Sheltered from the rain in a building entrance, Ricciardi waited. It might take hours, or it might take just a few minutes. His job demanded patience and a willingness to wait.
He felt like laughing every time he was at the movie theater and he chanced to see his imaginary American counterparts leap through windows, pistols drawn, to the frantic accompaniment of an out-of-tune piano; or whenever he read cheap pulps with stories of terrible shoot-outs, or policemen laying out armies of thugs with their fists. Most of the work he did consisted of just this, waiting in the rain, often waiting for nothing, while most of the rest of it involved filling out reports that no one would ever read.
He sneezed and then felt a stabbing pain in his temples from the sudden jerk of his head. Perhaps he should have kept the promise he’d refused to make to Maione and spent his Sunday in bed, sipping one of Rosa’s horrible steaming brews. He could have gone over to the window every now and then and looked out, and he might even have caught a fleeting glimpse of Enrica. Perhaps she would have smiled at him, and he would have known that she’d liked his most recent letter.
Instead, his policeman’s feet had dragged him out into the rain, to Santa Lucia, to wait for a man he’d never seen and who might not even have anything to do with what he was looking for.
Right: what was he looking for? The phantom image of a dead boy, which might not even exist. In fact, it almost certainly didn’t exist, outside of his own diseased mind.
My diseased mind, he thought; and the sad spectacle that he had witnessed through the peephole at poor Carmen’s apartment flashed before him: a man who’d lost his mind, a human vegetable constantly conversing with a world of ghosts that only he could see. Deep down, how was Carmen Fago di San Marcello’s husband any different from him? He wasn’t. Perhaps only to the extent that while that poor man now saw nothing but specters, Ricciardi still possessed some feeble connection to the real world.
What would you tell me, ghost of Tettè? Would you tell me to pet your dog, so it might stop persecuting me? Would you say that you’re finally getting enough to eat? I wonder what Signor Fago’s phantoms say to him. We really ought to exchange our impressions.
The street door that he’d been watching suddenly opened. A tall man emerged, more or less the same age as Ricciardi, perhaps a few years older. He wore a hat and an expensive overcoat, and he carried a cane. He walked with a limp.
He looked around, cautiously. When he saw that the street was empty, he seemed to be reassured and closed the heavy door behind him.
Before Ricciardi had a chance to move, three figures emerged from the shadows of the vicolo that ran alongside the building the man had just exited. They rapidly surrounded him. Two kept a lookout while the third pulled something out of his pocket, something that gleamed dully in the light of the rainy day. The man with the limp turned pale with terror, and lifted his arm to protect his face.
Ricciardi snapped to and acted as fast as he could. He stepped out of the doorway and walked toward the little knot of men, shouting:
“Halt, police! Drop your weapons!”
The man who was standing lookout in his direction gave a cry of warning and took off running, followed by the other two. The one with the knife waved the sharp tip threateningly toward the man with the limp, as if in warning, before turning to run.
Ricciardi approached the man, who was leaning, white as a sheet, against the jamb of the closed door.
“You saved me. Grazie. Did you see? A knife, they had a knife.”
“I’m Commissario Ricciardi, from police headquarters. You need a good strong drink. There’s a tavern at the corner, come along.”
Keeping an eye on the man’s expression, Ricciardi registered only relief when he identified himself. Clearly the man had more to fear from other quarters than from the police.
They reached the tavern; the man with the limp walked fast, even over the slippery cobblestones, leaning on his cane and shooting worried glances in the direction of the vicolo down which his three attackers had vanished. He kept muttering to himself, under his breath, “This is how far it’s come, this is how far they’re willing to take it . . . ”
They sat down at a table. The man knew the proprietor, who greeted him affably and looked suspiciously at Ricciardi; the man must be used to Sersale’s bad company.
“Commissario, you arrived just in the nick of time. They would have wounded me, perhaps slashed my face. Grazie again.”
Ricciardi waved his hand dismissively.
“This neighborhood is a mecca for armed thieves. These are hard times.”
The man laughed bitterly.
“Those weren’t thieves. I know who sent them. Forgive me, I haven’t introduced myself: my name is Edoardo Sersale. And I thank heaven above that you happened to walk past my building just then, otherwise I would certainly have wound up in the hospital.”
“I didn’t just happen to walk by. I was waiting for you, Signore. Just like the three of them, though obviously with different intentions.”
Sersale looked at him curiously. He was surprised but not frightened.
“Really? And why would that be? The police are the only people in town I don’t owe money. And I’ve never defrauded anyone.”
Ricciardi carefully studied the way the man reacted.
“You said that you knew who sent those men after you. Who was it, and why do you think you know?”
Edoardo had ordered a carafe of wine. He poured himself a glassful and downed it in a couple of gulps.
“Well, Commissario, I’m not going to tell you that, of course. If I were interested in filing a complaint, I would have come down to police headquarters months ago; and I’d almost certainly be dead now as a result. These are nasty people, that’s all you need to know. People who want the money I owe them, and want it now. Money I don’t have.”
“But not long ago you confided in a girl, somewhere, that you expected to come into the money soon. How do you expect to get it?”
Sersale was increasingly curious.
“Incredible! How do you know that? Have you been following me? How long have I been under surveillance?”
Ricciardi decided to come clean.
“No, you haven’t been under surveillance. I’m on a case . . . that is, I’m interested in a situation that may involve you: the death of Matteo Diotallevi, a young boy, an orphan at the parish church of Santa Maria del Soccorso in Santa Teresa. Does that sound familiar?”
The man jumped back and recoiled as if he’d suddenly been slapped hard in the face.
“He’s dead? Tettè is dead? But how on earth . . . That can’t be, I saw him just last week! And he was fine! It’s impossible, Commissario; if this is a joke, it’s in very poor taste.”
“I wish it was a joke. The boy was found dead Monday morning at dawn, at the base of the monumental staircase leading up from the Tondo di Capodimonte.”
Sersale ran a hand over his face.
“Poor child . . . but how . . . how did he die?”
“He seems to have accidentally ingested rat poison. But there are a few dark spots, and that’s what I’m looking into.”
Looking him straight in the eye, Ricciardi realized that Sersale was genuinely upset.
“At this point, I need to tell you the way things stand, Commissario. I’ve told you about my debts. I should also tell you that my family . . . ”
Ricciardi broke in:
“I already know about your family. I’ve seen . . . your half brother. His wife was very fond of the little boy, and I’ve talked to her a number of times. She’s the one who confirmed your identity.”
Sersale’s face hardened in anger.
“That harpy. She wouldn’t dream of missing the opportunity. But please bear with me, Commissario: Why don’t you listen to my version of events?”
Ricciardi nodded his head and gestured for the man to go on.
“I was injured in combat in the Great War, and I was left . . . like this, the way you see me now. I have to walk with a cane, and when the weather is as damp as it’s been, my wound hurts so bad it practically drives me crazy. I haven’t been able to work, or be as productive as I used to be; or maybe I’ve just taken advantage of my condition to do nothing, like my poor mother used to say. I’ll admit I like living the good life; and I like beautiful women. But that doesn’t mean I’m a gangster, and your family is supposed to help you when you fall on hard times. That woman . . . For as long as my brother’s been in this condition—and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that she did this to him, with some spell she’s cast, witch that she is—all communications between us have ceased, because of her. All the family’s wealth, and therefore my own, remains in her hands.”
Ricciardi listened attentively. The man continued.
“I’d lost all my ambitions, and I went through a long and difficult time. But I’ve recently been in touch with one of my old enlisted men, who’s started a business with northern Italy that . . . in other words, I can think about my future again, if only I could wipe out the debts I’ve run up. You saw them, those three . . . they wouldn’t kill me, because if they did they’d never get their money. But hurt me, cut my face, yes, they’d do that: that’s the way they make their point.”
“So you asked your sister-in-law for the money.”
“Who else could I go to? She’s in charge of it all, the witch. And she turned me down, said that enough was enough, that it was time for me to face up to my responsibilities, and so on and so forth. I was beside myself.”
Ricciardi tried to bring the conversation back to what happened to the boy.
“And how does Tettè fit into all this?”
Sersale smiled wearily.
“He fits in, Commissario. She told you that she’s infertile, didn’t she? That she can’t have children. That her life has been a living hell. A few months ago, by chance, while rummaging through a steamer trunk in search of a book, I stumbled upon a pack of old letters tied with a ribbon. The trunk was from my brother’s home, and it contained my mother’s clothing. That witch couldn’t wait to get rid of it, and she shipped it off before my mother’s corpse was cold. Somehow these letters, which had evidently been hidden all too well, wound up in the trunk. They were from the doctor who was in charge of my brother’s care, and they date back ten years or so, to immediately after the war. In short, he and my sister-in-law had been having an affair. It went on for years, at the same time that my poor brother was losing his mind. You see, Commissario? You see how shameful?”
Ricciardi shrugged.
“These things happen. It doesn’t strike me, in any case, that you’re in the best position to preach morality to others, no?”
Sersale blanched, but recovered.
“It’s not a matter of morals: Did she have an affair, yes or no? Was she unfaithful, yes or no? Then perhaps she has no right to grab my family’s wealth for herself. Those letters were the proof. So I started to follow her, determined to find out whether she was still having that affair with the doctor, or if she’d found herself another lover to take his place.”
Ricciardi nodded.
“And you found out about the child.”
“Yes, I did. And it just seemed odd to me, how attached she was to him. This bottomless love she had for a little bastard boy . . . forgive me, Commissario. Poor little thing, after all. But I came to the conclusion that this child might be something else to her, something different, something more. Perhaps this was her son, the child born of that affair. Even if he wasn’t, I still could blackmail her with those letters. You know it yourself, Commissario, in this city, defamation moves mountains. I could insinuate the suspicion, based on the fact that she’d had the affair.”
Ricciardi was putting together the pieces of the puzzle.
“So you started to dig.”
Sersale nodded.
“Precisely. I gave a little money to that disgusting pig of a sexton, a truly filthy creature, just so that I could get a chance to talk to the boy alone. I met with the boy several times; the sexton simply assumed I was a pervert, and let me tell you, I came very close more than once to beating his repulsive face in with with my cane. I have to admit that the little boy was pitiable: he was a little runt, skinny as hunger itself, and with a stutter that would break your heart. It took him half an hour just to get out a couple of words.”
Ricciardi was starting to see where Sersale was heading with this.
“You were trying to find out whether the woman had a special attitude toward the boy, weren’t you? Signs of motherly love, in other words.”
“Yes, that’s right. I tried everything on him, blandishments and threats, though I never hurt him, so I could find out what I could about how she behaved; but there was never anything solid, Commissario. Clearly, she loved the boy, but she never said anything special to him, never gave him anything unusual. The boy called her Signora, he adored her, and he was enormously devoted to her. But he would have bonded with anyone, like he did with the stray dog that used to follow him everywhere, and I was even sorrier for the dog than the boy. But it was just because she was the only one who treated him decently.”
“So you gave up.”
“That’s right. I was hoping to use the letters and the boy, but I finally realized that I wouldn’t achieve anything more than dragging my brother’s name through the mud, with nothing in return. But no, I haven’t given up. I’ll talk to her again, the witch, and I’ll threaten to make the letters public. Without the boy, it’ll be harder, I know: especially because she’d never made a move to adopt him, or at least take him home to live with her.”
Ricciardi thought to himself that it was for exactly that reason that Carmen had condemned herself to eternal regret.
“One more thing, Sersale: Who, as far as you know, would have had any ill will toward Tettè? Was there anyone, for instance, who could have faced suspicion if the corpse had been found near a private home or a shop?”
Sersale thought it over, then shrugged.
“The other boys didn’t much care for him, that much is certain. They had it in for him and for his dog. In fact, the last time I saw him, I had the distinct sensation that they were about to do him or the dog some harm. The sexton, too, let me say it again, struck me as the kind of guy who would sell you his sister for a couple of lire. But who could have any reason to care about a little kid like him?”
Ricciardi nodded, sadly. Who could have any reason to care about a little kid like him?
“Watch out for yourself, Sersale. Folks in the vicoli don’t kid around. They might leave you with more than a warning, next time they catch up with you. If you change your mind and decide to tell us the names of the loan sharks, you know where to find me. In the meanwhile, until we settle all our questions about Tettè’s death, I’d recommend you not leave town.”