Excursion to Tindari

“Seems fishy to me. With our postal system, how could the letters always arrive punctually the next day?”

Mimi shook his head no.

“I don’t think they were mailed.”

“So how did they send them?”

“They didn’t. They handed them to each other next time they met. They probably read them in bed, and then started fucking. Sounds like an excellent stimulant.”

“I can see you’re an expert in these things. Aside from the date, do the letters mention the place of origin?”

“Nene’s always come from Vigata. Hers are from Montelusa or, on rarer occasions, from Vigata. Which bolsters my hypothesis. Which is that they would get together sometimes here, sometimes in Montelusa. She’s married. Both he and she often mention the husband, but they never say his name. The period they saw each other most often coincided with a trip abroad by the husband. Who, as I said, is never mentioned by name.”

“That gives me an idea, Mimi. Isn’t it possible the whole thing is a pile of bullshit dreamed up by the kid? Isn’t it possible this woman doesn’t exist, that she’s a product of his erotic fantasies?”

“I think the letters are authentic. He typed them into the computer and then destroyed the originals.”

“What makes you so sure the letters are authentic?”

“What she writes. They minutely describe what a woman feels when she’s making love. They give details that would never remotely occur to us men. They do it in every way possible: normal, oral, anal, in all the positions, on different occasions, and every time, she says something new, intimately new. If it was all made up by the kid, he would surely have turned out to be a great writer.”

“How far did you get?”

“I’ve got about twenty left. Then I’ll get started on the novel.You know, Salvo, I have a feeling I might know who the woman is.”

“Tell me.”

“Not yet. I have to think it over.”

“I have a vague idea about it too.”

“What’s that?”

“I think we’re dealing with a woman who’s not so young anymore, and who took on a twenty-year-old lover. Whom she paid handsomely.”

“I agree. Except that if it’s the woman I think it is, she’s not middle-aged. She’s rather young. And there’s no money involved.”

“So you think it’s a question of infidelity?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe you’re right.”

No, Mimi wasn’t right. Montalbano sensed instinctively, in his gut, that behind the killing of Nene Sanfilippo there must be something big. So why was he agreeing with Mimi’s hypothesis? To keep him happy? What was the proper verb? Ah, yes: to cajole him. He was pandering to him shamelessly. Perhaps he was behaving like that newspaper editor in the movie The Front Page, who resorts to every expedient on earth and in heaven to keep his ace reporter from moving, for love, to another city It was a comedy with Matthau and Lemon, and he remembered that he died laughing. Why was it that, thinking back on it now, he didn’t even crack a smile?

“Livia? Hi, how are you? I want to ask you two questions, and then tell you something.”

“What are their numbers?”

“What are what’s numbers?”

“The questions. What are their reference numbers?”

“Come on ...”

“Don’t you realize you’re talking to me as if I was some kind of office?”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean—”

“Go ahead, ask me the first one.”

“Livia, imagine we’ve made love—”

“I can’t.The prospect is too remote.”

“Please, I’m being serious.”

“All right, but give me a minute while I collect my memories. Okay. Go on.”

“Would you ever think, the day after, to write me a letter describing everything you felt?”

There was a pause, and it lasted so long that Montalbano thought Livia had hung up on him.

“Livia? You there?”

“I was trying to think. No, I, personally, wouldn’t do that. But another woman, in the throes of a violent passion, might.”