The Potter's Field (12 page)

In the letter he also said that by entrusting the case to him, the inspector could put all of Mimì's abilities to the test.

In conclusion, Mimì was asking for help.

Exactly that. He had even used the word:
help
. A word that a man like Mimì didn't use lightly.

Think harder, Montalbà, try to reflect with an open mind, without anger, without falling prey to resentment.

Wasn't it possible that Mimì's aggressive, belligerent attitude was his own very personal way of calling to other people's attention a situation he couldn't get out of alone?

All right, let's admit this. Then what did the investigation have to do with it? Why was Mimì so fixated on it? Why had it become, from one day to the next, so important to his very existence?

One possible answer might be that, once he was involved in a difficult, complex investigation, Mimì would inevitably find he had less time to spend on his mistress. And so he could ease up on his relations with the woman, take the first steps towards a definitive break.

Ingrid was probably right on target when she said that Mimì might be falling seriously in love and wanted to prevent this, since Beba and the baby were caught in the middle.

He reread the letter a third time.

When he got to the last sentence—
Whatever you should decide, my great affection and esteem for you will always remain unchanged—
he immediately felt his eyes water and his chest tighten up. Mimì had written “affection” first, and “esteem” after.

The inspector buried his face in his hands, finally giving full vent to his sadness—and to his anger at not having immediately grasped, as he would have done a few years earlier, the gravity of his friend's predicament, who was so much a friend that he named his first son after him.

At that moment he felt Ingrid's presence on the veranda.

He hadn't heard her approach, convinced she was still asleep. He didn't look at her, too embarrassed at having been caught by surprise at a moment of weakness he was unable to bring to an end.

Then Ingrid turned off the light.

And it was as though at the same time she had turned on the sea, which now emitted a pale, almost phosphorescent glow, and the distant, scattered lights of the stars.

From an invisible boat, a man cried out:

“Giuvà! Giuvà!”

But no one replied.

Absurdly, the reply that never came was like the last painful rent in Montalbano's chest. He started weeping without restraint.

Ingrid sat down on the bench beside him, held him tight, and made it so that Montalbano could rest his head on her shoulder.

Then, with her left hand she raised his chin and gave him a long kiss on the lips.

It was six o'clock in the morning when he drove Ingrid back to the Marinella Bar to pick up her car.

He didn't feel like sleeping. On the contrary, he felt an overwhelming need to wash himself, to take a shower so long it would use up all the water in the tanks. When he got home, he undressed, put on his bathing suit, and went down to the beach.

It was cold. It was a little while yet before sunrise, and a light wind made of billions of tiny steel blades was blowing.

Like almost every morning, Cosimo Lauricella was easing back into the water the rowboat he had pulled ashore the previous evening. He was an elderly fisherman who every so often brought the inspector fresh-caught fish and never accepted any payment.

“Isspector, I don' think iss such a good idea this morning.”

“Just a little dip, Cosimo.”

He stepped into the water, overcame an immediate attack of paralysis, dived under, and had taken a few arm-strokes when all at once the night's darkness returned.

“How is that possible?” he had just enough time to think before feeling the seawater rush into his mouth.

He woke up in Cosimo's boat with the fisherman pounding him with his fist.

“Shit, Isspector, you sure gave me a scare! I tol' you it wasn't such a good idea today! Good thing I was here, or you woulda drownded!”

Once ashore, Cosimo wanted to accompany him all the way home and wouldn't take no for an answer.

“No more o' these pranks, Isspector, I mean it. Iss one thing when you're a kid, but iss another thing later on.”

“Thanks, Cosimo,” he said. But he was thinking:
Thanks not so much for having saved my life as for not having called me an old man
.

But, as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Mature, elderly, of a certain age, no longer young, getting on in years: all ways to soften but not change an essential fact—that he was getting unavoidably, irremediably old.

He went into the kitchen, put a six-cup espresso pot on the stove, then drank the scalding-hot coffee from a big mug.

Afterwards he got into the shower and used up all the water, imagining Adelina's curses when she realized she couldn't clean the house, scrub the floors, probably not even cook.

In the end he felt a little cleaner.

“Ah Chief Chief! Dacter Arcà's been lookin' f 'yiz an' he sez a tell yiz a call 'im at Frensix.”

“All right. I'll tell you when I want you to ring him for me.”

First he needed to do something more urgent.

He went into his office, locked the door behind him, sat down at his desk, dug Mimì's letter out of his pocket, and read it one more time.

The previous evening, when he had started mulling over Mimì's words, he was struck by two things. The first was the tone, and the second . . .

The second had slipped his mind because Ingrid had woken up. And even now, try as he might, he could not recall it.

And so he took a ballpoint pen and a clean sheet of paper without letterhead, thought things over a bit, and started writing.

He reread the letter. It seemed perfect to him.

It would help keep Mimì in line for a few days, while the inspector awaited the results of Ingrid's surveillance. And it gave him no reason to get angry and pull any more stupid stunts.

He got up, opened the door, and called Galluzzo.

“Listen, do me a favor and type up this letter. Then put it in an envelope and write: ‘For Inspector Domenico Augello / Personal and Confidential' on it. Then deliver it to him. Is he in his office?”

Galluzzo only gawked at him, bewildered. No doubt he was wondering why Montalbano and Augello had suddenly decided to use him as their personal secretary.

“He hasn't come in yet.”

“Give it to him as soon as he arrives.”

But Galluzzo made no move to leave the room. He clearly felt torn.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Well, yes, Chief. Could you tell me why you, too, are having me type up a letter?”

“So that you know exactly how things stand. You've read the one Mimì wrote to me, and now you can read my reply,” he said sharply—so sharply that Galluzzo reacted.

“Excuse me for saying so, Chief, but I don't understand. First of all, you can't type up a letter without reading it. And, second of all, after I know how things stand between the two of you, what am I supposed to do about it?”

“I don't know. You decide.”

“Chief, you've got me all wrong,” said Galluzzo, offended. “I'm not the kind of guy who goes around telling everybody and his dog what goes on in here.”

Montalbano felt Galluzzo was being sincere and immediately regretted what he'd said. But the damage had been done. Directly or indirectly, Mimì Augello was sowing discord and resentment in his police department. The problem had to be resolved as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, he could only hope that Ingrid would manage to discover something.

“Catarella! Ring Forensics for me and get Dr. Arquà on the line!”

“Hello,” said Arquà after a spell.

“Montalbano here. You asked for me?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to prove to you that I am a gentleman and you are a boor.”

“An impossible task.”

“Professor Lomascolo called me from Palermo ahead of time with the results of his examination of the dental bridge. Interested?”

“Yes.”

“It took him only an hour, he said, to be absolutely certain that this kind of bridge was commonly used in South America until a few years ago. Happy?”

The inspector said nothing. What the hell was the little shit getting at?

“I made a point of letting you know at once,” Arquà continued, shooting the venom from his tail. “I hope you're able, with your usual acumen, to find the right dentist among the million or more practicing in that part of the world. Bye.”

Fucker. Actually, no: motherfucking son of a bitch. Actually, no: motherfucking son of a stinking whore.

If that goddamned bridge might actually be of any use to the case, never in a million years would the guy have called him. He only wanted the satisfaction of telling him that the bridge would never help him to cross the great sea of shit this case was.

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to turn it over to Mimì.

It was time to go eat, but he didn't have even a hint of appetite.

His thoughts felt a bit muddled, as if a few drops of glue had oozed into his brain. He felt his forehead. It was hot. Apparently the result of the morning's bravado.

He decided to go straight home to Marinella and told Catarella he wouldn't be back at the office in the afternoon.

When he got home, he started looking for the thermometer. It wasn't in the medicine chest, where he usually kept it. It wasn't in the drawer of his nightstand either. After searching for twenty minutes he finally found it between the pages of a book. Ninety-nine point five. He took an aspirin from the medicine chest, went into the kitchen, and turned on the faucet, but not a single drop of water came out. He cursed the saints. But why curse the saints when it was his own fault? There was a bottle of mineral water in the refrigerator, and he poured himself a glass. But then he remembered that aspirin shouldn't be taken on an empty stomach. He needed to eat something. He reopened the refrigerator. Lacking water, Adelina had used her brains. Caponatina, caciocavallo di Ragusa, and sardines in onion sauce.