[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  The woman nodded and he went on: “Commissario, we know perfectly well who it was that killed my cousin. We know it because the killer swore that he would do it, and from what I was able to see of the corpse, there can be no doubt. For the past few days, my poor cousin has been literally stalked by this man, who two nights ago actually had the gall to come beneath her window and sing her a serenade. And he was drunk, the same as he was at the theater.”

  Ricciardi observed the two cousins. Cettina continued to keep her eyes downcast as she slowly shook her head, as if trying to convince herself this was all just a nightmare. Capone, on the other hand, was chewing his lower lip.

  “And just who would this man be? Do you know him?”

  “Certainly we do. We know him very well. And we know that he’s capable of doing what he certainly did.”

  “You seem quite sure of yourself.”

  A sort of leering grin crossed the lawyer’s face.

  “If there was any need for further confirmation, you provided it yourself when you said that my cousin wasn’t robbed. When you said that they hadn’t taken his money.”

  Ricciardi placed the tips of his fingers together.

  “Would you care to tell me this person’s name?”

  Capone turned toward his cousin, expectantly.

  The woman remained silent, as if she hadn’t noticed that she was expected to reply.

  Then she looked up and, in a harsh and determined tone of voice, said: “His name is Sannino. Vincenzo Sannino.”

  Ricciardi was surprised. Even he had heard of that name.

  In a subdued tone, the lawyer added: “Yes, him. That’s right. The cowardly boxer.”

  And at long last, Cettina Irace began to cry.

  XVI

  Vinnie felt his respiration pulsate in his ears, accentuating the pain, and considered just how short fifteen years could be.

  He half-closed his eyes, reviewing in procession the individual stabs of pain, the screams by means of which his body demanded attention, rest, and relief.

  His ankle, an old ache. It dated back to the very beginning, when he had stayed on his feet, trying desperately to keep his balance on the other foot, after spraining it in the bout with Rohmer. Although he was barely eighteen, he’d already learned that that sport, a rough struggle of blood and saliva, sweat and fists, was actually, first and foremost, a game of chess that turned on who made the first error. And sure enough, his adversary had finally made that error, reliably, in the tenth round. At the sight of the limping Italian, the German had felt reassured and had left himself unguarded on the wrong side. Boom. German on the canvas. Sweet dreams. But the ache in the ankle had stayed with him, a faint reminder of the value of patience.

  His right wrist, too, was a memory from the past: Van Bistrooy. It was when he was twenty. He’d broken that wrist in the third round and had to continue fighting until the twelfth, punching and defending himself with just one hand; with his right hand all he could do, at the very most, was feint a little bit. He’d found himself fighting, not only against his adversary, but also against the feeling that he was about to faint every time the monumental Dutchman landed a punch, without knowing, on the side of the fracture: lots of palummelle—fluttering doves—in front of his eyes and the canvas itself, which turned into an inviting, comforting place to close his eyes and drift off into a dream. Instead, he’d won that bout too, with his marvelous left hook that had become a legend. Feinting had helped. Van Bistrooy had taken the bait.

  The other pains were all more recent. Over time, he had learned to dodge, avoid, defer, and dissimulate. Now, if someone wanted to hurt him, that someone would have to be a good opponent, a very, very good one.

  There weren’t all that many of them, really, but the few that were out there needed to be studied carefully. On this point, Jack had been quite outspoken: Vinnie possessed a K.O. punch, but he was also one of the lighter fighters in his class. He was fast on his feet but, if someone backed him into a corner, in the long run he’d go down. He needed to get out of there by any means necessary and go on dancing on the tips of his toes like a goddamned ballerina.

  Jack, Jack, Vinnie mused as he sat on his bench, both arms propped up on the ropes, the water-soaked sponge bringing him to, his breathing calming down, what would have happened if that evening you hadn’t decided to put me in the ring to serve as a punching bag?

  Over the years, he had learned to savor the moment when, while all around him pandemonium broke loose, he managed to wander away in his head for a few seconds. For who knows what odd reason, the concentration, the pain, and the weariness all allowed him to leave his body and the place where the bout was being held and depart for an intimate and absolute dimension, outside of time and space. The moment expanded, becoming infinite, and he could think about himself and about life in a way he couldn’t anywhere else.

  The noise was overwhelming, pounding, and indistinct. His eyes ran out over the usual panorama: the roaring crowd, the excitement of the newscasters who never seemed to pause to catch their breath as they shouted into their microphones, the bookmakers as they constantly retallied their odds, the reporters frantically jotting notes, puffing on cigarettes all the while. The opponent in his corner, glistening with sweat and black as the mouth of hell, one eye swollen half-shut and the other bloodshot and blazing red, mouth open to suck in air while his trainer encouraged him by shouting into his ear.

  Nothing. There was nothing that mattered.

  Nothing.

  He could feel Jack fooling around with his left arm, massaging the biceps. As if he were polishing his rifle in a trench before going over the top in an attack. They didn’t even need to talk, he and Jack. They agreed on the strategy in advance, during the long process of bandaging his hands. After that there was no encouragement. No gaze lost in the void.

  What had happened, in those fifteen years? Nothing. Everything had rolled down an inclined plane, everything had followed naturally from that evening when the young man responsible for cleaning the gym had climbed up into the ring. The real step, the one that wasn’t obvious, the one on which no one, not even Vincenzo himself, would have bet a red cent, was the fact that he had been called up to serve as a punching dummy, a sparring partner to help Starkevic learn how to hold his guard up—Starkevic, the Russian upon whom Jack had pinned all his unreasonable and even absurd hopes, and who was probably now working as a bouncer in some bar on Twenty-Seventh Street. After that, the rest had come naturally.

  Because—the man who had once been Vincenzo, the young man who had swum through cold water to take back his future, and who was now Vinnie “The Snake” Sannino, the world light heavyweight champion, thought in a fraction of a second—boxing came natural to him. Like breathing. Like eating or drinking.

  Like dreaming of Cettina.

  One bout after another. The gym. The neighborhood. The city. The state. The nation. The continent. One championship after another, knocking down his opponents like so many bowling pins; each of them with a weakness to exploit at just the right time. He, Vinnie the Snake, would lash out and connect the minute he saw his opening. And sooner or later, that opening always appeared.

  But, since the Snake was also in part Vincenzo, there had never been a single day when he had stopped thinking that he was going to return home. And the time was almost ripe. He had told Jack time and time again that he was going to take him all the way to the top, but after that, he had other plans. And every time he said it, the trainer gave him a strange look. Deep down, Vinnie was convinced, Jack didn’t believe him. When on earth had a world champion simply walked away from it all like that? When had a world champion ever retired to become a shopkeeper with a comfortable belly, a sensible waistcoat, and his hands stuck lazily in his pockets?

  Instead, for Vincenzo, the period from when he had sailed away until the day he returned had been nothing more than an intermission. A time he wasn’t interested in prolonging for so much as a second, useful only as a way of setting
aside the money he would need to purchase Cettina’s father’s store and give it to her as a gift. And then make her his wife, something about which he never had an inkling of doubt.

  Certainly, for years the letters that he sent her had been left unanswered. It was only natural that she should be angry at him for his prolonged absence. But he had no doubt that she was still waiting for him. That once she got over her surprise, she would laugh, that wonderful laugh that opened his heart and filled it with light, and then she’d happily run into his arms.

  He’d done some calculations: in order to save up all he needed, he would have to defend the title at least three times.

  This was the first time.

  He met the gaze of Penny, as always sitting in the second row. He remembered when she had first begun to accompany him. She had come to interview him, and the next thing he knew she was waiting for him outside his building, and then at the gym, and in his apartment, and then finally in his bed. He had told her right away that he was in love with another woman, that the woman who was going to be his wife, the mother of his children, was Cettina, that Cettina would make his meals and take care of him, and that he would take care of Cettina. That as far as he was concerned, he might as well be married already, because when he was Vincenzo, not Vinnie the Snake, before his swim through the chilly waters of that foreign sea, before he washed up, exhausted, on that shore littered with garbage and shrubs, he had sworn to his Cettina that he’d come back to her. Penny had smiled, she had shrugged her shoulders and replied: All right. So he and Jack had hired her, because a good journalist could always come in handy; she was the one who spoke on the phone with the many people who contacted them, it was she who managed the correspondence with the many admirers of the great Italian boxer.

  Even back in the homeland, he’d been told, he was a famous man now. The paragon of the strong, invincible, smiling Italian male. He wondered if Cettina had seen any of his pictures in the papers, the pictures they took with both gloves up in front of his face, and a menacing expression.

  And yet, Vinnie thought as he waited to begin the round that would put an end to the bout, he was neither an invincible male, nor even one with a menacing face. He just wanted to earn enough money to take his life back. Two more bouts, Cetti’, three at the very most. Then I’m coming home.

  The gong sounded and Vinnie leapt lightly to his feet. Jack nodded. They had agreed to work the opponent’s flanks, just hitting him now and then, not too hard, to slow him up and hinder his movements. Rose, was that Negro’s name. A leftie. He was enormous, powerful and fast, but not especially smart; named after a flower. Well, Rose, my friend, Vinnie the Snake is about to give you a lethal taste of his fangs.

  Sixth round. Jack had reckoned that by this point the Negro would be tired and would try to put an end to it.

  There was the right that we had expected, Jack. And there is my counter punch, a right to the solar plexus delivered with a diagonal shift onto my left leg; a small stab of pain to the ankle, but it’s all right, it’s just old memories surfacing.

  A one-two punch: there we go.

  A short left hook, to the liver. The Negro starts to tilt to one side, then he totters, lowering his arms and leaving his face unguarded.

  This is the moment.

  A right uppercut to the jaw. The open eye goes vacant, the facial features slacken. He’s done, Jack yells from his corner. He’s done for.

  But the Snake still needs to deliver his final punch. He needs to put his signature on this victory. The Negro is crumpling onto his knees, it’s over, the flower has been clipped, but the left hook lashes out all the same. Open combinations need to be closed. After all, you never know, he might get back to his feet and force me to fight four or even five more rounds, and who knows how those will turn out. Better to make sure. Better to take one last punch.

  To the temple, short, sharp, and hard.

  The Negro falls. The referee doesn’t even bother to count, he turns to Rose’s corner and waves the doctor into the ring.

  Vinnie raises both arms triumphantly, the crowd shouts, the radio broadcasters shout, the reporters shout. Jack, where are you, Jack? Why don’t you hug me? One bout down, Cetti’, I’ll be coming home soon.

  Everyone’s staring at his opponent, flat on the canvas.

  It was the last punch.

  The safety punch, no? The punch that sets your mind at rest.

  The last punch.

  My trademark.

  XVII

  Not even half an hour after Signora Irace and the lawyer Capone had left, Ricciardi heard a knock at his office door. Maione’s head peeped through.

  “What should I do, Commissa’, bring you a little more coffee?”

  “Raffaele, why are you still here? I gave you a direct order.”

  Maione smiled, cunningly.

  “Commissa’, you ordered me to go home, not to stay there. I went home, I washed up, I had a shave, and I came straight back here. God only knows, I might as well be in a hospital, the way things look at my place. The children all sniveling, Lucia and the older girls running from one bed to the next: Believe me, I’m better off here. And then, I couldn’t get the thought of that poor wretch dead on the ground out of my head. What’s happened in the meantime?”

  Ricciardi briefed him about the conversation that he had had with the widow and her cousin. Maione listened raptly and, in the end, murmured: “Sannino. This case is turning serious. You know who he is, don’t you, Commissa’?”

  Ricciardi replied somewhat uncertainly.

  “I believe he’s a boxer, right? A good one, a champion. I must have read about him somewhere. And I recall that one time they were broadcasting running commentary on a bout with loudspeakers in Largo Carità; there was quite a crowd. I thought he lived in America, though.”

  Maione rolled his eyes, looking up at the ceiling with a disconsolate expression.

  “Okay, I get it, I’d better bring you up to speed on this. Sannino is from here. He emigrated to America years ago and became the world boxing champion, in the light heavyweight category; he never lost a match. They call him the Snake, because he strikes unexpectedly, just like those venomous reptiles, you know what I’m talking about? And you can’t imagine what the Fascist regime says about him: the invincible Italian male, Latin power . . . They’ve turned him into something like an athletic ambassador. Even the Duce has talked about him: an example for us all to live by, etc. Then, a year ago, give or take, he was defending his title against a Negro opponent. He knocked him down with a punch to the temple and the guy, I can’t remember what his name was, never came to. After a month in the hospital, he died.”

  Ricciardi had grown attentive.

  “Well, though, it was during a fight. An accident, after all. The kind of thing that happens in boxing.”

  Maione nodded.

  “Yes, Commissa’. But after that fight, Sannino gave up boxing. The experience, how to put this, left a deep mark on him. And from a hero, he slid to the status of a national embarrassment. What? asked Mussolini, or whoever speaks for him: You win, you’re powerful, you’re so damned powerful that you actually kill your opponent, who’s only a Negro after all—and you know what Mussolini and his ilk think about negroes—and now you retire? In that case, you’re nothing but a coward. And so now he’s in disgrace.”

  “I continue to fail to follow. Okay, he stopped fighting, that was a personal decision. But why are people still talking about it?”

  “People are still talking about it because they don’t agree, Commissa’. There are some who say he did the right thing, and there are others who say he should have toughened up and just gone on fighting, even if that meant killing other opponents. You know the way public opinion works, don’t you? But the important detail, as far as we’re concerned, is this: Sannino came home ten days ago, give or take a day or two. The news was reported in all the papers.”

  Ricciardi thought it over.

  “Well, it would appear that t
he boxer who is no longer a boxer has started singing serenades and threatened to murder Irace. We’re going to need to find out why.”

  “So shall go over and pick up Sannino and bring him in for questioning, Commissa’?” Maione asked.

  “Not right away, Raffaele. Let’s proceed by degrees. First, let’s gather as much information as we can about the business deal that took the victim over into the port area in the early morning. I want to understand how this profession works, the job of selling fabrics, and I want to see the shop. Let’s have a chat with the people who worked with him. And as soon as we can, let’s hear what the doctor has to say about his examination of the cadaver.”

  The population of that city didn’t pay a great deal of credence to official naming conventions, at least when it came to the better-known streets. Once the populace had baptized a street with a name, it refused to recognize any other name that the authorities might wish to assign to it, even though it might be attributed with pompous ceremonies, with accompanying unveilings of plaques and band concerts. And that is why Corso Umberto I, the long street that ran along parallel to the waterfront, slightly inland, connecting the large palazzi and apartment houses in the center of town with the railway station, was actually known to one and all as the Rettifilo—literally, the Straightaway—and so it would be known for all time, king or no king, named Umberto or otherwise.

  A sort of small-scale, mocking resistance to the high-handed impositions of the countless tyrants that had controlled the city in an unbroken succession.

  The award-winning fabric shop of Irace & Taliercio enjoyed an excellent location, at the very beginning of the major thoroughfare, almost straight across from the University of Naples. It had a handsome entrance and three large plate-glass windows, in front of which every day numerous couples and ladies would linger, enchanted by the soft fabrics masterfully displayed there.

  Given what had happened, Ricciardi and Maione expected that the shop would be closed, with no time wasted; they were convinced that, in the very best scenario, before they could speak to a shop clerk they would have to knock on the metal roller blinds, which might be lowered halfway. Instead the shop was open for business, and what’s more, it was besieged by a small crowd trying to garner what information they could about the murder.