All obvious, all normal. Too obvious, too normal for a man who was found shot in the face with his willy hanging out, whatever the purpose he’d used it for. It was still hanging out, after all. Okay, getting caught with your dick exposed no longer shocked anyone nowadays, and there had even been an honorable member of Parliament, later to become a high charge of the state, who’d shown his to one and all in a photo printed in a number of glossy magazines. Okay. But it was the two things together—the whacking and the exposure—that made the case peculiar.
Or constituted the peculiarities of the case. Or, better yet, the whacking and the whack-off. Engrossed in these sorts of complex variations on the theme as he was putting everything back in the wallet, the inspector, when he got to the bills of fifty, suddenly stopped.
How much was there in the account Michela had shown him? Roughly ninety thousand euros, of which fifty thousand, however, were Michela’s. Therefore Angelo had only forty thousand euros in the bank. Or scarcely eighty million lire, to use the old system. Something didn’t add up. Angelo Pardo’s earnings probably consisted of a percentage gained on the pharmaceutical products he managed to place. And Michela did suggest that her brother earned enough money to live comfortably. Okay, but was it enough to pay for the expensive presents he supposedly, according to Michela, gave to Elena? Surely not. Nowadays, going to market and buying food for the week, one spent as much as one used to over the whole month. And so? How did someone who didn’t have a lot of money manage to buy jewelry and sports cars? Either Angelo was draining the bank account—and this might explain Michela’s resentment—or he had some other source of revenue, with a related bank account, of which, however, there was no trace. And of which even Michela knew nothing. Or was she merely pretending to know nothing?
He went inside and turned on the television. Just in time for the late news on the Free Channel. His friend, newsman Nicold Zito, spoke first of an accident between a car and a truck that killed four, then mentioned the murder of Angelo Pardo, the investigation of which had been assigned to the captain of the Montelusa Flying Squad. This explained why no journalists had come to harass the inspector. It was clear poor Nicold knew little or nothing about the case, and in fact he merely strung a couple of sentences together and moved on to another subject. So much the better.
Montalbano turned off the TV, phoned Livia for their customary evening greeting, which did not result in any squabbling this time—indeed it was all kissy-kissy—and went off to bed. No doubt thanks to the phone call, which calmed him down, he fell asleep straightaway, like a baby.
But the baby woke up suddenly at two in the morning, and instead of starting to cry like babies all over the world, he started thinking.
His mind went back to his visit to the garage. He was convinced he’d neglected some detail. A detail which at the time had seemed unimportant to him but which he now felt was important, very important.
He reviewed, in his memory, everything he’d done from the moment he entered the garage to when he left. Nothing.
I’ll return there tomorrow,he said to himself.
And he turned onto his side to go back to sleep.
Less than fifteen minutes later, he was in his car, dressed higgledy-piggledy and racing to Angelo Pardo’s place, cursing like a maniac.
If the tenants on the two stories of that building—three stories, actually, counting the ground floor—seemed dead during the day, he could only imagine what they’d be like at three in the morning, or thereabouts. Whatever the case, he took care to make as little noise as possible.
Having turned on the light in the garage, he began studying everything—empty jerry cans, old motor-oil tins, pliers, monkey wrenches—as though with a magnifying glass. He found nothing that was in any way worth considering. An empty jerry can remained, desolately, a simple, empty jerry can still stinking of gasoline.
So he moved on to the Mercedes. The road maps in the glove compartment didn’t have any particular routes high-lighted, and the car’s documents were all in order. He lowered the visors, examined the CDs one by one, stuck his hands in the side pockets, pulled out the ashtray, got out, opened the hood, saw only the motor in there. He went be-hind the car, opened the trunk: spare tire, jack, red triangle. He closed it.
He felt a kind of ever-so-light electric shock and re-opened the trunk. Here was the detail he’d neglected. A tiny paper triangle sticking out from under the rubber carpeting. He leaned forward for a better look: It was the corner of a linen envelope. He eased it out with two fingers. It was addressed to Signor Angelo Pardo, and Signor Angelo Pardo, after opening it, had put three letters, all addressed to him, inside it. Montalbano pulled out the first and looked down at the signature. Elena. He put it back in the linen envelope, closed up the car, turned off the lights in the garage, lowered the metal shutter and, with the linen envelope in hand, headed back to his car, which he’d left a few yards away from the garage.
“Stop! Thief!” yelled a voice that seemed to come down from the heavens.
He stopped and looked up. On the top floor was an open window; against the light, the inspector recognized His Royal Majesty Victor Emmanuel III, pointing a hunting rifle at him.
What, was he going to start arguing from two stories away with a raving lunatic at that hour of the night? Any-way, when that guy got a bee up his ass, there was nothing doing. Montalbano turned his back to him and walked away.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Montalbano kept walking, and His Majesty fired. Everyone knew, of course, that the last Savoys were notoriously trigger-happy. Fortunately, Victor Emmanuel was not a good shot. The inspector dived into his car, turned on the motor, and drove off, screeching his tires even worse than the cops in American movies, as a second shot ended up some thirty yards away.
As soon as he got home, he started reading Elena’s letters to Angelo. All three had the same two-part plot.
Part one consisted of a kind of passionate erotic delirium—clearly, Elena had written the letters right after a particularly steamy encounter—where she remembered, with a wealth of detail, what they had done and how many orgasms she had had during Angelo’s endless tric-troc.
Montalbano stopped, perplexed. Despite his personal experience and his readings of a variety of erotic classics, he didn’t know what “tric-troc” meant. Maybe it was a term from the sort of secret jargon that lovers always invent between themselves.
Part two, on the other hand, was in a completely different tone. Elena imagined that Angelo, when he went on
