Rounding the Mark (7 page)

After these images, the purse-lipped face of Pippo Ragonese appeared.

“In cases such as these,” said the channel’s chief editorialist, “it is absolutely imperative to appeal to cold reason and not let oneself be carried away by instinct and sentiment. We must consider a simple fact: Our Christian civilization cannot allow itself to be altered at its very foundations by the uncontrollable hordes of desperate, lawless people who daily land on our shores. These people represent a genuine threat to us, to Italy, and to the entire Western world. The Cozzi-Pini law recently passed by our government is the only real bulwark we have against this invasion, no matter what the opposition says. But let’s turn to a knowledgeable voice from Parliament, the honorable Cenzo Falpalà, and hear what he has to say on this pressing question.”

Falpalà was a man whose face expressed above all an effort to let the world know that nobody would ever pull a fast one on him.

“I have only a brief statement to make. The Cozzi-Pini law is proving that it works quite well. If immigrants are dying, this is precisely because the law provides us with the tools to prosecute the human traffickers who, at the first sign of trouble, have no qualms about throwing those desperate people overboard to avoid arrest. I would like, moreover, to say that—”

Montalbano suddenly got up and changed the channel, not so much enraged as disheartened by so much presumptuous stupidity. They were deluded to think they could stop an historic migration with police measures and laws. He remembered the time he noticed that the hinges on the main door of a church in a Tuscan town had been bent backwards by a force so strong as to push them in the opposite direction from the one in which they’d been designed to go. When he asked a man from the town to explain this, he was told that, during the war, the Nazis had put all the town’s men inside the church, locked the door, and started throwing in hand grenades from above. The people inside, in their desperation, had forced the door to open in the opposite direction, and many had managed to escape.

Well, those people flooding in from all the poorest, most devastated parts of the world were strong enough and desperate enough to turn history’s hinges back on themselves. And tough shit for Cozzi, Pini, Falpalà, and company, who were both the cause and the effect of a world filled with terrorists who could kill three thousand Americans in a single blow, with Americans who considered the thousands of civilians killed by their bombs “collateral damage,” with motorists who squashed pedestrians with their cars and never stopped to help them, with mothers who killed infants in their cradles for no reason at all, with children who slit the throats of mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters for money, with fraudulent balance sheets that according to new rules were no longer considered fraudulent, with people who should have been thrown in jail years ago but who were not only free but rewriting the rules and dictating the law.

To distract himself and calm his nerves a little, he channel-surfed for a while until he came to a station showing two very swift sailboats racing neck-and-neck in a regatta.

“This long-awaited, fierce, but highly sporting contest between the
Stardust
and the
Brigadoon
, permanent rivals, is about to draw to a close. Yet we still can’t say which will emerge as the winner of this magnificent competition. The upcoming turn at the buoy will surely be decisive.”

There was a panning shot from a helicopter above. A dozen other boats straggled behind the two in the lead.

“We’re at the buoy!” the announcer yelled.

The first boat went into its maneuver, elegantly putting about and rounding the mark as closely as possible before heading back the same way it had come.

“But what’s happening to the
Stardust
?” asked the announcer, upset. “Something’s not right.”

Strangely, the
Stardust
had made no sign of any maneuver, but just charged on straight ahead, even faster than before, riding a stiff aft wind. There was no getting around it. Was it possible the crew never even saw the buoy? Then something unheard of happened. Apparently out of control—maybe the rudder was stuck—the
Stardust
went and rammed straight into a kind of trawler sitting motionless in its path.

“Unbelievable! She just rammed the officials’ boat broadside! The two vessels are starting to sink! Here comes help! Unbelievable! It looks like nobody’s hurt. Believe me, friends, in all my years covering sailing competitions, I have never seen anything like it!”

Here the commentator started laughing. And Montalbano laughed, too, as he turned off the TV.

 
 
He slept poorly, drifting off into short dreams from which he woke up in a daze every time. One of these dreams struck him in particular. He was with Dr. Pasquano, who had to perform an autopsy on an octopus.

Nobody seemed surprised by this. Pasquano and his assistants treated the matter like business as usual. Only Montalbano found the situation odd.

“Excuse me, Doctor,” he said, “but since when have we been doing autopsies on octopi?”

“Don’t you know? It’s a new directive from the minister of justice.”

“Oh. And, afterwards, what are you going to do with the remains?”

“They’re going to be distributed to the poor, for them to eat.”

The inspector wasn’t convinced.

“I don’t understand the reasoning behind this directive.”

Pasquano gave him a long stare and then said:

“It’s because things are not what they seem.”

Montalbano remembered that this was the same thing the doctor had said to him about the corpse he’d found in the water.

“Want to see?” asked Pasquano, brandishing the scalpel and then lowering it.

Suddenly the octopus turned into a child, a little black boy. Dead, of course, but with his eyes still wide open.

 
 
As he was shaving, the scenes of the previous evening on the wharf ran through his head again. Little by little, as he reviewed them with a cold eye, he began to feel uneasy, disturbed. There was something that didn’t jibe, some detail that clashed with the rest.

He stubbornly played the scenes over in his head, trying to bring them more into focus. No dice. He lost heart. This was surely a sign of aging. He used to be able to find the flaw, the jarring note in the overall picture, without fail.

Better not to think about it.

5

As soon as he entered his office, he summoned Fazio.

“Any news?”

Fazio looked surprised.

“Chief, there hasn’t been enough time. I’m still working on the preliminaries. I’ve checked the missing persons reports, of course, both here and in Montelusa—”

“Well done!” the inspector said snidely.

“Why are you mocking me, Chief?”

“You think that corpse was out for an early morning swim and heading home?”

“No, but I had to check things out here, too. Then I asked around, but it looks like nobody knew him.”

“Did you get an ID profile on him?”

“Yessir. About forty years old, five foot eight and a half, black hair, brown eyes. Stocky build. Distinguishing marks: an old scar on the left leg, just under the knee. He probably limped. And that’s it.”

“Nothing to get excited about.”

“Yeah. That’s why I decided to do something.”

“What’d you do?”

“Well, considering that you’re not too fond of Dr. Arquà, I went to Forensics and asked a friend for a favor.”

“And what was that?”

“I asked if he could make me a computerized sketch of what the guy might have looked like before he died. It should be ready by tonight.”

“Listen, I never ask Arquà for any favors, not even if you put a knife to my throat.”

“Don’t worry, Chief. It’ll remain between me and my friend.”

“What do you intend to do in the meantime?”

“Hit the road. I’ve got a few chores to take care of first, but then I’m going to take my own car and check out the towns along the coast, both to the west and to the east. I’ll contact you the minute I have any news.”

As soon as Fazio left, the door flew open and slammed violently against the wall. Montalbano, however, didn’t move; he knew it was Catarella. By now he was used to these entries. What could he do? Shoot him? Keep the door to his office always open? All he could do was put up with it.

“ ’Pologies, Chief. Hand slipped.”

“Come in, Cat.”

He said it with the exact same intonation as the De Rege brothers’ legendary “Come in, cretin.”

“Chief, seeing as how a journalist phoned this morning asking for you, I jes’ wanted to let you know that he said he was gonna call you back.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“Pontius Pilate, Chief.”

Was it too much to expect Catarella ever to get anybody’s name right?

“Listen, Cat, when Mr. Pilate calls back, tell him I’m in an urgent meeting with Caiphas, at the Sanhedrin.”

“D’jou say Caiphas, Chief? I sure won’t forget that!”

But he remained standing in the doorway.

“Something wrong, Cat?”

“Lass nite I seen you on TV, Chief.”

“What do you do, Cat, spend all your free time watching me on TV?”

“No, Chief, it was by accidint.”

“What was it, a replay of me naked? I must be getting good ratings!”

“No sir, you was drissed. I seen you past midnight on the Free Channel. You was on the docks, tellin’ two of our men to go back ’cause you could take care of things y’self. Man, what a thorty you got!”

“Okay, Cat, thanks. You can go now.”

He felt rather worried about Catarella. Not because he had any doubts about his sexuality, but because if he, the inspector, resigned—as he’d already decided to do—surely Catarella would suffer terribly, like a dog abandoned by its master.

 
 
Ciccio Albanese showed up around eleven-thirty, empty-handed.

“You didn’t bring the charts you mentioned?”

“If I showed them to you, would you understand them?”

“No.”

“So why should I bring them? It’s better if I explain things myself.”

“Tell me something, Ciccio. Do all of you trawler captains use maps?”

Albanese looked at him cockeyed.

“Are you kidding? In our line of work, we know our stretch of sea by heart. Some of it we learned from our dads, some of it we learned by ourselves. For the new stuff, we get some help from radar. But the sea’s always the sea.”

“So why do you use maps?”

“I don’t, Inspector. I look at ’em and study ’em ’cause it’s something I like to do. But I don’t bring ’em aboard with me. I prefer to rely on experience.”

“So, what can you tell me?”

“First of all, I gotta tell you that before coming here this morning, I went to see
u zù Stefanu
.”

“I’m sorry, Ciccio, but I don’t—”

“Stefano Lagùmina, but we all call him
u zù Stefanu
. He’s ninety-five years old, but his brain’s as sharp as anyone’s.
U zù Stefanu
don’t go out to sea no more, but he’s the oldest fisherman in Vigàta. He used to have a lateener before he got a trawler. Whatever the man says is gospel.”

“So you wanted to consult with him.”

“Yessir. I wanted to make sure my hunch was right. And
u zù Stefanu
agrees with me.”

“And what are your conclusions?”

“Here’s how I see it. The dead man was carried by a surface current that we all know well, and which runs east to west, always at the same speed. The spot off Marinella where you bumped into the body is where this current comes closest to shore. You follow?”

“Perfectly. Go on.”

“It’s a slow current. You know how many knots?”

“No, and I don’t want to know. And just between you and me, I don’t even know how many knots there are in a mile.”

“Well, a mile’s one thousand eight hundred fifty-one point eighty-five meters long. An Italian mile, that is. ’Cause in England—”

“Forget about it, Ciccio.”

“Whatever you say, Inspector. As I was saying, this current comes from far away. It’s not native. To give you an idea, we run into it way down at Capo Passero. That’s where it enters our waters, and then it hugs the coast up to Mazara. After that it goes its own way.”

And there you have it! This, of course, meant that the body could have been thrown into the sea at just about any point along the southern coast of Sicily! Albanese read the discouragement on the inspector’s face and came to his aid.

“I know what you’re thinking. But I have something important to tell you. A little before Bianconara, this current is cut off by another, stronger current going in the opposite direction. And so a body floating from Pachino over to Marinella would never actually get to Marinella because the second current would carry it into the Gulf of Fela.”

“So that means that my dead body’s story definitely begins after Bianconara.”

“Exactly, Inspector. You’ve understood everything.”

Thus the likely area of investigation was reduced to some sixty kilometers of coastline.

“And I now should tell you,” Albanese continued, “that I also talked to
u zù Stefanu
about the condition the body was in when you found it. I could see for myself: the man’d been dead at least two months. You agree?”

“Yes.”

“So I say: a corpse isn’t gonna take two months to float from Bianconara to Marinella. Maybe ten, fifteen days, at the most, if you figure in the speed of the currents and all.”

“And so?”

Ciccio Albanese stood up and held his hand out to Montalbano.

“That kind of question’s not for me to answer. I’m only a sailor. That’s where you come in, Inspector.”

A perfect assignation of roles. Ciccio didn’t want to venture into waters not his own. All Montalbano could do was thank him and accompany him to the door. After the captain left, the inspector called Fazio.