The Paper Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

were you doing all this time with her?”
    “I put her to bed.”
    Tommaseo look a quick glance around, then huddled up conspiratorially next to the inspector.
    “Pretty?”
    “That’s not the right adjective, but I’d say yes.”
    Tommaseo licked his lips.
    “When could I…interrogate her?”
    “I’ll bring her to your office tomorrow morning, around ten-thirty. Is that okay with you? Unfortunately, I’ve a meeting with the commissioner at eleven.”
    “That’s fine, go right ahead.”
    He licked his lips again. Pasquano came up.
    “So?” asked Tommaseo.
    “So what? Didn’t you see him yourself? He got shot in the face. One shot. That was enough.”
    “Do you know how long he’s been dead?”
    Pasquano gave him a dirty look and didn’t answer.
    “Roughly speaking,” Montalbano bargained.
    “What day is today?”
    “Thursday.”
    “Roughly speaking, I’d say he was shot late Monday evening.”
    “Is that all?” Tommaseo cut in again, disappointed.
    “I don’t think I saw any wounds from assegais or boomerangs,” Pasquano said sarcastically.
    “No, no, I was referring to the fact that his member was—”
    “Oh, that? You want to know why he had it out? He’d just performed a sexual act.”
    “Do you mean that he was taken by surprise right after masturbating and killed?”
    “I didn’t say anything about masturbation,” said Pasquano. “It might have been oral sex.”
    Tommaseo’s eyes started to flash like a cat’s. He lived for these sorts of details. Gloried in them. Wallowed in them.
    “You think so? So the murderess killed him right after giving him a—”
    “What makes you think it was a murderess?” asked Pasquano, who, no longer angry, was beginning to amuse himself. “It could just as easily have been a homosexual relation.”
    “True,” Tommaseo reluctantly admitted.
    The homoerotic hypothesis clearly didn’t appeal to him.
    “Anyway, it’s not sure there were only oral relations.”
    Pasquano had cast the bait, which the prosecutor immediately swallowed.
    “Think so?”
    “Yeah. It’s possible the woman—assuming, for the sake of hypothesis, that it was a woman—was straddling the man.”
    Tommaseo’s eyes turned more catlike than ever.
    “Right! And as she was bringing him to orgasm and looking in his eyes, she already had her hand on the weapon, and—”
    “Wait a second. What makes you think the woman looked her victim in the eyes?” Pasquano cut in, a seraphic expression on his face.
    Montalbano felt like he couldn’t take Pasquano’s shenanigans any longer and would burst out laughing at any moment.
    “But how could she not look him in the eyes, in that position!” said Tommaseo.
    “We’re not certain that was the position.”
    “But you yourself just finished saying—”
    “Listen, Tommaseo, the woman might well have straddled the man, but we don’t know how—that is, whether facing him or with her back to him.”
    “True.”
    “And in the latter case, she would not have been able to look her victim in the eye, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, from that position, the man would have had an embarrassment of riches. Well, I’m going to go. Good night. I’ll keep you informed.”
    “Oh, no you don’t! You have to explain yourself! What do you mean by ‘an embarrassment of riches’?” said Tommaseo, running after the coroner.
    They disappeared into the darkness. Montalbano approached Fazio.
    “Did Forensics get lost?”
    “They’ll be here any minute.”
    “Listen, I’m going home. You stay here. See you tomorrow at the office.”
    He got home in time for the local news. Nobody, of course, knew anything yet about the death of Angelo Pardo. But the two local stations, TeleVigàta and the Free Channel, were still talking about another death, a truly distinguished corpse.
    Around eight o’clock on Wednesday, the night before, the honorable Armando Riccobono, a deputy in parliament, had gone to see his party colleague, Senator Stefano