The Age of Doubt (6 page)

“So you received the complaint, eh?”

Montalbano made a vague gesture that could have meant nothing or everything.

“The bastards.”

The man paused.

“The fuckin’ bastards!”

Having taken in the high esteem in which Digiulio held those who had reported him, the inspector decided he needed to know a little more.

“Please tell me your version of the story.”

“In Rethymno, me and Zizì went out drinking at a tavern, and there was two Greeks there who—”

“—who provoked you.”

“Exactly. Zizì reacted immediately, and I went to back him up, and before we knew it, there was a brawl and—”

“You smashed the place up.”

“Smashed it up? Come on! Zizì broke a couple a chairs and . . .”

Zizì. Where had he heard that name before? Someone had mentioned it in passing. But who? And when? He couldn’t quite call it to mind.

“I’m sorry, but was Zizì a local?”

Digiulio gave him a look of astonishment.

“No, he’s one of the crew.”

“But his name’s not listed in the—”

“Ah, sorry, we call him Zizì, but his real name’s Ahmed Shaikiri. He’s North African.”

Montalbano had a flash.

“Was he the former owner’s manservant?”

Digiulio’s astonishment increased.

“The former owner’s manserv . . . No way! Zizì signed on with us barely three months ago!”

Montalbano’s brain was now firing on all cylinders.

“Could you run through the names of the other crew members for me?”

“But they weren’t involved in the fight.”

“Please tell me them just the same.”

“Maurilio Alvarez is the engineer, Stefano Ricca’s the . . .”

Montalbano stopped paying attention. Ricca! Now it had all come back to him. Vanna had said Ricca was a banker and associate of her uncle Arturo. But it was the yacht that was named
Vanna
, and Digiulio, Zizì, and Ricca were all crew members . . .

The girl had certainly been clever. What a subtle edifice of lies! Hats off!

Want to bet that what he had thought was an elaborate prank on Vanna’s part actually had a precise purpose?

Meanwhile, however, he had to get rid of the sailor.

“Listen, do you by any chance have a sister named Vanna?”

“Me? No, I have a brother named Antonio.”

“All right, then, you can go.”

The sailor felt lost.

“What about the complaint?”

“Which one?”

“The one from the tavern’s owner.”

“We never received it.”

“Then why did you call me in?”

“There was another complaint.”

“There was?”

“Yes, by a certain Vanna Digiulio against her brother, Mario. But since you claim you have no sisters—”

“I don’t
claim
I have no sisters, I really don’t have any sisters!”

“Then it’s clearly a case of two people with the same name. Good day, my friend.”

The inspector was certain it wasn’t Digiulio who had informed Vanna of the yacht’s change of course. He absolutely needed to speak to the other crew members. He called Fazio, who still seemed offended for having been excluded from the questioning.

“Have a seat.”

Montalbano stared at him for a moment. Should he tell him about Vanna or not? Now that the whole business seemed to have taken on a new meaning, wasn’t it better to have Fazio as an ally?

“Do you remember when, the other day, it rained so hard that the road collapsed?”

“Yessir.”

“Do you remember that pathetic creature I brought into the station, whose name was Vanna Digiulio?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, you know what? Her name wasn’t actually Vanna Digiulio, and she wasn’t a pathetic creature but a sly little bitch who made a great big monkey out of me.”

Fazio looked stunned.

“Really?” he said.

Montalbano told him the whole story.

“And what do
you
make of it?” Fazio asked him when he’d finished.

“Several things seem clear to me. One, that the moment I introduced myself to her as Inspector Montalbano, the girl—whom we’ll keep calling Vanna for the sake of convenience—started sneezing and didn’t stop.”

Fazio balked.

“Wait a second. What’s that got to do with it?”

“It’s got everything to do with it. I would bet my family jewels that those sneezes were faked. She did it to buy time to decide whether she should tell me what she wanted to tell me. And then she immediately put me, indirectly, on the trail of the yacht.”

“Why?”

“I could venture a guess. She did it for future reference.”

“What do you mean?”

“If anything bad happened to her, she had given me sufficient information as to who to put the squeeze on.”

“But Vanna never even showed her face to the people on the yacht.”

“That’s true. Because, in my opinion, something unexpected happened.”

“And what was that?”

“The yacht brought a corpse aboard. Which meant the presence of the police, the Harbor Office, the coroner, the Forensics department . . . Too many people, in short. And so she decided to disappear. Make sense to you?”

“Sure. But the fact remains that we still don’t know what she had come to do.”

“And that’s why it’s important to find out who she was in contact with. Someone at the Harbor Office? I don’t think so. Mario Digiulio of the
Vanna
? No, definitely not. This is where I need your skills, Fazio.”

“Meaning?”

“We need to talk to the other crew members, but we can’t use the same set-up we did with Digiulio. You need to find a way to approach the North African, what’s his name . . .”

“Shaikiri.”

“Right, but his friends call him Zizì. Try to see what you can find out from him. See if you can get him drunk . . . Do they ever come ashore?”

“Are you kidding? They’ve been hanging out all over town.”

“Well, find a way to get friendly with him.”

At that moment Mimì Augello appeared. Sharply dressed and smiling.

“And where have you been?”

“What? You mean Catarella didn’t tell you? Yesterday I took Beba and the kid to her parents’ place. Can’t you see the look on my face? I slept like a god last night! Finally!”

Montalbano just sat there in silence, staring at him.

“What’s wrong?” Augello asked.

“I’ve just had an idea.”

“Well, that’s news! Does it concern me?”

“Yes it does. Do you feel up to wooing a fifty-year-old woman who looks forty?”

Mimì didn’t hesitate for a second.

“I can try,” he said.

6

He went to Enzo’s to eat, feeling rather satisfied at finding, he thought, a key to understanding a little about the behavior of the girl who called herself Vanna. He was now almost convinced that she had acted the way she did as part of a precise plan she had devised in her head when she learned that he was Inspector Montalbano.

Therefore it wasn’t just a silly game, but something serious. Quite serious.

At any rate, he felt—even if he didn’t exactly know why—that he was acting the way she would have wanted him to.

On the other hand, he had nothing to congratulate himself about when it came to the corpse in the dinghy. Things were practically still at square one. The inability to identify the corpse was paralyzing everything. Whoever had smashed the guy’s face in had achieved his purpose.

And if the guy was a foreigner, there was no point searching all the hotels and inns in Vigàta, Montelusa, and environs. That wouldn’t only take a lot of time, but the question would remain unchanged: How do you identify someone without papers who no longer has a face?

And if by chance he was a local, how come nobody had reported him missing?

In the trattoria, the inspector did find some consolation. Fish was back on Enzo’s menu, and to make up for his forced abstinence of the day before, Montalbano gorged himself. He ordered a mixed fry of mullet and calamari that could have fed half the staff at the station.

As a result, a walk along the jetty to the lighthouse became an absolute necessity. This time, too, he went out of his way, passing by the
Vanna
and the
Ace of Hearts
, which still were side by side.

No sooner had he passed them than he heard laughter and shouting behind him. He turned around to look as he kept walking.

At that moment Livia Giovannini, the
Vanna
’s owner, and Captain Sperlì were descending the gangway of the
Ace of Hearts
as a man of considerable size, a colossus a good six-foot-three-inches tall with shoulders like a truck and red hair, waved bye-bye to them from the cruiser’s deck. The
Ace of Hearts
might be a huge boat, but the guy probably had to walk with his head bent when he was below decks. Then the lady and her captain started going up the gangway to the
Vanna
.

When he got to the flat rock under the lighthouse, the inspector sat down, fired up a cigarette, and started thinking about what he had just seen.

What were the owner and captain of the
Vanna
doing aboard the
Ace of Hearts
?

Perhaps just a courtesy visit, a good-neighborly sort of thing? Was it common practice for those kinds of people to do that? Given the time of day, it was also quite possible, even likely, that the
Vanna
people had been invited to lunch.

Or did they all know each other from before? Were they old friends? Or business associates or something similar?

There was only one way to find out: try to learn more about the
Ace of Hearts
.

This, however, would mean that the investigation, instead of becoming smaller and more focused, would expand by involving more people. Which was the worst thing that could happen to an ongoing investigation.

At any rate, the only way to get any information on the
Ace of Hearts
was to ask Laura, whom he had something else to ask as soon as possible.

Laura! Man, was she ever . . .

Once again he got lost in his thoughts about her. He didn’t like the fact that the moment she came to mind, he could no longer concentrate on anything else. In his head there was only her: the way she walked, the way she laughed . . . Deep down, he felt a little ashamed of this. It didn’t seem proper for a man his age. But he couldn’t do anything about it.

Once inside the car, instead of going to the station, he took the road to Montelusa. Pulling up in front of the Forensic Medicine Institute, he got out and went inside.

“Is Dr. Pasquano here?”

“He’s here, for what it’s worth.”

Which, translated, meant: He’s here, but it is not advisable to go and bother him.

“Listen, all I need is a copy of the memo the doctor wrote after performing the autopsy on the disfigured corpse.”

“I can get that for you myself, but you should know you can’t take it away with you.”

“I only need some information from it, which I can get here, on the spot, right in front of you. Please do me this favor.”

“All right, but don’t tell the doctor.”

Half an hour later, he pulled up in front of the broadcasting studios of the Free Channel, one of the two local television stations.

“Is Zito in?”

“He’s in his office,” said the secretary, who knew Montalbano well.

The inspector and Zito embraced. They were old friends and were always genuinely happy to see each other.

Montalbano gave him the information he had copied down. Height, weight, hair color, width of shoulders, length of legs, teeth . . . Zito promised to make the announcement on the eight o’clock evening news and the midnight edition, which were the two most watched. Anyone who happened to call the studio in response would be told to contact the Vigàta police directly.

Back at the office, he found Fazio waiting for him, looking like a beaten dog.

“What’s wrong?”

“We’re fucked, Chief!”

“You think that’s news? What’s so unusual about that? I happen to believe I’ve been fucked since birth. So, a little more fucked, a little less fucked, makes no difference . . . What’s this about?”

“Shaikiri.”

“Tell me everything.”

“Well, just by chance, as I was on my way to eat, I saw Digiulio, Ricca, and Alvarez going into Giacomino’s tavern. So I waited a few minutes and went in myself, and I sat down at a table not far from theirs. When I heard them talking about Zizì, I pricked up my ears. And you know what?”

“If it’s bad news, I don’t want to hear it. But tell me anyway.”

“Zizì was arrested last night.”

Montalbano cursed.

“By whom?”

“The carabinieri.”

“For what?”

“Apparently, as they were heading back to the ship last night, Zizì saw a carabinieri squad car parked near the port. He’d been drinking a lot, and he went up to the car, unbuttoned his trousers, and pissed on it.”

“What, is the guy crazy? And were there carabinieri inside the car?”

“Yup.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, as they were arresting him, he managed to punch one of the carabinieri.”

Montalbano started cursing again.

“What should we do?” Fazio asked.

“What can we do? We can’t very well phone the carabinieri and tell them to let him go because I need him! Listen, try and make friends with Ricca. It’s the only move we can make at this point.”

He and Laura had agreed the previous evening that she would call him at the office around seven o’clock, but it was now almost eight and he still hadn’t heard from her. Since this time he’d had her give him her cell phone number, after a bit of mental tug-of-war with himself, he called her up.

“Montalbano here.”

“I recognized your voice.”

She’d said it without any enthusiasm at all.

“Did you forget that you—”

“No, I didn’t forget.”

Damn, was she ever expansive!

“Too busy?”

“No.”

“So then why didn’t you—”

“I’d decided not to call you.”

“Oh.”

Silence fell.

And suddenly Montalbano was gripped by a hysterical fear that they’d been cut off. It was idiotic, but he could do nothing about it. Whenever he thought he’d lost his telephone connection, he went into a terrible panic, like a child abandoned in a starship adrift in space.

“Hello! Hello!” he started yelling.

“Don’t shout! I’m here!” she said.

“Can you explain to me why—”

“Not over the telephone.”

“Try.”

“I said no.”

“Well then let’s meet, if you don’t mind! There’s also something I have to ask you about the
Vanna
.”

Another pause.

This time, however, Montalbano heard her breathing.

“Do you want to have dinner together?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But not at your house.”

“All right. We can go wherever you like.”

“Then let’s go to that restaurant in Montereale you mentioned to me.”

“All right. Let’s do this: you come here to the station, and we can take my car to—”

“No. Just tell me how to get to this restaurant. We can meet there. But give me about an hour; I still need to change.”

What had got into Laura? Why had her mood changed so drastically? He couldn’t figure it out.

About ten minutes later, the phone rang.

“Ahh Chief Chief! Ahh Chief!”

Bad sign. Whenever Catarella intoned these lamentations, it meant that Mister C’mishner, as he reverently called him, was on the line.

“Does the commissioner want me?” Montalbano asked.

“Yessir, Chief! An’ iss rilly urgint!”

“Tell him I’m not in my office.”

The commissioner was likely to tell him to come to Montelusa, which would make him miss his appointment with Laura.

“
Matre santa
, Chief!” Catarella wailed.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Wha’ss wrong izzat when I gotta tella lie to hizzoner the c’mishner, iss like I’m c’mittin’ a mortal sin!”

“So just go and confess!”

Forty-five minutes later, he was about to get up and leave when Fazio came in.

“Chief, I have a very good friend who’s a carabiniere, and I took the liberty of—”

“What did you do?”

“I asked him what they planned to do with Shaikiri.”

“And how did you explain your interest in him?”

“I told him he was a friend of mine and that whenever he drank he lost his head, and I apologized for him.”

“And what did the guy say?”

“They released him at five o’clock this afternoon. He was charged with assault and resisting arrest. What should I do? Go look for him at Giacomino’s tavern?”

“Go there at once and forget about Ricca.”