The head turned to face Ricciardi and stared at him with its one remaining eye; the hands folded in her lap, the legs reduced to a pair of charred sticks of wood, folded with a strange, bloodcurdling gracefulness. They looked at each other, the corpse and the commissario, the latter still holding the glass under the stream of water as it overflowed, running over his hand.
“You’re a whoremonger,” the woman said, “a filthy bastard and a whoremonger. You can cry on command. You tell me that she’s your true love and I’m the angel of the hearth. Well, when you get home tonight, you’ll find a nice hot fire waiting for you. You wanted my mother’s jewelry, but it’s at the bottom of the sea. You wanted the jewelry, but what you’ll get is a nice hot fire, tonight, you and your whore.”
The blackened skeleton threw its skull back and laughed. The woman had died laughing, devoured by flames. The angel of the hearth and she had set herself ablaze. Ricciardi noticed a shock of blonde hair at the back of the ravaged neck. He turned off the faucet, set down the glass without drinking from it, and went back into the parlor.
Ridolfi was talking.
“No, Brigadier, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about Calise. Perhaps she was a little distracted. But maybe that was just an impression I had. Prego, Commissario, did you find the glass? Please, make yourself comfortable.”
Ricciardi remained standing, both hands in his pockets.
“Just how did your wife die, Professor? What happened?”
There was a moment of awkward silence. Maione couldn’t imagine Ricciardi’s reason for so indelicately reminding this man of a tragedy that still tormented him.
After a long sigh, with tears welling up in his eyes again, Ridolfi answered.
“She was cleaning the kitchen, and she was using benzene-who knows why. I was at school. By the time I got home, it was too late. Luckily, a woman from work was with me, and she was very helpful. That was the end of Olga’s life and, in some ways, the end of mine.”
In some ways, Ricciardi thought to himself.
“Well, we have to go now, Professor. Thanks for your cooperation. I have just one piece of advice to offer: whatever it is you’re looking for, stop. I have a feeling you’re never going to find it.”
XXXIX
When they got back to headquarters, they found the officer on duty at the front door waiting for them in the middle of the courtyard. They realized that something serious had happened.
“Brigadier, Commissario, forgive me. We got a phone call from Pellegrini Hospital; Camarda and Cesarano are there. Someone’s been seriously wounded. A knife wound. They said that if possible, you should hurry over right away.”
The two men looked at each other and took off at a run.
The awkwardness that had lingered in the air between them after the interview with Enrica was completely swept away. Now their thoughts were focused entirely on Camarda and Cesarano, on their children and their mothers.
When they arrived in the hospital courtyard and found both men standing before them, they felt an enormous surge of relief. Maione, expansive as always, actually rushed forward and threw his arms around them. Ricciardi in contrast stared intently at two women, one young, the other older, standing in a corner, shaded from the afternoon sun. They were so pale and grief-stricken that it was as if the Deed were showing him two souls that had committed suicide over the loss of some loved one, the very picture of sorrow. The young woman was pressing a tear-soaked handkerchief to her mouth, while the older woman seemed to be carved out of marble, her gaze lost in the void, one hand clutching the black shawl that covered her head tight to her throat, the fingers of the other hand intertwined with those of the young woman.
“What happened?” he asked Camarda.
“Commissa’, we walked into the pizzeria of this Antonio Iodice. We were ready to deliver the summons-here it is, I still have it in my pocket. So anyway, we were laughing and kidding around, because our shift was almost over, which reminds me, my wife must be starting to worry by now. We walk into the restaurant. There wasn’t much of a crowd. The lady over there”-and he pointed to the young woman weeping-“that’s Iodice’s wife; she was serving tables. It smelled good in there. . it was lunchtime. We walk in, as I was saying, and the lady comes up to us and she asks if we want something to eat. We wish we could, we say to ourselves, then, ‘No, Signo’, is this the pizzeria of Antonio Iodice?’ I barely have time to get the name out of my mouth when the pizzaiolo, who turns out to be Antonio Iodice, lets out a horrible shriek.”
Cesarano broke in.
“You wouldn’t have believed it, Commissa’, nice and loud, ringing out in the silence, came this shriek that froze the blood in our veins, as God is my witness. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying. It sounded like ‘my children,’ or something of the sort. I thought he was going to attack us, and I went to grab my revolver.”
Back to Camarda.
“I was facing toward him; I saw him pull this long knife out from under the counter, you know the kind I mean, the kind they use to slice meat. Brigadie’, I swear to you, with the flames of the pizza oven behind him, he looked like a soul in hell. So then he raises this knife and plunges it into his chest.”
Cesarano went on.
“Madonna Santa, it was a horrible thing to see. First he plunges it into his chest, then he drives it in deeper and deeper. Everyone was screaming, running around: it was a madhouse. We didn’t have time to stop him; we tried but we weren’t quick enough. He drove it in all the way, right to the handle. He said ‘forgive me,’ and then he closed his eyes. Camarda, here, got next to him. .”
“That’s right, I got to him first. Cesarano was holding up the signora, his wife, who kept screaming ‘my love, oh my love, what have they done to you, Toni’,’ but he’d done it all himself right in front of everyone. Anyway, I could see that, even with all that blood everywhere, blood coming out of his chest and out of his mouth, he was still breathing. Madonna, Commissa’, he was as white as a sheet. So I lifted up one of the tables, me and Cesarano here; we swept pizzas, plates, and glasses onto the floor. .”
“We got him up on the table and we carried him here to the hospital. And what a procession it was, out on the street, Brigadie’! It looked like a funeral, except everyone was running. They’re operating on him right now. We got here just in the nick of time; Doctor Modo was just about to finish his shift.”
Ricciardi looked over at the women again; they stood at a certain distance, across the courtyard.
“So the younger woman is his wife, then?”
This time, Camarda replied:
“That’s right, Commissa’. The older one is his mother, I think. She came straight to the hospital and so far she hasn’t uttered a word.”
The rehearsals had been interrupted, to the evident annoyance of the director and lead actor; he would have gone on rehearsing and re-rehearsing the same scene for eternity. A maniacal perfectionist, thought Attilio, or perhaps simply a narcissist.
The female lead, even uglier than usual, had threatened to relieve herself in the middle of the stage unless she was given a break. The whole crew laughed and, bitter pill though it was to him, that overweening buffoon had been forced to give in to her demand. Romor took advantage of the opportunity to get a breath of fresh air and smoke a cigarette in the vicolo behind the theater. The playwright’s brother joined him.
“So, Atti’, what do you say? That good-looking lady with the dark eyes, the one who always sits in the first row of the second balcony? She hasn’t been in for a couple of nights. Is she sick or something?”