Everyone in Their Place

XX

Maione was escorting Ricciardi back to police headquarters; it was still too early to go to the offices of the Roma to interview Capece, plus Garzo wanted to see the commissario before they talked to the journalist.

As they walked, the brigadier for once wasn’t thinking about the heat or his hunger, terrible though they both might be: he’d been happy to meet the tenor’s widow, who had already shown some interest in Ricciardi the last time; he remembered that he’d even taken the liberty, with some awkwardness and embarrassment, of recommending that Ricciardi open up a little bit and spend some time with the woman, who struck him as not only quite beautiful but also a decent person. He also remembered that Ricciardi hadn’t seemed entirely indifferent to her charms. Nothing had come of it and in the end she’d left.

All the same, he’d detected odd emotions in the air, at Gambrinus, as if the commissario were struggling with a difficult situation, almost as if he’d been caught red-handed. He wondered why, given the solitary life that he led. Perhaps he himself had been the cause of the awkwardness; perhaps the commissario would have preferred not to be seen on such a personal occasion. And so he’d chosen to make no comment about his meeting with the Signora.

When they got back to the office they found Ponte as always, anxiously awaiting them at the door so that he could accompany them to see Garzo. The man was pouncing back and forth in the throes of his usual anxiety and, as soon as he saw them, he started toward them.

“Commissario, Brigadier, buona sera. Dottor Garzo is waiting to see you, both of you; he says to come by his office before you go out again.”

Maione spoke as if the other man weren’t even there:

“Let’s go see him immediately, Commissa’. Otherwise I’m liable to beat this guy silly.”

They followed Ponte to Garzo’s office, where the deputy chief of police was waiting for them at his desk.

“Well, well, I know that you’re going to head over to the newspaper, now.”

The unceremonious start to the meeting was a clear indication of the deputy police chief’s concerns.

“Yessir, Dottore. This morning we were at Palazzo Camparino, and we spoke. .”

“. . with the duke and with his son, I heard. And I also heard that, as is unfortunately all too often the case, you were intrusive and rude. Now you tell me, Ricciardi, do I always have to tell you the same things? And every blessed time, do I have to get telephone calls from prominent people, complaining about your lack of respect?”

Garzo punctuated his tirade by pounding his fist on the top of his desk: he was irate, and he wanted the fact to be known. But the only one who jumped at the sound of it was Ponte, who had been standing in the doorway. There was a moment of silence, in which Maione glanced over at Ricciardi, his eyebrows knit and a look on his face that promised nothing good: he seemed ready, at a gesture from the commissario, to lunge at the deputy chief of police’s throat. Ricciardi spoke, and his voice was little more than a whisper.

“I’m going to repeat something that I’ve already told you, sir, since it would appear that you failed to understand it the first time: you are free to assign this damned investigation to whoever you please. But if it’s my investigation, then stop sticking your nose into my business. If we fail to catch the guilty party, you can certainly do whatever you think best. But in the meanwhile, you are not to question any of my decisions. None of them.”

It had been little more than a hiss, but the effect was that of a gunshot in a church. Ponte pulled his head down between his shoulders, as if he’d heard an explosion. Maione went on looking at Garzo with the same irritated expression. The deputy chief of police stood frozen, as if Ricciardi had suddenly slapped him in the face. As for the commissario, he hadn’t even taken his hands out of his pockets; his stray lock of hair dangled over his forehead, his eyes were focused on his superior officer’s face, and he never blinked an eye.

After what seemed like an endless lapse of time, Garzo took a deep breath:

“I’m not saying that. . unquestionably, you know what you’re doing. All the same, I believe that it’s my prerogative to expect you, when you interact with. . certain individuals, to show a minimum of. . well, damn it: you report to me, and I have to deal with the reckless nonsense you pull. I have every right, and it’s my duty, to ask you to take care how you operate! The duke, as I’ve told you before, is a very sick man; but his son is healthy as a horse, and he frequents. . he has very highly placed friends. Very. And the press. . the press is still powerful, even after the most recent directives.”

This wasn’t a day on which Ricciardi was likely to feel pity for Garzo. Too many things had happened.

“I don’t care in the slightest about the power of the press. If the duchess turns out to have been murdered by the editor-in-chief of the paper, I’ll bring him to you in leg irons. It’s up to you to decide what to do about it. That’s my duty. It’s what I’m expected to do, and it’s what I’ll do. May I go now?”

Garzo had a large red patch on his neck, directly above his tie, as he always did when two equal and opposite forces left him powerless: in the case in question, on the one hand he’d have happily relieved Ricciardi of the investigation and started a nice fat disciplinary proceeding against him; but on the other hand the chief of police was pushing him to come up with a rapid solution of the Camparino murder-all of Naples was talking about nothing else. It was the second of these pressures that prevailed, of course: the one that was most important to the advancement of his career. Still, he wasn’t going to miss the satisfaction of one parting dart.

“You can hardly expect awareness of social sensitivities from someone who has no life of his own. Do as you see best: but I swear, if you don’t solve this case, you’ll rue the words you’ve said here today. You’ll rue them bitterly.”

And he waved his hand in the air, as if he were shooing a fly away. Maione took a step forward: perhaps he had finally found someone on whom he could vent his irritation over his hunger, the heat, and the fruit vendor. Ricciardi laid a hand on his arm, and the two men left the room. Ponte softly shut the door.

Usually, Lucia enjoyed ironing: it felt as if she were caressing her loved ones, exploring the pleats and folds of their clothing and at the same time thinking of the expressions and the movements of her children and her husband. But now it really was too hot; the white hot coal enclosed in the iron sent scalding waves of heat up her sweat-drenched arm. She sighed, and sprinkled water from a small basin onto one of Raffaele’s shirts. She checked the stitching of a button right on a line with his belly and shook her head: she’d have to reinforce it. He’s still got a little too much belly, but it’ll slowly subside.

She smiled as she thought of him; after all the years they’d spent together she still liked him just as much, perhaps even more. Wiping her brow, she wondered how it had ever been possible, even in the horrible grief of those years, to forget how much she loved him and how her very life depended on her man. She felt a stab of pain at the thought that she could have lost him, by neglecting him as she had; just imagine how many other women would have been glad to take him, handsome and good-hearted as he was.

She caressed the shirt, and with one hand she smoothed out a last wrinkle underneath the collar. I’m the wife, she thought to herself. You can look, but don’t touch.

Or I’ll claw your eyes out.

He became aware of someone knocking insistently at the door. He’d fallen asleep at his desk, his face resting on his arm, the half-empty bottle of liquor in front of his eyes. He tried to remember, as he reemerged from the mists of sleep; and he remembered.

Memory swept over him like a wave, renewing the incandescent pain that he’d managed to stifle by getting drunk. He was alone, in his office at the newspaper. He heard the noises from the newsroom, the typesetting of fresh news, tomorrow’s paper going through its birth throes; but it wasn’t the way it usually felt, those sounds gave him no comfort. Nothing would ever give him comfort again. Because Mario Capece had forever lost everything that mattered to him, the love of his life. And the worst thing about it was that he’d lost her through a fault of his own.

The unknown hand continued to pound on the door, close to the jamb, and the noise was making his head explode. He shouted:

“Come in, damn it!”

Whoever it was tried the handle, and then he remembered that he’d locked the door. He got up and went to unlock it, with a stabbing wave of pain to his forehead. Better to die, he thought. An artery bursts, and goodbye sorrow. Maybe what the priests always told us is true, and I’ll be able to see you again someday, my love.

Standing at the door was Arturo Dominici, his deputy editor; worry was stamped clearly on his face.

“Mario, are you all right? Everyone’s been looking for you. Did you sleep here again last night?”

Capece gestured in annoyance.

“Yes, yes. I haven’t been anywhere else. What do you want. What’s happening now?”

The man spoke in a low voice, shooting furtive glances over his shoulder.

“There are two. . the police are here, the mobile squad. One’s in uniform, the other one’s in civilian clothes. They’re looking for you.”

Mario smiled wearily.

“At last. They took their sweet time, almost two days. Show them in.”

“Do you want me to be present too? As a witness, you know.”

Capece looked at his friend intensely: he deeply appreciated the offer, knowing as he did that Dominici too assumed that he was guilty of Adriana’s murder.

“No, Arturo. That’s not necessary. If I need you I’ll call you. Grazie.”

Ricciardi and Maione walked into the office just as Capece was throwing open the window. The room was hot as an oven and it reeked of stale air and liquor; it was like being in a bar. They introduced themselves and when Capece pointed them to two chairs, they sat down. Maione asked the journalist his name and age and other basic details, and he supplied them with a voice that was only slightly slurred and with eyes half-closed from the pain of his migraine.

Capece wasn’t tall, but his frank and extroverted expression gave him an imposing air. His professional skills were highly esteemed, and the fact that he didn’t pander to the powerful, that he criticized or praised openly and as he saw fit, had won him the admiration of many, but also the hatred of the fanatical supporters of the regime. His weak point had been his affair with Adriana, a weapon that the fanatics had used to hinder the career that he would certainly have enjoyed otherwise.

The man that Ricciardi and Maione had before them, however, was a different person from the one that Mario Capece had been until just a short while ago. His three-day growth of whiskers, his loosened tie, his shirt half-untucked, his single buttoned suspender, and his waistcoat dangling open were so many signals of the state of prostration into which the journalist had slipped. Still, he looked at them mockingly and said:

“Well then, you must be Commissario Ricciardi. The solitary hawk at police headquarters, the man who doesn’t want career advancement. The implacable hunter of murderers. I’ve been following your work, did you know that? Your progress is interesting. Your superior officers are afraid of you, and so are those who report to you. They say you bring bad luck.”

Maione was about to repond but Ricciardi held up his hand.

“Interesting information. But as luck would have it, we’re not here to talk about me today, but about you, Capece. And in particular about the death of a woman whom, from what I’ve heard, you knew very well. Is that right?”

Capece shot to his feet like a spring suddenly released, his bleary eyes red with rage.

“The death of a woman, you say. A woman I knew well. Careful, Ricciardi: never use that tone of voice again. Never again. That woman has. . had a name, and her name was Adriana Musso, duchess of Camparino. And I didn’t know her: I loved her. Not that I’d expect you, a dreary little policeman who lives alone, to understand. But I loved her.”

Maione had no intention of tolerating that tone, no matter what Ricciardi said. He leapt to his feet and, towering over Capece, leaned toward him, placing both hands flat on the desktop.

“Listen up, Capece: you try talking to the commissario like that one more time, and dead woman or no dead woman, I’ll smack you so hard that you’ll get over your drunk in the blink of an eye. You respect us and we’ll respect you. Otherwise, we can go have this little chat at police headquarters, and your children will wake up to find that their father’s in prison. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Capece and Maione stared at each other for a good thirty seconds, face to face. Ricciardi watched the journalist as the two men faced off, wondering whether this reaction was a product of his personality or simply a state of despair. He opted for the first factor, but with some reservations.

At last the man sat down, and the brigadier sat down after him. Unexpectedly, he smiled.

“So you do you have blood in your veins, after all! And you don’t find your courage only when you outnumber your opponent. Fine, then, let’s respect each other. And I’ll answer your question: yes, I knew her. And I didn’t kill her. Even though it’s my fault that she’s dead, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for the fact.”

Ricciardi tried to delve deeper: “What do you mean, it’s your fault?”

Capece smiled a bitter smile, staring into the void.

“You must already know that on Saturday night we had a fight, at the Salone Margherita. I have no doubts that you were informed, because that incompetent Garzo, the deputy chief of police and your boss, was there, and I’ll never forget his face and his foolish stunned expression. It was a typical lovers’ skirmish. But, idiot that I am, I stormed out of the place and I let her go home alone, or else accompanied by who knows who. That’s just the way she was, you know: instinctive. And someone killed her.”

While he was speaking he’d started weeping, without even realizing it. Tears rolled down his cheeks, in a silent incessant stream, like some hemorrhage of unbroken grief. Maione, who’d been pleased to hear that open reference to Garzo’s incompetence, handed him a handkerchief.

Ricciardi resumed:

“And you, where did you go?”

“I went drinking. First at the Circolo dell’Unione, then in one cantina and then in another, and finally to the train station where there was the one last bar in the city that was still open. I was alone, I imagine you want to know that. No one can confirm it. Nor do I care whether or not you believe it.”