Rounding the Mark

“Of how people would react to a show of force. How many favorably, how many unfavorably. Luckily it didn’t go too well for them.”

“Bah!” said Augello, unconvinced.

Montalbano decided to change the subject.

“How’s Beba doing?”

“Not too well. She’s having a difficult pregnancy. She can’t sit up much and has to lie down most of the time, but the doctor says it’s nothing to be worried about.”

After miles and miles of solitary walks along the jetty, hours and hours spent sitting on the rock of tears, contemplating the events in Genoa until his brain began to smoke; after eating what must have amounted to several hundred pounds of calia e simenza; after countless nighttime phone conversations with Livia, the wound the inspector carried inside him was beginning at last to heal when he got wind of another brilliant police action, this time in Naples. A handful of cops had been arrested for forcibly removing some allegedly violent political activists from a hospital into which they’d been admitted. After bringing them to a barracks, the police treated them to a flurry of kicks and punches and a torrent of obscenities and insults. But what most upset Montalbano was the reaction of other policemen to the news of their colleagues’ arrest. Some chained themselves to the gate of the Central Police building in an act of solidarity; others organized demonstrations in the streets; the unions made some noise; and a deputy commissioner who in Genoa had kicked a demonstrator already on the ground was greeted as a hero when he came to Naples. The same politicians who’d been in Genoa for the G8 were behind this curious (though not so curious for Montalbano) semirevolt on the part of the forces of order against the judges who had issued the arrest warrants. And Montalbano couldn’t take it any more. This last, bitter morsel he just couldn’t swallow. One morning, as soon as he got to work, he called Dr. Lattes, chief of the Montelusa police commissioner’s cabinet. Half an hour later, Lattes informed him, through Catarella, that the commissioner could see him at twelve noon on the dot. The men at the station, who had learned to gauge their boss’s mood from the way he walked into the office each morning, realized at once that this was not a good day. And so, from the vantage point of Montalbano’s desk, the station seemed deserted that morning. No voices, no sounds whatsoever. Catarella was standing guard at the entrance door, and as soon as anyone came in, he opened his eyes wide, put his forefinger over his nose, and enjoined the intruder to silence.

“Ssssshhhh!”

All who entered the station acted like they were attending a wake.

Around ten o’clock, Mimi Augello, after knocking discreetly and being told to come in, entered the inspector’s office with a grim expression on his face. As soon as he saw him, Montalbano got worried.

“How’s Beba doing?”

“Fine. Can I sit down?”

“Of course.”

“Can I smoke?”

“Of course, but don’t let the minister see you.”

Augello fired up a cigarette, inhaled, and held the smoke in his lungs a long time.

“You can exhale now,” said Montalbano. “You have my permission.”

Mimi looked at him, confused.

“Yes,” the inspector continued, “this morning you seem Chinese to me. You ask my permission for every little thing. What’s wrong? Is it so hard to tell me what you want to tell me?”

“Yes,” Augello admitted. He put out his cigarette, got more comfortable in his chair, and began, “Salvo, you know I’ve always thought of you as my father—”

“Where’d you get that idea?”

“Where’d I get what idea?”

“That I’m your father. If it was your mother who told you, she’s a liar. I’m fifteen years older than you, and though I may have been precocious, at age fifteen I wasn’t—”

“Salvo, I didn’t say you were my father, I said I thought of you as a father.”

“And you got off on the wrong foot. Drop the father, son, and holy ghost shit. Just say what you have to say and get the hell out of my hair, ’cause today’s not a good day.”

“Why did you ask to see the commissioner?”

“Who told you that?”

“Catarella.”

“I’ll deal with him later.”

“No, you won’t. If anything, you’ll deal with me right now. I was the one who told Catarella to tell me if you contacted Bonetti-Alderighi, which I expected you would do sooner or later.”

“But what’s so unusual about me, an inspector, wanting to talk to my superior?”

“Salvo, you know you can’t stand Bonetti-Alderighi. You hate his guts. If he was a priest at your deathbed wanting to give you last rites, you’d get up out of bed and kick him out of your room. I’m gonna talk to you straight, okay?”

“Talk however the fuck you like.”

“You want to leave.”

“A little vacation would do me some good.”

“You’re unbearable, Salvo. You want to resign.”