Free Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri

hard. Just as Ciccio Albanese had said. Looking up, he saw his car on the wharf in the distance. He realized he’d left it in the exact same spot where he’d stood with the little boy as his mother kicked up such a row that she broke her leg. He got up and headed back. He wanted to know how that whole business had turned out. The mother was surely in a hospital somewhere with her leg in a cast.
    When he got back to the office, he immediately phoned Riguccio.
    “Oh, God, Montalbano, I’m so embarrassed!”
    “Why?”
    “I still haven’t returned those glasses. I’d completely forgotten about them! It’s so chaotic here that—”
    “Rigù, I wasn’t calling about the glasses. I wanted to ask you something. What hospitals are the sick, the injured, and pregnant women taken to?”
    “To any one of the three hospitals in Montelusa, or else to—”
    “Wait, I’m only interested in the ones who were put ashore yesterday.”
    “Give me a minute.”
    Apparently Riguccio had to flip through some papers before he could answer.
    “Here, at the San Gregorio.”
    Montalbano informed Catarella he’d be out for an hour or so, got in his car, stopped at a café, bought three slabs of chocolate, and headed towards Montelusa. San Gregorio Hospital was outside the city, but easy to reach from Vigàta. It took him about twenty minutes. He parked, went inside, and asked for directions to the orthopedic ward. He got in the elevator, got off at the third floor, and spoke to the first nurse he saw.
    He told her he was looking for a non-European immigrant who had broken her leg the previous evening while disembarking at Vigàta. To help identify her, he added that the woman had three small children with her. The nurse looked a bit surprised.
    “Would you wait here? I’ll go check.”
    She returned about ten minutes later.
    “Just as I thought. There aren’t any non-European women here for a broken leg. We do have one who broke her arm, however.”
    “May I see her?”
    “I’m sorry, but who are you?”
    “Inspector Montalbano.”
    The nurse looked him over and must have immediately decided that the man standing before her had the face of a cop, because she said only:
    “Please follow me.”
    But the immigrant woman with the broken arm was not black; she looked merely like she had a tan. Secondly, she was pretty, slender, and very young.
    “You see,” said Montalbano, slightly flustered, “the fact is that yesterday evening, I saw an emergency medical crew take her away in the ambulance with my own eyes . . .”
    “Why don’t you try the emergency ward?”
    Of course. The medic might have been mistaken when he diagnosed her with a fracture. Maybe the woman had only a sprain, and there’d been no need to hospitalize her.
    In the emergency ward, none of the three men who’d been on duty the previous evening remembered seeing a black woman with a broken leg and three small kids.
    “Who was the doctor on call?”
    “Dr. Mendolìa. But today’s his day off.”
    By dint of effort and cursing, he managed to get the doctor’s phone number. Dr. Mendolìa was courteous, but had not seen any non-European woman with a fractured leg. No, not even a sprain. So much for that.
    Once out of the hospital square, he saw some parked ambulances. A few steps away stood some people in white smocks, talking. As he drew near, he immediately recognized the gaunt medic with the mustache. The man recognized him as well.
    “Last night, weren’t you—?”
    “Yes. Inspector Montalbano’s the name. Where did you take that woman with the three children, the one who’d broken her leg?”
    “To the emergency room here. But I was wrong, her leg wasn’t broken. In fact, she got out of the ambulance by herself, though it took some effort. I saw her go into the emergency room.”
    “Why didn’t you accompany her?”
    “Inspector, we’d just received an emergency call from Scroglitti. There was a huge mess over there. Why, can’t you find