Andrea Camilleri - The Dance of the Seagull

“I can’t tell you over the phone.”

She was very scared. Her voice was trembling.

“Try to stay calm. You can tell me tomorrow evening.”

“No. I absolutely have to tell you tonight, so that you can—”

“All right, listen, I can see you for five minutes, but let’s meet halfway between here and Fiacca, so I can get back to the station as quickly as possible. Have you finished your shift?”

“I got off fifteen minutes ago.”

“Do you know the Torrisi Motel? If we leave right now, we can meet there in forty-five minutes. Oh, and don’t get out of your car when you arrive, just wait for me in the parking lot. And make sure nobody follows you.”

While driving there, he was thinking not of what he would say to Angela, but of how to corner Sinagra and, by association, Di Santo with him. Because what Mimì had called to his attention was all well and good, but it was also true that everything has its limit. For example: it’s one thing to go out to eat with someone vaguely associated with the Mafia, and it’s another thing to be seen in the company of a mafioso publicly known to have ordered two murders and another attempted murder. Knowledge of the fact would make Sinagra’s arrest all the more sensational and the public disgracing of the honorable undersecretary all the more effective. So the problem came down to one thing only: how to screw Sinagra?

When the inspector pulled into the parking lot, which was almost entirely in darkness, he still hadn’t found an answer. He got out of the car. There were three other cars in the lot. One flashed its brights.

“Get in,” said Angela, opening the car door.

The moment he was inside, she threw her arms around him and gave him a long kiss.

“I’m not sure I wasn’t followed,” she said in a low voice as the inspector, still numb from the unexpected attack, was regaining consciousness. “So we should pretend we’re meeting here to . . .”

“Then let’s get into the backseat,” Montalbano suggested. “Like lovers who, even when they have only five minutes . . .”

They got out and went in back.

“Lie down,” Angela ordered him.

The inspector obeyed and, after climbing on top of him, with her left leg on the seat next to his and her right foot resting on the floor of the car, she held him tight. Montalbano couldn’t move.

“Carmona told me that tomorrow night I’m supposed to make you drink a lot and get very tired. And that when I see that you are in a deep sleep . . .”

The problem was that when she spoke in her present state of agitation, moving her hips one minute and her breasts the next, it had a devastating effect on the inspector.

“. . . when I see that you are in a deep sleep, I am supposed to go and open the door to let them in. But, are you listening to me?”

“Hmm?” said Montalbano.

At that exact moment he was reviewing in his mind Book I of The Iliad , “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus . . . ,” *after having first tried to think in rapid succession of the last funeral he’d been to, two or three massacres, and an old woman who’d been murdered and quartered . . . But the girl’s weight, body heat, and breath were too much for him to blot out. He was making a superhuman effort to make what he was feeling, well, intangible.

“They want me to open—”

“Right, right, I got that. But why?”

“Carmona says they want to photograph you naked with me beside you, also naked. To blackmail you.”

“And why was it so urgent for you to tell me this?”

“Because I’m not convinced that all they want to do is take your picture. And also to let you know, so that you can maybe catch Carmona in the act.”

“You’re right. I’ll see what I can do, thanks.”

Detached, yes, but always polite, our Inspector Montalbano. Always compos sui (but why the hell was he thinking in Latin?), even when he had a beautiful young woman lying on top of him.

“And now, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I really have to go.”

Angela got off him, he sat up, and they got out of the car and kissed. Exactly like two lovers who had just released a little of their pent-up desire.

“I’ll ring you tomorrow,” the inspector said.

He waited for her to leave, then went into the motel.

“Excuse me, but could I use your bathroom?” he asked the porter, who knew him.

“Of course, Inspector.”

Locking himself inside, he took off his jacket and shirt, turned on the faucet, and put his steaming head under the running water.

Compromising photos, right! They would take those afterwards, since the way things would have gone would have been as follows: Carmona and his friend would have gone into his house with the camera and had Angela lie down next to him, naked. Then Carmona would have pulled out his gun and killed them both. Almost a repeat of what they did to Manzella. Then they would have arranged the corpses in more or less obscene poses and photographed them. The newspaper and TV headlines: INSPECTOR MONTALBANO AND HIS YOUNG LOVER KILLED WHILE SLEEPING. A CRIME OF PASSION? And then it would turn out that they were shot by some jealous ex-lover of Angela.

Everybody’d already seen the movie, but people never got tired of seeing it again.

But why were they aiming at him? Maybe Mimì was right. Maybe the Via Bixio house was under surveillance. Their suspicions must have been aroused when the inspector didn’t immediately call Forensics but had kept the whole business to himself. This silence got them worried and upset. They must have thought: If Montalbano was acting this way, it must mean he found something very damning to us in there. Better silence him before he takes any action.

And this meant he didn’t have much time left to neutralize Sinagra. By this point it was an open duel.

He needed to remain lucid for at least another two hours. He prepared the large espresso pot, and when the coffee bubbled up, he took the whole thing out to the veranda. The night was a little chilly, and he also felt chilled for his own reasons, as the weariness of the day began to make itself felt. But he didn’t put his jacket back on to go outside. The cold actually helped him to think. By now he knew Manzella’s letter by heart and could repeat it to himself word for word. Which was what he started to do, changing registers each time: first as a lament, then stressing practically every syllable, then pausing after each line. The fifth time through, one sentence in particular struck him: a stingy man who had a sort of tic; he would appropriate everything that came within his reach . . . Giovanna had nicknamed him “the Thieving Magpie.”

The Thieving Magpie. What did it mean? Why did this seem so important to him? The phrase started repeating itself in his head, together with certain passages of Rossini’s music, the way it used to happen with old vinyl records when the needle would get stuck on a single syllable or note.

At last there was a flash of light.

A crazy thought, real loony-bin stuff, like betting everything he owned on the roulette wheel—no, better yet, like a sort of Russian roulette, a game of chance where if he got it wrong, he would be out of the police force the very next day. But he couldn’t think of anything else, and it seemed like the best option.

He studied it from every possible, imaginable angle. With a little luck, it might work. He looked at his watch. Two A.M.

He got up, went into the house, and dialed Angela’s number. After calming her down from the fright he’d given her, he asked her: