Immersing himself in Via San Gregorio Armeno, Maione could hardly keep himself from thinking of the shack where the Lomunno family lived, at least what remained of them. Just as Christmas seemed to have stopped at the entrance to that dirt road, abandoning those who lived there to whatever fate awaited them, here in contrast every single window, every door, every shop screamed at the top of its lungs that the year’s sovereign holiday was on its way, and everyone should prepare for its arrival.
This had always been the place to find shepherds for manger scenes, decorations for the home, things with which to deck the halls. Sales began in late October and went on until the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Epiphany, on January 6. After that the street sank back into commercial lethargy, with the vendors specializing in the cloth flowers that were used to adorn the hats and dresses worn by the ladies of the city.
At least three pairs of zampognari, paid by the terra-cotta-shepherd merchants, were playing their Christmas melodies; even though it was still light out, every shop had turned on its luminous decorations to attract the eyes of the numerous pedestrians; and all the figurari, or figure carvers, had laid out their finest creations on the street, creating a particolored effect that enchanted and seduced the passersby.
Maione however wasn’t looking at the shops’ merchandise; he was thinking about what he intended to do.
He’d talked himself into believing that the boy wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him. Maione, after all, had attended the trial in civilian clothing and had hung back, blending in with the crowd of curious onlookers. Nearly four years later, he still clearly remembered the sense of alienation he’d felt, as if the trial were something that had nothing to do with him.
Now, years later, and with Maione dressed in his uniform, even if his son’s killer saw him, he’d be unlikely to recognize him. The brigadier just needed to find out where the young man worked. He assumed that it couldn’t be very far from the apartment he’d chosen, but of course he could be wrong about that; maybe Biagio worked at the Bagnoli steel mill, or at some construction site in Vomero, and that would require further investigation, and possibly another call on Bambinella.
Just as he was mulling over these thoughts, he spotted him. Hunched over a countertop, in the arched entrance of one of the largest figurari shops, the young man was intently shaping a wooden face with a palette knife. Maione noticed him because, on a street that seemed like a rushing river of people hurrying to and fro, there was a knot of people standing around him, raptly watching him work.
Maione stopped, hanging back at the rear of the crowd: he was tall enough to peer over the heads of the others. The boy was working with his head low, as if he were alone in the middle of the desert, blithely unaware of the commotion. He was putting the finishing touches on a face, what the figurari called a testina, a little head. It was an old woman, her hair pulled up in a bun, her cheeks hollow, her eyes wide open and slightly bulging.
The young man was really good; his sharp gestures gradually brought out a human expression, a look of wonder and surprise. On the counter lay two hands with curved, clawing fingers, reaching out as if trying to grab something. The hands had yet to be painted, but they already conveyed the impression of something fully alive. In the end, head and hands would be given a wire and cotton-wad body, in the old style, dressed in silk and lace.
He noticed that the young man, the tip of his tongue sticking out and his shoulders hunched, was putting the final touches on the testina with his left hand. With a sharp pang he remembered that the report on Luca’s murder had identified a single mortal wound, under the left shoulder blade. It was a wound inflicted by a left-handed man, and the brother who was sentenced for the crime was right-handed. No one had given the matter any thought. After all, they had a confession; why dig any deeper? Maione himself hadn’t thought twice about it, at the time.
The thought roused him from his state of wonder at seeing a woman’s likeness emerge from a piece of wood, and brusquely reminded him of what he was doing there. He took a few steps back, picked a terra-cotta cow up off the counter, and went over to the proprietor of the shop who was standing, with a satisfied look on his face, behind the cash register.
“Hello. You’re drawing a nice crowd today, eh?”
The man looked at the uniform with some mistrust, but smiled.
“Yes, Brigadie’, at least the week before Christmas a few people come by; but for the most part, they’re just looking, fine things cost money, they like to look but then they go and buy the cheaper shepherds.”
Maione feigned sympathy.
“Certainly, there’s not much money changing hands these days. People would rather buy groceries, no?”
The proprietor launched into a defense of his profession.
“Yes, and I understand that. But what’s Christmas without a nativity scene? We survive, and that’s fine; but it’s a tradition in this city that every home, no matter how poor, should have at least a Holy Family. Of course, the shops that sell cheap items are doing better, with those clumps of terra-cotta colored in haste and hurry. But we, we make works of art.”
Maione led the conversation where he needed it to go.
“Eh, I’ve seen that you have wonderful things. That young man, down there, for instance, who’s working on the old woman: he seems truly talented.”
The proprietor stepped around the cash register and stuck his head out, observing with satisfaction that the crowd around the young man had only grown.
“Yes, he’s good. I’ve been doing this work for forty years, and before me my father did it, and I apprenticed with him; but I’ve never seen anyone so quick to learn. He does more things, and he does them better, than that idiot son of mine who’s been here for fifteen years and still hasn’t laid hands on a piece of wood.”
Maione faked an interest just this side of good manners.
“Ah, and how long has the boy been working for you?”
“Biagio? It must be three and a half years now; this is the fourth Christmas. I remember when he first turned up here, he spent a whole day loitering in the street outside; he kept looking in but never came inside. At a certain point I called to him and said, ‘Guaglio’, what are you looking for?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘I was just wondering if you needed someone to sweep the shop and mop up.’ I said, ‘All right, but just during the holidays.’ Then one of the carvers got hurt in a brawl, he broke his fingers, and the boy sat in for him. And he hasn’t left that seat since. He’s a wizard with a knife.”
Maione felt another stab of pain at those words. It’s not an act of wizardry to drive a knife into the back of a poor unsuspecting young man, all the way to the hilt. That’s not magic.
“So he’s a help, and things are going well. And the boy seems to be honest, eh?”
It wasn’t an uncommon question for a policeman to ask; the proprietor didn’t seem suspicious.
“Absolutely, Brigadie’, as good as gold. He’s married, and he has two little children. After he’d been working here for a couple of months, he found an apartment right in the next vicolo. His wife, if you see her, is even better than him: a fine girl, a bravissima guagliona. She does some cleaning in the apartments around here, she leaves her children with a little old woman who looks after them, and she works hard. Everyone loves her here in the neighborhood. Right now she’s doing some work for my wife, across the way. Every so often she looks out the window to watch her husband work. There she is, you see her?”
Following the man’s gaze, Maione saw a dark-haired girl leaning out of the third-floor window of the building across the street, the same girl he’d seen that morning. It was a fleeting apparition, a smile and a blown kiss, to which the boy replied with a nod of the head, without a break in his work.
The proprietor looked Maione in the eye.
“It does your heart good, to see two young people so in love and working so hard. Certainly it must seem strange to you, Brigadie’, accustomed as you are to seeing the worst class of people from morning to night, no?”
Maione shrugged his shoulders.
“I couldn’t say. Sometimes people aren’t what they seem. Not as good, and not as bad. I’m running late, I really have to go now. What do I owe you for the cow?”
Hustling back up the street in a hurry to get back to police headquarters, Maione felt a strong wind rushing through his head. A wife, two small children: it was the life that Luca could have had. There was that girl he liked, what was her name? That’s right, Marianna. The daughter of Rosario, the mechanic who repaired bicycles.
His little brothers used to make fun of him, Luca has a girlfriend, Luca has a girlfriend, and he’d laugh and pretend to chase after them. By now, he might well have been married, I might be a grandfather. The grandfather of a little girl and a little boy. And this one, who’s now showing off his bravura as a wood carver, would be a criminal, following after his no-good brother. He might already have met his unhappy end, killed by some other criminal on a street corner somewhere.
The voice of Franco Massa, Luca’s godfather who had pretended to be a priest, echoed in his ears: we have to track down this Biagio and kill him like the dog he is, the same way he did to Luca. Kill him like a dog. Like a dog. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll do it myself.
In the midst of the sounds of the zampognari and the festive crowd preparing for the coming Christmas, Raffaele Maione was thinking about death.