The Bottom of Your Heart (46 page)

Ricciardi wanted the friar to tell him everything he could remember: “What was he like, Father? Did he seem upset, anxious, confused?”

The prior turned to look at him, his fingers clasped behind his back: “No, Commissario, quite the opposite. That was what I was trying to tell you, earlier. There was no anguish, fear, or despair in him; nor was there resignation or anger. He was a man at peace, tranquil and serene. That is why the news you've given me is so upsetting, and why I asked you to confirm with a description. After all these years I thought I could recognize a human being on the verge of an act as terrible as suicide, but instead, as you can see, I was wrong.”

Ricciardi understood him perfectly.

“What did he tell you, Father?”

“He told me his name, and his profession. He had a bundle, which he gave to me. He told me that it was a gift from him to the Virgin Mary, and he asked me if I would display it on the day of the festival.”

Maione asked: “Did he say if it was on the behalf of some other person? Did he say by chance whether it had been commissioned by a woman?”

“A woman? No, Brigadier. He told me that it was an object that he had made for the Madonna, to whom he was particularly devoted. For that matter, I remember that man very clearly because he attended all the services every Sunday, and often during the week as well. He really must have been very devoted to Our Lady.”

Ricciardi said nothing. He had placed his hope in the mysterious female visitor's mission, and he'd thought he would be able to track her down to learn what bond linked her to Coviello, and what had caused him to kill himself. At last he said: “Can we see this object, Father? Perhaps it can help us to understand.”

The prior said: “I can't see how it would. However exquisite the workmanship, the fact that it was donated by a man who then killed himself strips it of all value, and there is no way that I can comply with poor Coviello's request. The Virgin Mary, on the day of Her festival, certainly cannot wear a bloodstained jewel.”

Ricciardi decided to insist: “Just one more reason, Father, not to conceal it from us. If it cannot be a venerated object because the man who made it and donated it died a suicide, and therefore its mere venal value can only serve to do some act of charity, perhaps in that case showing it to us would not violate your rules.”

The prior sighed: “All right. You're probably correct.”

He went over to a tall, deep cabinet. Once again, he pulled out the ring with the many keys and opened it. The policemen glimpsed, beyond the friar's diminutive physique, a great many metallic objects that glittered in the light of the setting sun; the man picked up something and quickly shut the door, turning the key several times in the lock. Then he came back to the desk carrying a bundle wrapped in dark cloth that Ricciardi recognized as the one that Coviello had wrapped up hurriedly and stowed away in the safe the first time they had come to his workshop.

The friar stepped over to the desk and spread the cloth out on the surface. At the center, gleaming brightly like a small sun, was Coviello's heart.

It was the size of a clenched fist, and it was topped by a nine-pointed flame. It had been carefully polished, and the front, the part that was visible as it lay on the cloth, featured very fine arabesques that almost looked as if they'd been embroidered.

It was absolutely beautiful, Ricciardi thought; it had every right to serve as the artistic last will and testament of a great craftsman.

He asked the prior: “Does it have a meaning, Father? Does it mean something, in and of itself?”

The friar made a baffled face: “Hard to say. Votive offerings, you see, haven't always been the same throughout history: it's a testimonial, a sort of signature on the pact between man and God or His saints. Every object can have a different meaning, even if they have roughly the same shape: as you must know, ex-votos take the shape of diseased and cured organs, or the ones on behalf of which a grace is being asked. The material used symbolizes the seriousness of the disease or the importance of the grace that is being requested. Gold, obviously, means something of maximum gravity. The donor does what he can, and at times the funds at his disposal don't allow him to allocate large sums, but the faith that underlies the gift is almost always dictated by immense hope or true gratitude. A heart with a flame, like this one, can have an array of meanings. It's a burning heart, either burning with grief or pain or else with love, like the heart of Jesus: a flame that does not consume, and that is never consumed. An eternal love, like the love of the Savior for His children.”

Ricciardi murmured: “An eternal love. A love that extends to death. A love that doesn't end with death, that turns death into a departure.”

The friar and Maione looked at each other, perplexed.

The commissario seemed to be praying: “A love that is never consumed, you said. There is no point in fighting such love. Better to put an end to it.” He turned toward the friar, pointing to the heart on the desk: “May I?'”

The friar nodded. Ricciardi reached out and carefully took the object.

It was massive, a single block of solid gold. It must be worth a fortune. Ricciardi thought about how many years of obscure and wonderful work Coviello must have done, losing his sight and his health by the faint light of the oil lamp, to piece together enough gold to complete that object of immense beauty.

He turned it in his hands, admiring the workmanship from up close. He tried to sense, from the smooth decorated surface, the emotion, the passion with which its maker had infused it; he tried to recognize, on the metal polished mirror-bright, Coviello's oblong irregular face, all his sorrow. A flame that is never consumed, that continues to burn.

The inferno. The inferno in a heart.

Ricciardi noticed an arabesque, at the top of the heart, offset slightly with respect to the rest of the design.

“Father, do you have a magnifying glass?”

The friar nodded, picked up a crystal circle with a silver handle, and extended it to Ricciardi.

The commissario held the lens close to the heart and peered through it.

Then he read the name that was at the bottom of the heart of Mastro Nicola Coviello.

A
cross from the front gate that constituted the entrance to the ancient convent that had become the general hospital's complex, there was a café: a place of refreshment for the family members of the sick in search of a break from their sorrow and worry, and for the physicians and nurses who felt the need to get a little time away from a workplace that could easily become oppressive and sad.

Ricciardi was sitting there, at a table from which he could clearly see the front door, that Thursday morning prior to the final celebrations of the festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

He was waiting for someone.

After leaving the church and the prior, he'd spent all of Wednesday evening at Rosa's bedside. The old woman's breathing seemed rougher and more labored than ever. He'd asked for an explanation from Bruno, who'd stopped by more than once, and his friend had simply shrugged. At a certain point he'd placed a hand on Ricciardi's shoulder and uttered two words: brace yourself. As if it were possible to brace yourself for the loss of a loved one, he had thought to himself. As if it were possible to shake off, through sheer force of will, the dark louring mantle of loneliness.

Early that morning, after a few hours of troubled sleep, he'd set out for the general hospital, where he had his first interview of the day. The little pieces that together formed the overall picture of the investigation were starting to move into place, but there were still a number of gray areas that needed illumination. The previous afternoon, upon their return from the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the commissario and Maione had agreed they'd only rendezvous back at headquarters late the next morning: Ricciardi would then fill the brigadier in on the findings of that nonmedical visit he was making to the hospital. Maione, beaming and a bit absentminded for some secret reason, hadn't insisted on accompanying him as he usually did, nor had he detained him with questions. Strange. He'd seemed to have decided to come live full-time at the office, but now he was eager to head home. The commissario had deduced, therefore, that Raffaele had successfully settled some major conflict with his wife. He was happy for him, knowing how important domestic tranquility was for the brigadier. Seeing a smile again on that great broad face was the only good thing that had happened in a long time.

Nonetheless, Ricciardi had asked Maione to drop by the general hospital before dinner to ascertain in his discreet way what time the person the commissario wished to see finished his shift; not that they couldn't have relied on information from the switchboard, but he'd given Raffaele a rough idea of what he now believed had happened, and it was best to act cautiously. The brigadier had returned in half an hour and told Ricciardi he'd be able to see the person he was interested in tomorrow morning, around seven, at the front gate. While at the general hospital, Maione had gone upstairs and made sure no one had been into Iovine's office, which remained off-limits to the staff of the obstetric clinic.

“Everything's all right, Commissa',” he'd told Ricciardi. “No one enters that room, it must strike them as creepy. I'll see you tomorrow morning around eleven, and then we'll wrap this case up.”

As he sipped his coffee, Ricciardi wondered whether certain matters were ever entirely wrapped up. Whether blood, once shed, doesn't continue spilling forever, red and malignant, defiling the lives of whoever came into contact with that murder for all time. As was true for him.

At last, the person he was waiting to see emerged from the gate. The man greeted the custodian with a nod of the head, then looked around, squinting into the morning light, and started walking directly toward the café. He didn't notice Ricciardi at first, and when he did recognize him he greeted him with surprise: “Oh,
buongiorno
, Commissario. What are you doing here?”

“
Buongiorno
, Dr. Rispoli. I was actually waiting for you. I wanted to buy you an espresso and have a chat. If you can spare five minutes.”

The man took a seat across from the commissario. His curiosity was aroused, but he didn't seem nervous.

“Certainly, Commissario. When you get out of that place,” and he jerked a thumb toward the polyclinic, “you never really feel like heading home, even if you're working double shifts as we have been lately. It's as if you needed to cleanse yourself . . .”

Ricciardi broke in: “Are you doing Iovine's work, or has someone else already been assigned to replace him?”

Rispoli lit a cigarette, with a sad grimace: “No such luck, Commissario. It will be months before they assign a new director to the professorship, and therefore the clinic. You can't imagine how slowly the bureaucracy moves, and a civil war is no doubt already underway throughout Italy over this post. I can assure you that poor Tullio's murder is being viewed as a winning lottery ticket for many doctors at various universities. Countless hands are outstretched to grab this brass ring; I can only imagine the phone calls that are being made in a quest for the right recommendation. And until that's settled, my colleagues and I will have to pick up the slack.”

Ricciardi sipped his coffee.

“What about you? Don't you aspire to succeed Iovine? After all, you were his first assistant.”

“No, Commissario. The university career path means that, at most, I can hope to take that job in a smaller teaching hospital somewhere else, and then, perhaps, come back: but I have no desire to do that. First of all I'm already too old to aspire to a university chair like this one; moreover, I don't have the academic credentials. I'm someone you might call a hands-on physician, good for the operating room and for rounds, certainly not the kind of doctor who does research or writes scientific papers. In fact, that's why Tullio picked me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Rispoli exhaled a puff of smoke: “He would never have taken someone ambitious to work alongside him, someone he would have had to watch out for. What he needed was someone reliable, someone who could run things when he was away.”

Ricciardi shifted to a more comfortable position in his chair.

“Still, the night that Graziani's wife died, neither you nor Iovine were on duty.”

“That's not unprecedented. In fact, though, since I wasn't working that night, he shouldn't have left. But then . . . well, but then you know what happened. He did leave, and the rest is history. I was summoned urgently, but I got there too late, after Tullio had already tried to do the impossible. Like I told you the other day, Commissario, in all likelihood the woman would have died in any case. These things do happen.”

Ricciardi nodded.

“They do. A few minutes ago, you said that Iovine would never have taken on someone he'd have to watch out for. Why not?”

Rispoli crushed out the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Because he was determined to hang onto his position, Commissario. Like almost everyone who makes their career the central pillar of their existence. Tullio was like that, no one around him who might undermine his status: the great professor, the grand luminary. I was perfect; I was an assistant. And an assistant I shall remain, although now to someone else.”

Ricciardi strained to detect rancor or sarcasm in the doctor's words, but he sensed none.

“And what happens, when a person makes his career the central pillar of his existence? What might he be willing to do?”

The doctor stared long and hard at Ricciardi: “Commissario, I don't understand. Why have you come to see me this morning? What do you want me to tell you?”

Ricciardi waved his hand in the waiter's direction and called for another espresso.