waiting for him.
“Five minutes more and I would have left,” she said, cold as a slab of ice.
Owing perhaps to the ordeal he had gone through to get there more or less on time, her words had the immediate effect of seriously pissing him off. He was unable to control himself, and out of his mouth came a declaration he would never have thought himself capable of.
“Well, then I’ll just leave myself.”
And he turned his back, went out of the restaurant, got in his car, and drove home to Marinella.
He wanted nothing more than to get into the shower and stay there for as long as it took to wash away his agitation.
Twenty minutes later, as he was drying himself off, he thought again with a cooler head about what he had done, and realized he’d committed an act of colossal stupidity. Because he absolutely needed Laura’s help if he was going to get anywhere in the investigation. Indeed, the only way Mimi Augello could come into contact with La Giovannini was through Laura.
That was what happened when you mixed personal matters with work.
He decided he would call her first thing in the morning and apologize.
He no longer felt hungry. Perhaps his appetite would return if he went out for a few minutes onto the veranda and breathed some sea air. He had noticed, on the way back from the restaurant, that it was less chilly than the previous evening and there wasn’t a breath of wind. So he went outside with only his underpants on. He flicked on the light for the veranda from the inside, grabbed his cigarettes, and opened the French door. And froze. Not because it was cold outside, but because there was Laura, standing before him, speechless, eyes lowered.
Apparently she had knocked on the door when he was in the shower and he hadn’t heard it, and so, knowing he must be at home, she had walked around the house to enter from the side facing the beach.
“Forgive me,” she said.
And she looked up. At once her grave expression vanished and she started laughing.
At that very same moment, as if seeing his reflection in her eyes, Montalbano realized he was in his underpants.
“Ahhh!” he screamed.
And he dashed back to the bathroom as if in a silent film.
He was so upset, so confused, that the comedy continued when, as he was standing and putting his trousers on, he slipped on the wet tiles and fell on his ass to the floor.
When at last he was able to think straight again, he emerged and went out to the veranda.
Laura was sitting on the bench, smoking a cigarette.
“I guess we’ve just had a quarrel,” she said.
“Yeah. I apologize, but, you see…”
“Let’s stop apologizing to each other. I owe you an explanation.”
“No you don’t.”
“Well, I’m going to explain anyway, because I think it’s necessary. Have you got any more of that wine?”
“Of course.”
He got up and went out, then came back with a new bottle and two glasses. Laura guzzled a whole glass before speaking.
“I had no intention of calling you today and had promised myself that, if you called me, I would say I wasn’t up to seeing you.”
“Why?”
“Let me finish.”
But Montalbano insisted.
“Look, Laura, if there was anything I said or did yesterday that may have offended you, for whatever reason-”
“But I wasn’t offended at all. On the contrary.”
On the contrary? What did she mean? He’d best sit tight and hear what she had to say.
“I didn’t want to see you because I was afraid I’d seem ridiculous. And anyway, it wouldn’t have been right.”
Montalbano felt dazed.
And he feared that anything he might say would be the wrong thing. He didn’t understand what was happening.
“And so I told myself that it would be a mistake for us to keep seeing each other. It’s the first time in my life this sort of thing has happened to me. It’s humiliating and demoralizing. I’m completely helpless and can’t do anything about it. My will counts for nothing. And in fact, when you called me, I didn’t know… Help me.”
She stopped, poured herself another glass, and drank half of it. As she brought it to her lips, Montalbano saw her eyes glisten, brimming with tears.
7
Help me, she’d said. But with what? And why was she crying? How could he help her if he didn’t have the slightest idea what was happening to her?
Then, all at once, Montalbano understood. And, at first, he refused to believe what he thought he’d understood.
Was it possible the same thing was happening to her as was happening to him?
Was it possible the proverbial
He felt angry at himself for thinking of a cliche (even if it was French), but nothing more original came to mind.
And he began to feel weak in the knees, torn in opposite directions, happy and scared at once.
But as he was asking for help without saying anything, he wished he could embrace her and hold her tight.
And to keep from doing this, he had to make such an effort that a few droplets of sweat formed on his brow.
Then he did the only thing that could be done, if he was really the man he thought he was, even though it cost him great physical pain, a sort of knife blade piercing his chest.
“Well, given the fact that we’ve met,” he said indifferently, as if not having understood a word she’d said or grasped the suffering in those words, “let me take advantage of the fact and ask a favor of you, assuming you’re able to do it for me.”
“Go ahead.”
She seemed disappointed and pleased at the same time.
“My second-in-command on the force is a man named Mimi Augello, who’s not only an excellent policeman but a very good-looking guy who has a way with women.”
“And?” asked Laura, somewhat taken aback by that preamble.
“I thought it could be very useful to have him meet the owner of the yacht.”
“I see. You think that if they hit it off, your man might manage to get some information out of her?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you mind telling me why you’re so fixated on this yacht? You should know, at any rate, that the boat has undergone many Customs inspections and they’ve never found anything abnormal.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t really explain, not any better than that. It’s just, well, a feeling, an impression…”
