Maione was pacing back and forth in Ricciardi’s office, railing against Garzo, while Ricciardi stood silently in front of the window.
“Oh now, did you hear that idiot? We take him for a fool, and just when I think he’s fallen asleep, he takes us by surprise and out he comes with all this legal mumbo jumbo, like he’s the lawyer’s lawyer! I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it myself! And of course, since the professor from Via Santa Lucia is rich, he must be innocent, while poor Iodice, God rest his soul, filthy, weaselly, lower-class pizzaiolo without two pennies to rub together, must surely be guilty! And after we got the whole story from Teresa Scognamiglio, who heard everything with her own ears!”
Ricciardi spoke without lifting his gaze from the piazza below.
“As much of a fool as you like, and certainly convinced that it was poor Iodice who did it. Still, what he said wasn’t so stupid. The truth is that all we have are clues, in both cases. Both of them had a good motive for murdering Calise. Both of them had an opportunity to murder her. Both of them saw her dead: as we know from Serra di Arpaja’s shoes and Iodice’s promissory note. But what we don’t know for sure is which one of them watched her die.”
Maione stopped. He was unwilling to surrender to the evidence of the facts.
“Yes, but Serra can defend himself and Iodice can’t, Commissa’. So before we lay the blame on the dead man, we should make sure that the living one is innocent. Am I right?”
Ricciardi stood in silence for a few seconds. He was looking out the window.
“Have you ever thought, Maione, about all the things that you can see out a window? You can see life itself. You can see death. You can see, but you can’t do anything about it. So who is he, the man who watches? You know who he is?”
Maione waited, listening. He knew it didn’t fall to him to reply.
“The man who watches is the man who isn’t living. He can only watch other people’s lives go by; he can only live through them. Someone who watches is someone who just can’t handle it, who’s given up on living.”
Maione listened to him. And he understood that Ricciardi was no longer talking about Calise, Garzo, Iodice, or Serra di Arpaja. He was talking about himself.
Even though the brigadier lacked a well-developed sensibility, he did realize that the mood of the commissario, who was already melancholy by nature, had taken a plunge after that interview two days earlier with a witness, a certain Enrica Colombo. And now that he thought about it, this witness resided on Via Santa Teresa, right where Ricciardi lived. Perhaps they knew each other, which would certainly go a long way toward explaining the bizarre direction the interview had taken, the interview that he himself had been forced to conduct because the man who ought by rights to have asked the questions sat in silence. He sat silently and watched.
The brigadier had grown up on the street, and he knew when it was a good idea to keep quiet. There was nothing he could say; he could only sympathize with his superior officer and friend from a distance.
LIV
At the usual small café table at the Gran Caffè Gambrinus, Ricciardi sat waiting.
Garzo hadn’t given him much time, far too little in fact, forcing him to gamble somewhat recklessly. Ricciardi liked to plan things out, leaving as little as possible to chance. He know how important strategy was in his line of work. But the time he had now was terribly short.
And so he’d telephoned the Serra di Arpaja residence. It was a desperate, flailing move, a long shot.
But however rarely it happens, even long shots hit their targets every now and then: Teresa herself had answered, and she had told him that yes, the signora was at home, she’d see if the signora was available. He could be sure that the girl wouldn’t mention the phone call to Ruggero. And Emma had agreed to meet with him. Luck favors the bold.
Ricciardi, sitting at the café table, looked out through the plate glass window at the wheeled, hooved, and foot-borne traffic that marched over the cobblestones of Via Chiaia; springtime had staged a morning in which the light seemed to surge up from below, the sky was so blue that it hurt your eyes, and the women seemed to be dancing in time to a music that only they could hear. Men smiled and tipped their hats, soldiers walked two-by-two and blew kisses to girls who accelerated their gait, giggling under the brims of their little hats. Near a beggar stretched out on the sidewalk, Ricciardi glimpsed a child badly injured around his pelvis, the unmistakable mark of a carriage wheeclass="underline" blood was gushing out of his mouth and the upper half of his body was curiously out of alignment with the lower half, as if he were reflected in a fun-house mirror or seen through wet glass. Outside the large plate glass window, Ricciardi could hear his voice, calling, Il mio canillo, è fuiuto. My little dog got away. Wearily, he wondered where the puppy had run off to and whether it had found a new master.
“Commissario Ricciardi, if I’m not mistaken.”
The purring voice of Emma Serra di Arpaja summoned him back from the dark pit of his soul. He rose from his seat and pulled the other chair out from the table, turning it slightly in a courteous gesture.
He instantly saw the difference between the mousy, reserved person he had interviewed and the confident and brazen woman who was looking at him with amused curiosity. Ricciardi wondered whether it had been her husband’s influence that had chastened Emma’s personality, or whether she had just been playing a part for the benefit of the two policeman; in any case, he mused, the real Emma was the one standing before him.
He asked what she was having, and she told him a glass of white wine. In the morning, he thought. For himself he ordered the usuaclass="underline" an espresso and a sfogliatella pastry.
The woman laughed. A short, silvery laugh.
“Not worried about your weight, are you, Commissario? A mid-morning sfogliatella. Mio Dio!”
“And you’re not worried about getting drunk, first thing in the morning?”
He said it with the full awareness of how rude and provocative he was being. He wanted to let her know in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t be intimidated and to verify that the signora liked to tie one on, as Teresa had told him.
Emma reeled from the direct hit: she turned pale, then blushed and started to her feet. Ricciardi didn’t reach out to stop her.
“If you leave now, I’ll feel free to disregard your pain.”
The woman sat back down in her chair, wide-eyed.
“What pain? I’m in no pain.”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“Signora, we both know that what you said yesterday was far from the truth; no one returns obsessively to the same place without a powerful motive. Powerful enough to give you the courage to take on the world; and yet yesterday you didn’t take on anyone. You didn’t fight; you parroted the lesson you’d been taught, and nothing more. I didn’t fall for it, not even for a second. Even before I ask you for the truth, I’m going to ask you why you lied.”
Emma looked at Ricciardi, shaking her head. Her hands were gripping the arms of her chair so hard that the skin on her knuckles turned white as wax.
“I. . I wanted to understand why you’d come to see me. Me in particular. Dozens and dozens of people went to see Calise. I alone must have recommended her to twenty of my girlfriends. So why me, out of all of them?”
Ricciardi didn’t want to tip his hand by telling her that hers was just one of the names marked down in the fortune-teller’s notebook for that last day. Instead, he decided to go all in.
“Why are you covering for your husband, if you no longer love him?”
Emma opened her eyes wide; then she began to laugh. At first quietly, under her breath, with a look of surprise, and then louder and louder until she threw her head back, tears running down her cheeks. Ricciardi sat waiting, watching her, not saying a word. People sitting at other tables turned to look at them, wondering what on earth that gloomy-looking man had said to that lovely, elegant lady to make her laugh so hard. At last Emma regained her composure.