Rounding the Mark

9

After Fazio left, he sat and pondered his course of action until he had it all clear in his mind. He called in Galluzzo.

“Listen, I want you to go to the Bulone printworks and have them make a bunch of calling cards for you.”

“With my name?” asked Galluzzo, perplexed.

“Come on, Gallù, are you acting like Catarella now? With my name.”

“And what should I tell them to write?”

“The essential. Salvo Montalbano and, underneath, Chief Inspector, Vigàta Police. On the bottom left, have them put our telephone number. Ten or so will be enough.”

“While we’re at it, Chief—”

“You want me to order a thousand? So I can wallpaper my bathroom with ’em? Ten’ll be more than enough. And I want them on my desk by four o’clock this afternoon. No excuses. Now hurry, before they close for lunch.”

It was time to eat. Since most people were at home, he might as well try. He picked up the phone.

“Hallo? Who tokin?” said the voice of a woman who must have come from at least as far away as Burkhina Faso.

“This is Inspector Montalbano. Is Signora Ingrid there?”

“You wait.”

By now it was tradition. Whenever he called up Ingrid, a housekeeper from a country nowhere to be found on the map always answered.

“Hi, Salvo? What’s up?”

“I’m going to need a little help from you. Are you free this afternoon?”

“Yes. I have an engagement around six.”

“That should be more than enough time. Can we meet in Montelusa, in front of the Vittoria Café at four-thirty?”

“Sure. See you later.”

At home he found a casserole of tender, mischievous pasta ’ncasciata (he suffered from improper use of adjectives and couldn’t define it any better than this) in the oven and feasted on it. Then he changed, putting on a grey double-breasted suit, a pale blue shirt, and a red tie. He wanted to look like a cross between white-collar and shady. Afterwards, he sat out on the veranda and sipped a coffee while smoking a cigarette.

Before going out, he looked for a greenish, vaguely Tyrolean-style hat he hardly ever wore and a pair of glasses with plain lenses that he’d used once but couldn’t remember why. At four o’clock he returned to the office and found a small box with calling cards on his desk. He took three and put them in his wallet. He went back outside, opened the trunk to his car, where he kept a Humphrey Bogart-style trench coat, put this on, along with the hat and glasses, and drove off.

Seeing him appear before her in that getup, Ingrid began laughing so hard that tears started running down her cheeks and she had to dash into the café and lock herself in the bathroom.

When she came out, however, the giggles got the better of her again. Montalbano was stone-faced.

“Get in the car, I’ve got no time to waste.”

Ingrid obeyed, making a tremendous effort to refrain from laughing.

“Do you know that gift shop at number 34, Via Palermo?”

“No, why?”

“Because that’s where we’re going.”

“What for?”

“To select a gift for a girlfriend of yours who’s getting married. And I want you to call me Emilio.”

Ingrid literally exploded. Her laughter burst out uncontrollably. She put her head in her hands, and he couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

“Okay, I’m taking you home,” the inspector said in a huff.

“No, wait a minute, come on.”

She blew her nose twice, wiped away her tears.

“Tell me what I’m supposed to do, Emilio.”

Montalbano explained.

The shop’s sign said: Cappuccino, in big letters, and below, in smaller characters, Silverware, Gifts, Bridal Registries. The undoubtedly fancy display windows featured an array of glittering objects of questionable taste. Montalbano tried to open the door, but it was locked. Fear of robberies, apparently. He pushed a button, and somebody opened the door from within. Inside there was only a fortyish woman, petite and well-dressed, but clearly nervous and on the defensive.

“Good afternoon,” she said, but without the welcoming smile usually reserved for clients. “What can I do for you?”

Montalbano was certain she was not an employee but Signora Cappuccino in person.

“Good afternoon,” Ingrid replied. “A friend of ours is getting married, and Emilio and I would like to give her a silver platter as a present. Could I see what you have?”

“Certainly,” said Signora Cappuccino, and she began taking silver platters off the shelves, each one more vulgar than the last, and setting them down on the counter. Montalbano, meanwhile, was looking around “in a clearly suspicious manner,” as the newspapers and police reports like to say. Finally Ingrid called him over.

“Come, Emilio.”

Montalbano approached and Ingrid showed him two platters.

“I can’t decide between these two. Which do you prefer?”

While pretending to waver, the inspector noticed that Signora Cappuccino was stealing glances at him whenever she could. Maybe she’d recognized him, as he was hoping.

“Come on, Emilio, make up your mind,” Ingrid egged him on.

At last Montalbano made up his mind. As Signora Cappuccino was wrapping the platter, Ingrid had a brilliant idea of her own.

“Emilio, look, what a beautiful bowl! Wouldn’t that look good in our dining room?”

Montalbano shot a withering glance at her and muttered something incomprehensible.

“Come on, Emilio, please let’s buy it. I just love it!” Ingrid insisted, her eyes sparkling with amusement from the joke she was playing on him.

“Do you want it?” Signora Cappuccino asked him.

“Some other time,” the inspector said firmly.

Signora Cappuccino then moved over to the cash register and rang up the purchase. When Montalbano reached into the back pocket of his trousers to extract his wallet, it got stuck and all its contents fell to the floor. The inspector bent down to pick up the various bills, cards, and slips of paper.

Then he stood up and with his right foot slid a calling card he’d purposely left on the floor closer to the table supporting the cash register. The sham had been a perfect success. They left.

“You were so mean, Emilio, not to buy me that bowl!” Ingrid said, pretending to be upset when they got in the car. Then, changing her tone: “Was I good?”

“You were great.”

“What are we going to do with the platter?”

“You can keep it.”

“I’m not going to let you off so easily. Tonight we’re eating out. I’m taking you to a place where the fish is out of this world.”

Not a good idea. Montalbano was certain their playacting would yield immediate results, and he preferred to wait in his office.

“How about tomorrow night?”

“All right.”

“Ahh, Chief, Chief!” shrieked Catarella the moment Montalbano entered the office.

“What is it?”

“I been true the whole archive, Chief. I can’t see no more, I got spots in front o’ my eyeses. There in’t nobody otherwise that looks like the dead swimmer looks. Only Errera. Chief, in’t it possible it’s possibly Errera hisself?”

“Cat, the people in Cosenza told us Errera’s dead and buried!”

“Okay, Chief, but in’t it possible ’e came back to life and then went back to death in the water?”

“Are you trying to give me a headache, Cat?”

“Perish the tot, Chief! What’m I sposta do wit’ dese photos?”

“Leave ’em here on the desk. We’ll give ’em to Fazio later.”

After two hours of fruitless waiting, an irresistible wave of somnolence came over him. He cleared a space amidst the papers, crossed his arms on the desk, laid his head down on them, and in the twinkling of an eye he was asleep. So deeply, in fact, that when the telephone rang and he reopened his eyes, for a few seconds he didn’t know where he was.

“H’lo, Chief. There’s somebody wants to talk to you poissonally in poisson.”

“Who is it?”

“That’s just it, Chief. He says he don’t wanna say what ’is name is.”

“Put ’im on . . . Montalbano here. Who is this?”

“Inspector, you came to my wife’s shop with a lady this afternoon.”

“I did?”

“Yes, sir, you did.”

“Excuse me, but would please tell me what your name is?”

“No.”

“Well, then, goodbye.”

He hung up. It was a dangerous move. It was possible that Marzilla had used up what courage he had and wouldn’t have the guts to call again. But apparently Marzilla had such a firm bite on the inspector’s bait that he needed to call back immediately.

“Inspector, excuse me for that call a minute ago. But try to understand my position. You came into my wife’s shop, and she recognized you immediately, even though you were in disguise and went by the name of Emilio. On top of that, my wife found one of your calling cards, which had fallen on the floor. You must admit, it’s enough to make a guy nervous!”

“Why?”

“Because it’s obvious you’re investigating something to do with me.”

“If that’s what you’re worried about, you can relax. The preliminary investigation is over.”

“And I can relax, you say?”

“Absolutely. Until tomorrow, at least.”

He could hear Marzilla’s breath stop short.

“What . . . what do you mean?”

“I mean that tomorrow I move on to the next phase. The operative phase.”

“And . . . what’s that mean?”

“You know how these things work, don’t you? Arrests, subpoenas, interrogations, prosecutors, reporters ...”

“But I have nothing to do with any of it!”

“With any of what?”

“But . . . but . . . but . . . I dunno, whatever you’re investigating . . . But then why did you come to the shop?”

“Oh, that? To buy a wedding present.”

“But why were you calling yourself Emilio?”

“The lady I was with likes to call me that. Listen, Marzilla, it’s late. I want to go home. See you tomorrow.”

He hung up. Was it possible to be any meaner? He would have bet his cojones that within the hour Marzilla would come knocking on his door. He could easily find the address by looking him up in the phone book. As he’d suspected, the ambulance man was up to his neck in what happened on the wharf. Somebody must have ordered him to find a way to get the woman and her three kids into the ambulance and then drop them off outside the hospital’s emergency ward. And he’d obeyed.

He got in the car and drove off with all the windows open. He needed to feel some cool, nocturnal sea air on his face.

An hour later, as he had lucidly foreseen, a car pulled up in front of his house. A car door slammed, then the doorbell rang. Opening the door, he was greeted by a different Marzilla from the one he’d seen in the hospital parking lot. Unshaven and haggard, he had a sickly air about him.

“I’m sorry if I—”

“I was expecting you. Come in.”

Montalbano had decided to change tactics, and Marzilla seemed confused by his politeness. He walked in, unsure, then didn’t so much sit down as collapse into the chair the inspector offered him.

“I’ll do the talking,” said Montalbano. “We’ll waste less time that way.”

The man made a vague gesture of resignation.

“The other evening, at the port, you knew in advance that an immigrant woman with three children would get off the boat and pretend to fall and hurt her leg. Your assignment was to wait there, have the ambulance ready, and not get tied up by some other job—and then to run up, diagnose a broken leg before the doctor could get there, put the woman and her three kids in the ambulance, and head back to Montelusa. Am I right? Answer only yes or no.”

Marzilla managed to answer only after he’d swallowed and run his tongue over his lips.

“Yes.”

“Good. When you got to San Gregorio Hospital, you were supposed to drop the woman and her kids off in front of the emergency room door, without accompanying them inside. You were even lucky enough to get an urgent call to go to Scroglitti, which gave you a good excuse for acting the way you did. Answer.”

“Yes.”

“Was the ambulance driver your accomplice?”

“Yes. I slip him a hundred euros each time.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“Twice.”

“And were there children with the adults both times?”

Marzilla swallowed two or three times before answering.

“Yes.”

“Where do you sit during these runs?”

“It depends. Sometimes in front with the driver, sometimes in back, with the people we’re carrying.”

“And during the run I’m investigating, where did you sit?”

“For a while, in front.”

“Then you went in back?”

Marzilla was sweating. He was in trouble.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Could I have some water?”

“No.”

Marzilla gave him a frightened look.

“If you won’t tell me yourself, I’ll tell you. You had to go in back because one of the kids, the oldest, the six-year-old, wanted at all costs to get out of the car, he wanted to escape. Am I right?”

Marzilla nodded yes.

“What did you do then?”

The medic said something so softly that the inspector didn’t so much hear it as intuit it.

“Gave him a shot? To put him to sleep?”

“No. A sedative.”

“Who held the kid down?”

“His mother. Or whoever she was.”

“And what were the other kids doing?”

“Crying.”

“Was the kid you gave the shot to also crying?”

“No.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was biting his lips. Till they bled.”

Montalbano stood up slowly. He felt a kind of tingling in his legs.

“Please look at me.”

The medic raised his head and looked at him. The first slap, to the left cheek, was so fierce that it turned the man’s head almost completely around; the second caught him just as he was turning back around and cuffed his nose, triggering a stream of blood. The man didn’t even try to wipe it off, letting the blood stain his shirt and jacket. Montalbano sat back down.

“You’re getting my floor all dirty. The bathroom’s down the hall on the right. Go clean yourself up. The kitchen’s across the hall. There should be some ice in the freezer. You know what to do, being a nurse when you’re not torturing small children.”

The whole time the man was fussing about in the bathroom and kitchen, Montalbano tried hard not to think about the scene Marzilla had just described to him, that hell shrunken down to the little space inside the ambulance, the terror in those eyes open wide on the violence . . .

And it was he who had taken that child by the hand and turned him over to the horror. He couldn’t forgive himself . . . It was no use repeating to himself that he’d thought he was doing the right thing . . . He mustn’t think about it, mustn’t give into the rage, if he wanted to continue the interrogation. Marzilla returned. He’d made an ice pack with his handkerchief and held this over his nose with one hand, his head bent slightly backwards. He sat down in front of the inspector without a word.

“Now I’ll tell you why you got so scared when I came to your shop. You had just learned that your bosses had to kill that boy, the one you’d given the shot of sedatives to. Had to cut him down like some wild animal. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“And so you got scared. Because you’re a two-bit hood, a sleazeball, a piece of shit, but you don’t have the stuff to be an accomplice to murder. You can tell me later how you found out that the kid you were involved with was the same one they ran over with their car. Now it’s your turn to talk. But I’ll save you a little breath by telling you that I already know that you’re swimming in debt and need money, a lot of money, to pay off the loan sharks. Now go on.”

Marzilla began to talk. The two hard slaps the inspector had dealt him must have dazed him, but they also seemed to have calmed him down a bit. By this point, what was done was done.

“When the banks refused to give me any more loans, I risked losing everything I had. So I started asking the people I knew where I might get a helping hand. They gave me a name and I went to talk to the person. That’s how it started. It’s worse than being broke; I’m ruined. The guy lent me the money, but at an interest rate so high I’m ashamed to tell you. I scraped by for a while, then I couldn’t take it any longer. Then, about two months ago, this man made me an offer.”

“Tell me his name.”

Marzilla shook his head, which he kept tilted backwards. “I’m scared, Inspector. He’s liable to have me and my wife killed.”

“Okay, go on. What was this offer he made you?”

“He said he needed to help some immigrant families get back together here. Apparently their husbands had found work here, but since they were illegals, they couldn’t bring their wives and children over. In exchange for my help, he would reduce some of the interest I owed him.”

“A fixed percentage?”

“No, Inspector. We were supposed to discuss it each time.”

“How did he let you know when it was time to act?”

“He would phone me the day before a scheduled arrival. He would describe the people and what they were supposed to do to get taken aboard the ambulance. The first time it all went smoothly. There was an old woman with two little kids. But the second time it went the way I said, and the oldest kid rebelled.”

Marzilla stopped and heaved a deep sigh.

“You’ve got to believe me, Inspector. I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing the scene before my eyes, the woman holding him down, me with the syringe, the other kids crying, and I couldn’t fall asleep. A couple of days ago, at about ten in the morning, I went to see the man about reducing my interest. But he said this time he wasn’t reducing anything, because the deal had gone sour, the goods were damaged. That’s exactly how he put it. But before he sent me away, he said I could still make up for it, since there were some new arrivals coming. I went home feeling depressed. Then I heard on TV that a little immigrant kid had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. And I thought maybe that was what the man meant when he said the goods were damaged. Then you came to my wife’s shop, after you’d already been asking questions at the hospital, and . . . well, I realized I had to get out, whatever the price.”

Montalbano got up and went out on the veranda. The sea was barely audible, like a small child breathing. He stood there a moment, then went back inside and sat down.

“Listen. So you don’t want to give me the name of this . . . this gentleman, for lack of a better term.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, I can’t!” the medic nearly screamed.

“Okay, calm down. Don’t get upset or your nose’ll start bleeding again. I’ll make you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“You realize I can have you put in jail?”

“Yes.”

“You’d be ruined. You’d lose your job at the hospital, and your wife would have to sell the shop.”

“I understand that.”

“So, if you’ve got any brains left in your head, you only have to do one thing. Let me know the minute the guy calls you. That’s all. We’ll take care of everything else.”

“Will you keep me out of it?”

“I can’t guarantee you that. But I can try to limit the damage. I give you my word. Now get the hell out of here.”

“Thank you,” said Marzilla, standing up and heading for the door on shaky legs.

“Don’t mention it,” Montalbano replied.

He didn’t go to bed right away. He took out half a bottle of whisky and went out on the veranda to drink it. Before each swig, he raised the bottle in the air. A toast to the little warrior who had fought as long as he could, but didn’t make it.