IM11 The Wings of the Sphinx (2009) by Andrea Camilleri Read Free Book Online

nightclub?”
    “About two-thirty in the morning.”
    “Naturally, you’d had something to drink at your various girlfriends’ places?”
    “Of course. I see what you’re getting at. No, sir, I wasn’t drunk. The man I saw was most definitely Arturo Picarella. I’ve been playing with him at the club for years.”
    “So why didn’t you go up to him to say hello?”
    “Are you kidding? It might have put him in an awkward position.”
    “Your testimony, Mr. Di Noto, is certainly an important one. But it’s not enough to—”
    “Have a look at this,” the other interrupted him.
    He pulled a photograph out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Montalbano.
    It showed Di Noto kissing a girl. But the photographer had also captured part of the table next to them. The face of the man whose ear was being licked by a blonde was undoubtedly the missing Picarella, whom Montalbano had seen again and again in the dozens of photographs brought to him by Signora Ciccina.
    So Augello and Fazio had been wrong as to the country to which the man had fled to live it up in style with his lover. It was Cuba, not the Maldives or the Bahamas.
    “Can you leave me this photo?”
    “That’s easier said than done.”
    “Why?”
    “My good inspector, I would gladly let you have it, but if you then use it, and the photo appears on TV and my wife sees it, do you realize the trouble I’m gonna be in?”
    “I promise I’ll arrange it so that you’ll be entirely unrecognizable in the photo.”
    “I’m in your hands, Inspector.”
    As soon as the Ferrari drove off with a roar that shook even the floor of the office, the inspector called Catarella.
    “I want you to go to Montelusa to see your photographer friend. What’s his name again?”
    “Cicco De Cicco, Chief.”
    “You’re going to give him this photograph and tell him to print several copies of it after changing the features on this gentlemen here, the one kissing the girl. But be careful: only him. I mean it. Not the other man. Now go.”
    “Atcher service, Chief. But could you ’splain sumpin a me?”
    “Sure.”
    “Does ‘features’ mean ‘face’?”
    “Very good.”
    “Tanks. I’ll git Galluzzo to manna phones. Ah, an’ I wannit a say that two people called about the buttafly.”
    “Are we supposed to call them back or will they call us back?”
    Catarella looked dumbfounded.
    “They din’t say nuttin.”
    “But did they leave a phone number?”
    “Yessir. I writ it down on this piece a paper.”
    He handed it to Montalbano.
    “All right, then, go, but send me Galluzzo before he sits down at the switchboard.”
    On the piece of paper were the names of a certain Signor Gracezza and a certain Signora Appuntata, each followed by a number in which it was impossible to tell the fives from the sixes and the threes from the eights.
    He handed the piece of paper to Galluzzo.
    “See if you can figure these numbers out. Call the man first, and the woman after.”

    While he was waiting, he decided to give Pasquano a ring.
    It was barely ten o’clock, but the doctor normally began performing his autopsies around five in the morning.
    “Montalbano here. The doctor in?”
    “As far as that goes, yes, he’s in.”
    It wasn’t an encouraging answer.
    “Could you have him come to the phone a minute?”
    “You must be kidding.”
    “This is Inspector Montalbano. Please call him for me.”
    “Inspector, I recognized your voice right away, but to be honest with you, I’m just not up to it. The doctor’s in a really nasty mood today, believe me.”
    “Do you know if he’s done the autopsy on the girl we found yesterday?”
    “Yes, he has.”
    “All right, then, thanks.”
    The only solution was to go in person, at the risk of being buried in obscenities by Pasquano and having to dodge a flying scalpel or a few dead body parts.
    The telephone rang.
    “Inspector, I’ve got Signor Graceffa on the line. That’s his real name, not the way Catarella wrote it.