When he was beginning to lose hope, he heard the nurse’s voice.
“Is that you, Inspector?”
“Yes. I’m sorry if I—”
“Not at all. What can I do for you?”
“I need to see you and talk to you. As soon as possible.”
“Listen, Inspector. I’m on the night shift and would like to sleep in a bit tomorrow morning. Could we meet around eleven?”
“Certainly. Where?”
“We could meet in front of the hospital.”
He was about to say yes, but thought better of it. What if the ambulance worker were to see them together?
“I’d rather we met in front of your house.”
“All right. I’m at Via della Regione, number 28. See you tomorrow.”
He slept like an innocent cherub with no problems or thoughts, as he always did when he started an investigation on what seemed to be the right foot. The next morning he arrived at the office fresh and smiling. On his desk was a hand-delivered envelope addressed to him. There was no indication of the sender.
“Catarella!”
“Your orders, Chief!”
“Who brought this letter?”
“Pontius Pilate, Chief. Brought it here last night.”
He put it in his pocket. He would read it later. Or maybe never. Mimi Augello came in a few minutes later.
“How’d it go with the commissioner?” Montalbano asked.
“He seemed down, less self-assured than usual. Obviously all he brought back from Rome was a lot of hot air. He said it’s clear now that the flow of illegal immigrants has shifted from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean and that it’ll be harder than ever to stop. Apparently the people at the top are a little slow to acknowledge this fact. But then again, they’re also slow to acknowledge that petty theft is up, not to mention armed robbery . . . They just sing in chorus
“Did you apologize for my absence?”
“Yes.”
“And what’d he say?”
“What did you want him to do, Salvo? Start crying? He merely said: Fine. Period. Now tell me what was the matter with you yesterday.”
“I had a problem.”
“Salvo, who do you think you’re fooling? First you tell me you want to see the commissioner to tender your resignation, then fifteen minutes later you change your mind and tell me I have to go to the commissioner’s instead. What kind of problem?”
“If you really want to know . . .”
He told him the whole story of the little boy. When he’d finished, Mimi was silent and pensive.
“Something not add up for you?” Montalbano asked.
“No, it all adds up, but only up to a point.”
“And what would that be?”
“You directly connect the boy’s murder with his attempt to run away on the wharf. I’m not so sure about that.”
“Come on, Mimi! Why else would he have done it, then?”
“Let me tell you something. Last month a friend of mine went to New York and stayed with an American friend of his. One day they went out to eat. My friend ordered an enormous steak with potatoes on the side. He couldn’t eat it all and left some of it on his plate. After clearing the table, the waiter came back with a little bag containing what my friend hadn’t eaten. My friend takes the bag and, outside the restaurant, sees a group of bums and starts walking towards them to give them the bag with his leftovers. But his American friend stops him, telling him the bums won’t accept it. If he feels like being charitable, he should give them fifty cents, he says. ‘Why won’t they accept the bag with half a steak in it?’ my friend asks. ‘Because there are people here who give them poisoned food, the way they do with stray dogs,’ he says. See my point?”
“No.”
“It’s possible that the little boy, caught by surprise at the side of the road, was deliberately run over just for fun, or in a fit of racism, by some goddamned son of a bitch, some nameless bastard who had nothing to do with the kid’s arrival here.”
Montalbano let out a deep sigh.
“I wish! If that were really what happened, I would feel less guilty. Unfortunately, I’m pretty convinced the whole affair has a precise logic of its own.”
Agata Militello was a well- groomed woman of about forty, good-looking but tending dangerously towards plumpness. She was a garrulous sort and in fact did almost all the talking during the hour she spent with the inspector. She said she was in a bad mood that morning because her son, a university student (“You know, Inspector, I had the bad luck to fall in love at age seventeen with a rascal who left me as soon as he learned I was expecting”), wanted to get married (“But I say,
