Blood Curse Read online

  There weren’t many people in the orchestra seats; the play had been running for a while now, and there were other attractions in the city. Marisa Cacciottoli di Roccamonfina sighed; she would rather have gone to see something else tonight. She looked over at her girlfriend sitting beside her in the box.

  “How many more times are you going to want to come to see this show? At this point we might as well take a seat in the prompter’s box; we know every line by heart. We’re the talk of the town, today’s top story. Yesterday, at Gambrinus, Alessandra Di Bartolo said to me, ‘You know all about the theater, can you recommend anything interesting? Really, because I’ve heard that you and Emma never miss a show!’ Just think: the two of you never miss a show! What do you think she meant by that?”

  The woman she had just addressed was young and elegantly coiffed and dressed. Her dark hair was cut short, as fashion dictated, her skin was ivory white, and her chin was just slightly pronounced, an indication of her determined, strong-willed personality.

  She turned for an instant to look at Marisa, but without allowing her attention to be diverted from the stage.

  “Listen, if you no longer wish to join me, say so clearly. I’ll find someone else. You know, there are people who are willing to be seen in public places in my company. Also, you can go ahead and tell that dimwit Alessandra, along with all the other girls who gather at her house with the excuse of playing canasta but really just like to sling mud, to come and say it to my face if they are curious about me.”

  Marisa recoiled in the face of this vehement attack.

  “Emma, we’ve been friends all our lives. Our poor mothers were friends before we were, and if we’d had children, they would have been friends too. But that’s exactly why I feel I have to tell you that you’re making a fool of yourself. I’m not telling you not to have your fun, I wouldn’t dream of it. After all, you know what I’m capable of getting up to. But a little discretion would not be a bad idea.”

  “Discretion? What on earth for? Who am I harming? I go to see a play that I’ve already seen before: what of it? Does that give those vipers permission to spit their venom in my direction?”

  “First of all, you see this play two or three nights a week, and have done since it opened, at least one time out of three with yours truly, and I’m starting to become stupider than I really am what with trying to keep up with you. Next, you stay out all night more often than you sleep at home: don’t try to deny it, because Luisa Cassini’s husband ran into you twice in Via Santa Lucia, when you were coming home at eight in the morning and he was on his way to work.”

  She reached out and took her friend’s hand, squeezing it tight.

  “No kidding, Emma: I’m worried about you. You were always the strong one. The one who set an example for others. You have a distinguished husband who loves you: all right, so he’s older than you, so what? Didn’t you know that when you accepted him? No one says you can’t have your own . . . amusements, but use some discretion! And then go home. Don’t destroy a place in society that so many people envy you for.”

  In the darkness of the box, the eyes of Emma Serra di Arpaja welled up with tears.

  “You don’t understand, Marisa. It’s too late to go back. Too late.”

  The orchestra began playing and the curtain rose to reveal the stage.

  XXI

  The next morning, as Ricciardi climbed the last flight of stairs at police headquarters, he was surprised to find Maione fast asleep in the chair outside his office door.

  “Maione? What on earth are you doing here so early?”

  The brigadier started and leapt to his feet, knocked over the chair, lost his hat, caught it in midair, cursed, picked the chair up again, snapped a military salute with cap in hand, thus smacking himself in the forehead with it; then he cursed again, put his cap on his head, and said, “Yezzir.”

  Ricciardi shook his head.

  “I don’t know what’s come over you; one day you come in late, covered with blood, and the next day I actually find you fast asleep at headquarters at seven in the morning.”

  “No, Commissa’, it’s just that I wasn’t sleeping well and so I thought, I wonder if the commissario ever finished up with all those numbers? I said to myself, I’ll go see what he’s up to and lend a hand, because I know him, until he finishes the job, he won’t go home; I’ll go down there, I thought to myself . . .”

  “All right, all right, I understand. Make me my ersatz coffee, go on, and make a quart of it for yourself; that’ll wake you up. And come see me as soon as you’re done. We have a lot to do. I’ve been doing some thinking myself.”

  Ruggero Serra di Arpaja, illustrious jurist, university professor, central figure of Neapolitan high society, and one of the wealthiest aristocrats in the city, sat weeping in the satin-upholstered armchair in his bedroom. This is what happens, he thought, when you marry a much younger woman. When you have such a strong need to feel you are loved that you no longer know how to do without it. When you reach the age of fifty-five without realizing how much time has gone by. When you have no children. When you forget what it means to be alone in the world. When you have no friends, only esteemed colleagues.

  He shivered at the thought of his own loneliness. It was as if he had suddenly found himself on a mountain peak, with no paths he could take to seek out help. And yet he truly needed it. He, a man who had studied so much, unfailingly advising his clients on how to extricate themselves from intricate legal traps, couldn’t see a solution for himself.

  And yet, he mused, he’d worked it out perfectly, a perfect example of premeditation. One contract, two jobs performed, one payment. What does one do, esteemed law students, when there is no way of determining whether the service contractually agreed upon has indeed been performed?

  He noticed that the shoes he’d worn the day before had left marks on the carpet. He’d have to remember to tell the servant girl to scrub them out. Or perhaps, for once, he might have to do the scrubbing himself.

  Rituccia was waiting for Gaetano, on the steps of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Their place. She waited with her hands in her lap, neatly composed, like a grand lady who’s just ordered tea. He’d told her that he would ask his foreman, the Mastro, permission to show up at the construction site a little late, so that he could speak with her. The way they used to. Because these days, what with him working and her keeping house, they practically never saw each other anymore.

  Of course, they only needed to rendezvous for a minute, outside the front doors of the adjoining bassi in which they lived, to tell each other everything that had happened. That was how well they knew each other; a glance, a half-word would be plenty. Even just a expression.

  She saw him coming a long way away, with that distinctive, gangly stride that made him seem off-balance, something she’d teased him about so many times in the past. It always made him mad; Gaetano didn’t know how to joke around. Rituccia shoved over on the step. He gave her a look.

  “Again?”

  She lowered her gaze. He clenched his fist and punched himself in the leg, with silent force. That’s how he let out his rage.

  “I’ll kill him. This time, I’ll kill him.”

  Rituccia said nothing. Without lifting her eyes from the ground, she reached out her hand and brushed her fingers across Gaetano’s knee. They remained motionless in that position for a long time. He was breathing furiously, his eyes reddened in his swarthy face.

  “What about you?” she asked, looking him in the eyes.

  A moment passed, then Gaetano nodded his head yes and looked down at the step.

  They stood there in silence. After a while, he spoke.

  “There’s a police officer. He was with her, last night.”

  Rituccia started in shock and seized his hand. Her glance betrayed a concern that verged on terror.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. He has the usual puppy-dog look. Guappos, police officers. The usual look.”

  Whereup
on she smiled, reassured. She put her head on his shoulder.

  XXII

  Doctor Modo appeared in the doorway between the autopsy rooms and the waiting room, and there he found Ricciardi and Maione, just arrived from headquarters. The doctor was drying his hands with a handkerchief, his lab coat splattered with unmistakable stains.

  He looked like a little boy about to run out into the street to play soccer.

  “Oh, what nice visitors! Welcome, friends; have you come to take me out to breakfast?”

  With a nice broad smile, satisfied.

  Ricciardi looked him up and down.

  “Yes, but please take off your butcher’s uniform first. As it is, people turn away when we walk by and make hand gestures to ward off evil, and let me tell you, some of those gestures are hard to look at. The last thing we need is to show up for a stroll through Pignasecca market with Doctor Frankenstein.”

  “Here’s the Ricciardi I love best: cheerful, optimistic, a lover of light reading. Have you tried reading Carolina Invernizio, or that author who goes by Liala? Or Pitigrilli; I see his books being carried around by all the idiots who passionately support your regime.”

  “My dear intellectual friend, for your information, I don’t have time for reading—and I’m more optimistic than you are, since you see a future darker than the present. Come along, and I’ll treat you to an espresso and a sfogliatella pastry, as promised.”

  Outside, Pignasecca market had already reached a fever pitch of activity. From the ramshackle stalls a roar of singsong voices touted the wonders of whatever merchandise happened to be available that day; rickety pushcarts pushed their way through the crowd; dozens of dark-skinned, half-naked street urchins, their heads shaved to ward off lice, darted from one vendor to another, trying to steal a bite to eat.

  As the trio moved through the crowd, people obediently stepped aside, as if pushed away by a silent bow wave. Two policemen and a doctor—the latter a professional butcher of corpses. What could possibly bring worse luck?

  They came to a café in Piazza Carità and sat down at a small table inside, near the plate glass window. The moving picture of the busy city outside suddenly became a silent one.

  Ricciardi gestured to the waiter: three coffees and three pastries. “Well? Any news about how the Calise woman died? Don’t tell me she died of consumption.”

  Modo snorted with a smile, lit a cigarette, and crossed his legs.

  “You might show a little respect for the work that other people do, for a change. Between you and Brigadier Maione here, I haven’t been able to leave that dump of a leper colony I work in for the past two days. If it weren’t for the fact that I want to be at the hospital when someone sends you there, so that I can personally put you out of your misery, I would have already fled the country. To Spain, for instance, where they truly appreciate doctors; otherwise they line them up against a wall, give them a last cigarette, and good night, nurse!”

  Maione broke in, ironically, feigning an afflicted tone. “Dotto’, forgive us, it’s just that the sight of all that lady’s blood . . . It was too much for me, and you know I don’t trust anyone else’s work. After all, when you find a shop that provides good service, you go back. Am I right?”

  “Go on, keep jerking me around, since that’s become our national pastime. Of all my faithful clients, luck had to send me the two most down-at-the-heels cops in all of Naples! Well, listen, I’m a gifted physician, understand? Your lady friend, for instance, Brigadie’, I’d love to see what my colleagues who boast about their academic titles would have done with her face. I operate in the hospital for ideological reasons, not because I couldn’t have any position I wanted in any one of the best private clinics!”

  Ricciardi was baffled.

  “Shop, lady friend, clinic . . . what are you two talking about? Who is this lady friend of Maione’s?”

  The brigadier’s plump face had turned red as a watermelon.

  “No, what lady friend? That woman I told you about yesterday, Commissa’, the reason I had blood all over my jacket, remember? I don’t know her; that is, I’d never met her before yesterday. I took her to the doctor, here, because she was badly hurt.”

  “Damned right, she was badly hurt! They’ve ruined her for life, is all! And she was a stunningly beautiful woman. Believe me, Ricciardi: a living cameo. An honest-to-God cameo, carved in mother-of-pearl. But why on earth has our good brigadier turned so red? Did someone slap him in the face? Or could it be he’s in love?”

  “Trust me, Maione has a wonderful family waiting for him at home; he’s not a lonely dog like the two of us. So he’s not going to fall in love anytime soon. Let’s just say that a cop is a cop, on duty or off.”

  Maione looked up in silent gratitude for Ricciardi’s help. But the commissario did not return his glance.

  The doctor went on, stretching out his legs under the table and clasping both hands behind his head.

  “A cop in springtime, then. And what about your springtime, Ricciardi? Any sign of it?”

  “It’s still cold out and you know it. Come on, now, enough chitchat; it’s getting late. Have you finished up with the Calise woman? What can you tell me?”

  “What am I supposed to tell you? Why don’t you just tell me what you want to know? You know that I can make the dead sit up and talk. They keep no secrets from me; if they want to tell me something, they just whisper it in my ear. Then it’s up to me to decide whether to report it to you or keep it to myself.”

  Maione snickered at the efficacy of that macabre image. Once again, Ricciardi’s expression remained unchanged.

  “Are you trying to tell me that the dead speak to you?” he was tempted to say. You have no idea what that even means. You know that every morning two dead men greet me on the staircase down at headquarters? And the corpse that you sliced into tiny pieces this morning? It keeps repeating the same weird proverb to me out of its broken neck. And now you’re trying to tell me that the dead speak to you?

  “Take the Calise woman, for example. She was sick; a particularly nasty form of bone cancer. She had maybe six, eight months to live. Your murderer was wasting his strength. He just barely beat Mother Nature to it.”

  Six, maybe eight months, Riccciardi thought to himself. And you think that’s so little? Spring, summer, and autumn. Flowers, the scent of new grass, the smell of the sea breaking against the cliffs; the first cool wind from the north, chestnuts roasting on street corners. A few flakes of snow, naked children plunging into the water, or with their noses lifted in the air to see what this or that cloud looks like. Rain on the street, the clang of horseshoes. Street vendors calling their wares. She might have lived to see another Christmas and hear the shepherds playing bagpipes in the piazzas and in people’s houses.

  Six, maybe eight months. Wasn’t she entitled—the poor despicable usurer, the lying fortune-teller—to even an extra six, maybe eight minutes, in exchange for the two-bit illusions that she bestowed upon her customers, if life had decided to concede her that time?

  “. . . and her bones were like paper, like the wood of a worm-eaten piece of furniture. All that force wasn’t even necessary. You know how much the corpse weighed? A hundred pounds.”

  “But what about the wounds? What kinds of wounds did you find, Bruno?”

  “The wounds, you ask? Right parietal bone, crushed in, with loss of brain matter,” the doctor began enumerating with his fingers, without putting down the cigarette in his hand, which he held cupped a manner uniquely his, “right ear shredded; three fractured vertebrae in the neck; at least two blows to the side of her body. Right cheekbone recessed, while the eye was literally popped. And then there’s the kicking.”

  “What do you mean? More wounds?”

  “Yes, Brigadie’, numerous wounds. Fortunately by that point the poor thing had already been reduced to a bag of rags, already flown away to wherever it is she is now, into the absolute void, if you ask this old materialist physician. All of her ribs broken, and I
mean every last one of them, with her lungs and stomach perforated, her spleen crushed, and so on. Name a traumatic lesion, and she had it. After a while I just got tired of transcribing what I found, if you can believe it. I got sick of the job altogether; so I stitched her up, closed the bag, and went outside to smoke. I needed a breath of fresh air.”

  They all sat in silence, looking out the plate glass window. It had suddenly become very pleasant to watch the street urchins running around, the women chatting, and the men ripping each other off, pretending they were making business deals. That was life, as it would be always. And life was preferable to death.

  “But leaving aside the laundry list of wounds and fractures, did you come to any conclusions that might prove useful to us? About the mechanics of the thing perhaps?”

  Modo scratched his whiskery cheek, with a sorrowful expression.

  “Let’s see: the woman died between ten PM and midnight, give or take a minute or two. The fatal blow, the first one, came from above, as you can see from the direction of the cranial fracture. The fact that it’s on the right side could mean one of two things: either the person who dealt the blow was left-handed and was standing face-to-face with the victim, or else they were right-handed and the Calise woman had her back to them. I’d opt for the second hypothesis, because then the first kick fractured her neck and that landed here, at the base of the nape of the neck. Also, even though the bones were fragile for the reason I explained to you earlier, a remarkable amount of force was used. It’s not certain, of course, but I’m inclined to think it was a man. Or else an enraged young woman.”

  “Any marks on the wounds? I don’t know—imprints of rings, strange cuts. Sometimes that sort of thing happens.”

  “No, nothing like that. They were definitely wearing shoes. The wounds showed abrasions—cowhide, leather, stitched soles. Is my memory failing me or weren’t there some nice clear footprints on the carpet? That’s it,” and he pointed out the window, “you should be looking for someone with stains on their shoes.”