coffee in the trattoria, he decided he’d better have another at a bar right next door to the bank.
To the door—one of those revolving kinds with an alarm—he must have seemed disagreeable, for it reopened behind him and commanded:
“System alarm! Deposit all metal objects outside the door!”
The guard sitting inside a bulletproof glass booth glanced up from a crossword puzzle and looked at him. The inspector opened a little drawer and dropped in about a pound of europennies that were making holes in his pockets, closed it with a plastic key, and entered the tubelike door.
“System alarm!”it repeated.
So it just didn’t like him. That door was dead set on busting his balls. The guard started looking at him with concern. The inspector took out his house keys, put them in the drawer, went back in the door, the half tube closed behind him, the door said nothing, but the other half of the tube, the one in front of him, didn’t open. Imprisoned! The door had taken him hostage, and if he wasn’t freed in a few seconds, he was fated to die a terrible death by suffocation. Through the glass he saw the guard engrossed in his crossword puzzle; he hadn’t noticed anything. Inside the bank there wasn’t a living soul to be seen. He raised his knee and gave the door a powerful kick. The guard heard the noise, realized what was happening, pushed a button on some contraption in front of him, and the back half of the tube finally opened, allowing the inspector to enter the bank. Which consisted of a first entrance with a small table and a few chairs and led to two doors: The one on the right was an office with two vacant desks; the one on the left had the usual wood-and-glass partition with two tellers’ windows over which were plaques sayingWINDOW IandWINDOW 2,incase anyone wasn’t sure. But only one had a teller behind it, and that was indeed Window 1. One could not in good conscience say the bank did a lot of business.
“Hello, I would like to speak with the manager. I’m Inspector—”
“Montalbano!” said the fiftyish man behind the window.
The inspector gave him a puzzled look.
“Don’t you remember me? Eh, don’t you?” said the teller, getting up and heading toward the door at the end of the partition.
Montalbano racked his brain but couldn’t come up with a name. Meanwhile the teller came straight up to him, un-shaven, arms half open and ready to embrace his long-lost friend. But don’t these people who expect to be recognized after forty years realize that time has done its work on their faces? That forty winters, as the poet says, have dug deep fur-rows in the field of what was once adorable youth?
“You really don’t remember, do you? Let me give you a little hint.”
A little hint? “What was this, a TV game show? “Cu…Cu… “
“Cucuzza?” the inspector took a wild stab.
“Cumella! Giogid Cumella!” said the other, leaping at his throat and crushing him in a pythonlike grip.
“Cumella! Of course!” Montalbano mumbled.
In truth he didn’t remember a goddamned thing. Night and fog.
“Let’s go have a drink. We need to celebrate!Matre santa,it’s been so many years!”
When passing in front of the guard’s little cage, Cumella informed him:
“Lullu, I’ll be at the bar next door with my friend. If anyone comes, tell ‘em to wait.”
But who was this Cumella? A former schoolmate? University chum? Student protester from ‘68?
“You married, Salvu?”
“No.”
“I am. Three kids, two boys and a girl. The girl, who’s the youngest, is a beauty. Her name’s Natasha.”
A Natasha in Fanara. Like Ashanti in Canicatti, Samantha in Fela, and Jessica in Gallotti. Didn’t anybody name their little girls Maria, Giuseppina, Carmela, or Francesca anymore?
“What’ll you have?”
“A coffee.”
At that hour, one coffee more or less made no difference. “Me, too. Why did you come to our bank, Inspector? I’ve seen you a couple of times on television.”
“I need some information. Perhaps the manager—” “I’m the manager. What’s this about?” “One of your clients, Angelo Pardo, was murdered.” “I heard.”
“I couldn’t find any of your statements in his apartment.”
“He didn’t want us to send them to him. And he sent us those instructions in a registered letter! Imagine that! He would come and pick up the statements in person.”
“I see. Could you tell me how much is in his account and if he made any investments?”
“No, unless you’ve got a judge’s authorization.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then I can’t tell you that until the day he died he had somewhere around eight hundred thousand.”
“Lire?” asked Montalbano, a little disappointed. “Euros.”
That put things in a whole new light. Over a billion and a half lire.
“Investments?”
“None whatsoever. He needed ready cash.”
