“What time was it when you spotted the bag?” Augello cut in.
“Maybe six in the morning.”
“And it took you over an hour to get from here to the cave and call us?” Augello pressed him.
“And what’s it to you, may I ask, how long it took me to call?”
“I’ll show you what it is to me!” said Mimi, enraged.
“We got your call at seven-twenty,” Fazio said to the man, trying to explain. “One hour and twenty minutes after you discovered the bag with the body.”
“What did you do? Make sure to tell someone to come and pick up the body?” Augello asked, suddenly seeming like a dastardly detective in an American movie.
Worried, Montalbano realized Mimi wasn’t pretending.
“Who ever said that? What are you thinking? I didn’t tell nobody!”
“Then tell us what you did for that hour and twenty minutes.”
Mimi had fastened on to him like a rabid dog and wouldn’t let go.
“I was thinking things over.”
“And it took you almost an hour and a half to think things over?”
“Yessirree.”
“To think what over?”
“Whether it was best to phone or not.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause anytime anybody’s got to deal with you cops, they end up wishin’ they hadn’t.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Mimi, turning red in the face and raising his hand to deliver a punch.
“Cool it, Mimi!” said Montalbano.
“Listen,” Augello continued, looking for an excuse to have it out with the man, “there are two ways to reach the cave, one from above, the other from below. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“Why did you take us on the downhill path? So we could break our necks?”
“Because you guys woulda never made it uphill. With all this rain the path’s slippery as hell.”
They heard a dull rumble, and all looked up at the sky. The break in the clouds, instead of opening, was beginning to close. They all were thinking the same thing: If they didn’t find that body soon, they were going to get even more soaked.
“How do you explain the fact that the body is gone?” Montalbano intervened.
“Well,” said Ajena, “either the body got flushed down to the bottom by the water and soil, or somebody came and took it.”
“Go on!” said Mimi. “If somebody came and took the bag, they would’ve left a trail in the mud! Whereas there’s nothing!”
“Whattya mean, sir?” Ajena retorted. “Do you really think after all this rain you’re still gonna see tracks?”
At this point in the discussion, for who knows what reason, Catarella took a step forward, and so began his second slide of the morning. He had only to set one foot half down on the clay to execute a figure-skating sort of split, one foot on the path, the other on the edge of a clay slab. Fazio, who was standing beside him, tried to grab him on the fly, to no avail. In fact, in so doing he only managed to give Catarella a strong if involuntary push. Thus in a split second Catarella spread his arms, then spun around, turning his back as his legs flew out from under him.
“I loss my balaaaa . . .” he announced loudly to one and all as he fell hard on his can and, in that position, as though sitting on an invisible sled, began to gain momentum (reminding Montalbano of a law of physics he had learned at school:
None of the spectators uttered a word; none made any move. They just stood there, spellbound.
“Get that man some help,” Montalbano ordered after a moment.
His balls were so severely busted by this whole affair that he didn’t even feel like laughing.
“How do we get down there to pull him out?” Augello asked Ajena.
“If we go down this same footpath we’ll come to a spot not far from where the p’liceman ended up.”
“Then let’s get moving.”
But at that moment Catarella emerged from the bush. He’d lost his trousers and underpants in the slide and was prudishly holding his hands over his private parts.
“Did you hurt yourself ?” Fazio shouted.
“Nah. But I found the body bag. Iss here.”
“Should we go down there?” Mimi Augello asked Montalbano.
