Ricciardi thought it over, nodding. Then he got to his feet.
“True, but there’s still a little legwork we can do, even at this late date. And if we’re going to listen to what the contessa has to say, and it strikes me that that’s what we’ve decided to do, we’re going to have to get started somewhere. Let me ask you a favor, Raffaele. Since we have to give back these reports to that idiot De Blasio first thing tomorrow, copy them over for me from start to finish. In the meantime, I’ll take a little stroll over to the Pellegrini hospital and find out if Bruno Modo remembers anything about the autopsy he did on Piro.”
Maione turned disconsolately to look at the small stack of pages in the folder.
“Mamma mia, Commissa’. You know that’s something I’m not much good at, writing: my fingers are just too big. Do you mind if I drag Antonelli, from the archives, into this? He really enjoys it, he says that he has beautiful handwriting, and that at school they always gave him gold stars.”
Ricciardi produced the usual grimace that he called a smile.
“Do as you think best. But take care: extreme secrecy. I don’t want to find Garzo sticking his nose into this, asking what we think we’re up to. We’ve decided to reopen a closed case, remember that. Now, let’s get to work. We’ll talk later.”
Walking up Via Toledo, as noon gave way to afternoon. Walking up the main street of the city, at the very time of day when people were returning home or going to work, or out looking for food, or just trying to get by. When everyone was out on the street, enjoying the air that flowed through it, the air between the scent of the sea, rising from below, and the sparkling aroma of the woods, wafting down from above, to be inhaled as if it were opium that could change your mood for the better for no good reason, and God only knew there was plenty of call for that.
Ricciardi walked the short distance to the hospital, savoring the momentary solitude that you can only enjoy in the midst of a busy crowd. He tried to keep his mind on this case that wasn’t a case, this investigation that couldn’t be an investigation. He wondered how and why he was even working on the matter at all, since he always saw work as a necessary factor, and dealt with the shadows of the human soul because he was obliged to, and never of his own free will.
He wasn’t one of those guardians of law and order who make a sort of moral precept out of their pursuit of criminals. He realized that to the eyes of others, his colleagues on the police force and perhaps even the magistrates he worked with, it might look that way: the way he sank his teeth into his cases, the way he dedicated himself body and soul to solving them, never taking a break, never slackening his pursuit, did in fact seem as if he were on a mission, something that went well beyond mere professional dedication. For that matter, the fact that he had no social life, no woman in his life, no friends, parties, or receptions to attend, no clubs he belonged to: all this only confirmed the opinion that one might easily form of him.
But that’s not the way it was, he thought to himself as he walked along, hugging the wall, skirting the mass of people that crowded the street. In reality, he detested the dark side of the human soul and was terrified at how well he was able to conceive of the variegated and ripe-smelling river of humanity that poured laughing, singing, shouting, and chatting through the streets and alleyways, creating the passions that would carry them to the shores of joy or, more likely, to utter ruin. He would gladly have avoided having anything to do with crime at all. He’d have given all he owned just to be a normal human being, with the single goal of starting a family and caring for it as best he could.
At the corner of the street, his eyes were met with a grotesque and terrible scene. A little flower girl was squatting on the ground, and in front of her sat a basket of violets, wild roses, and jonquils. Smiling, she was trying to attract the attention of the passersby with a singsong: ciure, ciure delicate, evere addirose, ma vuje vulite bbene a quacchedune? Delicate flowers, Ricciardi translated, and aromatic herbs. A gift for the one you love.
Right in front of the girl, less than a yard away, the commissario perceived the corpse of a middle-aged man. The dead man’s eyes, his teeth gnashing in horrible pain all the while, stared unseeing straight into the little girl’s eyes: the body had been sliced neatly in half by the trolley he’d jumped in front of, and he vanished from Ricciardi’s sight right where his bloody pelvis ended, with white vertebrae and pink intenstines dangling out. The dead man’s voice, perfectly audible to Ricciardi, at least as clear as the young girl’s singsong cry, was cursing the poverty and despair that had led him to seek that atrocious demise.
He picked up his pace without responding to the flower girl’s invitation, extracting a perfumed handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it to his mouth to stifle his sudden nausea.
That’s the reason, he thought. That explains why I’m so devoted to my work, to what might seem like a pathological pleasure in muckraking, delving into the filth that men and women carry hidden away in the inmost rooms of their hearts. How can I do it, how could I ever hope to ignore all this pain? How could I escape it, how can I avoid it, if it hits me between the eyes at an ordinary street corner on this wonderful September afternoon?
He entered the cool shade of the Pellegrini hospital and was enveloped in a silence that seemed unreal, after the noise and clamor of the piazza that the hospital overlooked, where a bustling street market was always under way.
He knew the place well, and he quickly climbed the staircase that led up to Dr. Modo’s ward.
X
The doctor emerged from the autopsy room, rubbing his hands on his lab coat.
“Oh, what a lovely surprise! It’s our dear Ricciardi, deprived of his usual vaudeville sidekick, the famous Brigadier Maione. To what do I owe the honor? I don’t recall having checked in any murdered guests, here at the hotel.”
Despite his usual ostentatious display of sarcasm and irony, Ricciardi knew that if there was a man who fully empathized with the suffering he beheld from dawn to dusk of every working day, that man was Bruno Modo. The doctor ran his hand through his full head of thick white hair, scrutinizing the commissario over the lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Well, let me take a look at you. You’ve lost a little weight, if I’m not mistaken? It seems to me that that sideboard of a girl who’s come to take care of you has less authority than poor Rosa in terms of stuffing food into you.”
The physician’s eyes darted to the black band that Ricciardi wore on his arm, over his jacket. As the only person who was at all on close personal terms with the commissario, he was well aware of Ricciardi’s strong bonds of affection with his tata. He had battled with all the weapons that science put at his disposal to save her, but in the end the cerebral hemorrhage had triumphed.
“What are you talking about? Nelide is worse than her aunt,” Ricciardi replied. “She stands there like a bloody-minded gendarme and she won’t clear the dishes from the table unless she can see clear through to the porcelain. She’s been good, as far as that goes, it hardly seems that a thing has changed. Rosa was perfect in that, too. She taught her everything.”
Modo, who remembered her perfectly, shook his head.
“She was extraordinary. An extraordinary woman. And what’s more, she put up with you, which made her an authentic heroine. Come on, step outside with me so I can smoke a cigarette and get a breath of fresh air. I imagine it’s a lovely day, though here in prison you’d never know it.”
They walked out into the rear courtyard, where there was a large flowerbed with a couple of benches next to a centuries-old tree. The shade was pleasant. It seemed impossible to think that just a few yards away, on the other side of the enclosure wall, the city was still there, teeming like an anthill.
The minute they sat down, a little white dog with brown spots showed up, one ear drooping and one perked up high, his tail frantically fanning the air. The animal came up to the doctor, who rough
ly scratched his head, pulling a chunk of bread out of the pocket of his lab coat.
“Here you are, dog. How is your day going? Here, a little something for you to eat, that way you won’t pester the people in the hospital kitchen. Do you think I don’t know that you take up a position outside the kitchen door? And that those wretches who work there toss you all the scraps and leftovers?”
Ricciardi smiled briefly. He’d been a witness to the first meeting between the doctor and the dog, a year before or thereabouts, and it gave him pleasure to see how inseparable they still were.
“So you still haven’t given him a proper name?”
Modo shrugged his shoulders.
“Why should I? It’s not like there are any other dogs that live with me. No names and no leashes, my friend: the secret of relationships is freedom. But tell me, on the other hand, what brings you here? I don’t believe for one second that you have been able to withstand the temptation to absorb a shred of my wisdom and profound culture.”
Ricciardi reached out and distractedly patted the animal who, having recognized him, had placed a paw on his leg.
“Yes, in fact, I do need to ask you for some information. But you’re going to have to stretch your memory, this case dates back several months.”
Modo lit a cigarette, inhaling the smoke with gusto.
“That’s no problem, I remember everything, I’m not an old man like you. It will be a pleasant variation on my everyday routine. Lately all that’s come in here are suicides, dammit. Yesterday they brought me a man in two pieces, just think: he threw himself under a trolley car not a hundred yards away from here. What a depressing story.”
Ricciardi saw before him the severed torso of the man murmuring imprecations at the unsuspecting flower girl.
“In the first few days of June, earlier this year, you performed an autopsy on a certain Ludovico Piro, a lawyer. Do you remember?”
Modo furrowed his brow.
“Certainly, I remember, I’ve already told you that of the two of us, the one who’s going senile is you. And after all, how could I forget? A coming and going of carriages and chauffeur-driven automobiles: that man was in business with all the debauched good-for-nothings of the anemic aristocracy of this dying city. From my point of view, though, nothing special. Aside from the mortal wound, no other lesions.”
Ricciardi nodded, and resumed stroking the dog’s head.
“Yes, I read the report. But tell me something more about the cadaver. Are you sure that you remember clearly?”
The doctor exhaled a plume of smoke.
“Let me tell you in no uncertain terms that you are in the presence of the clearest mind in this nation, and in fact I’m the only one who clearly sees the abyss toward which this country is barreling now that Germany, too, has chosen to allow itself to be governed by buffoons. Now then: the dead man was about fifty, and he wasn’t in particularly good physical shape. The arteries, the lungs, the internal organs displayed the usual signs of wear and tear found among the people of that class. Still, barring complications, a couple of decades of life remained to him, if that other gentlemen hadn’t decided otherwise.”
“And were there any signs of a struggle? You know, flesh under fingernails, bruises . . . ”
Modo shook his head.
“No, I told you, there were no other lesions. I went myself to take a look at the scene of the crime; a beautiful place in Santa Lucia, a splendid summer day, with the sea that practically seemed to come in through the window. Such a shame to die, in a place like that.”
Ricciardi sat up more alertly.
“So you really did arrive while the dead body was still there? What position was it in? Did you see any details, did anything catch your eye?”
Modo looked at him curiously.
“Oh, mamma mia, what enthusiasm! Do you mind if I ask what’s going on? Have you reopened the investigation? I thought that the murderer confessed. At least that’s what I read in the papers.”
The commissario vaguely waved his hand.
“No, no. On the contrary, I need this conversation to remain private. I’m reconstructing certain aspects at the request of . . . well, let’s just say, privately. Well, are you going to tell me whether you remember anything?”
The doctor concentrated.
“Well, now, let’s see. The cadaver was slumped over, on the desktop. There were documents, promissory notes, contracts. There wasn’t a great deal of blood, from which I deduced that the fatal blow hadn’t severed any arteries, and in fact that’s what I found during the autopsy.”
“Besides that? Nothing else?”
“Nothing else. Just that one blow. As if he’d caught the victim off guard: boom, and then facedown on the desk. I remember that there was a bronze statuette on the desk, a little boy fishing, and it hadn’t even been knocked over. An inkwell, full of ink. A letter tray containing letters and documents, still upright. And then him, as if he’d fallen asleep.”
The dog curled up at Ricciardi’s feet and fell into a light sleep, but one ear remained upright, ready to pick up any noise out of the ordinary.
“And you didn’t have any further thoughts about this paper knife or pen that is thought to have been used to murder Piro?”
Modo shook his head.
“No, it was no paper knife. It was a clean wound, a hole at least seven inches deep, but there were no lateral cuts. Not a knife, or a paper knife either. A pen, yes, that could be, in fact, that seems quite likely. But dry, because there were no traces of ink on the flesh.”
The commissario seemed to be observing with the greatest attention the dog’s rhythmic breathing.
“Well then, how did he die?”
The doctor indicated a point beneath his right ear.
“The blow was delivered directly behind the mandible, on the right side, medially to the sternocleidomastoid. The sharp point, whether it was a pen or something else, entered obliquely, at roughly a sixty-degree angle, and penetrated the throat muscles until it hit the larynx, as I wrote in the autopsy report. The victim, in practical terms, was suffocated in his own blood in less than a minute’s time.”
Ricciardi was completely absorbed by the description.
“To the right. So a left-handed killer, then?”
Modo shrugged his shoulders.
“Not necessarily. To strike a blow, either hand will do, it’s not a piece of precision work, after all. But whoever delivered that blow was certainly above the victim, the angle speaks clearly.”
“And he never called for help.”
“No, he didn’t. He couldn’t have, with the laceration of the cartilage. If he’d been able to, he would most likely have been heard, even at that time of night. It was hot out, and the window was open.”
The commissario said nothing for a long while. Then he spoke: “The wife and children were sleeping only a few yards away. The window was open. Someone comes in in the middle of the night, argues, probably has a loud fight because otherwise it’s unclear why he’d kill him, and then murders him. Then he turns and leaves, untroubled, opens the door again, walks downstairs, and exits the building. No one sees him. No one hears him.”
Modo threw his arms wide.
“Or maybe someone does see him and decides to mind their own business, quite simply. Or maybe at that hour of the night, in a well-to-do neighborhood, everyone is asleep in spite of the heat. The fact remains that Count Whatsisname made a full confession, right? Why should he have done that, if he wasn’t the murderer?”
Once again, silence. Then, in an undertone: “Right, why should he?”
The doctor stood up.
“I have to get back to my ward, I have an old man with a nasty case of pneumonia who I doubt is going to live to see tomorrow. Listen, Ricciardi, I’ve made an important decision that concerns you: one of these nights you’re going to have
to get over your proverbial stinginess and invest a little of your substantial assets to take me out to dinner. There’s a new trattoria that I’m told has such piss-poor wine that you can get drunk on less than a liter of it. Agreed?”
Ricciardi protested weakly.
“Bruno, you know I don’t like going out at night. It’s been a kind of tough period . . . ”
Modo lifted his hand, brusquely.
“Maybe you didn’t understand: this is your doctor’s orders. No excuses. I’m going to come pick you up at police headquarters the day after tomorrow at eight in the evening, because I’m on duty tomorrow.”
“Has anyone ever told you that your way of doing things is reminiscent of the Fascists?”
The doctor burst into laughter, waking up the dog, who leapt to his feet.
“Ah, you’ve found me out! In reality, I’m a spy appointed by Il Duce personally to discover all those who would be willing to establish bonds of friendship with a dissident, and arrange to send them into internal exile. Instead of me, a dozen Blackshirts will come to get you, and they’ll beat you bloody.”
Ricciardi was resigned.
“Fine with me, better a dozen Blackshirts than an entire evening spent listening to you rave on about politics.”
When he left the courtyard, Modo was still laughing, and the dog was happily wagging his tail.
XI
Why had he decided to delve into that absurd story? Ricciardi couldn’t help but ask himself.
By now it was late afternoon. From the dull grumblings of his stomach he realized that he had skipped lunch; that had happened many times in the past, but never once since he had returned from Cilento after Rosa’s funeral. He stopped at the cart of a street vendor who was calling his wares in a stentorian voice, comparing his pizza to the most exquisite products of the finest pastry shops.
As he was rapidly gobbling his meal, bent forward to prevent olive oil and tomato sauce from dripping onto his trousers, the question kept whirring through his head: Why?
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