A Few Drops of Blood (23 page)

The marshal’s secretary was doing something with the coffee maker. It spluttered and started to drip.

She had a wedge of purple lipstick on one of her front teeth, an inappropriate miniskirt and a magenta push-up bra mostly visible through a filmy black blouse. The magenta heels seemed matched with the bra. Tacky, Natalia thought, but if dress up made the poor woman happy …

“Would you like a cup?” she said.

“Smells good but no, thank you. Is he available?”

“Just a minute.” She flounced off.

Natalia took one of the wooden chairs.

The secretary returned. “He says, give him a minute.”

Her cell phone played the theme from
The Godfather
. A moment later the intercom buzzed, and she pantomimed for Natalia to go in.

Without preamble, Cervino said, “Suzanna Rutollo. Lola Nuovaletta. Another woman, unidentified. And a
female officer of the Carabiniere. All four met secretly a few days ago.”

“Secretly? Where did this conference take place?”

“In a beauty parlor.”

“Hmm. Maybe they were having their hair done. Are we investigating hair styles now?”

“Carabinieri socializing with known Camorra is mine to investigate, Captain Monte.”

“We hadn’t all been together in a very long while, Marshal. We went to school together as children.”

“I don’t care if you played doctor together.”

“You must have childhood friends, classmates. No?”

“None who have pledged themselves to the Camorra remain my friends.”

“How nice for you. I find friendships harder to discard. Or maybe you grew up in a better quarter of the city.”

“You know the regulations on this. If you don’t take steps, I’ll have to report it to Colonel Fabio, ma’am.”

“Do what you will, but keep clear of me and mine, Marshal.”

“A threat, Captain? Must I report a threat, too?”

“You’re insulting,” Natalia said and walked out.

Back in her office, she found Angelina on her feet, pacing.

“What?”

“I was just sending you a text. We’ve been summoned to a bridal shop murder.”

They rushed downstairs and commandeered a car just coming off shift. By the time they arrived, the street was already cordoned off by police, and people were pushing against the tape, craning their necks to see what was going on. The locals were bad enough, but they had no patience for the curious tourists.

Natalia and Angelina identified themselves and were
signed into the crime scene. A woman in a purple housecoat grabbed Angelina’s forearm and loudly informed her she was the designated mayor of the block and was going through to monitor the situation.

“No, ma’am,” Angelina said.

“What’s your name?” the woman demanded.

“Angelina Cavatelli, Casanova Station.”

“Your boss is going to hear from me.”

“I am her boss,
signora
,” Natalia said. “What is the problem?”

“She’s probably new, right?”

“What is it,
signora
?”

“We have an arrangement: anything happens on my block, the
polizia
call me.”

“We are not the
polizia
,” Natalia said. “Officer Cavatelli is doing her job properly. That doesn’t include escorting you into a crime scene. Please excuse us.”

Shattered glass covered the sidewalk out front. Inside the destroyed display window knelt Dr. Agari, collecting blood and tissue samples. Raffi, wearing little forensic booties, was snapping photographs of the surround.

Francesca waved a gloved hand to Natalia and pointed to a large plastic bag propped on the sidewalk against the wooden frame. Natalia zipped herself into the hazardous materials’ gown, then slipped a pair of booties over her heels.

“Careful of the glass,” Francesca warned as she stepped into the display.

“Captain,” Raffi called out, and when she turned, the camera clicked loudly.

“What’s that about?” Natalia said.

“The higher-ups want some shots of our devoted men and women at work. For the public information office.”

The dead woman was propped against a mannequin. The white, crystal-beaded wedding gown soaked in blood. Bridesmaids in teal lay on the floor around her.

The victim was slender, no taller than Natalia. Blond hair in a pageboy. Blood spackled the hair, but her face appeared unscathed, eyes wide open. Death had not erased the horrified expression, however. Her scarlet lipstick was smeared, or the killer had slathered the lifeless lips with blood.

“Killed after the dress-up,” Francesca said. “Slit throat. Here in the window, judging from the amount of blood everywhere. Not an easy way to go, having your wind pipe and jugular sliced through. Essentially drowned in his own blood as shock set in, and blood pressure plummeted. He suffered.”

“He?” Natalia stepped closer and saw the shadow of a beard. “Fuck!”

Francesca looked up at her friend, who’d gone pale. “You know the man?”

Natalia nodded. “Pietro Fabretti. He sells music. Vintage, mostly. His shop’s around the corner.”

Francesca repeated the information into her lapel microphone.

“He’s a friend of the gossip columnist, Carlo Bagnatti. Paid for Bagnatti’s funeral, in fact. Sweet man.”

“Any idea who might have killed him?” Francesca said.

“Yes. Me.”

“What do you mean?” Francesca touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

Natalia nodded.

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

Just then a commotion started. Someone tried to push
through the police to get a better view. It was the lady in the purple housecoat.

“I’m sorry. No one is allowed through.” A police officer had gotten hold of her sleeve. Finally he succeeded in pushing her back.

“You get your hands off me! You don’t know me? You must be new.”

“
Signora
 … I’m sorry. It’s the rules.”

“The rules? The favors I do all of you? Since before you were born. Fuck all of you!” The sweep of her arm included Natalia and Francesca as well as the men who waited to load the body into the gurney before she stormed off.

While Francesca and her criminalists processed the bridal store, Natalia and Angelina used Fabretti’s keys to enter his music shop. It was as it had been the day before.

Looking on Fabretti’s desk, Angelina brushed against a button on the stereo, and Mario Lanza’s voice filled the space with its golden tones. Despite several hours of searching, they turned up nothing. Natalia patted an antique violin he had on display and plucked a sad sound from its single intact string.

Whatever Fabretti might have gleaned had gone with him into the next world.

Returning to the bridal shop, they found Fabretti’s body bagged and still waiting to be collected. Natalia remained with the corpse. It was finally loaded into the morgue van and driven away hours later.

Too crushed to deal with typing up the formal report, she turned for home. Halfway there, she stopped the cruiser and got out to walk along the waterfront.

The Buddhists were right, she thought, about life being a wheel. Or was it more like a medieval rack? With joy and
suffering traded off as the wheel turned, bestowing its goodness and inflicting pain in equal measure.

Mariel was at a concert with her new Milanese boyfriend. Lola didn’t answer her mobile; probably occupied with Dominick. Just as well. Contact with Lola was getting sticky.

A man got up from one of the benches on the promenade and started after her. She continued on a few steps and pivoted, her hand on her holstered weapon. The man calmly crossed over to the buildings facing the harbor and turned to look back. He didn’t go into any of them. Just stood there staring—a short man, strong build—eating something out of a paper bag.

Natalia drove back to the station. She turned the vehicle in and started home. A slightly taller male seemed to take an interest in her, too, and she ducked into a novelty shop. The clerk behind the register was engrossed in a discussion with a woman in gold stretch pants. Natalia studied the lipsticks and packages of multicolored hair bands and glanced out at the street periodically. No one loitering.

She spent an even longer time reading the ingredients on a bottle of shampoo and finally took it to the counter. After the clerk rang up her purchase, she stepped out and checked the street carefully.

Camorra spies were everywhere. The man roasting chestnuts. The woman on the balcony stringing up baby clothes stamped with blue and white duckies. The old man on a cell phone in the doorway of the barbershop. Even the antiques dealer dusting his yellow satin Victorian chair. All or any could be reporting her passage. She took a quick look behind her. Her pursuer was nowhere to be seen.

To be sure she wasn’t being followed, Natalia proceeded to the corner and dropped an index card into the red metal postbox mounted on the wall: Her pretend letter
went into the left slot as if it were destined for city mail, as opposed to the right, for every other destination. She listened for footfalls. Nothing.

Closer to home, she saw her old logic professor and his wife, arm in arm, as they crept along the street. His wild hair was mostly gone. Hers was patchy, stiffly curled and dyed a strange shade that glowed the palest blue in the light of the streetlamps.

Arriving at her building, she tried to calm her breathing. Luigina had put a mattress out on her landing. Once a year Natalia’s neighbor conducted an elaborate cleaning. Natalia stepped around it. Luigina was listening to a popular soap. The volume seemed even louder than usual. Natalia wondered if the dear lady was losing her hearing.

She sighed deeply and proceeded, barely managing the last set of stairs. She felt so drained. The light on her landing flickered on and off: a loose wire sending Morse messages. Scrawled in large letters across her door was another.

Morirai
. You will die.

As she opened the front door, Pino rushed out of the kitchen. He was wearing an apron he must have made out of a peasant shirt. He informed her that dinner was ready, anytime “
la princesa
” desired. She said that would be delightful, although the last thing she could imagine was eating a meal.

She lay on the bed, dropped into sleep and dreamed that she and Fabretti were dancing slowly across a marble floor. A waltz. She was in a filmy gown, and he was wearing a tuxedo. Three musicians sat on velvet chairs. Gino was among them.

As they whirled by, Gino looked up, and she could see he was crying.

“
Cara!
”

Pino’s voice woke her.

She tried to erase the image of bloody chiffon and sequins from her mind.

In the course of her career she’d seen death close up many times. Innocent victims as well as evil ones. She had pulled the trigger more than once. But that was because it had been necessary. To save an innocent from death. She coped because she had a role to play: to seek for justice, to hold evil accountable. And that had always sufficed. Until now.

If it hadn’t been for her, Fabretti would still be alive. No question. With the death of the music shop owner, she’d crossed a line. How was she going to be able to live with that?

“First there was fire,” Pino said. “Then the earth—hard stone. Followed by water and sun. Near the
zendo
in Caserta you can see such stars.” He was philosophical, as usual, as he was after they made love, but Natalia was distracted. Nothing felt right. Not even Pino.

She closed her eyes again and drifted. How had Angelina attained such a good balance between love and work? She and her partner had even snagged an apartment for 600 euros a month in Spaccanapoli, three blocks from Giuletta’s clinic, a twenty-five minute walk to Casanova, and they were seriously talking about having a child. So ordinary, so easy. Hell, lesbians could do it. Why not she?

“Let’s get married,” Pino murmured. “Let’s both go to Caserta, lie in the sun, breathe country air, not talk to a soul ever again. We’ll be safe there.”

During their first heady days of love, Pino had accompanied her to the ancient street market where she regularly
bought her food. As crabs waved their pale claws in supplication, he had said, “All creatures want to live.”

He believed that, in the universal scheme of things, one would experience many lifetimes and be reincarnated in one creature or another until reaching the state of nirvana: nothingness. Natalia felt that you lived the life you were born with. And that was it. No other, later lives or second chances. Just now. She looked at him. His eyes looked cinnamon in the flickering light of a votive candle. The same sweet mouth. But she felt distant from him now. Maybe she was the one who had changed.

She needed to wash away the grime. She got into the shower and stayed beneath the falling water a long time, letting the stopper fill the tub. Then she lowered herself in. For several minutes the water cascaded down on her as she quietly wept.

Her parents had assured her she could sell her flat when the time came, meaning when she got married. She badly wanted to sell it immediately, married or not. Take the money and flee somewhere far, to hide in shame for what she’d done. But she couldn’t as yet. It wasn’t over.

Angelina filled her in on the procedure at the morgue. When Natalia didn’t say anything, she asked what was wrong.

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Nor did I. And I have a pretty strong stomach. I’ve seen plenty worse in Palermo.”

“I’ll bet. But this was as gruesome as it gets.”

“He was gay, wasn’t he?” Angelina said.

Natalia nodded.

“Came here to get away from a homophobic culture,” Angelina said. “Thought me and my girl we were finally
free—hold hands, put an arm around one another. No one says squat. The men on the horse. I was okay with that. I’m the new girl on the block, so I deal. But this? I’d be lying if I said it didn’t freak me out.”

“I understand.” Natalia pressed her palms against her eyes.

“My job has never been pretty and, up till now, Giuletta’s been okay with it. But last night she says she doesn’t feel safe and she’s making noise about leaving. I tried to calm her down. Said she shouldn’t be afraid. We’re not dealing with a serial killer here.”