The Bottom of Your Heart (47 page)

“I need information about the past, Rispoli; about how Iovine became who he was, about how he attained his position. Information about a time, perhaps, before you knew him, but that you might have heard about from people in your line of work.”

Rispoli was bewildered: “But . . . Commissario, I don't understand: what does the way Tullio advanced his career have to do with anything? He'd held the chair for a great many years, what . . .”

The commissario interrupted him with a sharp gesture: “I know that. And please, let me be the judge of what's useful and what's not. These are things that, if I took the time and dug through the archives, I could find out anyway: but it would take more time, and I want to resolve this case as quickly as possible, if for no other reason than to keep innocent people from winding up in serious trouble just because they happen to be unable to prove they weren't here that night. That's why I've come to see you, and why I'm trusting in your good sense. Otherwise, I'll say goodbye.”

Rispoli said nothing. Ricciardi realized that he was mentally calculating what problems he might cause for himself if he gave the commissario the information he'd asked for, and what problems he might cause for himself if he didn't. Then he nodded, and he too ordered another espresso.

“I've worked with Tullio, I told you, for many years. I'm pretty good at what I do, and when he chose me I was honored—at least until it became clear to me how he wanted to use me and my professional skills; but since I was willing to accept even that, and there's plenty of work but also an excellent salary that always arrives on time, let's just say that we built a good partnership. And I should tell you that everything I'd heard about him was fully confirmed.”

“And what had you heard about him?”

“I'd heard that he was determined and hardworking; but that he was unwilling to share what he knew, that he guarded his expertise jealously, and was even a bit of a money-grubber. In short, a perfect boss if you stayed in your place and made no mistakes. As far as I was concerned, there were no problems, because in the end he gave me free rein.”

“What about in personal terms?”

“Well, he wasn't exactly effusive. We eventually were on a first-name basis, and sometimes we'd make small talk, but nothing more than that. Recently, he'd shown me his new car, which he was very proud of; but we didn't talk much about our lives outside of work.”

Ricciardi wanted to know more: “What about the past? Did he tell you anything about that? I don't know, memories, references to his own time as an aide or an assistant . . .”

Rispoli smiled, with a gleam of malice: “No, I'd say not. And for that matter, from what I heard when I was still a student, there certainly wasn't anything he'd be eager to tell.”

The commissario grew more alert: “Why not? Tell me everything.”

The invitation was accepted with enthusiasm. In fact, it seemed that the doctor had just been waiting for the chance. Ricciardi settled in to hear a story he already knew full well, with who knows what variations: “Tullio was one of the two assistants to a famous professor, a real genius, a man who had become director of the chair at a very young age: Albese was his name. He was so good that—though he came from a small town and certainly had no noble ancestry which, believe me, should have disqualified him from pursuing this career—he was still a leading light in the academic community. Well, at a certain point, the other assistant, a certain Ruspo who now has a nursing home out Mergellina way, was knocked out of the running by an anonymous letter that accused him of carrying on an affair with a married woman. In medical school circles, the word was that Tullio himself wrote that letter, since he was the only one who could benefit from the ensuing scandal. Aside from the cuckolded husband, of course.”

Rispoli snickered as he sipped his espresso.

Ricciardi asked: “And then what happened?”

“After that, luck played its part, as far as Tullio's career was concerned. Albese had a heart condition that got worse, and he died. And Tullio happened to be at the right place at the right time, more or less like I was, but with much greater support and far more determination: he had created such a powerful network of friendships and supporters that he was appointed director of the chair, and he remained in that position ever since. Until he fell out that window.”

Every detail matched the information Ricciardi already possessed.

“And naturally in that period Iovine, in order to be able to take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself, spent all his time at work. That must have been a sorry life for his young bride.”

Rispoli shook his head: “Why, no, Commissario: at the time, Tullio was still unmarried. And he couldn't have been married, for that matter.”

“Why not?”

“That's easy: because the woman he married was Albese's widow, Maria Carmela.”

Ricciardi held his breath. That was the answer he'd been waiting for.

An old automobile went rattling past the café, pursued by a crowd of running, half-naked children.

“How long after Albese's death did Iovine and Albese's widow marry?”

Rispoli concentrated: “It seems to me it was exactly two years, once the widow's strict period of mourning was over. The story was pretty sad, in fact. She was pregnant, four or five months along I believe, when her first husband died. It was Tullio himself who took responsibility for looking after her pregnancy, but it ended badly, unfortunately; you know, primiparous pregnancies are always the riskiest, and the widow had a miscarriage. Tullio stayed by her side, kept her constant company, and in the end they were married. Some time later they had a child of their own, and the baby survived without problems.”

Ricciardi observed the treetops inside the walls of the polyclinic, motionless in the still air of that infernal July morning. He thought of Iovine falling, in the midst of those trees, until he slammed into the walkway below. And he thought about the twisted paths of love and the lust for power, ambition, and tenderness, paths that intersected and split a thousand times as they headed down into the abyss.

He thought of Sisinella, who had been Iovine's last desperate link to life; the smidgeon of happiness that perhaps she had been able to give him, though in exchange for cash; he thought of a man whose entire life had been consecrated to self-interest and his career. And he thought of Enrica, now far away, perhaps following the path that would lead her to happiness.

He looked up at Rispoli.

“And what was their relationship like? Are you aware of any marital difficulties, any fighting between husband and wife?”

“I wouldn't know, Commissario; like I told you, Tullio wasn't particularly open. In the past ten years, I've met his wife no more than a couple of times: once at a retirement party for one of the general hospital's directors, and one summer when they were going on vacation and Tullio dropped by to make sure everything was running smoothly. More recently, she came by one day when her husband wasn't here; I only caught a glimpse of her because I was scheduled to perform an operation, but the staff gave her a warm welcome: I believe that when she was married to her first husband, she came into the clinic more frequently. But I have no idea what she was like with Tullio. I had the impression of a strong woman, perhaps a little hard; but once you've suffered certain losses, you probably become hard, don't you, Commissario?”

Ricciardi thought it over and then, in a voice so low that it seemed as if he were only speaking to himself, said: “Yes. You do. Suffering hardens you. Thanks, Doctor. You've been very helpful.”

And he called the waiter for the check.

I
f any of the passengers had bothered to look around, on the funicular that wended its way up toward Vomero on the morning of that July 14, they would have caught sight—in that little knot of laborers, shop clerks, and civil servants, each on his way to give his personal daily contribution to the growth of the new quarter—the large head of a police brigadier, topped by his regulation cap and adorned with an ecstatic smile.

Life, thought Maione, indifferent to the terrible heat, the mosquitoes, and the sweat-drenched, intrusive, annoying crowd, is so beautiful. Especially when it gives you the rare opportunity to look down into the abyss of despair and then makes you see that it was all just a bad dream, and that upon your awakening, the sun is still shining.

His chat with Bambinella at the Café Caflisch had at first confused him, and then had made him incredibly happy. Lucia wasn't cheating on him. Lucia hadn't stopped thinking about him. Lucia was still the wonderful wife and mother she always had been. He, Maione, would no longer have to erase the most secret memories that constituted his past and his very essence; he no longer had to devise dark vendettas; he no longer had to retreat into bleak despair.

The first beneficiaries of the new Maione were the policemen at headquarters who had seen a tempestuous giant in uniform, quick to anger and violence, leave the building, only to witness the return of an indulgent, avuncular superior officer, inclined to praise and kindness. The suddenness of the change had thrown them into a state of confusion, and for a while they had continued to steer clear of him, but before long they ventured closer and took advantage of his new demeanor to ask for a more permissive drafting of the schedule for summer vacation time.

Then Maione had hurried to order a bouquet of wildflowers, arranging for delivery before he arrived home. The gesture, however, hadn't produce the hoped-for effect: a weary, overheated Lucia had received it shouting in exasperation that she hardly saw the point of wasting money—hard-earned money that their household barely had enough of to make ends meet every month—for such frivolities as an oversized bouquet of flowers that the girls could go and pick for themselves in the neighboring countryside. Who knows how much that thief of a florist had charged, taking advantage of her husband's credulity.

And by the way, now that Lucia stopped to think of it, did this mean that he was asking forgiveness for something? Because if a man decides to send his wife flowers, on no special occasion and for no other conceivable reason, then the explanation can invariably be traced back to some unspeakable misdeed and the need to assuage his remorse-plagued conscience.

Fortunately for Maione, he had an excellent memory and a lengthy string of special occasions and anniversaries, and he promptly reminded his wife of their first kiss on a warm, hopeful July night, in the coolness of the forest of Capodimonte; actually, the date was at least a couple of weeks away, but Lucia didn't have his same steel-trap memory and she believed it, replacing the rebukes with smiles, and rewarding the brigadier with a night that was worth an entire grove of trees, forget about a bouquet of wildflowers.

All the same, Maione had willingly sacrificed a few extra hours with his family when he might have enjoyed his newfound domestic peace because he had an errand to run.

Who knows why he'd thought about it first thing after leaving that café in the possession of news that had restored his equanimity. Over those last few days, the conviction that he'd lost the love of his life, and that he'd probably never even possessed her at all, had driven him to act in ways that were very distant from his true nature; at the same time it had made it clear to him how important that emotion was, and how terrible it must be to be forced to live without it.

For that reason, he'd come to a decision the night before. Taking advantage of Ricciardi's request that he go over to the general hospital and see what time Rispoli's shift ended, Maione had made his way into the office that had once belonged to Iovine. He'd looked around and wondered just how much of a role love had played in that ugly story. The commissario had confided the theory that he'd come up with, a theory that had been bolstered by their visit to the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Maione had been forced to admit that it all added up; but as a husband, a father, and a man, he still hoped that it wasn't true, that the commissario had misread a fact or made some other blunder.

And for the first time he had the sensation that his commissario, his friend and companion, had revealed himself—the truth, right down to the very bottom of his self—to him. It wasn't the pang in his heart that he always experienced when he thought of his solitary superior officer. The absence of love, hope, and family. No woman at his side, no children. To know everything that there can be in a man's life, and to go without. You have to love someone, Maione reflected in his unassuming way; otherwise, what are we here for? When poor Rosa was gone, who would the poor commissario have left in his daily life? Aside, of course, from Maione himself.

The funicular discharged its cargo onto a sun-drenched piazza. From the surrounding countryside came a faint breeze that improved the brigadier's already good mood as he headed off toward the apartment house on Via Kerbaker that he had already visited twice in the past few days. From a distance he thought he heard the notes of a
pianino
, and this made him furrow his brow for a moment: there are people, he mused, who were born to take advantage of others. They might not do so explicitly, they might conceal their cold calculation behind a warm smile or a seductive song, but they're much more dangerous than those who do it professionally, out in the light of day. Or under the light of a streetlamp, on a street corner.

The night before he had thought of Maria and Benedetta: the daughter born of his blood and his love, and the little orphan who had also become his daughter, even more so. He'd suddenly seen them, so grown-up now, capable of taking care of their younger siblings, better and better at imitating their mother as cooks and seamstresses; they were no longer playing, messing around with flour and water or poking holes in rags with a needle. Now they were completing tidy little pieces of work, competing to draw cries of pleasure from their
papà
when they brought him dishes of fritters that were identical in every detail to the ones produced by Lucia.