Blood Curse

LVII

The pizza from the pushcart that passed through Piazza Municipio made him think of Iodice and his dream. Ricciardi’s solitary lunch generally featured this solution as an alternative to his sfogliatella pastry and espresso, and he gobbled it down, thinking about other things. Work, Garzo, his current case. Enrica.

But this time, as he watched the agile hands of the itinerant pizza chef, the commissario tried to imagine the suicide’s thoughts and words, when, not yet a prisoner to his dream, he wandered carefree and happy through the streets of the city. The doctor was right: there is a precise moment in which a person decides his own death. That moment can always be avoided. Fate doesn’t preordain; it has no will of its own. There’s no such thing as fate.

The piping hot mouthful slithered down into his belly, silencing its savage clamoring for more. Pizza was good, all right. Poor Iodice, his poor children, his poor wife. And his poor mother, who, judging by the proverb she’d uttered as she’d left his office-a proverb that had opened new avenues of investigation-really believed in fate.

He strolled along Via Toledo for a ways. The street’s two very different faces were on view: the large, venerable old palazzi with their high windows and broad balconies, the austere entrances guarded by liveried doormen. Illustrious names and heraldic crests; centuries of history having passed by in the shadows of those walls, year after year. Palazzo Della Porta, Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Palazzo Cavalcanti, Palazzo Capece Galeota: severe, majestic edifices, constituting the city’s formal drawing room. Behind them swarmed the anthill of the Spanish Quarter, nameless vicoli bubbling over with passions and crime: the dark narrow lanes that the Fascist regime wanted to erase through reclamation projects, as if a new piazza and a façade here and there could change people’s souls.

Children were getting out of school, a few factory workers and laborers and the city’s credentialed professionals were heading home. Nearly all the shops were closed; lunchtime was about to come to an end. The air was steeped in springtime.

Ricciardi caught a gamy whiff of love. Calise worked with money and emotions, the roots underlying every crime. But this time he could feel it: love was the killer.

As he walked, he skirted the construction sites, empty at this hour. The heavy white blocks used in the new constructions, the rickety, precarious wooden scaffoldings. Standing vigil, by now little more than fading shadows, were two dead men, killed in accidents a few months earlier. Distractedly, Ricciardi noticed a new one: Rachele, my Rachele, I’m coming to join you, they pushed me to join you. Sighing, he did his best not to dwell on those words, knowing he’d hear them again many times. Who was Rachele? A wife? A sister? And that poor soul in need of her company? Had he fallen or had he jumped? Who could say? And what did it matter now?

A short distance farther on, he saw a couple coming toward him, the man hobbling along on a pair of crutches, his left leg bandaged from knee to foot. He suddenly recognized Ridolfi, the unhappy widower of the woman who had set herself on fire and loyal client of Calise. He was talking excitedly with an insignificant woman who looked to be about his same age, her head lowered beneath a small hat trimmed with a veil.

Before the man’s eyes met his, Ricciardi had a chance to overhear: “I looked there too, I tell you. Who knows where she put them, damn her. May she burn in hell the way she burned to death.”

His voice was throbbing with rage. When he saw Ricciardi, his face transformed itself into the usual mask of grief demanding compassion; with a comical, awkward gesture, he lurched to a precarious halt, balancing on a single crutch, and removed his hat.

The commissario, offering no response to this greeting other than an expressionless gaze, thought to himself that a crutch was as good a murder weapon as any; and if you could stroll along Via Toledo with a sprained ankle, then you could also get to an apartment in the Sanità.

Still, despicable hypocrite though he was, even Professor Ridolfi needed a motive to commit a murder.

He turned around and retraced his steps; time was short and there was still a great deal of work to be done.

Maione was waiting for the commissario just outside of his office door.

“Commissario, buona sera. Have you eaten? The usual pizza, eh? Lucky you, you must have a cast-iron stomach. If I eat a fried pizza, I have to go straight to the hospital to see Doctor Modo. So I have that name. This city is just incredible; a person does something good, like, I don’t know, catching a dangerous criminal, and nobody ever finds out about it; but sleep with a married woman and pretty soon the newspaper boys are shouting it out on the street. Anyway, the man’s name is Attilio Romor, and they say he’s a good-looking young man. He has a part in a play by that famous guy, what’s his name. . well, you know who I mean, right around here, at the Teatro dei Fiorentini. The show starts at eight. It’ll be easy for us to get there, so you tell me. And just in the nick of time: I hear that tomorrow is the last show before the troupe heads for Rome.”

Ricciardi thought it over.

“The last show. Tomorrow. Here’s what we’ll do: let’s meet at the theater at eight o’clock. Now let’s go home and get some rest; it’s going to be a late night.”

But Maione didn’t go home. He had another place to visit, and he was in a hurry: he needed to clear something up, once and for all.

In his strong, simple heart, there was no room for messiness. He had spent his whole life dealing with direct and unequivocal feelings and emotions; he was incapable of coping with doubt.

The sun had just set when he arrived at Vico del Fico. Filomena was surprised to see him, but she didn’t hold back a happy smile. She hastily pulled the shawl up over her face to hide her scar; she’d removed the bandages.

“Raffaele, what a surprise. I didn’t think you’d be here so early. I wanted to make you something to eat.”

Maione waved his hand, as if telling her not to bother.

“No, Filome’, don’t go to any trouble on my account. If you don’t mind, I was hoping to have a little talk with you. Can we go inside?”

A shadow of worry flitted over the woman’s beautiful face; Maione’s expression was different from the one she was accustomed to. He looked grim, determined, as if he were struggling with some mute sorrow or being tormented by a thought.

In that ground floor room, steeped in darkness as always, sat Rituccia, intently shelling peas at the table. Maione observed her serene, distant expression. A little old lady who had just turned twelve.

Filomena told her that they wanted to talk privately. The girl nodded a silent good-bye and left the room.

“She’s a good girl, but unfortunate. She’s suffered so, first losing her mamma, and now her father. Gaetano and I have decided to keep her here with us, at least until her mother’s relatives turn up. So far, we haven’t seen anyone. Shall I make you an ersatz coffee? It’ll just take me a couple of minutes.”

Maione sat down, setting his cap down on the table in front of him.

“No, Filome’, don’t worry about it. Sit down here for a second. I need to talk to you.”

The woman took a seat, drying her hands on her apron. In her deep dark eyes there glittered a light of concern and apprehension. As she sat down, she removed the shawl from her head. Maione smiled at her.

“This place, this home, and you, have done something important for me in these last few days. Knowing that you’re here, knowing the road to come here, have given me back the desire to get to the end of the day. You’ve become a good, dear friend to me. You smile at me, and I’m proud to make you smile. But Filome’, I’m a policeman. It’s not just a matter of the uniform; that’s just a shell, a box. I’m a policeman deep down. I can’t live with the thought that something’s been left unresolved; and also with the thought that you might be in danger. Whoever committed this. . crime,” and here he waved vaguely in the direction of her face, “could come back with even worse intentions.”

Filomena gently shook her head, smiling.

“You see, Raffaele, you’re something new for me, in my life. You see me for who I am. I uncovered my face, with the wound showing, and you never so much as glanced at it. No one looks at me the way they used to. Not even my son. But you look me in the eye without looking away. We’re friends, you said; so why can’t we just pretend we met under different circumstances, not these?”

Now it was Maione’s turn to shake his head.

“No, Filomena. Between friends, people who have come to care about each other, people who talk and are happy to see each other, things cannot be left unsaid. I have to know, Filome’. With this shadow between us, there can be no friendship.”

Tears welled up in Filomena’s eyes. She glimpsed a determination in Maione’s face that she’d never seen in him before.

Outside in the vicolo, the children were playing with a bundle of rags that was serving as a makeshift soccer ball. A woman called her son for dinner. Over the fire, the pot was coming to a boil.

The woman lifted her hand to the scar on her face and traced its contour, with a gesture that was becoming habitual.

“All right, Raffaele. I don’t want to lose your friendship, and I want to be able to talk to my friend. But this thing doesn’t leave this house, the place where it happened. Do I have your word on that?”

Maione nodded. Filomena hadn’t once shifted her gaze away from his eyes.

“It was my son.”