Stunned, Maione glanced over at Ricciardi, then checked his uniform to make sure he was wearing it. At last, he answered: “The reason is none of your business. As for your privacy, if I cart you straight off to jail, I assure you that you’d make a bunch of new friends who would help you get over your love of privacy. I give you my word on that. But this morning I’m feeling the milk of kindness, so I’m going to give you a second chance: Where does the Irace family live?”
The doorman took a step back, as if afraid that Maione was about to attack him.
“Be my guest, Brigadie’, on the third floor, the door right in front of you when you reach the top of the stairs. What should I do, shall I announce you?”
The policeman glared at him angrily.
“No, don’t go to the trouble. We’ll go up on our own. Camarda, Cesarano, you stay here.”
As they were climbing the stairs, Ricciardi spoke to Maione.
“Are you all right, Raffaele? Because I have to say, you were a little aggressive, with the doorman. Is there something bothering you?”
When the brigadier replied, he avoided looking his superior officer in the eyes.
“No, Commissa’, what could be wrong? I’m just a little tired; my children have a fever and they won’t let us sleep. That’s all.”
“You were at the end of your shift when the call came in, is that right? Forgive me, that never even occurred to me. I’m so sorry. Now we’ll talk to the dead man’s family, and then you can go on home.”
The other man shook his head.
“What are you talking about, Commissa’? With a murder investigation under way? It’s out of the question, I’ll stay and . . . ”
Ricciardi interrupted him with a wave of the hand.
“Brigadier Maione, obey orders when they’re given. We’ll finish up here and you head home to your family. We’ll carry on the investigation ourselves, and afterward we’ll provide you with the evidence and you can solve it. Agreed?”
The brigadier smiled.
“At your orders, Commissa’. After all, I know that when all is said and done I’ll have to tie up all the loose ends for you, as usual.”
An attractive maid in a uniform answered the door ushering them into a spacious drawing room. The rain was pelting against the high windows, through which it was possible to make out the distorted silhouette of the large church of San Domenico. Downstairs, in the piazza—aside from a few carriages awaiting passengers, the drivers slumbering under the canopies—there was no one to be seen.
A voice rousted the policemen out of their rapt contemplation of that gray Monday morning.
“Buongiorno. I am Signora Irace. What can I do for you?”
Ricciardi and Maione turned and found themselves face to face with a woman who, without making a sound, had come to the threshold and was looking into the room. She was wearing a housecoat tied in the front, made of heavy dark-blue cotton adorned with yellow flowers, and a light woolen jacket. She looked no older than thirty.
She wasn’t very tall, but she was pretty, with fine, delicate features, short hair that was fashionably curled, a body that was at once soft and compact. But she did have a veil of sadness in her reddened eyes. Ricciardi wondered what the reason for that might be.
“Buongiorno, Signora. I am Commissario Ricciardi from the city police, and this is Brigadier Maione. I’m afraid I’m here to give you some bad news.”
The woman tottered visibly, without taking her eyes off Ricciardi’s face. Maione took a couple of quick steps and grabbed her by the arm, supporting her.
“Please, Signo’, you really ought to sit down,” he said softly, helping her to sit down on a small armchair.
Ricciardi waited a moment, then said: “You are the wife of Costantino Irace, I imagine.”
She nodded, biting her lip. Although her eyes were dry, she drew a handkerchief from her pocket and clutched it in her fist.
The commissario went on: “I’m sorry to have to tell you that your husband has been found dead in a narrow alley in the Porta di Massa neighborhood.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. She looked around, as if trying to remember where she was, or perhaps just in search of comfort in the familiar objects that surrounded her. Then she cleared her throat.
“What . . . what was it? Did he have . . . His heart?”
“No, Signora. We believe that he was murdered. There will have to be some further examinations to ascertain once and for all, but . . . ”
“Where is he now? At the hospital? I . . . you said that . . . I’d like to say goodbye to him. I can’t . . . ”
Ricciardi and Maione knew perfectly well what was going through Signora Irace’s heart and mind. They had witnessed scenes like this countless times. In her was the impossible desire to go back a few minutes in time, to when she was still busy organizing her day according to the customary routine, performing the usual actions, uttering the same words as ever.
Could it be that there is no solution? the woman was thinking to herself. Could it be that there’s nothing I can do? Just a minute ago, a miserable round of the hands on the pendulum clock ticking away behind me, my problems were what to make for dinner or what dress to wear to the theater. And now my life has changed forever. Her mind envisioned an array of grim and tragic scenarios.
The two policemen, without any need to confirm even with a glance, gave her a few minutes to work through the situation.
While they stood there, in silence, a pudgy man, drenched in sweat, wearing a dressing gown and his thinning hair unkempt, burst into the room.
“Cetti’, what on earth has happened? The doorman called me and told me that the poli . . . Ah, so you’re already here. Then it’s all true. What do you want?”
Maione replied in a somewhat brusque tone: “Listen, we’re here to talk to the lady. And just who would you happen to be? And what right do you have to ask that question?”
Signora Irace lifted her head and looked at the sweaty man, with an expression on her face as if she were about to share an absurd piece of nonsense with him.
“Guido, they’re telling me that . . . I mean that Costantino . . . my husband . . . ”
The other man hastened to her side and put a hand on her shoulder. He pressed his lips tight, and stared at Ricciardi and Maione.
“I’m a lawyer, Capone’s the name, and I’m the lady’s cousin. If you please, I’d like to know what happened.”
Maione ran his eyes over the blue-and-red striped dressing gown, the drab head of hair, which must usually be arranged on one side into a combover, and the protruding belly. A lawyer. That’s all they needed.
Once again, it was the woman who spoke.
“Dead. Costantino is dead. And they say that he was . . . that someone . . . Oh my God . . . ”
She raised the handkerchief to her face and started crying. At first softly, and then louder and louder. Soon, she was wracked with sobs.
The lawyer seemed to lose a little of his confidence.
“Are you certain it was him? Last night we ate dinner together. I live upstairs and . . . ”
Ricciardi replied in a low voice: “The identity documents were his. We’re going to need someone to identify the body, but I’m sorry to say there isn’t much doubt about it. It happened in the early hours around dawn, down by the port. And you, Signora, do you by chance have any idea why he might have been down there?”
The woman tried to regain self-control.
“He . . . we are businessmen. My husband . . . we own a fabric shop, Irace & Taliercio, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, down on Corso Umberto . . . All I knew was that he had to go out . . . ‘Don’t get up, Cetti’,’ he told me . . . ‘I need to go out early’ . . . I still can’t believe it . . . ”
She burst out into a violent storm of tears again. Capone intervened decisively at this point: “As you can both see, at this point my cousin is in no condition to answer any of your questions. Give her a chance to calm down, if you please. We’ll
come in to see you soon enough. All right?”
Ricciardi nodded.
“I understand. You’ll find me at my office at police headquarters, Signora. Let me remind you of who to ask for, I’m Commissario Ricciardi. I’m on the third floor. But before you come in, you ought to stop by the Pellegrini Hospital, where . . . ”
The lawyer didn’t give him a chance to finish the sentence.
“Yes, I’ll take care of that myself. I’d be able to identify my cousin and I don’t want to make Cettina suffer any more than she needs to. Of course, I intend to accompany her in to see you, inasmuch as I am her relative and her legal counsel. I usually deal in business matters, but given the circumstances . . . ”
“All right then. But make sure you hurry. Time is a crucial factor in any investigation. We urgently need information.”
The man looked down at the woman’s back. His expression betrayed great inner turmoil, but also an edge of anger.
“You’ll get all the information you need,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that.”
XIV
On their way back, Maione had tried to persuade Ricciardi to let him stay in the office, at least until Signora Irace came by with Capone. But the commissario had been adamant: Maione had to go home and get some rest.
The brigadier felt a stabbing pain in his temples that forced him to keep his eyes half-closed. Shivers ran frequently through his body, a sinister foreshadowing of several degrees of fever to come. He was all too well aware that what he ought to do is scoot straight off to bed and tuck himself under the covers, with the comforting warmth of a bowl of broth made by his loving Lucia; and he also knew that, the way he did every time he got sick, he’d greatly enjoy devolving into a weepy whiner, the object of the tender care and concern of his whole family.
But, as he was walking along holding the enormous umbrella open over his head, the thought of Bambinella wormed its way into his head. And it was a troublesome thought, because if things were the way the femminiello had given him to understand, this was an urgent matter. Very urgent.
He knew the Lombardi clan, the people who had their sights set on Gustavo ’a Zoccola. Ferocious people, who didn’t tolerate anything that got in the way of their business concerns. They’d come up from the bottom and in just a few years they’d expanded into all sorts of dirty trades. They offered protection from their own rough treatment, and if anyone refused to pay, they quickly and brutally made it clear that they’d better fall into line. The head of the family, Pasquale, also known—and justifiably so—as ’o Lione, the Lion, was a bloodthirsty wild animal.
The police had tried many times to break down the wall of omertà—conspiratorial silence—that fear had erected around them. And a few details had filtered out through the folds of the confessions of the small fry who had actually tumbled into the hands of the legal system, but none of it had ever been enough to nail ’o Lione and his seven terrible sons. If Bambinella’s boyfriend had interfered with them in any way, then there really was a good chance that he’d soon vanish from the face of the earth. Vanish for real, because not a scrap of flesh of any of the Lombardis’ other alleged victims ever turned up.
That meant that there was no time to waste. Those criminals acted quickly and without warning, in order to forestall whatever countersteps their enemies might take in order to avoid their wrath.
As he was climbing up the long, steep street, doing his best to avoid setting foot in the steady rivulet of water that came running downhill straight toward him, Maione was electrified by another jolt of realization, due to certain thoughts that had occurred to him, more than anything else. He knew where Gustavo ’a Zoccola lived, because Bambinella had told him before letting him go away. Paying a call on him wouldn’t even require much of a detour. After all, he told himself, he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep with that troubling thought wedged in his feverish head. He looked at his watch: it was almost eleven.
He lengthened his stride.
The piazzetta that the femminiello had described to him was at the far end of a short vicolo, next to the street that ran from Via Toledo to Corso Vittorio Emanuele. As he was peering up in search of the street number, Maione failed to notice a puddle that seemed innocuous to the unwary eye, but which in fact concealed a deep pothole in the terrain. As a result, he sank into the mud to the middle of his calf and came close to hurting himself badly. He was still cursing under his breath when, right next to him, an apartment house door swung open and a very short man, as skinny as he was diminutive, slipped out in an attempt to head off in the direction from which Maione had come.
The brigadier, who had in the meantime lowered his umbrella, reached out a lightning-quick hand and grabbed the little man by the scruff of his neck, forcing him to turn around. Maione then lifted him easily a few inches off the ground, holding him now by the lapels of his coat. For a moment the other man just kept pumping his legs furiously in midair, until he finally fell still as he found himself face to face, his nose inches from the policeman’s. Maione began studying the little man with a certain scientific interest, as if he were contemplating a rare specimen from the animal kingdom. His features were finely drawn, with a large, perfectly triangular nose and oversized ears that protruded, fanlike, giving him the general appearance of a gigantic mouse. Even though he was evidently having difficulty breathing, the little man continued to look around with feigned nonchalance.
Maione stood there for a few seconds in utter silence, baffled, then, addressing the nose which filled his entire field of vision, he said: “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you. But would you happen to know where a certain Gustavo Donadio lives, also known to his closest friends in Poggioreale, confidentially, as ’a Zoccola?”
The little man opened his mouth and coughed, which was his way of making it clear that, being held like that, he wouldn’t be able to talk. As soon as the policeman set him back down on the ground, however, and none too delicately to tell the truth, he came back to life as if by magic and tried to make good his escape. Maione was ready for him, though; his hand shot out, and this time he grabbed him firmly by the right ear, which by the way served as a very secure handle.
“Ah, ah, ah, now let’s not be bad little boys and girls. Somebody asks you a question politely, and in response all you do is turn and run without even saying goodbye? Am I going to have to give you a good spanking right here, in the middle of the street?”
Moaning in pain, the other man stammered out: “N-no, Brigadie’, p-please, not the ear, m-my ear is so sensitive . . . ”
“I can imagine. Big as it is, I’m certain that it’s even fond of poetry. But tell me, does the owner of this ear have a name he goes by?”
The poor man’s ear flap was by now a deep, throbbing red.
“Th-that’s enough, Brigadie’. I’m Gustavo Donadio, none other . . . But you had already recognized me.”
“And why did you decide to run for it the minute you saw me?”
Donadio whimpered pathetically.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Brigadie’, it’s not as if I was running away. It’s just that I have some important business to tend to and I was in a hurry. Can’t we talk some other time? Maybe I could come in and see you at police headquarters and . . . ”
Maione burst out laughing.
“I can just see you at police headquarters, sure. With your hat in hand as you ask: ‘Excuse me, do you happen to know where Brigadier Maione’s office is? No, because the only directions I myself can give you are to the holding cell. I think it would be better if we just talked right here, Zoccola, my friend. Plus, you know something? I thought that the reason they called you that is because of the way you break into the various shops through the sewers, but instead I can now see that with all the time you’ve spent in certain settings, you’ve become a full-fledged sewer rat. You deserve to let me kill you.”
Gustavo opened both eyes wide and stared in all directions, in sheer terror.
“Brigadie’, for the love of C
hrist, lower your voice. Around here, the walls have ears even bigger than mine. Come on, let’s go inside where we can talk.”
With some difficulty, since Maione was continuing to hold him in a very tight grip, out of caution and to spare the man any foolish temptations, Gustavo led the brigadier into the building from which he had first emerged. They found themselves in a small, dank courtyard, from which a single flight of ramshackle stairs ran upstairs. There wasn’t a living soul.
“Brigadie’,” said Donadio, “there’s nowhere for me to run in here. Can I have my ear back now, please?”
Somewhat reluctantly, Maione released his grip.
“Take care, because if you try any funny business, I’ll take half the ear off. Even then, there would be plenty left over, is that clear?”
Massaging his ear, Gustavo nodded in agreement.
“All right, fine. But who told you this thing about someone wanting to kill me?”
Maione leaned over and stared him right in the eye.
“It doesn’t matter who told me. I just want to know if it’s the truth. And make sure you answer truthfully, otherwise you know what’ll happen to you.”
Instinctively, Donadio clapped both hands to either side of his head.
“It was Bambinella, wasn’t it? And to think I was hoping she might mind her own business, for once in her life. I had a feeling she might try to solve the matter after her own fashion.”
Maione emitted a low growl.
“Zoccola, if a person loves a person, then they want to protect them, don’t they? What did you expect, that the poor guy would just sit there and watch while they rubbed you out once and for all?”
Gustavo smiled, sadly.
“No, you’re right, Brigadie’. And Bambinella . . . I know that she wants to help me, believe me: but this time, there’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that. Tell me what happened.”
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 10