By My Hand (3 page)

“No, certainly not, Brigadie'. The last one to leave the building was the accountant Finelli, then the captain came home, and he always goes out again in the afternoon, but that was it. I keep a sharp lookout, you know: a fly couldn't get inside without me knowing.”

Maione shook his head.

“With the exception of two
zampognari
, complete with musical instruments, whom you neglected to mention. As invisible as a couple of big shiny bluebottle flies, I'd say. You didn't see them when they went in?”

Ferro opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. Then he admitted:

“No, Brigadie', I didn't see them. They managed to get by me. They must have gone in just as I was getting my money out to pay and I looked away for a moment.”

Maione and Ricciardi exchanged a glance: even if they hadn't noticed the alcohol on his breath, it was obvious from his red nose and bloodshot eyes that good old Ferro liked to lift an elbow, whether or not it was cold out. Anyone who knew the doorman's habits could simply have waited for their chance to slip past him.

“All right. Let's go have a chat with the two
zampognari
then. We'll see what they have to say for themselves.”

T
he
zampognari
were clearly father and son. The resemblance was unmistakable: same eyes, same features, same movements.

Ferro had let them into the small apartment where he lived, on the ground floor, right behind the doorman's little booth, in the lobby of the apartment building; most of the room was occupied by a wooden table on which a manger scene was in the process of being assembled. The doorman apologized for the clutter.

“Excuse the disorder, Commissa'; I still haven't found the time to finish it. I want to put it at the entrance of the building for Christmas. That is, I wanted to put it out, but now I'm not sure it would be in good taste. Certainly, the accountant Finelli's children would have loved it, and I even promised them that I would; they'll be so disappointed. But with two people dead, and with the horrible way they died, it seems like a bad idea, don't you agree, Brigadie'?”

Maione shrugged his shoulders. Ricciardi focused on the two men waiting off to one side of the room, as if they were hoping to be swallowed up by the shadows. The son, sitting in a chair, was pale in the face, trembling; next to him his father, his face baked by the sun, had put a hand on the young man's shoulder. An acrid odor wafted off the pair of them.

They wore the distinctive clothing of their trade: pointed hats, sheepskin jackets, thigh-high lace-up boots. The young man held the
zampogna
in his arms, an animal-skin bag from which protruded three pipes of different lengths. The older man had set his own instrument down on the floor; it was a sort of double horn. The father's calm air served as a counterpoint to the son's terrified expression, almost as if they were playing an emotional duet as well.

Ricciardi spoke to the man standing by his son.

“Now then, what's your name? And where do you come from?”

To his surprise, it was the boy who replied, his voice shaky but confident.

“Our name is Lupo, Commissa'. I'm Tullio, and my father is Arnaldo. We come from Baronissi, near Avellino. We play the novena. This is . . . was the third day, the Friday before Christmas Eve.”

“Tell me what happened. What time did you get here?”

“The times we play in the homes change, the ladies like to do things their way and they tell us to come in the mornings, the afternoons, or the evenings, whatever suits them. We make our rounds; we have four different homes to go to, but they're not close and we really have to hustle. Signora Garofalo . . . poor lady,
mamma mia
. . . had asked us to come around lunchtime, so her husband would be there. The little girl was kind of afraid of us; children are strange, some of them clap their hands when we play and start singing along with us, others get frightened, clap their hands over their ears, and run off.”

Ricciardi nodded, remembering the discomfort that he'd felt as a boy at the ear-splitting sound of the horn and the dull rumble of the
zampogna
, the bagpipe.

“So the little girl wasn't there, is that right?”

“No, that's why the signora asked us to come at one. And also because her husband was coming home from work, and he wanted to hear us play, too.”

Maione listened carefully. He asked:

“And when you got here, was the front door open downstairs? Did anyone see you come in?”

The two men exchanged a quick glance, then shot a quizzical look in the doorman's direction. Maione explained:

“We already know that the doorman was . . . otherwise occupied. Don't worry about getting him in trouble. Just answer the question, please. And tell the truth.”

The father answered, in a deep, low voice that reverberated in the small bedroom.

“There was no one there. No one saw us. We went upstairs to the landing. I knocked, I called out, and there was no answer. The door opened partway; my son looked in. And then we came downstairs, to summon the doorman. That's all there is to tell.”

“And you saw no one come up or go down? You heard no sounds in the apartment, or outside?”

“Nothing. We heard nothing and we saw no one.”

His tone had been conclusive, firm. Exact wording aside, the man had just said: We had nothing to do with this; we were here just to do our job. Ricciardi nodded.

“I see. So it was your son who saw the signora's corpse, is that right?”

The young man ran his hand over his eyes.

“That's right, Commissa', it was me. And I'll never forget it as long as I live, that poor woman lying in all that blood.”

His father gripped his son's shoulder and said:

“You have to understand, he'd never seen blood before, only the blood of the lambs at Easter. And even that upsets him.”

Maione looked hard at him.

“What about you? Does blood not upset you particularly?”

The waves roared in the wind, not far off.

“I fought in the war, Brigadie'. I fought in the war, and I was at the front. And when I was a boy there were still bandits where I grew up. No, Brigadie', blood doesn't bother me. And it hasn't bothered me in a long, long time.”

Another crashing wave in the sea below resounded like the thunder of a distant cannon. Ricciardi thought to himself that blood still hadn't stopped upsetting him, no matter how much of it he saw.

“Give your particulars to the officer, including the address of wherever you're staying here in Naples, and your address back in Baronissi. Don't leave the city until we let you know it's all right; make sure we can get in touch with you if we need to, in other words. For now, you're free to go.”

 

When they were alone again, Maione said to Ricciardi:

“Commissa', I think you were right to let them go. It's true that no one saw them come in, they're the only ones who saw the corpses, the door was open and not tampered with, which means that whoever killed the signora, she let them into the apartment herself. If it had been them, would they have killed the Garofalos and then gone to the tavern to summon the doorman, without taking any valuables, instead of simply running away? And the bootprint in the blood is proof that when the young fellow poked his head in, the woman was already dead.”

“No, I don't think they did it either, and in any case, we know their names and addresses; we can track them down when we want to. You know I don't like throwing people in jail if I can possibly avoid it. Let's wait and try to find out a little more about what happened. Have the doctor and the photographer arrived?”

“Not yet, Commissa'. I had calls put in to both of them from headquarters before we headed out, so they'll be here any minute. And as usual I made a special request for Doctor Modo, and no one else.”

Ricciardi agreed.

“You did the right thing. I don't trust anyone else; the others inevitably make a mess of things. Why don't you ask that Ferro, the doorman, to come in here for a minute. There's something I want to ask him.”

 

The doorman seemed to have regained some degree of confidence, Ricciardi thought; his jacket was buttoned more neatly, his hat was on straight, and the man had even combed his hair.

“Commissa', here I am, at your service. I sent the rubberneckers home, with the help of your officer. They're all fishermen. Nothing much ever happens around here; I don't even know what it is they had hoped to see.”

“I wanted to ask about the little girl, the Garofalos' daughter. How old is she, and what are the hours of her school?”

“Well then, Commissa', the little girl is named Benedetta, like I told you before. She's eight or nine and she goes to school with the nuns, on Riviera di Chiaia, not far away but not so nearby that she could go there on her own. Her aunt, Sister Veronica, comes to pick her up. That's her mother's sister; she teaches girls Benedetta's age.”

Ricciardi chose to focus on this.

“What time did her aunt come to get her this morning?”

“As always, quite early, around eight o'clock. I was here, I said hello to her—she's a jolly nun—then she took the little girl and they left together. That one, Sister Veronica, she has a voice that's very . . . very odd, piercing. She never stops talking. If you ask me, she stuns that poor child into obedience.”

“It all checks out, then. At eight o'clock they were still alive, and at one o'clock, when the
zampognari
got here, they were dead. But did you see the captain leave for work?”

Ferro avoided Ricciardi's gaze.

“I don't remember, Commissa'. A couple of times I might have stepped away. A man has to use the facilities every so often, after all; then I watered the plants in the courtyard, I went to pick up some groceries . . . No, I don't remember seeing him leave, or for that matter come home.”

Maione bore in, shoulders thrust forward.

“Clearly, Ferro, with you on the job a person can rest assured that nothing will slip through the cracks, eh?”

“What can I say, Brigadie', I'm all alone. I have no wife to help me, no children to lend a hand.”

Maione looked over at Ricciardi and threw his arms open helplessly.

“Well, that's that, Commissa'. If we want to find out anything about what happened here, or when it happened, we'll have to wait for Dr. Modo.”

A
nd Dr. Modo arrived, his face bundled up in a scarf and his hat pulled down over his ears to ward off the biting winter wind, followed by the police photographer, and just as furious as ever.

“Ah, it's you, I knew it; I knew it'd be the two of you behind this. Now then, gentlemen, it's time for us to come to an understanding once and for all and put an end to these summonses by name. What have things come to when I have to be afraid of the switchboard operator at the hospital? When that devil of a telephone contraption goes off, ringing its bell, it always means trouble, and that trouble always seems to have your names on it!”

Maione snickered.

“Dotto', what can we do about it, it's your fault for always being around for us to call. Why don't you try taking a few days off sometime; then we'll have to work with one of your colleagues and we'll finally get it through our skulls that there are better doctors than you around.”

Modo shook his fist in Maione's direction.

“Well, then I'll just have to shut up and take it, because there's nobody around who's a better doctor than me. But excuse me, did you make some kind of pact with Lucifer so that the bloodiest murders would always happen when it's cold as a witch's tit out? Or else when it's pouring rain, like with that poor little boy two months ago, or when the wind is so icy it'll slice your ears off your head? And every time, I have to walk clear across town, thanks to you two!”

Ricciardi hadn't so much as blinked.

“Now, there's an idea worth looking into. Maione, make a note: let's arrange to have the next murder take place in the hospital waiting room, that way the good doctor won't have to go out in the rain. The truth is that we ought to be more understanding when we're dealing with white-haired senior citizens.”

The doctor stood, arms akimbo, in a combative stance.

“Listen here, Ricciardi. It just so happens that I'm one of those guys who just gets better with age; and my hair turned white before I turned forty. You on the other hand: I was hoping that the blow to your head might have set your sense of humor straight, but instead here I find that you're no better off than you were before. Next time I have you under the scalpel I won't be able to resist the temptation to open up your head so I can tidy things up in there.”

Ricciardi snorted dismissively.

“All you did was give me a few stitches. It'd take a lot more than a windshield to crack my head; I'm a country boy, and you know our skulls are a lot tougher than you city types'. But I have to say, Christmas hasn't put you in a particularly good mood.”

“Aside from the fact that, as you know, I'm an atheist, I've always found Christmas to be sort of depressing, if you want to know the truth. All these families gathering together to pretend they love one another, whereas you and I see day after day how much they hate one another in actuality; all this exchanging of smiles and best wishes, only to insult one another and wish one another ill as soon as they turn their backs; this flaunting of wealth and prosperity, only to plunge back into the grimmest poverty in the days that follow. It disgusts me.”

Maione laughed.

“Oh,
mamma mia
, Dotto'—there's a nice bit of optimism! Listen, come over to our house on Christmas Eve: we'll see if you can resist the broccoli, the vermicelli with clam sauce, and the big pan of eel my Lucia makes, with a couple of liters of wine from Gragnano, which a friend of mine who works down there brings me. Shall we make it interesting, a little cash bet that the Maione family can make you like Christmas?”