He pulled the three slabs of chocolate out of his jacket pocket and laid them on Riguccio’s desk.
“I bought them for those little kids,” he muttered.
“I’ll give them to my son,” said Riguccio, putting them in his pocket.
Montalbano gave him an uncomprehending look. He knew that his colleague, after six years of marriage, had given up hope of having a child. Riguccio understood what was going through his head.
“Teresa and I managed to adopt a little boy from Burundi. Oh, I almost forgot. Here are the glasses.”
Catarella was puttering away at the computer, but the moment he saw the inspector, he dropped everything and ran up to him.
“Ah, Chief, Chief!” he began.
“What were you doing at the computer?” Montalbano asked.
“Oh, that? I’s workin onna idinnification Fazio axed me to do. Of the dead guy who was swimmin when you was swimmin.”
“Good. What did you want to tell me?”
Catarella got flustered and stared at his shoes.
“Well?” asked Montalbano.
“Beggin’ pardon, Chief, I forgot.”
“That’s all right, when it comes back to you—”
“It’s back, Chief! Pontius Pilate called again! And so I tol’ him as how you tol’ me to tell him that you’s meeting with Mr. Caiphas and Sam Hedrin, but he made as like he din’t unnastand, and so he tol’ me to tell you as how he got something he gotta tell you.”
“Okay, Cat. If he calls back, tell him to tell you what he has to tell me, so you can tell me yourself.”
“Chief, sorry, but I’m curious ’bout something. Wasn’t Pontius Pilate the guy?”
“What guy?”
“The guy that washed ’is hands inni olden days?”
“Yes.”
“So he was the ansister of this guy that called?”
“When he calls back, you can ask him yourself. Is Fazio around?”
“Yessir, Chief. Got back just now.”
“Send him to me.”
“Can I sit down?” asked Fazio. “With all due respect, my feet are smoking from all the walking I’ve been doing. And I’ve only just started.”
He sat down, pulled a small stack of photographs out of his jacket pocket, and handed these to the inspector.
“My friend in forensics got them to me fast,” he said.
Montalbano looked at them. They showed the face of an ordinary forty-year-old, with long hair in one, a mustache in another, a crewcut in another, and so on. But they were all, well, totally anonymous, inert, not personalized by any light in the eyes.
“Still looks dead,” said the inspector.
“What did you expect, for them to bring him back to life?” snapped Fazio. “That’s the best they could do. Don’t you remember the state of the guy’s face? For me they’ll be an enormous help. I gave Catarella copies for comparison with the photo archives, but it’s going to be a long haul, a real pain in the neck.”
“I’m sure it will,” said Montalbano. “But you seem a little on edge. Anything wrong?”
“What’s wrong, Chief, is that the work I’ve been doing, and the work still left for me to do, might be all for nothing.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been searching the towns along the coast. But who’s to say the man wasn’t killed in some inland town, put in the trunk of a car, driven to some beach, and dumped into the sea?”
“I don’t think so. Usually when somebody is killed in the countryside or some inland town, they end up inside a well or buried at the bottom of a mountain ravine. In any case, what’s to prevent us from first checking the towns along the coast?”
“My poor feet, Chief, that’s what.”
Before going to bed, he phoned Livia. She was glum because she couldn’t come to Vigata. Montalbano wisely let her vent her feelings, occasionally clearing his throat to let her know he was listening. Then, without a break, she asked:
“So, what did you want to tell me?”
“Me?”
“Come on, Salvo. The other night you said you had something to tell me, but you preferred to wait until I got there. Since now I can’t come, you have to tell me everything over the phone.”
Montalbano cursed his big mouth. If he’d had Livia right in front of him when telling her of the little boy who’d tried to escape on the wharf, he could have weighed his words, tone, and gestures appropriately, to keep Livia from getting too sad thinking about Francois. At the slightest change in her expression, he would have known how to steer the drift of the conversation. Over the phone, on the other hand . . . He tried a last-ditch defense.
“You know what? I really don’t remember what I wanted to tell you.”
