The Snack Thief

“In what way?”

“Well, he became nervous, never laughed. In fact, he’d pick a fight and make a big to-do over the smallest things.”

“Any idea what might have been the cause?”

“One day I asked him about it. It was a health problem, he said. The first stages of arteriosclerosis, that’s what his doctor told him.”

o o o

The first thing he did in Lapecora’s office was sit down at the typewriter. He opened the drawer to the little secretarial table and found some stationery printed with the old letterhead and yellowed with age. He took out a sheet, reached into his coat pocket, and removed the envelope that Signora Antonietta had given him. He copied its address on the typewriter. A foolproof test if there ever was one. The r’s jumped above the line, the a’s dropped below, and the o was a little black ball. The address on the anonymous letter’s envelope had been written by this same typewriter.

He looked outside. Signora Vasile Cozzo’s housekeeper, standing on a stepladder, was cleaning the windows. He opened the window and called out.

“Hello! Is the signora there?”

“Wait,” said the girl, giving him a dirty look. Clearly she wasn’t very fond of the inspector.

She stepped down from the ladder, disappeared, and a short while later Signora Clementina’s head appeared just above the sill. There was no need for them to raise their voices so much, as they were less than ten yards away from each other.

“Excuse me, signora, but if I’m not mistaken, you told me that, sometimes, the young man, do you remember . . . ?”

“Yes, the young man.”

“You said he used to type sometimes. Is that right?”

“Yes, but he didn’t use the office typewriter. He would bring his own portable.”

“Are you sure? Might it have been a computer?”

“No, it was a portable typewriter.”

What kind of cockamamie way to conduct an investigation was this? He suddenly realized the two of them must look like a couple of old housewives gossiping across their balconies.

After saying good-bye to Clementina, to regain some semblance of dignity in his own eyes he began a detailed search of the office like a true professional, looking for the package the printer had sent. But he never found it; nor did he find a single envelope or sheet of paper with the new letterhead in English.

They’d removed everything.

As for the portable typewriter Lapecora’s bogus nephew used to bring along instead of using the office machine, he thought he’d come up with a plausible explanation for this.

The young man had no use for the keyboard of the old Olivetti. Apparently, he needed one with a different alphabet.

1 0 1

h2> He left the office, got in his car, and drove to Montelusa. At Customs Police headquarters, he asked for Captain Aliotta, who was his friend. They let him in immediately.

“It’s been so long since we spent an evening together!

I’m not blaming you. It’s my fault, too,” said Aliotta, embracing Montalbano.

“Let’s forgive each other and try to rectify the situation soon.”

“Okay. What can I do for you?”

“I need the name of that sergeant of yours I spoke to on the phone last year, the one who gave me that precious information about the supermarket in Vigata. The case of the weapons traffic, remember?” “Of course. His name’s Lagana.”

“Could I speak with him?”

“What’s it about?”

“He would have to come to Vigata for half a day at the most, I think. I’d like him to examine the files of a business owned by that guy who was murdered in an elevator.”

“I’ll call him for you.”

Sergeant Lagana was a burly fifty-year-old with a crew cut and gold-rimmed glasses. Montalbano took an immediate liking to him.

He explained in great detail what he wanted from him and gave him the keys to Lapecora’s office. The sergeant looked at his watch.

“I can be in Vigata at three o’clock this afternoon, if the captain has no objection.”

o o o

Just to be thorough, once the inspector had finished chatting with Aliotta, he asked if he could use his phone and called headquarters, where he hadn’t shown his face since the previous evening.