I Will Have Vengeance Read Free Page A

letter-holder. The pale wood of the desk and the overflowing bookcases. The lead grenade fragment brought back to Fortino by the old war veteran Mario, once used in so many imaginary battles as a child, now a dubious paperweight. The sun’s light forced its way through the dusty windowpanes, reaching the wall and illuminating the portraits like a divine investiture.
    â€œSuch beauties,” Ricciardi quipped to himself with a half-smile. The little king without power and the great commander with no weaknesses. The two men who had decided to expunge crime by decree. He still remembered the words of the Questore, a dapper diplomat whose life was dedicated to providing absolute satisfaction to those in power: “There are no suicides, no homicides, no robberies or assaults, unless it is inevitable or essential. Not a word to the people, especially not to the press: a fascist city is clean and wholesome, there are no eyesores. The regime’s image is granitic, the citizen must have nothing to fear; we are the guardians of assurance.”
    But Ricciardi had understood, long before studying it in books, that crime is the dark side of emotion. The same energy that drives humanity can divert it until it becomes infected and festers, then explodes in brutality and violence. The Incident had taught him that hunger and love are the source of all atrocities, whatever forms they may take: pride, power, envy, jealousy. In all cases, hunger and love. They were present in every crime, once it was pared down to its essentials, once the tinsel trappings of its outward appearance were stripped away. Hunger or love, or both, and the pain they generate. All that suffering, which he alone was a constant witness to. And so you, my dear
Mascellone
, Ricciardi thought sadly, gazing at
Il Duce
’s protruding jaw, can issue all the decrees you want; unfortunately, however, you and your black suit and debonair hat will not be able to change men’s hearts. You might manage to frighten the populace rather than make people smile, but you won’t change the dark side of those who continue to experience hunger and love.
    Maione appeared in the doorway, after a discreet tap on the door frame.
    â€œGood morning, sir. I saw your door was open. Here already? Can’t sleep well, even with this cold weather? Spring doesn’t seem to want to come this year. I told my wife, we can’t afford the cost of wood for the stove for yet another month. If this weather keeps up, the kids will get chilblains. And how are you this morning? Shall I bring you a so-called coffee?”
    â€œSame as usual. And no thanks, to the coffee. I have a mountain of reports to complete. Go on, go. I’ll send for you if I need you.”
    Outside, amid the first cries of the street vendors, a tram rumbled by and a flock of pigeons flew up into a still-wintry sun. It was eight o’clock.

IV
    T welve hours later, the only thing that had changed in Ricciardi’s office was the light: the dusty desk lamp with its green shade had replaced the anaemic late-winter sun. The Commissario was still bent over his desk, busy filling out forms.
    More and more often he thought of himself as a clerk in the land office, obliged to spend most of his time transcribing words and listing numbers: the accounting of the offence, the rhetoric of the crime.
    He had succumbed to hunger around two, going out in the cold without an overcoat to get a
pizza fritta
at the cart downstairs from the station; the dense smoke from the pot of boiling oil, the inviting smell of fried dough, the warmth of the glowing hot crust, had always been irresistible to him. This was one of those moments when he felt the city nourished him like a mother. Then a quick espresso in Piazza del Plebiscito, at Caffè Gambrinus, as usual, watching the passing trams with their typical cargo of jubilant street urchins in tow, balancing on the rails, clinging to the coach.
    As his frozen fingers