Free Vipers by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar

her, and when they did come face to face, he looked at the floor. Obviously, something had happened.
    Still, she thought, looking at herself again in the mirror, it was hardly like her to lay down her arms. It wasn’t like her to give up. Why, just a few days ago her girlfriend Edda, the Duce’s daughter, had told her over the phone that, even though she did miss her, she had to confess that she could hear in her voice a new and captivating determination. And if Edda said so, then it must certainly be true.
    She observed her own face more closely, in search of wrinkles she did not find. She opened her jewel box and went in search of something lovely to put on: nothing made of yellow gold, her friends in Rome had told her; the color white is all the rage now: platinum and diamonds. In Paris no one’s wearing anything else.
    Once again, she leveled her dark eyes at the mirror and smiled, accentuating the dimple in her chin. Look out, Ricciardi: Livia Lucani, the widow Vezzi, isn’t giving up. No staying at home today, no reading books.
    Today, lunch at Gambrinus.

XII
    R icciardi headed for the little side room where by now the brigadier had arrived with Vincenzo Ventrone, the merchant of sacred art Lily had covered for.
    The conversation with Coppola and the sorrowful tale the man told had left him baffled. Other times in the past he’d questioned brutal murderers who had so successfully buried their own guilt that they had convinced themselves that they hadn’t committed the crime, even when confronted with unmistakable evidence. And the younger brother’s declaration of innocence, when no one had accused Giuseppe of the murder, had sounded like an unasked-for justification dictated by a worried mind. And after all, this was a man who, by his own admission, had a certain familiarity with violence, and so the extent of his emotional involvement made it easy to imagine a disproportionate reaction if the woman had turned down his proposal of marriage.
    Then again, the man’s despair, his huge and overwhelming grief, could not have been concocted out of whole cloth. Giuseppe Coppola really had been madly in love with Maria Rosaria Cennamo, aka Viper.
    Maione was standing by the door: in his sleepy expression and his relaxed features, Ricciardi recognized the brigadier’s very particular way of disguising his anger.
    â€œCommissa’,
buongiorno
. The gentleman, here, is . . .”
    The gentleman shot to his feet as if he were spring-loaded. His rain-drenched jacket, his dripping hair, his sopping hat, and his sagging mustache all gave a touch of the ridiculous to the man’s angry expression, as he ground his teeth and bugged out his eyes.
    â€œAt last a sentient being, at least I hope so: Signore, you owe me not one but a great many explanations. A brute of a uniformed policeman knocks at dawn on the door of a more than respectable family, a family with friends, let me make this perfectly clear, in very high places, and this oversized gorilla practically yanks me out of my bed where, incidentally, I lie quite unwell, and he conveys me by force, I insist: by force! and where? Where? No less than to police headquarters! Like some common two-bit street criminal, like some robber or pickpocket, like a burglar, like an . . .”
    Ricciardi, who stood, arms folded across his chest, waiting for the tirade to run out of steam, chose this moment of indecisiveness to intervene.
    â€œ. . . like an individual who is about to be indicted for gross insult of an officer of the law and taken to a cell.”
    The phrase, uttered in a soft, almost inaudible voice, had the effect of a further spray of cold water on Vincenzo Ventrone, proprietor of the award-winning company of the same name.
    The man—short, smartly dressed, and in his early fifties—lost his swagger.
    â€œI, I . . . but how . . . I certainly didn’t mean any disrespect to anyone, but