The sweet and amiable voice with which Maria had asked her husband for his consensus clashed violently with the blazing flames of warning that shot from her eyes. Her spouse had received the message immediately.
“Why of course, of course. We’ll have a fine reception. And yes, it will be a pleasure.”
Manfred had smiled, bowing his head ever so slightly, and had given Enrica a tender glance.
After that episode, the young woman’s sleep had grown increasingly troubled. That’s why she had confided in her father, and in the aftermath of their chat, she’d tried to peer deep inside her soul with the greatest possible objectivity, plumbing her memories and her aspirations and comparing them with what her heart told her.
She couldn’t ignore reality. By now she was twenty-five years old and, if she ever wanted to build a family, she was already late in comparison to all the other girls she knew, including her own younger sister. Her mother was right, in a certain sense. Even if Maria had a slightly intrusive way about her, she did want what was best for her when, with respect to Manfred, she tried, if not to hasten events along, at least to facilitate their flow.
But Enrica also couldn’t stop thinking about Ricciardi. From the few times that the two of them had spoken, but especially from his sea-green eyes, it had seemed to her that she had detected that somewhere inside that strange man—who never asked her out, who never introduced himself, who for years now, every evening, had been watching her secretly from his window—he nurtured a certain feeling for her. A sentiment of the same hue as the one she harbored for him.
This conviction, which came to her much more from the heart than from the mind, had driven her to wait for him, to nurture the hope that one day Ricciardi would break through the obstacle that hindered him, deep inside; something, she could sense, that emerged from the past and shaped his present. At that point, perhaps, a future might open up, a future that included her.
But time passed and nothing happened. In fact, the death of his nanny, his tata Rosa, her only real contact with the commissario’s life, had if anything shattered the bridge that she had so laboriously constructed between her window and Ricciardi’s, so near and yet as distant as farflung continents. The few times that they had run into each other, they had exchanged only a few, scattered phrases that, on the one hand, maintained the form of a conversation between strangers and, on the other, possessed the profundity of a great and star-crossed love. Nonetheless, it was her impression that the two of them had said more to each other than many conventional couples would in years of a formal engagement.
But Enrica wanted children. She yearned for them above all else, she who was so late in starting a family. She’d been born for it. Her father, when they had spoken, had put her in touch with her most authentic nature. She would have liked to explain it to her mother, if only she’d had the courage. I’m not averse to marriage, Mamma, I wish for it with every bone in my body. It’s just that I want to marry the great love of my life. A romantic idea, true enough, and perhaps not an especially fashionable one, seeing that many of my girlfriends have chosen their husband according to the dictates of profit, not according to the dictates of their hearts. But it’s my idea. It’s my desire, my wish.
And so she had made up her mind to scale the dizzyingly high barrier of her own personal reserve, and she would speak to Ricciardi one last time. At the risk—or perhaps with the certainty—of giving him the impression that she was something of a hussy, she would ask him with untroubled determination what exactly it was that he wished from the future. Whether in his fantasies, in his wishes, there was a family, a home, a wife, and—most important of all—children. Because, if that were not the case, then there was no point in hoping for the impossible. But if he were interested, then she would wait for him, ignoring her mother’s wishes, rejecting Manfred and any other man who might step forward. Counting on the help that her father had promised her, she would wait.
But she needed to meet him before her damned birthday. Before Manfred unleashed his attack, as he had made all too plain.
Without even realizing she was doing it, Enrica shot a glance at the wall in the general direction of Ricciardi’s building. Her mother happened to notice it and, as she so often did, she misread her daughter’s thoughts.
“Over there, for the tea table, is that what you think? Why, do you know, you have a point? If we use the good tea service, which is much finer than the dining service, then it’s better that that be the first thing that greets the eye as they come in through the door. Yes, yes indeed. Lina, Fortuna, help me to move the table, that way we can see how it looks. To cover it, I was thinking of a lawn weave tablecloth with filet motifs. We don’t have one and we don’t have time to embroider one. We’ll have to look for one in a shop on the Rettifilo. Susanna, would you come with me to look for one, this afternoon? Oh, Madonna, there’s so much to be done, I feel as if I’m losing my mind, and I’m not even directly involved, I can hardly imagine what it must be like for you, my dear Enrica. What do you think, should we also serve coffee, or does that seem wrong, if we already have tea?”
Enrica sighed, thinking about how and where she might be able to see Ricciardi.
Her heart skipped a beat, at the mere thought of his name in her mind.
XXXII
After a short break, the rain had started to pelt the air and the land again.
The wind made it difficult to find shelter, altering the direction of the rain in sweeping gusts and slapping it into the face or against the back of those walking down the street. The untimely darkness forced people to turn on their lights, and it looked as if it were late in the evening, rather than the broad daylight of noontime. Only a rare few ventured out into the streets, and only if constrained by absolute necessity. Among them, Ricciardi and Maione.
They passed by Irace’s shop, but that’s not where they were heading. All the same, a quick glance inside the well-lit shop gave them a chance to notice that, in spite of the bad weather, there were a few women intently palpating a bolt of woolen cloth: winter was galloping toward them and people were hurrying to purchase fabrics with which to make warm clothing. And with those women, along with the sales clerks, was Taliercio. An ostentatious black band on one arm, a symbol of mourning, clashed with the salesman’s smile that Taliercio was lavishing on a fat matron. The show must go on, thought Ricciardi.
The sign reading MEROLLA AND DAUGHTERS—FABRICS AND CLOTHS stood out ostentatiously a few dozen yards further up, on the opposite side of the street. There were no customers in the shop. In the unlit display windows, the mannequins were draped with scraps of garishly bright cloth, lightweight and ill suited to the chilly weather and the general atmosphere of sobriety. Maione almost felt a twinge of pity, sympathizing with the mannequins for how exposed to the cold they looked. That’s luck, just think: to be born a mannequin, he thought to himself.
Ricciardi was the first to enter the store, kindling a look of hope on the faces of the two young women behind the counter; their expression changed, though, as soon as they spotted the uniformed brigadier behind him, stamping the rainwater off his drenched boots and onto the gleaming floor.
“Buongiorno,” said Ricciardi, and introduced himself and Maione.
The two girls resembled each other very strongly; both had hooked noses and jutting chins. They exchanged the usual worried glance that always seems to be prompted by the arrival of the police. The one who looked to be the elder of the two asked: “What happened, Commissa’? A robbery in the neighborhood?”
The question wasn’t an odd one: whenever a crime was committed in the area, the police would alert the shopkeepers so they could keep an eye out. The younger one, though, immediately made an acid comment: “In any case, you’ve walked all this way in the rain for no good reason. In this shop, as you can see for yourselves, there’s nothing to steal.”
Maione looked around, letting his eyes get used to the dim, diffuse light. And in fact, the shelves were by and large empty,
and there was an air of neglect and abandonment that brought a gust of sadness in its wake.
Ricciardi asked: “Is the owner in, please?”
The elder of the two replied: “My name is Isabella Merolla, and this is my sister Fedora. Our father is in the back, checking out some merchandise. Perhaps we can tell you what you need to know?”
Ricciardi maintained a courteous tone.
“We’d rather speak with him, thank you.”
Once again, the sisters exchanged a glance. This seemed to be a habit with them, as if it formed part of a mute dialogue that had begun who knows when.
Fedora nodded and vanished behind a curtain. Maione sneezed, pulled out an enormous handkerchief, and loudly blew his nose. Ricciardi considered the unmistakable difference between the two competing businesses and, though he was no expert in the subject, had the impression that Merolla was certainly struggling.
The young woman who had walked away now reappeared, and the first thing she did was to stare at her sister, who returned a sad smile, as if in consent. A little bit later a man emerged, his nose even more hooked and his chin even more jutting than either of the two women; there could be no doubt that this was their parent. He ran his small and mistrustful eyes over the policemen, not even bothering to say hello.
At that point, Maione, in a brusque tone of voice, asked him: “Are you Signor Merolla?”
The man stood motionless, giving no sign of having heard. The daughters exchanged the usual glance; Isabella sighed. Maione waited for an answer for a long moment of surreal silence. From outside came the rumble of thunder. At last, the man said: “Yes, I’m Gerardo Merolla.”
Ricciardi addressed him in a courteous voice: “Buongiorno, Signor Merolla. We have a few questions we’d like to ask you. Is there someplace private where we could speak?”
The shopkeeper’s reply was terse: “No. There is nowhere private. Right here will be fine; after all, as you can see, it’s a slow day.”
Fedora emitted a high-pitched snicker and her father blasted her with an angry glare. The two sisters looked at each other with an attitude of tolerant resignation.
Ricciardi maintained his composure.
“Fine. I imagine that you’ve heard about the death of Signor Irace, who owns the store nearby?”
A gloomy smile appeared on Merolla’s face, making him look like nothing so much as a bird of prey. He might be fifty or so; he was bony and lean, with just a patch of greasy hair on the top of his otherwise bald cranium.
“Yes, I heard about it. A piece of good news, for once.”
The girls exchanged a glance full of worry. Maione acted scandalized.
“What do you mean by that, excuse me? Do you even understand what we’re talking about?”
The man stared at him, indifferently.
“Irace was a worthless wretch, and he was responsible for the ruination of my business: he stole my daughters’ future. It’s thanks to him, and the way he ran his business with that money he got from who knows where, that we’ve been reduced to the condition that you now see. As far as I’m concerned, his death comes as good news, and I’m not enough of hypocrite to pretend otherwise.”
Maione wasn’t placated.
“My dear sir, Irace was murdered. Something of that sort ought to be far more important than any matters of money or debt, don’t you think? Or when it comes to money, does the milk of human kindness simply run dry?”
Merolla kept his voice chilly.
“Brigadie’, you didn’t know him. He was capable of pretending to want to join me in partnership for a purchase, fifty-fifty, in order to get a discount from the suppliers, and then carrying on the negotiation for himself and leaving me with nothing in the end. I fell for it twice before I figured out just what kind of a person he really was. Believe me, if you’d ever had any dealings with him, you too would have been happy to learn that he was dead.”
Ricciardi decided to break in, in order to prevent another annoyed retort from his underling.
“We understand, the two of you were bitter competitors. But now we’d like to know something more about the last shipment of fabrics that Irace was about to sign a contract for: we hear that you were interested in the same deal. At least that’s what the import-export agent, Signor Martuscelli, claims.”
Needless to say, at the sound of Martuscelli’s name, the two young women exchanged a glance. Merolla nodded, expressionless.
“Another highwayman, though unfortunately this one controls all the merchandise that comes in through the port. If I had managed to get my hands on that load of fabrics, I’d have saved the shop. Look around, do you see any winter fabrics? The only ones I have are down there, at the end of the room, and they’re from two years ago. No one’s buying them anymore because the fashion has changed; and even if they were in fashion, with the collapse of prices the most we could hope to make back would be 20 percent of what we originally spent. Just enough to pay our utilities.”
Ricciardi insisted.
“Yes, but the negotiations . . . ”
Merolla paid him no mind. He went on describing the difficulties of his situation.
“I don’t have sales clerks anymore, don’t you see? Five people used to work in this shop. And now for all I know they’re all homeless. Except for one of them, who left to take a job with Irace; he’d been with me since he was a kid, ’nu guaglione, that miserable pirate. And we need to keep the lights off, to save, we only turn the lights on in the evening. And who do you expect will even come in here, if they can’t even see what we have for sale? To say nothing of the display windows. It’s depressing.”
Ricciardi tried again.
“Martuscelli claims that . . . ”
“I have two daughters, yet another piece of bad luck, and my wife passed two years ago. Now, let me ask you: who’s going to marry them, without a shred of a dowry and with a shop full of debts that’s about to go out of business? Eh? Will you tell me that?”
The two young women glanced at each other with reciprocal commiseration. For a moment, they looked to Maione like a pair of baby birds in a nest; he couldn’t keep from thinking to himself they would have had a hard time landing a husband even if they were rolling in money.
Ricciardi took advantage of Merolla’s rhetorical question.
“So you made him an offer, is that right?”
“Certainly, and it was even more generous than Irace’s. Only, of course, I would have paid with letters of credit. As I sold the merchandise, I’d have honored them, and I’d have made sure they got every cent. I’d arrived at an offer of 86,000 lire, a price that was more than fair, believe me. But that bastard offered to pay up immediately, cash on the barrelhead, and the manufacturer, who’s new and doesn’t know his way around, chose to take his offer. And giving him a substantial discount into the bargain: a round sum, so long and thanks very much. Who has that big of a lump sum, these days, with the state of things?”
Maione listened with furrowed brow. He didn’t like the man’s evident rancor one little bit.
“So you knew that Irace had pulled off the deal.”
“I’ll say I knew. I went to see Martuscelli over and over again, until the night before, begging him to guarantee for me; we’ve known each other for years, but he refused. He told me: ‘Merolla, I love you like a brother, but I can’t.’ I love you like a brother, you get that? That thief. Who knows how big a bribe he took, from his comrade in commerce.”
Ricciardi wanted to know more.
“But that can’t have been the only fabric available, can it? Surely you could obtain supplies somewhere else.”
The young women looked at each other with a smile, this time, as if they’d just heard a rollicking joke. Their father snorted.
“With another shop a hundred feet away that sells better merchandise at a lower price? Why don’t you try it yourself, my good sir, and let us know how it turns out for you.”
Maione decided to be more direct.
“Merolla
, where were you yesterday morning between six and seven o’clock?”
The question echoed around the half-empty shelves. Isabella and Fedora, as if in accordance with some prescripted choreography, both took a step back, raised a hand to their mouth and, just for a change, exchanged a glance. At the center of that ballet, however, the father once again remained impassive.
“I was at home, in bed. After all, there’s no point in opening up early. We don’t have to come downstairs until ten. It’s a matter of days now, and if it goes on like this, I’ll have to start my going-out-of-business sale. And with all that, you think I ought to feel pity for Irace because someone decided to murder him? Do me a favor, Brigadie’: if you do lay your hands on whoever did it, before you haul him off to prison, bring him by here, because I want to give him a hug and a kiss on the forehead.”
Then he burst out in a blood-chilling laugh. The young woman looked at each other, shuddering.
And like them, the two policemen.
XXXIII
Ricciardi and Maione felt the need to swing by the office to dry off and warm up. The most violent gusts of the downpour had stopped, turning into a fine, cold rain that, somehow, was even more disagreeable.
Maione shook off his cap and said: “Commissa’, that Merolla horrifies me. How can you hate someone so badly even after they’re dead, and all of it just about money?”
Ricciardi had pulled a handkerchief out of his desk drawer and was trying to dry his hair.
“Don’t ask me, I’m simply not familiar with the emotion. But I don’t believe that if you murder someone you’re likely to then go tell the police how much you hated him.”
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 24
