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you.”
    “Exactly. Zizì reacted immediately, and I went to back him up, and before we knew it, there was a brawl and—”
    “You smashed the place up.”
    “Smashed it up? Come on! Zizì broke a couple a chairs and . . .”
    Zizì. Where had he heard that name before? Someone had mentioned it in passing. But who? And when? He couldn’t quite call it to mind.
    “I’m sorry, but was Zizì a local?”
    Digiulio gave him a look of astonishment.
    “No, he’s one of the crew.”
    “But his name’s not listed in the—”
    “Ah, sorry, we call him Zizì, but his real name’s Ahmed Shaikiri. He’s North African.”
    Montalbano had a flash.
    “Was he the former owner’s manservant?”
    Digiulio’s astonishment increased.
    “The former owner’s manserv . . . No way! Zizì signed on with us barely three months ago!”
    Montalbano’s brain was now firing on all cylinders.
    “Could you run through the names of the other crew members for me?”
    “But they weren’t involved in the fight.”
    “Please tell me them just the same.”
    “Maurilio Alvarez is the engineer, Stefano Ricca’s the . . .”
    Montalbano stopped paying attention. Ricca! Now it had all come back to him. Vanna had said Ricca was a banker and associate of her uncle Arturo. But it was the yacht that was named
Vanna
, and Digiulio, Zizì, and Ricca were all crew members . . .
    The girl had certainly been clever. What a subtle edifice of lies! Hats off!
    Want to bet that what he had thought was an elaborate prank on Vanna’s part actually had a precise purpose?
    Meanwhile, however, he had to get rid of the sailor.
    “Listen, do you by any chance have a sister named Vanna?”
    “Me? No, I have a brother named Antonio.”
    “All right, then, you can go.”
    The sailor felt lost.
    “What about the complaint?”
    “Which one?”
    “The one from the tavern’s owner.”
    “We never received it.”
    “Then why did you call me in?”
    “There was another complaint.”
    “There was?”
    “Yes, by a certain Vanna Digiulio against her brother, Mario. But since you claim you have no sisters—”
    “I don’t
claim
I have no sisters, I really don’t have any sisters!”
    “Then it’s clearly a case of two people with the same name. Good day, my friend.”

    The inspector was certain it wasn’t Digiulio who had informed Vanna of the yacht’s change of course. He absolutely needed to speak to the other crew members. He called Fazio, who still seemed offended for having been excluded from the questioning.
    “Have a seat.”
    Montalbano stared at him for a moment. Should he tell him about Vanna or not? Now that the whole business seemed to have taken on a new meaning, wasn’t it better to have Fazio as an ally?
    “Do you remember when, the other day, it rained so hard that the road collapsed?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Do you remember that pathetic creature I brought into the station, whose name was Vanna Digiulio?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Well, you know what? Her name wasn’t actually Vanna Digiulio, and she wasn’t a pathetic creature but a sly little bitch who made a great big monkey out of me.”
    Fazio looked stunned.
    “Really?” he said.
    Montalbano told him the whole story.

    “And what do
you
make of it?” Fazio asked him when he’d finished.
    “Several things seem clear to me. One, that the moment I introduced myself to her as Inspector Montalbano, the girl—whom we’ll keep calling Vanna for the sake of convenience—started sneezing and didn’t stop.”
    Fazio balked.
    “Wait a second. What’s that got to do with it?”
    “It’s got everything to do with it. I would bet my family jewels that those sneezes were faked. She did it to buy time to decide whether she should tell me what she wanted to tell me. And then she immediately put me, indirectly, on the trail of the yacht.”
    “Why?”
    “I could venture a guess. She did it for future reference.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “If anything bad happened to