“There you are, Filome’. How are you? Did you miss me? I was out of town a few days for business, in Sorrento. But I thought about you the whole time I was gone, you, the most beautiful girl in all Naples. So, have you given it some thought? I’ll come see you. Tonight. Send the boy out to sleep in the street; after all, as you can see, the cold weather is gone. Spring is here.”
Filomena had slowed to a halt. She held her head low, gripping the shawl that covered her face. Time stood still.
Annoyed that her reply was slow in coming, Don Luigi reached out suddenly and jerked the shawl off her face.
“Look me in the eye, why don’t you, when I’m talking to you.”
Filomena lifted her head and stared straight at him, tears flooding her eyes. The guappo’s smile froze on his lips and he took a step back, as if he’d just been slapped in the face. His shoulders collided with the wall; his hat fell to the pavement and rolled a short distance downhill. He lifted one trembling hand to his mouth and uttered a wail, the sound a frightened woman might make. His power was gone; fear had just moved house.
Filomena slowly drew her shawl back over her head and continued on her way. A young man walked behind her and looked curiously at Don Luigi, still shrinking back against the wall, one hand covering his mouth.
He didn’t bow.
Ricciardi and Maione watched Nunzia cry, waiting patiently for her to finish. In their line of work it was common for people to break down in tears.
When confronted with the ragged bundle that had been found underneath Carmela’s mattress, the porter woman had been, in her own way, a spectacle to behold. At first, there was only a faint trembling of the lip, which then spread to her shoulders. Then a tiny whine, almost a whistle, like a far-off train. When enough pressure had built up inside her, as in an overheating boiler, she threw herself face-first onto the table, racked by sobs, her skin covered with bright red splotches. Beneath her, the chair creaked in helpless despair.
The two policemen looked at each other and waited for the rainstorm to end.
Sniffing, the woman raised her head from the table. She looked at Maione, hoping for a handkerchief, a friendly hand, or at least a look of compassion, but he just stared at her, expressionless. So she shifted her gaze to Ricciardi, meeting those green-glass eyes in which she felt as though she were drowning.
“She gave me a little help, sometimes, Donna Carmela did. She loved my Antonietta, the poor child. And she’d give her a little present now and then, just a trifle-pennies for candy.”
Maione took the wad of cash from his other pocket.
“Well, mamma mia, that daughter of yours sure eats a lot of candy! Guess that’s why she’s such a little roly-poly. Looky here, ten, twenty, fifty. . one hundred thirty lire. How much candy is that, two cartloads?”
The woman glanced around her, her narrowed eyes seeking help. She’d walked into a trap and she knew it, but she wasn’t ready to give up the fight.
Ricciardi sat waiting, as patient as a spider at the center of its web. It was only a matter of time. Soon they’d have Nunzia with her back to the wall, and that’s when she’d lift the veil on another part of the story. He’d never thought for a second that she was responsible for the old woman’s murder; if anything, now that he knew she’d been giving the porter woman money, he was all the more certain that it hadn’t been Nunzia. Money: a strong motive, both to kill and to mourn. This woman’s grief was genuine. She’d suffered a terrible loss.
From her corner, the old woman with the broken neck croaked out her proverb about accounts due and accounts payable. In his mind Ricciardi asked her: Did the person who killed you owe you money? Was he or she angry, desperate, offended? Or perhaps in love? As hideous as she’d been, deformed by her arthritis, she’d been able to stir such powerful emotions in someone as to be killed the way she was killed, murdered with such ferocity.
Ricciardi had always thought that hunger and love, or at least perversions of these two powerful drives, were at the root of most crimes. He could sense their presence in the air, around the dead people who called out for justice, and around the hatred of the living who survived them. Which had been behind the terrible blows that had ravaged Carmela Calise: hunger, or love? Or possibly both?
Nunzia straightened her back, once again assuming a proud expression. The chair beneath her creaked briefly.
“Who said the money was for me? A person can write whatever they want on a handkerchief. If you ask me, you don’t have a scrap of evidence and you’re just going around looking for someone to pin the blame on.”
This reaction was also a familiar one, both to Ricciardi and Maione. The final whiplash: the last spark of rebellion.
“Exactly, Petrone. You’re quite right; what a smart woman you are. We have no evidence and we just need someone, anyone, to pin this murder on. Otherwise, what’ll we tell our bosses? All we have in hand is this handkerchief with the money for the candy. So you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to haul you off to jail. We’re going to say you were blackmailing the Calise. And that’s all there is to it.”
Without changing his tone of voice, without changing his expression.
“You mean you’d actually have the nerve to do such a thing? You’d have that much nerve? What about my daughter?”
Ricciardi shrugged.
“There are excellent orphanages. She’ll be well provided for.”
Nunzia ran a hand over her face.
“All right, Commissa’. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
XXXI
It had all started years earlier, five years, perhaps, when her daughter was still a little girl. The old woman, crippled by the pain of arthritis, could no longer take on the small seamstressing jobs that had allowed her to make ends meet in her poverty. One summer evening, as they sat side by side down in the street, seeking refuge from the crushing heat and trading tales of woe, Carmela had told Nunzia that when she was a little girl she’d learned to read tarot cards. Her mother had taught her, and she in turn had learned from her grandmother, and on and on, back through the generations to the earliest mists of time, when the sirens sang on the shoals of Mergellina. She couldn’t remember which of the two of them had first had the idea to devise a nice little con.
In those days, not far away, there lived the widow of a merchant who was obsessed with her deceased relatives. The local children liked to howl beneath her windows for fun, and one morning she confided to Nunzia-whom she regularly ran into at the vegetable cart-that she would give anything to talk to her husband just one more time. Anything-she’d give anything.
The two women came to an understanding. Nunzia told the widow that she knew a woman who was capable of telling her anything that those in the great beyond wanted her to know with tarot cards. After many years of listening to her confidences, Nunzia knew the things the woman most wanted to hear, and sure enough, Carmela told her all of them. A little at a time. First five, then seven, and finally ten lire per séance.
When the widow died, overjoyed to be rejoining the devoted and loving soul of her husband, who had forgiven her for all her betrayals, the respected corporation of Nunzia and Carmela already boasted a dozen or so loyal customers. And word was spreading fast.
Here’s how it worked. A person would hear about Carmela. They’d show up one day and the old woman would say that she was busy just then and couldn’t find time to see them until the following week. She would take first name, last name, address, and reason for calling: love, health, or money. At that point, Nunzia would swing into action. Thanks to her dense network of porter women, hairdressers who made house calls, and gossipmongering women street vendors, by week’s end she was ready to provide Carmela with all the information she needed to ply her prospective new client with delectable scraps of news from beyond, for five lire apiece.