“No, I’m afraid that you need to know everything, Baron. Bianca was here, this morning, and she asked me to be entirely frank with you, to tell you in the most complete and detailed manner exactly what happened. Because, you understand, I played a part in all this. An important part. And unless I explain it all to you from the very beginning, then you might miss something, or I might overlook some detail, which would make your ‘unofficial investigation,’ as you called it yourself, entirely pointless.”
Ricciardi was confused.
“I’m ready to listen to you, but if it’s something that’s relevant to the case, why didn’t you issue a spontaneous declaration about it at the time? It would have helped the investigators to reflect, to refrain from archiving the investigation immediately.”
Marangolo was gazing steadily at the horizon where the hill tumbled down to the sea. The cloudless sky looked like a papier-mâché panel.
Blue above, blue below.
“It wouldn’t have changed a thing. But it changes everything for me, for my conscience. Because you see, Malomonte, the money that Piro loaned to Romualdo di Roccaspina didn’t come from the religious entities for which he served as administrator.
“I gave him that money.”
XXXIV
Brigadier Maione was reading the report drawn up by officers Camarda and Cesarano concerning a likely suicide that had taken place the day before, not far from Via Toledo, in the very center of town. Sipping the dark swill that Officer Mistrangelo stubbornly insisted on calling coffee, but which might more accurately be described as an assault on the digestive tract of all employees at police headquarters, he grimaced in disgust. He drained the demitasse, pushed it out of his sight, and for the umpteenth time swore to himself that he would never again drink that horrible brew.
The dead man was a high school teacher, a recent widower. According to the report, in the midst of shopping hours, while the street was crowded with pedestrians, without so much as a shout of warning, he had climbed over the railing of his balcony on the fifth floor of a venerable old apartment house that had seen better days, and had imitated a seagull, or a pigeon, or an eagle; the only difference was that, since he had not been endowed with feathers and wings, he had slammed into the pavement and only by a sheer miracle had avoided taking with him, on his last journey, three or four of the afternoon strollers beneath.
Camarda and Cesarano, the police officers who had hurried to the scene of the death, had followed proper procedures, the brigadier noticed as he skimmed the report. Upon the physician’s arrival, they had accompanied him upstairs to the apartment, where they had found a suicide note in which the poor wretch had written to his wife that at last, that night, they’d sleep together again. Then they had waited for the morgue attendants and the entire matter had been wrapped up.
Maione thought about what he would do if, by some cruel twist of fate, he were to outlive Lucia. The report said nothing about children: maybe he would have found the strength to go on living in them. Most likely, the flying high school teacher had no children.
As he was trying to dismiss that bothersome thought, he realized that someone was knocking at the door of the officers’ wardroom so softly it was scarcely even perceptible.
“Come in!” he called out.
The door opened just a crack and a worried, broad moon face appeared—it was Amitrano, the policeman who just the day before had failed to restrain the bad manners of the scugnizzo who had been sent by Bambinella.
“Amitra’,” said Maione, “if I didn’t have such good ears, you could have stood there knocking until the end of the shift, do you realize that? What the hell do you want?”
The officer was terrorized: he was sweating and his eyes were wide open.
“No, Brigadie’, it’s just that I didn’t want to disturb you. I know that you were drinking your ersatz coffee and I didn’t want to interrupt with work matters.”
Maione furrowed his brow.
“What are you talking about, Amitra’, you seem to be a little dumber than usual today. I’m already at work, and you don’t want to interrupt me with work? Forget about it, okay? So what’s going on?”
The man spoke in a very low voice and Maione was able to guess at a word here and another there.
“ . . . street door . . . someone who . . . chauffeur . . . not anymore . . . ”
The brigadier leapt to his feet.
“Amitra’, as God is my witness, I’m going to kick that voice out of you! Speak up, loud and clear, because I can’t understand you! And come ahead in, damnation, what are you doing half in and half out?”
The officer leapt into the air, as if some mysterious force had catapulted him into the room, clicked his heels, and lifted his hand to his forehead twice in a salute.
“Yessir, Brigadier. It’s just that outside, at the front entrance, there’s someone who’s looking for you. Or at least, it seems to me that you’re the one he’s looking for, even if . . . that is, he doesn’t know the name, but from the description it seemed to me . . . in other words, he says that he’s a chauffeur, or at least that he used to be. He would be a chauffeur, if they would let him, but apparently they fired him and . . . ”
Maione was exasperated.
“Amitrano, please, speakly slowly and calmly. Let me understand you. I know that you can do it, even if you’re a fool and an idiot and I don’t know how you were ever accepted onto the police force. How did you understand that this out-of-work chauffeur was looking for me of all people?”
The officer stared at the floor, tracing the outline of a terracotta tile with the tip of his shoe.
“Brigadie’, please, trust me. He’s looking for you. Don’t make me say things I don’t want to have to say.”
Maione slowly got to his feet, towering a good eight inches over the head of his confused colleague from his height of six foot three.
His voice was low and therefore all the more threatening.
“Amitra’, speak. You see, I’m telling you with the utmost calmness. Speak, it’ll be better for you.”
The man gasped, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s, trying to get a gulp of air. His face was gray. Then he answered, all in a rush: “He said: there’s a brigadier who’s looking for me, and he’s got an enormous gut, an old man, with no hair on his head. That’s what he said.”
Maione stood there in silence, staring at the top of the officer’s cap, while instead the officer stared at the floor, his neck tucked down into his shoulders, awaiting his inevitable doom.
The brigadier nodded slowly. Then he whispered: “And you understood immediately, didn’t you? You had no doubts. You came straight here to find me.”
Amitrano was sniveling.
“Brigadie’, what was I supposed to do? Should I have just sent him away? Then what if it turned out to be something important? And after all, who else could this enormous brigadier be? Brigadier Cozzolino is shorter than me, after all; Brigadier Ruotolo is skinny as a beanpole; and Brigadier Velonà has a thick head of hair. Forgive me, I beg you!”
Maione ran a hand over his face.
“Amitra’, I hate you. I really and truly hate you. And sooner or later I’m going to kill you, on my honor; already, I have no idea how you survived yesterday, with the little boy who let out a raspberry in the courtyard, what do you think, that I didn’t hear him? And you never even managed to catch him. Let this chauffeur in, and remember: I don’t have a gut, I’m just robust; and it isn’t true that I have no hair, I just wear my hair very short for convenience’s sake. Go on, get out of here. And try not to let me see you ever again.”
The officer shot away, grateful that once again destiny had decided to let him live. After less than a minute the door opened to let in a skinny little man, with large, watery blue eyes, who was holding a chauffeur’s cap in both hands.
“May I come in? Are you th
e brigadier who was looking for me?”
Maione looked him up and down.
“I don’t know. It depends. Who told you that I was looking for you in particular?”
The little man, as if he were reciting a poem, replied: “Now then, my surname is Laprece, given name Salvatore, and until three months ago I worked as a chauffeur for the lawyer Ludovico Piro, who recently passed away because of his having been murdered. An . . . acquaintance of mine, Signorina Elvira Durante, who is a working girl at the unauthorized brothel of Madame Sonia in Santa Lucia, and who I chanced to run into today, told me that a young lady who is an acquaintance of yours, Signorina Bambinella of San Nicola a Tolentino, who works privately out of her home, but who from what I’ve been told no longer works because now she has a boyfriend, asked her for some information about me.”
Maione stared openmouthed at the man.
“And so?”
“And so, since this Signorina Bambinella told Elvira Durante that this information had been requested by a friend of hers who is a brigadier, Elvira Durante asked her whether by any chance this friend of hers was having his way with her or not. And Signorina Bambinella began to laugh and said no, what on earth are you thinking, he’s an old man, without any hair and with a big gut. So I decided to come here to find out why on earth this brigadier should be taking an interest in me, and whether he might by any chance be willing to help me find a job, because ever since I was unjustly dismissed from my position, I haven’t been able to find another one, not even with the references that they gave me.”
The brigadier seriously considered inflicting punishment on the former chauffeur for the infractions of Bambinella, Officer Amitrano, and the raspberry-emitting scugnizzo; then he decided to let him go free on his own recognizance and to take advantage of the opportunity to hear from the man’s own lips a little information about the secret investigation that he was carrying out with Ricciardi.
“All right, Laprece, let’s forget about how you came to learn about the fact that we were looking for information. Yes, I’m the one who asked the young lady . . . who asked that person to let me have whatever news she could gather. Even though, as you can see with your own eyes, I’m neither an old man, nor hairless, nor even all that fat. So now, tell me: How long did you work as a chauffeur for the Piro family?”
The man put on a dreamy expression.
“For three years, Brigadie’. I was in charge of maintenance of the automobile, a black Fiat 525, 68 horsepower, lovely as the sunshine; you have to believe me, Brigadie’, I miss that car as if it were a member of my family.”
“And what was the nature of your employment?”
“I drove the lawyer everywhere he needed to go. And the rest of the time, once I’d made sure the car was in tiptop shape, I waited for orders; and then I’d loiter in the general area.”
Maione snickered.
“And while you were loitering in the general area, you met Signorina Elvira Durante, who just happened to be loitering herself, and you became fast friends. All right, go on: why were you fired? Did you do something you shouldn’t have?”
Laprece put on an indignant expression.
“No, Brigadie’, how can you think such a thing? I’ve always been, what’s the word I’m looking for, irresponsible in my professional life!”
Maione sighed.
“Irreprehensible. The word you’re looking for is irreprehensible. Then why would they have fired you, in your opinion?”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“Brigadie’, I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times. They have plenty of money, and they use that car, even though the lawyer has been murdered. They told me that they just had to retrench with their expenses now that the father is dead.”
Maione thought it over for a moment and then asked: “Do you remember anything odd that might have happened in the last few days before Piro was killed? I don’t know, a particular meeting with someone, an unaccustomed appointment; or maybe he himself said something to you, confided something . . . ”
The chauffeur ruled it out decisively.
“No, Brigadie’, why would you think such a thing? The lawyer, God rest his soul, had a ferocious personality, the last thing he’d dream of doing is striking up a conversation with me: I drove and he read his papers. Every so often he’d tell me not to go so fast, but I don’t remember ever talking about anything else. And we never met anyone either.”
The brigadier scratched his head.
“In other words, nothing out of the ordinary.”
Laprece reflected for a moment, then murmured: “Now that I stop to think, one strange thing did happen the very same day as the lawyer’s murder.”
“What was that?
“Now then: the day before we had gone to the convent of the Sisters of the Coronation of Our Lady; you know, after Pomigliano d’Arco, there’s the convent and a boarding school. The lawyer was the administrator there and every three or four months he would have me drive him out. There he would confer with the Mother Superior and I would enjoy some refreshments; the sister who worked in the refectory would make me a first-rate espresso and she’d also give me a dish of the biscotti they make there, which are truly something special. This visit went the same as any other. The next day, though, the lawyer ordered me to take him back, as if he had forgotten something. I had never seen him go to the same place twice in two days before.”
“And did he tell you why he wanted to go back? Was he on edge, or angry, or . . . ”
“No, no. He was silent, the way he always was. And I didn’t ask him anything, of course. I was just happy to be able to eat a few more of the nuns’ biscotti. In any case, the visit didn’t last long, half an hour or so, and then I took him home.”
The brigadier had jotted down notes on a scrap of paper to be able to report back with precision to Ricciardi. At the bottom of the sheet of paper, he also made a note of Laprece’s address.
“Lapre’, listen carefully, make sure we can get in touch with you, because we might have a few more questions at some point.”
The little man threw his arms wide.
“Brigadie’, there’s no one easier to get in touch with than me. You see? I still go everywhere with my chauffeur’s cap, that way maybe someone will see me and hire me. But who’s going to understand that I’m someone who knows how to drive, if I go everywhere on foot? Anyway, see if you can help me out, even to drive your police cars, for instance.”
Maione gave him an unfriendly look.
“Don’t you worry about that, we don’t neeed anyone. I’m a first-rate driver! Go on, and give my regards to Signorina Elvira.”
Laprece heaved a sigh.
“Eh, when am I ever going to see Elvira again, now that I’m unemployed. Lucky you, since you still have a job, because that means you can see Signorina Bambinella on a regular basis! Elvira told me that she’s especially good at . . . ”
Before Maione could grab him by the scruff of his neck, the little man guessed at his intentions and with a hasty farewell darted out of the room. In the blink of an eye, he had run out the front entrance.
Pretty fast for being a pedestrian chauffeur, the brigadier thought angrily to himself.
XXXV
Marangolo was talking, in a subdued voice, and he seemed to be speaking to the sea and the hill, and the waves that lapped at the rocks and the boats that rode offshore, slowly rocking.
He was speaking to himself, Ricciardi realized.
“When I saw her for the first time, she was sixteen. It was her birthday, July 7th; her parents threw a party at the villa in Vomero where they regularly repaired for the summer. My folks and her folks were friends, even practically relatives; we’re all practically relatives, as you know. I was thirty-eight years old, I was a sort of eligible bachelor, and everyone was wondering who I’d wind up marrying. I found the whole
thing to be amusing, but I didn’t give it much thought, I didn’t like the idea that decisions about my life should be made by my father, and I told him so, to his face. I wasn’t even supposed to be there, my friends and I had made plans to go to the beach at Posillipo, to spend the day out on a boat. Instead, I didn’t go. Instead, I gave in to my mother’s request, we took the carriage and rode up to Vomero for the birthday party of the youngest daughter of the Borgati di Zisa family, Signorina Bianca.”
He fell silent for a moment, his eyes half closed. A muscle was twitching in his jaw. The sea continued its slow respiration.
“Practically speaking, I hadn’t seen her since the day she was born. I knew her elder brother, who was killed in the war, and her sister who lives in Rome. All I could remember about her was some vague recollection of having held her in my arms when she was still in swaddling clothes. There were lots of people, at the reception. The ladies held parasols over their heads, they held their long skirts up with gloved hands to keep them from getting soiled in the grass; the men sweated in their tailcoats, with top hats on their heads. I was resigned to being bored to death. Little did I realize that in a short while my life would be changed once and for all.”
He took a sip from the demitasse, with a grimace, and then gave a tug on a bell pull. With a curt nod he ordered another espresso from Ciro, the waiter, and when the man brought it to him, he continued his story, without ever looking to see whether Ricciardi was listening to him.
“She left a few minutes after we arrived. Even now, she’s one of the loveliest women in our circle, but that day, as I watched her walk down the flight of stairs leading away from the villa’s front door, I all at once felt as if I was in a dream. All of the noise around me suddenly stopped, the air stood still, the summer breeze stopped blowing. Even my heart stopped beating, lest it interfere with the perfection of that moment. Not only was she beautiful, she was an angel come down to earth. Her hair shot out flame caught from the sun. Her neck was that of a swan. Her lips and her nose seemed to have been drawn by a master painter. And her eyes, Baron. Those eyes. Do you know what I’m talking about when I refer to her eyes? During a trip to the Far East I once saw a precious stone that adorned a royal crown, and I felt sure that it was the same color. I spent a fortune to buy it, but once I was able to make the comparison I realized that it was only a pale, futile imitation. That color exists nowhere else. If I can’t read the smile in those eyes, life is worth nothing. Nothing.”
Glass Souls Page 25