By My Hand Read Free Page B

badly. Ricciardi said to him:
    â€œWell, you were right: the man’s dead, too. What were the victims’ names?”
    â€œGarofalo was their surname, Commissa’. Captain Emanuele Garofalo, and the signora was Costanza. I don’t know what her maiden name was.”
    â€œCaptain, you said; was he in the military?”
    â€œYes . . . uh, no, not exactly. He worked at the harbor, a member of one of those voluntary militias, those new Fascist institutions. He wasn’t really a captain; he must have told me a hundred times but I never understood, something else, um, maybe it was a centurion. In the end he gave up and he just said to me, ‘Beniami’, let’s do this: why don’t you call me captain, which is the corresponding rank in the army, and we won’t have to discuss it again.’”
    Maione commented:
    â€œIn fact, our friend here isn’t entirely wrong, Commissa’. They create a new one of these militias every few months, and you can’t make heads or tails of it. Anyway, if he worked at the harbor it must have been the port milita, the one that’s in charge of cargo and fishing.”
    â€œThat’s right, Brigadie’, in charge of fishing, too,” Ferro broke in, “and in fact we’d often have fishermen showing up here with gifts for him, but he’d always turn them away; he said that they were trying to buy his silence with a basket of fish, but that he couldn’t let himself be corrupted in any way. He was a model of honesty, a real straight shooter. And now just look what’s become of him.”
    Ricciardi brought the conversation back to the main topic:
    â€œYou didn’t leave the building, all morning long?”
    â€œNo, Commissa’. Well, that is, I did go over to the trattoria across the way, just for a bit, no more than half an hour, and I kept my eye on the front door the whole time. You feel how cold it is out here, and the wind that’s blowing, no? At a certain point a man has a right to get warmed up a little.”
    With a shudder Maione remembered the man’s breath, reeking with the foul stench of cheap wine.
    â€œHalf an hour, eh? And you never took your eye off the front door the whole time. And the whole time, you never saw anyone go in?”
    â€œNo, certainly not, Brigadie’. The last one to leave the building was the accountant Finelli, then the captain came home, and he always goes out again in the afternoon, but that was it. I keep a sharp lookout, you know: a fly couldn’t get inside without me knowing.”
    Maione shook his head.
    â€œWith the exception of two
zampognari
, complete with musical instruments, whom you neglected to mention. As invisible as a couple of big shiny bluebottle flies, I’d say. You didn’t see them when they went in?”
    Ferro opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. Then he admitted:
    â€œNo, Brigadie’, I didn’t see them. They managed to get by me. They must have gone in just as I was getting my money out to pay and I looked away for a moment.”
    Maione and Ricciardi exchanged a glance: even if they hadn’t noticed the alcohol on his breath, it was obvious from his red nose and bloodshot eyes that good old Ferro liked to lift an elbow, whether or not it was cold out. Anyone who knew the doorman’s habits could simply have waited for their chance to slip past him.
    â€œAll right. Let’s go have a chat with the two
zampognari
then. We’ll see what they have to say for themselves.”

III
    T he
zampognari
were clearly father and son. The resemblance was unmistakable: same eyes, same features, same movements.
    Ferro had let them into the small apartment where he lived, on the ground floor, right behind the doorman’s little booth, in the lobby of the apartment building; most of the room was occupied by a wooden table on which a manger scene was in the process of being assembled. The doorman