by Jan Weiss
“A courageous man,” Pino said. “It makes sense that he’s here. The proprietor also disdains the mob. If his father hadn’t been one of them, this place would have been trashed a long time ago.”
Natalia remembered asking, when she was small, why Turrido lived with his mother. And didn’t have children. Because he’s a good boy, her mother had insisted. An only child. So he couldn’t leave his Mamma.
“Me too,” Natalia had said. “I’m an only child. So I can’t get married either, or ever leave you.”
Her mother had laughed and kissed her, saying, “No. It’s different for girls. Besides, I have your father.”
Yes, different, Natalia reflected bitterly nearly thirty years later. A woman was still not considered much of anything if she is without a man. Yet it couldn’t have been easy for Turrido. What if he’d wanted a wife and kids? What if he’d been in love? And after the tragedy, he’d been like a madman. What woman would have settled for him then? Was he still bitter? How could he not be?
“At least he’s baking again,” she said.
Pino beckoned the waitress over. He smiled at the girl. “We have a few questions about the photograph you identified of Teresa Steiner to our colleagues. How is it that you know the man who came in with her?”
“Benito? We grew up together. I heard he was becoming a priest, so I was surprised to see him with a girl.”
“Has he been blind from birth?”
“He can see a little. He got sick when he was fifteen. A virus.”
“Are you sure it was Benito—the man with her?” Natalia asked.
“He knew me, all right. I said, ‘It’s me, Tina.’ He pretended he didn’t know me. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I said, ‘My mistake.’ It didn’t seem like he and the girl knew each other that well, but.…”
“When was this?”
“Months ago. He didn’t come back, either. I figured it was because I was here. Did something happen to Benito?” “No. To the girl.”
“The girl in the crypt,” Tina gasped. “Oh, my God.” She made the sign of the cross, then kissed her fingers—a proper daughter of Italy, despite appearances.
“What can you tell us about him?” Natalia asked.
The girl bit her lower lip.
“Anything you can tell us will be in confidence,” Natalia reassured her.
“I don’t know.” She scraped at her thumb. Green nail polish flaked off.
“A young girl is dead. And there may be others if we don’t catch her killer.”
“Even before he lost his sight, he was teased a lot because of his thick glasses. Plus he was short. And he didn’t talk much.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “I was his friend. For a while. Excuse me. I have customers.”
“Please take my card,” Natalia said. “We may need to talk with you again.”
“I don’t want Benito in trouble,” she said, taking the card, frowning, and the next second smiling at Pino. “I’m Tina. Prada, like the designer,” she added, flouncing away.
Natalia’s partner seemed oblivious to the flirtation.
At a table near the door, the owner enjoyed a cup of his own coffee.
“Your baker, Turrido,” Natalia said, “I knew him as a child.”
“Vesuvio’s. Best bread in Naples, I have to concede.”
“Do you know where he lives these days?”
“Off Piazza Gaetano, by the docks. He’s got a room there. He could afford better, but.…” He shrugged. “Did you find out anything about the dead girl? I saw her here a coupla times, but Tina waited on her.”
“We’re working on it, thanks.”
“Scusi,” said a familiar voice behind her. “Natalia Monte?”
It was Turrido. He showed the wisp of a smile.
She smiled back. “So you did recognize me.”
“The uniform threw me. I wasn’t sure. How is your mother?”
“She died. A few years after your poor Mamma.”
“I’m sorry to hear,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “She’s in heaven.” He stepped back. “Eh, eh? Whaddya know? One of the first women on the force, no? And a captain. Mamma would have been proud of you.”
“So, how are you?” she asked. “You disappeared from the neighborhood.”
“People don’t know me around here. They leave me alone. What about you? Married? Kids?”
“No. Just the job.”
“Little Natalia Monte. Who would have thought?”
“A girl was killed this morning. You must have heard about it.”
He looked pained. “Yes.”
“She was a student, a beautiful girl. She came into the café a few times, according to Tina.”
“I don’t wait on customers.”
“But you come out sometimes, to look after the orders.”
“Sometimes.”
“She was tall, a redhead. One time she was with a priest.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you. Come by some time. For a visit.” He told her his address. “My bell is number five.”
“That would be nice—for old time’s sake.” They smiled at each other again, and he left.
“Turrido,” she said to Pino. “He played the harmonica. Did magic. He could make his thumb disappear. And found coins in our ears.”
Pino nodded. “You know Tonio the Dwarf? He didn’t do tricks, but he threatened us with curses. We were terrified. We thought we’d stop growing like he did. What time is it?”
“Time to go.”
“You’re a million miles away,” Pino said as they walked out. They were jostled on all sides by lunchtime traffic. Gates clanked down in front of the shops.
Natalia said, “Did you notice? The small corno around her neck? I wouldn’t have taken her for the type. Tina’s kind of cute.”
“Whose neck? That girl’s?” Pino said, putting on his sunglasses.
“Yes, that girl. Tina. My mother had a huge horn in our living room. She was convinced that our neighbor was a jettatore. What made her think the woman was a witch, I don’t know. She’d been our neighbor forever. A pretty lady, she always wore lipstick, even when she was old. My mother couldn’t very well shun her, so she bought this giant coral horn. I’m sure your aunt had one. It wasn’t until recently that it occurred to me that my mother was jealous because the woman made my father blush.”
“Jealousy,” Pino said, steering his bicycle around a bald German doing push-ups next to a handwritten sign: Will Work For Food.
Truth be known, Natalia’s best friend wore a corno, and she herself said “buongiorno” to the spirits upon entering her own house.
* * *
4
* * *
When Pino reached Posillipo, he chained his bicycle to a post and entered a fashionable apartment building. He mopped his face with an old handkerchief in the elevator. On the twelfth floor, a beautiful woman opened the door when he knocked.
“Si?” Not unpleasant—formal.
“Carabiniere.” Pino showed his ID. “Sergeant Loriano.”
“Oh.” She stepped back to let him in. Her white pleated skirt matched the pristine apartment. The apartment was filled with fresh-cut daisies. A nod to Pino, a quick kiss for her husband who was sitting on a white couch, and she was gone.
“Please, sit down.” Professor Marco Lattanza pointed to a white couch that was the twin of the one he was sitting on. “Can I offer you something? Lemonade or a drink, Sergeant?”
“Lemonade would be nice, thank you.”
Professor Lattanza went to fetch refreshments. Through the picture window, ships as small as toys zigzagged in the bay.
Professor Lattanza returned with the lemonade.
“You know why I am here,” Pino said. “You are Miss Teresa Steiner’s thesis adviser, yes?”
Lattanza closed his eyes and pressed a finger against them. “Teresa Steiner was a thrilling student. She was working on a monograph of our neighborhood street shrines. She wanted to know everything about the history
of Naples. Since I am an expert, well.…”
Pino reached into his bag for the photographs. He handed Lattanza two of them.
Professor Lattanza put down his glass. He looked at one and then the other. “My God, the photos, of course. You’d think the worst. But believe me, we weren’t intimate with one another any more. Teresa took a short leave of absence after her mother was diagnosed with cancer. When she came back, she hardly smiled. She’d been an incredibly sunny girl. She also changed her thesis topic. I had the feeling someone else was mentoring her and helping with her project. She stopped confiding in me. She is”—he took a deep breath—“she was such a beautiful woman.”
“Were you home last night?”
“Am I a suspect?”
“Routine questions. Everyone who knew her will be questioned.”
“Certainly I was here. I worked late, but that is normal. Marissa can vouch for me.”
“Anyone besides your wife?”
“I find that insulting.”
“Again, merely routine.”
“Of course. Forgive me. It is upsetting news. I can’t imagine anything more horrible for a parent. If there’s anything I can do.…”
“We’ll need a statement as soon as possible. If you could come by? Later today or tomorrow would be best.”
“Certainly.”
Nice to be rich, Pino thought, back on his bike, coasting downhill past large, elegant houses. He swerved to avoid a fat gold caterpillar inching its way across the street. If it could survive another ten feet, it might end up a butterfly and dance among the roses in the Orto Botanico for the balance of its brief life.
He didn’t need to pedal until he reached the cobblestones along the waterfront. An ocean liner floated out of the harbor, its horn bellowing. A melancholy sound of departure. He closed his eyes. For a moment, there was only the wind, the goddesses, and the sea.
“Campesino!” a driver screamed at him out the window of a Mercedes.
“Watch where you’re going!” a woman’s loud voice assaulted his ear as she raced by in a convertible. She had a nasty face, and a bony arm, which she waved at him. “Bastardo!” she yelled, gunning the engine.
So much for goddesses, Pino thought, and headed for the Carabinieri station.
On Piazza Borsa, students tipped their faces toward the sun. A few were reading. Girls and boys in jeans, scruffy T-shirts, and wearing backpacks; a few girls in short tops, their gorgeous midriffs on display. Had she ever been that young?
Natalia reached the Quartiere Porto, and then Largo San Giovanni Maggiore. There was the Bar Université, where she had spent countless happy hours daydreaming and reading her textbooks. Across from it, the Dante and Descartes Bookstore, another favorite destination where she had wasted many afternoons browsing. Today there must have been fifty silver scooters clumped in front of the bookshop, the popular color this year. She’d forgotten the beauty of the Cappella dei Pappacoda, the small chapel opposite the school, with its gothic marble portico and shabby door.
A monk scurried out. His heavy brown hassock must have been uncomfortable in this heat, but his only visible acknowledgment of such earthly concerns was that he was barefoot in sandals, instead of wearing the traditional heavy shoes. His rope belt swung as he walked past.
The scent of marijuana was strong in the outer courtyard. There were one or two cars parked there, but mostly bicycles. Not much had changed. The same beat-up bulletin boards and plain stone stairs, a wide balustrade, the classrooms open to the courtyard, overlooking a few neglected plantings.
A professor passed—an older portly man in a linen suit and gray straw hat. A briefcase stuffed with books and brimming with yellowed papers was clutched to his side. How many times had he delivered the same lecture? He’d probably been teaching when Natalia was a student, though she didn’t recognize him.
Her first year at the University, Natalia was one of hundreds of students streaming into the shabby gray and white stone building. She did well in her studies—the first year, her paper on the female iconography of the Church won a prize, and in her second year she was honored with an invitation to a conference in Rome. She had only been to Rome once before, on a religious pilgrimage with the nuns when she was thirteen. When her professor told her she was going, her mother made a special outfit for her. She hadn’t thought of it in years. Lemon-colored, the dress had a fitted bodice and a full skirt. Her mother made a little jacket to go with it. They even found shoes to match. Afterward, she never wore the dress again. Natalia felt a stab of anxiety as she entered, for the first time in years, the place where she had suffered her disgrace. She walked across the marble foyer, feeling badly until she remembered Teresa Steiner.
Bypassing the elevator, she went to the stairs. A group of students was discussing the latest Almodovar film: “What do you mean, gay theme? There is no such animal!”
Maybe there was progress, after all. One could not imagine this discussion when she’d been a student. She climbed the stairs to the third floor. At the end of the corridor, the Titian poster was a little more faded than when she’d last seen it. The Olivetti typewriter had been replaced by a computer. The same cactus with the deceptive, soft-looking growth sat on the sill.
“Buongiorno.” A woman looked up from a pile of papers.
“Buongiorno, signora,” Natalia said, holding up her ID. “Is Professor Massone in her office?”
The red lipstick bled into the cracks around the mouth, and her face had a few more wrinkles, but it was the same department secretary. A devoted Catholic woman, she began the majority of her sentences with “If God wishes it.” Or was it “If God wills it”? She still wore her signature high heels. When she stood, the crooked seams of her stockings marked her thin calves.
The day Natalia’s thesis was refused, she had taken her, sobbing, into an empty office, brought her coffee, and sat with her until her friend Mariel arrived.
Professor Massone was reading a journal as Natalia was shown in.
“Excuse me,” Natalia said, “I’m here about Teresa Steiner.”
Professor Massone stood up. “Come in.” She extended her hand, “Please, sit down. Terrible. I can’t believe it. She wasn’t my student officially, but she came to me to talk about her work. She didn’t want her thesis adviser to know. Most of the male faculty is hostile to the idea of feminist studies. I am in the enemy camp.”
“Please elaborate, if you will.”
“She felt terribly alone. She’d just found out that her mother had cancer. Her mother responded well to treatment, but the prognosis wasn’t good. She had taken some time off and had come up with an idea about our street shrines, that they represented the female.”
“Female?”
“Yes, because they were originated by men but were female iconography and tended by women from the earliest days. Her work was cutting-edge. She would have been an academic star. She was on to something. We Neapolitans take the shrines for granted. We don’t see them really. Teresa was—how can I say this? She refused the compromises that become necessary as we get older. You know better than I, the Camorra involvement with the shrines. If you think about the thousands of shrines that exist, you realize how lucrative they are. At the very least, a way for the women tending them to ease their poverty, feed their families, maybe start a bank account. There wasn’t a day my mother didn’t toss a few coins into the shrine on our block.”
“My mother too,” Natalia said. “We think Miss Steiner was collecting for Gambini.”
“You know, I was afraid of something like that. I tried to warn her without spelling it out, but she had a beautiful enthusiasm and you didn’t want to clip her wings. Whatever she was doing, she knew Professor Lattanza would disapprove of her decision to use the shrines for her thesis topic. He’s not a mobster, don’t get me wrong: he’s a snob.”
“And her lover?”
“Yes. To make matters worse. But you know that already.” She made a fist, then stretched her fingers. “Ter
esa Steiner was one of the most interesting students we’ve had in a long time. Are you all right?”
“Maybe a glass of water.”
Professor Massone opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Pellegrino and a glass.
“Here. It must be the heat.”
“Probably,” Natalia said. “Thank you.”
Teresa Steiner’s thesis adviser and her own years ago were one and the same man. Natalia too had been close to completing her doctorate, until the same Dr. Marco Lattanza pressed against her as they rode alone in an elevator at the conference they were attending in Rome. She pushed him away, refused to sleep with him. A month later, he scrawled Indefensible across her black-and-white title page in blood-red ink.
Too ashamed to tell her parents what had happened, for a year she lived at home, not doing much of anything. It was Mariel who’d finally rescued her from depression, encouraging her to join the force.
“Better?” Professor Massone asked.
“Much. Thank you.”
“I’d like to publish Teresa’s thesis—posthumously—as a tribute to her.”
“Anything else you can tell me about her?”
“She was a nice girl. Polite. Ambitious. If she had lived, she would have commanded attention.”
“Ambitious enough to use Dr. Lattanza to advance her own career?”
“Hard to say. I had the feeling she came from a poor background. I never saw her in a pair of jeans. Always a skirt or dress. They were colorful but cheaply made. We are—were—about the same size. She was slimmer, but close enough. I had a couple of Prada pieces I couldn’t fit into any more. I didn’t want to offend her, but I took a chance. I needn’t have worried. Like a child, she was so excited. She ran around the desk to kiss me.… oh, God!”
“I’m sorry,” Natalia said.
“No, it’s okay. We have to find out who killed her,” Professor Massone said firmly. “I feel confident with you on the case. It will not be ‘overlooked,’ as so often happens when it is a female who is killed. Meanwhile, will you excuse me? I have a class in forty-five minutes, and I have not even peeked at my notes.”