When he came back into the office, Maione found the usual Ricciardi waiting for him. Inscrutable, composed, lost in thought. Though perhaps just a bit more downcast.
“All right, Maione, let’s move on. This day is proving tougher than I would have expected. Who do we have now?”
The brigadier consulted his notebook.
“Now then: next is Antonio Iodice—a pizzaiolo from the Sanità, a client of the loan-sharking branch of the operation. Here’s the story: Iodice used to have a pushcart, one of those carts where you yourself often stop for lunch, and he was doing reasonably well; our boy’s a hard worker, always cheerful, always out working, even in the worst weather. Then he opened a sit-down restaurant of his own, taking over the place from a blacksmith who closed shop, borrowing the money from Calise. But things didn’t go all that well, and according to Petrone he’d already asked for an extension on his loan terms twice, and that night he was going to have to ‘pavare’—that is, pay up.”
The commissario seemed to be having difficulty focusing.
“And did he pay? Did you check the papers in the biscuit tin?”
Maione nodded his head yes.
“Yes, Commissa’, I checked it again, and as I think I already told you, there’s nothing under his name. Forgive me, Commissa’, but if you don’t mind my asking, are you sure you’re feeling well? No, it’s just that, it’s not like you ever have that much color in your face, but right now you’re so pale you look like a corpse. If you’d like, we can just leave off here for to the day and start over again tomorrow. After all, Calise is in no hurry.”
“I look like a corpse, do I? No, trust me; it takes a lot more than this to look like a dead man. Take a look and see if this Iodice has come in. Let’s keep going.”
He spotted the policemen at the end of the street from his spot on the balcony, where he was leaning on the railing, trying to figure out the right thing to do, how to react. He saw them advancing toward him, like a pair of gray insects in the midst of the colorful crowd of strolling vendors, women, and children walking down Via Santa Lucia in search of the year’s first sea breezes.
He immediately knew why they had come. They’d come for him. Somehow, they’d uncovered tracks that in his naïve foolishness he’d surely left behind. He smiled at the irony of fate. A rank beginner. The most famous criminal lawyer in the city, a professor at the most prestigious university in Italy for jurisprudence, every magistrate’s greatest fear, known as “the fox” in court—only to be caught red-handed. And for what? For love.
Because, say what you will about Ruggero Serra di Arpaja, you couldn’t accuse him of lying to himself. He knew that what had driven him to that situation hadn’t been an attempt to protect his good name, his prominent position, or his social standing. No; it had been love for his wife. The same woman who for a long time now had barely spoken to him, indifferent to his feelings, their home, and the reputation attached to the name she bore. A woman who shamelessly flaunted her own adulterous affair.
And yet he loved her still. With all his heart. Her smiling face appeared before his eyes, the silvery sound of her laughter echoed in his ears, and he decided that it had been worth going all in if it meant he might be able to hold on to her.
The two policemen had come to a halt in front of the palazzo’s street door and were speaking with the doorman, whose livery was even more spectacular than their uniforms. Ruggero watched as they handed him an envelope and then turned to go. What could this be about? He summoned the housemaid with her perennially frightened expression and told her to hurry downstairs to retrieve the document.
A minute later, he was turning over in his hands a summons to police headquarters addressed to Signora Emma Serra di Arpaja.
For the first time in many months, a meager smile appeared on his lips. Perhaps all was not lost.
Given the delay on the part of the patrol that had been sent to fetch the pizzaiolo, Ricciardi had informed Maione that he preferred to head out immediately to the home of Ridolfi, the invalid. He lived not far from headquarters, in one of those aristocratic palazzi on Via Toledo, which had been subdivided into apartments a few years earlier due to the economic misfortunes afflicting the venerable family that had once owned it.
Even though Ricciardi had little regard for the city’s aristocracy, he still felt a certain discomfort at seeing the interiors of those venerable residences so brutally gutted; it gave him the unpleasant impression of a huge dead animal, its carcass apparently intact and the viscera teeming with hundreds of parasites.
As he walked the short distance together with Maione, he tried to rid his mind of the powerful emotions that he had just experienced: meeting Enrica, speaking to her, looking into her eyes. Dreams he’d nurtured for months, realized in a way that was at such sharp variance with how he’d imagined them.
The doorman did nothing to conceal his open hostility; yes, Professor Ridolfi was at home. He’d hurt his leg. Yes, they could go up and no, there was no elevator. Top floor, apartment twenty-one.
Huffing and puffing, Maione recounted to the commissario everything the Petrone had told him: Ridolfi taught Latin at the high school. He’d been going to see Calise for a year, give or take. He’d been widowed because of an accident: his wife had been using a powerful solvent and had died in a fire that had broken out. He was talking to Calise because he wanted to know whether he’d succeed in tracking down a bundle of family memorabilia, items of no intrinsic worth but great sentimental value, which had gone missing after their downfall. He was convinced, and the Calise and Petrone partnership was glad to agree, that he would find out where it was from his late wife, who would speak to him through the old woman’s tarot cards.
The porter woman had told Maione that every time Ridolfi came to see Calise, he had a good hard cry, and that, in her opinion, he’d fallen because he’d been unable to see the steps through the tears in his eyes. He was a wonderful person, an authentic gentleman. It had thrown a real scare into the two women; he had tumbled down an entire flight of stairs, head over heels, that morning.
They knocked on the door, which had been left ajar, loudly asking permission as they stepped inside. They found themselves in a small parlor, clean and nicely furnished. Ridolfi was sitting in an armchair upholstered in green satin, with his left leg bandaged and splinted, propped up on a footstool. He held a book in his hands.
“Prego, come right in. Forgive me if I don’t get up. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
He had noticed Maione’s uniform, but his face showed no signs of worry. Ricciardi had no trouble cataloguing him: fifty years old, neatly dressed and groomed, but not dandyish, with a black tie, a stiff collar, and a well worn-in smoking jacket. A face with regular features, melancholy eyes, black eyeglasses somewhat the worse for wear. Not someone who’d stand out in a crowd.
“Buon pomeriggio, Professor; good afternoon. Sorry to bother you, but we have a few questions to ask concerning Carmela Calise.”
“Oh, yes, I read about it. What a terrible thing. I was there just the day before. In fact, it was there that I fell down the stairs. A bad sprain; at the hospital they told me they’ll remove the bandages a month from now. It’s inconvenient, and if it weren’t for the help I get from the doorman’s wife . . . Of course, it’s an extra expense. But compared to certain terrible misfortunes, you come to think of yourself as being lucky. Isn’t that right, Signor . . .”
Maione intervened, politely. He liked this man; he struck him as a decent person.
“Commissario Ricciardi and Brigadier Maione of the Mobile Squad, at your service, Professo’. Tell me, what was the reason for your visit to Calise the other day?”
Ridolfi sighed and shook his head.
“Brigadie’, old age is a miserable thing. And loneliness is even worse. Since my wife passed away a year ago, I haven’t thought about anything else: only her. We never had children; it was just the two of us, and now I’m all alone. Unfortunately, she knew where all our memorabilia were stored, and I haven’t been able to find them. They’re little things, objects worthless to anyone else, but it would mean a lot to me to have them.”
As he went on talking, the man’s eyes welled up with tears that slowly dissolved on his face. His voice remained even and low in tone; there were no sobs or sighs, just tears.
“That’s why I went to see Calise. At first, just because; it was almost a game, something to get me out of the house. Then . . . then she started reading things in those cards that only my Olga and I knew. And I started to think that, just maybe, there might really be a way to talk to her again. To meet again in this world, before being reunited in the next.”
Ricciardi looked at this man. There was something about him that stirred a sense of uneasiness in the commissario. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but he didn’t detect the notes of genuine grief in his words. Perhaps it was the fact that he never varied his tone of voice as he spoke, as if he were reciting a litany he was well acquainted with. Perhaps it was his hands, which weren’t trembling at all. Or perhaps it was that silent stream of tears. Suddenly, Ricciardi felt parched.
“Professor, could I bother you for a glass of water?”
“But of course, commissario. You’ll have to get it yourself, though; my leg prevents me from being the hospitable master of the house I ought to be. Make yourself at home; the kitchen is through that door. The drinking glasses are by the sink.”
Maione started to get to his feet to fetch him a drink, but Ricciardi gestured to him to stop. He walked into the kitchen.
He was running the water when he glimpsed something moving out of the corner of his eye. Sitting in a corner, clearly visible in the shaft of sunlight filtering in through the window, was Ridolfi’s late wife.
More than a year and he could see her clearly. She hadn’t faded a bit, and there were still plumes of smoke curling lazily off her scorched flesh. The emotion she felt in her final moments must have been extremely powerful. The skeleton was covered with tattered flesh, and there was no sign of her clothing except for a strip of fabric dangling from her shoulder. Her cranium glistened, the color of roast almonds. One eye socket had been left empty when the eyeball popped from the heat; the other eye, still intact, rolled crazily. The charred lips revealed a cloister of teeth that almost seemed to glow against the blackness, they were so white. To one side, a gold premolar tooth emitted a faint sparkle in the afternoon sunlight.
The head turned to face Ricciardi and stared at him with its one remaining eye; the hands folded in her lap, the legs reduced to a pair of charred sticks of wood, folded with a strange, bloodcurdling gracefulness. They looked at each other, the corpse and the commissario, the latter still holding the glass under the stream of water as it overflowed, running over his hand.
“You’re a whoremonger,” the woman said, “a filthy bastard and a whoremonger. You can cry on command. You tell me that she’s your true love and I’m the angel of the hearth. Well, when you get home tonight, you’ll find a nice hot fire waiting for you. You wanted my mother’s jewelry, but it’s at the bottom of the sea. You wanted the jewelry, but what you’ll get is a nice hot fire, tonight, you and your whore.”
The blackened skeleton threw its skull back and laughed. The woman had died laughing, devoured by flames. The angel of the hearth and she had set herself ablaze. Ricciardi noticed a shock of blonde hair at the back of the ravaged neck. He turned off the faucet, set down the glass without drinking from it, and went back into the parlor.
Ridolfi was talking.
“No, Brigadier, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about Calise. Perhaps she was a little distracted. But maybe that was just an impression I had. Prego, Commissario, did you find the glass? Please, make yourself comfortable.”
Ricciardi remained standing, both hands in his pockets.
“Just how did your wife die, Professor? What happened?”
There was a moment of awkward silence. Maione couldn’t imagine Ricciardi’s reason for so indelicately reminding this man of a tragedy that still tormented him.
After a long sigh, with tears welling up in his eyes again, Ridolfi answered.
“She was cleaning the kitchen, and she was using benzene—who knows why. I was at school. By the time I got home, it was too late. Luckily, a woman from work was with me, and she was very helpful. That was the end of Olga’s life and, in some ways, the end of mine.”
In some ways, Ricciardi thought to himself.
“Well, we have to go now, Professor. Thanks for your cooperation. I have just one piece of advice to offer: whatever it is you’re looking for, stop. I have a feeling you’re never going to find it.”