by Jan Weiss
Despite the rumor of concubinage and sexual misconduct, the Jesuits had always been the most decent of orders. Members took their vows of poverty seriously; witness Father Pacelli’s worn trousers and his dog-eared sweater, mended more than once at the elbows. How different from the majority of clerics, who patronized fancy tailors for their trim black outfits and elaborate robes: like the princes of the Church, they were well cared for by housekeepers and assistants. No sign of such coddling here. In the kitchen, a novitiate cooked greens for a soup. Another washed dishes. The linoleum and tablecloth were worn and stained. A faucet dripped badly above a deep sink.
Natalia said, “We appreciate your arranging for us to talk to Benito.”
“Of course,” Pacelli responded, brushing back his sandy hair. “Such a terrible thing, murder.”
Father Pacelli led them to a doorway. Pino stopped to read the inscription above it: Praise be to you my Lord with all your creatures—especially Brother Sun who is the day and through which you give light.
“A canticle of St. Francis,” Pacelli said.
“Father,” the dishwasher called after him, “I need to speak with you.”
“In a moment, Milo,” Father Pacelli said.
Pacelli opened the door leading to their private quarters. “His room is at the top of the stairs, third door on the right.”
The stairway reminded Natalia of Catholic School with its strong smell of caustic soap. Together they ascended the steep stairs to the second floor. On the landing, a sagging wooden table with reliquaries and a tray of ex-votos—a child’s hand and an adult foot. Someone interested in antiquity. Natalia sighed. Even among the Jesuits, the yearning for symbols, no matter how crude. But maybe she was being unfair. These had probably been abandoned here centuries ago and had remained ever since beneath the melancholy gaze of Jesus.
They found the monk’s door. As soon as they knocked, Benito opened it. Had Father Pacelli told him they were coming?
“Benito Gambini?”
“Si.”
“I’m Captain Natalia Monte. This is Sergeant Loriano. We’re Carabinieri. We need to ask you a few questions.”
The room, as expected, was spartan. A tiny window overlooked a courtyard encircled by a medieval covered walk. There was a bed, a nightstand, and a guitar. In a wardrobe niche hung two pairs of pants and a shirt. Benito sat on his bed. His eyelids, closed, were bruised half moons.
Pino said: “We believe you knew the girl recently murdered in the alley next door—Teresa Steiner.”
The monk sat down on his bed. He bowed his head and took a deep breath. “Teresa Steiner was my friend. She was doing research on the role of shrines in Neapolitan society. I helped her sometimes. She was being followed around by her professor, a creep, and appreciated the company. She’d gone out with him for a while. After she broke it off with him, he wouldn’t leave her alone, she said. Kept phoning. Waited for her everywhere. Pestered her.”
“Did he threaten her?” Natalia asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. He said he’d block her graduate project. Teresa was sure he had stolen students’ work before and passed it off as his own. She worried that he was planning to make off with hers.”
“Did you see or hear anything suspicious the night she was murdered?” Natalia asked. She looked out the narrow window onto the roof of the meditation walk.
“I did hear something. It woke me. But I slipped back to sleep and was awoken again a little while later by commotion in the street, when I went down to see what was going on.”
“How much sight do you have, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Light and shadow. Like when you look through a mist. On a good day I can make out faces. At night I can’t see anything.”
“And you think you heard something happening in the street and it awakened you, although your room does not face the street and the walls of the monastery are ancient and thick?”
“My hearing is acute … God’s compensation for my vision, perhaps.”
“So you may have heard Teresa Steiner being assaulted?”
The monk’s face flushed. “Yes.”
“Can anyone confirm that you were here in your room the night she was killed?” Natalia asked.
“Where would I go? We have prayers in community after our evening meals and retire early.”
“Did you ever go to the crypts?”
“Yes, sometimes. To help the bone cleaner, Gina Falcone.”
“Even with your vision so poor?”
“The dark doesn’t bother me, Detective.”
“Did Teresa visit you?” Natalia asked. “Was she here the night she was killed?”
“No.”
“No? Are you sure you didn’t come on to her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re Aldo Gambini’s nephew.”
“I have been forever. Yes. And always will be. What of it?”
“Do you do work for him?”
“No. I am a servant of our Lord.”
“Did Teresa meet your uncle?”
“Yes. I asked him to help her out.”
“How?”
“A family illness had reduced her funds. She was visiting the shrines for her research and running out of money. He hired her to attend to the donation boxes there. He has a franchise from the Church to gather the donations. She oversaw them in this district and serviced some herself.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“What? That is none of your concern.”
“I regret to say that it is now.”
“Your question is inappropriate and bordering on offensive. Such things are private. Between myself and anyone for whom I may have such feelings.”
“It may soon be between you and the State’s Prosecutor.”
Benito waved off further talk.
Father Pacelli was talking to the dishwasher when they passed through the kitchen again.
“How can I prepare the dinner without the knife?”
“Something wrong?” Pino asked.
“Nothing. A missing knife. Some Japanese thing. I’ll ask if anyone has seen it after Mass. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“What do you think?” Natalia asked as they stepped back into the street. “About the knife.”
Pino looked back at the monastery. “Probably nothing. But I can follow up if you think it might be important. Odd that it’s missing. Probably a coincidence.”
“Probably.”
“But I think our Brother Benito was emotionally involved with the murder victim, whether or not it was consummated or reciprocated. He has obviously been greatly affected by her death. Whether he had anything to do with it, I’m not sure.”
“He’s a suspect,” Natalia said, “any way you look at it. The young woman’s mother was ill. She needed money fast. Benito helped. Interceded with his mob-boss uncle, aided her thesis research and shrine collections. Perhaps she showed interest in him as a man. When he realized that she was involved with others.…” Natalia turned to her partner to see how the theory played.
“A suspect,” he said, nodding. “Certo.”
“I’m going to check into him further.”
“Let’s look into the Japanese knife, too.”
As they entered the courtyard, water splashed them on the head. They looked up and found the culprit watering her plants, blooming with yellow flowers.
“Mi dispiace,” she said. I’m sorry.
“Non ce problema, signora.”
Pino leaned his bicycle against a wall beneath a web of vines, hoping the rusty frame would discourage anyone from taking it. Gold-tinted leaves and drying laundry extended across the courtyard. Pino and Natalia climbed to the fifth floor. The hallway was a tangle of toys. A baby cried nearby. Natalia rapped on the door.
“Not home.” A tired-looking woman with lanky ashcolored hair had come out of the door next to the bone cleaner’s apartment. She was shaking a mop. Children’s voices leaked from her a
partment. Pino reached into his pocket for his ID.
“Eighty-two, my mother. Stubborn. She should be home relaxing with her grandchildren, not getting messed up in police business. Whadda you gonna do?”
“She may have some information about a murder case.”
“I knew it.” The woman pressed her palms against her eyes. “Mother of God.” There was the sound of breaking glass. She threw the mop down and slammed into her apartment.
Natalia and Pino had not heard the door open behind them. Gina Falcone stood in her doorway. Her apartment smelled like a chemistry lab.
“We didn’t think you were home,” Pino said to the bone cleaner.
“I didn’t want my daughter pestering me with her problems and her children. She thinks I have nothing better to do than chase after them. Come.”
The bone cleaner waved away Natalia’s badge and motioned them in. There was a small balcony that would provide light if the curtains hadn’t been drawn across the windows. A pile of bones sat on her table. The flat was so full of piled boxes and stacks of everything that ever passed through Gina Falcone’s hands that there was hardly a place to stand.
“Nice cat,” Natalia said. A musty old tabby was camouflaged on the bed.
“Bobo,” Gina said and made a kissing sound. A toddler in diapers and a shirt smeared with something—hopefully chocolate—stumbled in after them. “Christ! I forgot to close the door. Go! Out! Home to Mama. Nonna’s busy.”
The baby fell over, shrieking. Gina put him out and locked the door.
“We brought you something to eat,” Pino said. He removed a plastic container from a bag.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said. She carried it into the kitchen and cleared a space for it among the bones.
“Friarielli and sausage?” she said. “My favorite.”
She’d been washing bones in a bucket by the sink. Pino recognized a femur and a thighbone. She poured the contents of the container into an empty pan. “I can finish later.” Bobo jumped on the table, sniffing the pan. “Get!” Gina hissed, clapping her hands. Pino cut off a piece of sausage and put it on the floor. The cat rubbed against his leg, purring.
“Don’t spoil Bobo,” Gina said.
“We have a few questions,” Natalia said.
“No free lunch—is that it? Whaddya want to know?”
“Teresa Steiner’s killer?”
“Nobody was down there when I found her.”
“You knew the girl was visiting the shrines that Gambini controls.”
“Yes.”
“You know Mr. Gambini.”
“Aldo Gambini and his brother Pasquale and I grew up together. Pasquale is Benito’s father. Benito’s aunt was my deskmate in school. I’d starve if it wasn’t for a few people at the cemetery and Aldo Gambini. Aldo doesn’t forget. The government never remembers us unless we cause trouble.”
“If Aldo Gambini knew you told us about the shrines, he wouldn’t like it. If he thinks you ratted on him—”
“He wouldn’t touch a hair on this head.” She tugged a clump of hair, her finger crooked with arthritis.
“Family ties have never stopped him in the past.”
“What do you expect? He is an important man. He does what he must. God watches over me.”
“God may watch over you, but who will intercede if it goes hard for you?”
“Don’t be a smartass. You young people don’t know what hard is. When there was no work and people set fires in the streets, and when they ate all the exotic fish in the old aquarium during the War—Gambini helped me through all that. Where was the government then?”
“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?”