Vipers (14 page)

Ricciardi took a step forward.

“No, we're not looking for your father. Not right now, in any case. No, we wanted to speak to you, if you can spare us a few minutes.”

Ventrone thought it over in a hurry and realized that there was no good way out of this interview. He considered the fact that by now the street was practically empty and the shop deserted.

“All right. But if a customer happens to come in, you'll have to excuse me.”

Ricciardi understood that he was talking to a thoughtful and intelligent young man.

“Why, of course. But why are you here alone? Your father . . .”

Augusto gave him a level stare.

“My father, as you know very well, has undergone a trauma. And it certainly didn't do him any good to be taken to police headquarters early in the morning, as if he were some two-bit criminal. It's been a few months since we were able to afford a shop clerk, we already have too many craftsmen in the workshop, and in any case our customers must be given the kind of service to which they're accustomed. I'd prefer to take care of it myself.”

Ricciardi gave a slight shrug.

“Your father, since you speak of him so freely, happened to find a dead body. He ought to have reported the fact to us immediately but he didn't: for us to go pick him up in such a discreet manner, believe me, was an act of courtesy. And even now, the fact that we're talking here in your shop and not in my office is thanks to your good name.”

The young man took the point, blinking rapidly.

“Of course, of course. And I thank you for that. You certainly understand that our business is quite . . . singular, and a good reputation and sense of discretion are essential. Tell me, how can I be of assistance?”

Oh, at last, thought Maione: before people are ready to cooperate, you always have to give them a nice hard shake.

Ricciardi began:

“How's business? I imagine you do pretty well around Easter, don't you?”

Augusto grimaced.

“I wouldn't say so. People are feeling the economic crisis, and even saints have become something that most households feel they can do without. There are fewer and fewer wealthy families every day, the large apartments are being subdivided and rented out, and the first things to go are usually the private chapels. Offerings to the churches have dropped, and even the parish priests prefer to go on using vestments and stoles until they're threadbare, instead of buying new ones.”

Ricciardi feigned astonishment.

“Will you look at that! And I was positive that your father had plenty of money.”

The young man caught the subtle reference and blushed bright red. But his voice betrayed no emotion.

“I didn't say that we were broke, though. Three years ago we started a, shall we say, parallel line of products that are earning quite well: we make flags, pennants, banners, and pennons for regiments and brigades. Just now, demand is high, and so we make up for the decline in the religious market.”

Maione underscored the point:

“So the army and war help prop up the church. We'd need the doctor here, who knows what he'd have to say.”

“Excuse me?” asked Ventrone.

Ricciardi gave the brigadier a look.

“Nothing, just a little office politics. Now then, in the absence of your father, you're alone here at the shop.”

“Unfortunately, that's right. Most of the time, anyway.”

“So you don't have a lot of free time.”

Ventrone sighed.

“Not much. Certainly, every so often, for instance, if I absolutely have to use the lavatory, I lock the door temporarily and I leave: we don't live far away from here, our place is midway up Via Filangieri, it only takes me a few minutes, at the very most half an hour.”

Ricciardi asked:

“And are there times when you need your father?”

“It can happen. Unfortunately, he's the only one who can sign for merchandise from the various tradesmen.”

“I see. So then you would need to go call him.”

“That's right,” the young man murmured. “I have to go call him. Good thing I've always known where he is. At least, until now.”

His tone of voice, cold and cutting, made Ricciardi's ears perk up.

“Why do you say: until now?”

The young man answered brusquely:

“Commissario, let's be frank. My father was, quite simply, obsessed with that woman. He couldn't live without her. It would be pointless to deny it, and it would suggest I was trying to cover for him, and he doesn't need me to do that. Running away after finding her dead was a mistake, as I've told him. But he didn't kill her, he'd never have done such a thing. With time, perhaps, I might have convinced him of the absurdity of that relationship.”

There was an awkward silence. Then Ricciardi said:

“And now?”

“And now, I truly hope that it's over. He'd always patronized that place, and I imagine that he'll go back; but in a less intense way, that's for sure. And that would be enough for me. It's not just a matter of our good name, you understand, it's also a matter of money. You can't imagine how much money he gave that woman.”

Ricciardi was watching the young man.

“You hated her, didn't you?”

A look of sadness came over Augusto's face.

“No, I never hated her. But I can't deny a sense of relief, as far as the fate of our family goes, at the fact that she . . . that she's no longer around. You see, there's someone I care for. She's the granddaughter of the Duchess Ribaldini, the woman you saw leave a little while ago. We aren't engaged, even if I hope that someday . . . in other words, if things had kept on going the way they were going, I wouldn't have even been able to hope. So yes, I'm happy that it's over, though I certainly wish it had happened in a very different way.”

Ricciardi was thinking about the power of love, and about money. He said:

“Where were you, when you learned of the murder? And exactly how were you informed?”

Ventrone furrowed his brow.

“I don't understand your question, Commissario. And I don't like it. I was here, in the shop, where I always am, as I was telling you. And I heard about it from the only person who could have told me: my father, who came back as gray as a corpse.”

“I see. For now we have no need of any further information, Signor Ventrone. Forgive the intrusion, and enjoy the rest of your evening.”

 

Once they were back in the street they noticed that nearly all the shops were closed.

Maione commented:

“Here's another person who, if poor Viper had said no to Coppola, would have had an excellent motive for wanting to get rid of her. His father was not only bankrupting the company, he was also blowing the guy's chance at a happy marriage.”

Ricciardi walked along, hands plunged into the pockets of his overcoat, while the wind tousled the lock of hair hanging over his forehead.

“Yes indeed. And seeing that he went so frequently to get his father at Il Paradiso, it's entirely possible no one would even have noticed him going by. It seems incredible, but whoever we talk to, we seem to get new ideas about the motive for this murder.”

“True enough, Commissa'. So what do we do now?”

Ricciardi walked briskly to the sidewalk on the other side of the street to avoid the suicide in front of Gambrinus, and Maione, lost in thought, followed.

“We'll need to go on a little outing to Vomero, tomorrow. Let's go visit the dead woman's family, and we'll take a closer look at Coppola's company too. I think that at this point, these are the pieces we're missing, no?”

Maione sighed:

“Yes, and let's hope it doesn't rain, there's no telling with this crazy weather. If I get my boots dirty one more time, my wife is going to shoot me with my own service revolver, at least that way the gun will get some use.
Buonanotte
, Commissa'.”

R
icciardi was walking into the wind; and as he walked he mulled over the way that the slight uphill slope of the street he took on his way home every night seemed to change from time to time, one day becoming an easy descent and just the next day a steep challenging climb, like a mountain he had to scale.

Viper's fate, such a young life cut short, now seemed practically predestined. The more the investigation proceeded, the more it seemed that Coppola's proposal of marriage, at first glance a favorable twist of fate, had actually worked as a death sentence.

As always, when he was confronted by a death caused by human hands, Ricciardi found himself thinking of hunger and love, the ancient enemies that regularly formed an alliance, each covering up the other's foul deeds, providing each other alibis, each concealing the other and helping to confuse those who were trying to figure out who was the guilty party.

Love, its manifold corruptions and the passions engendered by contagion which made it the worst of all diseases: Coppola confronted by rejection, Ventrone confronted by the possibility of a final farewell. But there was also Lily's affection for the merchant, and Augusto's hope for a brighter future. Hunger, greed, debts, and a blind and desperate need for cash: thus, Madame Yvonne, her son the gambler, and the possibility of losing the finest mare of her stable; and Lily, who might have wanted nothing more from Ventrone than the money he was giving to Viper. And who knows who else might be lurking in the shadows.

Sometimes, the commissario mused, it would be better not to see. Better to pretend to be blind, like the accordion-playing beggar sitting at the corner by Il Paradiso.

Il Paradiso, what supreme irony. A place inhabited by the passions of hell, but named after Eden. Perhaps, though, he reckoned, it was accurate. Maybe heaven and hell exist for that reason, so that they can switch places and pretend to be the perfect place for everyone.

Little whip
, Viper had said, in the form of a ghostly image, whispering into the ear of Ricciardi's curse.
My little whip
. A pet name for her long-ago lover, a sign of the regret and pity she felt for having rejected him? Or one last desperate bid for a weapon of self-defense, an attempt to escape Ventrone's blind fury?

 

All that afternoon, Rosa had held a seminar for Enrica on Cilento-style ragú.

She'd begun by saying:

“Signori', do you know how to make Neapolitan ragú? You do? Well, forget everything you know. Clear your mind, this is a completely different matter, and if you want to do it right, you have to think of it as a way of saying ‘I love you'; you are conjuring an expression of love into being. Your man should say:
Mmm!
And then he should turn to you, beaming. Men from Cilento aren't big talkers, you should be happy with that smile. Do you understand?”

Enrica felt a twinge of pity and more than a little fear when she watched Rosa holding the large wooden spoon the way a conductor holds his baton. The utensil trembled a little as her hand wavered, but it moved with the extraordinary confidence of everything the woman was doing.

Enrica had carefully listened to her description of the ragú: eyes and words had arranged in the cookpot a piece of mutton, not lamb, with the bone in, and slices of pork laid out on the cutting board on top of which had to be arranged pieces of
caciocavallo
—a strong southern cheese
—
and prosciutto, parsley (“with the stalk!” Rosa had said, resolutely), raisins, salt, pepper, and garlic—then these slices of pork were to be rolled up tight, bound with twine, and sautéed briefly in a saucepan with a little garlic.

“Signori', and don't think for a minute that this is the entrée! After this comes the roasted kid goat.”

At that point, she had stopped. She'd gazed at the young woman, at her tortoiseshell glasses, at the stray lock that had escaped the bobby pin behind her ear, at her cheeks reddened by the heat of the flame; and for the first time she got a sense of the young woman's charm, that silent, underwater grace that had captivated her young master from behind two panes of glass. Then she took everything she had made and put it away in a cabinet, and said:

“Now it's your turn. Let's see if you've figured out what you're supposed to do.”

An expression of terror appeared on Enrica's face.

“Me, Signora? But I don't know how to do like you do. I cook in a different way and . . . I'm afraid to try.”

Rosa softened.

“You think too much, Signori'. Instead of thinking, just love. Don't waste time. And I'm tired, my legs hurt: I'll sit down here, you see? I won't say a word. The ingredients are all in the icebox and the pantry, just cook without your head. Cook with your heart.”

And she had sat down.

And Enrica had begun making Easter dinner for Ricciardi.

 

Just as he was about to start up the last stretch of road, Ricciardi realized that his mind was devoting itself to the thought of Viper in order to avoid another image, which unsettled him deeply: the image of Livia looking at him, wounded, desperately struggling not to burst into tears.

In a certain sense, the two figures—the prostitute murmuring about her little whip and the shocked woman firmly pressing her lips together at the little table in Gambrinus—both pierced his heart with the same pang of pity: something broken, something pointlessly hurt.

He really had been a son of a bitch, he thought to himself. He couldn't say how or why he'd come up with that inappropriate insult, and above all he had no idea why he'd said it, viciously slapping a person whose only fault was that she loved him.

He analyzed his feelings for Livia. He couldn't deny that he was attracted to her, in a way that had little to do with the thoughtful or the sentimental. She was flesh, an animal appeal to gut and to blood; her beauty, her graces pulled him out of the silent little room into which he'd retreated when he was just a boy, when it had become clear to him who he was and the nature of the verdict that had been visited upon him, making him different from everyone else. She dragged him into the eye of the maelstrom of human passions. The very thing that frightened him most.