The Age of Doubt (16 page)

But in the inspector’s brain, an annoying sort of bell had started ringing.

Hoping to make it stop, he reread everything from the beginning.

But this only made the bell start ringing louder, so loud, in fact, that he began worrying that something might be happening to his brain.

Then he realized that it was the telephone.

At first he decided not to answer, but then he thought it might be Laura and started running.

“Chief, ya gotta ’scuse me fer ’sturbin’ yiz at home in yer own home.”

“What is it, Cat?”

“Dacter Micca called juss now.”

Never heard of him. The only Micca he knew of was the famous Pietro, the Piedmontese soldier he’d read about in history books.

“Did he tell you his first name?”

“Yessir, Chief. ’Is firss name’s Jerry.”

“You mean as in Jerry Lewis?”

“Yessir, ’ass azackly right, Chief.”

Jerry Micca. Geremicca!

“And what did he say?”

“’E axed yiz to go an’ see ’im.”

“Listen, Cat, since I have to go to Montelusa, you have to do me a favor.”

“Yessir, Chief!”

The inspector was certain that Catarella had stood at attention when saying this.

“I want you to do an Internet search for the name Kimberley Process.”

“No problem, Chief. Ya jess gotta tell me how iss writ.”

“I’ll try. The first letter is a
K.
”

A good three minutes passed without Catarella saying anything. Maybe he’d gone to look for a pen.

“Cat?”

“I’m here, Chief.”

“Did you write down the
K
?”

“Not yet, Chief.”

“Why not?”

“I’s wunnerin’ if iss a
K
witt or wittout the
O
.”

“Without, Cat.”

“So how you write a
K
wittout the
O
?”

At this rate, it was going to take them a week. Because once they got past the stumbling block of the
K
, there was still the
Y
at the end.

“Listen, Cat, tell you what. I’ll write it down on a piece of paper and drop it off at the station for you before going to Montelusa, okay?”

As he was on his way to Vigàta, the inspector realized that Geremicca’s call had come at absolutely the right moment. If he wanted to see Montalbano, then he must have received news from his French colleague, which meant that the investigation was about to be enriched with new elements, and the inspector could throw himself into it body and soul. He didn’t give a flying fuck that the commissioner had taken him off the case; he would carry on just the same. The investigation was more vital to him than bread itself, and for one simple reason: it would not allow him any time to think about Laura.

He pulled up in front of the station, didn’t bother to park, got out of the car, leaving the door wide open, went inside, gave the piece of paper with the name Kimberley Process written on it to Catarella, and said:

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Wait, Chief.”

“What is it?”

Catarella clearly felt awkward, as he kept looking at his shoe tops and opening and closing his hands in a fist.

“Well?” the inspector prodded him.

“Y’see, Chief, I gots somethin’ I oughter tell yiz but I ain’t ’ad the pleasure a tell yiz cuz I dunno whither I oughter tell yiz or no.”

“All right, then, when you decide what’s best, you can send me a telegram.”

“Chief, this in’t no jokin’ matter!”

“Then out with it, for Christ’s sake!”

“Please, Chief, le’ss go in yer office.”

If this was Catarella’s way of
not
wasting his time, well then . . . Catarella followed him down the hallway. The door to the inspector’s office was closed. Montalbano opened it and went inside.

Fazio was there, sitting in front of the desk with his back to them. Hearing someone come in, he turned around. At that moment the inspector noticed a mortuary pillow of white flowers in the middle of his desk, the kind that one lays down on coffins.

He turned pale, suddenly remembering the dream he’d had about his own funeral.

“What . . . what . . .”

He was unable to speak. He looked at Fazio, who was wearing a gloomy, worried expression.

“What else could it be, Chief? This is a classic Mafia warning.”

It was true. Montalbano went over to the filing cabinet atop which he always kept a bottle of water, and drank a glass of it as his brain whirred at high speed.

There was only one explanation possible for this threat. The Mafia must definitely be involved in the activities of the
Vanna
and the
Ace of Hearts
. That flower pillow was meant to tell him that if he didn’t back off, they would kill him. Never before had the Cuffaros or Sinagras gone to such lengths with him. Maybe the dream he’d had would even come true.

Montalbano said nothing. He batted the pillow with his hand in frustration, knocking it onto the floor.

“Catarella, grab that thing and throw it into the garbage.”

Catarella bent down, picked up the pillow, and was about to leave the room when Montalbano asked him:

“When did they deliver it?”

“Juss five minutes afore ya got here.”

“Did you see who brought it?”

“Yiss. Ciccino Pànzica, the floriss.”

“Fazio, I want this Pànzica here in front of me in five minutes.”

He had to admit it, he felt a bit scared. Normally he wouldn’t, if not for that damned dream he’d had.

Ciccino Pànzica was about sixty years old, with skin as pink as a pig’s.

“You must excuse me if I—”

“I’ll ask the questions around here.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Who ordered that pillow from you?”

“The person didn’t say who he was. They ordered it over the phone.”

Fazio intervened.

“How did you arrange for the payment?”

“They were going to send someone by.”

“And did this person come?”

“Yessir, yesterday evening.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“If I saw him, yes. He was in uniform.”

Montalbano and Fazio looked at each other, puzzled.

“What kind of uniform?” Fazio asked.

“Yours.”

A mafioso disguised as a policeman! This was becoming more and more troubling.

“Can I say something I wanted to say from the start?” the florist asked.

“Go ahead,” said Montalbano.

“The policeman also gave me a little card, which I forgot to deliver with the pillow.”

Normally, however, these kinds of threats never contained any written messages, Montalbano thought.

“Let’s see it.”

The florist handed it to him. It was a calling card in an envelope. Montalbano opened it. On the back of the card were the words:
Sincerest condolences. Lattes
.

16

As Montalbano was entering Geremicca’s office, he had no idea that in a few minutes, inside those four walls, a word would be uttered, only one, but that word alone would suffice to put him on the right track.

Upon seeing Montalbano, Geremicca stood up smiling and rotated his right hand in the air, as if to say that something really big had happened.

“Montalbano! You’ve landed a big one!”

“Me? What’d I do?”

“I e-mailed my French colleague a photocopy of the passport you gave me. And I told him that you’d told me that the name on the passport was the same as that of a character in a Simenon novel, if I remember correctly.”

“That’s right. And so?”

“And so he started telling me that a month ago they’d arrested an expert forger, a real master, but the guy refused to name his clients. They had, however, managed to confiscate two passports ready for use, among other things. Your passport, together with these, made three. And thanks to the clue we’d given them, my friend discovered that the forger was in the habit of using fictional names of characters from French literature. Imagine that!”

“I guess the guy liked to read.”

“And there’s more. The names the forger chose always had some sort of connection with something the client did in real life.”

“Can you give me a little more detail?”

“Sure. Just to give you an idea, my colleague said this Émile Lannec, the fictional character, owns a small steamboat in the novel. Is that true?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, thanks to some other information, and despite the mangled face, my colleague was able to identify the man on the passport. His name is Jean-Pierre David. He has a clean record, but the police have had their eye on him for a while.”

“And what’s the thing connected to his real life?”

“His father used to own a small steamboat that eventually sank. And so the clue you gave them helped lead the French to the true identities of the other two whose passports were ready for use. They convey their heartfelt thanks to you.”

“And why were they keeping an eye on this David?”

“Apparently he was part of a large organization involved in some heavy traffic.”

“What kind of traffic?”

“Diamonds.”

Montalbano gave a start. For a moment he couldn’t see a thing. The lightning that had flashed through his brain was so bright, it had blinded him.

What to do next?

It should have been his duty to go at once, without wasting another minute, to the office of Mezzamore, no, Mozzamore, or whatever the hell his name was, and tell him point by point everything he had learned.
Should have been
, mind you. Because, according to the commissioner’s orders, the inspector shouldn’t even have gone to see Geremicca that morning. He should have told him, over the phone: “Thank you, my friend, but you should pass all information on to my colleague Mizzamore, since he’s the one handling the case henceforth.”

Instead, he’d gone. Thus committing an act of insubordination. Now if he went to Mozzamore and told him that the dead man had been identified, the commissioner could accuse him of insubordination or worse . . .

“But aren’t you ashamed to be pulling out such lame excuses?”
the voice of his conscience reproached him.
“The truth of the matter is that you’re such an egotist, such a selfish wretch that you don’t want to share anything with anyone . . .”

“Would you just let me think for a second?”
Montalbano replied.

To report or not to report. That was the question.

In the end, his conscience won out. He walked around the building, entered through the main door, and asked where Inspector Muzzamore’s office was.

“You mean Mazzamore?” the person at the reception desk, who knew Montalbano, corrected him. “It’s right next door to Dr. Lattes’s office.”

Alas. Alas, alack, and wailaway. He had to proceed with extreme caution.

Instead of taking the elevator, he climbed the stairs. When he’d reached the right floor, he stopped. There was a whole corridor to cross. He stuck his head out and saw none other than Lattes, standing right in the middle of the hallway, talking to someone.

No, he just couldn’t go on any longer with this farce about the nonexistent little boy who died.

He turned tail and left. He would give Mazzamore a ring. But later, whenever he happened to. There was no hurry.

“Pretty good excuse you came up with there!”
his conscience needled him.

He told his conscience where to go, to the same place he probably too often sent it. Actually, there was no “probably” about it.

“Ahh Chief Chief! Ahh Chief!”

Montalbano knew what this plaintive litany meant.

“Did the commissioner call?”

“Yessir, ’e did, jess now, by tiliphone.”

“What did he want?”

“’E said as how ya gotta go rilly rilly emergently t’ see ’im, ’im being Mr. C’mishner hisself.”

Utterly and totally out of the question! No way could he risk running into Lattes. At the very least he would be forced to thank him for the funerary pillow.

“Tell Fazio to come to my office at once. And, by the way, did you find anything about Kimberley Process?”

“Yessir, I did, Chief, I’ll prinn it up straightaways.”

Going into his office, the inspector noticed that one of the flowers that had come detached from the wreath when he’d knocked it to the floor had remained there. He bent down, picked it up, and threw it out the window. He didn’t want to see anything that might remind him of the dream he’d had of his own funeral.

“What is it, Chief?” asked Fazio, coming in.

“You have to do me a favor. I want you to call the commissioner.”

Fazio looked puzzled.

“Me?!”

“Why not? Do you find it offensive? Embarrassing?”

“No, Chief, but . . .”

“No buts. I want you to tell him a lie.”

“About what?”

“He wants to see me right now, but for reasons of my own, I really can’t go there just now.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him?”

“Tell him that as I was driving to work somebody bumped into me, and you had to take me to the emergency room and then home.”

“Would you like to tell me, in case he asks, exactly what happened to you in the accident? Was it serious or minor?”

“Since I’ve already given him some other bullshit, just tell him I reinjured the same ankle I’d already sprained.”

“And how did you get this sprain?”

“The same way I got bumped into.”

“I see.”

“And now I’d better get on home fast, in case he phones me there.”

“All right,” said Fazio, turning to leave the room.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to my office to make the call.”

“Can’t you just do it here?”

“No, sir. I’m a better liar when I’m alone.”

Fazio returned less than five minutes later.

“Wha’d he say?”

“He said you’ve been having too many accidents lately and had better start taking better care of yourself.”

“Didn’t he believe it?”

“I don’t think so. Chief, I think you’d better go home right away. He’s definitely going to call.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Yes. He said you’re going to have to resume the investigation because Inspector Mazzamore is too busy with another case.”

“And you’re telling me this now?”

“When was I supposed to tell you?”

“It should have been the first thing!”

They stood there for a moment in silence, staring at each other.

“I’m not convinced,” said Montalbano.

“Me neither. But it’s not the first time he’s given you back a case he’d taken away from you.”

“I’m still not convinced. At any rate, I wanted to tell you that the body in the dinghy’s been identified. His real name was Jean-Pierre David, and the French police had been keeping an eye on him.”

“Why was that?”

“Apparently he was involved in diamond trafficking.”

Fazio’s eyes narrowed to little slits.

“Ah, so the guys from the
Ace of Hearts
 . . . ?”

“Are up to their necks in this. Cross my heart and hope to die. We have to figure out a way to set them up. And we’ve got to do it quickly, because they could leave at any moment. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Tell me.”

“I want you and Gallo to be ready. This afternoon, around five o’clock, there’s something we have to do.”

“What’s it involve?”

“We’ll probably have to arrest Mimì.”

Fazio opened his mouth and then closed it again. And he turned red in the face, and then pale as a ghost. He collapsed into a chair.

“Wh . . . Why?” he asked in a faint voice.

“I’ll explain later.”

At that moment Catarella came in with a few sheets of paper in his hand.

“I prinnit it all up, Chief.”

Montalbano folded them and put them in his jacket pocket.

“See you later,” he said.

And he headed back home.

But how was it that the telephone had now acquired the fine habit of starting to ring just as he was coming through the door? Since he’d given up hope that it was Laura trying to reach him, he took his time.

He went and opened the French door to the veranda, then went into the kitchen.

Since he would, of necessity, have to eat at home, he wanted to see what Adelina had made for him. He opened the oven.

And what a discovery it was.
Pasta ’ncasciata
and mullet
alla livornese
.

The telephone, which in the meanwhile had stopped ringing, started again. This time he went and picked up.

It was the c’mishner.

“Montalbano, how are you feeling?”

Just as Fazio had predicted, the goddamn sonofabitch wanted to verify whether he had actually had an accident. And Montalbano was ready to oblige him. He began:

“Well, the crash wasn’t—”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” the commissioner cut him off sharply.

Oh no? Then what did he want to talk about? Maybe it was best to keep quiet and see where the guy was headed.

“I was referring to your mental health, which I’m very worried about.”

What was this? Was he telling him he thought he was going insane? How dare he?

“Listen, Mr. Commissioner, sir, I can put up with a lot, but I will not tolerate any comments about my mental—”

“I’ll do the talking here, Inspector. You just answer my questions.”

“Listen, this isn’t—”

“Goddammit, Montalbano, that’s enough!” Bonetti-Alderighi snapped.

He must really be angry. Better let him get it out of his system. But the question he asked was the last thing Montalbano expected.

“Is it true that you suffered a terrible loss a few days ago?”

The inspector felt annihilated. Dr. Lattes must have told the commissioner that he’d lost his son!

“In other words, that a son of yours died?” the commissioner continued in a frosty tone of voice.

How the hell was he going to get out of this one?

“And your wife is in despair?”

The commissioner’s voice was now well below zero.

“And can you explain to me how this can be when, as far as anyone knows, you have neither wife nor children?”