Bambinella took a second to answer, busy as she was chewing her mouthful of fried anchovies.
“Five, maybe six years. Forever. In their way, among the, so to speak, non-regulation relationships, they were an old couple; you know it, Brigadie’, men switch lovers more often than they do wives. Not the two of them: they’d really been together for some time.”
The policeman wanted to know something more about the man’s life when he wasn’t with the duchess.
“For instance, his wife, his children? Had he moved out or was he still living with them? And his family, I don’t know, his parents?”
Bambinella shrugged her shoulders and joined her greasy hands together, palms flat.
“What can I tell you, Brigadie’, I don’t really know. Certainly, he slept with the duchess more nights than not, I think. The two of them, what with going to the theater, the movie house, and out to dinner in fancy restaurants, were out on the street until dawn, then he had a job after all, and I don’t think that left much time in the day.”
Maione felt downcast, a victim of the heat and the heap of fried anchovies that Bambinella was methodically shoveling down.
“Then how on earth can I find out something more?”
After a moment of silence, spent chewing while lost in thought, Bambinella’s face lit up.
“Maybe I can help you out, but it’s not recent information. A girlfriend of mine-honest, and a hard worker-used to keep house for the Capece family. Then she had a piece of blind luck, she met a guy from the Pendino quarter who ran a shipping service, a couple of horses and two or three wagons, he’d bring the goods in from Mugnano. . okay, okay, I understand, Brigadie’, but try to be a little patient: I have to tell stories my way, otherwise I lose the thread. So, as I was saying, what with one thing and another, this girlfriend of mine, Gilda’s her name, now she’s had this brilliant career and she’s in a brothel at La Torretta, she’s making money hand over fist. Now everyone calls her Juliette. I don’t remember how long ago it was that she kept house for the Capeces, but she can certainly tell you something.”
Maione shook his head in admiration.
“Certainly, Bambine’, there are times when you seem like a spider at the center of her web: even if you don’t know something, you always know someone who does. Would you take me right away to see this. . Signorina, what’s her name, Gilda Juliette; and let’s see if she can tell us something about Capece.”
Ricciardi knew very well where he needed to go in order to start understanding something more about the murder of the Duchess Musso di Camparino. He needed to head home. To be exact, he needed to reconstruct the senseless route he’d taken the night before, in search of the sleep he’d never found.
As he climbed the Via Toledo, gasping under the whiplash of the hot sun, doing his best to stay in the shade of the palazzi, he reflected on the dance of emotions around the duchess and her death. A woman who had turned her beauty into a tool, an instrument with which to climb the social ladder, to amuse herself, to charm others. And then she’d become that beauty’s slave, a prisoner of the passions that her own beauty ignited, and which she no longer knew how to extinguish.
Love is one thing, but passion is quite another, Ricciardi thought. This is the real difference. My feelings for Enrica, for example. I want her welfare and happiness, and if the young man can make her happy, then I ought to be happy too. Perhaps that is love. Then, there is passion, this stabbing pain in the belly, this vise grip that seizes your stomach. The picture of Enrica’s eyes filled with tears, the emptiness in his heart, this anxiety on his flesh. The inability to sleep, the street by night, a sense of regret, even though he had nothing to regret.
It is passion that leads to murder, he mused. Perhaps in all these years I’ve attributed faults to love that it does not deserve. I wonder how you can eliminate a passion; probably by replacing it with another passion. His mind, in defiance of his attempt at self-control, leapt to Livia; her smiling face, the dimple in her chin, the scent of spices. And the long legs, sheathed in fishnet stockings, her feline stride.
And especially, the fleeting kiss that she’d planted on his cheek as she left, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Then and there, caught as he was in the tempest of emotions prompted by the sight of Enrica, he’d felt embarrassed, practically annoyed. But now, as he walked under the arch of Port’Alba and turned into Via Costantinopoli, he thought back to the pressure of her lips and the whisper of her breath. As always, he’d been too brusque, and he regretted it.
It wouldn’t make any sense to go in search of her; but if he ever did see her again, he promised to give her the pleasure of his company, at least once. She wasn’t like Enrica: Livia was a strong, independent woman, he couldn’t hurt her. A relationship without a future, he decided, but possibly one with a present.
As he drew near to his destination, he forced himself to regain his focus and concentrate on what he’d come to do. Love or passion, he thought.
Let’s see what kind of animal we’re dealing with.
XXVII
Walking through the city streets with Bambinella wasn’t the greatest, as far as Maione was concerned; the incredibly piercing voice and the dozens of friends the man had, which required affectionate billing and cooing and lengthy, nerve-racking pauses on the cobblestones, exacerberated the effect made by the dubious appearance, the garish colors, and the heavy makeup.
Moreover, it could hardly be healthy for the transvestite to display publicly his close contacts with the police, albeit with no one other than the brigadier; the world of the vicoli frowned on these contacts, even on the part of those who had nothing to do with the darker dealings of the underworld, but might simply be aware of them. By common agreement, then, they made an appointment to meet directly in La Torretta, the poor quarter close to the waterfront, at Mergellina. That was the location of the brothel where Gilda worked, the Capeces’ former maid who’d enjoyed such brilliant career advancement.
Maione was the first to arrive. He’d stopped at a fruit and vegetable shop, where he devoured two plums and an apricot; it actually seemed to make him hungrier. He’d insisted on paying, despite the proprietor’s protestations: no, he had it in for the entire professional category of grocers now-an extension of his antipathy toward the notorious Ciruzzo, the skinny and intrusive fruit and vegetable vendor.
The fact that he’d arrived early only worsened his already bad mood. The brothel, in fact, was located on a cross street of the broad Viale Principessa Elena; hardly a main thoroughfare, in other words. He found a place to wait in the shade of a tree, thirty feet or so away from the entrance with a brass plaque, on which was engraved: “Casa di Madame Yvonne.” There was quite a coming and going, and every soldier, sailor, or office clerk who went in or came out shot him a look somewhere between the scornful and the concerned: what was a uniformed brigadier of the Neapolitan police department doing there loitering in the shade of a tree? Was he noting down the identity of everyone who frequented the house, or was he laying the groundwork for a raid? Or was he simply working up the nerve to go in himself?
Finally Bambinella showed up, swinging her hips on her stiletto heels, wrapped in a tight-fitting red-flowered dress.
“Forgive me, Brigadie’, but I had to stop twice to get something to drink, it’s so hot you wouldn’t believe it.”
Maione wanted to speed things up.
“Sure, sure, that’s fine. But let’s go in, all we need now is for your girlfriend to be busy, and the two of us to be seen sitting together in the waiting room.”
The entrance to the brothel was through a small wooden door and up a steep staircase. At the top of the stairs, they were greeted by an old woman with a broom and a bucket in her hands, cleaning an already spotless landing.