Di Pietrantonio was personally acquainted with Sergeant Santarella: not to mention Ingravallo, who was even a distant cousin via various old women, aunts, a chain of godmothers: the chain of relations, repeated in time along the chain of mountains, the harsh Apennine, had traveled up the bitter spine of the boot, up, up, from Vinchiaturo to Ovindoli. And, besides Santarella was the shining eponym of discipline: and of Latial duty. Di Pietrantonio, for his part, knew la Pacori, and Grabber knew her, too: because they had stopped for a drink, in September, at her counter: Zamira! of whose name and whose actions, open or veiled, not to say secret or splendid, legend had become first discoverer or trouvere, then divulgator and trumpeter: from Marino to Albano, from Castel Gandolfo to Ariccia.
Meanwhile Retalli Enea, aged nineteen, son of Anchise and Venere nee Procacci, it turned out, had as his nom de guerre Iginio, not Luiginio: "which doesn't make sense anyway," they dismissed it, in one accord. "Bah! of course not!" they agreed. Tricks of inductance, overloaded wires. Inadequate service. Work on the line. The change of management!
La Pacori, oppressed then by an accumulation of rags, garments, heavy sweaters, and ragged jerseys to dye, which would need the caldron of Beelzebub, her patron, with some suspicion of animal life inside the stuff, at the height of anguish, had sub-contracted the dyeing work, including the green sash to the Ciurlani firm in Marino: which, two days earlier, in the fury of a stupid equinoxial wind with slanting rain, had sent a carriage to collect that rubbish: and the horse had arrived soaked, and so worn out, poor animal, that they had to unhitch him, then dry him off in a broken-down stall, where it rained in, patting his ass and giving him some hot wine to drink. It was there, in Marino, that is, that Pestalozzi had directed himself. There was some stuff already dyed, in a heap, on a table: and other stuff to disinfect or to dye again, in two sacks against the wall, on the ground: but when it came to them, Sora Mara warned the corporal to watch his step, you can't be too carefuclass="underline" "Those little beasts, once they get on to you. ."
Pestalozzi, a man with guts, sharpened his eyes, but with his legs, he drew back at once: "two steps to the rear," snip, snap, with military vivacity: like at close-order drill. After some pecking around by the titular Ciurlani (that is to say Sora Mara herself) in that pile on the table, which was already cooked almost white, purified in the autoclave of any possible quadruped, from it, in fact, the scarf had emerged, tugged by one end, the sash: unfinished: like a serpent drawn from its hole by the tail, green, yes, once, black-green with dots: now green no longer, but not yet its new color which, ideally, was to be a pale brown, because to perfect the pale brown a second immersion was required. Thus spake la Ciurlani.
But how was it, asked the experts, that Zamira, the trouser-maker of I Due Santi, had dared offer the information?
Pestalozzi led them to believe that the idea of questioning her had occurred to him: and "only later on" to Sergeant Santarella. They were the station's two motorcyclists. And at his disposal, in the course of certain private exchanges of ideas with some stubborn types, he had arguments which were not wholly ineffectual, indeed rather convincing, against the great plague of reticence: (Di Pietrantonio, in his mind's eye, was already examining the leather belt): arguments which, in some cases, could succeed in counterbalancing and even overcoming, in doubting hearts, in hardheaded bumpkins, the opposing fear, the terror of vendetta. But with the good Zamira. . there had been no need to go so far. Eh! A woman! And a woman of such stuff, of such form! Not even calling her to the barracks ad audiendum verbum, not even that had been considered necessary: a thing which, for that matter, "you might say," would have caused her more pleasure than fear. Oh! Sergeant Santarella, that is, in other words. . the station, yes, the station had its trump cards, some here, some there: "all through the deck": and Di Pietrantonio, taking the words from his colleague-adversary's mouth, assumed the wisest face in the Cacco office. "In the midst of the theater of operations," Fumi added, serious, turning over a paper, with gentle gravity. A niece… a girl who worked for la Pacori. A little bunch of primroses for the sergeant. Two knitted stockings for his little girl, the baby, Luciana, and a few words to go with them. Few, but well-chosen.
Fumi then recalled that a girl, that Ines, Ines. . — and he started to search, with one hand, in the file of fine ladies, which he kept on his desk as a kind of mindful aroma, like lovely flowers in a vase — Ines. . Ciampini, yes, from Torraccio, or Torracchio, on via Appia, the stop after Le Frattocchie, had been picked up a few evenings earlier by a patrol from the San Giovanni police station: the evening before the crime: picked up for loitering, no identification papers: and on well-grounded suspicion of prostitutional activity in a public place (Santo Stefano Rotondo!), activity for which she was not licensed (a mere amateur, in short). She had insulted the arresting officers, calling one of them "Sergeant Fathead." She had offended, "admittedly probably with only sporadic activity and, on that evening, in an entirely occasional form," she had been caught in flagrant contravention of the Federzoni orders for the reformation of the urban sidewalks under booted regime, "in accordance with that special regulation from the Minister of the Interior on February fourteenth, you know the one, Ingravallo, regulation number seven hundred eighteen — help me out on this — Ingravallo, with that memory of yours! — concerning the moralization of the Capital." Ingravallo didn't open his mouth. "And held for suspicion of complicity in a theft," Di Pietrantonio reminded his chief. "What theft?" "A chicken." "Where'd she steal it?" "Piazza Vittorio." The morning of Wednesday the sixteenth, after the round-up of the nymphs, Corporal Juppariello of the San Giovanni station had shown her to the two women who had suffered the robbery three days before: a chicken-seller and another woman who sold slippers. A theft of an old pair of shoes from this latter, and a chicken, too, nearby, from the next stand: plucked and neckless, as it turned out, but in compensation with three feathers in its ass. And the ones who snatched them, both shoes and chicken, were two characters, a boy and a blond girl, "who had wandered around for some time along the street, in that very crowded hour, then they had separated, and had mysteriously disappeared with the merchandise." The chicken-seller's wife, who was the one who yelled loudest of all, "at first" had thought she recognized in Ines, Cionini Ines of Torraccio, the very blonde who she believed had snitched the feathered creature, or rather, de-feathered. "On second thoughts," however, she seemed to hesitate. A sample chicken, to enlighten the police, had been taken to San Giovanni, in every way similar to its colleague which had vanished from sight three days before — it was now Sunday the 13th — and the same with the two shoes: accused and accuser were then coached together to Santo Stefano, the shoe lady with them. Questioned at headquarters, Ines had sustained and sworn, with many a "I hope to die if it's not true," that she knew nothing of the fowl, in the first place: that she was an apprentice seamstress, though without employment at present: and that she had worked, as a trouser-maker at I Due Santi, just beyond le Frattocchie. "And then what?" Then she had been reduced to coming to Rome, to look for work. "It's no shame to have to look for a job." The chicken let off a terrible stink: it, too, had been taken to the station, along with the two shoes, both lefts; once at Santo Stefano del Cacco, the bird had apparently taken fright and, though dead, it had shat, there on Paolillo's little table: not much, though, to tell the truth. "Let's hear this Ines!"