The Paper Moon (8 page)

“He wanted to report a crime committed by persons unknown. Apparently last night somebody tried to force open the victim’s garage door, but the
commendatore
foiled the plot, firing two rifle shots at the unknown man and chasing him away.”

“Did he injure him?”

Fazio answered with another question.

“Are you injured, Chief?”

“No.”

“Then the
commendatore
didn’t injure anyone, thank God. Would you please tell me what you were doing in that garage?”

“I’d gone there earlier to look for the strongbox, since both you and I had forgotten to look there.”

“That’s true. Did you find it?”

“No. Then I went back later, because all at once a small detail came back to me.”

He didn’t tell him what this detail was, and Fazio didn’t ask.

“And what was the second thing you wanted to tell me?”

“I got some information on Emilio Sclafani, the schoolteacher.”

“Oh, good, tell me.”

Fazio slipped a hand in his jacket pocket, and the inspector shot him a dirty look.

“If you pull out a piece of paper with the teacher’s father’s name, the teacher’s grandfather’s name, the teacher’s father’s grandfather’s name, I’ll—”

“Peace,” said Fazio, removing his hand from his pocket.

“Will you never rid yourself of this public-records vice?”

“Never, Chief. So anyway: The teacher is a repeat offender.”

“In what sense?”

“I’ll explain. The man’s been married twice. The first time, when he was thirty-nine and teaching at Comisini, with a nineteen-year-old girl, a former pupil of his from the
liceo.
Her name was Maria Coxa.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Albanian. But her father was born in Italy. The marriage lasted exactly one year and three months.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. At least that’s what people say. After being married a year, the bride realized that it was mighty strange that every evening when her husband lay down beside her, he would say, ‘Good night, my love,’ kiss her on the forehead, and go to sleep. Get the drift?”

“No.”

“Chief, our schoolteacher did not consummate.”

“Really?”

“So they say. So his very young wife, who needed to consummate—”

“Went consummating elsewhere.”

“Exactly, Chief. A colleague of the husband’s, a gym teacher…you get the idea. Apparently the husband found out but didn’t react. One day, however, he came home at an unexpected time of day and caught his wife trying out a particularly difficult exercise with his colleague. Things got nasty and reversed.”

“Reversed?”

“I mean our schoolteacher didn’t touch his wife, but took it out on his colleague and beat him to a pulp. It’s true the gym teacher was stronger and in better shape, but Emilio Sclafani put him in the hospital. He went berserk; something turned him from a patient cuckold into a wild beast.”

“What was the upshot?”

“The gym teacher decided not to press charges, Sclafani split up with his wife, got himself transferred to Montelusa, and got a divorce. And now, in his second marriage, he finds himself in the exact same situation as in the first. That’s why I called him a repeat offender.”

Mimì Augello walked in and Fazio walked out.

“What are you still doing here?” Mimì asked.

“Why, where am I supposed to be?”

“Wherever you want, but not here. In fifteen minutes Liguori’s going to be here.”

The asshole from Narcotics!

“I forgot! I’ll just make a couple of phone calls and run.”

The first was to Elena Sclafani.

“Montalbano here. Good morning, signora. I need to talk to you.”

“This morning?”

“Yes. Can I come by in half an hour?”

“I’m busy until one o’clock, Inspector. If you want, we could meet this afternoon.”

“I could make it this evening. But will your husband be there?”

“I already told you that’s not a problem. At any rate, he’s coming back this evening. Listen. I have an idea. Why don’t you invite me out to dinner?”

They agreed on the time and place.

The second call was for Michela Pardo.

“I’m sorry, Inspector, I was just on my way out. I have to go to Montelusa to see Judge Tommaseo. Fortunately, my aunt was able…What is it?”

“Do you know Fanara?”

“The town? Yes.”

“Do you know who lives at Via Libertà 82?”

Silence, no answer.

“Hello, Michela?”

“Yes, I’m here. It’s just that you took me by surprise…Yes, I know who lives at 82 Via Libertà.”

“Tell me.”

“My aunt Anna, my mother’s other sister. She’s paralyzed. Angelo is—was—very close to her. Whenever he went to Fanara, he always dropped in to see her. But how did you know—”

“Routine investigation, I assure you. Naturally I have many other things to ask you.”

“You could come by this afternoon.”

“I have a meeting with the commissioner. Tomorrow morning, if that’s all right with you.”

He dashed out of the office, got in the car, and drove off. He decided he needed to have another look at Angelo’s apartment. Why? Because. Instinct demanded it.

Inside the front door, he climbed the silent staircase of the dead house and cautiously opened, without a sound, the door to Angelo’s flat, terrified that His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III might burst out of his apartment with a dagger in his hand and stab him in the back. He headed to the study, sat down behind the desk, and started to think.

As usual, he sensed that something didn’t tally but couldn’t bring it into focus. So he got up and started walking around the apartment and fussing about in each room. At one point he even opened the shutter to the balcony off the living room and went outside.

In the street right in front of the building, a convertible had stopped, and two young people, a boy and a girl, were kissing. They had the radio—or whatever it was—at full volume.

Montalbano leapt backwards. Not because he was scandalized by what he saw, but because he finally understood why he’d felt the need to return to the apartment.

He went back to the study, sat down, searched for the right key in Angelo’s set, put it in the lock to the middle drawer, opened this, took out the little book entitled
The Most Beautiful Italian Songs of All Time,
and started leafing through it.

“Pale little lady, sweet fifth-floor neighbor / From across
the way…”

“Today the carriage may seem / A strange relic from the
olden days…”

“Don’t forget these words of mine / Little girl, you don’t
know what love is…”

All the songs dated back to the forties and fifties. He, Montalbano, probably wasn’t even born when people were singing those songs to themselves. And, more importantly—or so it seemed to him—they had nothing to do with the CDs in the Mercedes, which all had rock music.

There were numbers written in the narrow white margin on each page of the booklet. The first time he’d seen them, the inspector had thought they involved some sort of analysis of the meter. Now, however, he realized that the numbers referred to only the first two lines of each song. Next to the lines
Pale little lady, sweet fifth-floor neighbor / From across the way,
were the numbers 37 and 22, respectively; next to
Today the carriage may seem / A strange relic from the olden days,
23 and 29; while
Don’t forget these words of mine / Little girl, you don’t know what love is
had 26 and 31. And so on down the line for all the other ninety-seven songs in the book. The answer came to him all too easily: Those numbers corresponded to the total number of letters in the respective line of the song. A code, apparently. The hard part was figuring out what it was for. He put the booklet in his pocket.

As he was about to enter the Trattoria da Enzo, Montalbano heard someone call him. He stopped and turned. Elena Sclafani was getting out of a sort of red missile, a convertible, which she had just parked. She was wearing a track suit and gym shoes, her long hair flowing onto her shoulders and held in place only by a light blue headband slightly above her forehead. Her blue eyes were smiling, and her red lips, which looked painted, were no longer pouting.

“I’ve never eaten here before. I’ve just come from the gym, so I’ve got a hearty appetite.”

A wild animal, young and dangerous. Like all wild animals.

And, in the end, like all youth,
the inspector thought with a twinge of melancholy.

Enzo sat them down at a table a bit apart from the others. But there weren’t many people there in any case.

“What would you like?” he asked.

“Is there no menu?” asked Elena.

“It’s not the custom here,” said Enzo, looking at her disapprovingly.

“Would you like a seafood antipasto? It’s excellent here,” said Montalbano.

“I eat everything,” Elena declared.

The look Enzo gave her suddenly changed, turning not only benevolent but almost affectionate.

“Then leave it up to me,” he said.

“There’s a slight problem,” said Montalbano, who wanted to cover himself.

“What’s that?”

“You suggested we go out to lunch together, and I was happy to accept. But…”

“Come on, out with it. Your wife—”

“I’m not married.”

“Something serious?”

“Yes.” Why was he answering her? “The problem is that when I eat, I prefer not to talk.”

She smiled.

“You’re the one who’s supposed to ask the questions,” she said. “If you don’t, then I don’t have to answer. And anyway, if you really must know, when I do something, I like to do only that one thing.”

The upshot was that they scarfed down the antipasto, the spaghetti with clam sauce, and crispy fried mullets, all the while exchanging only inarticulate sounds along the lines of
ahm, ohm,
and
uhm,
which varied only in intensity and color. And a few times they said
ohm ohm
in unison, while looking at each other. When it was over, Elena stretched her legs under the table, half closed her eyes, and heaved a deep sigh. Then, like a cat, she stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked her lips. She very nearly started purring.

The inspector had once read a short story by an Italian author that told of a country where making love in public not only caused no scandal but was actually the most natural thing in the world, whereas eating in the presence of others was considered immoral because it was such an intimate thing. A question came into his head and almost made him laugh. Want to bet that before long, because of age, he would be content to take his pleasure from women merely by sitting at the same table and eating with them?

“So where do we go now to talk?” asked Montalbano.

“Do you have things to do?”

“Not immediately.”

“I’ve got another idea. Let’s go to my place, I’ll make you some coffee. Emilio’s in Montelusa, as I think I already told you. Did you bring your car?”

“Yes.”

“Then just follow me, so you can leave whenever you like.”

Keeping up with the missile was not easy. At a certain point Montalbano decided to forget it. He knew the way, after all. In fact, when he arrived, Elena was waiting for him at the front door, a gym bag hanging from her shoulder.

“That’s a very nice car you’ve got,” said Montalbano as they were going up in the elevator.

“Angelo bought it for me,” the girl said almost indifferently while opening the door, as though she were talking about a pack of cigarettes or something of no importance.

This girl’s trying to pull the rug out from under me,
thought Montalbano, feeling angry either because he’d thought of a cliché or because the cliché corresponded exactly with the truth.

“It must have cost him a lot of money.”

“I’d say so. I need to sell it as soon as possible.”

She led him into the living room.

“Why?”

“Because it’s too expensive for my budget. It consumes almost as much gas as an airplane. You know, when Angelo gave it to me, I accepted it on one condition: that every month he would reimburse me for the cost of fuel and the garage. He’d already paid for the insurance.”

“And did he do as you asked?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me something. How did he reimburse you? By check?”

“No, cash.”

Damn. A lost opportunity to find out if Angelo had any other bank accounts.

“Listen, Inspector, I’m going to go make coffee and change clothes. In the meantime, if you want to freshen up…”

She led him into a small guest bathroom right beside the dining room.

He took his time, removing his jacket and shirt and sticking his head under the faucet. When he returned to the living room, she still wasn’t back. She arrived five minutes later with the coffee. She’d taken a quick shower and put on a big sort of housecoat that came halfway down her thigh. And nothing else. She was barefoot. Stretching out from under the red housecoat, her legs, which were naturally long, looked endless. They were sinewy, lively legs, like a dancer’s or an athlete’s. And the best of it—as was immediately clear to Montalbano—was that there was no intent, no attempt to seduce him on Elena’s part. She saw nothing improper in appearing this way in front of a man she barely knew. As though reading his mind, Elena said:

“I feel comfortable with you. At ease. Even though that shouldn’t be the case.”

“Right,” said the inspector.

He felt comfortable himself. Too comfortable. Which wasn’t good. Again it was Elena who came back to the matter at hand.

“So, about those questions…”

“Aside from the car, did Angelo give you any other gifts?”

“Yes, and rather expensive ones, too. Jewelry. If you want, I can go get them and show them to you.”

“There’s no need, thanks. Did your husband know?”

“About the gifts? Yes. Anyway, something like a ring I could easily hide, but a car like that—”

“Why?”

She understood at once. She was dangerously intelligent.

“You’ve never given presents to a lady friend?”

Montalbano felt annoyed. Livia was never, not even by accident, supposed to enter into the tawdry, sordid stories he investigated.

“You’re leaving out one detail.”

“What?”

He deliberately wanted to be offensive.

“That those presents were a way of paying you for your services.”

He was prepared for every possible reaction on Elena’s part, except for her to start laughing.

“Maybe Angelo overestimated my ‘services,’ as you call them. I assure you I’m hardly in a class of my own.”

“Then let me ask you again: Why?”

“Inspector, the explanation is very simple. Angelo gave me these gifts over the last three months, starting with the car. I think I’ve already told you that he had lately been overcome by…well, in short, he’d fallen in love with me. He didn’t want to lose me.”

“And how did you feel about it?”

“I think I already told you. The more possessive he became, the more I grew distant. I can’t stand being harnessed, among other things.”

Wasn’t there an ancient Greek poet who wrote a love poem to a young Thracian filly that couldn’t stand being harnessed? But this wasn’t the time for poetry.

Almost against his will, the inspector slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and extracted the three letters he’d brought with him. He set them down on the table.

Elena looked at them, recognized them, and didn’t seem the least bit troubled. She left them right where they were.

“Did you find them in Angelo’s apartment?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“Hidden in the trunk of his Mercedes.”

Suddenly three wrinkles: one on her forehead, two at the corners of her mouth. For the first time, she seemed genuinely baffled.

“Why hidden?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know. But I could venture a guess. Maybe Angelo didn’t want his sister to read them. Certain details might have proved embarrassing to him, as you can imagine.”

“What are you saying, Inspector? There were no secrets between those two!”

“Listen, let’s forget about the whys and wherefores. I found these letters inside a linen envelope hidden under the rug in the trunk. Those are the facts. But I have another question, and you know what it is.”

“Inspector, those letters were practically dictated to me.”

“By whom?”

“By Angelo.”

What did this woman think? That she could make him swallow the first bullshit that came into her head? He stood up abruptly, enraged.

“I’ll expect you at the station at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Elena also stood up. She’d turned pale, her forehead shiny with sweat. Montalbano noticed she was trembling slightly.

“No, please, not the police station.”

She kept her head down, her fists clenched, arms extended at her sides, a little girl grown up too fast, scared of being punished.

“We’re not going to eat you at the station, you know.”

“No, no, please, I beg you.”

A thin, frail voice that turned into little sobs. Would this girl ever be done astonishing him? What was so terrible about having to go to the station? As one does with small children, he put a hand under her chin and raised her head. Elena kept her eyes closed, but her face was bathed in tears.

“Okay, no police station, but don’t tell silly stories.”

He sat back down. She remained standing but drew close to Montalbano until she was right in front of him, her legs touching his knees. What was she expecting? For him to ask her for something in exchange for not forcing her to go to the police station? All at once the smell of her skin reached his nostrils, leaving him slightly dazed. He became afraid of himself.

“Go back to your place,” he said sternly, feeling as if he’d suddenly become a school principal.

Elena obeyed. Now seated, she tugged at the housecoat with both hands, in a vain attempt to cover her thighs a little. But as soon as she let go of the cloth, it climbed back up, worse than before.

“So, what’s this unbelievable story about Angelo himself dictating the letters to you?”

“I never followed him in my car. Among other things, when we started seeing each other, it had been a year since I had a car. I’d had a bad accident that left my car a total wreck. And I didn’t have enough money to buy another, not even a used one. The first of those three letters, the one where I say I followed him to Fanara, dates from four months ago—you can check the date—when Angelo hadn’t given me the new car yet. But just to make the story more believable, Angelo told me to write that he’d gone to a certain house—I no longer remember the address—and that I’d become suspicious.”

“Did he tell you who lived there?”

“Yes, an aunt of his, his mother’s sister, I think.”

She’d recovered her nerve and was now herself again. But why had the inspector’s idea so frightened her?

“Let’s suppose for a minute that Angelo actually did get you to write those letters.”

“But it’s true!”

“And for the moment I’ll believe that. Apparently he had you write them so that someone else would read them. Who?”

“His sister, Michela.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he told me himself. He would arrange for her somehow to come across them, as if by accident. That’s why I was so surprised when you said he was keeping them hidden in the trunk of the Mercedes. It’s unlikely Michela would ever find them there.”

“What was Angelo trying to get out of Michela by having her read the letters? What, in the end, was the purpose? Did you ask him?”

“Of course.”