These Dark Things (10 page)

“We haven’t found the girl’s murderer,” Natalia said. “I was hoping you might have something to tell us. Her family deserves an answer.”

Gina was silent.

“What about Benito Gambini?” Pino said.

“The boy is a
monachello
. And blind. Why would you bother with him?” She lifted a stone absentmindedly. Natalia recognized it. The
pietra del sangue
—the bloodstone. More superstition.

“Who did you see in the alley the night Teresa Steiner was killed?” Natalia asked.

Gina pursed her lips.

Natalia remembered that as kids, she and Mariel had called her
la strega
—the Witch. Now she looked like an ordinary woman—grown old.

Pino cleared his throat. “Signora, we can make life difficult if you won’t cooperate.”

“I talked to you Carabinieri already,” the old woman said and picked up the fat tabby cat. “She was writing something for her University—about the shrines. I warned her. Be careful. You can ask the wrong person a question, and the next thing.… But you can’t tell young people anything.”

A tiny girl appeared, face smudged and wreathed in curls. “Nonna! Nonna!”

“Nonna’s busy. Go away. See the lady?” She pointed at Natalia. “She’s going to put you in jail.”

Gina Falcone swept up her granddaughter and took her out the door. A few seconds later, she was back.

“My daughter thinks I don’t have enough to do, without babysitting.”

“Someone saw you in the alley the morning the girl was killed.”

“So?”

“Did you see anything, anybody?”

“The girl was German, not from Naples. There are no bone cleaners there. She shouldn’t have to spend years in Purgatory. I wish I could clean her bones, once they are free of the corrupting flesh.” She paused. “Santa Maria del Purgatorio,” she said. “I can tell you anything you want to know about the church. I know it better even than old Father Cirillo. I was married there. Decades ago. A lot of people were getting married then. The war. My mother had a piece of silk. She saved it for me from when I was born and made me a gorgeous wedding gown.

“I cherished that dress forever. But my daughter wasn’t interested. Miss Fancy-Pants said she didn’t want some old rag. I tried to warn her about her fiancé. A ladies’ man before they were married. For her, the stars rose and fell on that two-bit thug. Left her when she was pregnant. Died a natural death, I’ll give him that.”

She made the sign of the cross and kissed her fingers. Natalia decided they’d had enough and signaled Pino with a raised eye. They told Signora Falcone they might be back.

Outside, a turquoise motor scooter backfired; a young girl with rainbow-colored hair clutched the driver around the waist. Street sweepers in lime-green uniforms propped their orange brooms against a wall to take a break. The colors dazzled after the dreary gray of Signora Falcone’s morbid world.

“I’m Teresa’s friend, Elsa Halme.” The girl hovered by Natalia’s office door.

She was wearing boys’ pants, charcoal gray, and a rustcolored sports jersey. Her hair was short. It looked as if she’d cut it herself without the benefit of a mirror. It was too short on the sides, and she had it flattened on top. It still had all the elements of a Mohawk.

There were several piercings—one above her left eyelid, just beneath the wisp of her brow, and two in her nose. Natalia tried not to stare, or to think about what must happen when this girl caught the inevitable cold.

Elsa Halme was a large girl, big-boned, who hunched over to hide her height. Her pale blue eyes were her nicest feature.

“Come in,” Natalia said. “Have a seat. So you knew Teresa Steiner?”

“We were close friends.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know where to start. My Italian is not so good. I’m from Finland.”

“You’re doing fine. Can I get you something? Some lousy coffee?”

This brought a smile.

“No, thanks. I am having trouble sleeping. I meant to come sooner. I’ve been too upset.”

“Would you feel more comfortable if I closed the door?”

“Perhaps. Thanks.”

Natalia did so and returned to her desk. “So?” she said gently.

“Teresa was my dearest friend at the University,” Elsa said, looking at her hands. “My only friend in Naples. I’m foreign, for one thing.” She looked up at Natalia. “People can’t figure me out. I don’t dress feminine. It doesn’t help that I’m shy. For a while I was very unhappy. Teresa and I were in a couple of classes together. One was a life drawing class. Not to boast, but I’m pretty good at rendering. She was taking it as a lark. She admired a couple of my drawings and invited me for coffee. Said she knew what it was like to feel like an outsider. I was comforted for the first time. Then she took me to see the Caravaggio paintings at the museum. They were just so”—Elsa broke down momentarily and wiped at her cheeks—“exquisite.”

When Natalia had been a student at the University, the Museo di Capodimonte was her second home, the Caravaggios her favorite as well. Often she had been the only visitor there. She mentioned them once to Pino when she was filling him in on her aborted career at the University. He had played football in the park on Capodimonte, but had never stepped inside the museum. Natalia took him to that very room with the Caravaggios, and he’d nearly swooned.

“What kind of a student was she?” Natalia asked.

“Super,” Elsa replied, somewhat recovered. “Insightful, thoughtful. Teresa was on the fast track academically. She used primary sources almost exclusively, and even went into the streets to research. Her thesis adviser and sometimes other students made fun of her, but she was on to something important. That the early deities were female until the men took over and suppressed them. And she made other connections. Dangerous ones, maybe. Teresa was particularly interested in the Church and the Camorra.”

“Ambitious,” Natalia said.

“Yes. She was. It took me a while to understand it. We don’t have such complications in Finland. We have socialized medicine, not organized crime. Existential questions. We have aquavit. Good and evil? God? No one believes in that stuff. And if they did, God wouldn’t be male.” Elsa laughed. “My country is cold and quiet. People keep to themselves. Finland is black and white and gray most of the year. I wanted to escape. The Bay of Naples was wonderful and startling after the Baltic. The colors and the people. Sorry. I don’t mean to be patronizing.”

“On the contrary,” Natalia said. “Teresa Steiner was colorful as well, no?”

“Amazing, yes. Wardrobe and personality both. She loved Naples, but she was not like Neapolitans—she was sunny, happy. About a month ago, she said she needed my help. She had to go home to take care of her mother. You know about her mother?”

“Yes.”

“That’s when she told me she was working for Mr. Gambini, that he had given her a small territory to supervise, meaning the collection of donations left at the shrines. She was making some extra money from it. Not a lot, but something. She wanted me to take over her territory for a few days. She confided in me. I knew everything—even about her affair with her professor. I worried for her, but she said she could take care of herself, and she could. I mean, she did until.…”

Elsa started to cry again.

Natalia handed her a tissue. “This can’t be easy for you.”

“Her professor was in love with her. But Teresa was tired of his power plays. She wanted out of the relationship. When she told him, he got very angry.”

“Did he threaten her?”

“Yes. That’s when I told her.…”

“Told her what, Elsa?”

“That I was gay and knew she wasn’t, but that I loved her anyway and would stand by her.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She laughed. Hugged me and laughed. ‘You’ll get over it,’ she said. And then we spent the night together.” Elsa wiped at a tear streaking her cheek.

“Was she gay?”

Elsa smiled. “No. Just curious. I won’t. Get over it, I mean.”

She might well not … not for a long time, Natalia thought. Whatever else she was, Teresa Steiner had been a powerful personality.

“After she was killed,” Elsa said, “Professor Lattanza asked me to stay after class—I have one course with him. He warned me that if I told anyone about him and Teresa, he’d make sure I didn’t get my degree. As if anyone in the department didn’t already know.”

“How did she meet Gambini?”

“She went for a weekend to a resort with Professor Lattanza. They had a fight and he stormed off. Gambini picked her up while she was eating dinner in a restaurant by the waterfront. She thought he was a harmless old man.” Elsa shook her head. “Even I knew better. The next day he took her out on his yacht, said he had a nephew her age in Naples. A nice boy she should meet. She thought that was sweet of him. A ‘gentleman,’ she said. She told him about her mother and her cancer. He offered her work collecting from the shrines. She said it was a great opportunity not only to help her mother, but to see how it all worked with the shrines.”

“I noticed she had some designer clothes. Odd, on a student budget.”

“Hand-me-downs. Whatever she wore looked stylish, even things she had bought on the streets. She insisted that I keep something when I covered for her, but I wanted her to send it to her mother. She went and bought me a beautiful poster for my room and sent home almost all the rest of the money she took from the boxes. My poor Teresa.”

“A dutiful daughter,” Natalia said.

Elsa smiled sadly and nodded.

“Yeah. Except … Teresa Steiner’s mother?” Natalia added softly. “She died when Teresa was a child.”

“Excuse me, Captain,” Giulio interrupted. “You have an urgent call from Sergeant Loriano.”

While Natalia took the call, Elsa scribbled something on a piece of paper, then slipped out.

“Pino. What do you have?”

“What kind of money did we find in Teresa Steiner’s room? Anything?” Pino asked.

“Thirty euros in a drawer. A few in her purse.”

“She had an account. I’m at the bank now.”

“Which one?”

“Banco di Napoli. A month before she died, Teresa Steiner opened a bank account with a cash deposit of 21,000 euros.”

7

Pino headed for the Zen Center. He bumped over the black cobblestones past the markets setting up on Vico Nuovo ai Librai. Grapes and oranges beckoned, jewel-like, despite the fact that the morning air already stank with garbage.

The newsstand on his corner was still shuttered: a death in the family. Workers standing at high tables just outside coffee kiosks hurriedly gulped espresso and tossed the paper cups onto the ground. At the other end of the chasm, between the two-hundred-year-old residential buildings, Vesuvius rose in the distance. Pino’s mother had been a girl the last time it erupted.

Walking briskly, he soon reached his destination. Inside the Zendo’s meditation room, Pino took off his jacket and sat on the floor. All three Buddhist monks in Naples lived in the rooms on the floor above. Rarely did Pino see them. Rarer still to find them floating through town in their cherry robes.

But this morning proved the exception. One of the monks beat on the
mokugyo
, a drum that looked like a blowfish. An offering of oranges sat on a porcelain plate before the shrine. It was only when Pino looped his legs into the crosslegged Lotus position that he realized there was someone else sitting closer to the enshrined golden Buddha.

The diamond sutra. Pino recognized the chant and joined in the Sanskrit, familiar from years of practice. The diamond sutra was a favorite: Subhito asks Buddha about the nature of reality. “Reality is change,” says the Buddha.

It was definitely a girl, judging from her voice. Unfamiliar with the chant, she was trying to make sounds that fit in. The sound of her small sobs broke the silence when the drumming and chanting stopped. Pino stood and walked to her.

It was Tina, the beautiful waitress from El Nilo. Her short blond-and-green hair was done up in small batches banded together in stalks all over her head. Even with the bizarre hairdo, she was stunning.

“I’m okay,” she sniffled. “Just a romantic problem.”

“Anything I can do?”

“No.” Tina shook her head.

Then she was standing and running, her unhappiness swirling after her. It was quiet in the room. The monk had slipped out. The incense, a pile of ash, smoked sweetly. Pino inhaled, imagining the sea and a seagull’s melancholy song.

When he came out, the sun was bearing down through the rusted leaves of the lone tree on the avenue. He looked for the girl. Silly to imagine she would have stayed around, but he looked anyway. Nowhere. He retrieved his bicycle from behind Tommaso’s newsstand and set off.