“What can I do for you, Mr. Giacchetti?”
The man sat down, carefully arranging the creases in his trousers and smoothing his mustache. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the inspector.
“Well?” said Montalbano.
“The truth of the matter is, I’m not sure I was right to come here.”
“Listen, I can’t help you with that. It’s up to you to decide. It’s not like I can give you little hints the way they do on quiz shows.”
“Well, the fact is that last night I witnessed something . . . and that’s just it, I don’t know what it was . . . something I really don’t know how to define.”
“If you decide to tell me what it was, perhaps together we can arrive at a definition,” said Montalbano, who was beginning to feel something breaking in the general area of his balls. “If, on the other hand, you don’t tell me, then I’ll have to send you on your way.”
“Well, at the time, it seemed to me . . . at first, that is, it looked to me like a hit-and-run driver. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes. Or at least I can tell a hit-and-run driver from a hit-and-run lover—you know, the kind with bedroom eyes and a little black book. Listen, Mr. Giacchetti, I haven’t got much time to waste. Let’s start at the beginning, all right? I’ll ask you a few questions, just to warm you up, so to speak.”
“Okay.”
“Are you from here?”
“No, I’m from Rome.”
“And what do you do here in Vigata?”
“I started three months ago as manager of the branch office of the Banco Cooperativo.”
The inspector had been right on the money. The man could only be with a bank. You can tell right away: Those who handle other people’s money in the cathedrals of wealth that are the big banks end up acquiring something austere and reserved in their manner, something priestlike proper to those who practice secret rites such as laundering dirty money, engaging in legalized usury, using coded accounts, and illegally exporting capital offshore. They suffer, in short, from the same sorts of occupational deformities as undertakers, who, in handling corpses every day, end up looking like walking corpses themselves.
“Where do you live?”
“For now, while waiting to find a decent apartment, my wife and I are staying at a house on the Montereale road, as her parents’ guests. It’s their country home, but they’ve turned it over to us for the time being.”
“All right, then, if you’d be so kind as to tell me what happened . . .”
“Last night, around two A.M., my wife started going into labor, and so I put her in the car and we headed off to Montelusa Hospital.”
The man was finally opening up.
“Just as we were leaving Vigata, I noticed, in the headlights, a woman walking ahead of me, with her back to me. At that exact moment a car came up beside me at a high speed, lightly swiping my car as it passed—it looked to me like it was swerving—and then it aimed straight for the woman. She quickly realized the danger, probably hearing the car’s engine, and jumped to her right and fell into the ditch. The car stopped for a second and then took off again with a screech.”
“So, in the end it didn’t hit her?”
“No. The woman was able to dodge it.”
“And what did you do?”
“I stopped, though my wife was crying—she was feeling very bad by this point—and I got out. The woman had got back up in the meantime. I asked her if she was hurt and she said no. So I told her to get in the car and I would take her into town, and she accepted. On the way, we all agreed that the person driving that car must have had a bit too much to drink, and that it must have been some sort of stupid prank. Then she told me where she wanted to be dropped off, and she got out of the car. Before she left, however, she begged me not to tell anyone about what I had seen. She gave me to understand that she was returning from an amorous encounter...”
“She didn’t explain how she happened to be out alone at that hour of the night?”
“She made some reference . . . she said her car had stalled and wouldn’t start up again. But then she realized she had run out of gas.”
“So, how did things work out?”
Fabio Giacchetti looked confused.
“With the lady?”
“No, with your wife.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand...”
“Did you become a father or not?”
Fabio Giacchetti lit up.
“Yes. A boy.”
“Congratulations. Tell me something: How old do you think the woman was?”
