At the rock, he sat down. Gazing at the water, he thought he saw the face of Carlo Martello appear indistinctly before him. He angrily threw the handful of pebbles at it. The image broke apart, flickered, and vanished. Montalbano fired up a cigarette.
“Oh, Chief, Chief, Chief!” Catarella assailed him as soon as he came through the front door of headquarters. “Doctor Latte, the one with an s at the end, called three times! He wants to talk to you poissonally in poisson! Says it’s rilly rilly urgint!”
He could guess what Lattes, the chief of the commissioner’s cabinet, nicknamed “Caffe-Lattes” for his nervous, unctuous manner, had to say.
Commissioner Luca Bonetti-Alderighi, Marquis of Vill abella, had been explicit and severe. Montalbano never looked his superior in the eye, but always slightly higher; he was fascinated by the man’s hair, which was very thick, with a great big shock on top that curled back like certain human shit piles deposited in the open countryside. Noticing that the inspector was averting his gaze, the commissioner had made the mistake of believing he’d finally intimidated his subordinate.
“Montalbano, now that the new captain of the Flying Squad, Ernesto Gribaudo, has arrived, I’m going to tell you once and for all: you’re going to play a supporting role from here on in. Your department will only handle little things; the big stuff will be handled by the Flying Squad in the person of Captain Gribaudo or his second-in- command.”
Ernesto Gribaudo, a living legend. Once, when glancing at the chest of a man who’d been killed by a burst of Kalashnikov fire, he’d declared the victim dead from a dozen stab wounds inflicted in rapid succession.
“Excuse me, Mr. Commissioner, could you give me a few practical examples?”
Luca Bonetti-Alderighi had beamed with pride and satisfaction as Montalbano stood before him on the other side of his desk, leaning slightly forward, a humble smile playing on his lips. Indeed, the inspector’s tone had been almost beseeching. The commissioner had him in the palm of his hand!
“Please be more explicit, Montalbano. What sort of examples do you mean?”
“I’d like to know what things I should consider little and what things I should consider big.”
Montalbano, too, was congratulating himself. His imitation of Paolo Villaggio’s immortal Fantozzi was succeeding marvelously.
“What a question, Montalbano! Petty theft, domestic quarrels, small-time drug-dealing, brawls, ID checks on im migrants, that’s the small stuff. Murders, that’s big.”
“Mind if I take notes?” Montalbano had asked, pulling a piece of paper and pen out of his pocket.
The commissioner had looked at him in bewilderment. And the inspector, for a moment, had felt frightened, thinking he’d pulled the other’s leg a little too hard and the commissioner had caught on.
But no. The commissioner had actually been scowling in disdain.
“Go right ahead.”
And now Lattes was about to reiterate the commissioner’s explicit orders. A homicide did not fall within his province. It was a matter for the Flying Squad. Montalbano dialed the cabinet chief’s number.
“Montalbano, old boy! How are you? Eh? And how’s the family?”
Family? He was an orphan and not even married.
“They’re all fine, thanks. And yours?”
“All well, by the Virgin’s good graces. Listen, Montalbano, on the matter of that homicide committed last night in Vigata, the commissioner—”
“I already know, Dr. Lattes. It’s not my concern.”
“That’s not true! Who ever said that? I called you, in fact, because the commissioner actually
Montalbano felt a mild shock. What could this mean?
He didn’t even know the murder victim’s vital statistics. Want to bet it will turn out the kid was the son of some big-wig? Were they trying to get him to take on some tremendous headache? Not a hot potato, but a glowing firebrand?
“I’m sorry, Dr. Lattes. I was at the crime scene, but I didn’t start any investigation. You can understand. I didn’t want to tread on anyone’s turf.”
“Of course I understand, Montalbano! We have some extremely sensitive people in this police department, thanks be to God!”
“Why isn’t Captain Gribaudo on the case?”
“You don’t know?”
“I know nothing.”
“Well, last week Captain Gribaudo had to go to Beirut for an important conference on—”
“I know. Was he held up in Beirut?”
“No, no, he’s back, but, upon his return, he immediately came down with a violent case of dysentery. We were worried it might be some sort of cholera—it’s not so unusual in those places, you know—but then, by the Virgin’s good graces, it turned out not to be.”
Montalbano himself thanked the Virgin for having forced Gribaudo not to stray more than a foot and a half from the nearest toilet.
“What about his second-in-command, Lieutenant Foti?”
