“No. Are you sure it wasn’t the ship’s machine gun?”
“Of course I’m sure. Those patrol boats, you know, are equipped with weapons that can shoot down an airplane.”
“Really? Your scientific precision simply amazes me, Jacomu.”
“How do you expect me to talk to an ignoramus like you?”
o o o
After Montalbano related the contents of the phone call, they sat awhile in silence. When Valente finally spoke, he said exactly what the inspector was thinking.
“Are we sure the patrol boat was Tunisian?”
o o o
Since it was getting late,Valente invited the inspector to his house for lunch. But as Montalbano already had firsthand experience of the vice-commissioner’s wife’s ghastly cooking, he declined, saying he had to leave for Vigata at once.
He got in his car and, after a few miles, saw a trattoria right on the shore. He stopped, got out, and sat down at a table. He did not regret it.
1 5 7
12
It had been hours since he last spoke with Livia. He felt guilty for this; she was probably worried about him. While waiting for them to bring him a
“Everything okay there?”
“Your phone call woke us up.”
So much for being worried about him.
“You were asleep?”
“Yes. We had a very long swim. The water was warm.” They were living it up, without him.
“Have you eaten?” asked Livia, purely out of politeness.
“I had a sandwich. I’m on the road. I’ll be back in Vigata in an hour at the most.”
“Are you coming home?”
“No, I have to go to the office. I’ll see you this evening.” It was surely his imagination, but he thought he heard something like a sigh of relief at the other end.
o o o
But it took him more than an hour to get back to Vigata. Just outside of town, five minutes away from the office, the car suddenly decided to go on strike. There was no way to get it started again. Montalbano got out, opened the hood, looked at the motor. It was a purely symbolic gesture, a sort of rite of exorcism, since he didn’t know a thing about cars. If someone had told him the motor consisted of a string or a twisted rubber band as on certain toy vehicles, he might well have believed it. A carabinieri squad car with two men inside passed by, then stopped and backed up. They’d had second thoughts. One was a corporal, the other a ranking officer at the wheel. The inspector had never seen them before, and they didn’t know Montalbano.
“Anything we can do?” the corporal asked politely.
“Thanks. I don’t understand why the engine suddenly died.”
They pulled up to the edge of the road and got out. The afternoon Vigata-Fiacca bus stopped a short distance away, and an elderly couple got on.
“Motor looks fine to me,” was the officer’s diagnosis.
Then he added with a smile: “Shall we have a look at the gas tank?”
There wasn’t a drop.
“Tell you what, Mr. . . .”
“Martinez, Claudio Martinez. I’m an accountant,” said Montalbano.
No one must ever know that Inspector Montalbano was rescued by the carabinieri.
“All right, Mr. Martinez, you wait here. We’ll go to the nearest filling station and bring back enough gasoline to get you back to Vigata.”
“You’re very kind.”
He got back in the car, fired up a cigarette, and immediately heard an ear-splitting horn blast behind him. It was the Fiacca-Vigata bus wanting him to get out of the way. He got out and used gestures to indicate that his car had broken down. The bus driver steered around him with a great show of effort and, once past the inspector’s car, stopped at the same point where the other bus, going in the other direction, had stopped. Four people got off.
Montalbano sat there staring at the bus as it headed towards Vigata. Then the carabinieri returned.
o o o
By the time he got to the office it was already four o’clock.
