The Terra-Cotta Dog (5 page)

At the mention of that name, Ingrassia, who had seemed to be losing interest as the inspector went on, sat up in his chair as if stung by a wasp.

“Misuraca?!”

“Yes, the one who used to work at the Records Office.”

“But he's a Fascist!”

“I don't see what the cavaliere's political beliefs have to do with the case we're discussing.”

“They have everything to do with it! Because when I used to be involved in politics, he was my enemy.”

“You're no longer involved in politics?”

“What's to be involved in anymore! With that handful of Milanese judges who've decided to ruin politics, commerce, and industry, all at the same time!”

“Listen, the cavaliere merely gave a testimonial establishing the modus operandi of the thieves.”

“I don't give a shit what the cavaliere was establishing. He's an old geezer who can't even remember when he turned eighty. He's so senile he's liable to see a cat and say it's an elephant. What was he doing out at that time of the night anyway?”

“I don't know, I'll ask him. Shall we get back to the subject?”

“Fine.”

“Once it was loaded, at your supermarket, after at least two hours of labor, the truck leaves. It drives three or four miles, turns around, parks in the lot behind the gas station, and remains there until I find it. And, in your opinion, someone went through this whole elaborate setup, committed half a dozen crimes, risking years in jail, just so he, or you, could have a good laugh?”

“Inspector, we could stay here all day arguing, but I swear to you that I can't imagine how it could have been anything but a joke.”

 
 
In the refrigerator Montalbano found a plate of cold pasta with tomatoes, basil, and black
passuluna
olives that gave off an aroma to wake the dead, and a second course of fresh anchovies with onions and vinegar. Montalbano was in the habit of trusting entirely in the simple but zestful culinary imagination of Adelina, the housekeeper who came once a day to see to his needs, a mother of two irremediably delinquent sons, one of whom was still in jail, put there by Montalbano. And this day, too, she did not disappoint him. Every time he was about to open the oven or fridge, he still felt the same trepidation he used to feel as a little boy when, on the second of November, he would look for the wicker basket in which the dead had left their gifts during the night—a celebration now lost, obliterated by the banality of presents under the Christmas tree, obliterated like the memory of the dead themselves. The only ones who did not forget their dead, and who indeed tenaciously kept their memory burning, were the mafiosi; but the presents they sent in remembrance were certainly not little tin trains or marzipan fruits.

Surprise, in short, was an indispensable spice in Adelina's dishes.

He took his two courses, a bottle of wine, and some bread to the table, turned on the television, and sat down to dinner. He loved to eat alone, relishing every bite in silence. This was yet another bond that tied him to Livia, who never opened her mouth when she ate. It occurred to him that in matters of taste he was closer to Maigret than to Pepe Carvalho, the protagonist of Montalbán's novels, who stuffed himself with dishes that would have set a shark's belly on fire.

On the national television stations, an ill wind of malaise was blowing. The governing majority found itself split over a law that would deny early prison release to those who had eaten up half the country; the magistrates who had laid bare the dirty secrets of political corruption were resigning in protest; and there was a faint breeze of revolt animating the interviews with people in the street.

He switched to the first of the two local TV stations. TeleVigàta was progovernment by congenital faith, whether the government was red, black, or sky blue. The news reporter made no mention of the capture of Tano the Greek, stating only that a few conscientious citizens had alerted the Vigàta police of a lively but mysterious shoot-out at dawn in the rural area known as “the Walnut,” and that investigators, after arriving promptly at the scene, had found nothing unusual. The newscaster for the Free Channel, Nicolò Zito, who did not hide his Communist sympathies, likewise failed to mention Tano's arrest. Which seemed to indicate that the news, fortunately, had not leaked out. But then, out of the blue, Zito started talking about the bizarre robbery at the Ingrassia supermarket and the inexplicable rediscovery of the truck with all the stolen merchandise. The common opinion, reported Zito, was that the vehicle must have been abandoned following an argument between the robbers over how to divide up the loot. Zito, however, did not agree. In his opinion, things had gone differently; the real explanation was surely far more complicated.

“And so I appeal directly to you, Inspector Montalbano. Is it not true that there must be more to this story than meets the eye?” the newsman asked, closing his report.

Hearing himself personally addressed and seeing Zito's eyes looking out at him from the screen as he was eating, Montalbano let the wine he was drinking go down the wrong way and started coughing and cursing.

After finishing his meal, he put on his bathing suit and dived into the sea. It was freezing cold, but the swim brought him back to life.

 
 
“Now tell me exactly how it all happened,” said the commissioner.

After admitting the inspector into his office, he had stood up and gone right over to him, embracing him warmly.

One thing about Montalbano was that he was incapable of deceiving or stringing along people he knew were honest or who inspired his admiration. With crooks and people he didn't like, he could spin out the flimflam with the straightest of faces and was capable of swearing he'd seen the moon trimmed in lace. The fact that he not only admired his superior, but had actually at times spoken to him as to a father, now put him, after the other's command, in a state of agitation: he blushed, began to sweat, kept squirming in his chair as if he were under cross-examination. The commissioner noticed his uneasiness but attributed it to the discomfort that Montalbano genuinely felt whenever he had to talk about a particularly successful operation. The commissioner had not forgotten that at the last press conference, in front of the TV cameras, the inspector had expressed himself—if you could call it that—in long, painful stammerings at times devoid of common meaning, eyes bulging, pupils dancing as if he were drunk.

“I'd like some advice, before I begin.”

“At your service.”

“What should I write in the report?”

“What kind of question is that? Have you never written a report before? In reports you write down what happened,” the commissioner replied curtly, a bit astonished. And since Montalbano hadn't yet made up his mind to speak, he continued. “In other words, you say you were able to take advantage of a chance encounter and turn it into a successful police operation, skillfully, courageously, it's true, but—”

“Look, I just wanted to say—”

“Let me finish. I can't help but notice that you took a big risk, and exposed your men to grave danger—you should have asked for substantial reinforcements, taken due precaution. Luckily, it all went well. But it was a gamble. That's what I'm trying to tell you, in all sincerity. Now let's hear your side.”

Montalbano studied the fingers on his left hand as if they had just sprouted spontaneously and he didn't know what they were there for.

“What's wrong?” the commissioner asked.

“What's wrong is that it's all untrue!” Montalbano burst out. “There wasn't any chance encounter. I went to talk with Tano because he had asked to see me. And at that meeting we made an agreement.”

The commissioner ran his hand over his eyes.

“An agreement?”

“Yes, on everything.”

And while he was at it, he told him the whole story, from Gegè's phone call to the farce of the arrest.

“Is there anything else?” the commissioner asked when it was over.

“Yes. Things being what they are, in no way do I deserve to be promoted to assistant commissioner. If I were promoted, it would be for a lie, a deception.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” the commissioner said brusquely.

He got up, put his hands behind his back, and stood there thinking a moment. Then he made up his mind and turned around.

“Here's what we'll do. Write me two reports.”

“Two?” said Montalbano, mindful of the effort it normally cost him to apply ink to paper.

“Don't argue. The fake report I'll leave lying around for the inevitable mole who will make sure to leak it to the press or to the Mafia. The real one I'll put in the safe.”

He smiled.

“And as for this promotion business, which seems to be what terrifies you most, come to my house on Friday evening and we'll talk it over a little more calmly. My wife has invented a fabulous new sauce for sea bream.”

 
 
Cavaliere Gerlando Misuraca, who carried his eighty-four years belligerently, was true to form, going immediately on the offensive as soon as the inspector said, “Hello?”

“Who is that imbecile who transferred my call?”

“Why, what did he do?”

“He couldn't understand my surname! He couldn't get it into that thick head of his! ‘Bizugaga,' he called me!”

He paused warily, then changed his tone:

“Can you assure me, on your word of honor, that he's just some poor bastard who doesn't know any better?”

Realizing that it was Catarella who had answered the phone, Montalbano could reply with conviction.

“I can assure you. But why, may I ask, do you need my assurance?”

“Because if he meant to make fun of me or what I represent, I'll be down there at the station in five minutes and will give him such a thrashing, by God, he won't be able to walk!”

And just what did Cavaliere Misuraca represent? Montalbano wondered while the other continued threatening to do terrible things. Nothing, absolutely nothing from a, so to speak, official point of view. A municipal employee long since retired, he did not hold nor had he ever held any public office, being merely a card-carrying member of his party. A man of unassailable honesty, he lived a life of dignified quasi-poverty. Even in the days of Mussolini, he had refused to seek personal gain, having always been a “faithful follower,” as one used to say back then. In return, from 1935 onwards, he had fought in every war and been in the thick of the worst battles. He hadn't missed a single one, and indeed seemed to have a gift for being everywhere at once, from Guadalajara, Spain, to Bir el Gobi in North Africa by way of Axum, Ethiopia. Followed by imprisonment in Texas, his refusal to cooperate, and an even harsher imprisonment as a result, on nothing but bread and water. He therefore represented, Montalbano concluded, the historical memory of what were, of course, historic mistakes, but he had lived them with a naïve faith and paid for them with his own skin: among several serious injuries, one had left him lame in his left leg.

“Tell me,” Montalbano had mischievously asked him one day face-to-face, “if you'd been able, would you have gone to fight at Salò, alongside the Germans and the
repubblichini?
” In his way, the inspector was sort of fond of the old Fascist. How could he not be? In that circus of corrupters and corrupted, extortionists and grafters, bribe-takers, liars, thieves, and perjurers—turning up each day in new combinations—Montalbano had begun to feel a kind of affection for people he knew to be incurably honest.

At this question, the old man had seemed to deflate from within, the wrinkles on his face multiplying as his eyes began to fog over. Montalbano then understood that Misuraca had asked himself the same question a thousand times and had never been able to come up with an answer. So he did not insist.

“Hello? Are you still there?” Misuraca's peevish voice asked.

“At your service, Cavaliere.”

“I just remembered something. Which is why I didn't mention it when I gave my testimony.”

“I have no reason to doubt you, Cavaliere. I'm all ears.”

“A strange thing happened to me when I was almost in front of the supermarket, but at the time I didn't pay it much mind. I was nervous and upset because these days there are certain bastards about who—”

“Please come to the point, Cavaliere.”

If one let him speak, Misuraca was capable of taking his story back to the foundation of the first Fascist militias.

“Actually, I can't tell you over the phone. I need to see you in person. It's something really big, if I saw right.”

The old man was considered someone who always told things straight, without overstating or understating the case.

“Is it about the robbery at the supermarket?”

“Of course.”

“Have you already discussed it with anybody?”

“Nobody.”

“Don't forget: not a word to anyone.”

“Are you trying to insult me? Silent as the grave, I am. I'll be at your office early tomorrow morning.”

“Just out of curiosity, Cavaliere: what were you doing, alone and upset, in your car at that hour of the night? You know, after a certain age, one must be careful.”

“I was on my way back from Montelusa, from a meeting of the local party leaders. I'm not one of them, of course, but I wanted to be present. Nobody shuts his door on Gerlando Misuraca. Someone has to save our party's honor. They can't continue to govern alongside those bastard sons of bastard politicians and agree to an ordinance allowing all the sons of bitches who devoured our country out of jail! You must understand, Inspector—”