Day of the Dead by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Page A

his hat on his knees, and he’d slid the handkerchief back up one of his sleeves. He spoke in a subdued voice, his hands resting on his belly.
    â€œIn my parish, among the other good works we carry on, we take in a number of the orphans from the quarter. I house them in a building behind the rectory; right now we have six. One of them, the youngest, is named Matteo, and we haven’t seen him since the day before yesterday. Seeing as he’s never been away this long, I thought I should come report the matter to you.”
    Ricciardi was thrown by the priest’s untroubled tone of voice. He sensed neither tension nor worry in the man’s words, words that were uttered, moreover, in the sniveling whine that he’d immediately noticed.
    â€œBut Padre, didn’t you notice the child was missing before? Why did you wait until this morning to come to us?”
    â€œWell, you see, Commissario, I’m not running a boarding school. What I have is just a shelter for these children who have neither a home nor a family. They’re free to come and go as they like, they learn a trade, or they beg in the street; I certainly can’t keep track of what all six of them are doing, twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes it happens that they stay out all night. These are children accustomed to life on the streets, unfortunately: but they’re perfectly capable of looking after themselves. Some­times they just leave and don’t come back, they find someplace else to stay, and they don’t even come to say thank you for what we’ve done for them. But I don’t do it to receive gratitude, I do it only for the glory of God.”
    Ricciardi and Maione exchanged a glance: it struck both of them as a speech the man had used on more than one occasion, a speech he kept handy in case he needed it.
    â€œWell then, how did you come to the conclusion that the boy we found is . . . what did you say his name was, the child who lives in your shelter?”
    â€œMatteo is his name. Matteo Diotallevi, but we assign them a surname ourselves when we don’t have any other, just so we can register them with the office of vital statistics. He’s the youngest one, I think he must be seven or eight; I can’t say for sure, because they come to us not knowing when or where they were born. I thought it might be him because until now, as I told you, he’d never been away for so long. This morning, when I didn’t see him, I asked the others and then inquired a little around the neighborhood, and no one had seen him in the past few hours. That’s when I decided it would be best to report him as missing, to be safe. Then, when I got to police headquarters, the brigadier told me about the body you found at the Tondo di Capodimonte. Perhaps, if I saw him, I’d be able to confirm.”
    Ricciardi studied the priest’s expressionless face.
    â€œForgive me, Padre, if I may take the liberty of saying so, you don’t seem especially concerned. Resigned, perhaps, if anything. Why is that?”
    A moment of silence followed. Both the priest and Maione were surprised by what the commissario had said, in such flat and direct terms. At last, the man heaved a sign and replied:
    â€œThat’s not the way it is, believe me. I care deeply for the children I help, and the fact that I keep the house going, at great personal cost and sacrifice, and receive nothing in return is the proof. But these times we live in aren’t easy, and who would know that better than you? The conditions the poor live in are terrible, and the ones who suffer most are the weakest, the elderly, and the young. They’re vulnerable to accidents, diseases. They die on the streets, in the
vicoli
and in the
bassi
. The brigadier here was telling me that the boy you found probably died of natural causes; if it’s Matteo, and I still have some hope that it isn’t, he’d probably still be alive if he’d stayed