On the morning of March 22nd, the springtime decided on a sudden and precocious change of attitude. The sky turned gray and the wind sprang up, a hot wind that stirred the sweet smells together with the rank odors that rose from the vicoli down in the harbor and in the Spanish Quarter, disorienting dogs, horses, and people who had believed that the season had changed once and for all.
Ricciardi, as usual, got to police headquarters very early. He’d had a restless night; the thought of Rosa’s worsening health gripped his heart in a clenched fist of anguish. Enrica’s few words at the front door had made him think about how often the mind forces us to ignore what we fear; how unprepared we are when those we hold dear grow old and fall ill.
And as always, the murder he’d encountered contributed to his troubled dreams. In his dreams he’d found himself face to face with the corpse of what had once been a wonderful young woman, full of life and perhaps hopes for the future, and from her dead mouth the references to who knows what perversion continued. The commissario wondered, as he covered the last few yards of Via Toledo before turning down the narrow street that led to his office, what corrupt passion could have brought someone to suffocate that life and those hopes under a pillow.
There were two men waiting for him at the entrance. The sentinel saluted and said:
“Commissa’, buongiorno. These two men here have been waiting for you for some time now, they showed up in the middle of the night. Should I tell them to go on waiting or would you like to speak with them?”
Ricciardi walked closer. One was blond, with two deep circles under a pair of light blue eyes and a face creased with unmistakable suffering. The other one was little more than a boy, with similar features and the same light blue eyes, but with black hair.
The blond man stepped forward.
“Are you Commissario Ricciardi? The one who’s . . . who’s in charge of the murder at Il Paradiso?”
Ricciardi confirmed that he was, without taking his hands out of his overcoat pockets. The man’s voice was deep and hoarse.
“Yes, that’s me. And with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
“I’m Giuseppe Coppola, and this is my brother Pietro. I believe that I was the last person to see . . .”
He ran a hand over his face. His lower lip was quivering, and he bit it to make it stop; he seemed to be gripped by powerful emotions. He went on:
“I was in Rosaria’s room, before . . . before what happened to her happened. The last person to see her alive. Except for the murderer.”
Ricciardi gestured toward the staircase and headed upstairs toward his office, followed by the two men. First, though, he told the officer on sentinel duty to have Maione wait for him with the merchant of sacred objects in a separate room. He had a feeling that for now it would be best to avoid any confrontations.
He pointed the Coppola brothers to the two chairs that stood facing the desk, then opened the windows on the piazza below, which lay immersed in the gray light of that morning, the branches of the holm oaks tossing their leaves uneasily in the wind. Strange weather, for this young spring; strange also not to have that moment of solitude that was the main reason he got to the office early, a time he used to reorganize his thoughts and plan out his activities for the day. But the two men he was about to talk to might well have very important information about Viper’s murder.
He sized them up attentively. Giuseppe was a few years older, thirty or so at the very most, though hard work and general privation often made guesses at age spectacularly inaccurate; the man had a handsome face, even if his unmistakable grief and anxiety had deformed his features. He wasn’t tall, and his taut, muscular physique spoke of days filled with hard labor, as did the gnarled hands, covered with cuts and abrasions, which he kept twisting.
The younger brother had declined the offer of a chair and remained standing, as if this were yet another way of expressing his subordinate role. He was a tall, powerful-looking young man, not especially intelligent in appearance, clearly ill at ease, like many people when they find themselves inside police headquarters.
Ricciardi sat down at his desk and said:
“Now then, from what you’ve told me, you were Viper’s last customer. Is that correct?”
Coppola turned even paler than before.
“Commissa’, I must beg you never to call her by that name. That’s not her real name, her name was Maria Rosaria, and everyone who knew her called her Rosaria. If you call her Viper, you’re doing her wrong.”
It had come out in a whisper, uttered in a broken voice. Pietro, standing behind his brother, dropped his head in embarrassment. Giuseppe resumed:
“And another thing: I’m not one of her customers. I paid, that’s true, otherwise they wouldn’t let us be together; but I’m not a client.”
Ricciardi refused to allow himself to be intimidated.
“Coppola, if we hope to attain any results from this conversation, then your hostility is useless. My objective is to identify the murderer of this poor girl as quickly as possible and to bring him to justice. If you have the same objective, that’s all well and good. Otherwise, I’ll have to question you in a very different manner, and in a different setting. It’s up to you.”
The tension drained visibly from Coppola’s body, as his shoulders hunched and he once again ran his hands over his face. After a moment, he said:
“You’re right, Commissa’. Forgive me. It’s just that this thing . . . this news, you understand, it’s got me upset. No, not upset, it’s killing me. Because since last night, when they told me, I’m a dead man too.”
“How and when did you learn about the girl’s death?”
“From the cook. We supply fruit and vegetables to Il Paradiso, we bring them late every night so they have plenty of time in the morning to get everything ready. They have a large icebox and that’s what they prefer. My brother, here, makes the last round: we’re street vendors, we have a pretty big company, we have horsecarts and trucks. The cook told him and he came to me with the news. Right, Pietro?”
The younger man nodded his agreement; Giuseppe didn’t even bother to turn around to look at him, and went on:
“It was late, very late. But still I hurried over. I had to see for myself . . . They wouldn’t let me in. They said that at your orders the bordello was shut, and that in any case she . . . they’d already taken her away. And so I decided to come here, to see you, and to try to find out more. I’ve been here waiting for you all night.”
Ricciardi nodded that he understood.
“Now tell me everything.”
Coppola smiled bitterly, but on his careworn face it looked more like a grimace.
“It would take two lifetimes to tell you everything, Commissa’. Two lifetimes, both ended together yesterday. Are you ready for that?”
Ricciardi spread both arms wide.
“I’m here in order to understand. Tell me.”
Giuseppe seemed to be trying to gather his memories, lost in the void behind painful images.
Outside, a particularly powerful gust of wind rattled the windows. The weather really had decided to change its mood.