Day of the Dead (28 page)

The true name of this particular individual was known only to a very select few; the nickname, by which she was universally known and renowned in all the city's most sordid
vicoli
, derived from a song by Raffaele Viviani that had been in vogue over the last few years. The protagonist and namesake of the song was a beautiful prostitute who was in love. The figure that answered the door, wrapped in a garish floral silk kimono, her face heavily made up, did possess lovely features and might very well be in love; nonetheless, under the thick layer of rouge, one could clearly see a veil of dark stubble, which only contributed to the cognitive dissonance induced by the individual's sheer height and strapping broad shoulders.

“Why, Brigadie': what a lovely surprise to see you here, and in weather I wouldn't send a dog out in! I was resigned to not seeing you at all, at this hour. Please come in,
prego
: make yourself right at home.”

The low, throaty voice was unmistakably masculine; but the modulation, fluting and affected, left no doubt about the speaker's absolute femininity. Bambinella walked, breathed, and lived perfectly at her ease along a fine boundary line: something that was only possible here, in the world's most tolerant city. And she was so much a part of that city that she managed, given her natural propensity for gossip, to learn everything about everyone in record time, information that she shared only and exclusively with Brigadier Raffaele Maione, in the name of an exceedingly odd and particular friendship between two people who couldn't have been more different from each other.

“Bambine', I have to tell you: of all your twisted ways, this insistence on only talking to me at your apartment, which happens to be on top of a mountain, is the one I can tolerate the least. One of these days, you're going to give me a heart attack, and then you'll have me on your conscience, you will.”

Maione flopped down into a small wicker chair that groaned under his weight, loosening his shirt collar and fanning himself with his handkerchief. Bambinella sat down across from him, coquettishly angling her sheer-stocking-clad calves to one side.

“Sure, that's all we need, to have our little conversations together in a café, in plain view. Then someone will slice my gut open with a knife, and at the very least they'll go tell your signora that they saw you with the loveliest
chanteuse
in Naples, and she'll slice you open, too.”

Maione's panting was starting to subside.

“You have a point, and that's why I'm willing to come all the way up here. But there is one other possibility: I could always arrest you, that way we could chat comfortably any time I like, without climbing a single step. What do you say to that?”

Bambinella clapped her hands.

“
Bravo,
Brigadier, now you're talking sense. That way I'd have free room and board, and you'd get what little information I could scrape together in jail. What do you say, is that what you're looking for?”

Maione snorted.

“All right, all right, I'll let you go free for now. Let's see if what you have for me today is sufficient, otherwise I might have to rethink my decision. Well?”

Bambinella looked up at the ceiling, as if to summon the information to her memory.

“Now then, what was it you wanted to know? Ah, yes, Cosimo the
saponaro
. Now, why are you interested in him? He's just a poor wretch, without skills or money. What could he have done wrong?”

“I told you already, Bambine', you need to remember to mind your own business when you're dealing with me. But only with me; as far as the rest of Naples is concerned it's your job to stick your nose in, and if you fail to do that, I'll have to throw you in jail.”

“
Mamma mia
, what an oaf you are! But all right; I have a soft spot for a man in uniform, and I just can't say no to you. Now then, about Cosimo: You were right about him, I got confirmation from a dear little girlfriend of mine who works in the building at the corner of the Largo San Giovanni Maggiore and Via Sedile di Porto. She saw him do it; he does pilfer from apartments. The method is a simple one: he starts chatting with these women, because he does have a nice running patter, he tells them stories he's just made up then and there, he pays them compliments, and the women get distracted. That's what fools we are, the weaker sex: we fall hard for the first man to come along and pay us a compliment.”

Maione considered the sheen of stubble on Bambinella's face, and the coarse hairs poking out from under the silk kimono that her powerful hand held tight to her chest, and said:

“You're exactly right. That's just the way you women are. Go on.”

“Well, while he was talking, the little kid that he brought with him on his rounds, who was the same poor child you found dead at Capodimonte, would slip stealthily into their apartments and steal a little something. Nothing spectacular: a fork, a knickknack, a pillowcase. All things that would then show up on the
saponaro
's handcart, but in some other part of town, or else someone might catch on to what he was doing. Little things, eh: but they help make ends meet. The question is what he's going to do now without the little boy.”

Maione scratched his head.

“So there was crime, if little more than a minor felony, in the life of this child. Though experience tells me that two-bit thieves are rarely capable of murder.”

Bambinella sat up straight in her chair, her eyes flashing.

“Murder? Why, what are you saying, that the child was murdered? Oooh,
madonna mia
, and you think that Cosimo did it?”

“No, Bambine', calm down, for Pete's sake! That's not what I said at all, and besides, I already told you, the child died after eating rat poison, accidentally. I'm just trying to figure out why the commissario wanted to know these things, that's all.”

Bambinella sighed.

“That commissario of yours. Every time he has a doubt about something, it turns out in the end that he was right.
Mamma mia
, what a handsome man he is! Too bad he's such a grouch and he brings bad luck, heaven protect us, or I'd be willing to take him out for a spin around the block, since you continue to spurn my advances.”

Maione groaned.

“No, in fact, I don't want you, Bambine'! I'm only here so that I don't have to arrest you, and you know it. Your profession, out on the street the way you practice it, is illegal. And don't you dare go around saying that my commissario brings bad luck or I'll lock you up, information or no information.”

Bambinella picked up a fan and started fanning herself coquettishly.

“Ooh, what a fiery temper you have! All right, I'll stop saying that he brings bad luck, even if everyone at police headquarters says so. And as for my profession, Brigadie', it's not my fault if the legal bordellos only take girls whose identification papers have the letter
F
in the box marked “sex.” How is a girl supposed to make a living? She has to do what she can, don't you agree?”

Maione waved his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Fine, fine, I give up, you're right; as long as you go on with what you found out. What else?”

Bambinella listed the items:

“Now then: Cosimo I told you about, he's a miserable wretch; at the very worst, he might lose his temper, get drunk, and pester some poor woman he meets on the street. But if you ask me, he wouldn't hurt a fly. Word is that he killed a man when he was young, but I also know that it wasn't him, it was another man who later fled to America. I asked around about what life is like for the boys in the parish church, and I got confirmation on what you've already heard. I also learned that the priest, Don Antonio, lends out money at interest. Nothing big, a little here and a little there, and he threatens those who are late in paying that he'll spread the word about them. You have no idea what people will put up with just to keep word from getting out that they're dying of hunger. And I've also heard that he buys and sells houses, apartments, and shops, and that he puts them in the names of stand-ins, fronts who collect the rent and then hand it over to him. In other words, he's a profiteer who does a little work as a priest on the side.”

Maione shook his head in disgust.

“How lovely. Doesn't practice what he preaches: the expression is certainly apt in this case. What else?”

Bambinella smiled unctuously.

“I got another nice tidbit from a girlfriend of mine who does old women's hair, right in the Santa Teresa quarter. She says that the sexton, a filthy drunk named Nanni, not only drinks but also has a bad habit of putting his hands where they don't belong . . . where they
really
don't belong, if you follow me . . . on women and, get this, on little boys. In other words, he's obsessed with that stuff. My girlfriend heard about it from an old bag of bones, a woman who told him where to get off—but my girlfriend says that it would have been smarter for her to accept, because that old woman is so old and ugly, when is she going to get another chance like that? Anyway, he was seen trying to wrap his arms around one of the bigger boys while he was drunk, and the boy kicked him and ran off. Now I don't know if this last bit of information is of any use to you, but I wanted to let you know.”

Maione put on a thoughtful expression.

“Well then, nice place, this parish church of the Soccorso. What a foul mess; in this city it seems like any manhole cover you lift, you find something filthy underneath it. All right, then, I think that's everything.
Grazie
, Bambine'. If I need anything else I'll let you know. And in the meantime, take my advice: behave yourself and don't let anyone stab you.”

Bambinella had gotten to her feet to walk Maione to the door.

“Brigadie', you know that you're always welcome here. I've told you before, there's no danger of being seen, and if you were, I'd just say that you were a loyal customer.”

Maione shot her an angry glare.

“You just dare to say such a thing, and if I don't kill you, I'll throw you in jail for the next thirty years,
capito
?”

“I get it, I get it. All right then, I'll just say that you come to see me incognito and you don't want word getting around, is that better?”

Maione's shoulders sagged in defeat.

“Say whatever you like! If you hear anything else, send me word.”

Just as the brigadier was walking out onto the landing, Bambinella called him back:

“By the way, I almost forgot. I should tell you that a client of mine, who sells fruit and nuts from a handcart—a fine strapping young
guaglione
who never has any money because he has six children, so I charge him half price because he breaks my heart, poor thing—he says that the boy who died used to go around with a little dog, is that right?”

Maione nodded, turning around and standing on the threshold.

“Yes. So?”

“He saw him not far from the parish church last Saturday. My client remembers because he'd only ever seen the boy on his own, just him and his dog. Sometimes he'd give the boy a walnut, or a cherry in May; he felt sorry for the kid because, as I told you, he has little ones of his own. But this time, the boy wasn't alone.”

“So who was he with? With the other boys, with the sexton?”

Bambinella shook her head.

“No, no. He was with a tall man, elegantly dressed: a gentleman, in other words. And one thing that made an impression on my client was the fact that he didn't walk right, in other words, he walked with a bit of a limp. And my client thought: well, look at that, a
cacaglio
and a
zoppo
, a boy who stutters and a man who limps. What a lovely pair.”

 

 

 

Nothing like one of Rosa's dinners when you have a headache, thought Ricciardi; her cooking is so devastating that your stomach, in its grueling efforts to digest it, demands so much of your attention that any other minor discomfort fades into the background. And there's no choice about whether or not to eat every last bit: she'll start sulking and the atmosphere at home will become intolerable.

That night she'd inflicted upon him, in an alleged attempt to raise his body temperature to what it ought to be, a
zuppa maritata
: in a bowl roughly the size of a small city piazza, there sailed sausages, lard, beans, celery, and a number of other objects that could not be readily identified. There was a perfect storm of garlic and onion, as he had been able to tell the minute he walked into the lobby downstairs. Ricciardi estimated that digestion wouldn't be complete until forty-eight hours out, unless he died before then.

The thoughts had never stopped running through his mind, even as he battled the unholy stew under the cook's vigilant gaze, standing as she always did in the kitchen doorway and watching him eat. The faces of Don Antonio, Carmen, and Eleonora, the downcast gazes of the boys, and the ambiguous figure of the sexton followed one another through his thoughts, alternating with the mysterious junk seller, the owner of the food warehouse, the thousand suspicious and malevolent eyes that looked out at him from the shadows of the
vicoli
as he went by, like the eyes of the young tough who'd asked Cristiano if he needed any help. He couldn't seem to put together a complete picture of the dead boy's life: there was something that continued to elude him.

He was starting to understand the dull, powerful yearning for affection that drove Tettè to comply with those who surrounded him, and which pushed those same people to take advantage of him, to persecute him; everyone except for Carmen and the dog. The thought of the dog sent a shiver down Ricciardi's spine, as he listened to the arabesques of a jazz orchestra on the radio. He couldn't get used to seeing that dog appear just ten feet away, sitting silently, barely visible through the rain. In some strange way, it seemed to him that this little spotted mutt, with one ear cocked, was commissioning him to pursue this investigation.