He got back in the car and left. But when he got to the white-and-red house in front of which he and Fazio had met, he turned around. He knew there was nothing to find there, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave that place. He pulled up again at the edge of the cliff. It was getting dark. Against the still luminous sky, the villa with the enormous terrace looked ghostly. Despite the luxurious homes, the well-tended trees rising above the enclosure walls, and the lush greenery everywhere, Spigonella was a wasteland. Of course, all seaside towns, especially those that depend on vacationers, seem dead in the off-season. But Spigonella must have been already dead at the moment of its birth. In its beginning was its end, to mangle Eliot again. Getting back into his car, this time he finally drove back to Vigata.
“Marzilla call, Cat?”
“No, Chief, he din’t. But Pontius Pilate did.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said he in’t gonna make the plane, but tomorrow he can, and so tomorrow afternoon he’ll be here in the afternoon.”
The inspector went into his office but didn’t sit down. He immediately made a phone call. He wanted to see if there was any chance of doing something that had occurred to him as he was parking the car in front of the police station.
“Signora Albanese? Good evening, how are you? This is Inspector Montalbano. Can you tell me what time your husband will be done with today’s fishing? Ah, he didn’t go out today? Is he at home? Could I talk to him? Ciccio, what are you doing at home? A touch of the flu? Feeling any better now? All gone? Good, I’m glad. Listen, I wanted to ask you something . . . What’s that? Why don’t I come by for dinner, so we can talk about it in person? I really don’t want to take advantage of you, or put your wife to any trouble . . . What was that? Pasta with fresh ricotta? And a second course of whitebait? I’ll be there in half an hour.”
He was unable to speak for the duration of the meal. From time to time Ciccio Albanese would ask him:
“What was that you wanted to ask me, Inspector?”
But Montalbano didn’t even answer, merely rotating the forefinger of his left hand, gesturing “later, later,” since either his mouth was too full or he simply didn’t want to open it, lest the air dilute the taste he was jealously guarding between his tongue and palate.
When the coffee was served, he decided it was time to talk about what he wanted, but only after complimenting Albanese’s wife on her cooking.
“You were right, Ciccio. The dead man was spotted three months ago at Spigonella. Things must have happened the way you said: first they killed him, then they threw him into the water at Spigonella or nearby. You really are very good, as everyone says.”
Ciccio Albanese absorbed the praise without a blink, as his due.
“What else can I do for you?” was all he said.
Montalbano told him. Albanese thought about it a minute, then turned to his wife.
“Is Tanino in Montelusa or Palermo? Do you know?”
“This morning my sister said he was here.”
Before phoning Montelusa, Albanese felt he needed to explain.
“Tanino is my wife’s sister’s son. He’s studying law in Palermo. His dad has a house in Tricase and Tanino goes there often. He’s got a dinghy and likes to scuba dive.”
The phone call took only about five minutes.
“Tanino’ll expect you at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Now let me explain how you get there.”
“Fazio? Sorry to bother you at this hour, but the other day, I think I saw one of our men with a small video camera and—”
“Yeah, that was Torrisi, Chief. He just bought it. From Torretta.”
Of course! Torretta must have moved the entire Zanzibar bazaar into the Vigata police headquarters!
“Send Torrisi right over here to Marinella, with the video camera and anything else I might need to operate it.”
11
When he opened the shutters, he took heart. The morning looked happy to be what it was, alive with light and color. In the shower Montalbano even tried to sing, which he rarely did; being somewhat tone-deaf, however, he merely hummed the tune. Though he wasn’t running late, he realized he was hurrying because he was anxious to leave the house and get to Tricase. In the car, in fact, he realized at one point that he was driving too fast. At the Spigonella-Tricase fork, he turned left and, once past the bend, found himself at the mound of gravel. The bouquet of flowers was gone, and there was a laborer filling a wheelbarrow with gravel. A bit further on, two more laborers worked on the road. The few paltry things commemorating the death and life of the little boy had all disappeared. By now his small body must have been buried anonymously in the Montechiaro cemetery. At Tricase he carefully followed the instructions Ciccio Albanese had given him and, when very near the shore, he pulled up in front of a small yellow house. A pleasant-looking kid of about twenty, in shorts and barefoot, stood in the doorway. A rubber dinghy bobbed in the water a short distance away. They shook hands. Tanino gave the inspector a curious look, and only then did Montalbano realize he was decked out like a tourist. In fact, in addition to the video camera in his hand, he had a pair of binoculars slung across his chest.
“Shall we go?” asked the kid.
“Sure. But first I want to undress.”
“Go ahead.”
He went into the house and came back out in a bathing suit. Tanino locked the door and they climbed aboard the dinghy. Only then did the kid ask:
“Where are we going?”
