“Chief, if the guy takes off like a rocket, I’m certainly not going to be able to stop him.”
“If you alert me in time, I’ll step in.”
“But you’ll be in Boccadasse!”
“I don’t think anything will happen in these next three days. In any case I’ll bring along my cell phone. And don’t you have Livia’s home phone number?”
He didn’t feel the least bit guilty leaving his cell phone at home in Marinella, actually hiding it in the drawer where he kept his clean linen. That way poor Fazio, too, at the right moment, would get his own taste of betrayal. This was the first time Montalbano had ever told him one thing while secretly intending to do another. It was, moreover, inevitable : Weren’t they all treading in the potter’s field now?
He retraced the same route as the day before, but this time he didn’t slow down to take in the landscape. At the junction, instead of turning towards the airport, he continued straight towards downtown Catania. A short while later he found himself caught in a traffic jam that slowed him down to barely five miles per hour, which was too slow even for him, to say nothing of the repeated gridlock that lasted a good ten minutes each time. During one of these stops, a traffic cop passed by his car.
“Excuse me, but what’s going on?”
“Where?”
“Here. Why is there all this traffic?”
“You call this traffic?” asked the policeman, surprised.
Which meant that this was perfectly normal. By the grace of God he came at last within view of the arcades of the port district. He asked where customs was, and as he was heading there, he drove slowly past three sparkling display windows full of meat, exhibited the way jewels used to be at Bulgari’s. A big, lit-up sign said: PECORINI— THE MEAT KING. Finding a legal parking space was, of course, a fantasy, and so he stopped the car inside a sort of great open doorway with its door unhinged and got out.
At Pecorini’s, the similarity with the former display windows at Bulgari’s was heightened by the prices accompanying the different cuts of meat.
As he entered the butcher shop he felt as if he were entering the reception room of a first-class beauty salon. Sofas, armchairs, little tables. As there was a group of people at the very elegant counter, he sat down in an armchair, and at once a girl of about eighteen appeared dressed as a chambermaid, in starched cap and apron.
“Would you like a coffee?”
“No, thank you. There are too many people. I’ll come back later.”
As he stood up, the man at the cash register looked up and eyed him.
In a flash, Montalbano was sure of two things: one, that the man was Arturo Pecorini, and two, that Pecorini had recognized him, because he had frozen in the act of giving change to a customer. Perhaps he had seen the inspector on television.
After parking the car at the airport, Montalbano broke into a sprint, as there were only twenty minutes left before takeoff. Glancing at a monitor to see what gate the flight was leaving from, he saw only a blank. He looked more closely: the flight would be leaving with a delay of an hour and a half. And this, too, was perfectly normal, just like the traffic.
16
After they’d had breakfast together, Livia went to the office. Left alone, Montalbano unplugged the telephone, dawdled about the apartment for an hour or so, then took a shower, got dressed, and spent another hour smoking and gazing at the landscape through Livia’s big picture window. Then he left Boccadasse and went into Genoa. He went to the aquarium and, after a half-hour wait in line, managed to get in. He spent the rest of the morning among the fish, charmed and bemused. At lunchtime he went to a trattoria that Livia had recommended. In every place he’d ever been in his life, he had always adapted to the local cuisine. He was sure that, if he ever ended up in the godforsaken mountains of Afghanistan, a waiter would say to him something like:
“We have an excellent dish of worms with a side helping of fried cockroaches,” and he would confidently accept.
This time the waiter asked him:
“Pesto?”
“Of course,” he replied.
But when the waiter listed the main dishes for him, which were all fish, Montalbano felt it wasn’t right to eat them after seeing all those beautiful, living fish at the aquarium.
“Could I have a
“Sure, if you go to Milan,” the waiter replied.
He ended up eating an excellent fried sole, begging forgiveness. Back in Boccadasse, he lay down in bed. He woke up around four o’clock, got out of bed, and went back to the picture window to read the newspaper he had bought. Dress rehearsal for life in retirement, he thought to himself, half amused, half dejected.
Livia came home at six.
“You know what? When I told my friend Laura you were here, she invited us to spend the weekend at her villa in Portofino. Feel like going?”
“But I have to be back in Vigata by Sunday evening.”
“Let’s do this. We can leave tomorrow morning, spend all of Saturday there and then, Sunday morning, after breakfast, I’ll drive you to the airport.”
“Okay.”
“Why did you unplug the telephone?”
