Then he’d withdrawn to his room. Rosa glanced out the kitchen window as she washed the dishes. The rain was coming down harder; the air smelled of autumn. The seasons pass, she thought, and they never change; yet each one leaves its mark. On the other side of the vicolo, the Colombos’ drawing room window was dark: no company tonight. That’s a good sign, thought the tata. Everything was going exactly as it ought to.
She wondered why Ricciardi had hidden a book underneath a loose floor tile behind his armoire, thinking she wouldn’t see it. What was it for? Of course, she’d found it that same morning, it was the first place she checked every day; he was so methodical, he never thought to come up with a new hiding place. She’d only been able to read the title, because she knew the big letters, not the little ones. She thought about the woman from up north that the hairdresser had mentioned, quoting Enrica’s words. She couldn’t say why, but the thought of that woman worried her. First of all, her presence ought to have made Ricciardi happy, but she could see he was even gloomier than usual. Then, there was the fact that she’d been described as someone quite different from the kind of woman she’d want her boy to be with. She knew who she wanted. The girl next door, she thought.
She looked out the window again, as it shivered with the impact of an especially strong gust of wind and rain. Who knows, maybe I could invite the Colombo girl over here for a cup of coffee, some afternoon. Now that it’s not so hot, now that the rains have come. From Ricciardi’s bedroom came the sound of a chair pushed along the floor. Rosa smiled as she dried the last dish.
As he walked into his bedroom, he’d immediately noticed that the light was on again in Enrica’s kitchen window. The heavy rain made it impossible to identify the silhouette he could glimpse, sitting in the cone of light, reading or perhaps embroidering. But he needed no confirmation.
Initiative, he thought. Everyone had told him that he needed to take the initiative. An act of will. As if that were so easy. His ears echoed with the words of Modo, Don Pierino, and Ettore Musso; people who were living the lives they’d chosen, despite a thousand obstacles.
He too made certain choices, of course; and they weren’t easy ones, to tell the truth. For instance, he’d just decided to let a murderer go free, just because a little girl had curtseyed gracefully.
Just a few seconds earlier, he had made up his mind to take the man in, since he was as guilty as Sofia Capece, or possibly more so; then he’d decided that it was up to him, not a judge seated behind his bench in the tribunal of Porta Capuana. It was he, Ricciardi, who had to decide whether to sentence four young children to a life of infamy and a man to life imprisonment for a momentary impulse, driven by the rediscovered terror of a return to poverty. And he’d made his decision.
How could that be? he wondered, as he looked out the rain-driven window. How can the same person make a decision like that on the spot, in the blink of an eye, and then sit here helpless, for months, looking out the window and not knowing what to do?
He bent over and looked under the armoire, lifted the brick, and grabbed the book. From the kitchen he heard the clattering of pots and pans; his tata would never find his hiding place, he thought to himself. She was too old to bend over like that, at her age. He shot another glance across the street, but he could only make out the light: the rain was drumming down too hard.
He went over to his little writing desk and sat down, turning on the lamp. He put the book on the table in front of him, remembering the flush of shame in the bookstore when he’d told the clerk the title: Il moderno segretario galante. A helpful guide to writing modern love letters.
The initiative, he thought: he had to take the initiative. He took a deep sigh: the man who saw dead people, and felt their furious pain on his flesh without blinking an eye, was now quite simply terrified.
He took a sheet of paper and dipped his pen in the ink: Gentile Signorina, he wrote.
Then he stopped, with his pen in hand. And he sat there, enchanted by the sight of the large raindrops streaking the glass.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ricciardi has several traveling companions, whom he couldn’t imagine doing without.
He works according to the directions of Aldo Putignano, a brother as much as a friend, irreplaceable.
Antonio knows the destination and how to reach it; Michele knows the equipment required, and the luggage to take along. Giulio Di Mizio speaks with Ricciardi and alone knows his other gaze. My mother knows his memories, and his hidden emotions. Giovanni and Roberto are the only ones who know how to keep him company.
If you notice a new spring in his step, it’s thanks to Mario Desiati, and to my dear friends, Manuela Cavallari, Manuela Maddamma, and Tiziana Triana: I wouldn’t know how to think of Ricciardi anymore without them. And especially Domenico, who picked him out of the crowd.
I, however, have only one real traveling companion: my sweet Paola.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maurizio de Giovanni lives and works in Naples. His Commissario Ricciardi novels, including I Will Have Vengeance (Europa 2013), Blood Curse (Europa 2013), and Everyone in Their Place (Europa 2013), are bestsellers in Italy and have been published to great acclaim in French, Spanish, and German, in addition to English. He is also the author of The Crocodile (Europa 2013), a noir thriller set in contemporary Naples.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Everyone in Their Place Page 35