Maurizio de Giovanni - Everyone in Their Place

The angel of death made its way through the festa , and nobody noticed.

It passed close to the wall of the church, which was still decorated from that morning’s religious celebration; by now, though, night had fallen, and the sacred had given way to the profane. A bonfire had been set in the middle of the piazza, in keeping with tradition, even though the brutal heat of August left everyone breathless, and no one needed those flames dancing over the pile of old wood that every family in town had contributed.

But the flames proved useful to the angel of death, casting the shadows of couples as they danced merrily to the sound of tambourines, guitars, and clapping hands, accompanied by the shouts of children and the whistles of strolling vendors. The angel hadn’t foreseen it, but it knew that divine justice would intervene in some way. A firecracker exploded, followed by another. Midnight was approaching. A fat perspiring woman pretended to faint, and the man next to her laughed. The angel of death brushed past him, touching his elbow, but the man didn’t even shiver: it wasn’t his turn, not that night.

Skirting the edge of the piazza in a nondescript black outfit, there was nothing about the angel that could’ve attracted notice, save perhaps the sadness of the downcast eyes and the slight droop of the shoulders. That too was something it had counted on.

It reached the front door of the palazzo and for a moment feared it might have been locked for the festa; but no, it had been left open just a crack, as always. The angel of death slipped inside, shadowlike, as the tarantella built to a crescendo and the crowd accompanied the dance with song and applause and firecrackers crackled, keeping time to the music. It knew just where to hide. It reached the narrow gap behind a pillar, took up a position, and settled in to wait.

Its hand slid into its pocket and touched the cold metal, but it brought no comfort. Nor did the courtyard’s solitary shadows bring comfort of any kind.

Nothing did, except the thought of the justice that would soon be meted out.

Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi didn’t mind working on Sundays, and that was just another of his quirks. His colleagues came up with excuse after excuse to get out of Sunday duty, every time shifts were being assigned: they had sick mothers to care for, seniority accrued, alleged family emergencies. Any excuse would do, as long as they could skip working the one day of the week that the whole city rested.

But Ricciardi said nothing, as usual, and so as usual he was stuck with the worst assignments. Not that the fact won him any goodwill from his fellow policemen; in fact, they took every chance that presented itself to whisper venomously behind his back.

He was a solitary soul, his hands always in his pockets, invariably hatless even in winter; he never attended parties or drank toasts, he was always somewhere else when people gathered. He let invitations lapse, he failed to form friendships, and he was never open to the confidences of others. His green eyes glittered in his dark face, a lock of hair unfailingly draping across his forehead, only to be swept away from time to time with a sharp gesture. He spoke only seldom, and then with a cool irony that most failed to understand. Still, his presence never failed to attract attention.

He worked tirelessly, especially when he was pursuing a murderer, indifferent to the vicious backbiting of those colleagues incapable of equaling the pace he demanded from all his investigators; the officers assigned to him cursed him under their breath for the hours he expected them to spend in the pouring rain or the hot blast of the noonday sun; he sent them out on seemingly endless and often futile stakeouts. They bitterly noted that, on each case he worked, it was as if someone had murdered a member of his family, no matter whether the actual victim was an aristocrat or a pauper.

On the other hand, nobody questioned his abilities. Without adhering to procedure or following the instructions issued by his superiors, he pursued his own incomprehensible twisting paths and always seemed to catch the culprit. Word had spread that Commissario Ricciardi spoke directly with the devil himself, and that the devil whispered to him the very thoughts that had been in the murderers’ heads; this rumor only widened the empty space around him, because superstition was so deeply ingrained in this city’s soul. No one knew a thing about his life, or perhaps there simply was nothing to be known. He lived alone with his old nursemaid, Tata Rosa, and no one knew of any relatives or friends. He frequented no women, or men for that matter, and no one had ever run into him at a bordello or a theater: never an evening out on the town. He inspired the same mistrust that always seems to spring up around those who have no vices, and can therefore have no virtues.

Even his superior officers, first and foremost among them Angelo Garzo, the deputy chief of police, were openly discomfited by the presence of a man who, despite his enormous abilities and skills, seemed to lack ambition entirely. It was whispered that Ricciardi was wealthy by birth, the owner of vast estates somewhere in the distant countryside, and that he therefore aspired to no increase in salary. The only thing that seemed to attract his interest was investigation itself.

Not that he ever showed signs of satisfaction, once he finally laid hands on the guilty party. He limited his reaction to a steady glance from those unsettling clear eyes, then turned his back and moved on. To another murder. Hunting new blood.

Ricciardi always came into the office early, even when he was working a Sunday shift. On his long walk from Via Santa Teresa to the end of the Via Toledo, he met fewer people when he walked early, and he didn’t mind that a bit; the city slowly awakening from slumber, the occasional fruit vendor or milkman strolling bandy-legged up the hills, the morning songs of the washerwomen gathered around hidden fountains in the working-class quarters through which he walked. In this brutal August-more than two months since the last drop of rain-it was a way of enjoying the last trace of evening coolness that made the walk pleasurable.

In the dim light of the half-closed shutters, sitting at his desk, the commissario gathered his thoughts for the day. Mechanical gestures, bureaucratic details, reports to compile, the roll call of attendance: very few people present that day. The piazza beneath his window was still deserted. A drunk sang raucously: somebody else working the Sunday shift, thought Ricciardi.

He’d left his office door ajar, to create some minimal cross breeze. Blades of light played on the wall, underneath the official portraits of the midget king and the oversized head of state. A seagull sang counterpoint to the drunken melody from below, and Ricciardi decided that of the two, the bird had a better sense of pitch and melody. He idly glanced through the narrow opening of the half-open door, looking down the hallway to the stairs, as far as he could see.

Even in the dim light the two corpses were clear to his eyes. They stood side-by-side, joined for eternity after their ever-so-brief meeting while still alive. A monument to cops and robbers everywhere, thought Ricciardi. But a monument invisible to almost everyone.

From where he sat, a dozen yards away, the commissario could see the broad scorched cavity carved into the side of the robber’s head and the tiny entry wound that the same bullet had made in the cop’s forehead, the rivulet of blood and gray matter that oozed down his neck; and he could hear the subdued murmuring of both men’s last thoughts. The two of you don’t work shifts at all, he thought with hatred. You’re here every goddamned day, poisoning the air with the useless sorrow of your wasted young lives.