had bought for him, spellbound by the continually changing forms and colors. His uncle had also bought him a tin revolver, whose bullets were caps, dark red strips with little black dots that passed under the hammer and went
This memory called to mind the shoot-out between Galluzzo and the two men who tried to burn down his house.
It occurred to him how strange it was that those people, who wanted something from him but didn’t say what, had let twenty-four hours pass without giving another sign of themselves. And to think they were in such a hurry! How could they suddenly let go of the reins around his neck?
Upon asking himself this question, he started laughing, because never before would he have thought of such a thing in terms relating to horses.
Was this due to the case he was investigating, or was it because, deep down, the evening he’d spent with Rachele was still on his mind?
No doubt about it, Rachele was a woman who—
The phone rang.
Montalbano leapt out of bed, more to escape the thought of Rachele at once than out of any anxiousness to answer the phone.
It was six-thirty.
“Ahh Chief, Chief! Iss Catarella!”
The inspector felt like screwing around.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” he said, altering his voice.
“Iss Catarella, Chief !”
“This is Fire Station Number 2373. If you want to speak with the fire chief, you’ll have to call the fire department, during regular hours, of course.”
“
He called right back.
“Hallo! Izz ’iss Fire Station 3723?”
“No, Cat. It’s Montalbano. Wait just a second, I’ll look up the fire station’s number for you.”
“No no no, Chief, I don’t want no fire station!”
“So why are you trying to phone them?”
“I donno. Sorry, Chief, I’m confused. Wanna hang up so’s I can start all over again?”
“All right.”
He rang a third time.
“Zzatt you, Chief ?”
“It’s me.”
“Wha’, was you asleep?”
“No, I was dancing the jitterbug.”
“Rilly? You know how to do that?”
“Cat, just tell me what’s up.”
“They found a corpus.”
How could you go wrong? If Catarella called at the crack of dawn, it always meant death in the morning.
“Male or female?”
“Iss o’ the male persuasion.”
“Where’d they find it?”
“In Spinoccia districk.”
“Where’s that?”
“Dunno, Chief. But Gallo’s on ’is way.”
“Where? To go look at the corpse?”
“No, Chief, sir, ’e’s comin’ a get you, poissonally in poisson. ’E’s gotta car an’s gonna betake you onna primisses, which’d be in Spinoccia districk.”
“But couldn’t Augello go instead?”
“Nossir, in as far as atta moment when that I made ’im the tiliphone call, ’is wife said as how he was outta the house.”
“But doesn’t he have a cell phone?”
“Yessir, ’e does. But iss ixtinguished.”
Like Mimì’s going to be out of the house at six in the morning! Obviously he was sleeping like a baby. And he’d told Beba to lie.
“And where’s Fazio?”
“’E’s already gone wit’ Galluzzo to the beforesaid allocation.”
When Gallo knocked at the door, the inspector had shaving cream all over his face.
“Come on in. I’ll be ready in five minutes. Where the hell is this Spinoccia, anyway?”
“In heaven, Chief. Out in the country, about six miles before Giardina.”
“Got any idea who was killed?”
“None, Chief. Fazio just phoned me and told me to come pick you up, so I came.”
“But do you know how to get there?”
“In theory, yes. I had a look at a map.”
“Look, Gallo, we’re on a dirt road, not on the racetrack at Monza.”
“I know, Chief.That’s why I’m going slow.”
Five minutes later:
“Gallo, I told you not to speed!”
“I’m going extremely slow, Chief !”
To Gallo, going extremely slowly, on a stinking dirt road full of potholes, crags, trenches, craters that looked like they’d been made by bombs, and dust galore, meant maintaining a speed of about fifty mph.
They were passing through desolate country, parched and yellow, with a few rare, scraggly trees. It was a landscape Montalbano was quite fond of.They had already left the last little white cube of a house behind them, about a mile back. All they had run across were a little pushcart climbing up towards Giardina from Vigàta, and a peasant with his mule, coming down in the opposite direction.
Rounding a bend, they saw the squad car in the distance and a donkey beside it. The ass, who was well aware that there was nothing to eat for miles around and just stood there, discouraged, looked at them with scant interest.
Gallo then launched the car off the dirt road with a swerve so sudden that the inspector lurched totally sideways, despite the seat belt, and felt his head come detached from the rest of his body. He started cursing.
“Couldn’t you stop the car a little further ahead?!”
“I’m stopping here to leave room for the other cars when they get here.”
When they got out of the car, they noticed that, beyond the squad car, on the left-hand side of the dirt road, near a clump of sorghum, Fazio, Galluzzo, and a peasant were sitting on the ground, eating. The peasant had taken a loaf of wheat bread and a round of tumazzo cheese from his haversack and divided them up.
They made an idyllic, bucolic foursome, a sort of Sicilian
Since the sun was already beating down hard, they were all in shirtsleeves.
As soon as Fazio and Galluzzo saw the inspector approaching, they stood up and put their jackets on.The peasant remained seated. But he brought a hand to his cap, giving a sort of military salute. He must have been at least eighty years old.
The dead man, wearing only a pair of underpants, was lying facedown, parallel to the road. Clearly visible just under the left shoulder blade was one gunshot wound, with a little bit of blood around it. A chunk of flesh was missing from the right arm, the result of an animal bite. A hundred or so flies swarmed around the two wounds.
The inspector bent down to look at the bitten arm.
