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feature on the Palmisano home, particularly the footage involving the doll. He let it be known that the journalist and cameraman who had entered the apartment were in danger of being indicted for “breaking and entering and theft of art objects.”
    In the face of such intimidation, Ragonese solemnly proclaimed that as of that moment, and for the entire afternoon and evening until the eight P.M . news edition, TeleVigàta would broadcast nothing but the images of the inflatable doll.
    And so they did.
    But only until six P.M ., because at that time two carabinieri showed up and confiscated the videotape by order of the prefect.
    By the following morning, needless to say, all the national papers and television news programs were talking about the affair. A few were against the confiscation; one of the most important national dailies, the one printed in Rome, published the headline:
    Is There No Limit to the Ridiculousness?
    Others instead were in favor. In fact, the other major newspaper, the one printed in Milan, ran the headline:
    The Death of Good Taste
    And there wasn’t a single stand-up comic on television that evening who didn’t appear onstage with an inflatable doll.

    That night, Montalbano had a dream which, if it wasn’t about an actual inflatable doll, as would have been logical and predictable, was about something that came very close.
    He was making love to a beautiful young blonde who worked as a salesgirl in a mannequin factory that was deserted, as it was past closing time. They were lying on a sofa in the sales office, surrounded by at least ten mannequins, male and female, who stared fixedly at them, polite little smiles on their lips.
    “C’mon, c’mon,” the girl kept saying to him, her eyes on a large clock on the wall, because they both knew what the problem was. She had obtained permission to become human, but if they didn’t manage to bring their business to a happy conclusion, she would turn back into a mannequin forever.
    “C’mon, c’mon . . .”
    They finally succeeded, with only three seconds left on the clock. The mannequins in the room applauded.
    He woke up and ran into the bathroom to take a shower. But how could it be that at fifty-seven he was still having the dreams of a twenty-year-old? Maybe old age wasn’t quite so near at hand as it seemed? The dream reassured him.

    As he was driving to work, his car’s motor made a strange noise and then suddenly stalled, eliciting a deafening chorus of screeching tires, horn blasts, curses, and insults. He managed to start it up again after a brief spell, but he decided the time had come to take the car to the mechanic’s. There were many and sundry things that either didn’t work or had a mind of their own.

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    The mechanic had a look at the engine, brakes, and electrical system and shook his head in dismay. Exactly like a doctor beside the bed of a terminally ill patient.
    “I’m afraid she’s ready to be junked, Inspector.”
    The use of that verb set his nerves on edge. Whenever he heard it, whenever he read it, his cojones immediately started to go into a spin. And it wasn’t the only word that had this effect on him. There were others: securitize, contingency, restructuring, as per, precurrent, and dozens more.
    Languages long dead invented wonderful words they handed down to us for eternity.
    Whereas our modern languages, when they died—which was inevitable, since every tongue on earth was becoming a colony of American English, itself dying a slow death by suicide—what words would they hand down to posterity? Junked? Scam? Keisters? Kickback? Normalcy?
    “That’s the furthest thing from my mind,” Montalbano snapped rudely.

    Another day of dead calm, as Fazio called it, went by at the station. That evening the inspector had Gallo drive him home. It would be another three days before he got his car back.
    After eating the mullet in broth and the caponata Adelina had made for him, he continued sitting outside on