These Dark Things (16 page)

“Of course.”

“You have a difficult job, Officer Monte, very difficult. You see many things no one should ever lay their eyes on. If you ever feel the need of solace, please … you know where to find me. After ten
P.M
., you can ring the bell, and someone will come—myself, or one of the brothers. We all need help. Even priests. The strength of a higher power. Or even a human ear. A comforting hand.” He touched her shoulder.

“Thank you, Monsignor.”

They were standing so close to one another that she could see the copper freckles on the bridge of his nose, and his lovely green eyes. A handsome man, Natalia realized as an announcement came over the loudspeaker and a train pulled into the opposite track.

No “
Scusi
” from the woman with an enormous suitcase, purple lipstick, and anxious look as she bashed into her. A young man hurried behind. He tossed his cigarette and rushed with her for the train.

It was Natalia’s decision to start with Benito’s parents. Pino was happy to find himself Natalia’s passenger in a department Alfa Romeo, zooming past the large ugly buildings that ringed the old city. Before they set out, she phoned Lola and left a brief message on the answering machine without identifying herself.

They stopped for lunch at a dingy
trattoria
near Cosenza. They were the only customers. The
padrone
cooked their meal—surprisingly good
risotto ai funghi
. Now he was sitting at a table, drinking a glass of wine. A large black fly buzzed around their table.

“A walk?” Natalia suggested.

The
padrone
was busy with paperwork as they passed. On the street, a dog howled. For a second, the clouds blew apart. There were some run-down buildings. A face at a window checked them out. It was too chilly to dally. In a few minutes they were on a country road. There was a long wall beautifully composed of ancient smooth stones, with vineyards on the hillsides. Then a gate. Neglected, the wood had rotted, the gate fallen open.

“Look.” Natalia picked up something off the ground. “Lemons.” She handed one to Pino. “There’s a grove back there.” She pointed to a few trees.

“
Then rain falls, wearying the earth, the winter tedium weighs on the roofs, the light grows miserly, bitter the soul. When one day through a half-shut gate, among the leafage of a court the yellows of the lemon blaze and the heart’s ice melts and songs pour into the breast from golden trumpets of solarity.
”

“That’s beautiful,” Natalia said.

“Montale, ‘The Lemon Trees.’”

They got back in the car. When they arrived at the farmhouse, the kitchen door was open.

“Benito?” His mother grabbed the cross on a gold chain around her neck. Jesus’s eyes were diamonds. “He’s okay?”

“Can we come in, Signora Gambini?” Natalia flipped open her identification card.

“Pasquale!” she called, as she directed them to a couple of chairs. “My husband.”

When he didn’t come, she walked into the other room. Natalia stood up and followed her.

The curtains were homemade. The walls hadn’t been painted in a long time. There was one small bookcase with more empty shelves than books. The couch was shabby, but the chair Pasquale was sitting in must have been expensive—it had a feature that allowed it to swivel and tilt.

“Get up!” She pounded him on the arm. “Carabinieri.”

Pasquale sat up, rubbing a hand over his beard. Then he stood, making sure his fly was zipped. A large dog followed him toward the kitchen. When it saw the visitors, it barked. “Shush.” Pasquale swatted the dog on the nose.

“Have you heard from Benito recently?” Natalia asked.

“What’s this about?” Pasquale asked, looking at his wife like it was her fault.

“Did Benito ever talk to you about a girl?” Natalia said.

“Benito is a man of the church.” The father was fully awake now. “He’s about to take holy orders.”

“Not quite,” Pino corrected him.

“Benito is a good boy.”

“A girl was murdered inside his church last week,” Natalia said.

“Oh, my God!” The wife clutched her rosary.

“This had nothing to do with my son,” Pasquale said.

“We hope not. But he knew her.”

“No!” The mother said. She picked up a dishcloth and put it back down.

“Sit down,” Natalia said, guiding her into a chair.

Pasquale stared out the window.

“When was the last time you spoke with your son?”

“Benito calls us every week,” his mother said, “usually Monday. He’s busy on Sundays. He called us yesterday.”

“Do you know where he called from?” Pino asked.

“No. He said he wanted to come for a visit. Usually he comes only once a year—around Christmas time. I asked him, was something wrong. He said he missed us, that’s all.”

“Aldo Gambini is your brother, isn’t he?”

“Aldo?” Pasquale raised his head. “Yes.”

“We know. We’ve been talking to Gina Falcone. She discovered the body.”

“We grew up together.”

“Yes,” Pino said. “We don’t want to upset you further, but we think Aldo may have had something to do with the murder.”

“Aldo is no good.”

“You don’t have a relationship with your brother?”

“No.”

“What about your son?” Pino said.

“Did he have a relationship with his uncle?” asked Natalia.

The old man shook his head. “No—nothing.”

“The TV dish and your rosary,” Pino said. “Expensive, no?”

“Benito.” Pasquale said. “He saved. From his work before he was a
monachello
. We don’t like handouts.”

His wife fingered the beads of the rosary.

“We want to help your son,” Natalia said. “If you hear from him again, call us right away.” Natalia put her card on the arm of Pasquale’s chair.

Driving the Alfa back to Naples, Pino turned to her for a moment. “You have that look,” Pino said. “Thinking about Professor Lattanza again—right?”

“I don’t know, it’s so convoluted. It would be like him to construct a labyrinth that only he understands. He must have resented Teresa Steiner from the moment she showed him her research.”

“That’s a big stretch, isn’t it, from jealousy to murder?”

“Jealousy as a motive for murder is right at the top of the motives list, no?”

“Romantic jealousy, maybe. But professional?” He signaled a lane change and eased into the fast lane.

“This could be both.”

“Teresa Steiner is hardly an innocent in this. She got involved with a novice monk, for Christ’s sake. The nephew of a mobster. Maybe with the mobster too.”

“And she certainly did with an egomaniacal professor who lusted after her and her thesis. She was a tremendously smart girl, but devious as well and not too discriminating about men. And as a result, she’s in the morgue. You think her soul deserves an ‘F’ for fucking them all, or a merciful passing ‘D’ for dead? What, are we judging her
right
to live based on
how
she lived?”

Pino shook his head. They didn’t speak for some moments.

He said, “Would Lattanza even have been
able
to carry her body down into those crypts?”

“He’s always prided himself on keeping fit.”

“We don’t know for sure if Teresa and Benito were involved, do we?”

“We don’t?” She laughed. “We do, Pino. We do. They weren’t just friends.”

“You think it’s Professor Lattanza who killed her?”

“I think Marco Lattanza. Yes.”

Pino said: “But if it’s someone else and we’re not paying attention.… Teresa Steiner could have easily fallen afoul of Gambini. She was killed near his nephew’s church, probably with a weapon from his nephew’s monastery kitchen. From what we are hearing about her, she could have easily found it fun to sneak into the monastery for a tryst with him.”

“Benito was in love with the girl,” Natalia said as she lowered her sun visor. “Gambini has a soft spot for his nephew, whom she jilted to have an affair with Lattanza. Maybe she bedded Gambini too.”

“I’m just pointing out,” Pino said, and paused. “Look. You may be right about Professor Lattanza, but your antagonism for him—”

“Listen, Sergeant Loriano. I’m responsible for the investigation. It’s
my
ass on the line!”

“By rank, you are my superior. But we’re a team, no?”

They fell into a sullen silence.

“Hey,” he said. He squeezed her shoulder. “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, you’re right. I’m too close to this.”

“You’re being hard on yourself.”

“No. I’m not. This is important. I’ll do better.” She looked at him. “Friends?”

“Foolish question, Captain Monte. Foolish questions don’t deserve answers.”

She checked her mobile for messages: no callback from Lola.

Pino said, “You think we should worry about the car that’s tailing us?”

Natalia glanced up at the mirror. “Undoubtedly Gambini’s minders.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption.”

“If Gambini’s responsible for Teresa Steiner’s murder, I worry that we won’t be able to tie him to it. And at the same time I worry that we will, and that we’ll have to arrest him and run the gauntlet of Camorra vengeance.”

Pino smirked. “What is it the Americans call that—
lose-lose
?”

“Did you hear the rumor around the station that Colonel Donati is contemplating retirement?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “The Colonel becomes eligible at the end of the year. A major Camorra arrest would be a fine cap to his record. He’d get a commendation from the prime minister, a handsome sendoff to commemorate his faithful service. He’d go off into the sunset, and we’d get hung out there like a bag of laundry.”

“Is the car still following us?”

Pino checked the mirror. “Yeah. Yeah, the silver Wrangler. Two back.”

“Listen. Tomorrow—”

“Yes?”

“Be in uniform. We need to confront the man himself.”

10

Pino removed the black uniform from the cleaner’s plastic coverings and prepared it for use, polishing the brim of his hat, his belt, and his shoes until they shined, polishing his buttons, brushing the epaulettes and reddish insignia chevrons that designated his non-commissioned officer’s rank of sergeant:
vice brigadiere dei Carabinieri
. Natalia was undoubtedly doing the same. Done, Pino turned to his pistol and cleaned the weapon, then loaded extra magazines for it. They were going into the heartland of the enemy. They needed to impress. They wouldn’t have much protection beyond their deportment. Half past eight, Natalia rang the downstairs bell and he went down. She was at the wheel of a blue official patrol car, with
CARABINIERI
in large letters running above a red horizontal stripe along the length of it. A blue bubble light sat on top. Her jacket was on a hanger in the back. He added his hat to hers on the back seat and slid in next to her. She sped off before he was even belted in.

Natalia drove fast with the window down. Three kilometers out of town, the countryside grew lovely. Mist burned off the fields, filled with orange poppies. Horses lifted their heads to watch them passing. Pino recognized the trees. Walnut. There must have been fifty walnut trees. They proceeded a few more miles at a fast pace, until Natalia suddenly slowed the car and pulled off the road. Luckily, there was no traffic. Without speaking, they got out of the car and walked under a row of sheltering oaks encased in vines, flanking a large field of uniformly placed walnut trees that had started to blossom. Dried shells were scattered on the ground.

“Like my grandparents’ farm,” Pino said.

Every Neapolitan knew that traditionally the nuts had to be picked on San Giovanni Battista’s Day, when they were still green. Their dark brown liquor was extracted and made into an after-dinner drink, a heavily spiced, almost bitter digestive. Natalia had never cared for the drink, but she loved nothing better than a fresh walnut and picked up a whole nut and handed it to Pino. He took her hand and brought it to his cheek.

“We’d better go,” Natalia said, palm against his face.

“It would be nice to spend the day here. It’s a shame we have to go.”

They drove on as if in a time machine, rolling backward five centuries to a feudal period when the barons and
signo-rotti
, the princes, ruled, issuing directives and laws. The
guappi
, the senior Camorristi, had supplanted this aristocracy in its authority and entitlement.

Though built on the bones of the poor, the Camorra was extremely class-conscious. The top mobsters dressed well, mixed with polite society, and banked their millions in Switzerland, in Liechtenstein, and on Gibraltar. They bought politicians and preyed on shopkeepers, selling them counterfeit goods to retail. They smuggled tax-free contraband cigarettes, fixed soccer playoffs, and dealt arms, and drugs.

Camorra life revolved around the oligarchs like Gambini. He was no less a feudal lord. A dictator with total power. No Italian government had challenged the Camorra or the other mafia brotherhoods since Mussolini.

Natalia and Pino were very much on their own. Unprotected. If the two of them met an untimely death, the public would express outrage. The media would speculate, the government investigate and make its customary self-righteous noises. For a while.