Day of the Dead (10 page)

He spits out the piece of pastry he had in his mouth, dumps the rest on top of it, and crushes it underfoot. Then he turns and walks away. The twin lunges at the mess on the floor, scrabbling at it with his fingers and eating it, looking at Tettè derisively.

Tettè's eyes fill with tears, but he doesn't cry. He gets to his feet, runs his hand over his neck. He would like to say something, but he knows that the words wouldn't come out. From across the room, Cristiano watches him, expressionless. Tettè smiles at him, but the other boy turns away and walks off.

A shaft of gray light starts to filter in through the shutters.

Ricciardi, having taken note of the priest's laundry list of happy memories and the idyllic picture he had just painted of the dead boy's life, asked:

“And you, Padre, when was the last time you saw him?”

Don Antonio tried to think back, with some difficulty.

“Now then, let me recall. Yes, I'd say on Sunday night, after the seven o'clock service. I remember that he was there, even if he wasn't the one who served mass. Yes, yes. I remember clearly, he was sitting in the second pew, on the left, looking from the altar.”

Ricciardi looked at the priest, then he said:

“And could you tell me who he was with, Padre? Who was he sitting with at Mass?”

“With the other boys, I believe. With all the other boys. They all attend the evening Mass every Sunday. They know that's what I want.”

“What about after Mass? Where could the child have gone? Don't they eat dinner, after the service?”

“Yes, certainly, after the service they go to dinner. I have no way of knowing, Commissario, where they . . . ”

Ricciardi bore in:

“But, Padre, don't you dine with the boys? If you were with them, you'd surely have noticed whether or not Matteo was there. There are only six of them in all: that's what you told me, right?”

Ricciardi's question fell into silence. A pained expression had appeared on Don Antonio's face. He stood up.

“Forgive me, Commissario, but now I really must go. I've been away from my parish too long as it is, and the faithful need me. Moreover, as you can well imagine, I've got to arrange for poor Matteo's funeral. I must also inform his companions of his death; as I told you, he was very well loved.”

Maione had stood up with the priest, in a show of respect, while Ricciardi had remained seated.

“I actually haven't finished yet, Padre. There are quite a few things I'd still like to ask you.”

The priest remained standing.

“Then we'll just have to finish this conversation of ours another time, Commissario. And as long as we're talking about it, it would be best to establish some ground rules regarding this matter.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that, however heartbreaking and terrible, what happened to Matteo was an accident, the result of a tragic twist of fate. That neither I nor anyone who lived with him and helped him, all without asking for anything in return, is to blame. That I do not personally fall under your jurisdiction, and therefore unless I choose to do so of my own free will, I need not answer any questions you might have: that I owe you neither my time nor anything I might or might not know. On this point, Commissario, bear with me if I repeat myself: it's up to me to decide whether I wish to answer your questions or no. It's up to me, and me alone. And one more thing: it's my duty to inform the curia of what's happened, both Matteo's tragic death and the fact that you ordered the dissection of the child's body without requesting any kind of authorization.”

Ricciardi objected vehemently:

“No, Padre, what we did wasn't a dissection! It was an autopsy, and it was ordered to learn the cause of death. It was a necessary examination.”

“That remains to be seen. And I assure you, Commissario, that the curia is not about to stand by and watch as servants of God are treated like criminals off the street, held against their will by the police and interrogated like common murderers. I believe that you would be well advised to proceed very carefully: the bishop is in regular contact with your superiors.”

The priest's diatribe, delivered in a voice as calm as if he'd been giving a Sunday sermon, had stunned Maione, who was standing openmouthed, cap in hand, by the door. But not Ricciardi, who hadn't moved an inch.

“As you think best, Padre. Take all the steps that you consider appropriate. But I can tell you one thing from my own experience: the only people who try to avoid questions are those with something to hide. Remember that. And keep one other thing in mind: as far as the fate of poor Matteo is concerned, you ought to be more concerned than I am. Good-bye; you're free to go.”

Don Antonio nodded his head in farewell and left the room.

After shutting the door behind the departing priest, Maione turned to look at Ricciardi.

“Commissa', forgive me, but this priest strikes me as very dangerous. Did you hear what he said?”

Ricciardi snorted.

“The things that priest says to scare me are like water off a duck's back, Maione. If he didn't know there was something strange going on, do you think he would have put on such an act? And plus this whole fairy-tale world he has these children living in doesn't square to my mind with the fact that Matteo goes missing but it takes him two days to come tell us about it.”

Maione scraped the floor with one foot, the way he did whenever he wasn't entirely in agreement with Ricciardi.

“Still, the priest does have one point: if it was an accident, then why all the questions? To tell the truth, if I'm being honest with you, Commissa', I wondered the same thing myself. The autopsy, the investigation, the site inspections—we don't do all these things even if we find a dead body with a bullethole between the eyes. It seems to me we're attracting a lot of unnecessary attention.”

Ricciardi shook his head.

“What, are you turning diplomatic on me now, too? Since when have we let a few threats scare us, instead of following through on an investigation?”

“Commissa', it's not a matter of getting scared or being diplomatic: this is something else completely. Mussolini's coming to Naples. They're already putting up posters all over town, haven't you noticed? And that puts the fear of God in everybody, you've got people running this way and that. The one running hardest is Garzo, and you know how much that imbecile cares about his relationships with important people; when that fortune-teller was killed, you remember, and the duke and duchess of whatever-it-was were implicated, he came this close to throwing us in jail ourselves, he was so scared of getting complaints. So just imagine if he gets a phone call from the bishop, the day before Thunder Jaw pulls into town!”

Ricciardi wasn't about to give up.

“Well, so what? If the child was poisoned, it's our duty to . . . ”

“No, Commissa', careful: the boy poisoned himself, the doctor even said so. We don't have the grounds for an investigation. Even the autopsy, as I told you more than once, was going too far. Do me a personal favor, just this once: let's call a halt to this right here. Then maybe later, once Thunder Jaw has left town, we can walk over to the parish together, and we'll see what kind of conditions these kids live in. You know me, I'm the first to get angry about these kinds of things. But we can't keep this up, not right now.”

Ricciardi stood up and went to the window. In the falling rain, not far from where the little dead girl was asking her mother to fetch her top, he glimpsed a dog sitting as if it were waiting for something. Without turning around, he said:

“I want to talk to Garzo. Do me a favor, call Ponte and ask for an appointment.”

Rosa observed Enrica, who was sitting stiffly on the sofa, as if she'd swallowed a broomstick, holding a demitasse of espresso. She hadn't drunk a drop.

She'd been sitting like that for five minutes now, not saying a word, eyes downcast, knees together, perched precariously on the seat, far from the backrest. Rosa wondered how to break the silence, which was starting to become awkward.

When they'd reached the landing, the young woman had stopped at the threshold holding the groceries, dripping rain onto the floor. The
tata
had immediately invited her in, but Enrica hesitated, as if she were afraid of something; in the end, she had made up her mind and walked through the door, eyes on the floor until she got to the kitchen. She set the groceries on the table, being careful not to look around lest she seem to be prying. At that point Rosa had invited her into the living room, while she made a pot of coffee. When Enrica protested, stammering that she didn't want to impose, the
tata
brusquely pointed her to the sofa: if she wanted to offer the girl a cup of coffee, she wasn't about to tolerate objections of any kind.

In the meantime Enrica was inwardly experiencing a bout of panic. The minute she'd found herself on that landing, outside that apartment, all the courage and determination she'd built up over the past two days, endlessly repeating to herself that the only way to get beyond that impasse was to make contact with Ricciardi's
tata
, had melted away like a gelato in mid-August. She'd thought about it so much, dreamed about it so often that now she was terrified: the phantom of a possible disappointment, the thought of hearing bad news, of learning that he was engaged or something even worse, gripped her by the throat, literally suffocating her. So she sat there, at the center of her heart's temple, silently gasping for air with a demitasse in her hand, praying to be struck dead then and there.

Rosa, unaware of these thoughts but realizing that the young woman was struggling, finally said to her:

“Signori', if you wait any longer, we're going to have to toss it out, that espresso. It's very good, you know; I make a good cup of coffee.”

Enrica started when the old woman said this, coming close to spilling most of the good coffee on the carpet. She drank half of it in a single gulp, burning her tongue in the process.

“Really very good, very good,
grazie
.
Grazie
again. I only wanted to help you carry the groceries upstairs.”

Rosa blinked: the situation was worse than she'd thought at first. Enrica was truly distraught; it would be no simple matter to make her feel comfortable.

“And what do you do, most days? Do you stay at home, do you study, do you work?”

“No, I . . . that is, I have my high school diploma, I'm a teacher, but I don't teach. No, I mean, I teach, but the fact is that I teach at home, I tutor children at our apartment, not at a school. I help them prepare, and then they take their exams at school.”

She realized she was acting like a complete idiot. She needed to get a grip on herself, or this was going to end badly.

“But I do housework, too, of course. That is, I help my mother, I give her a hand around the apartment. I especially like to cook, and my father says that I'm very good at it, too. And I embroider.”

Rosa liked that surge of pride, and smiled approvingly. A woman who knows how to keep house instinctively recognizes another like herself. A kind of informal sisterhood.

“Really? That's nice. My
signorino
lives here, did you know that? I look after him, but he's the master of the house.”

That direct reference to the object of her thoughts and dreams shattered Enrica's mounting equilibrium with the force of a hurricane uprooting a delicate young sapling. She started stammering again.

“Ah, is that so? I had no idea . . . that is, I knew, but . . . of course, I live across the street, and I'd seen a man, but I didn't think . . . not that I was looking through your windows intentionally, but you know, living right across the way . . . ”

Rosa was afraid the girl would burst into tears right in front of her. She decided to go all in, relying on the no-nonsense approach of her birthplace:

“Signori', I know that you already knew it. And I also know that the
signorino
Luigi Alfredo, my young master, is perfectly aware of who you are and where you live. I doubt that you failed to notice that every night after dinner, for I don't know how many months, if not years, he stands at the window in his bedroom, which is right through that door over there, and watches you do your needlepoint. And if you're here today it's certainly because you know it, and you don't mind at all if he watches you. Am I right?”

Enrica felt like a little girl caught with her hands in the marmalade jar. She wished she could jump to her feet and run, and keep going until she reached the water's edge, or even beyond. But a second later she realized that he had been just as incapable of concealing his interest in her from his
tata
, and she found this fact to be quite encouraging.

She smiled uncertainly and sighed. Then she looked up, squared her shoulders, pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and said:

“Yes, Signora. That's right. And I don't even really know why I'm here. Maybe it's because I need help. I need
your
help.”

Rosa settled into her armchair, satisfied. The girl wasn't a striking beauty: in fact at first glance, she seemed rather mousy and insignificant. But now that she was getting a closer look at her, she could detect an attractive figure, with long legs and a nice bust, and regular features; her eyes, too, shone with the light of intelligence and wit, behind her myopic glasses.

“He wrote you a letter. I don't know if he ever gave it to you, but I do know he wrote you a letter. I'm positive of it.”

“Yes, he wrote me. I received the letter the day before yesterday. It's not exactly . . . Well, I'd have to say he's not a man who makes bold declarations. He simply asks whether I would object to his greeting me if he sees me, that's all. I was happy, but now I'm not sure what I should do.”