Vipers (21 page)

Passing the entrance, she shot a glance into the courtyard. She dreaded that place as the policeman's wife that she was; every morning she instinctively recited a Hail Mary as she watched her husband leave for work: she remembered Commissario Ricciardi's time in that hospital, in the aftermath of that horrible car crash on the Day of the Dead, and how worried Raffaele had been. She herself had gone to visit the man, bringing him a
torrone
, the classic almond nougat, that she'd made with her own hands.

Just as she was about to hurry on, she glimpsed an odd movement: a small dog, tied to a pole by its leash, was furiously struggling to break free. On the far side of the courtyard, two men were conversing animatedly next to a black car, parked with the engine running. One of the men wore a lab coat and had white hair, and looked to be a doctor; Lucia wondered if this could be Dr. Modo, the physician of whom her husband always spoke with the greatest respect and fondness. The other man caught Lucia's attention because he was so well dressed, in a double-breasted suit and a hat of the same color; unlike the doctor, who was gesticulating angrily, this man stood still, impassive, arms at his sides.

Lucia stopped, her curiosity piqued. The distance made it impossible for her to overhear what they were talking about, but the doctor seemed to be in a rage. The dog was barking desperately. Oddly enough, there was no one walking through the courtyard, which was usually a busy place, and the hospital windows were all shut. At the entrance to the courtyard there were two stalls, but the vendors were making a great show of indifference, and continued sorting through their merchandise in its crates.

At a certain point, two other men climbed out of the car and flanked the doctor on both sides; they dragged him quickly into the car while the well-dressed gentleman, the one who'd been talking to the doctor up till now, walked around and got in the car on the driver's side. The car pulled away quickly, passing close to Lucia as it left the courtyard.

The doctor looked out, and for a second his gaze met the woman's. His face was red and upset, his eyes filled with anger and something else that struck Lucia as sadness.

Once the car had screeched around the corner, the woman recovered her wits and started calling loudly for help, but one of the two vendors who had feigned indifference walked over to her:

“Signo', take it from me: forget about this. If you don't want to put anyone else in danger, say nothing to no one about what you just saw. These are hard times.”

In the courtyard the dog had finally managed to break free, and it shot off in pursuit of the car that had by now disappeared.

F
rom his vantage point, what had happened at the end of Viper's strange funeral rite had provided Ricciardi with plenty of food for thought. First of all, he considered what he'd observed of Modo. His attitude toward anyone who represented the regime, even if they were just a few young thugs who were taking advantage of their black shirts to spread a little mayhem, would sooner or later land him in seriously hot water. Even if it only meant—and that time he'd come dangerously close—he was going to catch a beating.

After the women had retreated into their building and the doctor, Maione, and the commissario were left standing alone in the street, the doctor had blithely ignored their remostrances to be more cautious and had in fact actually scolded Ricciardi for failing to intervene.

The brigadier had replied in his superior officer's place:

“I told the commissario, Dotto', to stay out of the way. We were here without authorization, and the last thing we needed was a brawl in the street, to give the deputy police chief, that good-for-nothing Garzo, an excuse to toss us both in a cell. I can always say that I was just passing by, but the commissario can't.”

Maione had a point, but that wasn't what Ricciardi urgently needed Modo to understand.

“The point is, Bruno, if you keep it up like this, you'll get yourself into trouble we won't be able to get you out of. The problem isn't a crew of drunken hotheads looking for trouble; the problem is their boss. I dealt with them, last summer, when the Duchess Musso was murdered, and I can assure you that they're capable of doing things you couldn't even begin to imagine. I beg you, if you won't listen for your own sake, listen for the sake of all those you can help. Control yourself.”

Modo‘s tone of voice was venomous.

“Are you trying to tell me that we're just supposed to accept the kind of things we've seen here? That some little idiot, simply because he's wearing a black shirt and a pair of jackboots, feels that he has the right to put his hand on a woman's behind when she's in tears at her friend's funeral? Not me, I'll never accept it: and if they want to put me in front of a firing squad for it, they can go right ahead. I,” and here he tapped himself on the chest with his forefinger several times, “I defended this country, on the Carso. I stitched up wounds with steel wire, I amputated arms with a bayonet. And I'm not going to let them turn this country to a stinking pile of shit!”

He'd turned on his heel to leave, then he'd stopped, as if in regret, and come back.

“I know that you're my friend, Ricciardi. And I love you too, even if you're a silent, taciturn bastard and there's never a way of knowing what the hell you're thinking. But I am who I am, you know. There's no switch you can flip. If they're going to come cart me off, let them do it: that just means it was meant to be.”

And with that he left. The dog stared hard at Maione and Ricciardi for a second, then turned and trotted off after him, as usual trailing behind by a couple of yards.

Maione had commented:

“That dog kind of gives me the willies, Commissa'. He's like a citizen who can't talk.”

Ricciardi had said:

“What can I tell you, Raffaele: let's just hope that our friend the doctor manages to stay out of trouble. Let's just hope.”

From the street door of the building housing Il Paradiso,
 
Tullio, Madame's son, had emerged. He'd stopped for a moment to light a cigarette and then had headed off, head down as he walked into the wind, toward Piazza Trieste e Trento.

After a minute, Ricciardi had said:

“There: that's one piece of the puzzle we've been overlooking, it seems to me. Why don't you see where he's going, Raffaele: and then you can come back and report on what you find. I'll be waiting for you in the office.”

 

Maione had started off on the opposite side of the street, taking advantage, as was his custom, of the intermittent shade of the front entryways. Experience had taught him that this technique greatly reduced the risk of being spotted. Not that he was particularly worried the young man might see him: he'd craned his neck as he left the bordello, but he hadn't even glimpsed the brigadier and Ricciardi, who were talking in the atrium of the building across the street, making no effort whatsoever to escape notice.

He observed Tullio's shoulders, the head that appeared and disappeared as the young man made his way through the Holy Thursday crowd now filling the Via Toledo. He might have been twenty or maybe a little older, his face scarred by smallpox, his broad shoulders slightly bowed, his hair fair; he'd never heard his voice. Bambinella had been quite clear about him: a gambler, slave to the promise of easy winnings that never seemed to arrive. Maione had seen plenty of dreams just like his that wound up dying at knifepoint. Debts, and more debts contracted to wipe out the previous debts.

At a certain point the young man veered off confidently onto a side street. Maione wasn't caught off guard because he knew the locations of all the city's leading clandestine gambling dens, which did a brisk businesses even during the week of Easter. He'd already noticed a couple of touts, fairly shady customers who served both as lookouts in case of a police raid and as procurers, luring in potential gamblers who might happen by. From a distance he could see that the young man was trying to win admittance to a gambling den he knew quite well, a place run by Luigino della Speranzella, where the chief tout on the door was a certain Simoncelli, an ex-con whom Maione had run in a couple of times for purse snatching.

There was a discussion between the two men, short and intense. Maione could have repeated it word for word: Tullio wanted to get in to play some cards, and Simoncelli refused to admit him until he'd seen the color of his money. It was obvious that the young man had run through the line of credit that had been extended to him.

Their conversation was starting to break down, the young man was powerfully built and unaccustomed to hearing no, while the gatekeeper was well aware of his job. Then he saw something glitter in the dim light, and Maione decided that it was time to step forward; but the flash of the blade had been enough to persuade the young man to hurry off in evident fear.

The brigadier watched him try a few more doors, receiving an equally firm, if perhaps less violent, refusal each time, and in the end Tullio made his way dejectedly back to the bordello.

Maione went back to Speranzella's gambling den and, sneaking up behind Simoncelli's back, whispered from the shadows:

“Hey there, Simonce', how's it going?”

The man leapt into the air and emitted a high-pitched shriek, and swung around ready for trouble. He was a slight individual, with a sickly, treacherous appearance, hollow-cheeked, with small darting eyes. He wore a ridiculous tattered tailcoat and a pair of down-at-the-heel shoes. He'd slipped his hand into his inside breast pocket, the same pocket from which Maione had seen him pull the knife earlier.

“Ah, Brigadie', it's you,
buonasera
. You scared me. Listen to the way my heart is racing, try that again and you'll probably kill me.”

Maione took a step forward, emerging from the shadows.

“And you, to keep your heart a little safer, you have a knife right next to it, eh? Who's inside, how's the game going today?”

The man put up both hands, as if to defend himself:

“What game, Brigadie'? You know perfectly well that the only reason I'm standing here is I'm sweet on a girl who lives across the way, not because . . .”

With a quick grab, Maione seized Simoncelli's wrist and began to squeeze it, without letting the broad smile splashed across his face shrink by so much as a millimeter.

“Sure, of course. She must be quite a pretty girl, because you never move from this spot, you're here all day long, seven days a week. Must be true love! I'm a romantic at heart, Simonce', and I want to believe you. Why don't I wait here with you for awhile, and we can even serenade her together, all right? Start singing, Simonce', and I'll come right in behind you.”

The man had turned pale from the pain.

“No, stop, Brigadie', keep it up and you'll break my arm! All right, all right, there's practically no one upstairs, you know that there's not a lot of activity the week of Easter. Let me go, I'm begging you, Brigadie'. . .”

Maione let go of the arm and, with a disappointed expression, pulled the knife out of Simoncelli's inside pocket.

“What a pity, and here I was thinking that you really had fallen in love. You see how much your heart's well-being matters to me? I'd better hold on to this, otherwise you might manage to break your heart with it, where the young lady who lives across the way failed. Though you might get a little assistance from someone else, say the young man who was here earlier. Speaking of which, why don't you tell me his story? I get all emotional when I hear stories about young people; maybe I'll even get teary and decide not to throw you in jail today.”

The ex-con was now sweating copiously:

“Who, the son of that lady from the bordello? No, Brigadie', what are you thinking, he's just a two-bit chump, he's no problem. I just wanted to scare him, otherwise he'd have started yammering and there'd be no end to it.”

Maione grabbed the man's arm again, but this time without squeezing.

“Ah, so that's the way it is? Then why didn't you let him go upstairs, if business is so slow? Doesn't your boss want this sucker's money, too?”

Simoncelli looked at Maione's enormous hand on his forearm and decided to tell the truth. And to tell it as quickly as he could.

“No, Brigadie', that young man doesn't have any money. In fact, from what I hear, he owes money to everyone in the neighborhood. That's the way gambling is, you know that, don't you? When you start to lose, you just keep losing and there's nothing anyone can do to stop you. So we don't let him gamble, and neither does anyone else. Otherwise, as time goes by, he'll just keep digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole.”

Maione acted deeply touched. He gripped the arm again.

“Oh, how lovely to see how conscientious you are, how you take the well-being of the young people to heart. I should nominate you for a medal, they'll give one to you right away.”

The man sobbed in pain.

“No, no, Brigadie', I'm begging you . . . Oh, all right, the order is not to let him gamble again unless he brings cash with him and shows it here, at the entrance. And even if he does come with cash, part of it gets taken to cover the old debt. Otherwise, he can't come in. Even if I have to . . . to beat him silly.”

“And this is what you were going to use to beat him silly, eh?” asked Maione, waving the knife in the man's face. “I'm tempted to beat you silly, I'm tempted. Now then, Simonce', listen to me and listen good: if anyone stumbles on this young man in one of these
vicoli
with any kind of wound, I'll come and drag you out of your bed and I'll throw you somewhere that the next time you want to serenade a young lady, you'll have to wait a good thirty years. Do you follow me, yes or no?”

The man nodded repeatedly, frantically massaging his arm all the while.