“If you don’t tell me what’s happened, I don’t very well see what I can tell you.”
This time Garzo had no intention of allowing himself to be lulled by Ricciardi’s tone of voice.
“The publisher of the Roma called. And do you know who he called? He called me! Not the chief of police, as he ought to have done. The bastard called me directly, knowing full well who’s in charge of day-to-day operations.”
“And are you in charge of day-to-day operations?”
Garzo was too upset to catch the ironic tone of voice.
“And do you know what he said? He said that it’s his intention to run an article lambasting the intolerable methods being used by the police. That the police, without any solid evidence, and let me repeat that, without any solid evidence, are actually conducting newsroom raids. Now do you understand? An article in the newspaper! And it’s all your fault, you and your trusty sidekick here!”
He’d finished up with a flourish, pointing a finger at Maione and panting. He was truly beside himself. Ricciardi replied in the same tone of voice as before, as if he were asking him whether he’d like a cup of espresso.
“I’m glad you asked us to come upstairs, Dottore. If I’d known that you were still in your office at this hour, a highly unusual state of affairs, I’d have already come to talk to you. I need to request an authorization.”
Garzo blinked furiously, as if he’d just woken up from a particularly bad dream.
“Authorization? What authorization?”
“Authorization to search the residence of Mario Capece, chief news editor of the daily newspaper, the Roma, and question the members of his family.”
Mamma santa, thought Maione. This guy’s gonna have a heart attack any second now. And in fact Garzo seemed to be struggling to stand upright. He paled visibly, took a couple of steps backward, felt around behind him with one hand until he found the arm of his chair, and let himself flop down into it, with a dull thump. His mouth gaped silently until he was finally able to take in a mouthful of air and he exhaled. At last he said, in a faint voice:
“What, Capece? Haven’t you heard a word I said to you? What I just told you is-”
“I know exactly what you just told me. The fact is that today’s investigations have revealed a number of important elements. We now have good cause to believe that the Duchess of Camparino had just recently begun having an affair. A different one.”
Garzo was having difficulty catching his breath.
“Another affair? With who?”
Ricciardi showed no pity.
“I’m not yet ready to tell you the name, Dottore. But this person holds one of the highest offices in the city administration.”
Garzo felt as if he’d just been shot. One of the highest offices? Which one? Faces swam past his mind’s eye: the prefect, an older man who commanded an immense and loyal following in Rome; the high commissioner, who’d been appointed directly by the Duce; and the chief of police, who was waiting eagerly for him to make a false step so he could rid himself of a formidable rival.
Ricciardi and Maione almost felt as if they could hear the cogs grinding away in the deputy police chief’s brain as it feverishly processed this new information. A catastrophe. He could see a catastrophe looming. Once he felt sure that his superior officer had taken in the scope and dimension of the problem, Ricciardi continued:
“And so, unless we can move quickly to exclude Capece from the short list of potential suspects or else, an equally practicable alternative, charge him with the murder beyond any reasonable doubt, then we’ll inevitably be forced to reveal that it was his jealousy over this new affair of the duchess’s that drove him to make that jealous scene the other night. And we’d have to reveal the name of. . the other man.”
Garzo shot to his feet, as if someone had just jabbed him in the derriere with a hatpin.
“No! Never! This must never happen, Ricciardi. You understand that, don’t you? We’d be playing into their hands, giving them a chance to strip me of the. . strip us of the necessary investigative independence. What do you plan to do, to prevent such a development?”
Ricciardi shrugged his shoulders once again, keeping his hands in his pockets. His tone of voice became even vaguer than before.
“Hmmm, I don’t really know. Maybe, if we could find the weapon used in the murder, we could just arrest Capece without bringing up the matter at all. It’s not in his interest, either; from what we’re able to determine, he had a fair number of reasons to be jealous, so why would he want to make a number of powerful enemies before going to trial? And if we don’t find the weapon, we could start looking elsewhere once we’re done: perhaps the murderer was someone else.”
Garzo pondered the implications of what Ricciardi had just told him for a minute. In the end, he saw the light. A slow, broadening smile spread across his face like a river reaching the ocean. Still, a large bright red patch remained on his neck.
“Yes. Yes, yes. Yes. That’s fine, Ricciardi, you’ll have your authorization. Do as you suggest. But for the love of all that’s holy, make sure that no one hears about the. . the other thing. No one. Ever. Tomorrow morning, you’ll have the document on your desk first thing. And one more thing. . Grazie.”
As they left Garzo’s office, Maione was beside himself with excitement.
“Commissa’, this time you practically laid that poor sap out flat. But what’s all this talk about another affair? I gather you invented it out of whole cloth, but what was the purpose? It won’t take even a fool like Garzo more than a day or two to figure out that there’s no third party.”
Ricciardi shot a quick glance behind him to make sure that there was no one eavesdropping. With people like Ponte, you could never be sure.
“I had no alternative: I had to raise the stakes. Otherwise he’d bind us and gag us, and then we wouldn’t have been able to move an inch. Instead, I feel pretty confident that with either Ettore or Capece something’s really about to come to the surface. The information you uncovered today, about the pistol at the Capece home, is the only concrete thing we’ve come up with, and we absolutely have to go. I’ll say it again, this was the only possible way.”
Maione took off his cap and scratched his head.
“Then what can I tell you, Commissa’? You’ve done the right thing. And may the Lord Almighty set our feet on the right path.”
Sofia Capece was chopping onions and thinking about animals. About herbivorous animals, to be exact.
She was thinking that even the gentlest animals, the ones at the end of the food chain, the most non-aggressive animals, the ones without claws or fangs, could still become violent and dangerous. They turned vicious if they saw their young endangered. And it was the females, the ones charged with the preservation of the species, who were responsible for the birth and protection of the young, and who had to make up for the shortcomings of the males, the males that were out hunting or on some other foolish pursuit, leaving lairs and caverns unguarded.
She was determined to defend her home and her young. She could not allow a mistake made by their father to dangerously undermine their future. This was her duty, as the Duce himself had said more than once.
As she made dinner for her children and her husband, who probably wouldn’t come home that night, either, Sofia smiled as she considered the fact that in the end the deadliest of all animals is the female of the species. The male kills, struggles, and bellows. The female defends. Because, while the male may be strong, the female is cunning.
Enrica was chopping onions and thinking how stupid she’d been.
Perhaps her mother had a point when she said that a woman’s mission is to find a husband and have children. That there was no point in waiting for the love of your life, bcause what really matters most is to have a home of your own and the safety of a strong presence at your side. Perhaps Sebastiano, in all his obtuse fatuousness, devoid of mystery and allure though he might be, would have provided that presence, and might never have failed her: a solid shopkeeper on the Via Toledo, which was what her father had always been, after all.