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

I’ll put him through.”
    “Mr. Graceffa? This is Inspector Montalbano. Did you ask for me this morning?”
    “Yes. Last night I phoned the Free Channel and Mr. Zito told me to call you.”
    “Thanks for calling. What do you have to tell me?”
    Silence.
    “Hello?”
    Nothing.
    Matre santa , what had happened? Had the line gone dead? For some mysterious reason, whenever the line went dead as Montalbano was talking, he broke out into a cold sweat and felt like a little boy who had suddenly been orphaned.
    “Hello? Hello?” the inspector started yelling.
    “I’m here.”
    “So why don’t you speak?”
    “Iss a delicate matter.”
    “Would you rather not discuss it over the phone?”
    “No, because any minute now, my niece Concetta’s gonna come back from doing the shopping.”
    “I see. Could you come here?”
    “Not before noon.”
    “All right, I’ll be waiting for you.”

    “May I?” asked Augello from the doorway.
    “Come in and sit down, Mimì. Did Salvo let you sleep last night?”
    “Luckily, yes. But I came in late because Beba had to go to the doctor’s, and so I had look after the kid.”
    “What’s wrong with Beba?”
    “Woman stuff. Any news?”
    “Nothing substantial. But soon there may be a bit of news, though it concerns a different case.”
    “Which one?”
    “I’ll tell you later.”
    He didn’t want to set off the bomb about the sighting of Picarella until Catarella brought back the photo and Fazio was also there.
    “Did you see that I asked Zito on the Free Channel to—”
    “Yeah, I saw.”
    “After the broadcast, a certain Mr. Graceffa called and said he’s coming by in the early afternoon. Some lady also called—”
    The phone rang.
    “Chief, there’s a lady named Annunziata, not Appuntata.”
    “Put her on.”
    “Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough, Inspector. She’s here in person.”
    “Then show her into Inspector Augello’s office.”
    Mimì gave him a questioning look.
    “You listen to what she has to say, Mimì. She saw the broadcast and maybe can help us identify the girl.”
    “And where are you going?”
    “I’m going to see Pasquano.”

    “Look, I’m warning you, this morning my cojones are smoking,” was the doctor’s courteous admonition the moment he saw the inspector.
    Montalbano was not impressed and answered in kind. Pasquano became tractable only when one stood up to him.
    “And you know what mine are like today? A steam engine.”
    “What the heck do you want?”
    He had said “heck.” Not “fuck,” not “hell.” Which meant he was really enraged.
    “What’s wrong, Doctor?”
    “What’s wrong is that last night, at the club, I had a straight flush.”
    “That’s good, no?”
    “No, because some son of a bitch also had a straight flush. Royal. You understand?”
    “Perfectly, Doctor. Did you raise him?”
    “Wouldn’t you?”
    “I don’t gamble. You’ll see, tonight you’ll get another chance.”
    “Did you come here to console me?”
    “I came to—”
    “—to talk about the lives of Phoenicopteri ?”
    “No, if anything, about Lepidoptera .”
    “You mean the girl with the butterfly?”
    “I do. And it’s a moth.”
    “Look, she was definitely under thirty. About twenty-five, I’d say. She was killed by a single gunshot to the face, fired from about ten yards away.”
    “So the killer was a good shot?”
    “Either a good shot or lucky.”
    “The science lab says it was a large-caliber weapon.”
    “You don’t need all their science to know that. You only need to take a look at the damage it did. To give you an example, after grazing the left jawbone the bullet blew away half of her upper teeth, which were missing from the body.”
    “When was she killed?”
    “The murder definitely took place during the night between Saturday and Sunday. Then, the following night, the killer got rid of the body by throwing it into the dump.”
    “But why would he hang on to it for all of Sunday?”
    “That’s