The Snack Thief

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h2> Via Garibaldi, which they finally found, bordered on a yellow, uncultivated countryside interrupted here and there by the small green patches of stunted kitchen gardens. Number 70 was a little house of unwhitewashed sandstone consisting of two rooms, one atop the other. The bottom room had a rather small door with a window beside it; the top room, which featured a balcony, was reached by an external staircase. Fazio knocked on the door. It was soon answered by an old woman wearing a threadbare but clean jellaba. Seeing the two men, she unleashed a stream of Arabic words, frequently punctuated by short, shrill cries.

“Well, so much for that idea!” Montalbano commented in irritation, immediately losing heart (the sky had clouded over a little).

“Wait, wait,” Fazio told the old woman, thrusting his hands palms forward in that international gesture that means

“stop.” The woman understood and fell silent at once.

“Ka-ri-ma?” Fazio asked and, afraid he might not have pronounced the name correctly, he swayed his hips, stroking a mane of long, imaginary hair. The old woman laughed.

“Karima!” she said, then pointed her index finger towards the room upstairs.

With Fazio in front, Montalbano behind him, and the old woman bringing up the rear and yelling incomprehensibly, they climbed the outside staircase. Fazio knocked, but nobody answered. The old woman started to scream even louder. Fazio knocked again. The woman pushed the inspector firmly aside, walked past him, moved Fazio away as well, planted herself with her back to the door, imitated Fazio’s swaying of the hips and stroking of the hair, made a gesture that meant “gone away,” then lowered her right hand, palm down, raised it again, spread her fingers, then repeated the “gone away” gesture.

“She had a son?” the inspector asked in amazement.

“She left with her five-year-old boy, if I’ve understood correctly,” Fazio confirmed.

“I want to know more,” said Montalbano. “Call the Immigration Bureau and have them send us someone who speaks Arabic. On the double.”

Fazio walked away, followed by the old woman, who kept on talking to him. The inspector sat down on a stair, fired up a cigarette, and entered an immobility contest with a lizard.

o o o

Buscaìno, the officer who knew Arabic because he was born and raised in Tunisia up to the age of fifteen, was there in less than forty-five minutes. Hearing the new arrival speak her tongue, the old woman became anxious to cooperate.

“She says she’d like to tell her uncle the whole story,” Buscaìno translated for them.

First the kid, now an uncle?

“And who the fuck is that?” asked Montalbano, befuddled.

“Uh, the uncle, that would be you, Inspector,” the policeman explained. “It’s a title of respect. She says Karima came back here around nine yesterday morning, but went out again in a hurry. She says she seemed very upset, frightened.” “Has she got a key to the upstairs room?”

“Yes,” said the policeman, after asking her.

“Get it from her and we’ll have a look.”

As they were climbing the stairs, the woman spoke without interruption, with Buscaìno rapidly translating. Karima’s son was five years old; she would leave him with the old woman every day on her way to work; the little boy’s name was François; he was the son of a Frenchman who had met Karima when passing through Tunisia.

Karima’s room was a model of cleanliness and had a double bed, a cot for the boy behind a curtain, a small table with a telephone and television, a bigger table with four chairs, a dressing table with four small drawers, and an armoire. Two of the drawers were full of photographs. In one corner was a cubbyhole sealed off by a plastic sliding door, behind which they found a toilet, bidet and sink. Here the scent of the perfume the inspector had smelled in Lapècora’s study,Volupté, was very strong. Aside from the little balcony, there was also a window on the back wall, overlooking a well-tended garden.

Montalbano picked out a photograph of a pretty, dark-skinned woman of about thirty, with big, intense eyes, holding a little boy’s hand.

“Ask her if this is Karima and François.”

“Yes, that’s them,” said Buscaìno.

“Where did they eat? I don’t see any stove or hot plate here.”

The old woman and the policeman murmured animat-edly to each other. Buscaìno then said the little boy always ate with the old woman, even when Karima was at home, which she was, sometimes, in the evening.

Did she receive men?

As soon as she heard the question translated, the old woman grew visibly indignant. Karima was practically a djin, a holy woman halfway between the human race and the angels. Never would she have done haram, illicit things. She sweated out a living as a housemaid, cleaning the filth of men. She was good and generous; for shopping expenses, looking after the boy, and keeping the house in order, she used to give the old woman far more than she ever spent, and never once did she ask for change. As the uncle—Montalbano, that is—was clearly a man of honorable sentiment and behavior, how could he ever think such a thing about Karima?

“Tell her,” the inspector said while looking at the photographs from the drawer, “that Allah is great and merciful, but if she’s bullshitting me, Allah is going to be very upset, because she’ll be cheating justice, and then she’ll really be fucked.” Buscaìno carefully translated, and the old woman shut up as if her spring had come unwound. But then a little key inside her wound her back up, and she resumed speaking un-controllably. The uncle, who was very wise, was right; he’d seen things clearly. Several times in the last two years, Karima had received visits from a young man who came in a large automobile.

“Ask her what color.”

The exchange between Buscaìno and the old woman was long and labored.

“I believe she said metallic gray.”

“And what did Karima and this young man do?” What a man and woman do, uncle. The woman heard the bed creaking over her head.

Did he sleep with Karima?

Only once, and the next morning he drove her to work in his automobile.

But he was a bad man. One night there was a lot of commotion. Karima was shouting and crying, and then the bad man left.

She had come running and found Karima sobbing, her naked body bearing signs of having been hit. Fortunately, François hadn’t woken up.

Did the bad man by any chance come to see her last Wednesday evening?

How had the uncle guessed? Yes, he did come, but didn’t do anything with Karima. He only took her away in his car.

What time was it?

It might have been ten in the evening. Karima brought François down to her, saying she’d be spending the night out.

And in fact she came back the next morning around nine, then disappeared with the boy.

Was the bad man with her then?

No, she’d taken the bus. The bad man arrived a little later, about fifteen minutes after Karima had left with her son. As soon as he learned the woman wasn’t there, he got back in his car and sped away to look for her.

Had Karima told her where she was going?

No, she hadn’t said anything. The old woman had only seen them heading on foot towards the old quarter of Villaseta, where the buses stop.

Did she have a suitcase with her?

Yes, a very small one.

He told the old woman to look around. Was there anything missing from the room?

She threw open the doors of the armoire, and the scent of Volupté exploded in the room. She opened a few drawers and rummaged around in them.

When she’d finished, she said that Karima had packed that suitcase with a pair of slacks, a blouse, and some panties.

She didn’t wear bras. She’d also thrown in a change of clothes and some underwear for the boy.

The inspector asked the woman to look very carefully.

Was anything else missing?

Yes, the large book she kept next to the telephone.

The book turned out to be some sort of diary or ledger.

Karima must certainly have taken it with her.

“She’s not planning to stay away very long,” Fazio commented.

“Ask her,” the inspector told Buscaìno, “if Karima spent the night out often.”

Now and then, not often. But she always let her know.

Montalbano thanked Buscaìno and asked him:

“Could you give Fazio a ride to Vigàta?”

Fazio gave his superior a perplexed look.

“Why, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to hang around a little longer.”

o o o

Among the many photographs the inspector began to examine were those in a large yellow envelope, some twenty-odd photos of Karima in the nude, in various poses from provocative to downright obscene, a kind of sampling of the merchandise, which was obviously of the highest quality.

How was it a woman like that hadn’t succeeded in finding a husband or rich lover to take care of her so she wouldn’t have to prostitute herself ? There was a shot of a pregnant Karima some time before, gazing lovingly at a tall, blond man and literally hanging from him. Probably François’s father, the Frenchman passing through Tunisia. Other photos showed Karima as a little girl with a boy slightly older than her. They bore a strong resemblance, had the same eyes.

Brother and sister, no doubt. Actually there were a great many photos of her with her brother, taken over the years.

The last must have been the one in which Karima, with her infant son, a few months old, in her arms, stood next to her brother, who was wearing some sort of uniform and holding a submachine gun. He took this photograph and went downstairs.

The woman was crushing minced meat in a mortar, fold-ing in grains of cooked wheat. On a platter beside her, all ready to be roasted, were some skewers of meat, with each morsel wrapped in a vine leaf. Montalbano brought his fingertips together, pointing upwards, artichokelike— a cacòcciola, in Sicilian—and shook his hand up and down. The old woman understood the question and, pointing to the mortar, said: “Kubba.”

Then she picked up one of the skewers.

“Kebab,” she said.

The inspector showed her the photo and pointed at the man. The woman answered something incomprehensible.

Montalbano felt pissed off at himself. Why had he been in such a hurry to send Buscaìno away? Then he remembered that for years and years the Tunisians had been mixed up with the French. He gave it a try.

“Frère?”

The old woman’s eyes lit up.

“Oui. Son frère Ahmed.”

“Où est-il?”

“Je ne sais pas,” said the woman, throwing up her hands.

After this exchange straight out of a French conversation manual, Montalbano went back upstairs and grabbed the photo of the pregnant Karima with the blond man.

“Son mari?”

The old woman made a gesture of scorn.

“Simplement le père de François. Un mauvais homme.” She’d met too many of them—bad men, that is—had the beautiful Karima, and was apparently still meeting them.

“Je m’appelle Aisha,” the old woman said out of the blue.

“Mon nom est Salvo,” said Montalbano.

o o o

He got in the car, found the pastry shop he’d caught a glimpse of on the way, bought twelve cannoli, and drove back to the house. Aisha had set a table under a tiny pergola behind the cottage, at the front of the garden. The countryside was deserted. Before doing anything else, Montalbano un-wrapped the pastry tray, and the old woman immediately ate two cannoli as an appetizer. Montalbano wasn’t too thrilled with the kubba, but the kebabs had a tart, herbal flavor that made them a little more sprightly, or so, at least, he defined them according to his imperfect use of adjectives.

During the meal Aisha probably told him the story of her life, but she’d forgotten her French and was speaking only Arabic. Nevertheless, the inspector actively participated: when the old woman laughed, he laughed too; when she grew sad, he put on a face fit for a funeral.

When supper was over, Aisha cleared the table, while Montalbano, at peace with himself and the world, smoked a cigarette. When the old woman returned, she was wearing a mysterious, conspiratorial expression. In her hand was a narrow, flat black box that probably once held a necklace or something similar. Aisha opened it, and inside was a savings-account passbook for the Banca Popolare di Montelusa.

“Karima,” the old woman said, bringing her forefinger to her lips, meaning that this was a secret and should remain so.

Montalbano took the booklet from the box and opened it.

An even five hundred million lire.

o o o

The previous year—Signora Clementina Vasile Cozzo told him—she’d suffered a terrible spell of insomnia she could do nothing about. Luckily it lasted only a few months. She would spend most of the night watching television or listening to the radio. Reading, no. She couldn’t read for very long, because after a while her eyes would start to flutter.

Once—it must have been around four in the morning, perhaps earlier—she heard the shouts of two drunkards quarrel-ing right under her window. She opened the curtain, just out of curiosity, and noticed that the light was on in Mr.

Lapècora’s office. What could Mr. Lapècora be doing there at that hour of the night? But Mr. Lapècora was not there, in fact. Nobody was there; the front room of the office was empty. So Signora Vasile Cozzo concluded that somebody had left the light on. Suddenly, however, from the other room, which she knew existed but couldn’t see from her window, there emerged a young man who used to come to the office now and then, even when Lapècora wasn’t there.

Stark naked, the man ran to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and started talking. Apparently the telephone had been ringing, though the signora hadn’t heard it. Moments later, Karima emerged, also from the back room, and also naked. She stood there listening to the young man, who was growing animated as he spoke. When the telephone call was over, the young man grabbed Karima and they went back into the other room to finish what they’d been doing when they were interrupted by the telephone. They later reappeared fully dressed, turned off the light, and left in the man’s large metallic gray car.

Over the course of the previous year this scenario had repeated itself four or five times. For the most part they would stay there for hours not doing or saying anything. If he grabbed her by the arm and took her into the other room, it was only to pass the time. Sometimes he would write or read, and she would doze in the chair, head resting on the table, waiting for the phone to ring. Sometimes, after the call came in, the man would make a call or two himself.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the woman, Karima, would clean the office—but what was there to clean, for Christ’s sake? And sometimes she would answer the phone, but she never passed the call on to Mr. Lapècora, even when he was right next to her. He would only sit there, listening to her talk, head down and looking at the floor, as if none of it was his concern, or as if he felt offended.

In the opinion of Clementina Vasile Cozzo, the maid, the Tunisian girl, was a bad, evil woman.

Not only did she do what she did with the dark young man, but now and then she would go and wheedle poor old Lapècora, who inevitably would give in, letting himself be led into the back room. One time, when Lapècora was sitting at the little secretarial table reading the newspaper, she kneeled in front of him, unzipped his trousers, and, still kneeling . . .

At this point Signora Vasile Cozzo, blushing, interrupted her narrative.

It was clear that Karima and the young man had keys to the office, whether they had been given them by Lapècora or had copies made themselves. It was also clear, even though there were no insomniac witnesses, that the night before Lapècora was murdered, Karima had spent a few hours in the victim’s home. This was proved by the scent of Volupté. Did she also own a set of keys to the flat, or had Lapècora himself let her in, taking advantage of the fact that his wife had taken a generous dose of sleeping pills? In any case, the whole thing seemed not to make sense. Why risk being caught in the act by Mrs. Lapècora when they could easily have met at the office? For the hell of it? Just to season an otherwise predictable relationship with the thrill of danger?

And then there was the matter of the three anonymous letters, unquestionably pieced together in that office. Why had Karima and the dark young man done it? To put Lapècora in a difficult bind? It didn’t tally. They had nothing to gain by it. On the contrary, they risked jeopardizing the availability of their telephone number and whatever it was the company had become.

For a better understanding of all this, Montalbano would have to wait for Karima to return. Fazio was right: she must have slipped away to avoid answering dangerous questions and would come back on the sly. The inspector was positive that Aisha would keep the promise she’d made to him. In his unlikely French, he’d explained to her that Karima got mixed up with a nasty crowd, and that sooner or later that bad man and his friends would surely kill not only her but also François and Aisha herself. He had the impression he’d sufficiently convinced and frightened her.

They agreed that as soon as Karima reappeared, the old woman would phone him; she had only to ask for Salvo and say only her name, Aisha. He left her the telephone numbers to his office and home, telling her to make sure she hid them well, as she had done with the passbook.

Naturally the argument held water on one condition: that Karima was not the killer. But no matter how much he turned it over in his head, the inspector could not picture her with a knife in her hand.

o o o

He glanced at his watch by the flame of his lighter. Almost midnight. For more than two hours now he’d been sitting on the veranda, in darkness to avoid getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand flies, hashing and rehashing what he’d learned from Signora Clementina and Aisha.

Yet he needed one further clarification. Could he possibly call Mrs. Vasile Cozzo at that hour? She had told him that every evening the housekeeper, after giving her dinner, would help her undress and put her in the wheelchair. But even if she was ready for bed, she didn’t turn in immediately; she would watch television late into the night. She could move from the wheelchair to the bed, and vice versa, by herself.

“Signora, it’s unforgivable, I know.”

“Not at all, Inspector, not at all! I was awake, watching a movie.”

“Well, signora. You told me the dark young man sometimes used to read or write. Do you know what it was he read? Or wrote? Could you tell?”

“He used to read newspapers and letters. And he would write letters. But he didn’t use the typewriter that was there in the office. He’d bring his own, a portable. Anything else?”

o o o

“Hi, darling. Were you asleep? No? Are you sure? I’ll be at your place tomorrow around one in the afternoon. Don’t go out of your way for me, please. I’ll just come, and if you’re not there, I’ll wait. I have the keys, after all.”