Ricciardi shot a quick glance around the room, to make sure nobody else had heard those words.
“Considering that they’d just opened, that might not be so strange after all. Viper had only had time for one customer, possibly two at the most. And with both of the regular clients that she had, apparently, she didn’t always have complete intercourse. So we’re back where we started from.”
Modo stopped chewing, and stared at something just over Ricciardi’s shoulder. His face took on a glow of boundless admiration, and he said:
“Speaking of beauty, take a look at that spectacular sight!”
Ricciardi turned: stepping out of a car through a passenger door held open by a uniformed chauffeur, was Livia.
XVII
Toward the upper end of the Via San Nicola da Tolentino, as the buildings became more scattered, the wind could be felt more keenly. Maione walked, holding his hat to his head with one hand, to keep it from flying off to join the flocks of swallows sketching enigmatic paths across the sky.
The brigadier, dripping with sweat, wondered what mysterious factors had caused the person who knew most about everything that happened in this city—a veritable spider at the center of a vast web, as he’d always pictured Bambinella to himself—to live in such an isolated location. It struck him as a glaring contrast.
For that matter, it was actually better this way: the possibility that he’d be spotted, which would spell trouble in several ways—an embarrassment to Maione and the loss of his chief source of confidential information—diminished considerably in that far-flung section of the Spanish Quarter, behind Corso Vittorio Emanuele, hidden in the lush greenery of Vomero.
The spider at the center of her web opened the door and stood waiting for him at the top of the stairs, leaning fetchingly over the railing of the external loggia and walkway.
“Well, well, what a lovely surprise! My favorite admirer comes running to see me on the first day of spring: the most romantic thing in the world? Now, if we were in a movie on the silver screen, you can just imagine the background music that the pianist would be playing!”
Huffing and puffing as he came up the last flight of stairs, Maione retorted:
“If you ask me, you found an apartment on the top floor specifically to make sure I’d be so out of breath I wouldn’t have the strength to kick you downstairs. Now I ask you, wasn’t the practically sheer climb enough, without the stairs to top it off?”
Bambinella burst out with a loud laugh that sounded like a whinny:
“Oh right, I’d completely forgotten, Brigadie’: next time you should warn me so I can make sure you find me stretched out nude on the ground floor, so that everyone will know how much we love each other.”
The brigadier hauled off and delivered a straight-armed slap at the femminiello, who dodged it easily.
“Ah, how nice, I love it when you take it from conversation to physical contact. Come in, Brigadie’, make yourself right at home, and I’ll brew up a pot of ersatz coffee. How are you?”
Maione collapsed into a bamboo chair, evidence of Bambinella’s passion for anything Chinese, whether authentic or imitation. The lightly built chair groaned miserably under his weight.
“Ah, look, Bambine’, in theory we’d be fine; but no such luck, the minute the holidays roll around something always happens and we have to run all over the place. My family never seems to have a chance to enjoy a festival in blessed peace.”
The femminiello turned from the waist, as she briskly took down demitasses and espresso spoons from the drying rack.
“Oh, you’re talking about the murder of Viper, aren’t you? Mamma mia, I’m horrified by what happened!”
Maione spread his arms wide.
“Of course you would know all about it already. For that matter, it happened on your territory, no?”
“Not exactly, Commissa’, as you know. I work for myself, all the times that I tried working in a place like that, things didn’t really go very well. Not that they don’t want girls like me, don’t get me wrong: in fact, it’s one more treat on offer for their clientele and, if I do say so myself, I’m famous. You ought to know that there’s one thing I do, in a way that . . .”
Maione raised his voice:
“For the love of Christ, Bambine’, don’t you dare try telling me about the things you do! I don’t want to know, and I don’t even want to imagine them, because my imagination is all too powerful already. Just cut it out, and promise me you’ll never talk about it again, because if you do I’ll walk out of here right now!”
Bambinella whinnied again.
“Brigadie’, the last thing I wanted was to upset you. I understand that I’ll end up in your dreams and then normal life will no longer be enough: what do you think, that I don’t know how men become helplessly obsessed with me?”
“There’s no obsession here, if anything a healthy disgust, if you want to be exact. But please, continue. What were you saying, about that place?”
“That it’s not really the right place for me, you see. They have a clientele that’s just too normal, people who aren’t interested in trying anything new. But quite a few of my girlfriends work there, people I met . . . in other circumstances, so to speak, and that’s why I know all about the situation in there. That’s all there is.”
Holding the cup in both hands, she started across the room toward the brigadier, swiveling her hips as she walked. The black silk kimono dotted with a red flowered pattern parted to reveal a pair of long legs sheathed in flesh-colored stockings, while a lace negligee was visible at the chest, beneath a pair of broad shoulders. The long face, with its sharp features, was embellished by a pair of large brown eyes, limpid, expressive, and heavily mascaraed.
“You caught me unprepared, Brigadie’, I was just in the middle of putting on my face. Business doesn’t really get started, up here, until later during the holidays. You have no idea how badly people get the urge to do something fun during Holy Week. It must be a contrast with all the penitence that the parish priest tells everyone to do.”
Maione retorted ironically:
“And in the end, they come up to your place to do their penitence.”
“In fact. So, Brigadie’, if it wasn’t love that brought you all the way up here, what is it that you need?”
The policeman took a sip of the drink that was in the demitasse, and grimaced, disgusted.
“Mamma mia, this ersatz coffee is just foul . . . You know why I’m here, I need information. Both the commissario and I think that the madame of the brothel, Yvonne, and one of the girls, a certain Bianca Palumbo aka Lily, are telling us less than what they know. Maybe you know something that could help us understand the reason we’re getting this impression, that’s all.”
Bambinella assumed a pensive expression.
“Ah, you’re talking about a couple of interesting individuals, Yvonne and Lily. I don’t know them well, because they’ve always been at Il Paradiso and like I told you, I’ve never had much to do with that place. Still, I have picked up a tidbit or two about them, though only secondhand.”
“Like what?”
The femminiello put both her hands, with their long red nails, over her mouth and sat, concentrating.
“All right then, from what I’ve heard out and about, it’s not smooth sailing at that bordello. Madame Yvonne is having difficulties paying her suppliers, that’s something I heard from a client of mine who’s a fishmonger and that’s the reason—the fact that he wasn’t paid what he was owed for his supplies—he asked me to serve him free of charge. Well, I told him, I said: hey, guaglio’, what do you take me for, an office of the Fascist charity organization, the beneficenza fascista? But he begged and pleaded until finally I . . .”
Maione leaned forward, as if to stand up.
“No, Bambine’, if you’re going to start rambling then I’d rather go. Today
I just can’t bring myself to listen to the story of your life.”
“Why, what dreadful manners you have, Brigadie’, if a girl can’t talk to her friends about the hardships life throws her way! In any case, this boyfriend of mine told me that Madame Yvonne saw him personally, something she’d never done before, to ask him if he could wait a few days, that maybe she could fix the problem. And he heard that all the tradesmen are facing the same situation, except for the one from Vomero who sells her fruit, Peppe ’a Frusta, who doesn’t want money on account of Viper. But that’s a whole different matter.”
“Wait a minute, first let’s finish talking about Madame. So you’re saying they don’t have enough money. And that’s odd because from what I understand they’re running at full capacity.”
Bambinella agreed:
“Yes, Brigadie’, as far as that goes, no question. It’s one of the most famous brothels in all Naples. But there’s Madame’s son, you met him, practically a mental defective who loves to play cards, and she takes care of his gambling debts because if word gets out that he doesn’t pay what he loses at the tables, someone’s bound to kill him. She already lost her husband that way, stabbed in the gut outside a tavern in Vasto years ago, and she doesn’t want her son to meet the same ugly end. Which brings us back to that earlier question, the most important one: did you know that Peppe ’a Frusta, the fruit vendor with the fleet of carts from Vomero, asked Viper to marry him?”
Maione sighed in resignation.
“Yes, in fact, I do know. But my question is this: how on earth do you know?”
Bambinella smacked her lips.
“I know because a girlfriend of mine who works there every so often told me, though she works as a housekeeper, not a whore, but she still hopes to become a whore because she’s very pretty as a picture, if a little bit rough when it comes to her manners, because she just moved to Naples from Frattamaggiore; I told her: don’t give up hope, because the important thing is to be passionate about what you want to do, that and to have a nice big pair of tits and she . . . Oh, all right, all right, Brigadie’, what’s the good of you getting pissed off? In any case, the fact remains that Peppe, who was Viper’s boyfriend when they were just kids, is head over heels in love with her and asked her to give up the working life and marry him. But she wasn’t sure about it. She said within earshot of my girlfriend, when she was tidying up: If I marry him, I’ll have a home of my own, and I can keep my son close. Because, you know, she has a son . . . Ah, you do know that already. But if I marry him, she said, I’ll lose everything I have and that I earn, and I might even wind up with a guy who gets drunk or gets himself killed on some unfamiliar street. In other words, she wasn’t at all sure what to do, and she said that she wanted to think it over. And just as she was thinking it over, someone killed her.”
“Did you know Viper?”
“Only by sight, Brigadie’. She was beautiful but she did put on airs a little bit, she wasn’t the most likeable girl in the business, in other words. Beautiful women are just like that, they believe that the thing they have, between their legs, will let them rule the world but let me tell you, you can do plenty without.”
“I don’t doubt it. But the proposal of marriage, how could it have led to murder?”
Bambinella explained with a cunning look:
“Ah, that leads to the other person you mentioned, the other whore, Lily. And that’s where her position comes into play.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ought to know, in fact, you probably already do know, that Viper had only two clients, even if there were plenty of people who went to see her at the bordello out of curiosity. One client was Peppe ’a Frusta, who was terribly jealous of her but who had to reconcile himself to her profession, at least until she married him and he took her away from there. The other, whom you’ve certainly already met, was Cavalier Ventrone, the merchant of saints and madonnas from Via Chiaia. You know who I mean, no?”
Maione smirked.
“Of course I do, I went to pick him up because he was the one who found the body in the first place.”
“Exactly. Now, you need to know that before Viper came to work at Il Paradiso, Ventrone’s favorite whore, and he spends every penny he has in the place, was none other than Lily. When a man has the bad habits that Ventrone has, then he has to have a perfect understanding with the whore if he wants to be happy: and Lily, who’s a strong, no-nonsense woman, was perfect for doling out a beating. But then Viper came along, pretty as she was and clever too, and she took him away from her. But Lily told my girlfriend she hadn’t given up hope, and she still planned to get him back under her power: the man was like a trust fund!”
Maione’s face lit up.
“That hadn’t occurred to me. That’s why she claimed that she, not he, had found the body.”
The femminiello clapped her hands.
“Bravo, Brigadier! And that’s why, if you ask me, the real motive for Viper’s murder was Peppe ’a Frusta’s marriage proposal.”
“And why is that, pray tell?”
Bambinella got comfortable and said:
“Easy. If she decided to marry him, she’d be putting Madame into a world of trouble, leaving the bordello without its main attraction just when she most needed the money; and Ventrone would also be left without his favorite whore, and perhaps in the rage at losing her, he might have got some ugly ideas. But if she made up her mind to tell him no, then Peppe ’a Frusta, jealous as he was, might have lost control and killed her; or else Lily, who was hoping to get rid of her once and for all, hadn’t been able to resign herself to the fact that she was going to stick around and deprive her of her meal ticket.”
Maione looked at Bambinella with a renewed sense of admiration.
“Where did you get all these deductive powers? What are you planning to do, take my job?”
Bambinella tittered coquettishly, one hand covering her mouth.
“Oh, Madonna, Brigadie’, what are you saying, you’re so dear to me. For me, you’re like a grandfather. I’d never do such a terrible thing to you!”
“A grandfather, eh? Now you just watch how this old grandfather tosses you into a jail cell and throws away the key. And in any case, if you hear anything else of interest about this crime, please send for me. And I’m warning you: stay on the straight and narrow, because I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”
The femminiello stood up to accompany Maione to the door.
“Brigadie’, I’d be happy to stay on the straight and narrow, but I’ve never even been able to figure out where it is.”
XVIII
As if cued by a particularly theatrical director, the sun broke through the clouds just as Livia emerged from the car, appearing before passing strollers in all her glory.
Ricciardi tucked his head down between his shoulders, turning his back toward the woman and hoping he wouldn’t be seen; Modo, for his part, didn’t even make the effort to wrench his gaze away from the woman’s magnificent figure.
“Say, Ricciardi, isn’t that wonder of nature the widow of the tenor, the one who was murdered just a year ago?”
The commissario didn’t have time to stitch together an answer of any kind, because Livia headed straight for their table. She’d only stepped out of her vehicle a few seconds ago and already at least three men were converging on her from different points on the piazza, all anxious to offer her their company: that too was an effect of the spring.
The woman wore an unmatched suit, with a lightweight wool skirt and jacket in two different shades of grey, clinging softly to her body, and a dark-blue silk blouse with raspberry-pink trim. Topping her short hair was a woolen beret, cunningly perched just off to the right side; a string of pearls and a pair of platinum and diamond earrings completed a stunningly elegant ensemble.
But it certainly wasn’t on account of her beautiful clothing that ever
yone there, male and female, couldn’t take their eyes off her: there was something feline about the way she moved, the way she looked around her, stirring both attraction and fear. It was immediately obvious that this was a woman capable of deciding what was going to happen to her, with only the slightest margin of error.
Livia took only an instant to recognize the back of Ricciardi’s head, for the simple reason that she’d been looking for him. She looked for him everywhere she went, wherever she found herself in that city: she’d moved there specifically for that purpose.
She came over and spoke, addressing Modo:
“Do you mind if I disturb you, Doctor? I don’t know if you remember me, we met a year ago in tragic circumstances. I see that you have company, and in fact I’ve been introduced to your luncheon companion as well.”
Modo had leapt to his feet, knocking napkin and fork to the floor and making the table wobble.
“Signora, how could I ever forget you? What an immense pleasure to see you again. Please, do us the honor of sitting down with us.”
She turned to look at Ricciardi.
“If it wouldn’t bother your fellow diner, I’d be delighted to sit with you. In fact I’m here for lunch.”
The commissario got to his feet, with a partial bow.
“I doubt I have much say in the matter, given the doctor’s enthusiasm. Please, Livia, sit right down. I’m happy to see you.”
The impeccably garbed waiter glided over with a chair and Livia sat down.
“Really?” she said. “You don’t seem very happy at all, but I’ll choose to give more credence to your words than to the expression on your face. For that matter, our man Ricciardi doesn’t give his emotions much play, does he, Doctor?”
The three men who had hoped to squire her did nothing to conceal their chagrin, but quickly found new objects for their attentions. Modo, who would have agreed with Livia even if she had told him that the sun rose in the west, hastened to agree:
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