Ricciardi nodded.
“I think so too, Contessa. And I intend to go right away and talk to him. Could you please get in touch with the lawyer Moscato and ask him to arrange for an interview as quickly as possible? I’ll wait to hear from you in my office.”
Bianca stood up, staring Ricciardi in the face with those strange and deeply lovely eyes of hers.
“Commissario, I don’t know how I can ever repay you for what you’ve done. You’ve freed me from the obsession of something incomprehensible that would eventually have suffocated me. You restored my faith in myself and in those around me.”
Ricciardi couldn’t restrain a half smile.
Then he bowed his head and left.
XLIX
Ricciardi had just finished telling the whole story to Maione, who continued to shake his head in bafflement.
“Commissa’, forgive me but I truly can’t bring myself to believe it. That girl is the same age as my boy Giovanni, sixteen years old, and he plays soccer with his friends, his knees are always scraped up, and I still have to box his ears to get him to wash his hands before dinner. How can I believe that a young girl, a guagliuncella like her, could start up a relationship with a man who, even if he is a fool, is still a fully grown man, then kill her father, and still have the lucidity to deceive the police, her mother, the lawyers, and the magistrates?”
The commissario grimaced.
“No, Raffaele. Carlotta didn’t trick all these people. All she had to do was trick one person, Romualdo Palmieri di Roccaspina. Then he took care of tricking everyone else. Women, as you know, grow up quicker, so don’t worry about your son.”
“Eh, Commissa’, you joke around, but in the meantime, like you said before, there’s really almost nothing we can do. The only thing would be to talk the count into changing his confession.”
Ricciardi shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll try to talk to him. The contessa is going to ask his lawyer to request an urgent interview, we’ll see what comes of it. After all, here there’s still no trouble in sight, is there?”
Maione threw his arms wide.
“Quiet as a church, Commissa’. One of two things must have happened: either the crooks are all still on holiday or else they’re about to fire us all and we can all set up shop and do like the private investigators in America. After all, we’d be pretty good at it, don’t you think?”
Before Ricciardi had a chance to reply, there came a knock at the door. It was Amitrano.
“Commissa’, there’s a certain Counselor Moscato at the front entrance who asks if you can come downstairs.”
Bianca couldn’t bring herself to cry.
She had locked herself in her dark bedroom and had convinced Assunta that she wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t eat because of her headache. She continued to contemplate her own life, her memories of past grandeur and present poverty, but she still couldn’t bring herself to cry.
She ought to have, really. She had every reason to, and now she could add to that array the fact that she’d been betrayed by her husband.
Betrayed?
In good conscience, could she really say that she’d been betrayed? After all, she hadn’t thought of herself as his wife for years.
The answer was no.
She discovered, to her cautious amazement, that she actually envied Romualdo a little, because he had been able to rediscover the power of an emotion, the energy that goes with that. And this energy was strong enough to allow him to make an enormous sacrifice: renounce that very emotion.
Would she ever have that good fortune?
She still felt capable of experiencing love; her heart was hungry, her flesh was eager to be touched, caressed, her mouth wished for nothing better than to laugh.
She still felt alive, but buried in that palazzo which had become a museum to its own memories.
Who knows, maybe she ought to sell the place. After saving it from Romualdo’s demon, she ought to get rid of it and use the money to make a new life for herself. After all, her reputation remained intact: she still had her good name. She could rewrite her own destiny.
As she was thinking, someone knocked at her bedroom door. She heard the housekeeper’s voice.
“Signo’, Duke Marangolo is here. He says it’s urgent.”
Along the way to Poggioreale prison, Ricciardi informed Counselor Moscato of what he had found out.
The man was clearly disconcerted.
“Poor idiot. I told you, Commissario, the man never grew up. He isn’t a bad man, but deep down he’s still just a boy: he believes he’s immortal. Now he’s started skipping his meals, and you’ve seen the results. He thinks that that’s going to make the judges take pity on him and they’ll give him a shorter sentence.”
“We need to make him realize that all this is absurd. That he’s making an enormous sacrifice for no good reason, that the girl, given her age, would serve at most a few years in a juvenile reform school.”
Moscato twisted his mouth in a grimace.
“Commissa’, the man is out of his mind. All he talks about is mitigating circumstances, legal quibbles, he wants to get out of prison as soon as he possibly can. I thought it was for Bianca, even though whenever I mentioned her name he’d just change the subject: he didn’t want to hear a word about her. Instead it’s for the viper, Piro’s daughter. Bloodcurdling: if this is what she’s like at sixteen, you have to wonder what she’ll be like as an adult.”
Carlo Maria was waiting for Bianca in the living room. He looked simply terrible, his unhealthy complexion highlighting the features of a face full of suffering. He was clutching with both hands at a walking stick that supported his weight.
“Ciao, Bianca. At last, you receive me.”
She stared at him sorrowfully.
“You know why I never wanted to receive you here. Because I have your welfare at heart much more than many of those around you.”
The man said, in a whisper: “Seeing you. Seeing you is the difference between living and dying, for me. Don’t you understand? Just seeing you. I could never hope to have you by my side, not anymore, anyway, not since I fell sick. But to see you is such a delight! I feel as if my heart . . . is about to burst.”
In his deep emotion, his voice had failed him toward the end of that sentence.
Bianca felt her eyes fill with tears.
“Carlo, I . . . ”
The man shook his head.
“I didn’t come here to tell you this, Bianca. There’s a very serious mattered to be decided, and we’re going to have to resolve it immediately.”
The contessa grew worried.
“Why, what are you talking about? Has something else happened? Has Romualdo . . . ”
Marangolo waved away the count’s name as if it were a bothersome fly.
“No, for once this has nothing to with that fool husband of yours. Something very serious is happening, and we have to decide whether or not to intervene. But the decision is up to you.”
“Then explain it to me,” said Bianca.
Marangolo heaved a deep sigh.
“As you know, I have a great many friends. Friends where you wouldn’t expect; people whose names it’s better for you not to know. People who occasionally come to see me down at the yacht club and confide in me, tell me things. And so I come to learn things that are exceedingly interesting, I assure you; it’s as good a way as any to stay informed.”
“Carlo, I don’t understand what . . . ”
The duke interrupted her.
“Listen to me. Then it will be up to you to decide what to do.”
When Romualdo di Roccaspina saw Ricciardi his face took on a harsh expression and he turned to speak to his lawyer.
“Attilio, frankly I can’t understand why you persist in bringing this individual here to see me. I don’t wish to speak
to him. My wife and her absurd idea of . . . ”
Moscato waited for the guard to move away and then addressed him in no uncertain terms.
“Romua’, shut up. I’ve had it up to here with your lunatic ravings. The commissario isn’t here to listen to anything you have to say. He has some serious matters to tell you about. So sit down and listen.”
Moscato’s brusque, no-nonsense tone came as a revolutionary change, and it caught Roccaspina off guard.
Ricciardi took advantage of the situation and went on the attack.
“Count, I know what happened. I know, right down to the smallest details, the motives, and the way things went. Listen to me, and I think you’ll agree.”
He spoke coldly and with precision. He recounted the whole story, reconstructing moment by moment the scenario he had assembled for the murder, the hours preceding it and those that followed it.
As he spoke, going on for several intense minutes, the prisoner kept his eyes fixed on Ricciardi’s face without displaying any signs of change in the haggard, long-suffering features of his face, with the exception of a silent quivering of his lips. Moscato, on the other hand, had lifted his gaze above the table and seemed particularly focused on reading the slogans on the walls of the visiting room. Directly over Roccaspina’s head was written: “It is necessary to be disciplined especially when discipline requires sacrifice and renunciation.”
When Ricciardi fell silent, the lawyer weighed in.
“It makes no sense to go on maintaining this position, Romualdo. She’s a young girl who doesn’t even know what she wants from tomorrow, let alone trying to imagine that she’d be out there waiting for you in twenty years. She wouldn’t receive a serious punishment, since she’s a minor and a female. She’d receive only a minimum sentence, she could claim that her father was a man who habitually abused all those around him. Retract your statement, Romua’. I can put in a request today to reopen the investigation.”
Romualdo sat in silence for a while, steadily staring at Ricciardi. Then he replied, resolutely: “If all this were true, and if I were actually to retract, can you tell me what would become of her? A young woman carrying the infamy of having murdered her father. A ruined woman, without a chance at friendship, of any social life. Who has moreover tied herself to a rootless misfit, a man over his head in debt and so much older than her. Someone who chose to go to jail out of love, just think how crazy that is. They’d put her in prison, she who is as delicate as a butterfly, she, who is freer than the air itself. She, who is a smile made flesh, would never smile again as long as she lives. Having murdered only for the sake of my love, and because they wanted to lock her up in a nunnery. If all this were true, and if I were to accept your proposal, Atti’, what kind of life would be left to me? Living with a woman I hate and who judges me in silence every instant of the day. Now that I have found love and I’ve also found the strength to renounce the lived experience of that love with the sole courageous act of a pointless life. If all this were true.”
He stood up with a surprising burst of energy, gesturing to the guard at the far end of the room to come and retrieve him.
“But to the immense good fortune of one and all, first and foremost my beloved wife, who can now begin a new life without the burden of my debts, all this in fact is not true. I murdered Ludovico Piro, the infamous loan shark, and I am going to serve my sentence. And let me tell you one last thing, Commissario: I know perfectly well that she won’t wait for me. I don’t want her to. I want her to enjoy a life of freedom and happiness, because I love her.”
He left the room, the guard steering him by the arm.
In some strange way, in the loose prison clothing that hung off his body, flapping as he walked, he seemed positively regal.
Once he was within a short distance of police headquarters, Ricciardi grew increasingly confused. Sacrifice and renunciation, those were the words that had been written on the walls of the visiting room. Could it be that in order to love, one had to be willing to suffer so greatly?
As he was mulling over these thoughts, he was reminded of Enrica, Livia, Bianca, and the tears they had all shed. And Rosa, too, how she had worried about him.
Who knows if any of this is worth the trouble, he thought.
Concentrating on his thoughts, he failed to notice the black car parked in the shadows at the corner of the street, nor the two men who, the moment he came into view, stepped out of it and walked over, flanking him.
The elder of the two said, in a low voice: “Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, correct? I’m going to have to ask you to come with us.”
L
They were only a short distance from police headquarters, and yet it never even occurred to Ricciardi to call out for help, to shout, or to try breaking and running, or putting up any kind of resistance. The courteous behavior of the two men, their confident voices, the urgency of their manner wrongfooted him. Once he realized that he might be in serious danger, the large black automobile was already moving.
The younger man was driving, calmly, at moderate speed. The older man was sitting next to him in the backseat. His expression was relaxed, but under his jacket was an unmistakable bulge.
A sidearm. That man was packing a pistol, and the position of his right hand made it clear that he was ready to use it. Ricciardi took all this in with a hollow in the pit of his stomach.
“Who are you? Where are we going?”
His voice had come out a little too squeaky. He had betrayed his fear. And he was sorry for that.
Smiling in a way that was anything but reassuring, the man sitting beside him replied in a tone that clashed with the context.
“Nothing but a little drive, Commissario. You have nothing to fear. Nothing but an excursion among friends.”
Ricciardi let his eyes run down the car door beside him: there was no handle to open it, no crank to lower the window.
“Am I being kidnapped or am I under arrest?”
The question was ironical, meant to point out the absurdity of the situation, but the man beside him considered it seriously.
“Neither of the two,” he replied. “We’re just going to see some people who’d like to talk with you. I can’t tell you anything more.”
The automobile made its way through traffic, pushing past carts and wagons and public conveyances, moving steadily away from the center of town. Ricciardi locked eyes with a child who first waved his hand in greeting, then caught himself, as he read the despair in Ricciardi’s eyes. He had nothing to fear, he kept saying to himself. He had done nothing wrong.
Even he, who wasn’t accustomed to spending time conversing in the hallways of police headquarters, had heard of people who’d vanished from one evening to the following morning, people about whom the organs of the Ministry of the Interior had extended an unsettling veil of silence. But for the most part, these people were dissidents, individuals who were carrying on political activities, and who publicly expressed ideas that were openly in opposition to the Fascist regime, often publishing articles to that effect. Ricciardi was completely indifferent to certain matters, and he steered clear of any and all discussions on the subject.
His mind darted to Bruno Modo. He was the only person he knew and frequented who had openly expressed, speaking aloud, indeed often far too loud, his own thoughts which were anything but orthodox. More than once, Ricciardi had urged him to show more care, not to expose himself like that. A few months earlier he had even helped Modo out of a dangerous situation, and the people he had approached to do so had acknowledged Ricciardi’s own clear position of political indifference.
So what could those people want from him now? Was it possible that this was a common criminal operation? That someone he’d arrested wanted to take revenge on him, or something of that sort?
No. There was nothing about the two men in the car that suggested they were common criminals. They
were silent, nondescript, clean shaven, neatly brushed. They wore well-made suits and new hats. They could be a pair of businessmen, or two university professors, if it hadn’t been for that bulge under the jacket.
They were heading toward the eastern outskirts of town. The broad dirt road was lined to the right by the high walls of the cargo port and to the left by the endless procession of hovels housing the families of workers employed at the factories that could be glimpsed in the distance.
“We’re almost here,” said the man.
The automobile turned off onto a side street, and then into another, plunging into a grid of streets that all looked alike. He was driving in circles, Ricciardi realized. He wanted to confuse him, make it harder for him ever to find the place again. At last, and rather suddenly, they swerved through a nondescript gate that led into the courtyard of what could easily be a small abandoned factory. There was no one in sight, nor did the dusty windowpanes seem to conceal offices of any kind.
The driver got out and opened the door from the outside for his colleague, who in his turn went around and opened the door on the opposite side for the commissario. Ricciardi stepped out into the dusty courtyard. The silence was absolute. His heart was pounding in his throat: if they shot him and abandoned his body there, no one would ever find out anything about it.
He thought of Enrica, and then Maione. Who knows what they would think, if he simply vanished. Who knows if they would get together and share their memories of him. The absurdity of the thought almost made him smile, but immediately thereafter he was filled with a cold rage: what did these men want with him? How dare they treat him like this?
Glass Souls Page 35
