Andrea Camilleri - The Dance of the Seagull

“Excellent. Later, in due time, we’ll go and have a look.”

“So in your opinion, after the second cash installment in exchange for the binoculars and telescope, the game was over?”

“At least that’s what they wanted her to believe. And then they shot her a few hours later. And that’s the real problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s recapitulate, that’ll help you to understand. The whole story begins with a guy named Manzella who wants to report some smuggling activity to his friend Fazio. Fazio doesn’t mention it to us, but the same day Fazio disappears, Signor Rizzica comes and tells us that he’s suspicious of the crew of one of his trawlers and thinks they might be using the boat for drug trafficking. Notice the difference?”

“You mean the coincidence?”

“Mimì, I speak good Italian because I read books. You, on the other hand, are as ignorant as a sheep and confuse words. I said difference , not coincidence .”

“And what is this thing, whatever it is?”

“You see? Is that any way to express yourself? You’ve become an honorary Catarellian. The difference lies in the fact that Manzella talked about smuggling, whereas Rizzica came to report drug trafficking.”

“What kind of difference is that? Don’t we say drug smuggling ?”

“Perhaps. But in common speech we use the word trafficking . Nobody ever says drug smuggling .”

“What is this, grammar school?”

“No. If it were, I would have already flunked you. I’m just pointing out an important distinction for you. Smuggling can involve just about anything: weapons, cigarettes, medicine, nuclear bomb materials.”

“But is Fazio so sure Manzella said smuggling ?”

“Absolutely certain. And it makes sense to me.”

“Why?”

“Let’s resume our recapitulation, so you can understand, too. Manzella waffles for a few days, then makes an appointment to meet Fazio at the port. Fazio doesn’t realize it’s a trap, because Manzella’s already been murdered. So he goes to the meeting. He gets shot and wounded, and his aggressors decide to finish him off far outside of town, at the three wells. But then the unexpected happens: Fazio manages to break free and pushes one of them into the well.”

“Who hasn’t been identified yet.”

“Right.”

A solemn fib, since all he had to do was pull the file out of the drawer, and Mimì would have known the man’s first and last names. The problem was that Montalbano couldn’t do or say anything, otherwise Angela was screwed.

“But,” the inspector continued, “we do know that one of the two men was our same Vittorio Carmona, since Fazio identified him immediately when I described him for him.”

“And then they killed the porter’s wife.”

“Exactly. Two killings—actually three, except that Fazio did it in self-defense—and an attempted murder that they’re going to try to make good on, I’m sure of it. Don’t you think that’s a lot?”

“A lot of what?”

“A lot of dead people, Mimì. And that’s the point. Too many killings for a simple case of drug trafficking. We’re not in Bolivia, after all.”

“And so?”

“And so there’s probably something really big at the bottom of all this.”

“If only we could know how Manzella found out about the whole thing and why he wanted to tell Fazio about it . . .” Augello started saying.

“Wait a minute,” said Montalbano.

He picked up the receiver.

“Catarella, has Forensics sent anything over to me?”

“Yessir, Chief. Jess right now. A litter.”

“Bring it to me, would you?”

As soon as Catarella brought it, he opened the envelope and handed the letter to Mimì.

“Is this written by a man or a woman?” asked Augello after reading it.

“I had the same question. So I asked Gargiulo to have a look at it, and he said it was definitely written by a man who wants to pass for a woman.”

“A transvestite? Transsexual?”

“Perhaps. Here, read this too.”

He opened the drawer, took out the letter from Manzella’s friend, the one with the photograph of the sailor, and handed it to him.

“There we go” was Mimì’s only comment.

“In my opinion,” said the inspector, “our friend Manzella, married and the father of an only son, at a certain point in his life discovered a completely different world. And he realized he was made for that world. It’s his own business and should be of no concern to us.”

“Relatively speaking,” said Mimì.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because just the other day Beba pointed out to me that if we were all like them, we would betray our purpose on earth, which is to procreate.”

“Who ever told you that’s our purpose in life? The Lord God himself, poissonally in poisson? Tell me the truth: Before you got married, when you were fucking everything that moved, didn’t you do everything within your power not to procreate? The human race could have become extinct for all you cared!”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Let’s just drop the subject, Mimì, it’s better that way. So, to continue. On a dark day for him, Manzella meets G. It’s love at first sight, if you’ll pardon the cliché and the pain it may cause you, great converted procreator that you are. They get together rather often, until Manzella discovers by chance, or perhaps because G tells him, that his friend is involved in some shady stuff. But he doesn’t want to lose him, and so he keeps his mouth shut. Until one day somebody tells him that G is cheating on him. And so he decides to take revenge and tells Fazio what’s going on. But then he has second thoughts and backtracks. He has his ups and downs. And ends up letting G know his intentions. G warns whoever he needs to warn, and they silence him. Make sense to you?”

“It’s a plausible hypothesis,” said Augello.

“It’s the only one possible,” said Montalbano, standing up. “But there’s no proof.”

“Where are you going?”

“To eat. But take care, Mimì. When you’re tailing the ambulance, ring me every fifteen minutes on the cell phone. Don’t forget that you can arrest Carmona whenever you like, since he’s a murderer and a fugitive from justice. But don’t forget that he’s also dangerous and won’t hesitate for a second to start shooting. And when he shoots, it’s not just to make noise.”

“All right then, if I can, I’ll let you listen to the shootout over the cell phone, to help pass the time,” said Mimì.

Actually the inspector had no intention whatsoever of going to eat. In fact, since what he had to do was something that didn’t appeal to him at all, his stomach felt so tight that not even a bread crumb could have passed his lips.

He was also certain that if he did eat, he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do afterwards.

There are things that cannot be faced on a full stomach. He knew this from past experience.

One time, when he’d had to watch Pasquano working on the corpse of a ten-year-old girl just after he’d finished eating, he spent a good fifteen minutes in the parking lot doubled over, throwing up his soul. It wasn’t what Pasquano was doing, which he was obliged to watch, that had made him sick. No, it was the way the doctor was cataloguing out loud the wounds the little girl had suffered ( deep cut in the left calf inflicted by the same blade that . . . broad laceration in the groin area probably produced by an object . . . ) and he had imagined—no, he had seen, actually seen the murder unfold, as if it were taking place right before his eyes, and he’d felt suffocated by the ferocity, the violence, the horrific bestiality . . .