Excursion to Tindari

17

Once outside the police station, his great desire to hole up at Marinella and start reading suddenly disappeared the way the wind sometimes does, uprooting trees one moment and vanishing the next, as if it had never existed. He got in his car and drove towards the port. When he arrived in the neighborhood, he stopped the car and got out, bringing along the envelope. The truth of the matter was that he couldn’t muster up the courage to read it: he was afraid of finding in Nenè Sanfilippo’s words a stinging confirmation of an idea that had occurred to him after Ingrid left. He walked slowly, deliberately, to the lighthouse and sat down on the flat rock. He smelled the strong, acrid odor of the lippo, the greeny down that grows on the lower half of the rocks, the part in contact with the sea. He glanced at his watch: there was still an hour of light remaining. He could, if he wanted, start reading right there. But he still didn’t feel like it; he wasn’t up to it. What if Sanfilippo’s writing turned out in the end to be a pile of shit, the constipated fantasy of a dilettante who thinks he can write a novel just because he learned how to parse sentences in school? Which isn’t even taught anymore, besides. Another sign—as if he needed any more—of just how far he was getting on in years. But to keep holding those pages in his hand, unable to decide one way or another, made his skin crawl. Maybe it was better to go back to Marinella and start reading on the veranda. He would be breathing the same sea air.

At a glance he realized that Nenè Sanfilippo, to hide what he really had to say, had resorted to the same method he used in filming the naked Vanya. In that instance the tape had begun with some twenty minutes of The Getaway; here the first pages were copied from a famous novel: Asimov’s I, Robot.

It took Montalbano two hours to read the whole thing. The closer he got to the end, the clearer what Nenè Sanfilippo was saying became to him, and the more often his hand reached out for the whisky bottle.

The novel had no ending. It broke off in the middle of a sentence. But what he’d read was more than enough for him. From the pit of his stomach a violent spasm of nausea rose up and seized his throat. He ran to the bathroom, barely able to stand, knelt down in front of the toilet and started to vomit. He vomited the whisky he’d just drunk, vomited what he’d eaten that day as well as what he’d eaten the day before, and the day before that, and he felt, with his sweaty head now entirely inside the toilet bowl and a sharp pain in his side, as if he were endlessly vomiting up the entire time of his life on earth, going all the way back to the pap he was given as a baby, and when, at last, he’d expelled even his own mother’s milk, he kept on vomiting poison bitterness, bile, pure hatred.

He managed to stand up, holding on to the sink, but his legs could barely support him. He was sure he was getting a fever. He stuck his head under the open faucet.

“Too old for this profession,” he muttered.

He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

He didn’t stay there long. When he got up his head was spinning, but the blind rage that had overwhelmed him was now turning into lucid determination. He called the office.

“Hallo? Hallo? This the Vigata Pol—”

“Montalbano here, Cat. Put Inspector Augello on, if he’s there.”

He was there.

“What is it, Salvo?”

“Listen to me carefully, Mimi. I want you and Fazio, right now, to take a car, not a squad car, mind you, and drive towards Santoli. I want to know if Dr. Ingrò’s villa is being watched.”

“By whom?”

“No questions, Mimi. If it’s being watched, it’s certainly not by us. And you must try to determine if the doctor is alone or with others. Take as long as you need to be sure of what you’re seeing. I summoned all the men for a midnight meeting. Cancel the order; it’s no longer necessary. When you’ve finished in Santoli, let Fazio go home and come to Marinella to tell me how things stand.”

He hung up and the telephone rang. It was Livia.

“How come you’re already home at this hour?” she asked.

She was pleased, but more than pleased, she was happily surprised.

“And if you know I’m never home at this hour, why did you call?”

He’d answered a question with a question. But he needed to stall. Otherwise Livia, knowing him as she did, would realize that something wasn’t right with him.

“You know, Salvo, for the last hour or so something strange has been happening to me. It’s never happened to me before, or at least, it’s never been so strong as now. It’s hard to explain.”

Now it was Livia who was stalling.

“Give it a try.”

“Well, it’s as though you were here.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“Okay. See, when I came home, I didn’t see my dining room, I saw yours. Not exactly, though; it was my room, of course, but at the same time, it was yours.”

“As in dreams.”

“Yes, something like that. And since that moment, it’s as though I’ve been split in two. I’m in Boccadasse, but at the same time I’m with you, in Marinella. It’s ... really beautiful. I called because I knew you’d be home.”

To hide his emotions, Montalbano tried to make a joke of it.

“The fact is, you’re curious.”

“About what?”

“About the layout of my house.”

“But I already ...” Livia reacted.

She broke off, suddenly remembering the little game he’d suggested they play: getting engaged, starting all over.

“I’d like to get to know it.”

“Why don’t you come?”

He’d been unable to control his tone, and a sincere question had come out. Livia took notice.

“What’s wrong, Salvo?”

“Nothing. A bad mood, it’ll pass. An ugly case.”

“Do you really want me to come?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll catch the afternoon flight tomorrow. I love you.”

He had to find a way to pass the time while waiting for Mimi. He didn’t feel like eating, even though he had emptied his guts of everything possible. His hand, as if of its own will, took a book off the shelf. He glanced at the title: The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad. He recalled having liked it, even a lot, but couldn’t remember anything else. It often happened that if he read the opening lines of a novel, or the conclusion, a little compartment in his memory would open up, and characters, situations, phrases would come tumbling out. “Mr. Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.” That’s how the book began, but these words didn’t tell him anything. “He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.” These were the final words, and they said too much. Then a sentence from the book came back to him: “No pity for anything on earth, including themselves, and death enlisted for good and all in the service of humanity ...” He hastily put the book back in its place. No, his hand had not acted by itself, independently of his mind; it had been guided, unconsciously of course, by him, by what was inside him. He sat down in the armchair and turned on the television. The first image he saw was of prisoners in a concentration camp, not one of Hitler‘s, but a contemporary one. It wasn’t clear where, because the faces of people subject to horror are the same everywhere. He turned it off. He went out on the veranda, sat there staring at the sea, trying to breathe with the same rhythm as the surf.

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 ...”

“Why didn’t they kill the doctor too?”

“Because he can still be useful to them. His name is a guarantee for the customers. Like in advertising. So they decide to wait and see how things work out. If they work out well, they’ll let him start practicing again. If not, they’ll kill him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What can I do? Nothing, for now. Go on home, Mimi. And thanks. Is Fazio still in Santoli?”

“Yes. He’s waiting for my phone call.”

“Call him, then. Tell him he can go home to bed. Tomorrow morning we’ll decide how to continue our surveillance.”

Augello spoke with Fazio. Then he said:

“He’s going home. There are no new developments. The doctor is alone. He’s watching television.”

At three in the morning, after putting on a heavy jacket because it was cool outside, the inspector got in his car and drove off. Pretending it was simply for curiosity’s sake, he’d had Augello describe the exact location of Ingrò’s villa to him. On the way there, he thought again of Mimi’s expression after hearing his account of the transplant story. He himself had reacted the way he did, nearly suffering a stroke. Whereas Mimi had turned pale, yes, but didn’t really seem too upset. Self-control? Lack of sensitivity? No, the reason was clearly much simpler: the difference in age. He was fifty and Mimi was thirty. Augello was already prepared for the year 2000, whereas he would never be. Nothing more. Augello naturally knew that he was entering an era of pitiless crimes committed by anonymous people, who had Internet addresses or sites or whatever they’re called, but never a face, a pair of eyes, an expression. No, he was too old by now.

He stopped about twenty yards from the villa and, turning off the headlights, stayed there without moving. He carefully studied the place through binoculars. Not a single ray of light could be seen in the windows. Dr. Ingrò must have gone to bed. He got out of the car and, treading lightly, approached the gate. He stayed there some ten minutes without moving. Nobody came forward, nobody called from the darkness to ask what he wanted. With a tiny pocket lamp, he examined the lock on the gate. There was no alarm. Was it possible? Then he realized that Dr. Ingrò didn’t need any security systems. With the friends he had, only a fool would be crazy enough to rob his villa. It took him a moment to open it. There was a broad lane, lined with trees. The garden must have been kept in perfect order. There were no dogs, since at this hour they would have already attacked him. With the picklock he opened the front door as well. A large foyer led into an entirely glass-walled salon and to other rooms as well. The bedrooms were upstairs. He climbed a luxurious staircase covered with thick, soft carpeting. In the first room there wasn’t anybody. In the second room, however, there was. Someone was breathing heavily. With his left hand, the inspector felt around for the light switch; in his right, he held a pistol. He wasn’t fast enough. The lamp on one of the nightstands came on.

Dr. Ingrò was lying on the bed, fully dressed, shoes included. He showed not the least bit of surprise at seeing an unknown man, with a gun, no less, in his room. He’d clearly been expecting as much. The room smelled stuffy, sweaty, rancid. Dr. Ingrò was no longer the man the inspector remembered seeing two or three times on television. He was unshaven, his eyes red, his hair sticking straight up.

“Have you decided to kill me?” he asked in a soft voice.

Montalbano didn’t answer. He was still standing in the doorway, motionless, the hand clutching the pistol at his side, but with the weapon in full view.

“You’re making a mistake,” said Ingrò.

He reached out towards the nightstand—Montalbano recognized it from the tape of the naked Vanya—picked up the glass that was there, and took a long drink of water, spilling some of it on himself. His hands were trembling. He set the glass down and spoke again.

“I could still be of use to you.”

He put his feet on the ground.

“Where are you going to find someone as skilled as me?”

As skilled, maybe not, but more honest, yes, thought the inspector. But he said nothing. He let the man stew in his juices. But maybe it was better to give him a little push. The doctor was now standing up, and Montalbano ever so slowly raised the gun and pointed it at his head.

Then it happened. As if someone had cut the invisible rope holding him up, the man fell to his knees. He folded his hands in prayer.

“Have pity! Have pity!”

Pity? The kind of pity he’d shown for those who were slaughtered, literally slaughtered, for his sake?

The doctor was crying. Tears and spittle made the beard on his chin sparkle. Was this the Conradian character he’d imagined?

“I can pay you, if you let me go,” he whispered.

He thrust a hand in his pocket, extracted a set of keys, and held them out to Montalbano, who didn’t move.

“These keys ... you can help yourself to all my paintings ... a vast fortune ... you’ll be rich ...”

Montalbano could no longer restrain himself. He took two steps forward, raised his foot, and shot it straight at the doctor’s face. The man fell backwards, managing to scream this time.

“No! No! Not that!”

He held his face in his hands, the blood from his broken nose running between his fingers. Montalbano raised his foot again.

“That’s enough!” said a voice behind him.

He turned around abruptly. In the doorway stood Augello and Fazio, both with guns drawn. They all looked one another in the eye and understood. And the performance began.

“Police,” said Mimì.

“We saw you break in, punk!” said Fazio.

“You were going to kill him, weren’t you?” Mimì recited.

“Drop the gun,” ordered Fazio.

“No!” the inspector shouted and, grabbing Ingrò by the hair, he yanked him to his feet and pointed the gun at his head.

“If you don’t get out of here, I’ll kill him!”

Okay, they’d all seen that scene a thousand times in any number of American movies, but, all things considered, they had to be pleased with the way they were improvising it. Now, as if on cue, it was Ingrò’s turn to speak.

“Don’t go!” he begged. “I’ll tell you everything! I’ll confess ! Save me!”

Fazio leapt forward and seized Montalbano while Augello held down Ingrò. Fazio and the inspector pretended to struggle, then the former gained the upper hand. Augello took control of the situation.

“Handcuff him!” he ordered.

But the inspector still needed to give some instructions. It was absolutely imperative that they all act in concert and follow the same script. He grabbed Fazio’s wrist and, as if caught by surprise, Fazio let him take the gun away. Montalbano fired a shot that deafened them all and ran out. Augello freed himself from the doctor, who had been clutching his shoulders, weeping, and raced off in pursuit. At the bottom of the stairs, Montalbano tripped on the last step and fell facedown, firing another shot. Mimi, still shouting “Stop or I’ll shoot,” helped him up. They went out of the house.

“He shit his pants,” Mimì said. “He’s cooked.”

“Good,” said Montalbano. “Take him to Montelusa Central. On your way there, pull over at some point and look around, as if you’re fearing an ambush. When he’s in front of the commissioner, he has to tell us everything.”

“And what about you?”

“I escaped,” said the inspector, firing a shot in the air for good measure.

On the drive back to Marinella, he changed his mind. Turning the car around, he headed towards Montelusa. He took the outer belt and finally pulled up at 38 Via De Gasperi, home of his journalist friend, Nicolò Zito. Before buzzing the intercom, he checked his watch. Almost five in the morning. He had to buzz three long times before he heard Nicolò’s voice, sounding half-asleep and half-enraged.

“Montalbano here. I need to talk to you.”

“Wait for me downstairs, otherwise you’ll wake up the whole house.”

A few minutes later, sitting on a stair, Montalbano told him the whole story, with Zito interrupting him from time to time with comments like “Wait!” and “Oh, Christ!”

He needed an occasional pause. The story took his breath away.

“What do you want me to do?” Zito asked when the inspector had finally finished.

“This very morning, do a special report. Keep it vague. Say that Dr. Ingrò apparently turned himself in because of an alleged involvement in illegal organs trafficking ... You have to trumpet the news, make sure it reaches the national papers and networks.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“That they’ll hush the whole thing up. Ingrò has some very important friends. Too important. And one more favor. On the one o‘clock edition, pull out another story. Keeping it still vague, say that the fugitive Jacopo Sinagra, known as ’Japichinu,‘ has reportedly been murdered, and that he apparently belonged to the same organization that Dr. Ingrò was working for.”

“But is it true?”

“I think so. I’m almost certain this is why his grandfather, Balduccio Sinagra, had him killed. Not because of any moral qualms, mind you. But because his grandson, fortified by his alliance with the new Mafia, could have had him liquidated whenever he wanted.”

It was seven in the morning when he finally managed to get to bed. He decided to sleep the whole morning. In the afternoon he would drive to Palermo to pick up Livia, on her way down from Genoa. He was able to sleep for two hours before the telephone woke him up. It was Mimi. But the inspector spoke first.

“Why did you guys follow me last night when I explicitly—”

“—when you explicitly tried to pull the wool over our eyes?” Augello finished his sentence. “But, Salvo, how can you possibly imagine that Fazio and I don’t know what you’re thinking? I ordered Fazio not to leave the area of the villa, even if I countermanded the order. We knew you’d be there sooner or later. And when you went out of your house, I followed behind you. I’d say we did the right thing.”

Montalbano accepted this and changed the subject.

“So, how’d it go?”

“What a fucking circus, Salvo. They all came running: the commissioner, the chief prosecutor ... And the doctor kept talking and talking ...They couldn’t make him stop ... I’ll see you later at the office and tell you the whole story.”

“My name never came up, right?”

“No, don’t worry. We explained that we happened to be passing by the villa when we noticed the gate and front door were wide open, which aroused our suspicion. But unfortunately the hitman escaped. See you later.”

“I won’t be in today.”

“The fact is,” said Mimi, embarrassed, “I won’t be in to morrow.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Tindari. Since Beba has to go there, as usual, for work ...”

And maybe, on the way, he’d buy himself a set of kitchenware.

What Montalbano remembered of Tindari was the small, mysterious Greek theater and the beach shaped like a pink-fingered hand ... If Livia stayed a few days, an excursion to Tindari might not be a bad idea.