Free Vipers by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Page B

then made up his mind to speak.
    â€œReally? I certainly couldn’t say. Lily is . . . sometimes I go to her, when Viper is otherwise engaged. I imagine that she was just looking out for me. But I wasn’t Viper’s last client: whoever killed her was. I paid for my time, I walked into the room, and I found the door ajar: inside, Viper was sprawled on her back on the bed, with a pillow over her face. I assumed that she was playing some sort of prank, you understand, sometimes we play games. I moved the pillow and I saw . . . I saw that she wasn’t playing, anyway.”
    Maione drove in:
    â€œThen what did you do?”
    â€œThen I ran out of the room without touching anything else, and I called for help.”
    â€œWho was the first to respond?”
    â€œThe first was Lily, who came out of her bedroom with a man who’d been with her and was just leaving. She came over to me and took me to see Madame Yvonne. Then they both urged me to leave in a hurry, to avoid gossip and scandal.”
    Ricciardi shook his head.
    â€œThat wasn’t a good decision, as you can see for yourself. Tell me exactly what you saw in Viper’s room.”
    Ventrone concentrated, and described a setting that substantially matched what Ricciardi had found in his inspection.
    â€œWere you aware of the fact that Viper had received an offer to leave that line of work? That another man had asked her to marry him?”
    Maione looked at the commissario in surprise. Ventrone heaved a loud sigh and shrugged.
    â€œYes, I’d heard. The other girls and Madame were talking of nothing else, and had been for the past few days. But she would never have accepted.”
    â€œAnd why are you so sure of that?”
    â€œSimple: she liked the life she led there. The money, the luxury, and even the fun, the cheerful surroundings. And the men, of course, she liked them a lot. Believe me, I knew her well.”
    Disgusting though he might be, Ventrone seemed quite certain of what he was saying.
    The commissario asked another question:
    â€œOne more thing. What do you mean when you say: ‘sometimes we play games’?”
    The merchant blushed to the roots of his hair.
    â€œCommissario, everyone has his own personal tastes. I just enjoy . . . let me say this, I try to spice up my pastimes, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with it, that’s why men go to certain places, no? Sometimes, with Viper, we’d play innocently, she’d be the schoolmistress and punish me. As a joke, of course. And I’d react, also in play, and spank her. She had a . . . well, she was beautiful, as you know.”
    Maione and Ricciardi would have been very happy to throw that man in prison, but they realized they lacked the grounds.
    The commissario stood up.
    â€œYou’re free to go. You are not to leave town and you are to remain available for further questioning. And for the time being, you are forbidden to patronize Il Paradiso.”

XIII
    H
ow beautiful you are. I only feel good when I’m with you.
    How I love to caress your neck, watch your eyes half close at the touch of my hand. I’d spend hours doing it.
    She would have taken everything away from us. Little by little, her nature would have emerged. He was already her slave, and it would have just have gotten worse and worse.
    Your warm breath, how wonderful it is to feel it on my face.
    She knew how to make everything good disappear. Where she was, no one else existed, all that remained was her, with her desires, her moods.
    He was no longer himself, you saw that. He no longer understood a thing. She had become the sole proprietor of his smile; the rest of the time he was distracted, confused, he didn’t care about anything anymore. His life was just time spent waiting between helpings of her, an ugly parenthesis to be shortened, something without purpose.
    You feel it, my hand, don’t you? You feel its light touch