“Man, whatta crash! Even scared me m’self, Chief! Ahhh Chief! Whatta woman!”

“Where?”

“Right ’ere, Chief. Inna waitin’ room. Says ’er name’s Dolorosa. I say it oughter be Amorosa! Says she wants a talk t’yiz poissonally in poisson. Jesus, whatta woman! Ya gotta have eyes t’see this one!”

She must be the woman the inspector saw get out of the car. A woman who puts even Catarella in a state like that, and Mimì doesn’t deign to give her a glance? Poor Mimì! He was in a really bad way!

“Send her in.”

She didn’t seem real, but she was. Man, was she ever real.

Montalbano had the impression he’d already met her somewhere, but then realized that it was because she looked like a Mexican movie actress from the fifties he’d seen in a recent retrospective.

When she entered, the office filled with a faint scent of cinnamon.

But it wasn’t perfume that gave off that scent, the inspector thought. It was her skin. As she held out her hand to him, Montalbano noticed that she had extremely long fingers, disproportionately long, fascinating and dangerous.

They sat down, she in front, he behind the desk. The woman had a serious, worried air about her.

“What can I do for you, signora . . . ?”

“My name is Dolores Alfano.”

Montalbano sprang up towards the ceiling, and on his way back down, his left butt-cheek landed on the edge of the chair and he very nearly disappeared behind the desk. Dolores Alfano seemed not to notice.

So here, at last, personally in person, was the mysterious woman Fabio Giacchetti had talked to him about, the woman who, returning from an amorous tryst, nearly got run over by someone, perhaps on purpose.

“But Alfano is my husband Giovanni’s surname,” she continued. “My maiden name is Gutierrez.”

“Are you Spanish?”

“No, Colombian. But I’ve been living in Vigàta for years, at Via Guttuso, 12.”

“So, what can I do for you, signora?” Montalbano repeated.

“My husband is away at sea, sailing on a container ship as first mate. We stay in touch through letters and postcards. Before leaving, he always gives me a list of his ports of call with arrival and departure dates, so he can receive my letters when he goes ashore. We also sometimes call each other with our satellite phones, but pretty rarely.”

“Has something happened?”

“Well, Giovanni embarked a few months ago on a rather long voyage, and after three weeks had gone by, he still hadn’t written or phoned me. This has never happened before. So I got worried and called him. He told me he was in good health and had been very busy.”

Montalbano was spellbound as he listened to her. She had a bedroom voice. There was no other way to define it. She might say only “hello,” and immediately one imagined rumpled blankets, pillows on the floor, and sweat-dampened sheets smelling of cinnamon.

And the Spanish accent that came out when she spoke at length was like a spicy condiment.

“. . . a postcard from him,” said Dolores.

Lost in her voice, Montalbano had become distracted, his mind indeed on unmade beds and torrid nights, with perhaps some Spanish guitars playing in the background...

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” he said.

“I said that the day before yesterday, I got a postcard from him.”

“Good. So now you’ve been reassured.”

The woman did not reply, but pulled a picture postcard out of her purse and handed it to the inspector.

It showed the port of a town that Montalbano had never heard of. The stamp was Argentinean. On the back was written : Doing great. How about you? Kisses, Giovanni.

You couldn’t very well say the captain was an expansive sort. Still, it was better than nothing. Montalbano looked up at Dolores Alfano.

“I don’t think he wrote it himself,” she said. “The signature looks different to me.”

She took four other postcards out of her purse and passed them to Montalbano.

“Compare it with these, which he sent me last year.”

There was no need to resort to a handwriting expert. It was glaringly obvious that the handwriting of the last postcard was fake. And falsified rather carelessly at that. The old postcards also had a different tone:

“This last postcard I received,” Dolores continued, “brought back the strange impression I had after calling him on the phone.”

“Which was?”

“That it wasn’t him at the other end. His voice was different. As if he had a cold. But at the time I convinced myself that it was because of the distortion of the cell phone. Now I’m no longer so sure.”

“And what do you think I should do?”

“Well . . . I don’t really know.”

“It’s sort of a problem, signora. The last postcard wasn’t written by him, you’re right about that. But that might also mean your husband didn’t board the ship for any number of reasons and then had a friend write to you and send it so you wouldn’t get worried.”

Dolores shook her head.

“In that case, he could have telephoned me.”

“True. Why didn’t you call him?”

“I did. As soon as I received the card. And I called him twice after that. I even tried again before coming here. But his telephone is always turned off, nobody answers.”

“I understand your concern, signora, but...”

“So you can’t do anything?”

“No, I can’t. Because, you see, the way things are today, you aren’t even in a position to file a missing persons report. Who’s to say whether the situation isn’t other than what you say it is?”

“But what could the situation be, in that case?”

“Well, I dunno. For example . . .” Montalbano started walking on eggshells. “Mind you, this is only a conjecture, but maybe your husband met somebody . . . You know what I mean? . . . Somebody who—”

“My husband loves me.”

She said it serenely, almost without intonation. Then she took an envelope out of her purse and withdrew the letter that was inside it.

“This is a letter he sent me four months ago. Please read it.”

Montalbano blushed, decided he’d seen enough, and gave the letter back to her.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought he saw, deep inside the woman’s deep dark eyes, gone as fast as it had appeared, a flash of . . . irony? amusement?

“The last time he was here, how did your husband behave?”

“With me? The same as always.”

“Listen, signora, all I can do at this point is give you some, er, personal advice. Do you know the name of the ship on which your husband is sailing?”

“Yes, the Ruy Barbosa.”

“Then get in touch with the shipping company. Are they Italian?”

“No. Stevenson and Guerra is Brazilian.”

“Do they have a representative in Italy?”

“Of course, in Naples. His name is Pasquale Camera.”

“Have you got an address and telephone number for this Pasquale Camera?”

“Yes, I’ve got them right here.”

She took a piece of paper out of her purse and held it out to Montalbano.

“No, don’t give it to me. It’s you who has to call for the information.”

“No, I can’t,” Dolores said decisively.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want my husband to think that I . . . No, I’d rather not. Please, you do it.”

“Me? But, signora, as a police inspector I ca—”

“Just say you’re a friend of Giovanni’s and you’re worried because you’ve had no news of him for a while.”

“Look, signora, I—”

Dolores leaned forward. Montalbano was resting his arms on the desktop. The woman laid her hands, hot as if with fever, on top of Montalbano’s, her long fingers snaking inside the cuffs of his shirt, first caressing his skin, then clutching his wrists.

“Help me,” she said.

“All . . . all right,” said Montalbano.

They stood up. The inspector went to open the door for her and saw that half the police department was in the waiting room, all feigning indifference.

Apparently Catarella had passed the word about Dolores’s beauty.

Dolores’s fingernails had left marks on his skin. She had branded him. His skin burned a little. He sniffed his arms, which smelled slightly of cinnamon. Wasn’t it best to settle the matter at once? And get this black leopardess out of his hair? The less he saw of her, the better.

“Catarella! Ring up this number in Naples for me. But don’t tell them you’re calling for the police.”

Multiplication table for eigh—. A woman picked up at once.

“Camera Shipping Company. May I help you?”

“Davide Maraschi here. I’d like to speak to Mr. Camera.”

“Please hold.”

A recording of a song in keeping with the setting began: “O sole mio.”

“Could you please hold?” the woman cut in. “Mr. Camera is on another line.”

A new song: “Fenesta ca lucive.”

“Could you hold just a minute longer?”

New song: “Guapparia.”

The inspector liked Neapolitan songs, but he was starting to wish they would play some rock. Discouraged and worried he was going to have to sing along with the entire Piedigrotta repertoire, he was about to hang up when a man’s voice cut in:

“Hello, this is Camera. What can I do for you?”

What the hell did he tell the secretary his name was? He remembered Davide, but not the surname, except for the fact that it ended in -schi.

“I’m Davide Verzaschi.”

“How may I help you?”

“I’ll take only a few minutes of your time, as I can see you’re very busy. You represent Stevenson and Guerra, correct?”

“Among others.”

“Good. Listen, I urgently need to get in touch with someone presently on board the Ruy Barbosa. Would you be so kind as to explain to me how I might go about this?”

“How do you intend to get in touch with this person?”

“I’ve ruled out carrier pigeons and smoke signals.”

“I don’t understand,” said Camera.

Why did he always have to make wisecracks? The guy might hang up, and that would be the end of that.

“I don’t know, in writing or by telephone.”

“If you have a satellite phone, you only have to dial the number.”

“I have, but nobody answers.”

“I see. Wait just a minute while I check the computer . . . Here we are. The Ruy Barbosa will be calling at the port of Lisbon in exactly eight days. So you can write a letter. I can even give you the address of the Portuguese representative and—”

“Isn’t there a quicker way? I have some bad news to tell him. His aunt Adelaide has died; she was like a mother to him.”

The pause that followed meant that Mr. Camera was torn between duty and pity. And the latter won out.

“Look, I’ll make an exception, given the gravity and urgency of the situation. I’ll give you the cell phone number of the first mate, who is also the ship’s purser. Write this down.”

So how was he going to wiggle out of this now? The first mate of the Ruy Barbosa was the person he was looking for! He couldn’t think of a single way to get out of the predicament.

“The first mate,” Mr. Camera continued, “is named Couto Ribeiro, and his number is—”

What was the guy saying?

“I’m sorry, but isn’t the first mate Giovanni Alfano?”

There was a sudden silence at the other end.

And Montalbano was seized by the same sense of panic that always came over him when the line got cut off as he was speaking over the telephone. It was as if he’d been rocketed into the icy loneliness of outer space. He started yelling desperately.

“Hello? Helllloooo?”

“No need to shout. Are you a relative of Alfano’s?”

“No, we’re friends, former schoolmates, and...”

“Where are you calling from?”

“From . . . from Brindisi.”

“So you’re not in Vigàta.”

Elementary, my dear Watson.

“How long has it been since you last saw Alfano?” the man continued.

What the hell had got into Camera? What were all these questions? His tone was brusque, almost angry.

“Well . . . it’s probably been a little over two months . . . He told me his next job would be aboard the Ruy Barbosa, as first mate. Which is why I’m surprised . . . What happened?”

“What happened is that he never showed up to board the ship. I had to look for a substitute at the very last minute, and it wasn’t easy. Your friend got me into trouble, a great deal of trouble, in fact.”

“Have you heard from him since then?”

“Three days later he sent me a note saying he’d found something better. Listen, if you get a hold of him, tell him that Camera’s going to kick his ass all the way to Sardinia if he sees him. So, what are we going to do, Mr....”

“Falaschi.”

“. . . are you going to take down Couto Ribeiro’s number or not?”

“Please go ahead.”

“Oh, no you don’t! Get smart with me, will you? First you must clarify something for me, my good Mr. Panaschi. If you knew Alfano was aboard the Ruy Barbosa, why didn’t you contact him instead of me?”

Montalbano hung up.

By now he was probably cruising blissfully through the fiords of the North Sea. With a fond farewell and best wishes. Who was ever going to track the guy down?

He’d planned his scheme pretty well, had Mr. Captain of the High Seas.

He’d failed to show up for embarkation, sent Camera a note with the bogus story that he’d found a better deal somewhere else, given his cell phone to a friend, saying that if his wife called he should pretend he’s him, and asked him to send Dolores a phony postcard two months down the line. And so he’d gained a good leg up before his wife even realized he’d fled the coop and started her futile search.

What to do now?

Go at once to Via Guttuso 12, knock on the door, and inform the leopardess that she’s become a widow, if only by forfeit?

How do leopardesses react when they learn their leopard has left them? Do they scratch? Do they bite? And what if, by chance, she started crying, threw herself into his arms, and wanted to be comforted?

No, it was a rather dangerous idea.

Perhaps it was best to phone her.

But aren’t there certain things you just can’t say over the telephone? Montalbano was certain that, once he got to the heart of the matter, he would get tongue-tied. No, it was safer to write her a note. And advise her, before filing a missing persons report, to talk to the people at Missing, the TV program where they look for, and often find, missing persons before the police even get started.

But wasn’t it perhaps better to put it all off till tomorrow?

One day more or less wasn’t going to make any difference. On the contrary. This way, Signora Dolores would actually gain an extra night of peace.

Till tomorrow, he concluded, till tomorrow.

“Wha’?? How’d you scratch yourself like that? Have you disinfected them?”

“I didn’t scratch myself,” said Montalbano, annoyed, rolling down his shirtsleeves. “And there’s no need to disinfect them.”

“So how’d you get them, then?”

“Geez, what a pain! I’ll tell you later. Talk to me.”

“So. First of all, Pecorini didn’t use any agency to rent out his house. I called them all. However, a certain Mr. Maiorca, owner of one of the agencies, when he heard me mention Pecorini over the telephone, said, ‘Who, the butcher?’ ‘Do you know him?’ I asked. And he said, ‘Yes.’ So I went and talked to him in person.”

He pulled out a little piece of paper from which he was about to read something, but a homicidal glance from Montalbano stopped him dead.

“Okay, okay, Chief, no vital statistics. Just the bare essentials. The Pecorini of interest to us is a fifty-year-old from Vigàta, first name Arturo, who lived in Vigàta until two years ago and worked as a butcher. Then he moved to Catania, where he opened an enormous butcher shop at the port, near the customs house. Fits the bill, no?”

“Seems to. Is the summer house the only thing he kept in Vigàta?”

“No. He’s got another house, in town, that had always been his main residence, in Via Pippo Rizzo.”

“Do you know where that street is?”

“Yeah, in that same rich neighborhood I said I didn’t like. It runs parallel to Via Guttuso.”

“I see. And he only comes back here in the summer?”

“Who ever said that? He kept his butcher shop here and got his brother, named Ignazio, to look after it. And he comes here every Saturday to see how the business is going.”

Maybe—thought Montalbano—Mimì got to know the butcher from buying meat at his shop and found out, or already knew, that Pecorini had an empty house to rent. That might explain it.

“Did you also talk with your friend at the Antimafia Commission, Morici?”

“I did. We’re meeting tomorrow morning at nine in a bar in Montelusa. Now will you tell me how you got those scratches?”

“Dolores Alfano did it.”

Fazio was taken aback.

“Is she as beautiful as they say?”

“Very beautiful.”

“She came here?”

“Yes.”

“Did she come to report the person who tried to run over her?”

“The subject never even came up.”

“Then what did she want?”

Montalbano had to explain the whole matter to him, including the disappearance of Giovanni Alfano.

“And how did she scratch you?”

A little embarrassed, Montalbano explained.

“Be careful, Chief. That lady bites.”