The Shape of Water

7

Montalbano was well respected at the San Calogero trattoria, not so much because he was police inspector as because he was a good customer with discerning tastes. Today they fed him some very fresh striped mullet, fried to a delicate crisp and drained on absorbent paper. After coffee and a long stroll on the eastern jetty, he went back to the office. Fazio got up from his desk as soon as he saw him.

“There’s someone waiting for you, chief.”

“Who is it?”

“Pino Catalano, remember him? One of the two garbage collectors who found Luparello’s body.”

“Send him right in.”

He immediately noticed that the youth was tense, nervous.

“Have a seat.”

Pino sat with his buttocks on the edge of the chair.

“Could you tell me why you came to my house to put on the act that you did? I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“I did it simply to avoid frightening your mother.

If I told her I was a police inspector, she might’ve had a heart attack.”

“Well, in that case, thanks.”

“How did you figure out it was me who was looking for you?”

“I phoned my mother to see how she was feeling—when I left her she had a headache—and she told me a man had come to give me an envelope but forgot to bring it with him. She said he’d gone out to get it but never came back. I became curious and asked her to describe the guy. When you’re trying to pretend you’re somebody else, you should cover up that mole you’ve got under your left eye. What do you want from me?”

“I have a question. Did anyone come to the Pasture to ask if you’d found a necklace?”

“Yes, someone you know, in fact: Filippo di Cosmo.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I hadn’t found it, which was the truth.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said if I found it, so much the better for me, he’d give me fifty thousand lire, but if I found it and I didn’t turn it over to him, so much the worse. He said the same thing to Saro. But Saro didn’t find it either.”

“Did you go home before coming here?”

“No, sir, I came here directly.”

“Do you write for the theater?”

“No, but I like to act now and then.”

“Then what’s this?”

Montalbano handed him the page he’d taken from the little table. Pino looked at it, unimpressed, and smiled.

“No, that’s not a theater scene, that’s . . .”

He fell silent, at a loss. It occurred to him that if those weren’t lines of dramatic dialogue, he would have to explain what they were, and it wouldn’t be easy.

“I’ll help you out,” said Montalbano. “This is a transcript of a phone call one of you made to Rizzo, the lawyer, right after you found Luparello’s body, before you came here to headquarters to report your discovery. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who made the phone call?”

“I did. But Saro was right beside me, listening.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“Because Luparello was an important person, a big cheese. So we immediately thought we should inform Rizzo. Actually, no, the first person we thought of calling was Deputy Cusumano.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because Cusumano, with Luparello dead, was like somebody who, when an earthquake hits, loses not only his house but also the money he was keeping under the floorboards.”

“Give me a better explanation of why you called Rizzo.”

“Because we thought maybe something could still be done.”

“Like what?”

Pino didn’t answer, but only passed his tongue over his lips.

“I’ll help you out again. You said maybe something could still be done. Something like moving the car out of the Pasture and letting the body be found somewhere else? Were you thinking that’s what Rizzo might ask you to do?”

“Yes.”

“And you would have been willing to do it?”

“Of course! That’s why we called!”

“What did you expect to get out of it?”

“We were hoping maybe he could find us other jobs or help us win some competition for surveyors, or find us the right job, so we wouldn’t have to work as stinking garbage collectors anymore. You know as well as I do, Inspector, you can’t sail without a favorable wind.”

“Now explain the most important thing: why did you write down that conversation? Were you hoping to blackmail him with it?”

“How? With words? Words are just air.”

“So what was your reason?”

“Well, believe it or not, I wrote down that conversation because I wanted to study it. Something didn’t sound right to me—speaking as a man of the theater, that is.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Let’s pretend that what’s written down is supposed to be staged. I’m the Pino character, and I phone the Rizzo character early in the morning to tell him I’ve just found his boss dead. He’s the guy’s secretary, his devoted friend, his political crony. He’s more than a brother. But the Rizzo character, he keeps cool as a cucumber, doesn’t get upset, doesn’t ask where we found him, how he died, if he was shot, if he died in a car crash, nothing. He only asks why we’ve come to him, of all people, with the news. Does that sound right to you?”

“No. Go on.”

“He shows no surprise, in other words. In fact, he tries to put a distance between himself and the dead man, as if this was just some passing acquaintance of his. And he immediately tells us to do our duty, which is to call the police. Then he hangs up. No, Inspector, as drama it’s all wrong. The audience would just laugh. It doesn’t work.”

Montalbano dismissed Pino and kept the sheet of paper. When the garbage collector left, he reread it.

It did work, and how. It worked marvelously, if in this hypothetical drama—which in the end was not really so hypothetical—Rizzo, before receiving the phone call, already knew where and how Luparello had died and anxiously wanted the body to be discovered as quickly as possible.

~

Jacomuzzi gaped at Montalbano, astonished. The inspector stood before him, dressed to the nines: dark blue suit, white shirt, burgundy tie, sparkling black shoes.

“Jesus! Going to your wedding?”

“You done with Luparello’s car? What did you find?”

“Nothing of importance inside. But—”

“The suspension was broken.”

“How did you know?”

“My bird told me. Listen, Jacomuzzi.”

He pulled the necklace out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table. Jacomuzzi picked it up, looked at it carefully, and made a gesture of surprise.

“But this is real! It’s worth tens of millions of lire!

Was it stolen?”

“No, somebody found it on the ground at the Pasture and brought it in to me.”

“At the Pasture? What kind of whore can afford a piece of jewelry like that? You must be kidding!”

“I want you to examine it, photograph it, do all the little things you usually do. Then bring me the results as soon as you can.”

The telephone rang. Jacomuzzi answered and passed the receiver to his colleague.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Fazio, chief. Come back to town immediately. All hell’s breaking loose.”

“What is it?”

“Contino the schoolteacher’s shooting at people.”

“What do you mean, shooting?”

“Shooting, shooting! He fired two shots from the balcony of his apartment at the people sitting at the café below, screaming something nobody could understand. Then he fired another shot at me as I was coming through his front door to see what was going on.”

“Has he killed anyone?”

“No. He just grazed the arm of a certain De Francesco.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

~

As he traveled the six miles back to Vigàta at breakneck speed, Montalbano thought of Contino the schoolteacher. Not only did he know him, there was a secret between them. Six months earlier the inspector had been taking the stroll he customarily allowed himself two or three times a week along the eastern jetty, out to the lighthouse. Before he set out, however, he always stopped at Anselmo Greco’s shop, a hovel that clashed with the clothing boutiques and shiny, mirrored cafés along the corso. Among such antiquated items as terracotta dolls and rusty weights to nineteenth-century scales, Greco also sold càlia e simenza, a mixture of roasted chickpeas and salted pumpkin seeds. Montalbano would buy a paper cone full of these and then head out. That day, after he had reached the point, he was turning around, right under the lighthouse, when he saw an elderly man beneath him, sitting on a block of the low concrete breakwater, head down, immobile.

Montalbano got a better look, to see if perhaps the man was holding a fishing line in his hands. But he wasn’t fishing; he wasn’t doing anything. Suddenly he stood up, quickly made the sign of the cross, and balanced himself on his tiptoes.

“Stop!” Montalbano shouted.

The man froze; he had thought he was alone. In a couple of bounds Montalbano reached him, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, lifted him up bodily, and carried him to safety.

“What were you trying to do, kill yourself ?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because my wife is cheating on me.”

This was the last thing Montalbano expected to hear. The man had surely passed his eightieth year.

“How old is your wife?”

“Let’s say eighty. I’m eighty-two.”

An absurd conversation in an absurd situation, and the inspector didn’t feel like continuing it. Taking the man by the arm, he forced him to walk toward town.

At this point, just to make everything even crazier, the man introduced himself.

“I am Giosuè Contino, if I may. I used to teach elementary school. Who are you? If, of course, you wish to tell me.”

“My name is Salvo Montalbano. I’m police inspector for the town of Vigàta.”

“Oh, really? Then you came at just the right time.

You yourself can tell my slut of a wife she’d better stop cuckolding me with Agatino De Francesco or one of these days I’m going to do something crazy.”

“And who’s this De Francesco?”

“He used to be the mailman. He’s younger than I am, seventy-six years old, and he has a pension that’s one and a half times the size of mine.”

“Do you know this to be a fact, or are you just suspicious?”

“I’m absolutely certain it’s the gospel truth. Every afternoon God sends our way, rain or shine, this De Francesco comes and has a coffee at the café right under my house.”

“So what?”

“How long do you take to drink a cup of coffee?”

For a minute Montalbano went along with the old schoolmaster’s quiet madness.

“That depends. If I’m standing—”

“What’s that got to do with it? When you’re sitting!”

“Well, it depends on whether I have an appointment and have to wait, or if I only want to pass the time.”

“No, my friend, that man sits there only to eye my wife, who eyes him back, and they never waste an opportunity to do so.”

They had arrived back in town.

“Where do you live, Mr. Contino?”

“At the end of the corso, on Piazza Dante.”

“Let’s take a back street, I think that’s better.”

Montalbano didn’t want the sodden, shivering old man to arouse the townspeople’s curiosity and questions.

“Coming upstairs with me? Would you like a coffee?” he asked the inspector while extracting the front-door keys from his pocket.

“No, thanks. Just dry yourself off and change your clothes.”

That same evening he had gone to speak with De Francesco, the ex-mailman, a tiny, unpleasant old man who reacted quite harshly to the inspector’s advice, screaming in his face.

“I’ll take my coffee wherever and whenever I like!

What, is it illegal to go sit at the café under that arteriosclerotic Contino’s balcony? You surprise me, sir.

You’re supposed to represent the law, and instead you come and tell me these things!”

/000000000000

“It’s all over,” said the municipal policeman keeping curious bystanders away from the front door on Piazza Dante. At the entrance to the apartment stood Sergeant Fazio, who threw his arms up in distress. The rooms were in perfect order, sparkling clean. Master Contino was lying in an armchair, a small bloodstain over his heart. The revolver was on the floor, next to the armchair, an ancient Smith & Wesson five-shooter that must have dated back at least to the time of Buffalo Bill but unfortunately still worked. His wife was lying on the bed, she, too, with a bloodstain over her heart, her hands clasped around a rosary. She must have been praying before agreeing to let her husband kill her. Montalbano thought again of the commissioner, who this time was right: here death had indeed found its dignity.

~

Nervous and surly, Montalbano gave the sergeant his instructions and left him there to wait for the judge.

He felt, aside from a sudden melancholy, a subtle remorse: if only he had intervened more wisely with the schoolmaster, if only he had alerted Contino’s friends and doctor in time . . .

~

He took a long walk along the wharf and along the eastern jetty, his favorite. His spirits slightly revived, he returned to the office. There he found Fazio beside himself.

“What is it? What’s happened? Hasn’t the judge come yet?”

“No, he came, and they’ve already taken the bodies away.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that while half the town was watching Contino shoot his gun, some bastards went into action and cleaned out two apartments top to bottom. I’ve already sent four of our men. I was waiting for you to show up so I could go join them.”

“All right, go. I’ll be here.”

He decided it was time to play his ace: the trap he had in mind couldn’t fail. He reached for the phone.

“Jacomuzzi?”

“What, goddammit! What’s the rush? I still don’t have any report on your necklace. It’s too early.”

“I’m well aware you couldn’t possibly tell me anything yet, I realize that.”

“So what do you want?”

“To advise you to maintain total secrecy. The story behind that necklace is not as simple as it may appear. It could lead to unexpected developments.”

“You insult me! If you tell me not to talk about something, I won’t talk about it, even if the heavens fall!”

~

“Mr. Luparello? I’m so sorry I couldn’t come today. It simply wasn’t possible, you must believe me. Please extend my apologies to your mother.”

“Just a minute, Inspector.”

Montalbano waited patiently.

“Inspector? Mama says tomorrow at the same hour, if that’s all right with you.”

It was all right with him, and he confirmed the appointment.