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Authors: Maurizio de Giovanni,Antony Shugaar

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BOOK: Vipers
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½ HOUR 6 LIRE

1 HOUR 10 LIRE

EXTRA FOR SOAP AND TOWEL 1 LIRA

BAR OF SOAP 10 CENTS

COLOGNE 25 CENTS

 

Next to the cashier's desk was a flight of stairs with a red handrail, at the base of which stood two wooden statues of black slaves: one was holding a lantern that illuminated the desk, the other a tray in which the customers deposited their cigarette butts before going upstairs. Madame started up the stairs, but Ricciardi, before following her, turned and murmured something to Maione. The brigadier said:

“Cama', you stay there by the front door and make sure no one comes in and no one leaves. Cesara', you phone police headquarters and tell them to call over to the hospital, this is important, tell them to ask personally for Dr. Bruno Modo, and to send the photographer. Then station yourself here and don't let anyone come upstairs.”

At the top of the stairs was a hallway, lit by wall lamps. The doors of the ten or so rooms were almost all shut, except for one which stood half-open at the end of the hall.

Ricciardi indicated it with a nod.

“Is that it, Viper's room?”

Yvonne nodded her head yes. She seemed to have lost the confidence she'd displayed downstairs; her hands were trembling. That hatless commissario, with his penetrating green eyes, had made her uneasy from the first and, now that they were close to the corpse, he inexplicably frightened her.

Maione broke in, asking:

“And which one is Lily's room?”

Madame pointed to one of the rooms closest to the stairs.

“That one.”

Ricciardi gestured to the brigadier, who said:

“Stay here, Signo'. Don't move.”

The two policemen separated. Maione opened the door to Lily's room, and Ricciardi headed for the door that stood half-open. When he came to the threshold, he looked inside. He saw a side table, a gleam of light on a mirror, the edge of the bed. A hand, fingertips pointing away from the bed, was the only sign of a human presence that could be glimpsed through the opening.

He took a step forward and crossed the threshold.

As usual, instead of looking, he let his senses become accustomed to the room. He had to establish contact with the atmosphere, with the emotions suspended in the air. He kept his eyelids shut.

The smell, first of all. While in the rest of the bordello the smell of smoke, with an undercurrent of disinfectants, detergents, and dust, dominated, here the scent was of French perfume, elegant and penetrating; flowers, once fresh, fading; a vague aroma of lavender; and the unpleasant tang of stale sweat. No blood.

Then he listened to his skin. The open door had brought the temperature to the same level as the hallway, but he sensed a slight breeze coming from his right, possibly a window cracked open, or else just a draft. The room lay immersed in silence, except for a slow dripping.

The time had come.

He opened his eyes and looked, starting intentionally from the wall farthest from the bed. In the corner he saw the sink with the faucet whose drip he had heard, and a pitcher and washbasin; a vanity and chair, on which a black silk dressing gown with a red pattern had been abandoned; a five-drawer marble-top dresser, upon which he could see a jewel box and a framed photograph of a woman, middle-aged and serious, sitting with a little boy in a sailor suit in her arms; a vase with a spray of fresh flowers; the window, covered by a red curtain imperfectly closed, through which the spring air was entering the room.

His gaze had come around to the bed.

The corpse lay awkwardly sprawled in the middle of the rumpled sheets. One of the legs, as Lily had said, dangled over the side, and the arms were thrown wide, like the wings of a bird that would never again take flight. The light-colored slip was pulled up over the belly, revealing the undergarments that the woman was wearing. The only piece of jewelry on the body was a silver bracelet in the shape of a snake with two green stones in place of eyes, on the left forearm.

The face, uncovered, bore the expression of someone gasping for air, and a section of blackened tongue protruded from the open mouth.

Suffocated. The girl had been suffocated.

Just inches from the head lay a pillow marked with traces of makeup and a patch of damp saliva where it had been violently pressed down onto the mouth and nose, which to judge from the silhouette must have been fractured in the process. Even in the final insult of death, the commissario could tell that Viper must have been very beautiful.

Ricciardi followed the victim's blank gaze, the direction of her eyes in the moment of extremity. He heaved a long sigh.

Before a mirror that didn't reflect it, the woman's image: standing, arms at her side, short dark hair framing her face; lips stretched in one last breath, black tongue lolling out.

Looking at its own corpse, the image kept saying:
Little whip, little whip. My little whip
.

Ricciardi ran a hand over his face. Maybe I'm just imagining it all, he thought for the thousandth time. Maybe it's just an illusion produced by my sick mind. Maybe it's some kind of absurd inheritance, a lurking, silent form of madness. Maybe it's my hundreds of fears, my inability to live life. Maybe it's just a way to escape reality, maybe there's really nothing in front of me.

Outside, in the street two floors below, an accordion struck up a tango. Life in the street was resuming its movement through the first day of spring.

Ricciardi lowered his hand.

Along with the pain and grief of departure, the now familiar sense of melancholy and regret, and the surprise at being dead that Ricciardi knew all too well, he could just make out the echo of Viper's last thought:
Little whip, little whip. My little whip
.

He turned around sharply and left the room, walking toward Maione.

 

They'll understand. They'll have to understand.

I did it for you, to protect you. So that you'd understand that it's me, I'm the right woman for you. So that you would know that I and I alone know what you are, and what you want.

I can see you now, that time you came into my room, gripping my arm so hard that it hurt, staring into my tear-filled eyes, whispering through clenched teeth: it wasn't me. It wasn't me.

But I don't care. Whether or not it's true, you're my man, just like I'm your woman. The two of us together, we'll get out of this. Because you'll finally understand that I'm the right one, the one who cares for you: because I've protected you, I've put your safety first.

Not like that damned whore, who stole your soul. Who blinded you.

Because you can work as a whore, or you can be a whore. And she was a whore right down to the bottom of her soul.

But now she's dead.

Which is better for everyone.

V

A
ugusto Ventrone looked the angel in the eyes.

He admired its light-blue coloring, its intense expression, which was at once pitying and determined; ready to provide comfort and to inflict punishment, annunciating and exterminating. That's what an angel should be like.

He put the statue back on its shelf, next to the shop's front door, and looked outside: afternoon sunlight filled the street, and a few flies were flitting around in the low light. Spring had come. Punctual as ever.

Augusto allowed himself a quick smile. Not that he was in the habit of smiling: he was the most unsmiling twenty-year-old in the neighborhood, and possibly in the whole city. And really, why would he smile?

First of all, the merchandise they offered in their shop had to be sold with earnest sobriety, in certain cases with something approaching grief: and he was a born salesman. Their customers came in expecting a murmured recommendation. “Award-Winning Purveyors of Sacred Art, Vincenzo Ventrone and Son,” read the sign. Sacred art. Nothing playful, nothing funny. The religious expected a sophisticated adviser; private individuals interested in decorating a home chapel, a family tomb, or even just a nightstand in their bedroom, wanted the understanding of a professional: for smiles, they were welcome to try the undergarment shop, just fifty feet down the street, on the opposite sidewalk.

Nor had life given Augusto any particular reasons to be cheerful. A mother who'd died too young, no brothers or sisters, and a father who'd lost his head over a whore.

At first, Augusto had actually been quite tolerant. After all, after five years as a lonely widower, one could understand why Vincenzo Ventrone, who wasn't so old that he couldn't hear the call of the flesh, should have gone in search of comfort. And all things considered, better a brothel—with a discreet side entrance where you'd pay no more than a few lire—than a money-grubbing young lady from a well-to-do family looking to get herself situated, or even worse, a fortune hunter with children of her own, who could replace him as the heir to the family business.

But then matters had taken a strange turn. His father's visits to Il Paradiso (how blasphemously ironic, that name: astonishing that the authorities should allow it!) had multiplied until he was going daily, sometimes even more frequently. It was inevitable that other customers, that even a number of high prelates from the bishopric, would see him emerge from the bordello with a stupid, ridiculous grin stamped on his face, his celluloid collar unbuttoned, his tie askew, traces of lipstick smeared on his cheeks. And the idiot, instead of hiding in the shadows, just doffed his hat and called out hello.

With a shudder, Augusto remembered how he had learned that his father's affair with a whore had by now become public knowledge. One day the Contessa Félaco di Castelbriano had come into the shop, an elderly crone who weighed at least 225 pounds and collected statues of St. Anthony; she'd stopped at the front counter and stood there for several minutes silently staring at him, wearing a pained, sympathetic expression. He'd waited, as was befitting a serious shopkeeper in the presence of a first-rate customer. Finally, in her cavernous voice, the contessa had told him: “Your poor mother is turning over in her grave over this indecency. For the shame that your father is heaping on her, even in the afterlife.” Then she'd turned on her heel and left the shop.

At that point, Augusto had felt it was his duty to have a man-to-man talk with his father, in part because he'd recently noticed a slight drop in the number of customers, and he was a very keen observer of these kinds of things, having inerhited from his mother a certain, let's say, attention to the practical side of life. He'd said to him, not in so many words: Papà, if you want to have fun, that's your business; but discretion, in a business like ours, is a necessity. Given that, I have to beg you to stop letting people see you enter and leave that place, which after all is only a few hundred yards from our shop.

That fool had looked at him and said: my son, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not doing anything wrong, I'll spend my money and I'll go wherever I want. And after all, I only play cards there. You know that I live for the memory of your sainted mother.

Augusto was left with no alternative but to pray that Vincenzo would come to his senses, while every day more and more people came to see him, feigning compassion, to tell him the details of his father's affair with the famous Viper, the most notorious prostitute in town.

That day, however, something new must have happened. His father had come home much earlier than he usually did, pale as a ghost and trembling, the very opposite of how he'd looked when he'd walked out, frisky and fragrant, into the fresh spring air. He'd muttered something about not feeling well and needing to go to bed (his own bed, for once). Augusto had told him not to worry, that he'd look after the store. As if that were somehow a novelty.

Dusting off angels and saints, the young man indulged in the second smile of the day: a real record. And he decided that there are times when prayers are even answered.

Especially if you lend a hand.

 

Maione had understood perfectly what the commissario wanted him to check up on, when he'd nodded his head in the direction of the door to Lily's room—she was the woman who'd claimed to have found Viper's body—and he'd understood exactly what doubts his superior officer was entertaining.

They went back down to the main hall, followed by an increasingly concerned Madame Yvonne. They went over to the group that had clustered in the corner furthest from the staircase, as if death was contagious, as if its miasma might condemn them too.

There were about a dozen girls, of varying ages: there were very young ones, no more than twenty, and women who were probably past thirty, the marks of hard living just beginning to appear on their faces, their expressions hard and suspicious.

All different in their features and origins, brunettes, blondes, and redheads, dyed hair and natural colors, shapely and lean. Clothing and makeup designed to titillate and attract, and in that new and terrible context it all seemed like a grotesque masquerade. A few of them were weeping softly, blowing their noses every so often.

There were also three men. One was introduced by Yvonne as Amedeo, the piano player: a fidgety little man with tapered fingers and a wispy mustache that was being shaken by terrified shivers. A dapper, elderly gentleman in a tailcoat was announced as Armando, the butler, who actually made a formal bow, as if he were at a ball. The third, a strapping, shifty young man who grunted hello, was Tullio, Madame Yvonne's son: the woman explained that he was a handyman, in charge of maintenance, and also took care of security. All three of them swore that they hadn't left the main hall all morning.

Once they'd taken names and gathered what little information was forthcoming, Ricciardi summoned Lily.

The girl hadn't changed expression or attitude; now that he'd seen all the girls, including the victim, the commissario had made up his mind that the blond was the most attractive, with the possible exception of Viper herself: but her physical beauty clashed with the girl's hard and determined features.

BOOK: Vipers
11.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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