The Bottom of Your Heart (50 page)

The man turned an indecipherable gaze on him: “No, Commissario. Not you. That man. Remember? This is all just a story. An imaginary story. Otherwise you and I couldn't go on talking. You understand that, don't you?”

Ricciardi seemed to awaken from a sudden stupor; then he realized that Enrica's father had a point.

“Agreed. We know nothing about that man. We'd have to investigate, just as we do in our line of work. Because sometimes, Cavalier, if you don't know the true, underlying motives, an attitude, a way of acting, or even just the expression on a face can appear entirely incomprehensible . . .” He, too, now, focused his gaze on the vendor outside and glimpsed the old dead woman, fading in the sun, singing her long-forgotten lullaby and vomiting out the wine that had killed her. “That man, you see, has exceedingly strong feelings. Strong feelings if ever there were any. But he's also terrified, because he sees the effects those feelings can have in everyday life. And so he believes that keeping those feelings out of his life, and keeping himself out of the lives of the people who . . . of the people he cares most about, is the best way of doing them good. That's all. That, perhaps, is the reason why he keeps his distance, in the terrible hope that he will be forgotten; and in the certainty that to be forgotten would be the death of him.”

It was clear to him just how abstruse his reasoning might seem; but Colombo seemed to have grasped it.

“Commissario, I'm only a shopkeeper. I like to read and keep up with events, and I'm interested in politics, which, these days, with everything that's happening, may be a serious shortcoming. But I stopped studying after high school, and I don't understand much when it comes philosophical speculation. All I know is that Enrica is about to make a decision whose consequences could last forever. I don't know the intentions of the man to whom we've been alluding; all I know is that it's his duty at least to look her in the eye and speak to her, the way that the other man who met her is about to do.”

There was a pause. Colombo stood up, reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper, and extended it to Ricciardi.

“Here is an address that might prove useful to you, Commissario. Perhaps I'm doing the right thing by giving it to you, or perhaps I'm not. But I know that my Enrica would want me to. I hope that you find the correct balance, and that you make the right decision. I confide in your discretion, and therefore in the fact that you will never tell anyone, and especially not her, that this conversation took place. Good day to you.”

Ricciardi took the sheet of paper and slipped it into his pocket, stood up as well, and bade the other man farewell with a curt nod.

Then they both left, turning to walk in opposite directions.

M
aione was waiting for Ricciardi outside the front entrance of police headquarters, in the shade of the stone arch. Upon his return from Vomero he was sure he would find him in his office, as they'd agreed the previous day, and he was already starting to worry for no particular reason when he spotted the commissario in the distance, walking toward him with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground as usual; but to the brigadier's empathetic gaze it was clear that something wasn't right.

He walked to meet him, climbing a few dozen yards up the narrow
vicolo
from the building's entrance.

“Commissa', are you all right? I was just starting to wonder where you were, you told me that you were going to go talk to Rispoli first thing and then you'd come to the office. But here they tell me that they haven't seen you since yesterday. Did something happen?”

Ricciardi said nothing, as if preoccupied, his face creased with pain.

“Has something happened to Signora Rosa, Commissa'? When could it have happened? I just phoned over to the hospital a few minutes ago, because when I heard you weren't here I thought she might have taken a turn for the worse. But I talked to Dr. Modo and he told me that her condition is stable.”

At the mention of Rosa's name, Ricciardi seemed to snap out of it.

“Ah, you already called over? I was planning to do that myself, as soon as I got back to the office. No, nothing's wrong. Everything's normal. Come on, let's get upstairs; we need to make arrangements for the last interview we need to conduct, so we can close out this investigation.”

“No, Commissa'. I think we're going to have revise our plans. A call came in from Incurabili Hospital, where they've completed the autopsy on poor Coviello, which by the way confirms in every aspect what we already know about his death. They tell me that there's someone claiming the body to give it a funeral.”

Ricciardi stared at Maione, a long stony gaze.

“Well, that's something at least. Okay, let's get over to Incurabili.”

 

Incurabili
—“Incurables”—was the largest hospital in the city. Its name was in apparent contradiction with its mission, but only because the institution's full name, St. Mary of the People of the Incurables, was habitually abbreviated, and this because it, in turn, was at odds with the frenetic activity that went on there.

Ricciardi and Maione made their way across the atrium, threading carefully through the crowd of physicians, nurses, family members, and those patients well enough to walk on their own two feet. They passed the entrance to the church on their right, from which emerged the sound of mass, and emerged into an inner courtyard; they ignored the broad staircase leading up to the wards and the monumental old pharmacy, and instead proceeded on toward the rear of the building, where the morgue was located.

Just as they were about to step out from the courtyard, they were cordially greeted by the young physician they'd first met in Coviello's workshop: “Good afternoon, Commissario, greetings, Brigadie'. So they informed you that we were done with your hanged man, right?”

Ricciardi took immediate issue with the man's glib tone and offhanded manner toward the deceased; once again, he gained renewed appreciation for the merciful respect for the dead that Bruno Modo invariably displayed. The words that the ghostly image of the goldsmith had uttered at the scene of his death echoed clearly in his ears:
the bottom of your heart
.

“What is your name, Doctor?”

The physician replied in a haughty voice: “Guglielmo Franzi, Commissario.”

“So I would guess that you prefer to be called Dr. Guglielmo Franzi, don't you?”

The young man blinked behind the round lenses of his spectacles: “I don't follow you, Commissario. What are you saying?”

Ricciardi snapped back: “The person you refer to as “our hanged man,” sir, had a first and last name, you know? He was called Nicola Coviello. He had a mother, a poor demented old woman who's now all alone in the world, an apprentice that he was teaching a trade, as well as an array of feelings, loves, interests, and ideas. I'd be much obliged, if our professional paths chance to cross again, if you'd refer to the deceased by their first and last names.”

The young doctor blushed.

“You're absolutely right, Commissario. I beg your pardon. The corpse . . . er, Signor Coviello, as seemed to be the case on a preliminary investigation, died as a result of strangulation caused by the rope after a certain period of . . . after he . . . after he came to be suspended from the rafter. The groove on his neck showed the marks of the rope, which unfortunately means that a fair amount of time had passed. I would therefore confirm the presumable time of death.”

Maione asked: “And there are no signs of struggle, correct?”

“No, Brigadier. In fact, from the marks on the hands and the traces of hemp fiber corresponding to the rope, it is evident that he hauled himself up, without any external support. He must have been incredibly strong. Otherwise, he was healthy, no signs of any advanced-stage diseases: this wasn't done to avoid further suffering, in other words.”

But he was suffering, Ricciardi thought to himself. He was suffering, and how. Regrets, despair. Perhaps remorse.

“Thank you, Doctor. There's nothing else, is there?”

“Actually, Commissario, yes, there is. I had that information conveyed over the telephone. As you know, there's a person who has claimed the dead . . . that is, the remains of the deceased. They say they won't leave until they can make arrangements for a funeral and decent burial. I explained that we would have to await instructions from police headquarters, but . . .”

Ricciardi nodded: “Yes. I did know that, Doctor. We'll take care of it. Where is this person?”

The doctor pointed toward the rear of the courtyard: “Back there, by the entrance to the morgue itself. There's a bench, in the shade of the porch roof.”

“Fine. Thanks again, and have a good afternoon.”

Maione touched his visor in a salute, and followed Ricciardi, whispering: “Nice work, Commissa', you told him what's what, this young punk of a doctor. He's going to have a lot more work to do before he can become like Dr. Modo.”

“Doctors as bad as Bruno are born, not made. Let's go, Raffaele. Let's try to understand just when Coviello started to die.”

On the bench that the doctor had pointed out to them was a single person: a woman dressed in black, skinny, with gloved hands clutching at a purse in her lap. She wore a hat, likewise black, with a dark veil that covered her face, making her unrecognizable.

Ricciardi walked over, followed by Maione, and came to a halt before her. The heat was terrible and the crickets were chirping loudly in the trees.

The commissario made a slight bow: “
Buonasera
, Signora Iovine.”

A
ll three of them sat down on the bench, Maione next to Ricciardi and Ricciardi next to the widow Iovine. The brigadier kept glancing at the woman's veiled profile, practically impossible to see except for the sharp, narrow nose, which projected slightly beyond the silhouette of the commissario's own, as if it were a shadow. From the first time he'd laid eyes on her, he'd never been able to rid himself of a deep uneasiness: that skinny figure dressed in black, sitting stiffly outside the morgue, alone, reminded him of death itself.

Without turning to look at her, Ricciardi began speaking in a low voice, little more than a whisper: “I should have figured it out right away. All the evidence was there, you know; and I doubt that either you or he made any special effort to conceal it. But you don't see where you don't look, and I was distracted by . . . by a number of things. Then at last I saw.”

The woman didn't seem to be listening. She hadn't moved by so much as an inch, she hardly appeared to be breathing in the indifferent chorus of the crickets' chirping.

“The first clue was the most obvious of all. He'd been the last person to see Iovine alive. We listened to what he told us: the shadow in the dark, a gigantic man; but the last person to see the victim alive is always the murderer. He's the one with the strongest interest in shifting suspicion onto someone else, to give himself time. Not to get away with it, but just get a little more time. The time he needs to finish his work. He knew that suspicion on the other men, the doctor's son, the gangster with the dead wife, would eventually dissolve. He just wanted a little more time.”

Someone slammed a window shut high above them. Ricciardi continued: “And he himself, when we questioned him a second time, said that he had recommended a style of ring that would go perfectly on slender fingers like yours. And yet, by his and your own admission, he'd never seen you: you told us that you'd learned his name from some of your girlfriends and that then you'd told your husband about him. How could he have known what your fingers were like? Your husband couldn't have told him, he'd been very brusque, they'd hardly talked at all. And then, when we went to his home, his mother, a poor old woman with a wandering mind, told us that Nicola's girlfriend from many years ago had returned; a woman who had appeared one night, and stuck her face through the door of the workshop with an enigmatic phrase about steamships departing. The same words that he carved into his workbench, the place where he spent his whole life waiting for you, Signora. Waiting for you to come back. The grace for which he completed the ex-voto to the Virgin Mary, the Madonna whose name you bear.”

Maione sat there, as expressionless as a Buddha in a policeman's uniform, but deep inside a storm was raging. Ricciardi had explained his hypothesis to him before, but now to hear it in detail, just a few yards from the morgue where the poor goldsmith's body lay emptied of its innards, and in the presence of that lady in black who could easily have been a mannequin, was pushing him to the edge of madness.

Ricciardi went on: “And it was there, and only there, that I understood. When I went to see the heart in flames, devoured by the fire of an eternal love and an eternal pain, the solid gold heart that probably represents the entire fortune accumulated over years of highly respected craftsmanship. The heart at the bottom of which, engraved with enchanting skill, is your name, Signora. Your name, like a despairing scream. Your name, like a last misbegotten thought.”

The crickets fell silent, as if they'd been listening, suddenly attentive. To the bewildered Maione, that sign seemed at once terrible and simultaneously completely natural.

The commissario said, grimly: “It was Nicola Coviello who threw your husband out the window. It was Nicola Coviello, with his incredibly powerful and skilled hands, who picked him up by his belt and the collar of his shirt and hurled him over the windowsill, easily and promptly. It was Nicola Coviello who put an end to your husband's life, obeying an order from you, whether explicit or implicit. I can't prove it and I'm not really interested in doing so; for that matter, given the larger context, it doesn't really matter all that much to our investigation. But I'm sure of it. I just don't know what your motivations were. I want to know. And you must tell me. For justice's sake. To do him justice.”