Blood Curse

XXIX

Nunzia came to a halt at the threshold of the front door. Her fierce gaze wavered, wandering left and right. Her hands still clutched the straw broom.

Behind her, Maione reached out and gripped her arm with a firm hand. She snapped out of it and walked forward into the apartment.

Ricciardi was sitting at the rickety table, waiting for her. He was staring straight ahead, his mind and his heart flooded with melancholy, his ears filled with the proverb repeated over and over again by the ghostly figure of Carmela, in the corner of the room. He preferred to question people in the presence of the victim’s ghost: it gave him strength and reinforced his determination in his quest for the truth.

“Sit down,” he said to the woman. She stepped forward, pulled out a chair, carefully checked to see that it was sturdy, and sat down.

Both Ricciardi and Maione registered that detail, remembering that one of the chairs had a broken leg. Not that it told them all that much, but it did prove the porter woman was used to sitting at that table.

Outside, four floors below, the boys had resumed playing: their shouts accompanied the game of soccer they were playing with a ball cobbled together out of rags and newspapers.

“You’re going to have to tell us about your relations with the Calise woman. The truth this time: not the usual claptrap.”

Nunzia blinked her eyes. The firm tone, the deep voice, and most of all, those queer, icy green eyes unsettled her. Maione took the broom and propped it in the corner.

“What do you want me to tell you, Commissa’? She was one of the tenants here. I told you before, my little girl liked spending time with her; it was convenient for me to have someone keep an eye on her while I worked. Then, in the evening. .”

“. . you’d come up to get her, yes, you told me that before. And would you pay her, for watching your girl?”

Nunzia emitted a nervous little laugh.

“No, Commissa’, how could I pay her? Here, aside from the little one-room place on the ground floor and a few pennies every month, I don’t get a cent; we have to struggle to make ends meet. There was no way I could have paid Donna Carmela.”

“So money never changed hands between the two of you?”

A brief hesitation. Her eyes darted from right to left.

“No, I already told you. What money are you taking about?”

Ricciardi sat in silence. He went on staring the woman in the eye. Maione stood next to her chair, towering over her. On the windowsill, there was a fluttering of wings. A pigeon perhaps.

After nearly a minute, Ricciardi spoke again.

“What kind of person was she, the Calise woman? You knew her well, better than anyone else did. Maione here has asked around, and it seems that no one had any contact with her at all-the usual story. But you saw her every day. Did she have a family? What were her habits? Tell me all about her.”

As Nunzia felt the viselike grip relax, she was visibly relieved. She decided to show herself to be as cooperative as possible. She shifted in the chair, causing the wood to creak loudly as she moved her enormous posterior.

“She was a saint, Donna Carmela. That’s what I told you the other day and I’ll say it again now, and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t deserve to go on living. I swear it on the head of my poor sick girl, on her very soul, innocent angel that she is.”

“Sure, a saint and an angel, I get it. Which would make this a little patch of heaven. Tell me about the Calise woman’s life, and kindly refrain from changing the subject.”

“Well, she didn’t have any family in Naples. She wasn’t married, and she never mentioned any brothers or sisters. She was from some small town, I don’t even know the name. Once or twice a girl came here. Donna Carmela told me that she was a distant relation, but then I never saw her again. She never even told me the girl’s name. She had a gift, this ability to foretell the future, and she used it to help people. She did so much good.”

Maione broke in.

“And all this good she did for her fellow man, she did it free of charge, is that right? Out of the goodness of her heart.”

Petrone looked up at the brigadier, offense showing in her eyes.

“What harm was there if people chose to give her a small gift out of gratitude? She never asked for money; she’d say, if you want to give me a token of appreciation, I thank you for it. People were satisfied with that arrangement.”

Ricciardi raised an eyebrow and looked around the room.

“And just what did she do with these gifts? This place hardly seems luxurious to me. What did she do with the money?”

“How am I supposed to know, Commissa’? It’s not like I could read Donna Carmela’s mind.”

“You couldn’t read her mind, that’s fine, but you knew what she thought and what she felt, you told us that yourself. Or at least, your daughter did. So I’d imagine a little something filtered back to you, didn’t it?”

The woman sat up straight in her chair.

“No, never, Commissa’. Perish the thought. I loved Donna Carmela. Per senza niente. No strings attached.”

Ricciardi and Maione looked at each other. This was going nowhere. The commissario sighed and once again fixed his transparent gaze on Nunzia, looking her in the eye.

“Petrone, let’s be perfectly clear. We have all the evidence we need to prove that you were doing business with the deceased. We know that she not only read cards, but was also a loan shark. And that she gave you money.”

This time it was the woman’s turn to sit in silence, caught once again in the grip like a vise.

After what seemed like an endless pause, Nunzia spoke in a low, hard voice, meeting Ricciardi’s eyes.

“No proof. You got no proof. Talk. It’s all just empty talk.”

Without taking his eyes off her, Ricciardi nodded a signal to Maione, who dropped the little bundle he’d found under the mattress onto the tabletop. Written on the bundle was one word: Nunzia.

Attilio Romor knew he wasn’t particularly bright and could often be distracted. But he knew he truly excelled in the few areas he was competent in. One of those areas, the most important, was women.

When he could have possessed Emma, he’d made her wait, letting her desire swell within her. Gradually dismantling all her self-confidence, methodically testing her resistance, sapping her will, until she was finally putty in his hands.

A hundred, a thousand times he had read slavish devotion in her gaze, had felt the irresistible yearning grow within her, the desire to become his possession, something he owned. By now he knew with absolute certainty that he had become the center of her world, that he was the only reason she woke up in the morning. He couldn’t be wrong about this. No, not at all.

As he went on carefully combing his pomaded hair, he smiled at the image that he saw reflected in the mirror; Emma would soon beg him to find a way for them to be together forever. She would provide him with prosperity, comfort, and finally, revenge. All he had to do was play his cards right, and wait.