Angelica's Smile (13 page)

He felt as if he was in the Garden of Eden. The scent of jasmine dulled his senses.

Angelica turned on a little lamp that gave off a wan light.

“Where should we sit?”

There were only two possibilities.

A very low sort of beach bed, wide enough to fit two people, and a three-seater swing.

Both the little bed and the swing had a small table beside them, with whisky, glasses, and ashtray.

“Let’s go on the swing,” Montalbano said prudently.

It was comfortable and covered with cushions. And it was very close to the outside wall and therefore not visible from the buildings nearby.

“Whisky?”

“Yes.”

Angelica filled a glass halfway, handed it to him, and poured herself half a glass as well. Then she went and turned off the light.

“It’ll only attract mosquitoes.”

She sat down beside Montalbano.

“Do you tend the plants yourself?”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. A gardener comes twice a week at six in the morning. He’s a bit expensive, but I love my flowers, my roses, too much to do without them.”

Silence fell.

He was looking at Angelica’s profile, which could have been drawn by a great master, and her long hair, which swayed imperceptibly in the air, lightly tossed every so often by a faint breeze as tender as a caress.

She was so beautiful!

His whole being wanted her, but part of his brain was still putting up resistance.

The swing’s rocking motion brought their bodies into contact.

And neither of them made as if to move away.

On the contrary. Without seeming to, they each pressed harder against the other.

Montalbano enjoyed her warmth against the side of his body.

Then Angelica moved toward him, and he felt the sweet sensation of a breast resting against his arm.

He wished they could stay like that all night.

And what a sky there was!

The stars looked as if they’d come much closer to earth, while a point of light, perhaps a weather balloon, was slowly navigating eastwards.

Matre santa
, that scent of jasmine!

It made his head spin!

And the movement of the swing, back and forth, rocked him gently, enchanting him, relaxing his muscles and nerves . . .

Throwing fuel on the fire, Angelica started softly humming a melody that sounded a lot like a lullaby . . .

He closed his eyes.

All at once he felt Angelica’s lips on his, pressing hard, with passion.

He lacked the will to resist.

He looked at the clock. It was half past four. He got out of bed.

“You’re leaving already?”

“It’ll be dawn soon.”

He went into the bathroom to get dressed, feeling too embarrassed to let her see him.

When he was ready to go, Angelica, in her dressing gown, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Let’s call each other.”

She walked him to the elevator and kissed him again.

When he got home it was five o’clock. He sat down on the veranda.

He’d gone to Angelica’s place to find out the names of her most dogged pursuers, but had learned nothing.

No. He had to be honest with himself.

He’d gone there mostly in the secret hope that what happened would happen.

Nevertheless, he’d realized something important.

Which was that the Angelica who had made love to him was a woman like any other, even if she was much more beautiful than the others.

What had he expected?

Something out of a chivalric romance?

Son et lumière?

Violins playing in the background, like at the movies?

Whereas the whole thing had been almost banal, nothing out of the ordinary, almost a disappointment.

In the end, it had turned out to be a sort of exchange of bodies.

She wanted his, and he wanted hers.

They’d solved the problem, and a good night to all.

Better friends than before.

Orlando, now a man again and wise

(Still manlier and wiser than before),

Discovered he was cured of love likewise.

The one whom he was wont so to adore,

Who was so fair and queenly in his eyes,

He now dismisses and esteems no more.

As he got undressed to go back to bed he realized he hadn’t given Angelica her keys back.

He set them down on the table.

But he knew he would never use them again.

He had hoped to sleep for three hours or so, but there was no way he could fall asleep.

Because the moment he’d closed his eyes, a sort of unease began to hound him, and he knew that the cause of it was what he’d done with Angelica.

Try as he might to repeat to himself that the woman was forever gone from his heart, the undeniable fact was that she’d been in that same heart, and how!

And facts have weight. They’re not easily erased. They’re not like words carried by the wind . . .

How could it have happened? He didn’t even have the excuse of Livia being far away. Livia had been with him until the day before, but the minute she’d turned her back, he hadn’t wasted a minute letting himself be swept away by the longing for another woman.

For so many years of his life there had been only Livia. Then, after reaching a certain age, he was no longer able to remain indifferent to the many opportunities. A desire for youth? Fear of old age? He’d invoked them all; it was useless now to repeat the litany. Still, he felt they were insufficient explanations.

Maybe if he talked about it with someone . . . But whom?

Then, through the fog of the half-sleep into which he had drifted at around seven-thirty, he heard the phone ringing incessantly.

He got out of bed, walked toward the telephone with his eyes closed, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said in a voice from beyond the grave.

“Hi, it’s Angelica. Did I wake you up?’

He felt no emotion at the sound of her voice.

“No.”

“Come on, you’re as hoarse as a—”

“I was just gargling.”

“Listen, did you by any chance tell Fazio that you’d be seeing me?”

“No, I said you’d be calling me on the phone.”

“Well, I’m feeling generous and want to spare you any embarrassment. Have you got paper and pen handy?”

“Yes.”

“Then write down the following. Michele Pennino, Via De Gasperi 38. Forty years old, unmarried. He’s a customer at the bank, and extremely rich, but I don’t know what he does for a living. He literally lost his head over me. When he finally realized that no really meant no, he closed his bank account and went and told the branch manager that it was because I had always treated him badly. Did you write that down?”

“Yes, go on.”

“The other guy’s name is Eugenio Parisi, Via del Gambero 21. He’s married with two children, fifty years old. I met him at a party. You have no idea how many bouquets of roses, pastries, and even a necklace, which I returned to him . . . He got his revenge by sending an anonymous letter to my boyfriend, whose address he’d managed to find, I don’t know how. The letter basically said I was a whore.”

“But how can you be so sure that he was the—?”

“From certain details that would take too long to explain.”

A thought came into the inspector’s mind.

“Do you still have that letter?”

“No, are you kidding? Anyway, that’s all I had to tell you. Listen, will you be coming this evening to . . . ?”

Montalbano closed his eyes and took the plunge.

“Ah, I wanted to tell you that you can drop by Enzo’s this afternoon to pick up the little box with the keys.”

The minute he’d said it he regretted it. But he bucked up and bit his tongue.

She remained silent for a moment, then said:

“Okay, I get it. Ciao.”

“Ciao.”

Setting down the receiver, he let out a cry exactly like Tarzan’s in the jungle.

He’d liberated himself.

He hadn’t made it back to the bedroom before the phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Good morning.”

It was Livia.

“I tried earlier, but the phone was busy. Who were you talking to?”

A courageous thought came into his head.

Why not tell her everything?

Livia of course would feel resentful at first, but once her anger had subsided, she might even be able to help him . . .

She was the only person in the world who understood him even better than he understood himself.

He felt himself sweating all over.

“Well, what’s come over you? Who were you talking to?”

He inhaled deeply.

“With a woman.”

There, he’d done it.

“And what did she want?”

“Can you wait just a second?”

“Sure.”

He ran into the kitchen, drank a glass of water, dashed into the bathroom and washed his face, then went back to the phone.

“What did that woman want from you?”

Come on, Montalbano! Buck up, fire away!

“Well, we’d spent the night together . . .”

“In what sense?”

“What do you mean in what sense? We slept together.”

There was a pause.

“So when you told me you were going on a stakeout you were lying?”

“Yes.”

Another terrible pause.

Montalbano, standing stock still, was waiting for the Great Flood to begin. Instead he heard her laughing giddily. Was she so upset by his confession that she was losing her senses?

“Livia, please, don’t do that! Don’t laugh!”

“I’m not falling for it, darling!”

He felt befuddled, annihilated. She didn’t believe him!

“I have no idea why you want to make me jealous, but I’m not buying it. As if you would ever tell me when you’ve been with another woman! You would sooner be flayed alive than admit it! Is this some kind of joke? Well, it hasn’t worked.”

“Livia, listen to me, I—”

“You know what I say? I’m fed up!”

She hung up.

Montalbano stood there in a daze, receiver in hand.

He went back to bed, utterly drained.

He lay there with his eyes shut, not thinking about anything.

About half an hour later he heard the front door open.

“Is that you, Adelì?”

“Yessah, iss me.”

“Make me a big mug of strong coffee, would you?”

When he got to the office it was almost ten o’clock.

“Send me Fazio,” he said to Catarella.

“Straightaways, Chief.”

Fazio came in carrying a stack of papers, which he laid on the desk.

“All to be signed. No news last night.”

“So much the better.”

Fazio sat down.

“Chief, yesterday you gave me four names we need to know more about.”

“Yeah, and so?”

“I only had time to ask around town about Maniace. I’ll ask about the others today.”

“And what can you tell me about Maniace?”

“Can I take out the piece of paper I have in my pocket?”

“Only on the condition that you don’t give me any records-office information.”

Fazio suffered from what Montalbano called the “records-office complex.” For every person he sought information about, Fazio would obtain heaps of useless details such as the father’s name, the mother’s maiden name, the place and time of birth down to the minute, prior places of residence, names and ages of any children, close relatives, distant relatives . . . A real obsession.

Fazio cast a glance at his scrap of paper, put it back into his pocket, and began.

“Giorgio Maniace is a land surveyor of forty-three and is, as I believe I already told you, a widower. He is president of the town’s Catholic Men’s Association.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Except for the foreigners from Third-World countries, ninety-nine percent of the criminals we send to jail in this country are Catholics and love the Pope.”

“Fine, but this seems to me a special case. Maniace comes from a rich family. And up until the age of thirty-five, he had an easy time of things, including a wife who they say was very beautiful. Then he had an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“He drove a fast sports car, and he was with his wife that day. They were on their way to Palermo. Around Misilmeri a little girl of five dashed across the road. She was killed instantly. He was stunned, froze like a statue, and didn’t know what was going on. The car kept on going, ran off the road and off a cliff. He broke three ribs and his left arm, but his wife died after four days in the hospital. And as of that moment, his life changed.”

“Was he convicted?”

“Yeah, but nothing serious. There were witnesses who said that even if he’d been going twenty miles an hour, the little girl would still have been run over.”

“In what sense did his life change?”

“He sold almost everything he owned and started doing charity work. He kept only a country cottage and a place here in town. He’s a truly devout man.”

“So, in conclusion, it was a waste of time.”

“No, Chief, it wasn’t a waste of time, because we’ve still eliminated one of the four names.”

He looked down at his shoe tops and asked:

“Did you call La Cosulich last night?”

“Yes. She gave me two names.”

Now it was the inspector’s turn to take a piece of paper out of his pocket. He handed it to Fazio.

“Pennino, to take revenge on Cosulich, closed his accounts with the Banca Siculo-Americana and accused her, to the manager, of having mistreated him.”

“I know this Pennino,” said Fazio.

“And what’s he like?”

“I think the man is capable of anything.”

“Apparently he’s even someone who sends anonymous letters.”

Fazio pricked up his ears.

“If La Cosulich could let us see one . . .”

“You want to compare it with the ones Mr. Z has sent us, right?”

“Right.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Cosulich had one but threw it away. Listen, I don’t want to burden you with too much work. I’ll look into Pennino and Parisi myself.”

He wrote down the names and addresses of Pennino and Parisi on a scrap of paper and sent for Catarella.

“Listen, Cat, send a fax to Montelusa Central, internal offices. I want to know if they’ve ever investigated either of these two men, if they have any ongoing, or if they are planning to start any.”

“Straightaways, Chief.”

Montalbano spent an hour signing papers, then massaged his arm and went out to eat.

“Enzo, please give this packet back to the young lady, when she comes by for it this evening.”

Enzo didn’t venture to say anything.

And as he was making this definitive gesture, Montalbano was instantly overcome by a werewolf-like hunger.

Even Enzo was impressed.

“Enjoy it in good health, Inspector.”

This time he took his walk along the jetty at a fast pace, practically running, not the usual one foot up, one foot down. And when he reached the lighthouse, he deemed it insufficient.

And so he turned around and did it all over again.

At last, panting heavily, he sat down on the flat rock and lit a cigarette.

“I made it,” he said to a crab huddling motionless on the green slime and looking at him quizzically.

“Ah Chief! Jess now a ’spector jess like you called from Montelusa!”

“Did he give you his name?”

“Wait a secon’, I writ it down ’ere on a piss o’ paper.”

He found it and looked at it.

“’Z name’s Pisquanelli.”

“Pasquarelli, Cat.”

He was chief of the Narcotics unit.

“An’ wha’d I say?”

Better drop it.

“What did he want?”

“’E says as how y’oughter go ’n’ see ’im, ’im meanin’ the forementioned Pasquanini, as soon as possibly possible, cuz ’ass wha’ss best f’r ’im.”

“For him meaning Pasquarelli?”

“No, Chief, f’r’im meanin’ yiz.”

Since he didn’t have anything urgent on his plate, he was better off killing some time going to Montelusa than signing papers in his office.

“I’ll go right now.”

He got back in his car and drove off.

Pasquarelli was someone who did his job well and therefore was much to Montalbano’s liking.

“Why are you interested in Michele Pennino?” Pasquarelli asked as soon as Montalbano came in.

“And why are you interested to know why I’m interested in Pennino?”

Pasquarelli laughed.

“Okay, Salvo, I’ll go first. But I should inform you that I’ve already talked about it with the commissioner and he acknowledged that I’m in charge.”

“In charge of what?”

“Of Pennino.”

“Then there’s no point in my wasting any time here.”

“Come on, Salvo, we share a mutual respect for each other and so there’s no reason for us to make war. Why are you interested in him?”

“I think he may be leading a burglary ring in Vigàta that has—”

“I’ve heard mention of it. It couldn’t possibly be him.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’ve had him under strict surveillance for the past month and a half.”

“Drugs?”

“We’re almost certain that after the death of Savino Imperatore, who was the biggest importer in the province, he was replaced by none other than Pennino. I can assure you Salvo—I can guarantee it, in fact, with a twist of lemon on top, that Pennino is not the man you’re looking for.”