The Shape of Water (6 page)

Then he accelerated, putting a safe distance between himself and the inspector, his arm waving good-bye.

 
 
Back at home, Montalbano jotted down a few of the details that Gegè had provided, but sleep soon came over him. He glanced at his watch, noticed it was a little past one, and went to bed. The insistent ringing of the doorbell woke him up. His eyes looked over at the alarm clock: two-fifteen. He got up with some effort; the early stages of sleep always slowed down his reflexes.

“Who the fuck is that, at this hour?”

He went to the door just as he was, in his briefs, and opened up.

“Hi,” said Anna.

He’d completely forgotten; the girl had indeed said that she would come see him around this hour. Anna was looking him over.

“I see you’re wearing the right clothes,” she said, then stepped inside.

“Say what it is you have to tell me, then go back home. I’m dead tired.”

Montalbano was truly annoyed by the intrusion. He went into his bedroom, put on a pair of pants and shirt, and returned to the dining room. Anna wasn’t there. She had gone into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and was already sinking her teeth into a bread roll filled with prosciutto.

“I’m so hungry I can hardly see.”

“You can talk while you’re eating.”

Montalbano put the espresso pot on the stove.

“You’re going to make coffee? At this hour? Will you be able to fall back asleep afterward?”

“Anna, please.” He was unable to be polite.

“All right. This afternoon, after we split up, I found out from a colleague, who for his part had been told by an informer, that starting yesterday, Tuesday morning, some guy’s been going around to all the jewelers, receivers of stolen goods, and pawnbrokers both legitimate and illegitimate to alert them that if someone came in to buy or pawn a certain piece of jewelry, they should let him know. The piece in question is a necklace, with a solid-gold chain and a heart-shaped pendant covered with diamonds. The kind of thing you’d find at some cheap department store, except that this one’s real.”

“So how are they supposed to let him know? By phone?”

“It’s no joke. He told each one of them to give a different signal—I don’t know, like putting a green cloth in the window or hanging a piece of newspaper from the front door, things like that. He’s shrewd: that way he can see without being seen.”

“Fine, but I think—”

“Let me finish. From the way he spoke and acted, the people he approached concluded it was best to do as he said. Then we found out that some other people, at the same time, were making the same rounds in all the towns of the province, Vigàta included. Therefore, whoever lost that necklace wants it back.”

“Nothing wrong with that. So why, in your opinion, should this interest me?”

“Because the man told a certain receiver in Montelusa that the necklace might have been lost in the Pasture Sunday night or Monday morning. Does it interest you now?”

“Up to a point.”

“I know, it may be only a coincidence and have nothing whatsoever to do with Luparello’s death.”

“Thanks anyway. Now go back home. It’s late.”

The coffee was ready. Montalbano poured himself a cup, and Anna naturally took advantage of the opportunity.

“None for me?”

With the patience of a saint, the inspector filled another cup and handed it to her. He liked Anna, but couldn’t she understand he was with another woman?

“No,” Anna said suddenly, putting down her coffee.

“No what?”

“I don’t want to go home. Would you really mind so much if I stayed here with you?”

“Yes, I would.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m too good a friend of your father. I’d feel like I was doing him wrong.”

“What bullshit!”

“It may be bullshit, but that’s the way it is. And anyway, you seem to be forgetting that I’m in love, really in love, with another woman.”

“Who’s not here.”

“She’s not here, but it’s as if she were. Now don’t be silly and don’t say silly things. You’re unlucky, Anna; you’re up against an honest man. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

 
 
He couldn’t fall asleep. Anna had been right to warn him that the coffee would keep him awake. But something else was getting on his nerves: if that necklace had indeed been lost at the Pasture, then surely Gegè must also have been told about it. But Gegè had been careful not to mention it, and surely not because it was a meaningless detail.

6

At five-thirty in the morning, after having spent the night repeatedly getting up and going back to bed, Montalbano decided on a plan for Gegè, one that would indirectly pay him back for his silence about the lost necklace and his joke about the visit he’d made that afternoon at the Pasture. He took a long shower, drank three coffees in succession, then got in his car. When he arrived in Rabàto, the oldest quarter of Montelusa, destroyed thirty years earlier by a landslide and now consisting mostly of ruins refurbished higgledy-piggledy and damaged, ramshackle hovels inhabited by illegal aliens from Tunisia and Morocco, he headed through narrow, tortuous alleyways toward Piazza Santa Croce. The church stood whole amid the ruins. He took from his pocket the sheet of paper Gegè had given him: Carmen, known in the real world as Fatma Ben Gallud, Tunisian, lived at number 48. It was a miserable
catojo,
a small ground-floor room with a little window in the wooden door to allow the air to circulate. He knocked: no answer. He knocked harder, and this time a sleepy voice asked:

“Who that?”

“Police,” Montalbano fired back. He had decided to play rough, catching her still drowsy from the sudden awakening. Certainly Fatma, because of her work at the Pasture, must have slept even less than he. The door opened, the woman covering herself in a large beach towel that she held up at breast level with one hand.

“What you want?”

“To talk to you.”

She stood aside. In the
catojo
there was a double bed half unmade, a little table with two chairs, and a small gas stove. A plastic curtain separated the toilet and sink from the rest of the room. Everything was so clean and orderly it sparkled. But the smell of the woman and her cheap perfume so filled the room that one could hardly breathe.

“Let me see your residence permit.”

As if in fear, the woman let the towel fall as she brought her hands to her face to cover her eyes. Long legs, slim waist, flat belly, high, firm breasts—a real woman, in short, the type you see in television commercials. After a moment or two, Montalbano realized, from Fatma’s expectant immobility, that what he was witnessing was not fear, but an attempt to reach the most obvious and common of arrangements between man and woman.

“Get dressed.”

There was a metal wire hung from one corner of the room to another. Fatma walked over to it: broad shoulders, perfect back, small, round buttocks.

With a body like that,
thought Montalbano,
I bet she’s been through it all.

He imagined the men lining up discreetly in certain offices, with Fatma earning “the indulgence of the authorities” behind closed doors, as he had happened several times to read about, an indulgence of the most self-indulgent kind. Fatma put on a light cotton dress over her naked body and remained standing in front of Montalbano.

“So . . . your papers?”

The woman shook her head no. And she began to weep in silence.

“Don’t be afraid,” the inspector said.

“I not afraid. I very unlucky.”

“Why?”

“Because you wait few days, I no here no more.”

“And where did you want to go?”

“Man from Fela he like me, I like him, he say Sunday he marry me. I believe him.”

“The man who comes to see you every Saturday and Sunday?”

Fatma’s eyes widened.

“How you know?”

She started crying again.

“But now everything finish.”

“Tell me something. Is Gegè going to let you go with this man from Fela?”

“Man talk to Signor Gegè, man pay.”

“Listen, Fatma, pretend I never came to see you here. I only want to ask you one thing, and if you answer me truthfully, I will turn around and walk out of here, and you can go back to sleep.”

“What you want to know?”

“Did they ask you, at the Pasture, if you’d found anything?”

The woman’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, yes! Signor Filippo come—he Signor Gegè’s man—tell us if we find gold necklace with heart of diamond, we give it straight to him. If not find, then look.”

“And do you know if it was found?”

“No. Also tonight, all girls look.”

“Thank you,” said Montalbano, heading for the door. In the doorway he stopped and turned round to look at Fatma.

“Good luck.”

So Gegè had been foiled. What he had so carefully neglected to mention to Montalbano, the inspector had managed to find out anyway. And from what Fatma had just told him, he drew a logical conclusion.

 
 
When he arrived at headquarters at the crack of dawn, the officer on guard gave him a look of concern.

“Anything wrong, chief?”

“Nothing at all,” he reassured him. “I just woke up early.”

He had bought the two Sicilian newspapers and sat down to read them. With a great wealth of detail, the first announced that the funeral services for Luparello would be held the following day. The solemn ceremony would take place at the cathedral, officiated by the bishop himself. Special security measures would be taken, due to the anticipated arrival of numerous important personages come to express their condolences and pay their last respects. At latest count they would include two government ministers, four undersecretaries, eighteen members of parliament between senators and deputies, and a throng of regional deputies. And so city police, carabinieri, coast guard agents, and traffic cops would all be called into action, to say nothing of personal bodyguards and other even more personal escorts, of which the newspaper mentioned nothing, made up of people who certainly had some connection with law and order, but from the other side of the barricade atop which stood the law. The second newspaper more or less repeated the same things, while adding that the casket had been set up in the atrium of the Luparello mansion and that an endless line of people were waiting to express their thanks for everything the deceased had dutifully and impartially done—when still alive, of course.

Meanwhile Sergeant Fazio had arrived, and Montalbano spoke to him at great length about a number of investigations currently under way. No phone calls came in from Montelusa. Soon it was noon, and the inspector opened a file containing the deposition of the two garbage collectors concerning their discovery of the corpse. He copied down their addresses, said good-bye to the sergeant and the other policemen, and told them they’d hear back from him in the afternoon.

If Gegè’s men had talked to the whores about the necklace, they must certainly have said something to the garbage collectors as well.

 
 
Number 28 Gravet Terrace was a three-story building, with intercom at the front door. A mature woman’s voice answered.

“I’m a friend of Pino’s.”

“My son’s not here.”

“Didn’t he get off work?”

“He got off, but he went somewhere else.”

“Could you let me in, signora? I only want to leave him an envelope. What floor is it?”

“Top floor.”

A dignified poverty: two rooms, eat-in kitchen, bathroom. One could calculate the square footage the minute one entered. Pino’s mother, fiftyish and modestly attired, showed him in.

“Pino’s room’s this way.”

A small room full of books and magazines, a little table covered with paper by the window.

“Where did Pino go?”

“To Raccadali. He’s auditioning for a part in a play by Martoglio, the one about St. John getting his head cut off. Pino really likes the theater, you know.”

Montalbano approached the little table. Apparently Pino was writing a play; on a sheet of paper he had lined up a column of dialogue. But when he read one of the names, the inspector felt a kind of shock run through him.

“Signora, could I please have a glass of water?”

As soon as the woman left, he folded up the page and put it in his pocket.

“The envelope?” Pino’s mother reminded him when she returned, handing him his water.

Montalbano then executed a perfect pantomime, one that Pino, had he been present, would have admired: he searched first in the pockets of his trousers, then more hastily in his jacket, whereupon he gave a look of surprise and finally slapped his forehead noisily.

“What an idiot! I forgot the envelope at the office! Just give me five minutes, signora, I’ll be right back.”

Slipping into his car, he took out the page he’d just stolen, and what he read there darkened his mood. He restarted the engine and left. 102 Via Lincoln. In his deposition Saro had even specified the apartment number. With a bit of simple math, the inspector figured that the surveyor/garbage collector must live on the sixth floor. The front door to the block was open, but the elevator was broken. He had to climb up six flights of stairs but had the satisfaction of having guessed right: a polished little plaque there read BALDASSARE MONTAPERTO. A tiny young woman answered the door with a baby in her arms and a worried look in her eye.

“Is Saro home?”

“He went to the drugstore to buy some medicine for the baby, but he’ll be right back.”

“Is he sick?”

Without answering, she held her arm out slightly to let him see. The little thing was sick, and how: sallow, hollow-cheeked, with big, already grown-up eyes staring angrily at him. Montalbano felt terrible. He couldn’t stand to see children suffer.

“What’s wrong with him?”