Patience of the Spider

02

A gelid blast is blowing in through the wide-open window. It’s always that way in hospitals.They cure your appendicitis and then make you die of pneumonia. He’s sitting in an armchair. Only two days left, and he can finally go back to Marinella. But since six o’clock that morning, squads of women have been cleaning everything: corridors, rooms, closets, windows, doorknobs, beds, chairs. It’s as if a great cloud of clean-up mania had descended on the place. Sheets, pillowcases, blankets are changed, the bathroom sparkles so brightly it’s blinding; you need sunglasses to go in there.

“What’s going on?” he asks a nurse who’s come to help him get back in bed.

“Some big cheese is coming.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen, couldn’t I just stay in the armchair?”

“No, you can’t.”

A little while later, Strazzera shows up, disappointed not to find Livia in the room.

“I think she might drop in later,” Montalbano sets his mind at rest.

But he’s just being mean. He said “might” just to keep the doctor on tenterhooks. Livia assured him she’d be there to see him, only a little late.

“So who’s coming?”

“Petrotto.The undersecretary.”

“What for?”

“To congratulate you.”

Fuck.That’s all he needs.The honorable Gianfranco Petrotto, former chamber deputy, now undersecretary of the interior, though once convicted for corruption, another time for graft, and a third time let off the hook by the statute of limitations. An ex-Communist and ex-Socialist, now a triumphant member of the party in power.

“Couldn’t you give me a shot to knock me out for three hours or so?” he implores Strazzera.

The doctor throws his hands up and goes out.

The honorable Gianfranco Petrotto arrives, preceded by a power-ful roar of applause that echoes through the corridor. But the only people allowed to enter the room with him are the prefect, the commissioner, the hospital superintendent, and a deputy from the politico’s retinue.

“Everyone else, wait outside!” he commands with a shout.

Then his mouth opens and closes, and he begins to talk. And talk. And talk. He doesn’t know that Montalbano has plugged his ears with surgical cotton to the point where they feel like they’re about to explode and can’t hear the bullshit he’s saying.

o o o

It’s been a while now since the shutter stopped wailing. He barely has time to look at the clock—four forty-five—before he falls asleep at last.

o o o

In his sleep he could faintly hear the telephone ringing and ringing.

He opened one eye, looked at the clock. Six o’clock. He’d slept barely an hour and fifteen minutes. He got up in a hurry, wanting to stop the ringing before it reached Livia in the depths of her sleep. He picked up the receiver.

“Chief, whadd I do, wake you up?”

“Cat, it’s six in the morning. On the dot.”

“Actually my watch gots six oh tree.”

“That means it’s a little fast.”

“You sure ’bout that, Chief?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, so I’ll put it tree minutes slow. Tanks, Chief.”

“You’re welcome.”

Catarella hung up. Montalbano did likewise, then headed back to the bedroom. Halfway there, he started cursing. What kind of goddamn phone call was that? Catarella calls him at the crack of dawn to find out if his watch has the right time? At that moment the phone rang again. The inspector quickly picked up the receiver after the first ring.

“Beck y’pardin, Chief, but that bizniss ’bout the time made me forget to tell you the real reason for the phone call I jes phoned you about.”

“So tell me.”

“Seems some girl’s motorbike’s been seized.”

“Seized or robbed?”

“Seized.”

Montalbano fumed. But he had no choice but to smother his urge to yell.

“And you wake me up at six in the morning to tell me the Carabinieri or Customs police have impounded a motorbike?

To tell me? Pardon my French, but I don’t give a fuck!”

“Chief, you kin speak whichever langwitch ya like wit-tout beckin my pardin, though, beckin y’pardin, it sounds a lot to me like a ’talian,” Catarella said respectfully.

“And furthermore, I’m not on duty, I’m still convalescing!”

“I know, Chief, but it wasn’t neither the Customs or the Canabirreri that had the seizure.”

“Well, then who was it?”

“ ’Ass just it, Chief. Nobody knows. Ann’ass why they tol’

me to call you poissonally in poisson.”

“Listen, is Fazio there?”

“No, sir, he’s at the scene.”

“How about Inspector Augello?”

“Him too.”

“So who’s left there at the station?”

“For the moment, Chief, ’s jes me holdin’ down the fort.

Mr. Inspector Augello axed me to do ’is doody for ’im, so ’ass what I’m doin.”

Good God! A danger to be avoided as quickly as possible.

Catarella was capable of triggering a nuclear war with a simple purse-snatching. But was it possible Fazio and Augello would go to all this trouble for a routine seizure of a motorbike? And why did they have Catarella call him?

“Listen, I want you to do something. Get ahold of Fazio and tell him to phone me at once here in Marinella.” He hung up.

“What is this, Termini Station?” said a voice behind him.

He turned around. It was Livia, eyes flashing with anger.

When she’d got up she’d slipped on Montalbano’s shirt from the day before instead of her dressing gown. Seeing her thus attired, the inspector felt an overwhelming desire to embrace her. But he held himself back, knowing that Fazio would be calling at any moment.

“Livia, please, my job . . .”

“You should do your job at the station. And only when you’re on active duty.”

“You’re right, Livia. Now come on, go back to bed.”

“Bed? I’m awake now, thanks to you! I’m going to go make some coffee,” she said.

The telephone rang.

“Fazio, would you be so kind as to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Montalbano asked in a loud voice, since there was no longer any need for precaution. Livia was not only awake, but pissed off.

“Stop using obscenities!” Livia screamed from the kitchen.

“Didn’t Catarella tell you?”

“Catarella didn’t tell me a goddamn thing—”

“Are you going to stop or not?” yelled Livia.

“—all he told me was something about a motorbike being seized, but not by the Carabinieri or the Customs police. Why the fuck—”

“Knock it off, I said!”

“—are you guys bothering me with this stuff? Go see if it was the traffic police!”

“No, Chief. If anything was seized, it was the girl who owned the motorbike.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s been a kidnapping, Chief.”

A kidnapping? In Vigàta?

“Tell me where you are and I’ll come right over,” he said without thinking.

“Chief, it’s too complicated to find your way out here. If it’s all right with you, a squad car’ll be at your place in about an hour. That way you won’t have to tire yourself out by driving.” “Okay.”

He went in the kitchen. Livia had put the coffeepot on the burner and was now spreading the tablecloth over the small kitchen table. To smooth it out, she had to bend all the way forward, so that the inspector’s shirt she was wearing became too short.

Montalbano couldn’t restrain himself. He took two steps forward and embraced her tightly from behind.

“What’s got into you?” Livia asked. “Come on, let go!

What are you trying to do?”

“Guess.”

“You might hurt yo—”

The coffee rose in the pot. Nobody turned off the flame.

The coffee burned. The flame remained lit. The coffee started boiling. Nobody bothered with it. The coffee spilled out of the pot, extinguishing the flame on the burner. The gas continued to flow.

“Doesn’t it smell strangely of gas?” Livia asked languidly a bit later, freeing herself from the inspector’s embrace.

“I don’t think so,” said Montalbano, whose nostrils were filled with the scent of her skin.

“Oh my God!” Livia exclaimed, running to turn off the gas.

Montalbano had scarcely twently minutes to shower and shave. His coffee—a fresh pot had been made in the meantime—he drank on the run, as the doorbell was already ringing. Livia didn’t even ask where he was going or why.

She’d opened the window and lay stretched out, arms over her head, basking in the sunlight.

o o o

In the car Gallo told the inspector what he knew about the situation. The kidnapped girl—since there was no longer any doubt that she had in fact been kidnapped—was named Susanna Mistretta. A very pretty girl, she was enrolled at Palermo University and getting ready to take her first exam. She lived with her father and mother in a country villa about three miles outside of town. That was where they were heading. About a month earlier, Susanna had started going to a girlfriend’s house in the early evening to study, usually driving home on her moped around eight.

The previous evening, when she didn’t come home at the usual time, her father had waited about an hour before calling the girl’s friend, who told him that Susanna had left as usual at eight o’clock, give or take a couple of minutes. Then he’d phoned a boy whom his daughter considered her boyfriend, and the kid seemed surprised, since he’d seen Susanna in the afternoon in Vigàta, before she went to study with her friend, and the girl had told him she wouldn’t be coming with him to the movies that evening because she had to go home to study.

At this point the father started to get worried. He’d tried reaching his daughter several times on her cell phone, but every time the phone was turned off. At a certain point the home phone rang, and the father rushed to pick up, thinking it was Susanna. But it was the brother.

“Susanna has a brother?”

“No, she’s an only child.”

“So, whose brother was it?” Montalbano asked in exasper-ation. Between Gallo’s speeding and the pothole-riven road they were traveling on, his head was not only numb, but the wound in his shoulder was throbbing.

The brother in question was the brother of the father of the kidnapped girl.

“Don’t any of these people have names?” asked the inspector, losing patience, hoping that knowing their names might help him follow the story a little better.

“Of course they do, why wouldn’t they? It’s just that nobody told me what they are,” said Gallo. He went on: “Anyway, the kidnapped girl’s father’s brother, who’s a doctor—” “Just call him the doctor uncle,” Montalbano suggested.

The doctor uncle had called to find out how his sister-in-law was doing. That is, the kidnapped girl’s mother.

“Why? Is she sick?”

“Yessir, Chief. Very sick.”

And so the father told the doctor uncle—

“No, in this case you should say his brother.” Anyway, the father told his brother that Susanna had disappeared and asked him to come to the house to lend a hand with his sick wife, to free him up so he could look for his daughter.

But the doctor had to take care of some obligations first, and it was already past eleven when he arrived.

The father then got in his car and very slowly retraced the route that Susanna normally took to go home. At that hour in winter there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere, and very few cars. He went back and forth along the same route a second time, feeling more and more bereft of hope. At a certain point a motorbike pulled up beside him. It was Susanna’s boyfriend, who had phoned the villa and was told by the doctor uncle that there still was no news. The kid told the father that he planned to scour every street in Vigàta, to see if he could at least find Susanna’s motorbike, which he knew well. The father retraced Susanna’s route from her friend’s house to his own home four more times, occasionally stopping to examine even the spots on the pavement. But he seemed not to notice anything unusual.

By the time he gave up and went home, it was almost three o’clock in the morning. At this point he suggested that his doctor brother phone all the hospitals in Vigàta and Montelusa, telling them who he was. But they all answered in the negative, which on the one hand set their minds at rest, but on the other alarmed them even further. Thus they wasted another hour.

At this point in the story—they’d been driving in the open countryside for a while and were now on a dirt road—

Gallo pointed to a house about fifty yards ahead.

“That’s the villa.”

Montalbano didn’t have time to look at it, however, because Gallo suddenly turned right, onto another dirt road, this one in pretty bad shape.

“Where are we going?”

“To where they found the motorbike.”

It was Susanna’s boyfriend who had found it. After searching in vain up and down the streets of Vigàta, he’d taken a much longer route back to the villa. And there, about two hundred yards from Susanna’s house, he’d spotted the abandoned moped and run to tell the father.

Gallo pulled up, stopping behind the other squad car.

When Montalbano got out, Mimì Augello came up to him.

“I don’t like the smell of this, Salvo. That’s why I had to bother you. But things don’t look good.”

“Where’s Fazio?”

“Inside the house, with the girl’s father. In case the kidnappers call.”

“Mind telling me the father’s name?”

“Salvatore Mistretta.”

“What’s he do?”

“Used to be a geologist. He’s been halfway across the world. Here’s the motorbike.”

It was leaning against a low dry-wall outside a vegetable garden. The bike was in perfect condition, no scratches or scrapes, just a little dusty. Galluzzo was in the garden, seeing if he could find anything of interest. Imbrò and Battiato were doing the same along the dirt road.

“Susanna’s boyfriend . . . what’s his name?”

“Francesco Lipari.”

“Where is he?”

“I sent him home. He was exhausted and worried to death.”

“I was thinking. You don’t think maybe it was Lipari himself who moved the motorbike? Maybe he found it on the ground, in the middle of the road—”

“No, Salvo. He swore up and down that he found it exactly the way you see it there.”

“Post a guard next to it. And don’t let anybody touch it, or forensics will go ballistic. Have you found anything?”

“Not a thing. And to think the girl had a small knapsack with her books and things, a cell phone, a wallet she always kept in the back pocket of her jeans, the housekeys . . . But nothing. It’s as if she ran into somebody she knew and propped the motorbike against the wall so she could talk to him.” Montalbano seemed not to be listening, and Mimì noticed.

“What is it, Salvo?”

“I don’t know, but something doesn’t look right to me,” Montalbano muttered.

And he started taking a few steps backward, as one does to get a better look at something, to take it all in from the right angle. Augello also stepped back, but only mechanically, because the inspector had done so.

“It’s backwards,” Montalbano concluded a moment later.

“What is?”

“The motorbike. Look at it, Mimì. The way we see it right now, at a standstill, we should think it was going to Vigàta.”

Mimì looked, then shook his head.

“That’s true. But on that side of the road, it would be going the wrong way. If it was going in the direction of Vigàta, it should be on the other side, leaning against the wall opposite.” “As if a moped cared if it was going the wrong way! Hell, you find those things on the landing outside your apartment!

They’ll drive right through your legs if they can! Forget about it. But if the girl was coming from Vigàta, the front wheel of the motorbike should be pointed in the opposite direction. So my question is: Why is the bike positioned the way it is?” “Jesus, Salvo, there could be a lot of reasons for that.

Maybe she turned the bike around to prop it up a little better against the wall . . . Or maybe she herself turned around after she saw someone she recognized . . .”

“Anything is possible,” Montalbano cut him off. “I’m going over to the house. Come and join me after you’ve finished searching here. And don’t forget to post a guard.”

o o o

The villa was a two-storey building and must have once been rather beautiful. Now, however, it showed signs of neglect.

And when one loses interest in a house, it can tell, and it seems to plunge into a kind of premature old age. The sturdy wrought-iron gate was ajar.

The inspector entered a large living room furnished with dark, massive nineteenth-century antiques, but at first glance it looked like a museum, as it was full of small Pre-Columbian statues and African masks. Travel souvenirs of the geologist, Salvatore Mistretta. In one corner of the room there were two armchairs, a small table with a telephone on top, and a television. Fazio and a man who must have been Mistretta were sitting in the armchairs, eyes glued to the television screen. When Montalbano entered, the man gave Fazio a questioning look.

“This is Inspector Montalbano. And this is Signor Mistretta.”

The man came forward with his hand extended. Montalbano shook it without speaking. The geologist was a thin man of about sixty, with a face as baked as one of those South American statuettes, stooped shoulders, a mop of white hair, and a pair of blue eyes that wandered around the room like a drug addict’s. Apparently the tension was eating away at him.

“No news?” asked Montalbano.

The geologist threw his hands up disconsolately.

“I’d like to have a word with you,” the inspector went on.

“Could we go outside?”

For no apparent reason he felt like he couldn’t breathe. It was stuffy in the living room, and not a ray of light filtered in, despite two big French doors. Mistretta hesitated, then turned to Fazio.

“If somebody rings the bell upstairs, could you please let me know?”

“Of course,” said Fazio.

They went out. The garden surrounding the villa was in a state of utter abandon, now little more than a field of wild, yellowing plants.

“This way,” said the geologist.

He led the inspector to a hemicycle of wooden benches at the center of a kind of orderly, well-tended oasis of green.

“This is where Susanna comes to stu—”

Unable to continue, he collapsed onto a bench. The inspector sat down beside him and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Do you smoke?”

What had Dr. Strazzera advised him to do? “Try to stop smoking, if possible.”

At the moment, it was not possible.

“I’d stopped, but in these circumstances . . .”said Mistretta.

You see, dear distinguished Dr. Strazzera? Sometimes one simply cannot do without it.

The inspector held out a cigarette for him and then lit it.

They smoked awhile in silence, then Montalbano asked:

“Is your wife sick?”

“She’s dying.”

“Does she know what’s happened?”

“No. She’s on tranquilizers and sedatives. My brother Carlo, who’s a doctor, spent last night with her. He just left, in fact. But . . .”

“But?”

“But my wife, even in this induced state of sleep, keeps calling for Susanna, as if she mysteriously understands that something . . .”

The inspector felt himself sweating. How was he ever going to talk to the man about his daughter’s kidnapping when his wife was dying? The only way, perhaps, was to adopt an official, bureaucratic tone, the kind of tone that precludes, by its very nature, any form of humanity.

“Mr. Mistretta, I have to inform those in charge about the kidnapping. The judge, the commissioner, my colleagues in Montelusa . . . And you can rest assured that the news will also reach the ears of some newsman who will race here with the inevitable camera crew . . . The reason I’m stalling is that I want to be absolutely certain.” “Certain of what?”

“That it’s really a kidnapping we’re dealing with.”