The Terra-Cotta Dog (3 page)

“What if I told you that times are changing and that the wheel is turning fast?”

“That would be a little more convincing.”

“You see, when I was a little kid, my father—who was a man of honor when the word ‘honor' still meant something—my father, rest his soul, used to tell me that the cart that men of honor traveled on needed a lot of grease to make the wheels turn, to make them go fast. When my father's generation passed on and it was my turn to climb aboard the cart, some of our men said: ‘Why should we keep on buying the grease we need from the politicians, mayors, bankers, and the rest of their kind? Let's make it ourselves! We'll make our own grease!' Great! Bravo! Everyone agreed. Sure, there was still the guy who stole his friend's horse, the guy who blocked the road for some associate of his, the guy who would start shooting blindly at some other gang's cart, horse, and horseman . . . But these were all things we could settle among ourselves. The carts multiplied in number, there were more and more roads to travel. Then some genius had a big idea, he asked himself: ‘What's it mean that we're still traveling by cart? We're too slow,' he explained, ‘we're getting screwed, left behind, everybody else is traveling by car, you can't stop progress!' Great! Bravo! And so everybody ran and traded in their cart for a car and got a driver's license. Some of them, though, didn't pass the driving-school test and went out, or were pushed out. Then we didn't even have the time to get comfortable with our new cars before the younger guys, the ones who'd been riding in cars since they were born and who'd studied law or economics in the States or Germany, told us our cars were too slow. Now you were supposed to hop in a race car, a Ferrari, a Maserati equipped with radiophone and fax, so you could take off like a flash of lightning. These kids are new, brand-new, they talk to cell phones instead of people, they don't even know you, don't know who you used to be and if they do, they don't give a fuck. Half the time they don't even know each other, they just talk over the computer. To cut it short, these kids don't ever look anyone in the eye. As soon as they see you in trouble with a slow car, they run you off the road without a second thought and you end up in the ditch with a broken neck.”

“And you don't know how to drive a Ferrari.”

“Exactly. That's why, before I end up dead in a ditch, it's better for me to step aside.”

“But you don't seem to me the type who steps aside of his own choosing.”

“It's my own choosing, Inspector, all my own, I assure you. Of course, there are ways to make someone act freely of his own choosing. Once a friend of mine who was educated and read a lot told me a story which I'm gonna repeat to you exactly the way he told it, somethin' he read in a German book. A man says to his friend: ‘Want to bet my cat will eat hot mustard, the kind that's so hot it makes a hole in your stomach?' ‘But cats don't like mustard,' says his friend. ‘Well, I can make my cat eat it anyway,' says the man. ‘Do you make him eat it with your fist or with a stick?' asks the friend. ‘No sirree,' says the man, ‘he eats it freely, of his own choosing.' So they make the bet, the man takes a nice spoonful of mustard, the kind that makes your stomach burn just to look at it, picks up the cat and wham! shoves it right up the animal's ass. Poor cat, feeling his asshole burn like that, he starts licking it. And so, licking it up little by little, he eats all the mustard, of his own choosing. And that, my friend, says it all.”

“I see what you mean. Now let's go back to where we started.”

“I was saying I want to be arrested, but I'm going to need some theatrics to save face.”

“I don't understand.”

“Let me explain.”

He explained at great length, drinking a glass of wine from time to time. In the end Montalbano was satisfied with Tano's reasons. But could he trust him? That was the question. In his youth, Montalbano had a great passion for card-playing, which he had luckily grown out of; for this reason he now sensed that Tano was playing him straight, with unmarked cards. He had no choice but to put his faith in this intuition and hope that he was not mistaken. And so they meticulously, painstakingly worked out the details of the arrest to ensure that nothing could go wrong. When they had finished talking, the sun was already high in the sky. Before leaving the house and letting the performance begin, the inspector gave Tano a long look, eye to eye.

“Tell me the truth.”

“At your command, Inspector.”

“Why did you choose me?”

“Because you, as you are showing me even now, are someone who understands things.”

 
 
As he raced headlong down the little path between the vineyards, Montalbano remembered that Agatino Catarella would now be on duty at the station, and that therefore the phone conversation he was about to engage in promised at the very least to be problematic, if not the source of unfortunate and even dangerous misunderstandings. This Catarella was frankly hopeless. Slow to think and slow to act, he had been hired by the police because he was a distant relative of the formerly all-powerful Chamber Deputy Cusumano, who, after spending a summer cooling off in Ucciardone prison, had managed to reestablish solid enough connections with the new people in power to win himself a large slice of the cake, the very same cake that from time to time was miraculously renewed by merely sticking in a few new candied fruits or putting new candles in the place of the ones already melted.

With Catarella, things would get most muddled whenever he got it in his head—which happened often—to speak in what he called Talian.

One day he had shown up with a troubled look.

“Chief, could you by any chance be able to give me the name of one of those doctors called specialists?”

“Specialist in what, Cat?”

“Gonorrhea.”

Montalbano had looked at him open-mouthed.

“Gonorrhea? You? When did you get that?”

“As I remember, I got it first when I was still a li'l thing, not yet six or seven years old.”

“What the hell are you saying, Cat? Are you sure you mean gonorrhea?”

“Absolutely. Had it all my life, on and off. It's here and gone, here and gone. Gonorrhea.”

 
 
In the car, on his way to a telephone booth that was supposed to be near the Torresanta crossroads (supposed to be, that is, unless the receiver had been torn off, the entire telephone had been stolen, or the booth itself had disappeared), Montalbano decided not to call even his second-in-command, Mimì Augello, because he was the type—he couldn't help it—who before anything else would inform the newsmen and then pretend to be surprised when they showed up at the scene. That left only Fazio and Tortorella, the two sergeants or whatever the hell they were called nowadays. He chose Fazio, since Tortorella had been shot in the belly not long before and hadn't yet fully recovered, feeling pain now and then in the wound.

The booth was miraculously still there, the phone miraculously worked, and Fazio picked up before the second ring had finished.

“Fazio, are you already awake at this hour?”

“Sure am, Chief. Less than a minute ago I got a call from Catarella.”

“What did he want?”

“He was speaking Talian so I couldn't make much sense of it. But if I had to guess, I'd say that last night somebody cleaned out Carmelo Ingrassia's supermarket, the great big one just outside of town. They used a large truck or tractor-trailer at the very least.”

“Wasn't there a night watchman?”

“There was, but nobody can find him.”

“Were you on your way there now?”

“Yes.”

“Forget it. Phone Tortorella immediately and tell him to fill Augello in. Let those two take care of it. Tell them you can't go, make up whatever bullshit you can think of, say you fell out of bed and hit your head. No: tell them the carabinieri came and arrested you. Better yet, call them and tell them to notify the carabinieri—it's small potatoes, after all, just some shitty little robbery, and they're always happy when we bring them into our cases. Now listen up, here's what I want you to do: notify Tortorella, Augello, and the carabinieri about the theft, then round up Gallo, Galluzzo—Jesus Christ, I feel like I'm running a chicken farm here—and Germanà, and bring them all where I tell you to go. And arm yourselves with submachine guns.”

“Shit!”

“Shit is right. This is a big deal and we have to handle it carefully. No one is to whisper even half a word about this, especially Galluzzo with his newsman brother-in-law. And tell that chickenhead Gallo not to drive like he's at Indianapolis. No sirens, no flashing lights. When you splash and muddy the waters, the fish escapes. Now pay attention and I'll explain where you're to meet me.”

 
 
They arrived very quietly, not half an hour after the phone call, looking like a routine patrol. Getting out of the car, they went up to Montalbano, who signaled them to follow him. They met back up behind a half-ruined house, so that they could not be seen from the main road.

“There's a machine gun in the car for you,” said Fazio.

“Stick it up your ass. Now listen: if we play our cards right, we just might bring Tano the Greek home with us.”

Montalbano palpably felt that his men had ceased to breathe for a moment.

“Tano the Greek is around here?” Fazio wondered aloud, being the first to recover.

“I got a good look at him, and it's him. He's grown a mustache and beard, but you can still recognize him.”

“How did you find him?”

“Never mind, Fazio, I'll explain everything later. Tano's in a little house at the top of that hill. You can't see it from here. There are olive trees all around it. It's a two-room house, one room on top of the other. It's got a door and a window in front; there's another window to the top room, but that's in back. Is that clear? Did you take that all in? Tano's only way out is through the front, unless he decides in desperation to throw himself out the rear window, though he'd risk breaking his legs. So here's what we'll do: Fazio and Gallo go in back; me, Germanà, and Galluzzo will break in the door and go inside.”

Fazio looked doubtful.

“What's wrong? Don't you agree?”

“Wouldn't it be better to surround the house and tell him to surrender? It's five against one, he'd never get away.”

“How do you know there's nobody inside the house with Tano?”

Fazio shut up.

“Listen to me,” said Montalbano, concluding his brief war council, “it's better if we bring him an Easter egg with a surprise inside.”

3

Montalbano calculated that Fazio and Gallo must have been in position behind the cottage for at least five minutes. As for him, sprawled belly-down on the grass, pistol in hand, with a rock pushing irksomely straight into the pit of his stomach, he felt profoundly ridiculous, like a character in a gangster film, and therefore could not wait to give the signal to raise the curtain. He looked at Galluzzo, who was beside him—Germanà was farther away, to the right—and asked him in a whisper:

“Are you ready?”

“Yessir,” answered the policeman, who was a visible bundle of nerves and sweating. Montalbano felt sorry for him, but couldn't very well come out and tell him that it was all a put-on—of dubious outcome, it was true, but still humbug.

“Go!” he ordered him.

As though launched by a tightly compressed spring and almost not touching the ground, in three bounds Galluzzo reached the house and flattened himself against the wall to the left of the door. He seemed to have done so without effort, though Montalbano could see his chest heaving up and down, breathless. Galluzzo got a firm grip on his submachine gun and gestured to the inspector that he was ready for phase two. Montalbano then looked over at Germanà, who seemed not only serene, but actually relaxed.

“I'm going now,” he said to him without a sound, exaggeratedly moving his lips and forming the syllables.

“I'll cover you,” Germanà answered back in the same manner, gesturing with his head towards the machine gun in his hands.

Montalbano's first leap forward was one for the books, or at the very least a training manual: a decisive, balanced ascent from the ground, worthy of a high-jump specialist, a weightless, aerial suspension, and a clean, dignified landing that would have amazed a ballerina. Galluzzo and Germanà, who were watching him from different perspectives, took equal delight in their chief's bodily grace. The start of the second leap was even better calibrated than the first, but something happened in midair that caused Montalbano, from his upright posture, to tilt suddenly sideways like the tower of Pisa, then plunge earthward in what looked truly like a clown's routine. After tottering with arms outstretched in search of a nonexistent handle to grab onto, he crashed heavily to one side. Instinctively, Galluzzo made a move as if to help him, but stopped himself in time, plastering himself back against the wall. Germanà also stood up a moment, but quickly got back down.

A good thing this was all a sham, the inspector thought. Otherwise Tano could have cut them down like ninepins then and there. Muttering some of the pithiest curses in his vast repertoire, Montalbano began to crawl around in search of the pistol that had slipped from his hand during the fall. At last he spotted it under a touch-me-not bush, but as soon as he stuck his arm in there to retrieve it, all the little cucumbers burst and sprayed his face with seeds. With a certain melancholy rage the inspector realized he'd been demoted from gangster-film hero to a character in an Abbott and Costello movie. No longer in the mood to play the athlete or dancer, he covered the last few yards between him and the house with a few quick steps, merely hunching forward a little.