The Shape of Water

Was it stolen?”

“No, somebody found it on the ground at the Pasture and brought it in to me.”

“At the Pasture? What kind of whore can afford a piece of jewelry like that? You must be kidding!”

“I want you to examine it, photograph it, do all the little things you usually do. Then bring me the results as soon as you can.”

The telephone rang. Jacomuzzi answered and passed the receiver to his colleague.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Fazio, chief. Come back to town immediately. All hell’s breaking loose.”

“What is it?”

“Contino the schoolteacher’s shooting at people.”

“What do you mean, shooting?”

“Shooting, shooting! He fired two shots from the balcony of his apartment at the people sitting at the cafe below, screaming something nobody could understand. Then he fired another shot at me as I was coming through his front door to see what was going on.”

“Has he killed anyone?”

“No. He just grazed the arm of a certain De Francesco.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

~

As he traveled the six miles back to Vigata at breakneck speed, Montalbano thought of Contino the schoolteacher. Not only did he know him, there was a secret between them. Six months earlier the inspector had been taking the stroll he customarily allowed himself two or three times a week along the eastern jetty, out to the lighthouse. Before he set out, however, he always stopped at Anselmo Greco’s shop, a hovel that clashed with the clothing boutiques and shiny, mirrored cafes along the corso. Among such antiquated items as terracotta dolls and rusty weights to nineteenth-century scales, Greco also sold calia e simenza, a mixture of roasted chickpeas and salted pumpkin seeds. Montalbano would buy a paper cone full of these and then head out. That day, after he had reached the point, he was turning around, right under the lighthouse, when he saw an elderly man beneath him, sitting on a block of the low concrete breakwater, head down, immobile.

Montalbano got a better look, to see if perhaps the man was holding a fishing line in his hands. But he wasn’t fishing; he wasn’t doing anything. Suddenly he stood up, quickly made the sign of the cross, and balanced himself on his tiptoes.

“Stop!” Montalbano shouted.

The man froze; he had thought he was alone. In a couple of bounds Montalbano reached him, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, lifted him up bodily, and carried him to safety.

“What were you trying to do, kill yourself ?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because my wife is cheating on me.”

This was the last thing Montalbano expected to hear. The man had surely passed his eightieth year.

“How old is your wife?”

“Let’s say eighty. I’m eighty-two.”

An absurd conversation in an absurd situation, and the inspector didn’t feel like continuing it. Taking the man by the arm, he forced him to walk toward town.

At this point, just to make everything even crazier, the man introduced himself.

“I am Giosue Contino, if I may. I used to teach elementary school. Who are you? If, of course, you wish to tell me.”

“My name is Salvo Montalbano. I’m police inspector for the town of Vigata.”

“Oh, really? Then you came at just the right time.

You yourself can tell my slut of a wife she’d better stop cuckolding me with Agatino De Francesco or one of these days I’m going to do something crazy.”

“And who’s this De Francesco?”

“He used to be the mailman. He’s younger than I am, seventy-six years old, and he has a pension that’s one and a half times the size of mine.”

“Do you know this to be a fact, or are you just suspicious?”

“I’m absolutely certain it’s the gospel truth. Every afternoon God sends our way, rain or shine, this De Francesco comes and has a coffee at the cafe right under my house.”

“So what?”

“How long do you take to drink a cup of coffee?”

For a minute Montalbano went along with the old schoolmaster’s quiet madness.

“That depends. If I’m standing—”

“What’s that got to do with it? When you’re sitting!”