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Authors: Maurizio de Giovanni, Anne Milano Appel

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BOOK: I Will Have Vengeance
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Maione had become attached to Ricciardi at the time of his son's death. The then deputy of police had been among the first to arrive on the scene. Gently, he had asked Maione to leave the tavern where the boy's body had been found, lying in a pool of blood, the knife protruding from his back. Ricciardi had then remained in there alone for a few minutes, and when he came out of the darkness his green eyes seemed to gleam with an internal light, like those of a cat, but they were full of tears. He went over to Maione. In the silence of those present, men embarrassed by the father's anguish, Ricciardi reached out and squeezed Maione's arm. Maione still remembered the unexpected strength he had felt, the warmth of that hand through the fabric of his uniform.

‘He loved you, Maione. He loved you very much. He called out to you, it was his final thought. He will always be with you, with you and with his mother.'

Even through the haze of his immense sorrow, Maione felt a chill down his spine and at the back of his neck. He had not asked, either then or later on, during years of surveillance operations or the long trips required by various investigations, how Ricciardi knew, why he had been the one to deliver his beloved son's final message. But he felt that that was exactly what had happened, that the deputy had told him what he had seen and heard, that they were not the usual words of comfort that he himself had so often repeated to families of the deceased.

That's when Maione had become attached to Ricciardi. In the terrible days that followed, without respite or clemency, nights and mornings and afternoons and evenings without eating, without drinking, without going home, he chipped away at the neighbourhood's unbreachable wall of
omertà
, its code of silence, trading information, even promising to look the other way when it came to certain trafficking, just to get their hands on the vile murderer from the tavern. In the end, even Maione, though fuelled by rage, had to give in to exhaustion. But not Ricciardi, who was gripped by a fiery passion, as though possessed.

And they had caught the killer: in another neighbourhood, still in possession of the stolen goods, surrounded by his accomplices. He had laughed when they burst in. The lookouts he had stationed at the end of the alley were already bound and under guard. A twelve-man operation: there wasn't one policeman who didn't want to get his hands on Luca Maione's killer. When the storeroom had been emptied of accomplices and stolen loot, the man, finding himself alone with Ricciardi and Maione, begged them to spare his life, whimpering and no longer the cocky thug he had been. Ricciardi watched Maione. Maione stared at the man and saw his son as a little boy, bringing him a ball made of old rags, laughing, his face dirty and his eyes shining. He turned and left the room without a word. It was then that Ricciardi had in turn become attached to Maione.

From that moment on, Maione was Ricciardi's constant companion. Each time the Commissario went out, it was he who briefed the squad that was to escort him. He knew that during the first inspection of the crime scene Ricciardi had to be left alone. It was up to him to keep out the other cops, the witnesses, the sobbing family members and curious onlookers, during those first long moments when the Commissario was getting to know the victim, focusing his legendary intuition, and tracking down the fundamentals needed to begin the pursuit. Then too, he acted as counterpoint to Ricciardi's silences and solitary nature, thanks to his innate affability and his ability to communicate openly with people. He was solicitous of the perils the Commissario went up against, always vulnerable, with a boldness that sometimes seemed reckless or even suicidal. Maione suspected that Ricciardi went in search of death, of its quintessential meaning, with an inquiring frenzy, as if to define it, to reveal it; with no particular interest in his own survival.

But Maione didn't want Ricciardi to die. First of all because, in his good-natured simplicity, he was convinced that a part of his lost son lived on in the Commissario. Then too, because over time he had become fond of those silences, those brief smiles, the echo of sorrow that could be seen in the gestures of those tormented hands. And so he continued to watch over the Commissario's well-being, on Luca's behalf and in his memory.

III

I
n the chill wind of that Wednesday morning, Ricciardi was walking down from Piazza Dante, hands in the pockets of his dark grey overcoat, head hunched between his shoulders, eyes on the ground. Moving briskly, he could hear the city without looking at it.

He knew that on the way from Piazza Dante to Piazza del Plebiscito he would cross an invisible boundary between two distinct realities: below, the wealthy city of aristocrats and the bourgeoisie, of culture and entitlement; above, the working-class neighbourhoods in which a different system of laws and regulations applied, equally rigid or perhaps more so. The sated city and the hungry one; the city of feasting and that of despair. How many times Ricciardi had witnessed the clash between those two sides of the same coin.

The boundary was Via Toledo. Old buildings, silently facing the street but noisy in the back: windows thrown open on narrow alleys, the housewives' first songs. Church doors, their façades wedged between other buildings, opened to welcome the faithful who went to commend the day to God. The wheels of the first buses rumbled over the large stones that paved the street.

Morning was one of the very few times when mingling occurred: from the warren of alleys in the Quartieri Spagnoli, street vendors came down along Via Toledo with their carts of assorted goods and hearty calls; from the densely populated port districts and from the outskirts, skilled craftsmen, shoemakers, glovers and tailors went up towards the maze to reach the burgeoning residential district of the Vomero or the shops lining the dim alleys. Ricciardi liked to think that that was a moment of reconciliation, of interaction, before the awareness of disparity and hunger led some to be consumed with envy and contemplate crime, and others to fear an assault and crack the whip.

At the corner of Largo della Carità, as on the last several mornings there, Ricciardi saw the image of a man who had been the victim of a pickpocket: he had fought back and had been savagely beaten with a stick. Brain matter oozed from the crushed skull and blood covered one eye; the other still flashed with rage, and the mouth with its broken teeth kept repeating incessantly that he would never let go of his things. Ricciardi thought about the thief, by now impossible to find, swallowed up by the Quartieri; about hunger, and the price paid by the victim and his killer.

As usual, he was the first to arrive at the Questura. The policeman at the entrance snapped to attention in a military salute and Ricciardi responded with a brief nod. He didn't like walking through the crowded halls of the municipal headquarters once life at Palazzo San Giacomo reached the mayhem and bedlam stage, or making his way through the detainees' venomous invectives, the guards' loud calls to order, the lawyers' strident arguments. He much preferred the early morning hours, with the still-clean staircase, the silence, the nineteenth-century feel.

When he opened the door to his office, he noticed the familiar smell as he did every day: old books, prints, a bit of dust left by time and memories. The leather of the old desk chair, of the two chairs facing the desk and of the worn olive-green desk blotter. The ink in the crystal inkwell set in the letter-holder. The pale wood of the desk and the overflowing bookcases. The lead grenade fragment brought back to Fortino by the old war veteran Mario, once used in so many imaginary battles as a child, now a dubious paperweight. The sun's light forced its way through the dusty windowpanes, reaching the wall and illuminating the portraits like a divine investiture.

“Such beauties,” Ricciardi quipped to himself with a half-smile. The little king without power and the great commander with no weaknesses. The two men who had decided to expunge crime by decree. He still remembered the words of the Questore, a dapper diplomat whose life was dedicated to providing absolute satisfaction to those in power: “There are no suicides, no homicides, no robberies or assaults, unless it is inevitable or essential. Not a word to the people, especially not to the press: a fascist city is clean and wholesome, there are no eyesores. The regime's image is granitic, the citizen must have nothing to fear; we are the guardians of assurance.”

But Ricciardi had understood, long before studying it in books, that crime is the dark side of emotion. The same energy that drives humanity can divert it until it becomes infected and festers, then explodes in brutality and violence. The Incident had taught him that hunger and love are the source of all atrocities, whatever forms they may take: pride, power, envy, jealousy. In all cases, hunger and love. They were present in every crime, once it was pared down to its essentials, once the tinsel trappings of its outward appearance were stripped away. Hunger or love, or both, and the pain they generate. All that suffering, which he alone was a constant witness to. And so you, my dear
Mascellone
, Ricciardi thought sadly, gazing at
Il Duce
's protruding jaw, can issue all the decrees you want; unfortunately, however, you and your black suit and debonair hat will not be able to change men's hearts. You might manage to frighten the populace rather than make people smile, but you won't change the dark side of those who continue to experience hunger and love.

Maione appeared in the doorway, after a discreet tap on the door frame.

“Good morning, sir. I saw your door was open. Here already? Can't sleep well, even with this cold weather? Spring doesn't seem to want to come this year. I told my wife, we can't afford the cost of wood for the stove for yet another month. If this weather keeps up, the kids will get chilblains. And how are you this morning? Shall I bring you a so-called coffee?”

“Same as usual. And no thanks, to the coffee. I have a mountain of reports to complete. Go on, go. I'll send for you if I need you.”

Outside, amid the first cries of the street vendors, a tram rumbled by and a flock of pigeons flew up into a still-wintry sun. It was eight o'clock.

IV

T
welve hours later, the only thing that had changed in Ricciardi's office was the light: the dusty desk lamp with its green shade had replaced the anaemic late-winter sun. The Commissario was still bent over his desk, busy filling out forms.

More and more often he thought of himself as a clerk in the land office, obliged to spend most of his time transcribing words and listing numbers: the accounting of the offence, the rhetoric of the crime.

He had succumbed to hunger around two, going out in the cold without an overcoat to get a
pizza fritta
at the cart downstairs from the station; the dense smoke from the pot of boiling oil, the inviting smell of fried dough, the warmth of the glowing hot crust, had always been irresistible to him. This was one of those moments when he felt the city nourished him like a mother. Then a quick espresso in Piazza del Plebiscito, at Caffè Gambrinus, as usual, watching the passing trams with their typical cargo of jubilant street urchins in tow, balancing on the rails, clinging to the coach.

As his frozen fingers clutched the hot cup, a little girl came up to the window, pouting. Hanging limply at her side in her right hand was a bundle of rags, perhaps a doll. Her left arm was missing: a fragment of white bone protruded from the torn flesh, splintered like a piece of fresh wood. Her hip was staved in, her chest cavity crushed. A tram, Ricciardi thought. The girl stared at him then, all of a sudden, held out the rag doll to him: “This is my daughter. I feed her and bathe her.” Ricciardi set down the cup, paid and went out. Now he would feel cold for the rest of the day.

At half past eight, Maione appeared at the door again.

“Do you need anything, sir? I'd like to go, my brother-in-law and his wife are coming to dinner tonight. I ask you: don't these two have a house of their own? They're always on my back.”

“No, Maione, thank you. I'm leaving too in a little while. I'll finish up here and close up shop. Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”

Maione shut the door again, but not before letting in an icy draft that made Ricciardi shiver, as though it were a premonition. And it must indeed have been a premonition, because not even five minutes had gone by when the door opened again to reveal Maione's burly, thickset figure.

“Forget what I just said, sir; just when I wanted to leave on time for once. Alinei called from the front door, on the intercom. There's a young man. We have to go see, he says something terrible has happened at the San Carlo.”

V

D
on Pierino Fava had arrived at the usual side door at seven in the evening, as agreed. It was the entrance to the Palazzo Reale gardens, the Royal Palace, where Lucio Patrisso was the caretaker. An important friendship. Not that he was more lenient with Patrisso than with his other parishioners, nor did he give him any special considerations. Still, it was an honour for the man to receive a personal greeting when leaving church after Mass.

This reasonable price bought don Pierino the greatest pleasure of his life: the opera. His simple heart would soar and accompany the voices, as his lips silently followed the librettos he knew by heart. From the time he was a child, in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, not far from Caserta, he would sit on the ground in the garden of a villa where a phonograph bestowed magic in the air. He could sit there for hours, heedless of cold, heat or rain, listening with bated breath, his eyes brimming with tears.

Small and plump, with dark, lively eyes and a prompt, contagious smile, he had intelligence and a quick wit that greatly worried his parents, farmworkers with eight other children. What would they do with this clever, lazy boy who always came up with excellent excuses to avoid working? The answer came from the gruff parish priest, who called on him more and more often for small tasks just to have the cheerful sprite around. And so little Pietro became “Pierino from the church.” He liked the cool shadows, the heady scent of the incense, the sun's rays filtering through the tall stained-glass windows.

BOOK: I Will Have Vengeance
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