It was a few hundred yards from police headquarters to Il Paradiso—the final stretch of Via Toledo and a section of Via Chiaia. But it was a bad time of day: the sidewalks were crowded, the shops were open, and the sweet spring air beckoned people out for a stroll. Ricciardi and Maione shouldered their way laboriously through the crowd, doing their best not to lose sight of the old woman hobbling on her bent legs with surprising agility; behind them were officers Cesarano and Camarda, who kept exchanging conspiratorial glances. They’d started it when Maione told them the address, and they hadn’t stopped smirking since.
Ricciardi didn’t trust the spring. There was nothing worse than the mild breeze, than the scent of pine needles or salt water that blew down from Capodimonte or up from the harbor, than the apartment windows opening. After a winter of silence, of icy streets swept by winds out of the north, of chilblains and of cold rain, people’s brooding passions have built up so much of that destructive energy that they can hardly wait to erupt, to sow chaos.
As he approached the corner where the street opened out into Piazza Trieste e Trento and the crush began to thin, the commissario let his gaze sweep over the dozens of heads crowded in the area in front of the Caffè Gambrinus: young men dressed in light colors, thumbs thrust into the pockets of their vests and hair brushed back, were talking in small groups, trying to catch the eyes of women that strolled past in pairs, well aware of the approbation they had so sorely lacked in the previous dreary months. Some of the men turned to the young women serving at the tables that had finally been set out along the sidewalks, drinking in the curves that could be glimpsed under their aprons. Strolling vendors hawked their magnificent wares, shouting and whistling. Children tugged on their mothers’ skirts, demanding nuts or balloons. There were convertibles, carriages, and accordions.
Welcome to springtime, thought Ricciardi. Nothing is more dangerous than all this apparent innocence.
Right around the corner was the elderly man who had killed himself. The commissario almost walked straight into him; he dodged to one side and bumped into a nanny pushing a perambulator; she glared at him, straightened her bonnet, and then resumed her brisk pace toward the Villa Nazionale. The commissario remembered the report, from a couple of days earlier: a retired high school teacher whose wife had died that winter. One day he woke up, dressed himself nicely, said goodbye to his daughter with a kiss on the forehead, then set out for his usual morning constitutional. When he reached the piazza, he turned to face the café, pulled out the pistol that he still kept from his military service in the Great War, and shot himself in the temple. The case had quickly been filed away; there was even a suicide note on the kitchen cabinet at home. But the grief of his departure lingered on, suspended in midair, perfectly visible to Ricciardi, in the form of a short, slender man dressed in dignified but threadbare garb: a jacket that was too big for him, the sleeves hanging so low that only his fingertips, and a pistol, could be seen. The bullet went in through his right temple and emerged from his forehead, opening up his head like a watermelon. The terror of imminent death had prompted a stream of urine, leaving a wet stain on the front of his grey trousers. Beneath the blood and brains that were oozing down his face, his mouth repeated the same phrase over and over: Our café, my love, our café, my love. Ricciardi instinctively turned toward Caffé Gambrinus, across the crowded street: the tables buzzed with people and life. He would feel his grief and pain for days: the old man who couldn’t bear to face the first season of fine weather without the companion who’d shared his life. The sudden stab of pain in his head made him reach his hand back to the scar, now healing, on the back of his head. If only the scar on my soul could heal as nicely, he thought to himself, the scar that attracts the whisperings of the dead, the awareness of their sorrow.
He made a mental note to avoid that corner and to cross over to the far side of the street in the next few days. At least until the echo of the old man’s suffering had finally dissolved into the cool air of the dawning spring.
Brigadier Raffaele Maione pushed through the crowd with some difficulty: his bulk kept him from moving quickly through all those people, and the unexpected warmth of the day had caught him off guard in his heavy winter uniform, thanks to which he felt sticky and sweaty. The old woman, on the other hand, seemed a ballerina, the way she dodged oncoming feet and perambulators, vanishing now and again from his sight, only to reappear a few yards further on.
Not that Maione needed directions to find Il Paradiso. It was Naples’ most famous brothel, strictly for the rich, and its blacked-out windows overlooked a street busy with strollers and lined with the city’s most expensive shops; from the darkened windows came the sound of a piano playing and the laughter of the clients, and the passersby either looked scandalized or amused, but in either case, a little envious.
The old woman had been out of breath when she got to police headquarters. She was the bouncer at the high-end bordello, herself an institution, known in the neighborhood for the powerful arms which contrasted with her petite appearance, allowing her to function as a reliable one-woman security detail: she would easily give drunken and troublesome clients the bum’s rush if they refused to leave when their time was up. Her name was Maria Fusco, and she was known as Marietta’ a Guardaporte—Marietta the Doorkeeper—and she had refused to speak to the lowly police private manning the front desk, demanding an audience with the brigadier to report “the calamity that had befallen,” as she said in thick dialect; Maione had met her once or twice and had won the woman’s coarse respect. When she appeared before him, he had immediately understood that she was truly upset: her cheeks were red, she was short of breath, her face twisted with despair.
“Brigadie’, come, hurry, right now. Something terrible has happened.”
Maione had only managed to squeeze out of Marietta that there had been a murder, so he had sent for Ricciardi, motioned Camarda and Cesarano over, and headed off after the old woman.
As he strode along briskly, he pulled his watch out of his jacket pocket. Four in the afternoon. The bordello must be open for business by now. Who could say how many people would be there, in Il Paradiso’s handsome drawing room, listening to music and watching the procession of scantily clad young ladies on the balcony, waiting to be chosen.
Suddenly the busy street was as empty as if a sinkhole had opened up, and the four policemen found themselves outside the entrance to the place. Marietta stood on the threshold, impatient. On the other side of the street, the inevitable crowd of rubberneckers, their heads inclined toward the windows, locked tight and covered by curtains; a subdued murmur of comments and speculation, some elbowing as the police appeared on the scene. Maione heard a woman laugh, but the laughter fell suddenly silent when he scowled in her direction. Death was death: it demanded respect, wherever and however it appeared.