The Snack Thief

“Yes, sir!”

He went into the bedroom, released Francois from Livia’s embrace, picked the child up, took him into the living room, and put him down to sleep on the sofa that Livia had already made up. He then took a shower and got into bed.

Livia, though asleep, felt him beside her and nudged closer with her back to him, pressing her whole body against him.

She had always liked to do it this way, half-asleep, in that pleasant no-man’s-land between the country of sleep and the city of consciousness. This time, however, as soon as Montalbano began to caress her, she moved away.

“No. Francois might wake up.”

For a moment, Montalbano stiffened, petrified. He hadn’t considered this other aspect of familial bliss.

o o o

He got up. Sleep, in any case, had abandoned him. On their way back to Marinella, he’d had something in mind that he wanted to do, and now he remembered what it was.

“Valente? Montalbano here. Sorry to bother you at home, especially at this hour. I need to see you at once, it’s extremely urgent. Would it be all right if I came to Mazara tomorrow morning, around ten?” “Sure. Could you give me some—”

“It’s a complicated, confusing story. I’m going purely on a hunch. It’s about that Tunisian who was killed.”

“Ben Dhahab.”

“Just for starters, his name was Ahmed Moussa.”

“Holy shit.”

“Exactly.”

1 4 3

0p>

11

“There’s not necessarily any connection,” observed Vice-Commissioner Valente after Montalbano had finished telling his story.

“If that’s your opinion, then do me a big favor. We’ll keep each to his own side: you go ahead and investigate why the Tunisian used an assumed name, and I’ll look for the reasons for Lapecora’s murder and Karima’s disappearance. And if we happen to cross paths along the way, we’ll pretend we don’t know each other and won’t even say hello. Okay?” “Jesus! Why don’t you fly straight off the handle!” Inspector Angelo Tomasino, a thirty- year-old with the look of a bank teller, the kind who hand-counts five hundred thousand lire in small bills ten times before handing them over to you, threw down his ace, in support of his boss: “Anyway, it’s not necessarily true.”

“What’s not necessarily true?”

“That Ben Dhahab is an assumed name. His full name might have been Ben Ahmed Dhahab Moussa. Who knows, with these Arab names?”

“I won’t bother you any longer,” said Montalbano, standing up.

His blood was boiling, and Valente, who had known him a long time, realized this.

“What should we do, in your opinion?” he asked simply.

The inspector sat back down.

“Find out, for example, who knew him here in Mazara.

How he managed to sign on to that fishing boat. If his papers were in order. Go search his living quarters. Do I have to tell you to do these things?”

“No,” said Valente. “I just like to hear you say them.” He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to Montalbano. It was a search warrant for the home of Ben Dhahab, complete with stamp and signature.

“This morning I woke up the judge at the crack of dawn,” Valente said, smiling. “Care to come along for the ride?”

o o o

The widow Ernestina Locicero, nee Pipia, was keen to point out that she wasn’t a landlady by profession. She did own, by the grace of her dear departed, a catojo, that is, a little ground-floor room that in its day had been a barbershop or, as they say now, a hair salon, though whatever they say, it was certainly not a salon. The gentlemen would see it soon enough, and anyway, what need was there for that whatdoyoucallit, that search warren? They had only to come and say, Signora Pipia, this is how it is, and she wouldn’t have made any trouble. The only people who make trouble are the ones who got something to hide, whereas she, well, as anyone in Mazara could testify—anyone except for the sons of bitches and bastards—she’d always led, and continued to lead, a clean life, squeaky clean. What was the late Tunisian man like? Look, gentlemen, on no account would she ever have rented a room to an African—not to one who was black as ink nor to one whose skin din’t look no different than a Mazarese’s.

Nothing doing. She was scared of those Africans. So why did she rent the room to Ben Dhahab? He was so well-bred, gentlemen! A real man of distinction, the likes of which you don’t find anymore, not even in Mazara. Yes, sir, he spoke ’Talian, or least managed to get his point across most of the time. He even showed her his passport —“Just a second,” said Montalbano.

“Just a minute,” said Valente at the same time.

Yessirs, his passport. All in order. Written the way the Arabs write, and there were even words written in a