At the usual small café table at the Gran Caffè Gambrinus, Ricciardi sat waiting.
Garzo hadn’t given him much time, far too little in fact, forcing him to gamble somewhat recklessly. Ricciardi liked to plan things out, leaving as little as possible to chance. He know how important strategy was in his line of work. But the time he had now was terribly short.
And so he’d telephoned the Serra di Arpaja residence. It was a desperate, flailing move, a long shot.
But however rarely it happens, even long shots hit their targets every now and then: Teresa herself had answered, and she had told him that yes, the signora was at home, she’d see if the signora was available. He could be sure that the girl wouldn’t mention the phone call to Ruggero. And Emma had agreed to meet with him. Luck favors the bold.
Ricciardi, sitting at the café table, looked out through the plate glass window at the wheeled, hooved, and foot-borne traffic that marched over the cobblestones of Via Chiaia; springtime had staged a morning in which the light seemed to surge up from below, the sky was so blue that it hurt your eyes, and the women seemed to be dancing in time to a music that only they could hear. Men smiled and tipped their hats, soldiers walked two-by-two and blew kisses to girls who accelerated their gait, giggling under the brims of their little hats. Near a beggar stretched out on the sidewalk, Ricciardi glimpsed a child badly injured around his pelvis, the unmistakable mark of a carriage wheel: blood was gushing out of his mouth and the upper half of his body was curiously out of alignment with the lower half, as if he were reflected in a fun-house mirror or seen through wet glass. Outside the large plate glass window, Ricciardi could hear his voice, calling, Il mio canillo, è fuiuto. My little dog got away. Wearily, he wondered where the puppy had run off to and whether it had found a new master.
“Commissario Ricciardi, if I’m not mistaken.”
The purring voice of Emma Serra di Arpaja summoned him back from the dark pit of his soul. He rose from his seat and pulled the other chair out from the table, turning it slightly in a courteous gesture.
He instantly saw the difference between the mousy, reserved person he had interviewed and the confident and brazen woman who was looking at him with amused curiosity. Ricciardi wondered whether it had been her husband’s influence that had chastened Emma’s personality, or whether she had just been playing a part for the benefit of the two policeman; in any case, he mused, the real Emma was the one standing before him.
He asked what she was having, and she told him a glass of white wine. In the morning, he thought. For himself he ordered the usual: an espresso and a sfogliatella pastry.
The woman laughed. A short, silvery laugh.
“Not worried about your weight, are you, Commissario? A mid-morning sfogliatella. Mio Dio!”
“And you’re not worried about getting drunk, first thing in the morning?”
He said it with the full awareness of how rude and provocative he was being. He wanted to let her know in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t be intimidated and to verify that the signora liked to tie one on, as Teresa had told him.
Emma reeled from the direct hit: she turned pale, then blushed and started to her feet. Ricciardi didn’t reach out to stop her.
“If you leave now, I’ll feel free to disregard your pain.”
The woman sat back down in her chair, wide-eyed.
“What pain? I’m in no pain.”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“Signora, we both know that what you said yesterday was far from the truth; no one returns obsessively to the same place without a powerful motive. Powerful enough to give you the courage to take on the world; and yet yesterday you didn’t take on anyone. You didn’t fight; you parroted the lesson you’d been taught, and nothing more. I didn’t fall for it, not even for a second. Even before I ask you for the truth, I’m going to ask you why you lied.”
Emma looked at Ricciardi, shaking her head. Her hands were gripping the arms of her chair so hard that the skin on her knuckles turned white as wax.
“I . . . I wanted to understand why you’d come to see me. Me in particular. Dozens and dozens of people went to see Calise. I alone must have recommended her to twenty of my girlfriends. So why me, out of all of them?”
Ricciardi didn’t want to tip his hand by telling her that hers was just one of the names marked down in the fortune-teller’s notebook for that last day. Instead, he decided to go all in.
“Why are you covering for your husband, if you no longer love him?”
Emma opened her eyes wide; then she began to laugh. At first quietly, under her breath, with a look of surprise, and then louder and louder until she threw her head back, tears running down her cheeks. Ricciardi sat waiting, watching her, not saying a word. People sitting at other tables turned to look at them, wondering what on earth that gloomy-looking man had said to that lovely, elegant lady to make her laugh so hard. At last Emma regained her composure.
“Forgive me, Commissario. It’s just too funny! My husband? Covering for my husband? That’s the last thing I would do. My husband covers for himself; that’s how he spends his life, covering for himself. And another thing: what would I be covering for? It’s true, he told me what to say yesterday, how to dress, even what tone of voice to use. And what of that? He’s a lawyer, one of the best there is. If I was covering anyone, it was myself, to ward off ridiculous suspicions. Not him.”
Ricciardi decided that the time had come to spring his trap, and he lied without hesitation.
“All the same, Signora, we have every reason to believe that your husband was in Calise’s apartment the night she died. Someone saw him there. Moreover, there were traces of blood on the soles of the shoes he was wearing.”
Emma was dumbfounded.
“But wasn’t it that pizzaiolo that the newspapers have been writing about? The one who killed himself? Why would my husband . . . no, Commissario . . . it’s impossible. My husband lacks the courage; he’s a very fearful man. He’d never be able to pull off anything of the sort, under any circumstances. He doesn’t act. He thinks. He didn’t even react when . . . He just doesn’t take action, let me assure you.”
This was no time to overlook her hesitations, Ricciardi decided.
“He didn’t even react when . . . what? This is no time to be less than forthcoming, Signora. Don’t make me think that you’re concealing something serious, or I’ll have no consideration for your well-being. Believe me.”
Emma chewed on her lower lip. There was something in Ricciardi’s tone of voice that scared her. She thought it over a while. Then she spoke.
“Even when I left him. For good. I wanted to run away, leave our home.”
“And you told him this?”
“Yes, I told him. I spewed every ounce of disgust I feel for him right in his face. I told him how I loathed him and how I hated our loveless life together. He begged me not to leave him, and he was crying, an old man with tears in his eyes . . .”
Ricciardi studied the expression on the woman’s face; she had flung open the door to her innermost thoughts. This was the moment to push.
“Did he try to change your mind? Did he threaten you? Did he threaten anyone else, say, Calise?”
Emma smiled sadly.
“No. Like I said, he lacks the courage. So when I saw him on his knees at my feet, sobbing convulsively, I just told him.”
“Told him what?”
“The truth. That I’m pregnant.”