postponed his meeting with Montalbano to a date as yet to be determined.

Elena never called either.

And this displeased him, in a way. He thought the girl had him in her sights and had put off the attack until the investigation was over. “To avoid any misunderstandings,” as she’d said. Or something similar.

And she was right. If she’d put her powers of seduction to work at the time, Montalbano might have thought she was doing it to gain his friendship and make him an accomplice. But now that even Tommaseo had exonerated her, there was no more possibility of misunderstanding. And so?

Want to bet the cheetah had been eyeing a different prey? And it was he who had misunderstood? He was like a rabbit that sees a cheetah coming after it and starts running away in terror. All at once the rabbit no longer senses the ferocious beast behind it. It turns and sees the cheetah pursuing a fawn.

The question was this: Why, instead of feeling happy, did the rabbit feel a wee bit disappointed?

On the fifth day, Mimì arrested Gaetano Tumminello, a man from the Sinagra family suspected of four other homicides, for the murder of Angelo Pardo.

For twenty-four hours, Tumminello insisted he had never set foot in Angelo Pardo’s apartment. Indeed he swore he didn’t even know where he lived. The alleged murderer’s photograph appeared on television. Then Commendator Ernesto Laudadio, alias HM Victor Emmanuel III, showed up at the station to report that on that Monday evening he hadn’t been able to enter his garage because there’d been a car he’d never seen before parked right in front, whose license-plate number he’d taken down. He’d started honking his horn, and after a brief spell the owner had appeared—none other than, you guessed it, the man shown in the photo on television, there was no mistaking him—whereupon said man, without so much as saying good night, had got back in his car and left.

As a result Tumminello had to change his story. He said he’d gone to Pardo’s to talk business, but had found him already dead. He knew nothing about the panties stuck in Pardo’s mouth. He also stated quite specifically that when he’d seen him, the zipper of Pardo’s jeans was closed. So that when he heard that Pardo had been found in an obscene pose (that’s exactly how he put it: “an obscene pose”), he, Tumminello, was shocked.

Nobody believed him, of course. Not only had he killed Pardo for having put lethal cocaine into circulation, risking a massacre, but he’d also tried to mislead the investigation. The Sinagras cut him loose, and Tumminello, in keeping with tradition, got the Sinagras off the hook. He claimed that the idea for getting into drugs was his and his alone, just like the idea to enlist the help of Angelo Pardo, who he knew was short on cash; and that of course the Family that had honored him by taking him in like a devoted and respectful son was entirely in the dark about all this. He repeated, however, that when he’d gone to talk to Pardo about the huge fuckup he’d made by cutting the cocaine, he’d found him already dead.

“Isn’t saying you ‘went to talk to him’ a polite euphemism for saying you’d gone to see Pardo to kill him?” the prosecutor had asked him.

Tumminello did not answer.

Meanwhile Marshal Melluso, Laganà’s colleague, had managed to decipher Angelo’s code, and the nine people on his list found themselves in a pretty pickle. Actually there were fourteen names, not nine, but the other five (including the engineer Fasulo, Senator Nicotra, and the Honorable Di Cristoforo) belonged to people who, thanks to Angelo Pardo’s modest talents in chemistry, could no longer be prosecuted.

A week later Livia came to spend three days in Vigàta. They didn’t quarrel even once. On Monday morning, at the crack of dawn, Montalbano drove her to Punta Raisi Airport and, after watching her leave, got in the car to drive back to Vigàta. Since he had nothing else to do, he decided to take a back road the whole way, one in pretty bad shape, yes, but which allowed him to enjoy for a few kilometers the landscape he loved, the parched terrain and little white houses. He rolled along for three hours, head emptied of thoughts. All at once he realized he was on the road leading from Giardina to Vigàta, meaning that he was only a few kilometers from home. Giardina? Wasn’t this the road with the service station where Elena, that Monday evening, had made love to that attendant—what was his name, ah, yes, Luigi?

“Let’s go meet this Luigi,” he said to himself.

He drove even more slowly than before, looking left and right. At last he found the station. A little platform roof, half crowned by lighted fluorescent tubes under which stood three pumps. That was all. He pulled in under the roof and stopped. The attendant’s shelter was made of brick and almost entirely hidden by the trunk of a thousand-year-old Saracen olive tree. It was almost impossible to spot it from the road. The door was closed. He honked, but nobody came out. What was the problem? He got out of the car and went and knocked at the door of the shelter. Nothing. Silence. Turning around to go back to the car, he noticed, at the very edge of the space at the side of the road, the back of a metal rectangle supported by an iron bar. A sign. He went around to the front but couldn’t read it because three-fourths of it was covered by a clump of weeds, which he proceeded to beat down with his feet. The sign had long lost its paint and was half spotted with rust, but the words were still clear:

CLOSED MONDAYS

Once, when he was a kid, his father, just to tease him, had told him the moon was made of paper. And since he never doubted what his father told him, he believed it. Now, as a mature, experienced man with brains and intuition, he had once again, like a little kid, believed what two women, one dead and the other alive, had said when they told him the moon was made out of paper.

The rage so clouded his vision that first he nearly ran over a little old lady and then he barely escaped colliding with a truck. When he pulled up in front of Elena’s place, it was past one o’clock. He rang the intercom and she answered.

She was waiting for him in the doorway, wearing gym clothes and smiling.

“Salvo, what a pleasant surprise! Come on in and make yourself at home.”

She went in ahead. From behind, Montalbano noticed that her gait was no longer springy and taut but soft and relaxed. Even the way she sat down in the armchair was almost languid, nonchalant. The cheetah apparently had recently had her fill of fresh flesh and for the moment presented no danger. It was better this way.

“You didn’t forewarn me, so I haven’t made coffee. But it’ll only take a second.”

“No, thanks. I need to talk to you.”

Still the wild animal, she bared all her sharp, white teeth in a cross between a smile and a feline hiss.

“About us?”

She was clearly trying to provoke him, but only in jest, without serious intent.

“No, about the investigation.”

“Still?”

“Yes. I need to talk to you about your phony alibi.”

“Phony? Why phony?”

Only curiosity, almost as though amused. No embarrassment, surprise, fear.

“Because on that fateful Monday evening, you could not have met your Luigi.”

That “your” he tossed in had escaped him. Apparently he still felt a twinge of jealousy. She understood and threw fuel on the fire.

“I assure you I did meet him, and we rather enjoyed ourselves.”

“I don’t doubt that, but it wasn’t on a Monday, because that filling station is closed on Mondays.”

Elena folded her hands, raised her arms over her head, and stretched.

“When did you find out?”

“A few hours ago.”

“Luigi and I could have sworn it would never occur to anyone to check.”