Andrea Camilleri - The Dance of the Seagull

“All right,” the other consented.

“What do you have to tell me?”

“Inspector, I want to tell you straightaway just to get it off my chest. I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“When I came to you an’ reported my suspicions. I was wrong.”

“So it wasn’t true the captain and crew of that fishing boat were involved in drug trafficking?”

“No sir.”

“Then why are they sometimes late coming back to port?”

“Inspector, that boat is jinxed. There’s a lot o’ boats, not just trawlers, even ships, that are born under a bad star. An’ they carry the hex with ’em wherever they go. I had the engine changed, an’ now iss never late anymore. So . . .”

“You’ll have to come into the station anyway, I’m sorry. We’ll set down in writing what you have to say, file a report, and then you can leave.”

They’d reached the last storehouse, almost at the end of the wharf. There the floodlights weren’t on, and there wasn’t anyone about.

“Who does this warehouse belong to?”

“Me.”

“Why’s it closed?”

“Inspector, I only use this warehouse when there’s really big hauls an’ the other warehouses aren’t enough. Tonight I’s already told that the haul isn’t so big.”

Therefore that was the warehouse they took Fazio to, right after shooting him.

Inspector Montalbano, since you’ll probably be assigned the investigation if they kill me, and they probably will, I hope that, if you are as good as people say, you’ll be able to find this letter easily. This all started when, at an unusual sort of gathering in Montelusa, I met Giovanna Lonero, a thirty-year-old transsexual. Since I felt immediately attracted to her, she confided to me that she lived in almost total isolation in an apartment in Vigàta, at the disposal of her lover, whose name she refused to tell me. She only went out at night, and when her lover was away on business. I was able to get her cell phone number, but she didn’t want mine because if her man ever found it, she could get in a lot of trouble. After that night, I called her almost every day, but her cell phone was either always turned off or she just wouldn’t answer. Finally she answered once and said she really wanted to see me, she had been thinking about me a lot, but didn’t dare let herself be seen out and about with me or any other man at all. She agreed to come to my place the next day around midnight. And so we discovered we lived very close to each other (at the time I lived in Via della Forcella, and she in Via delle Magnolie), and therefore she wouldn’t need to take her car, which might have attracted attention. She arrived on time and stayed with me until five o’clock in the morning. This first encounter was followed by many more. At this point I must confess that I own a large telescope that I use to spy on people in the intimacy of their homes. One night, totally by chance, I pointed it towards the outer part of the western wharf at the port, during the busy period when they unload the fishing trawlers and load the catch onto refrigerator trucks and into the cold storage houses. After that time, every so often I would look away from the lit-up windows of the nearby apartment houses and watch the traffic on the wharf. And that was how I happened to witness a scene that looked very strange to me. There was a refrigerator truck stationed in a much less busy spot, in front of the last storehouse at the end of the wharf, and I saw four large crates being unloaded very hurriedly from this truck and then reloaded onto a trawler that immediately went off to dock inside the harbor. Meanwhile the refrigerator truck had been loaded with crates of fish and then left. Three nights later, as I was watching the same scene unfold, Giovanna arrived. She also wanted to have a look, but then immediately stepped back in horror and said: “Oh my God, that’s Franco!” The tall, slender man of about forty was her lover, Franco Sinagra. She was upset, as if the man could see her in turn in my room. She didn’t want to stay, and left not long after. Several times when we got together after that, I tried very hard to find out a little more from her. Meanwhile I got down to work on my own, and someone from my social circle (it’s a very gossipy circle) told me that Franco Sinagra was the surviving representative of the Mafia family of the same name and was forced to keep his relationship with Giovanna extremely secret because strict conformity with so-called normal behavior was still the rule among mafiosi. On top of this he was married to the daughter of a boss from Rivera, and his father-in-law would have never forgiven him. In short, if the whole affair ever became known, he risked losing everything, all his power and wealth. Giovanna also told me he was a stingy man who had a sort of tic; that is, he needed to appropriate everything that came within his reach, to own it himself. He had even taken away two little pieces of cheap jewelry of Giovanna’s, after which she nicknamed him “the Thieving Magpie.” Anyway, little by little, I came on my own to the logical conclusion that whatever the sort of traffic he was involved in, it had to be something extremely important, if a Mafia chief was directing operations instead of some lackey. Inspector, at this point I have no qualms about admitting to you that Giovanna and I realized we were in love. If the word “love” bothers you in this context, then replace it with the word “passion.” And that was how I hatched a plan, without ever telling her, to eliminate Franco Sinagra so I could have Giovanna all to myself. I also managed, from hints and suggestions from her, to figure out what the mysterious traffic involved: they were ferrying chemical weapons provided by the Russian Mafia to an Arab country. Involved in the traffic were two trawlers owned by a certain Rizzica, who knows everything. But there’s more: Giovanna let slip that the person pulling the strings in the whole affair was the Honorable Alvaro Di Santo, currently Undersecretary of Foreign Commerce. One night she told me that Franco was supposed to be flying to Rome the following day. She was pleased with the prospect of being completely free to spend a few nights with me. I immediately disappointed her. I told her that the following day I also had to go away, to Palermo to see my mother, who was unwell. Without arousing her suspicion, I got her to tell me at what time Franco’s flight was supposed to be leaving Palermo. I was so taken up by my plan, Inspector, that I didn’t realize the possible consequences of my actions. To make a long story short, I took the same flight and, in Rome, didn’t once let him out of my sight. And I had a stroke of luck: I managed to take a picture of him with my cell phone, in a restaurant on the outskirts of town, together with Honorable Di Santo, whom I was able to identify from a photo in a copy of the parliamentary directory I had gotten my hands on. Then, using a camera with a telephoto lens that I’d borrowed, I photographed Franco in action with his crates. But one unlucky day a friend of mine revealed to me that while we were away (while Franco and I were away, that is), Giovanna had gone out to enjoy herself in Fiacca. In a fit of jealous rage, I decided to call Fazio and informed on everybody, including Giovanna, and broke off all relations with her. I even changed my address. But with Fazio I sort of had to beat around the bush, because Giovanna then suddenly reappeared in my life. But I found her somehow different from before. I thought: Is she sincere or is she hiding something from me? Maybe she will have to answer this question herself, Inspector, when I can no longer hear her.

Filippo Manzella

P.S.: the photos are in a safety deposit box in my name at the Vigàta branch of the Banca dell’Isola.