Andrea Camilleri - The Dance of the Seagull

Mimì finished reading the letter, laid it down on the desk, and then pushed it with his index finger towards the inspector. While reading, he hadn’t had the slightest reaction, and even now he was cool as a cucumber.

“First of all,” he began, “I’d like to know how you came into possession of this letter.”

Mimì was speaking Italian, a bad sign. Maybe he wasn’t as calm as he appeared. Montalbano realized he’d made a mistake in giving him the letter without a word of explanation. He improvised a modified version of what he had planned to tell him. It seemed more logical.

“I got a call from Fazio when I was in a restaurant. He’d just remembered an address that Manzella had given him. I finished eating and went there. And that’s where I found the letter, which was—”

“Stop glossing over the details. I’m a cop just like you. Got that? Was the door unlocked?”

“No.”

“So how’d you get in?”

“Well, I had a key that happened—”

“When are you gonna stop feeding me bullshit?” Augello interrupted him.

The inspector decided it was best to tell him everything.

“Were you armed?”

“No.”

“You know, with all the respect due a superior, I must say you’re a perfect idiot. Sinagra could have left someone there to guard the place.”

“Fine, but the fact is, he didn’t. Can we talk reasonably?”

“About what? The letter? There’s nothing to talk about. Now you’re going to put it back in the envelope, give me the key that you happened to have, and so on and so forth, and I’m going to go back and put it back in the picture frame.”

“And then what?”

“And then you are going to officially order me to go and investigate what happened in that house, and I will discover that Manzella was murdered there. I’ll call Forensics and arrange things so that Arquà, or someone in his place, finds the letter. Never in a million years will he turn it over to me, and despite my insistence he’ll take it directly to the commissioner, at which point we can walk away whistling. As expected.”

“ Pilatus docet , in short,” Montalbano said bitterly.

“It really gets on my nerves when you speak Latin.”

“And what do you think the commissioner will do?”

“I couldn’t fucking care less.”

“I don’t like your line of reasoning, Mimì.”

“Oh, no? You’re the one who taught me to look at things concretely!”

“Why, aren’t the things stated in the letter concrete?”

“Of course they’re concrete! But totally useless. There isn’t a single bit of evidence that would hold up.”

“What are you talking about? Tomorrow Rizzica’s coming, and we’re gonna put the screws on him. He’s neck-deep in this. The warehouse where the truck stops is his, the trawlers are his, and—”

“How do you know the warehouse is his?”

“He told me himself. I ran into him a few hours ago at the port, and he even told me that when he comes in today, he’s going to explain how it was all a misunderstanding and that the real problem was with the trawler’s motor.”

“You see? When he found out they’d shot one of us, the guy shat his pants and came up with an alibi. And he’ll have no trouble defending himself. He’ll start screaming: ‘But I was the first person to report that something seemed fishy! Why else would I notify the police?’ And bear in mind that he’s more afraid of Sinagra than we are.”

“We can try another approach. We can organize a stakeout, and the minute the refrigerator trucks arrive with Sinagra, we burst in and—”

“—and get the case taken away from us immediately. Can you imagine them leaving an investigation into chemical weapons traffic with an Arab country in the hands of a small-time police inspector and his even smaller-time assistant? No way. The spooks’ll come in, the good ones and the bad ones, and two days later—”

“—Undersecretary Di Santo’ll come on TV and say it was all a big mistake and the substances were actually medicines for the children of Darfur.”

“I see you’re starting to catch on.”

“Yes, but the photographs—”

“Salvo, assuming you even get permission to open that deposit box, assuming the photos are even there, and assuming the judge lets you keep them for more than two seconds, those photos don’t mean a fucking thing!”

“What are you saying? An undersecretary eating at the same table with a mafioso of the caliber of Franco Sinagra?”

“Oh, right! What a scandal! How shameful! No matter what they do, our elected representatives don’t give a fuck anymore about public opinion! They take drugs, frequent whores, rob, steal, cheat, sell themselves, commit perjury, make deals with the Mafia, and what happens to them? The newspapers talk about it for, oh, three days maybe? Then everybody forgets about it. But you—you who exposed the scandal, they won’t forget about you, nosirree, you can count on that, and they’ll make you pay for it.”

“We could ask Tommaseo for authorization to listen to Sinagra’s phone conversations with—”

“—with the Honorable Di Santo? But what fucking world do you live in, anyway? Nowadays there isn’t a single judge who’ll grant you that authorization, and he couldn’t do it even if he wanted to, because these people know how to shield themselves. He would have to ask for the authorization of parliament first, and then hope and pray they granted it!”

Montalbano listened to all this with a sort of mounting fatigue. Because these were words he himself might have said. But he realized that to continue to talk to Mimì would be a waste of breath. He would never manage to make him change his position. The best thing was to send him home to bed. He sat there for a few moments in silence, as if reflecting on what Mimì had said, then leaned forward, took the envelope, put the letter back inside, and handed it to Augello, who put it in his pocket.

“Tomorrow morning, no later than eight, I want you to go to Via Bixio. Take Gallo along, and leave Galluzzo with me here.”

“All right. But sleep easy. It couldn’t have been done any other way.”

In the light of ignoble common sense, no, it couldn’t have been done any other way. The argument Mimì had just made was his own, yes, but it was only the first part of the argument that he, in Mimì’s place, would have made.

The second part, in fact, would have begun as follows: Granted all of the above, what can we do now to screw them all, from the Honorable Di Santo to Franco Sinagra, without having to take it up the you-know-what ourselves? That was the question.

He would have to find the answer all by himself. By coming up with an idea that it scared him even to think about. Dropping everything was not an option.

18

He got up to go home when his cell phone rang. It was Angela.

“Listen, are you still at the station?” she asked.

“Yes, why?”

“I want to see you, even if it’s only for five minutes. I have something extremely important to tell you.”

She was scared, and her voice sounded choked. But he didn’t want to waste any time with her. He absolutely needed to go home to Marinella and reflect in peace.

“I already told you it’s not possible. Has something happened?”

“I’ve heard from that person I told you about.”

Carmona. Like all fugitives from justice, he came and went as he pleased without anyone, police and carabinieri included, ever recognizing him.

“What did he want?”

“To know if we were seeing each other tonight. I told him you were busy and we would see each other tomorrow. And then he told me I had to do something.”

“What was that?”