Day of the Dead

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Signora? Signo’, well, which one will it be?”

  Livia shook herself out of her thoughts and for what seemed like the hundredth time tried to focus on the two dresses that the seamstress was showing her. This seamstress had been recommended to her by a new Neapolitan friend, the Marchesa De Luca di Roccatagliata. She was happy with the two samples, but she couldn’t quite make up her mind as to which one she liked best.

  But her mind was wandering chaotically, returning repeatedly to the rain-streaked window. The few words she’d managed to pry out of Maione had put her in a state of anxiety and alarm for Ricciardi, especially concerning his relationship with Dr. Modo, a subject of special interest to the secret police.

  She’d gone to police headquarters specifically to let Ricciardi know, without saying it in so many words, that seeing the doctor socially could expose him to a very serious risk: it took next to nothing, these days, to find yourself shipped off to internal exile.

  But then Maione had spoken to her of the dead boy, and this, too, had gone straight to her heart. She’d been a mother herself, if only for a short time, because her baby boy had sickened and died. The fact that a man could become so passionately involved in finding out the reasons for the death of a little orphan boy only increased her interest in Ricciardi, if such a thing was possible.

  From the street below, along with the sounds of the pouring rain and passing cars, came the cheerful yells of the scugnizzi splashing in puddles. Anyone who feels love for children has a great deal of love to offer, she decided. She smiled at the seamstress.

  “They’re lovely, just beautiful; I’ll take them both.”

  In the same little café where he had met with Ricciardi earlier, Maione was sitting with Bambinella, who was warming her hands around a cup of tea. The expression on his informant’s face worried him: Bambinella was usually all smiles, playful and affectionate in a vulgar fashion, given to rough humor and teasing; now she was serious, grim, pensive.

  “Well, then, Bambine’: What’s going on, will you tell me? You’re always telling me how dangerous it is for us to meet out in the open, and now I actually find you standing on the street corner by police headquarters saying you want to talk to me?”

  Bambinella set down her teacup and picked up a napkin with her long fingers, her polished nails.

  “Brigadie’, it’s about the death of the child, the little boy from Santa Maria del Soccorso. I heard something and, since it struck me as an interesting piece of information, I came to tell you about it. Did I do wrong?”

  “No, no, you did right. It’s just that you have a face . . . well, not the usual ugly face I’m used to seeing on you.”

  Bambinella grimaced.

  “I know, I just left the house the way I was, without even touching up my makeup. But if a girl is pretty, she’s pretty no matter what, Brigadie’.”

  Maione smiled.

  “Exactly—if a girl is pretty. So tell me all about it: What did you find out?”

  “All right, Brigadie’, listen carefully: This morning that client of mine came by, the verdummaio, the strolling vendor who told me that he’d seen the boy with that well-dressed man, the man with the limp, you remember?”

  Maione nodded.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, he’d already told me that he’d had the impression that the man and the little boy were having an argument, and that the man with the limp was holding him by the arm and rousting him, shaking him a little, in other words. He’d even thought about stepping in, because it seemed to him that the little boy needed help.”

  “Yes, you already told me about that. So?”

  Bambinella went on patiently:

  “Well, today he told me that he’d seen him again, the man with the limp. He’d seen him come out of an apartment building, in Via Santa Lucia, number twelve; and he asked just who that gentleman was. The doorman, who was a friend of his, told him that the man lived there, and that his name is Sersale, Edoardo Sersale. He’s a nobleman, and he comes from some venerable family or other, my client didn’t really understand that part. The name rang a bell for me, and after the verdummaio left, I went down and talked to a girlfriend of mine who works in a bordello in Via Torretta.”

  Maione spread his arms wide.

  “I don’t know what to say, you have a girlfriend working in every single corner of this city, as long as the place is sufficiently filthy and disgusting. Whorehouses, taverns, gambling dens, you name it.”

  Bambinella nodded.

  “It’s true, Brigadie’. And it’s a good thing, too, because as always I’d remembered correctly: my girlfriend had told me about one of their customers who was really hooked on one of the girls. I know her by sight, too; she’s pretty enough, but if you ask me she’s just a bit vulgar, with a pair of tits like this, and a mouth . . .”

  Maione interrupted her vehemently:

  “Listen, do you really think that I should be sitting here with you, at the risk of having someone see me and making me look like a fool, and being mocked until the day I die, just so I can find out what kind of tits a whore who works at the bordello in Via Torretta has? Will you get to the point, yes or no?”

  “You’re right, you’re right, Brigadie’, forgive me; that’s just the way I am, I get distracted. In short, this client of the friend of my girlfriend answers the description perfectly, the limp, well-dressed, and so on. So I asked this girlfriend of mine if she could arrange for me to talk to the girl, whose name I’m not going to tell you—sorry, but I swore on Our Lady the Madonna of Pompeii, and as you know I’m a very religious girl. Well, to make a long story short, the name matches. And this guy Sersale is in trouble, too. Big trouble.”

  Maione perked up his ears.

  “What do you mean, in big trouble?”

  “Well, he may be an aristocrat, but he’s up to his ears in debt. He likes women, bordellos, and cards. He’s gone through a fortune, and now he’s in the hands of the loan sharks, and they’ve told him that if he doesn’t pay up, every last cent, they’re going to fix him good.”

  “What does that have to do with the little boy?”

  “Ah, that I couldn’t say, you’ll have to find out for yourself. But the fact remains that the girl said her friend had changed completely in the past few days. He was laughing and giddy like he used to be; he seemed to be happy again. He told her that it wouldn’t be long now until he expected to have all the money he needed to pay off his debts and straighten out his situation. And when the girl asked him how he expected to do that, he said: I’ve found the boy. That’s all.”

  Maione was baffled.

  “What’s that supposed to mean: “I’ve found the boy’? What did he mean by that? Tettè was an orphan boy, he didn’t even have food to eat, and in fact he was so hungry that he even gobbled down rat poison. What could he have given to a man like that?”

  Bambinella shrugged her shoulders.

  “That’s something I couldn’t say, Brigadie’. But my heart tells me that this bastard with a limp fits in with the death of that poor little child somehow, and that he’s in it up to his neck.”

  Maione agreed.

  “Whether or not he was involved, we’ll certainly have to investigate him. Grazie, Bambine’: you were right, this is very valuable information, and it needed to reach me right away. But can I ask you something? Why did you do it? Why did you go out hunting, all the way to Torretta in the rain and then here, to wait for me on the corner, knowing I might not come by here at all?”

  Bambinella drank her last sip of tea and smiled sadly.

  “Because I was a little orphan boy myself, Commissa’. No father, no mother, abandoned in the middle of this city’s streets. I know it what it’s like, when you’re nothing; when it doesn’t matter whether you live or die, and nobody gives a damn. I had to earn my living in scraps and mouthfuls of food, just like that poor
creature you found dead at Capodimonte. Let’s just say it was a flower I placed on that child’s casket. A flower from Bambinella.”

  Enrica’s hands flew over the bowls, plates, and utensils as she set the table for dinner. And the same way her hands were flying, her heart was soaring, high above the rain-dense clouds that were louring over the city.

  She’d received another letter. Her father had handed it to her with a conspiratorial smile, having pulled it out of the mailbox with a rapid sleight of hand that his wife failed to see: a knowing smile that had made her turn red as a ripe tomato, until she managed to escape to her bedroom.

  This time the tone was gentler, although it remained well within the bounds of discretion that she’d established with her own letter. Ricciardi apologized awkwardly for his shyness, which perhaps had been excessive, and had prevented him from stepping forward and speaking to her directly, as many other men surely would have done in his place.

  She shouldn’t doubt, however, that all his thoughts were focused on her: what he felt, and what he hoped one day to be able to tell her, was something very important (and here Enrica had been forced to stop reading, because her heart felt suddenly as if it were trying to leap out of her ears). It’s just that he wasn’t comfortable in this kind of situation, as he’d never experienced anything of the sort before.

  He concluded the letter by saying that he sincerely hoped that she, too, thought about him from time to time, and that her thoughts resembled his own. He truly hoped so. And he closed by wishing her every good thing in the world, with all his heart.

  Enrica couldn’t remember ever being so happy in her life. Ever. Not even close.

  She just hoped that she’d be able to put all her feelings into the letter she was about to write in response: she, too, would be more affectionate this time.

  She wondered when he’d ask for a meeting.

  XLVIII

  The population of Gambrinus changed at the dinner hour.

  The clients who came in for an aperitif, those who lingered over their afternoon chats, and others who met there for encounters more or less clandestine had all returned home by now, to punch the domestic time clock, and now sat around groaning dinner tables, carrying on uninteresting conversations with a bunch of strangers who bore their same surnames.

  The evening clientele, which consisted of those who wanted to hear music played by live musicians rather than the tinny sounds emitted by the wooden box known as the radio, others who wished to exchange glances with those of the opposite sex and lay the foundations for future liaisons, and those who hoped to take advantage of the giddy atmosphere to establish profitable business relationships—this clientele had yet to arrive.

  Dinnertime at Gambrinus was a no-man’s-land. The same waiters and barmen were sharpening their tools of the trade for the evening, while calculating the day’s profits and losses. They were starting to tot up the day’s tips, repairing rips in their tailcoats, reknotting bowties that were sagging from the feverish pace of the afternoon rush. At the monumental cash register, the bell of the cash drawer was dinging a little less frantically, and there were fewer caps and top hats doffed at the entrance, as customers entering met others on their way out.

  Even the smells changed at Gambrinus when the dinner hour arrived. As His Majesty King Coffee had reigned triumphant all morning and the scents of cooked tomatoes, mozzarella, and eggplants had wafted through the air at lunchtime, followed by those of pastries and savory treats in the long afternoon’s rounds of vermouths and rosolios, now the aromas all blended together, with no one smell clearly victorious, none entirely vanquished, since they’d thoroughly seeped into the silk upholsteries and woven wall hangings that day, ready to take up the battle again the next.

  At Gambrinus, sounds played their part, come the dinner hour. The cheerful piping melody of morning and the dreamy strains of afternoon had evolved, on the keyboard of the handsome concert grand piano, into quizzical arpeggios, a harmonic training session without any clear meaning. A babbling brook of musical notes, a drifting dust of falling stars surrounding the crystal fixtures, too delicate to make them vibrate, a music of expectation and faint regret.

  The air was oddly clear, under the lights at Gambrinus, when the dinner hour came. Cigars and cigarettes were a lingering memory of the afternoon, when they had blended with the scent of the rain and the silvery sound of women laughing and little spoons stirring tea in teacups; they would come back over the course of the long night that lay ahead, serving as a misty backdrop to the whispered words and the sensual despairing tangos danced in the center of the room, surrounded by tables piled high with hungry eyes and sugary sfogliatelle. But at that hour, at the dinner hour, the light of the immense crystal chandeliers played over the gold and the silver of the walls and the counters, arriving intact, just as it was when it set out from the thousand tiny lightbulbs.

  Dinnertime doesn’t last long at Gambrinus: from the last glass of vermouth tossed off and left empty on the table to the first nighthawk who walks in and looks around in disappointment, less than an hour will go by. But it will be a very long hour.

  Because it’s the dinner hour.

  Maione entered Gambrinus circumspectly, but there were very few people: no inconvenient encounters to be feared.

  A few tables were taken, of course; but then, it was a big place. A woman sitting alone, her makeup slightly smeared, an angry glare. An elderly man, the watery eyes of a drunk, every once in a while an incongruous giggle. Two men with stiff starched collars, intently eating dishes of something, never once looking each other in the face. A couple, the man reading a newspaper and the woman staring into the middle distance, saying nothing. How dreary, thought the brigadier.

  He saw Ricciardi sitting at his usual table, a steaming cup on the table in front of him, his hands in his pockets and his eyes gazing raptly out at the rain-slick street, striped with bands of light from the streetlamps. He was frighteningly pale, and now and then his lower lip quivered with a tremor.

  “Commissa’, you’re not at all well; and these aren’t nights to spend out in the streets, if you’re not well. You’ve got a raging fever, you can tell right away. Let me walk you home. Trust me on this: if you’re unwell, you’re no good to anyone.”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I’m the kind of person who just gets sicker if he tries to take care of himself. I ordered you a sfogliatella and an espresso. But why don’t you tell me what you got up to today, and then I’ll tell you about my day.”

  For more than half an hour, they exchanged information about their reciprocal investigations. Ricciardi talked about the sexton, without being able to conceal his revulsion at what a disgusting individual he had proven to be; Maione talked about Cristiano and his hard outer shell, so sad to see in a boy so young, and about Cosimo and his grimy self-interest. Each of the three prompted a potential theory of murder, in each of the three a potential for violence lurked; but in none of the three did they see a likely poisoner.

  Then the brigadier told the story of Bambinella lurking in wait for him, and the news that the femminiello had brought him about the man with the limp, a man who could now perhaps be pinned down to a Christian name and a surname and an address.

  Maione shook his head in dismay.

  “Commissa’, none of this is leading anywhere, we’re just spinning our wheels. Even as for the man with the limp, what solid evidence do we have? A confidential tip from one whore to another. And maybe the man’s nothing but a pervert, in which case we can certainly go pick him up and throw him into jail, after pounding him black-and-blue, obviously.”

  Ricciardi still seemed dubious.

  “But you tell me: Would someone who’s in that much trouble—piled high with debts and loan sharks on his tail, desperately looking for money—really waste his time venting his passions on a little boy? And even if so, what would it have to do with his remark about having
found the money he needed because he’d found the little boy? No, this theory about him being a pervert doesn’t add up as far as I’m concerned.”

  “All right, then, let’s go back to square one, Commissa’: the theory of accidental death. The deeper we dig, the more disgusting the things we find, I agree with you. Horrible things, things that make you want to puke. Let me say it again: let’s do a little cleaning. Let’s throw the saponaro, the sexton, and the man with the limp in jail. We’ll take a fine-toothed comb to the priest and see what we find, once Thunder Jaw leaves town, because till then they won’t let us move an inch; in other words, let’s really clean house. But the boy’s death was an accident, God rest his soul in peace, and now he’s an angel up in heaven. Let’s leave him there.”

  Ricciardi fell silent. He looked out at the street; it was cold and rainy, but the dead guappo was still standing sentry, his heart pumping out blood as he repeated the same words: Come on, I’d like to see you. I’d like to see if you have the nerve. He thought to himself that that’s the way things are: there they stand, firm and immutable; but there are some who see them, and others who don’t.

  He turned to look at Maione.

  “Tomorrow’s the Feast of All Saints, Raffaele. And the day after that is the Day of the Dead. You have two days off, why don’t you stay home with your family. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for having kept me company in this crazy investigation that’s probably—no, certainly—just another one of my misguided obsessions.”

  Maione studied the commissario’s face.

  “You’re not well. First of all you’ve got a fever that could knock out a horse, and the weather’s rotten, so if you insist on going out on the streets you’re going to catch pneumonia. In the second place, I know you pretty well—no, I know you very well, and you’re not capable of letting go of a case like this, not at this point. But do me a favor, Commissa’: give yourself a rest. We don’t have any hot leads; for now, unfortunately, this case is dead in the water. We’ve seen what we can see, and there’s nothing more that we can do. Let’s wait until Tuesday, and then we’ll get back on the trail.”