'No, but I'm shivering anyway.'
He stank of fear. As Montalbano knew from experience, fear had a smell all its own, sour, yellow-green in color.
'Do you know who that was who got killed?'
'Gege, a lot of people get killed. Who are you talking about?'
'Pietro Gullo, that's who, the one they drove to the Pasture after they killed him.'
'Was he a client of yours?'
'A client? If anything, I was his client. He was Tano the Greek's man, his collector. The same guy who told me Tano wanted to meet you.'
'Why so surprised, Gege. It's the usual story: Winner take all. They use the same system in politics. Tano's businesses are changing hands, so they're liquidating everybody who worked with him. You were neither an associate nor a dependent of Tano's. So what are you worried about?'
'No,' Gege said firmly,' that's not how it is. That's not what they told me in Trapani.'
'So how is it, then?'
'They said there was an agreement.'
'An agreement?'
'Oh, yes. An agreement between you and Tano. They said the shoot-out was bogus, a sham, a masquerade. And they're convinced that the people who staged this masquerade were me, Pietro Gullo, and somebody else they're sure to kill one of these days.'
Montalbano remembered the telephone call he'd received after the press conference, when an anonymous voice had called him a lousy fucking actor.
'They feel offended,' Gege continued. 'They can't bear the thought that you and Tano spit in their faces, made them look like chumps. It means more to them than the weapons. Now you tell me:What am I supposed to do?'
'Are you sure they have it in for you too?'
'I swear to God. Why else did they bring Gullo all the way to the Pasture, which is my turf ? You can't get any clearer than that!'
The inspector thought of Alcide Maraventano and what he'd said about codes.
...
It must have been a change in the density of the darkness, or a split-second glimmer seen out of the corner of one eye, but the fact is that an instant before the explosion of gunfire, Montalbano's body obeyed a series of impulses frantically transmitted by his brain: he bent over, opening the car door with his left hand, and hurled himself out while all around him was a thunder of gunshots, shattering glass, plates of metal flying apart, quick red flashes brightening the dark. Montalbano remained motionless, wedged between Gege's car and his own, and only then did he realize he had his pistol in hand. When Gege had come inside his car, he'd set it on the dashboard. He must have grabbed it by instinct. After the pandemonium, a leaden silence reigned. Nothing moved. There was only the sound of the agitated sea. Then, about twenty yards away, to the side where the beach ended and the hill of marl began, there was a voice:
'Everything okay?'
'Everything okay,' said another voice, this one very close.
'Make sure they're both finished, then we can go.'
Montalbano tried to picture the movements the man would have to make to verify that they were dead: chuff, chuff went his footsteps in the sodden sand. Now the man must be right beside the car; in a moment he would bend down to look inside.
Montalbano leapt to his feet and fired. A single shot. He clearly heard the thud of a body collapsing on the sand, then a gasping, a kind of gurgling, then nothing.
'Juj, erything all right?' asked the distant voice.
Without getting back in his car, Montalbano, through the open door, put his hand on the high-beam switch and waited. He could hear nothing. He decided to try his luck and started counting in his head. When he got to fifty, he turned on the brights and stood straight up. Swathed in light, about ten yards away, appeared a man with a submachine gun in hand, frozen in surprise. Montalbano fired, the man immediately reacted, firing blindly into the dark. Feeling something like a tremendous punch in his left side, the inspector staggered, leaned his left hand against the car, then fired again, three shots in a row. The man in the lights sort of jumped in the air, turned around, and started running, as Montalbano saw the white beam of the headlights begin to turn yellow, his eyes clouding over, head spinning. He sat down on the sand, realizing that his legs could no longer support him, and leaned back against the side of the car.
He waited for the pain, and when it came it was so intense he started howling and crying like a child.
17
As soon as he awoke, he realized he was in a hospital room, and he remembered everything in minute detail: the meeting with Gege, the words they exchanged, the shooting. Memory failed him only from the moment he found himself between the two cars, lying on the wet sand with an unbearable pain in his side. But it did not fail him completely. He remembered, for example, Mim Augello's contorted face, his cracking voice.
'How do you feel? How do you feel? The ambulance is coming now, it's nothing, just stay calm.'
How had Mim managed to find him?
