They stayed that way for a while, sharing the same posture a few yards apart: Ricciardi observing Yvonne, who was in turn observing the interior of Ventrone’s store, working to improve her vantage point by small, incremental adjustments.
Then the woman was forced to give up; her shoulders sagged under the weight of disappointment, and she slowly turned to retrace her steps.
At that point the commissario pulled up next to her. The maîtresse gave him a sidelong glance without slowing down.
“Oh, great, now you. What do you want with me this time? Can’t a poor woman even go out for a walk without having the police in her hair?”
Ricciardi adjusted his gait to match the woman’s.
“Hardly, Signora. I just spotted you from a distance, and I wanted to say hello.”
Yvonne grimaced.
“And what a lovely hello. Forgive me, Commissa’, but this is just not the day for it, with all the problems we have. By the way, when are we going to be able to use Viper’s room again? You can’t imagine how many customers want to see it, but I have to keep it closed until you say otherwise.”
Ricciardi replied confidently:
“Signora, for now I can’t give you that permission. Until we understand what happened, it’s important that everything remain just as it was at the time of the murder.”
The woman snorted.
“Commissa’, I’m sorry about what happened to Viper. I’m really sorry, truly. But life has to go on, and I can’t afford to do without any available resources right now.”
“You need all your resources, eh? Ventrone was a very nice resource, and apparently that’s one you’re having to do without.”
Yvonne stopped and lifted her veil.
“And just what is that supposed to mean, Commissa’? What do you know about it? Maybe the Cavalier is coming to see us all the same, even after Viper’s death, for all you know.”
“It’s simple, Signora. Why would you need to go to his shop in hopes of running into him if he was still coming to Il Paradiso every day the way he used to? And since they tell me that Cavalier Ventrone isn’t feeling well, or so he claims, and isn’t even coming down to the store . . .”
The woman ran a gloved hand over her face.
“You already know everything, don’t you? Then what are you asking me?”
Ricciardi shrugged.
“Nothing at all, Signora. I was just wondering why you had to speak with Ventrone. Perhaps it would help me to understand whether there’s some reason that man is no longer in circulation.”
They’d arrived at the building where Il Paradiso was located. Madame began to cry. She wasn’t sobbing, nor was her voice broken; tears simply began to streak her cheeks, and she did nothing to wipe them away.
Ricciardi looked around uncomfortably, and he was reminded of Livia at Gambrinus; he seemed to have a special talent for making women cry.
Madame opened the door with a key that she carried on a small chain under her shawl, and she headed up the staircase; the commissario followed her. Given the hour and the day, the bordello was immersed in an unusual silence veined with Lysoform and stale cigarette smoke. When she was close to her customary post with the oversized cash register, Yvonne finally felt comfortable:
“Commissa’, you don’t know. You couldn’t possibly know. I was in the profession, like so many others; I did it until one day I couldn’t do it any longer, and the funny thing is that it didn’t happen to me on the job. He, Tullio’s father, was . . . well, he never really had a job. And he didn’t have the money to pay me; but he was nice, and he was funny. Oh, how he used to make me laugh . . . A whore’s life is no laughing matter, as you know, Commissa’. But he told jokes, he acted out scenes, he did perfect imitations, and I had so much fun, and if he made a move, well, I didn’t say no. And when I happened to get pregnant, he didn’t leave. He certainly could have left, no? It would have been easy. I was a whore, it could have been anybody. But he stuck by me.”
Ricciardi pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Madame, who distractedly dabbed at her tears.
“And he wanted a place of our own, for our son; only he didn’t know how to make money, and since he was good at cards he gave that a try and he started to win. But then he started to lose, until one day they killed him. In broad daylight, one afternoon, they killed him. When does that ever happen, Commissa’, that loan sharks come and kill someone in the afternoon?”
A lamb, on a nearby terrace, emitted a high-pitched bleat that sounded like the cry of a baby.
“And now my son has started gambling too, right where his father left off. Instead of thanking Almighty God for how things turned out, the way that the two of us have managed to make do on our own. And I can’t stand the idea that he might wind up like him.”
Ricciardi listened attentively.
“And how do you think you can stop him, Signora? By continuing to pay off his creditors, with money you extort from whoever you can blackmail?”
“Commissa’, I don’t blackmail anyone. It’s true, I do take advantage of the friendship of some of our most loyal customers, I ask them to give me a little something in advance; but I give the girls their share out of my own pocket, and I assure you that they’re not going without, no, not at all.”
“And the most important of these customers, the one who was most willing to provide these, as you call them, advances, was Ventrone, wasn’t it? Look at that, coincidentally the one whose business was most vulnerable to gossip and backbiting.”
“Do you really think that I would blackmail Ventrone? No, Commissa’, I’ll say it again: I don’t blackmail anybody. The Cavalier is an old client, perhaps one of our dearest ones, and a friend. It’s just that his son . . . you’ve met him, haven’t you? He’s a young man, but he has the mind-set of an old one. All that contact with priests, ever since he was little—maybe he’s become a little bit of a priest himself. I’m sure that it’s him, that he’s locked his father up at home so he can’t come see us.”
Ricciardi tried to grasp the meaning of those words.
“Why, do you think that even without Viper the Cavalier would come all the same?”
Yvonne laughed mockingly.
“Commissa’, you need to listen to me: if someone is disposed to come to a place like this, they’ll just come, no question. It’s not a matter of this whore or that whore, it’s just the place. Ventrone, like so many others, used to come here even while his wife was alive, in fact, when his wife died they came to tell him right here in this drawing room. And there’s nothing wrong with that, if you think about it: when you’re grieving, you look for a place where you can concentrate on other things. It’s not the sex, it’s the state of mind. If Ventrone could come here, he would, the way he did before Viper, and the way he will again, long after the pleasures of the flesh are a distant memory. You’re not the kind of man who would come here, I know that. But if you did, you’d see how many people come even though their thingy is only good for peeing, and they pay plenty of money to hide behind a curtain or under a bed, just to hear and watch and especially to remember. And what’s so bad about that? It’s not as if the only thing we’re allowed to do in this life is suffer.”
If only certain forms of suffering could be avoided, Ricciardi thought. If only all you had to do was give someone money, in order to stop seeing. Even if only for an instant.
“Then why did you go looking for Ventrone? If you’re sure that he’ll come back, that it’s just a matter of time, why did you go to the shop this morning?”
“I was hoping not to see him at all in his shop. Because if he wasn’t there, it would mean that he was still afraid to to be seen here. And if he was there, then it meant that he was going somewhere else. Men like him, Commissa’, they just don’t give up coming to a brothel. Not for long.”
Ricciardi understood that he wouldn’t be able to pry any more information out of the woman.
“Signora, just as there are men who can’t stop coming to the brothel, there are others who are slaves to the card tables. Your son, as you know, is heading down that path, and he owes considerable sums to some nasty people who, luckily, given his youth, will no longer extend credit to him; but if that’s the way he was heading, let me tell you from experience, sooner or later he’ll start back down that path. Keep him on a short leash for now. He’d be well advised not to be seen in certain parts of town.”
The woman sighed.
“What do you think, Commissa’, that I haven’t tried? He’s turning into a full-grown man, he’s been coming into places like ours for years now. He’s an adult. A mother can’t do much in this situation. I can’t keep him locked up in his room.”
And Ventrone, with his advances, had been helping to pay off the debts that young Tullio was running up at the gaming tables, Ricciardi thought to himself.
“Another thing, Madame: Coppola, the fruit vendor, has he come back? Have you seen him again, since the murder?”
“No, Commissa’. The only reason he came was to see Viper, he’s not the kind of man who would patronize Il Paradiso or any other cathouse. He’s a different kind of person; nothing exists for him but his work and his family. In fact, he never really came for Viper: he came for Maria Rosaria, the guaglioncella—the little girl—from Vomero whom he’d known when she was young and whom he wanted to marry. He paid for his time just so that he could see her. He didn’t even come here to deliver fruit, until the one time he came and ran into her by chance. And it would have been better for everyone if he’d never run into her at all.”
“And why do you say that?”
“Because the only new thing that happened was that Peppe asked Viper to marry him, in fact. And she died as a result. And no one knows what she had decided to tell him. In any case, no, he hasn’t come back. He’s not one of those men who can’t live without seeing pretty girls, even if it’s only for fun. Just to spend time in a place that’s playful, amusing. To keep from dwelling on one’s troubles. You should come here yourself, sometime, Commissa’, lots of your colleagues from police headquarters do it. And after all, you could come with your friend: the doctor.”
Ricciardi pulled out his watch and wondered anxiously, for the thousandth time, whether what Livia was doing would have the hoped-for effect and what he would come up with if it didn’t.
And suddenly, the tiny window that had been laboriously creaking open in his mind over Viper’s murder slammed shut.