These Dark Things (8 page)

Mariel made a face. “What is it with these skirts you can see through? My mother would have killed me if I ever wore something like that.”

“Mine too.”

Two girls skipped by in short skirts, arms around one another.

“Cute,” Mariel said.

Natalia laughed. “Remember? The crochet stockings?”

“Of course.”

They’d worn them under their school uniforms in grade school. Natalia got caught. Mariel waited for her loyally while Natalia did her Hail Marys and scrubbed the rectory stoop. To celebrate their crime, Natalia and Mariel had spent the rest of the afternoon sipping cappuccino in a fancy café.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Natalia said, buttering a piece of the thick bread.

“What?” Mariel asked. She reached into the basket to tear off a wedge of the same.

“Teresa Steiner, the girl who was killed? She was a student at the University.”

“Yes.”

“Her thesis adviser…?”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my God. Lattanza. Did he kill her?” Mariel asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if he did!”

Eugenio brought two coffees. Since they’d been there last, another one of his teeth had gone. A front tooth, unfortunately. No one mentioned it as he put the plates down. To be poor in Naples was to diminish, to grow used to one’s losses. Food was a necessity, dentists a luxury. They had tried to slip him the money for the dentist, but Eugenio was proud and always declined.

Two men seated together near the dessert cart stared at Mariel and Natalia. They were in their fifties and wore dark glasses.

“They think you’re cute,” Natalia teased her friend. Mariel kicked her under the table. Bruno, another waiter, danced by, singing a rhyme about the
bruschetta
he was delivering, the innocent bread and the tomato sauce like blood.

“Compliments of the gentlemen,” Eugenio winked, as he put a bottle of limoncello and two glasses on the table.

“What do they think—we’re tourists?” Natalia laughed. “Tell them ‘thank you’ from Carabiniere Captain Monte and her friend.”

Message transmitted, the men were suddenly uninterested in the women at the outdoor table.

“Are you going to finish your bread?” Natalia asked.

Mariel slid her plate across to Natalia. “I shouldn’t have any more. I’m getting fat! I couldn’t button my favorite pair of pants this morning.”

“What are they,” Natalia teased, “size two? You’ll never guess who I ran into!” she added.

“Nick Keroci?” Mariel clapped her hands.

Nick Keroci had been Natalia’s first crush when she was seven and he ten. Black shiny hair, black eyes. The summer Natalia turned eight, he’d moved with his family to Palermo, breaking the hearts of many in the neighborhood.

“I haven’t thought of him in years. I wonder if he is still as handsome.”

“He’s undoubtedly a knockout,” Mariel said. “Never married, waiting for you to grow up.” She spooned the froth off her cappuccino.

“Anyway. Not Nick: it was Turrido I ran into. The baker. Remember him? Vesuvio’s Bakery?”

“Of course.”

“He’s living in a run-down neighborhood by the docks. He’s practically a recluse.”

“Too sad,” Mariel said, dabbing her lips. “Any progress on the new case?”

“The body of the poor girl was posed in the mausoleum under the church.”

“How awful,” Mariel said. “A religious crazy?”

“Could be, I suppose.”

“
Or
your Professor Lattanza. I mean, he’s a recognized expert on the Kingdom of Naples. He knows our catacombs certainly. Listen, I have a delivery coming to the shop in a few minutes. Call me later, okay?”

“Will do,” Natalia said as the two friends kissed. “
Ciao!
”

Better than a sister, Natalia thought, watching Mariel stride away, her beautiful long legs moving purposefully below the white pleats. Mariel turned and waved. Then she was lost among the crowds.

Natalia owed Mariel a lot. When she first signed on for the three-year course at the Carabinieri Officers Training College in Rome, she had soon wanted to quit the male dominated organization and avoid the persecutions visited upon its first female members. Mariel forbade her to. “What message does it send,
cara
, if you give up? That would be their victory. No. You can’t.” She wouldn’t hear of it. So Natalia had stuck it out, painful though it was, and graduated second in her class, earning an assignment to the Corazzieri Regiment, which protected the president. Or administering its logistics, anyway, as the honor guard was all male. The other reason she had endured was Sergeant Pino Loriano.

When Natalia arrived for her first day of work at the nondescript yet intimidating six-story building on Via Casanova—the Stazione dei Carabinieri—Pino was the other most recent hire and already paired with the notorious Marshal of the Carabinieri Tommaso Cervino, famous for his work on the Nicholas Green case. Though he was pudgy and going bald, he’d informed Pino that: “A good playboy makes a good Carabiniere. And a bad playboy makes a bad Carabiniere.” He was serious, and a serious misogynist.

When Natalia walked in, Marshal Cervino threatened to quit. He wasn’t the only one. Dirty pictures and obscene cartoons appeared on walls in the office, on her locker, remarks were whispered and complaints made about the inconvenience of having to accommodate a female. The men’s club closed ranks. Natalia felt like an outcast. A couple of times she went home in tears.

Slowly things improved. Colonel Donati partnered Pino Loriano and Natalia Monte in the elite ROS investigatory unit, and the lewd comments died down. True, Natalia and Pino were assigned the smallest office, the one without air conditioning and with the flimsiest cabinet for files. Jesus watched from his cross on the wall as the manual typewriter was carted away to make room for the computer Natalia insisted on, and they were in business.

For their first formal ceremony together, Natalia invited Mariel. Natalia wanted to show off her black Armani uniform and Mariel was properly impressed, carrying on about the polished hats and the leather belt with red trim. As plainclothes investigators, Natalia and Pino rarely had the opportunity to wear their uniforms, which were constricting. The boots, the hats, and even the holsters needed to be shined each time they were worn.

After they had worked together for a month, Pino brought her a present: a book of ancient Japanese poems.

“How beautiful!” she said. “But what’s this for?”

Her partner was busily straightening a pile of papers. He blushed. The phone rang before he could answer. When he got off, he told her it was for “toughing it out.”

“In that case,
I
should bring
you
a present,” she laughed. “I couldn’t have made it without you. Really.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, not looking at her. But it was true.

Soon they were assigned a small mob murder in Castelnuovo. Forchetti territory. The dead man might have been trying to muscle in. A hard case to investigate, as no one was willing to talk. When she arrived home that night, her downstairs neighbor, Luigina, was outside her door with her ghost-like cat.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Luigina said, rubbing her hands on her apron. “Carlo Forchetti, that dog. He’s at his sister’s. Thirty-eight Via Villari.”

It was not the last time Luigina slipped Natalia valuable information before anyone else tracked it down. Forchetti’s arrest and others got her promoted to a rank above her partner’s. He was the only male in the force not bent out of shape about it.

The church bells tolled the hour. Natalia counted eight.

She took out a lipstick and reddened her lips. The mayor had called a meeting of the crime council. Every couple of years, after a particularly bloody week, a panel of experts from the North convened to discuss the problem of crime in Naples. For two or three days, they converged on the city. Bodyguards surrounded them, glinty eyed, ready to use their assault rifles. They even stood outside the restaurants where the experts dined on their expense accounts and caught up on gossip. A few came up with clever theories, a solution or two were bandied about. They would be put into a report. The mayor always made a point of seeing them off at the train station. And nothing changed.

The morning’s meeting was a hodgepodge of experts. The Americans were familiar with the Mafia but knew little about the Camorra, so Natalia was asked to brief the assembled. She hoped she wouldn’t be lectured in turn. The last time, she’d been treated to an academic’s monologue on the connections between the poverty of the inhabitants of Naples on the one hand, and organized crime on the other. As if they hadn’t figured that out for themselves long ago.

She was delighted to find that the group consisted of no more than two visitors: one from Berlin, one from Washington, D.C. The colonel introduced her.

“Is the Camorra in the States?” the tow-headed agent from Washington asked.

“They first surfaced in Brooklyn, New York, in the early 1900s, led by the Neapolitan extortionist Alessandro Vollero. By 1916, Vollero was
capo di tutti capi
, boss of the eastern seaboard. Eventually, the Camorra and the Black Hand—the Mafia—went to war for control. Vollero ended up in Sing Sing and the Camorra lost their upper hand. Here in Naples, the Camorra dominates, as the ’Ndrangheta does in Calabria at the toe of Italy, and the Sacra Corona Unita runs Puglia.”

The gentleman from Germany wore green glasses, which he liked to whip off when making a point and whose earpieces he liked to nibble when contemplating. “Your local chieftain,”—he consulted his notes—“Mr. Gambini, has interests in our country that are expanding rapidly enough to concern us. He is in the construction business in Germany, for instance, and is getting into the sanitation field.”

She nodded. “Here too, of course. He holds a very lucrative contract from the city for garbage removal. One source here told us Gambini is also moving drugs into Europe through Poland and Latvia.”

“Great,” the American said. “Which varieties?”

“A little cocaine. A lot of heroin. He’s testing the markets in those countries too.”

“How big is his market here?”

Donati’s cheeks puffed as he pondered. “About half a million euros a day.” He raised his eyebrows and chin, signaling Natalia to continue.

“Recently a front company of Gambini’s shipped some cheap wine to Berlin. Over eight thousand cases. Before it arrived, it was decanted into luxury-brand bottles and re-priced.”

She was uncomfortable saying it in front of Colonel Donati, but she said it anyway: “Gambini’s hold over his territory is growing, and the Camorra’s over the city. The cartel’s profits increase daily. They are endlessly inventive. Recently, our police shut down a mob-run radio station in Palermo after it discovered secret messages being transmitted to imprisoned
Mafiosi.
”

“Secret messages?” The American actually smiled at this, flashing perfect teeth and making Natalia self-conscious about her own.

“Yes,” she said, “in song dedications.”

“Why am I not surprised?” said the American. “What can you tell us about this Gambini?”

“He’s a
guappo
, a senior member of the Camorra. He specializes in the costly and nonexistent. Pretending to import expensive fresh fish by air for mob fishmongers, exporting various goods that didn’t exist, and charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical procedures like organ transplants that never occurred.”

“
Ja
,” the German official said. “Your clever Mr. Gambini is consolidating power, taking advantage of the ’Ndrangheta and Mafia war in our territory.”

“I’m not familiar with this ’Ndrangheta,” the American said.

“Another secret criminal brotherhood,” Natalia said. “It dominates the drug trade at the moment. Takes in about thirty billion euros annually.”

The German nodded. “I’d be more than happy to see them neutralize each other. But I’m afraid for innocent civilians. Just a few hours ago there was another assassination. This one in a mall near Düsseldorf. A forty-five-year-old woman out shopping was caught in a crossfire and gunned down, along with four men who were the primary target.”

“Monstrous,” Colonel Donati exclaimed with accompanying gestures. “No one is safe.” He swiveled toward Natalia. “Now we have to worry about Mr. Bagarella’s and Mr. Santa Paola’s Camorra organizations too. You know this latest?”

“Only that Bagarella’s wife committed suicide last year,” Natalia volunteered.

“That’s right. And Santa Paola’s wife, Elena, was killed six months ago. So the two widowers spent some time in prison together. And now it appears they’ve exchanged wedding bands and multiplied their power, making life for the rest of us even more interesting than it already is.”

“Pardon,” the German said. “The killings near Düsseldorf? In the pocket of one male victim we found a singed prayer card with a picture of the archangel Gabriel on the back.”

Donati gestured for Natalia to explain. “Part of an initiation,” she said. “Recruits for the ’Ndrangheta hold out a hand while a prayer card is lit, and recite, ‘As this holy prayer card burns, so my flesh will burn if I betray the Family.’”

The visitors thanked her for her time and enlightening talk and retired to morning coffee in the canteen.

Donati waved Natalia closer. “Two bodies were dumped just last night on Torre del Greco, in front of the tax office. Heroin is on the surge again. I’m thinking, the Teresa Steiner murder—what if the murder victim was actually Gambini’s accomplice moving heroin into, say, Germany? Can we tie Gambini to the Teresa Steiner murder?”

“Not yet,” Natalia said. “Not enough evidence so far.”

Or ever, she thought. Gambini was too smart and kept himself too far removed from the actual deeds.

Colonel Donati’s phone rang. “I have to take this. Report to me as soon as you have something, okay?”

In the hall, Natalia ran into Carabiniere Doppo. After a long engagement, he was going to marry his fiancée, who was from a small village south of Rome. Natalia congratulated him. The long engagement was a requirement—not from either family, but from the powers that be—to make sure Angelina’s family was not connected to the Camorra or another of the secret criminal societies. Carabinieri were not free to pick and choose spouses like ordinary citizens. There had been too many cases of the criminal brotherhood using their pretty daughters as lures to infiltrate the force through unwary lovers. The same waiting period applied as well for the handful of women serving on the force.