o o o
Fazio heard the inspector call for him after waiting some forty-five minutes in the car, as he was starting to drift off into a leaden sleep. Upon entering the house, he immediately saw a drunken midget, who had vomited all over himself to boot. Unable to stand on his feet, the midget, leaning first against a chair and then against the wall, was trying to sing “
“Listen closely, Fazio,” said the inspector. “I’m going to tell you exactly what happened here, in case anybody questions you. I was returning home this evening, around midnight, when I saw, at the top of the lane that leads to my house, this man’s car, a BMW, blocking my path. He was completely drunk. I brought him home with me because he was in no condition to drive. He had no identification in his pockets, nothing. After several attempts to sober him up, I called you for help.” “Got it,” said Fazio.
“Now, here’s the plan. You’re going to pick him up—he doesn’t weigh much, in any case—put him in his BMW, get behind the wheel, and put him in a holding cell. I’ll follow behind you in the squad car.” “And how are you going to get back home afterwards?”
“You’ll have to drive me back. Sorry. Tomorrow morning, as soon as you see he’s recovered his senses, you’re to set him free.”
o o o
Back at home, he removed the pistol from the glove com-partment of his car where he always kept it, and stuck it in his belt. Then he took a broom and swept up all the frag-ments of Lohengrin Pera’s cell phone and glasses, and wrapped them in a sheet of newspaper. He took the little shovel that Mimi had given Francois and dug two deep holes almost directly below the veranda. In one he put the bundle and covered it up, in the other he dumped the papers and documents, now shredded into little pieces. These he sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire. When they had turned to ash, he covered up this hole as well. The sky was beginning to lighten. He went into the kitchen, brewed a pot of strong coffee, and drank it. Then he shaved and took a shower. He wanted to be completely relaxed when he sat down to enjoy the videotape.
He put the little cassette inside the bigger one, as Nicolo had instructed him to do, then turned on the TV and the VCR. After a few seconds with the screen still blank, he got up and checked the appliances, certain he’d made some wrong connection. He was utterly hopeless with this sort of thing, to say nothing of computers, which terrified him.
Nothing doing this time, either. He popped out the larger cassette, opened it, looked at it. The little cassette seemed poorly inserted, so he pushed it all the way in. He put the whole package back into the VCR. Still nothing on the goddamn screen. What the hell wasn’t working? As he was asking himself this, he froze, seized by doubt. He dashed to the phone.
“Hello?” answered the voice at the other end, pronounc-ing each letter with tremendous effort.
“Nicolo? This is Montalbano.”
“Who the hell else could it be, Jesus fucking Christ?”
“I have to ask you something.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry, really sorry. Remember the videocamera you lent me?”
“Yeah?”
“Which button was I supposed to push to record? The top one or the bottom one?”
“The top one, asshole.”
He’d pushed the wrong button.
o o o
He got undressed again, put on his bathing suit, bravely entered the freezing water, and began to swim. After tiring and turning over to float on his back, he started thinking that it was not, in the end, so terrible that he hadn’t recorded anything. The important thing was that the colonel believed he had and would continue to do so. He returned to shore, went back in the house, threw himself down on the bed, still wet, and fell asleep.
o o o
When he woke up it was past nine, and he had the distinct impression he couldn’t go back to work and resume his everyday chores. He decided to inform Mimi.
“Hallo! Hallo! Whoozat talkin’ onna line?”
“It’s Montalbano, Cat.”
“Izzat really ’n’ truly you in person, sir?”
“It’s really and truly me in person. Let me speak with In spector Augello.”
“Hello, Salvo. Where are you?”
“At home. Listen, Mimi, I don’t think I can come in to work.”
“Are you sick?”
“No. I just don’t feel up to it, not today nor tomorrow. I need to rest for four or five days. Can you cover for me?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. Don’t hang up.”
