Cettina’s hands began to shake. Capone burst out indignantly: “You kissed him? You went downstairs and you kissed him? How dare you?”
The woman replied in a whisper, as if she were talking to herself: “He’d been coming every night for a week. Ever since he’d returned. He’d sit out there, just outside of the ring of light from the streetlamp, and wait. The way he did when we were kids. I’d look out the window, see him, and feel myself die.”
Ricciardi sighed.
“Maybe that was all he wanted. Maybe looking up at a window and imagining who was behind it was all he needed.”
“Maybe so. And maybe I could have talked myself into believing it was just my own imagination, if he hadn’t sung that nameless serenade the way he used to do . . . ”
“ . . . on the seaside rock when you were kids. Yes, he told me all about it. And he even showed it to me, that rock. He must really have been in love with you. But he wasn’t the only one.”
The lawyer Capone broke in with a hesitant voice: “What are you trying to say, Commissario? What do you mean, he wasn’t the only one?”
Ricciardi turned to look at him.
“What drove you to come up with this plan, Counselor? What led you to consider it? Sannino’s return? If you ask me, you got the idea from reading the newspaper reports of the boxer who was killed and all the rest.”
Capone looked at his cousin with a vacant expression.
“But you really did kiss him? You . . . you kissed him on the mouth?”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“You’ve hated him for a long time, haven’t you, ever since you first realized that your cousin Cettina loved him, am I right? A hatred that has endured for a lifetime. It wasn’t enough for you to murder her husband, you also wanted to get Sannino out of the way. And you staged the whole thing, taking advantage of your cousin Michelangelo’s need for money.”
The lawyer continued to look at Cettina. His expression, baffled at first, grew steadily grimmer; his eyes had narrowed to a pair of twin slits, his jaw was clenched, his brow was furrowed. Rather than making him look ridiculous, his thinning hair and the napkin around his neck just made him even more frightening, like an evil clown.
“So you kissed him. With all I did for you, all I do for you, and you kissed him. Again. Just like back then, just like . . . ”
Ricciardi went on, undeterred.
“You were summoned to procure the cash, in accordance with normal practice, since you’re in charge of the company’s accounting. At that point, you blackmailed your cousin, dragging him into the murder. He was supposed to stop Signor Irace, while you did all the rest.”
Capone turned to look at Ricciardi, in a towering rage.
“You don’t know a thing. You think you know everything, and you know nothing.”
“Your cousin just told us that . . . ”
“My cousin is an idiot! He always has been. We were just kids and I was the one who always had to clean up after his foolishness. When he married a woman who already wasn’t quite right in the head, and then became a full-blown lunatic, and he started squandering money on impossible cures, who do you think supported him? And I only did it out of love for Cettina. I truly love her. Not like that loanshark of a husband of hers, who bought her for the money he could bring to the company. Not like that feebleminded punching bag Sannino, who didn’t even realize that he’d lost her the day he took ship. I was the one who always truly loved her, who truly loves her now.”
Ricciardi drove in on him.
“And you were the one who struck the blow, taking advantage of Irace’s surprise at the instant he found himself face to face with Signor Taliercio. Then, together, you dragged him into the vicolo, where once again it was you finished the job.”
Capone, who was confined to his chair by the sheer force of the brigadier’s hand, was spitting flames from his eyes and foaming in rage.
“That idiot couldn’t wait. I’d told him: ‘Let’s leave the scene of the crime separately, to avoid being noticed.’ So I left first. He just had to wait a couple of days, the police would give us back the money. But he couldn’t wait that long. He knew where Costantino kept the money and he took what he needed. Then, in his haste, he put the rest back into Costantino’s overcoat pocket. I realized instantly that that would be our undoing.”
Ricciardi replied, in a cold voice.
“To tell the truth, there were other elements to your attempted framing of the boxer that aroused our suspicions: the fact that you emphasized that the victim had been punched in a way that was identical to the blow that had killed the boxer in America; your efforts to keep us from asking Signora Irace and Signor Taliercio questions except in your presence; your insistence on Sannino’s guilt. All of these things were very odd for a lawyer specializing in business law.”
Not wanting to cause Cettina any further suffering, as she stared into the empty air, her face streaked with tears, Ricciardi said nothing about what had been the most important clue: Capone’s excessively solicitous attitude toward his cousin from the very first time Riccardi had met the two of them together. A concern that could not conceal his desire to possess her.
The man ran his hand over his face and said to his cousin: “You always rejected me. I tried a thousand times to get close to you, but you never let me. My desire for you drove me crazy; I couldn’t think about any other women, not even whores. At first, I thought it was because of that miserable oaf Sannino, then because you’d given your body to a loanshark in order to take care of the debts piled up by that incompetent father of yours. I thought that if I got these two presences out of your life, the fantasy of your adolescence and the prison of your maturity, then you would finally be mine. Because you were destined to be mine ever since we were little kids. I saw my chance to get rid of them both in a single blow, and I thought that our dream was about to come true. Our dream, that’s right, because I know that you had the same dream. Isn’t that true, Cetti’? Isn’t it, my love?”
The woman stood up, moving mechanically. She walked around the table and stopped, facing her cousin.
With a sharp motion of the head, she spat hard into his face.
Then she turned around and, without another word, went into her room.
XLVI
It took a few days before the magistrature could complete the bureaucratic red tape necessary to order Vincenzo Sannino’s release from prison. It was no easy matter for the authorities to admit that the cowardly boxer—who had tossed aside the title of world champion when he could have (and should have) become the pride of the Fascist regime, and who had wept over having killed a Negro, and what’s more, only doing so accidentally—was not actually a vile murderer.
Indeed, the press was warned not to fan the flames of public interest concerning the matter: if he really was going to have to be set free, at least let the fact pass unremarked, under a veil of silence.
In prison, Sannino hadn’t been treated with any special consideration, but he hadn’t been mistreated either. Men who were waiting to learn what judicial fate awaited them had no time for or interest in worrying about celebrities, and for Vincenzo it had been by no means disagreeable to become just another number in a crowd of numbers, and no longer to feel, as he had for so long, the curious eyes of the many upon him. He had been able to stop to think about himself, his past, and the path that had led him to this point.
He didn’t know whether and how his situation would be resolved. For that matter, he didn’t even know whether it had been he, in a drunken stupor, who had murdered Irace. The thought frightened him very much, because he really had detested that man, the night that he’d seen him carry Cettina off, at the theater, as if she were his personal possession. Never, until that day, had he felt such a powerful wave of negative emotion, not even the time when he’d bound up all his hopes of returning home in a single fight in the ring: his opponents, in all those cases, were merely an obstacle to be overcome, not a human being to be hated.
All he remembered from that fog-ridden and uncertain night was the dream that he had kissed Cettina. A dream that was as real as a sleepless night. Him sitting up, chilled and sleeping in the same doorway where, so many years before, he had awaited a wave from a window; she, bundled in the overcoat she had thrown over her nightgown, touching his shoulder, her eyes filled with tears, and leaning forward to place her lips upon his. It wasn’t Cettina as a girl, the way he usually dreamed of her, the way he had dreamed of her for all those years. It was the Cettina of the present, beautiful and sorrowful, adult and experienced, marked by life.
After that, he couldn’t remember anything else, except for the deserted, rain-drenched streets, except for the swaying light of the streetlamps on their electric cables, except for the dripping wet clothing. He couldn’t remember anything else, except for the burden in his heart at a loss that he was incapable of withstanding.
He had taken no interest, while he was being held in detention, in what was going on in the outside world. He knew that the government took a very dim view of him, and he knew enough about the country to place no hopes in any unlikely clemency. For all he knew, his situation might not change at all. And in reality, none of it mattered much to him. After all, without Cettina, without the possibility of hoping for Cettina, how was he supposed to survive?
He had received just a single visit, from Jack, who had paid off a useless lawyer to obtain a conversation with him. He had found that touching. After all, this was the closest thing to a friend that he had ever had. Jack had brought him a letter from Penny, which he had read hastily. She had asked his forgiveness for having hated him, for having refused to accept the fact that he did not love her. She said that she was planning to leave as soon as she could, that she was returning home, and that she would try to wipe his memory from her mind. She didn’t wish him good luck, but she did hope that he would be found innocent and that he could get back on his feet, find his way in life. Those lines gave him neither comfort nor sadness, but he was glad that the girl was determined to pursue the happiness she no doubt deserved. That anyone in this life deserved.
He had made it perfectly clear to Jack that he would never fight again, not even if they set him free that very same day. And he told Jack not to go to extreme lengths in pursuit of a legal defense, because as far he was concerned it was all the same whether he remained behind bars or got out. He told Jack not to worry, he would do nothing to hurt himself: having no wish to live and wishing to die were two very different things. He told the man he should leave, he should go back to the United States: unlike him, Jack was an American, there was no reason for him to stay.
They said farewell, gazing into each other’s eyes, since they couldn’t hug each other goodbye. On his friend’s disfigured face was clearly impressed the painful knowledge that this was farewell for good.
One morning, without any advance warning, an officer opened the peep hole in his cell and ordered him to gather his possessions. The other detainees watched him with venomous bafflement; one of them hissed that they might well be transferring him to another prison, a much tougher one. The other men snickered with the sense of relief that comes when lightning strikes nearby but leaves you unharmed.
The guard escorted him into a visiting room where he found the enormous brigadier, the one who had followed from a distance his stroll with the green-eyed commissario out to the seaside rock.
The policeman explained to him what had happened. He told him the details of Irace’s murder, and informed him that they had obtained complete confessions, and that he was now absolved of all charges.
Sannino was surprised at the wave of relief that swept over his heart. So he wasn’t a murderer after all. He hadn’t killed anyone, except for poor old Rose, whose gray image as he breathed his last in a hospital bed would torment him for the rest of his life. He wasn’t a murderer.
A moment later he thought of Guido and Michelangelo. He saw them again as the two kids he remembered: the grim-faced, chubby one who scrutinized him from a distance, mistrustfully; the younger one whose eyes darted from his sister to his cousin and then to him, trying to read the thoughts of each. He couldn’t imagine them as murderers. It was a horrible thing, and he wondered how much suffering that discovery had caused Cettina, and what she would do now.
The brigadier informed him that he was a free man, effective immediately; he had come to make sure that there were no more snags. Then he smiled and added that he had come at the orders of Commissario Ricciardi, who sent his regards and wanted him to know that the seaside rock was still there, and that no one would ever move it.
The brigadier accompanied him to the iron door, opened it, and stood aside to let him through. It had just stopped raining, and the air was redolent with the smells of rain and sea brine. Vincenzo felt lost.
He was no longer the young man who had set sail without ever leaving. He was no longer the man who had come back aboard an ocean liner, traveling in a first-class cabin. He was no longer a boxer. He wasn’t American, because he had never thought of himself as a citizen of that country. Nor was he even an Italian, for that matter, because his country would just as soon see him in prison.
So who was he, now?
The brigadier looked him in the eyes as if he were able to read his mind. As if the hesitation he was displaying was a mirror of what he had in his heart. He remembered the night sixteen years earlier, as he stood balanced on the railing of the ship that had taken him to America, and the black waters twenty-five feet beneath him. Back then he hadn’t hesitated. Back then he knew exactly what future awaited him.
The brigadier smiled at him to reassure him and tilted his head toward him, a gesture of encouragement. One of the guards standing close by shifted, uneasily: that metal door couldn’t be left open for long.
Sannino heaved a deep sigh and walked out.
Then he saw who was waiting for him on the other side of the street, and he broke into a run.
XLVII
On his way back from the prison, sniffing at the crystal-clear air, cleansed by the recent rainfall, Maione let himself ruminate on some thoughts about love.
It had been a fine way to end his shift. The task of going to set Sannino free had been an enjoyable one, and even before setting off to do it, he had had an opportunity to have a little extra fun. Ricciardi, in fact, with ferocious sarcasm, had asked Maione to come upstairs with him to receive the release orders personally from Garzo’s hands. What’s more, it was Ponte who announced their visit, and the deputy police chief had unleashed upon his underling all the fury that he could not dump on them.
Maione would not soon forget that scene, and he pulled it out of his memory to cherish it at times when he was feeling down. Ponte darting terrorized glances at the floor, the ceiling, the portraits, and the various accessories and knickknacks on the desk. Garzo shouting insults at him of every sort and description, clutching at the most frivolous of justifications: dust on the books, which by the way seemed never to have been cracked open and read, on the bookshelves that were there as decoration more than anything else; the fact that he had interrupted him when he was busy studying exceedingly important documents, even though there was nothing on his desk but the day’s paper; the fact that Ponte’s uniform left something to be desired in terms of fastidious neatness. After that, a chilly, formal congratul
ations to both the commissario and to Maione for their successful solution of the Irace case.
The document that bore the magistrate’s signature also displayed the date of the day before yesterday. It must have been an unpalatable dish, this crow that poor Garzo had had to eat. As Maione left the deputy chief’s office he could still hear shouts echoing from behind the door, as Garzo dressed down a red-eared, mortified Ponte, and he warmly thanked Ricciardi for the show, as if he’d invited him to the royal box at the Teatro San Carlo. In reply, Ricciardi had nodded his head ever so slightly, without so much as a smile.
The commissario certainly wasn’t a guy much given to cheerfulness, and yet Maione’s affectionate eye often managed to catch moments of irony or contentment in him. For the last few days, however, he had seemed grim in a very particular way, as if he were bearing the burden of a deeper melancholy and sorrow than usual. Something must have happened, but Maione had no way of knowing what it was. And he felt certain that in any case, Ricciardi would never talk about it. The brigadier could only hope that the problem had a solution. As he crossed the Piazza della Ferrovia on his way home, he decided that, if his superior officer showed no signs of improvement in the coming week, he would mention it confidentially to Dr. Modo, who—in his rough way—was a true friend. Perhaps he would know what to do.
Could these problems have to do with love, Maione wondered. After all, the commissario was older than thirty, and he was a single man. He had dated the widow Vezzi, a beautiful woman bursting with life, but that hadn’t turned out well. Then there had been the young woman who lived across the street from him, the daughter of the shopkeeper who sold hats and gloves from his haberdashery on Via Toledo, but she, too, had vanished from sight lately. And now the Contessa di Roccaspina had come onto the scene, now that her husband was in prison: a lovely woman, aristocratic and unhappy, and in that way quite similar to Ricciardi. But who could say? Perhaps that relationship, too, had failed.
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 34