“Cat, I’m leaving for Boccadasse tonight,” he’d said, walking into the station.

“I’m coming too!”

“No, you can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because!”

At this point Fazio cut in.

“I’m sorry, Chief, but you really can’t go to Boccadasse.”

“Why not?”

Fazio looked a little apprehensive.

“Do you mean to tell me you’ve forgotten, Chief?”

“Forgotten what?”

“You died yesterday morning at exactly seven fifteen.”

And he pulled a little piece of paper out of his pocket.

“You, Salvo Montalbano, son of-”

“Knock it off with the public records! Did I really die?! How did it happen?”

“You had a stroke.”

“Where?”

“Here, at the station.”

“When?”

“When you’s talkin’ witta c’mishner,” Catarella chimed in.

Apparently that sonofabitch Bonetti-Alderighi had pissed him off so badly that…

“If you want to come and have a look…,” said Fazio, “a mortuary chapel was set up in your office.”

They’d pushed aside the mountains of paper on his desk and laid the open coffin there. He looked at himself. He didn’t look dead. But he was immediately convinced that the corpse in the coffin was his.

“Have you informed Livia?”

“Yes,” said Mimì Augello, coming up to him. Then he hugged him tightly and said, crying, “I’m so sorry.”

And a sort of chorus kept repeating:

“We’re so sorry.”

The chorus was made up of Bonetti-Alderighi, his cabinet chief Dr. Lattes, Jacomuzzi, Headmaster Burgio, and two undertakers.

“Thanks,” the inspector said.

Then Dr. Pasquano came forward.

“How did I die?” Montalbano asked him.

Pasquano flew off the handle.

“What! Still busting my balls, even in death! Just wait for the autopsy results!”