THE TERRA-COTTA DOG
ANDREA CAMILLERI
Translated by Stephen Sartarelli
Viking
ALSO BY ANDREA CAMILLERI
The Shape of Water
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in 2002 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Translation copyright Stephen Sartarelli, 2002 All rights reserved
Originally published in Italian as Il cane di terracotta by Sellerio editore. 1996
Sellerio editore via Siracusa 50 Palermo
Publishers Note
This is a work of ficiton. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Camilleri,Andrea. [Cane di terracotta. English] The terra-cotta dog / by Andrea Camilleri ;
translated by Stephen Sartarelli.
p. cm.
ISBN: 1-4362-7198-3
I. Sartarelli, Stephen, 1954 II. Title.
PQ4863.A3894 C3613 2002 853'.914dc21 2002069172
Set in Bembo Designed by Jaye Zimet
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
THE TERRA-COTTA DOG
1
To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day, that is, blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind.
Inspector Salvo Montalbano had always belonged to this unhappy category of humanity. It was something passed on to him by his mother, a sickly woman who used to shut herself up in her bedroom, in the dark, whenever she had a headache, and when this happened one could make no noise about the house and had to tread lightly. His father, on the other hand, on stormy seas and smooth, always maintained an even keel, always the same unchanging state of mind, rain or shine.
This time, too, the inspector did not fail to live up to his inborn nature. No sooner had he stopped his car at the ten-kilometer marker along the Vig-Fela highway, as he had been told to do, than he felt like putting it back in gear and returning to town, bagging the whole operation. He managed to control himself, brought the car closer to the edge of the road, opened the glove compartment, and reached for the pistol he normally did not carry on his person. His hand, however, remained poised in midair: immobile, spellbound, he stared at the weapon.
The previous evening, a few hours before Gege Gullotta called to set up the whole mess - Gege being a small-
