Everyone in Their Place

XXXVIII

Sofia Capece decided that her husband would have to resign himself to it: she wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of.

She’d gotten out of bed repeatedly during the night, to go watch him sleeping on the sofa in the drawing room. It wasn’t like having him in her bed again, but she was a woman who knew how to wait: she’d already waited so long, she certainly wasn’t frightened at the idea of the few days that still separated her from a return to normal life. Because that was one thing Sofia was sure of: it was only a matter of time.

Mario had been sleeping fitfully: she’d heard him murmur, toss and turn, and sigh. At a certain point, she’d even had the impression that he was weeping. To her way of thinking, this was a good sign: it meant that deep inside he was conflicted, that a battle was being fought within him, and that she, Sofia, was sure to emerge victorious. As far as that went, the other woman was dead. She no longer existed.

Truth be told, this was not the solution that she would have hoped for: all too often she’d dreamed that her husband, recovering from the spell under which he’d labored for so long, would return home on his own two feet, contrite, begging forgiveness for the wrong he had done her. In her imagination, she saw herself as accommodating, sweet and gentle as ever, happy to take him back into her home and her bed, to offer him that domestic warmth that he might have forgotten by now, a warmth he was surely beginning to miss, as reluctant as he might be to admit it. She was still, in spite of everything, his wife. She’d sworn before God that she’d love him and honor him for the rest of her days.

She smiled as she fluffed the cushion and placed it back on the sofa. Mario had left the apartment before dawn, she’d heard his footsteps on the stairs and then out on the street. But he’d be back, she could tell. And after all, where else would he go? This was his home, this was his family. Her son came over to her to give her a kiss and say goodbye, he was going to school for the summer preparatory course; he was a boy any father would be proud of, and Sofia decided that the boy resembled his father more every day. Just one more reason for the man to return home. She told him not to stay out too late, because his father might be home in time for lunch.

Because she had turned to go back to the kitchen, she failed to glimpse the grimace on Andrea’s face. It was probably just as well, because the sight of all that hatred would only have frightened her.

Maione had found himself a place in the shadow of a doorway, right across from where the commissario had told him to go. The heat truly was infernal: inside, in the atrium, there wasn’t a breath of air, while outside the sunlight was intolerable; so the brigadier, in civilian attire as his superior officer had ordered, had positioned himself right in front of the palazzo’s street door. He was starting to suspect, however, that this location might be the worst possible combination of the shortcomings of the two others. He was fanning himself with his cap, occasionally wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, and every few minutes or so pulling out his pocket watch only to discover that time was passing exceptionally slowly; the heat was slowing him down too, he thought.

Just a few yards away stood an ice cream cart; evidently the vendor had decided that rather than taking up a position in the nearby Villa Nazionale, where competition was particularly fierce, he’d do well to try it here: before long, the street would be thronged with children, most of them belonging to well-to-do families; therefore, they had money in their pockets and they were very, very hungry.

Not that Maione was any less hungry than they were; at least a dozen times he’d reached into his pocket for his coin purse and the ten-cent price of a lovely ice cream cone, cool and delicious, which he knew he’d gobble down in an instant. Still, even if he was dressed in civilian garb, he was there to work and he needed to resist all distractions. What’s more, every time he felt the pangs of hunger and thought about eating, a picture of the fruit and vegetable vendor Ciruzzo appeared before his eyes, thin as a needle, smiling broadly, and he could hear the voice of that idiot Lucia, remarking on what good shape he was in, even though he was the same age as Maione. What does that matter? he thought. You have the constitution you’re born with. And after all, with my weight, I can always sit on him and crush him. He smiled at the thought.

He checked the time again: it wouldn’t be long, he thought. He’d walked a long way, but he didn’t mind: he felt like a man of action; sitting in drawing rooms questioning people wasn’t something he wanted to do. He’d gone to a place near the Capece home, right where the commissario had told him: a small door in a blind alley, a dead-end vicolo, leading down into a dank, filthy cellar. He’d looked for a brick slightly out of place in the wall, finding it by touch, lighting matches in the darkness: he’d gotten his hands dirty, and then he’d rinsed them at a little spigot, splashing some water on his face as well. It had taken him some time, but he did find something, just as Ricciardi had said he would. He’d asked the commissario how he knew where it would be and he’d dodged the question; Maione suspected this had been another tidbit he’d picked up on his stroll through Fascist headquarters. And in fact, he was now waiting for a possible murderer to show up, and if nothing else, a person guilty of concealing evidence; under his sweaty arm he was holding a package wrapped in newspaper, containing a Beretta 7.65 pistol that in all likelihood had killed Duchess Adriana Musso di Camparino.

Ricciardi looked up from the form he was filling out and checked the clock: it was almost time. The early afternoon sun was beating down relentlessly and pedestrians were few and far between. From his office window came the screams of seagulls and, every so often, ship horns from the nearby harbor.

He thought that setting sail for somewhere else wouldn’t be bad at all. Any ship would do, perhaps a freighter, with a distant destination. And a new life, new landscapes, new circumstances. And yet, he mused, a man like him had nowhere to flee. The dead speak the same language everywhere, dully repeating their last thoughts; and they would certainly befoul the air he breathed no matter where he went. He could run away from everything and everyone, but not from himself: that was his curse. Through the doorway, left open in hopes of a crossdraft, he could glimpse the dead thief. I won’t go back, I won’t go back in there, he repeated, like always. From the scorched bullet hole in his temple oozed blood and brains. You’re going to persecute me forever, thought Ricciardi. Forever.

He sighed as he got to his feet; he had to go join Maione and his guest.

Rosa removed her hatpins and took off her hat, overheated but contented. She wasn’t accustomed to being outside in the heat of the afternoon, especially during the month of August, but circumstances had demanded it.

She remembered that when the young master was just a little boy, back in the village, there was a group of hooligans his age who used to torment him; nothing dangerous, of course: they’d laugh when he went by, they’d lure him with offers of games and then abandon him, all alone, in the dark or out in the open countryside. Luigi Alfredo hated it, even if he never talked about it; she could only guess at his feelings from the sad gaze she saw on his face every time he came home after running into them. One day, she’d decided to take the initiative, facing off with the leader of the gang, a big strong boy who had no respect for anyone; at first she’d spoken to him courteously, but then, faced with the boy’s mocking laughter, she’d been forced to put matters in physical terms, with a pair of resounding blows. After that, the young master had never been mocked again, but the boys had also sought his company far less often: perhaps the cure had been worse than the illness.

This time, however, it would be different: she wasn’t planning to throw a scare into anyone, nor would she establish direct contact with the person who, intentionally or unintentionally, was making her boy suffer. She’d made use of the hairdresser, a necessary but dangerous intermediary: she hoped that she’d succeeded in purchasing the woman’s discretion, even though the cash price had been unreasonably high. Still, news had come in punctually, and once again, it had been good news.

Enrica, the eldest daughter of the Colombo family, couldn’t stand the man that her parents had been trying to match her up with: this was a well-known fact. She didn’t have the slightest intention of seeing him again one-on-one, and she’d only socialize with him when she had no alternative: which was better still.

The big news that she’d learned in the hairdresser’s kitchen just an hour ago, while a cookpot on the stove exuded a terrible miasma of onions and cauliflower and the temperature rose well above 120 degrees, was that just as Ricciardi looked at her, she too was looking at Ricciardi. Or perhaps she should say, Enrica allowed herself to be watched as she embroidered with tenderness and trepidation. And this had been going on, Rosa learned to her astonishment, for more than a year, which explained why every night, as soon as he was done eating, the young master hastily retired to his bedroom. It hadn’t been easy to pry this information out of the girl, the hairdresser had told Rosa, certainly in order to persuade her to a more generous tip. But Rosa believed that Signorina Colombo liked Commissario Ricciardi more than a little, and that it would be best if he hastened to introduce himself to the family, and wasted no time in doing so, before Signor Russo had a chance to make a formal request: also because the man wasn’t at all bad-looking, according to the hairdresser who had met him one night on the stairs; apparently, he was rich, to boot.

It would therefore be up to Rosa to find some way of persuading the young master to make his move, instead of waiting in silence the way he usually did: but how could she do it, if he never let slip a word or confided in her? And then there was one other odd detail: the Colombo girl had mentioned a woman that she had seen with Ricciardi. A woman described as vulgar and not as young as she used to be, dressed in a garish, show-offy style: translating from the very particular jargon of hairdressers and girls in love, Rosa had guessed that the woman in question was beautiful and much sought-after, well dressed and very elegant. Who could this woman be? And most important of all, Rosa wondered, why, if he was seeing such a lady, was Luigi Alfredo so unmistakably unhappy?

Maione was sitting at a table at Gambrinus, sweating and waiting for Ricciardi. The person sitting across from him, and behind a glass of spuma that was gradually losing its foam, was making him feel slightly uncomfortable.

It rarely happened that the brigadier felt uneasy in the presence of a suspect: he was accustomed to challenging individuals who were guilty of all sorts of crimes; he’d spent his life on the street, and hunger and poverty had been the only schoolteachers this man had ever had, and they’d made him the policeman he’d become. He’d seen everything and the opposite of everything. But he didn’t know what to think, now, of young Andrea Capece.

He’d waited outside the school, and he’d seen him come out, identical in every way to all the other youngsters swarming in the summer sunlight, finally free of their everyday duties, heading off for a Saturday of fun and relaxation. The boy was walking next to a girl, who looked over at him as she talked and talked, her books bound together with a leather strap; once again, he had occasion to appreciate Ricciardi’s sensitivity-the commissario had told him to go in civilian attire to spare the boy his classmates’ gossip. He’d walked over to him, touching him lightly on the arm to catch his attention; the boy recognized him, and he took great care to observe exactly what went through the boy’s eyes, what crossed his brow, in search of the usual signs of fear, the surprise of an animal caught in a trap; but he’d seen none of that.

Instead, he had seen the carefree smile give way to the signs of a profound sadness, age-old, grievous, the sadness you’d expect to see only in an adult; along with a flicker of something resembling pride. Not even a shadow of repentance, much less regret. The sad eyes had glided over the newspaper package, the shoulders had hunched over slightly under the weight of what would come next; he’d waved goodbye to the girl, and she had bowed to Maione, thinking him a family member, and then she’d walked off, the smile on her face never even fading.

They’d walked the whole distance in silence; the adult didn’t know what to say, the boy simply didn’t want to speak. They’d arrived at Gambrinus, as previously agreed with the commissario, and they’d taken a seat at one of the tables. Maione’d asked Andrea what he’d like, and the boy had shaken his head, with a doleful smile. The brigadier had then ordered a cup of coffee and a foamy spuma, but the young man never even tasted the drink. Now they were waiting for Ricciardi, who hadn’t wanted to have Andrea brought to police headquarters.

Maione wasn’t sure he wanted to be present during that interview, because he had a son the same age, now his eldest, after Luca’s death. He thought there shouldn’t be sadness in the eyes of a sixteen-year-old.