Cursing the saints, he got up, went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and lathered himself up. All at once the water ran out. In Vigata, and therefore also in Marinella, where he lived, water was distributed roughly every three days.
Roughly, because there was no way of knowing whether you would have water the very next day or the following week.
For this reason Montalbano had taken the precaution of having several large tanks installed on the roof of his house, which would fill up when water was available. This time, however, there had apparently been no new water for eight days, for that was the maximum autonomy granted him by his reserves.
He ran into the kitchen, put a pot under the faucet to collect the meager trickle that came out, and did the same in the bathroom sink. With the bit of water thus collected, he somehow managed to rinse the soap off his body, but the whole procedure certainly didn’t help his mood.
While driving to Vigata, yelling obscenities at all the mo-torists to cross his path—whose only use for the Highway Code, in his opinion, was to wipe their asses with it, one way or another—he remembered Catarella’s phone call and the explanation he’d come up with for it, which didn’t make sense. If Valente had needed him for some homicide that took place in Mazara, he would have called him at home, not at headquarters. He had concocted that explanation for convenience’s sake, to unburden his conscience and sleep for another two hours in peace.
o o o
“There’s absolutely nobody here!” Catarella told him as soon as he saw him, respectfully rising from his chair at the switchboard. Montalbano had decided, with Sergeant Fazio’s agreement, that this was the best place for him. Even with his habit of passing on the wildest, most unlikely phone calls, he would surely do less damage there than anywhere else.
“What is it, a holiday?”
“No, Chief, it’s not a holiday. They’re all down at the port because of that dead guy in Mazara I called you about, if you remember, sometime early this morning or thereabouts.” “But if the dead guy’s in Mazara, what are they all doing at the port?”
“No, Chief, the dead guy’s here.”
“But, Jesus Christ, if the dead guy’s here, why the hell are you telling me he’s in Mazara?”
“Because he was from Mazara. That’s where he worked.”
“Cat,think for a minute,so to speak . . . or whatever it is that you do: if a tourist from Bergamo was killed here inVigata, what would you tell me? That somebody was killed in Bergamo?” “Chief, the point is, this dead guy was just passing through. I mean, they shot him when he was on a fishing boat from Mazara.”
“Who shot him?”
“The Tunisians did, Chief.”
Montalbano gave up, demoralized.
“Did Augello also go down to the port?”
“Yessir.”
His second-in-command, Mimi Augello, would be de lighted if he didn’t show up at the port.
“Listen, Cat I have to write a report. I’m not in for anyone.”
o o o
“Hello, Chief ? I got Signorina Livia on the line here from Genoa. What do I do, Chief ? Should I put her on or not?”
“Put her on.”
“Since you said, not ten minutes ago, that you wasn’t in for nobody—”
“I said put her on, Cat . . . Hello, Livia? Hi.”
“Hi, my eye. I’ve been trying to call you all morning.
The phone at your house just rings and rings.”
“Really? I guess I forgot to plug it back in. You want to hear something funny? At five o’clock this morning, I got a phone call about—”
“I don’t want to hear anything funny. I tried calling at seven-thirty, at eight-fifteen, I tried again at—”
“Livia, I already told you I forgot—”
“You forgot
“Livia, I’m warning you. It’s windy outside and about to rain.”
“So what?”
“You know what. This kind of weather puts me in a bad mood. I wouldn’t want my words to be—”
“I get the picture. I just won’t call you anymore. You call me, if you feel like it.”
o o o
“Montalbano! How are you? Officer Augello told me everything. This is a very big deal, one that will certainly have international repercussions. Don’t you think?” He felt at sea. He had no idea what the commissioner was talking about. He decided to be generically affirmative.
“Oh, yes, yes.”
