The Snack Thief

the telephone call was over, the young man grabbed Karima and they went back into the other room to finish what they’d been doing when they were interrupted by the telephone. They later reappeared fully dressed, turned off the light, and left in the man’s large metallic gray car.

Over the course of the previous year this scenario had repeated itself four or five times. For the most part they would stay there for hours not doing or saying anything. If he grabbed her by the arm and took her into the other room, it was only to pass the time. Sometimes he would write or read, and she would doze in the chair, head resting on the table, waiting for the phone to ring. Sometimes, after the call came in, the man would make a call or two himself.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the woman, Karima, would clean the office—but what was there to clean, for Christ’s sake? And sometimes she would answer the phone, but she never passed the call on to Mr. Lapecora, even when he was right next to her. He would only sit there, listening to her talk, head down and looking at the floor, as if none of it was his concern, or as if he felt offended.

In the opinion of Clementina Vasile Cozzo, the maid, the Tunisian girl, was a bad, evil woman.

Not only did she do what she did with the dark young man, but now and then she would go and wheedle poor old Lapecora, who inevitably would give in, letting himself be led into the back room. One time, when Lapecora was sitting at the little secretarial table reading the newspaper, she kneeled in front of him, unzipped his trousers, and, still kneeling . . .

At this point Signora Vasile Cozzo, blushing, interrupted her narrative.

It was clear that Karima and the young man had keys to the office, whether they had been given them by Lapecora or had copies made themselves. It was also clear, even though there were no insomniac witnesses, that the night before Lapecora was murdered, Karima had spent a few hours in the victim’s home. This was proved by the scent of Volupte. Did she also own a set of keys to the flat, or had Lapecora himself let her in, taking advantage of the fact that his wife had taken a generous dose of sleeping pills? In any case, the whole thing seemed not to make sense. Why risk being caught in the act by Mrs. Lapecora when they could easily have met at the office? For the hell of it? Just to season an otherwise predictable relationship with the thrill of danger?

And then there was the matter of the three anonymous letters, unquestionably pieced together in that office. Why had Karima and the dark young man done it? To put Lapecora in a difficult bind? It didn’t tally. They had nothing to gain by it. On the contrary, they risked jeopardizing the availability of their telephone number and whatever it was the company had become.

For a better understanding of all this, Montalbano would have to wait for Karima to return. Fazio was right: she must have slipped away to avoid answering dangerous questions and would come back on the sly. The inspector was positive that Aisha would keep the promise she’d made to him. In his unlikely French, he’d explained to her that Karima got mixed up with a nasty crowd, and that sooner or later that bad man and his friends would surely kill not only her but also Francois and Aisha herself. He had the impression he’d sufficiently convinced and frightened her.

They agreed that as soon as Karima reappeared, the old woman would phone him; she had only to ask for Salvo and say only her name, Aisha. He left her the telephone numbers to his office and home, telling her to make sure she hid them well, as she had done with the passbook.

Naturally the argument held water on one condition: that Karima was not the killer. But no matter how much he turned it over in his head, the inspector could not picture her with a knife in her hand.

o o o

He glanced at his watch by the flame of his lighter. Almost midnight. For more than two hours now he’d been sitting on the veranda, in darkness to avoid getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand flies, hashing and rehashing what he’d learned from Signora Clementina and Aisha.

Yet he needed one further clarification. Could he possibly call Mrs. Vasile Cozzo at that hour? She had told him that every evening the housekeeper, after giving her dinner, would help her undress and put her in the wheelchair. But even if she was ready for bed, she didn’t turn in immediately; she would watch television late into the night. She could move from the wheelchair to the bed, and vice versa, by herself.

“Signora, it’s unforgivable, I know.”

“Not at all, Inspector, not at all! I was awake, watching a movie.”

“Well, signora. You told me the dark young man sometimes used to read or write. Do you know what it was he read? Or wrote? Could you tell?”

“He used to read newspapers and letters. And he would write letters. But he didn’t use the typewriter that was there in the office. He’d bring his own, a portable. Anything else?”

o o o

“Hi, darling. Were you asleep? No? Are you sure? I’ll be at your place tomorrow around one in the afternoon. Don’t go out of your way for me, please. I’ll just come, and if you’re not there, I’ll wait. I have the keys, after all.”

8 5

h2> Apparently, in his sleep, one part of his brain had kept working on the Lapecora case. Around four o’clock in the morning, in fact, a memory came back to him, and he got up and started searching frantically among his books. Suddenly he remembered that he’d lent the book he was looking for to Augello, after his deputy had seen the film made from it on television. He’d now had it for six months and still hadn’t given it back. Montalbano got upset.

“Hello, Mimi? Montalbano here.”

“Ohmygod! What’s going on? What happened?”

“Do you still have that novel by Le Carre entitled Call for the Dead? I’m sure I lent it to you.”

“What the fuck?! It’s four in the morning!”

“So what? I want it back.”