Modo shook his head sadly.
“Mamma mia, what a shame. Believe me, Ricciardi, Viper was a very beautiful woman. So beautiful. I’m so sorry that you had to see her so beat up. She had dark deep eyes, glittering with life, plump lips, and a graceful way of moving that drove men mad.”
Ricciardi was impressed: he’d never heard his friend so raptly absorbed in a description.
“What about you, Bruno, were you . . . I mean, did you see her?”
A melancholy expression appeared on Modo’s face.
“No, no. I come here to have fun, to drink and to play cards. The young ladies who warm my skin are more cheerful and unassuming than Viper. Also, from what I heard, she had very few clients. For Madame Yvonne she was like a kind of publicity, a flesh-and-blood advertisement. Certainly, this is a major loss for her.”
“Yes, so she told me. I might have some more questions for you about life in this place, that way you can raise yourself from necrophiliac butcher to police informant. But tell me something else: did you notice anything about the girl’s body?”
Modo, in spite of himself, chuckled briefly.
“There, now I recognize you: the real Ricciardi, the one who, as soon as the conversation veers onto lighthearted topics, steers it straight back to his world of blood. Well, no, little more than what you’ve certainly already guessed: it must have been over quickly, the murderer or murderess shoved her onto the bed and put a pillow over her face, and that was that. Death by suffocation; nasal septum fractured, bleeding of the upper and lower lips due to pressure against the teeth. She didn’t have a chance to cry out to anyone. She kicked a little: there’s a small ecchymosis on her foot, it must have hit the nightstand.”
Ricciardi decided that the picture he’d developed matched perfectly.
“What about her hands? Did she try to defend herself, did she manage to . . .”
“No, no scratches on the murderer, there aren’t any traces of skin under the fingernails. Unfortunately, there aren’t any fingerprints: she struggled to get the pillow off her face, that’s the only thing she touched.”
Modo had immediately caught Ricciardi’s drift: the presence of scratches and cuts on the hands or forearms could certainly have helped to identify the murderer.
“Of course, I reserve the right to come back to you with more information after the autopsy, which I intend to perform with extreme care: anyone capable of murdering such a beautiful woman, a woman who definitely freshened the foul air of this city, deserves the worst punishment possible.”
Ricciardi shrugged.
“That’s the kind of attention that we give all murderers. One last thing, Bruno: I’ve heard that in places like this they sometimes, let’s say, play games that can turn a little rough. That some people, in other words, like to use . . . things that could hurt. Sometimes, the games can get out of hand, and lead to uncontrolled violence, even to death.”
Modo was staring at him, arms folded, and with an ironic glint in his eyes.
“Well, lookie here: the monastic Ricciardi, the high priest of self-mortification himself, the man who never has fun, not even by accident, is all caught up on sadomasochistic practices. Yes, of course, people like the oddest things: and in places like this one, people come to try out things that they’d never have the nerve to suggest at home. And I certainly can’t rule out that poor Viper might have been particularly gifted in this sector, in fact, I think I even heard something to that effect, some time ago, in the waiting room. But I can rule that out as a contributing factor to the crime.”
“And how can you be so sure?”
“Simple. As you saw for yourself, she was still wearing her undergarments. There was no sexual intercourse underway, nor was there afterward.”
They walked downstairs to the large drawing room. Ricciardi addressed Madame.
“Signora, for now I’d ask you not to move anything, and of course, we can’t allow you to reopen for business. An officer will remain here until the morgue attendants arrive. No one will be allowed to enter the bedroom.”
The woman put a hand to her forehead and clutched at the side of the desk, as if she were about to faint.
“Commissa’, you’re going to ruin me! Already this is Holy Week and we get little enough business as it is, but if we shut down then we’ll lose even those few customers and that’s the end! How am I supposed to feed my girls and my employees?”
Ricciardi didn’t blink an eye:
“I’m very sorry, but that’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s going to have to be. A murder is a serious thing, you know. The most serious thing that can happen. I need more information: you are to draw up a list of the clients that were present here when it happened, aside from this Ventrone. Now, tell me: apart from the entrance where we came in, are there any other ways in or out?”
Yvonne shook her head no, to the sound of jangling earrings.
“Only the tradesmen’s entrance, but that leads directly into the kitchen. They use the little side door, off the vicolo, but if a stranger or someone unusual had come in that way, the cook and his assistants would have to have seen him.”
Ricciardi nodded.
“Fine. No one is to leave town without asking permission from police headquarters, and you, Signorina Lily, you are not even to leave the building or talk on the phone. Officer Cesarano will stay here to keep an eye out, and you, Maione, remember to send someone to relieve him, at least for the day tomorrow. That goes until you make up your mind to tell the truth.”
The young woman smirked sarcastically.
“So it’s more or less like being under house arrest. Hardly new to me.”
Ricciardi looked at the girl’s long blond hair, tied up in a bun.
“Tell me something, Signorina: could something that belonged to you have found its way into the murdered woman’s bedroom?”
Lily shrugged her shoulders.
“Of course, we’re always swapping things, makeup, brushes, soap. We all live here, we’re all doing the same things.”
Yvonne broke in emphatically:
“Just like I told you, Commissa’, these girls are like daughters to me, so they’re also like sisters. None of us could ever have hurt Viper.”
Ricciardi headed for the door, then turned around and said:
“One last thing. I want to know the names of Viper’s clients, the most frequent ones.”
Lily snickered and said:
“That’s an easy one.”
Madame Yvonne shot her an angry look that the commissario didn’t miss.
As soon as they were back out in the street, Ricciardi said to Maione:
“First thing tomorrow morning, go get this Ventrone, the merchant of sacred art who found the body. And do it discreetly: we don’t want to stir things up for no good reason.”
As they passed it, he shot a quick look up the vicolo that ran alongside the palazzo and got a glimpse of the small door that served as the tradesmen’s entrance, right next to where a blind accordion player was trying to coax charity out of the passersby with the heartbreaking strains of his instrument.
The night of the first day of spring had by now fallen, but its smells still filled the air.
People were dawdling, as if they were disoriented by the warm weather, hungry for hours outdoors after struggling through a harsh and pitiless winter. The strolling vendors took advantage of situation, and went on hawking their goods much later than usual.
After two days of celebrations, the Festa di San Giuseppe—the Festival of St. Joseph—was still going, and the fry cooks continued selling their zeppole fried in black rancid oil; the acrid smell and the plumes of smoke filled every corner of the street, causing stabbing pangs of hunger in the bellies of those hurrying home for dinner.
You could see bird vendors, their stalls piled high with cages of all sizes in which birds thrashed in a frenzy, beating their wings against the bars, in search of their lost freedom; according to tradition, grace would be granted to anyone who purchased a bird for the festival of Jesus’s father, and that belief was still popular. With the arrival of spring, the city’s balconies filled up with goldfinches and canaries that had been blinded with a pin to encourage their beautiful, despairing song.
But the air was also filled with the irritating noise of the zerri zerri, the infernal wooden rattles that children whirled around on their handles, producing a clickety-clack that sounded more or less like castanets.
The last gasps of the Festa di San Giuseppe, however, were destined to die out: the heart of the populace had already turned to Easter, which was by now less than a week away. The countless catholic religious and pagan traditions would soon reclaim their rightful space, their enchantments commanding the attention of the entire city, throughout each of the various social strata that made up Naples.
Modo made a show of placing both hands over his ears to shut out the shrill whistle of a peanut vendor.
“I wonder what on earth these starving beggars have to celebrate, penniless in their tattered rags. And yet, for whatever reason, they’re still in the middle of the street, laughing and dancing. Instead of understanding that they’re living under the heel of a dictator, who actually forces them to count in order to figure out what year it is: can you believe it, Ricciardi? Year ten. As if Christ had been reborn. Incredible.”
Now it was Ricciardi’s turn to feign despair and cover up his ears:
“For the love of God, please! It’s already been a hard day, don’t you start in too.”
Modo snickered, pointing behind him at a little white dog with brown spots trotting along with one ear down and the other up.
“You see? I have followers of my own. In fact, you know what I think? From here on out I’m going to force the dog to say that this isn’t 1932, but the year fifty-six.”
Maione poked him in the ribs with his elbow.
“Dotto’, if you ask me that dog doesn’t think about you at all, much less have any idea how old you are. He never even comes when you call him!”
The doctor heaved a sigh of annoyance.
“So what? We’re friends, it’s not like I own him. He can stay with me as long as he likes, and when he chooses to he’ll go his own way. We all should do the same thing, in love and in politics. Let people choose.”
Maione snickered.
“Dotto’, I can choose, no question. But say that I choose not to go home for dinner and instead, I don’t know, go to a trattoria with some friend, my wife will choose to greet me with a shoe straight to the forehead, when I do go home. So what does that mean, that we’re two free individuals?”
Modo gave up, disheartened:
“Nothing doing, I give up. You’re a bunch of sheep, and you’re destined to die like sheep, and I say this with a perverse pleasure now that Easter is almost here. But do you want to hear how low we’ve sunk? Well, the other day in the hospital a lawyer comes in for some stitches. His lip was split open, he’d taken a slap or a punch to the face. We’re getting along, we get to talking, and finally he tells me that he’d been assaulted in front of the courthouse, in broad daylight, by a pair of these idiots in black shirts. And do you know why?”
Ricciardi shook his head no.
“No, we don’t, but we’re pretty confident that you’re about to fill in this gap in our knowledge.”
“In fact, I’ll tell you straightaway: because he’d dared to defend . . . dared, you understand? . . . an accountant accused of ‘offending the honor of the head of government.’ And what do you think this offense consisted of?”
Maione spread both arms wide.
“Dotto’, this is starting to sound like twenty questions. Tell us, just what had this accountant done?”
“He’d taken down from the wall of his office at the Provincial Bank the portrait of the Old Bull Head you call Il Duce, that’s what he’d done. And it was only because he wanted to hang up his calendar, and he didn’t have any other nails handy. So do you realize how low we’ve sunk? Already it’s ridiculous to bring the defendant up on these charges, but then to attack his defense lawyer!”
“We hear these kind of stories all the time, Bruno. We hear them. And there’s not much we can do about them, you know. If they decide to establish a new crime, however absurd it might be, complete with sentence and indictment, it’s our job to enforce the law. Now, of course, there are some things you do with conviction and others you don’t: in other words, we have priorities. At least, that applies to Maione and me.”
The brigadier snickered.
“That doesn’t mean, Commissa’, that if the order came in to arrest a certain doctor for subversive activity, we wouldn’t take a special pleasure in carrying it out. Maybe by then they’ll have come up with some new kind of penalties, I don’t know, say flogging or flaying.”
Modo playfully waved his finger under Maione’s nose.
“Ah, the worst thing they’re going to do to me is this new internal exile, and they’ll send me someplace with lots of sun and sand, far away, finally, from your ugly mugs. In fact, maybe one of these days I’ll turn myself in after some especially serious crime, like blowing a raspberry or farting in honor of your Duce, and I’ll get myself sent down intentionally. And do you know what I have to say to you, my dear brigadier? This dog, here, I’ll leave him to you in my will. The day you no longer see me around, you’ll have to take care of him.”
Maione, poker-faced, lifted his hand to the visor of his cap.
“All right, Dotto’, at your service. And next time you see him, do me a favor, and teach the dog how to do a proper autopsy. That way we really won’t need your help anymore. Now, with your permission, and the commissario’s, I’m heading home for dinner, because this smell of zeppole is driving me crazy. Tomorrow morning I’ll bring you the merchant bright and early, Commissa’. Have a good evening.”
Modo gave Maione a friendly slap on the back and turned to Ricciardi.
“Well, my funereal commissario, now that you’ve shut down the place where I was planning to spend my evening, I hope you’ll at least buy me dinner?”
Ricciardi glanced at his watch.
“I wish I could, Bruno; but I have to get home early tonight. Maybe tomorrow, let’s be in touch.”
The doctor gave him a long look.
“You’re not telling me the whole story, and you haven’t been for a while. You’re in too much of a hurry to get home. My old but exceedingly well trained nose catches a whiff of woman. Go on, go on: I give up here. That means that the dog and I will just have to eat alone tonight, in a trattoria some friends of mine own down by the sea. He’s getting used to fish, turning into a real salty dog. Good evening to you, my friend.”
What do you want from springtime?
What do you ask of this season, which brings you gifts of new flowers and new ideas, borrowed from the scent of the sea?
Maybe to get away from the cold and the damp of winter. Maybe only that. To take off the grey overcoats, the galoshes, to furl the umbrellas having waxed their canvases one last time. To cover your trousers with sheets of newspaper to keep them from creasing.
Or perhaps to eat fresh fruit and rediscover flavors longed for like relatives away on a trip, new and forgotten but still familiar.
What gift do you ask of springtime?
Not to have to lay eyes again for months on the heavy gloves, slightly worn at the fingers, and the woolen stockings with an impertinent hole that defies any attempts at darning. And maybe to dig out a cheerful silk scarf or a straw boater that’s survived the moths.
Perhaps spring can give you the gift of a deep breath of fresh air, scented by new budded leaves in the forest of Capodimonte, if the wind blows in the right direction; or the image of a coachman dozing in the seat of his carriage, a hazy smile on his toothless lips, lost in a dream of youth, indifferent to the flies attracted by the smell of his nag.
And even the scugnizzi dangling like bunches of raggedy grapes from the ends of trolley cars rattling up Via Medina will seem more cheerful in springtime, as they shout obscene compliments at the girls emerging from the boarding school in Piazza Dante, walking silently, their books bound together with a strap. And their fellow students, the boys who are head over heels in love with them, will shake their fists in the air and invite them to fight bloody duels, but by then the laughing scugnizzi will already be at the far end of Via Toledo, on their daily ride down to the sea.
What do you ask of springtime, while you melt into new hopes you never thought you’d have, as you start to think that perhaps a life of happiness may still await you?
Ask springtime, and perhaps she, in her giddy madness, will grant you your wish.
Ask her for death.