These Dark Things

by Jan Weiss

  The area was properly cordoned off, though the flares on the ground seemed redundant in the glare of the morning sun. Natalia flashed her ID as she walked to the white van that stood idle across several lanes. Its cab door was open and the driver sat upright, safety belts still in place. City police milled everywhere, clearing the way for an ambulance, containing gawkers that stood by the side of the road, directing traffic around the impediment, directing one another. Her “nemesis,” Marshal dei Carabinieri Cervino, was chatting up the constabulary.

  “I guess they broke his horns,” she overheard him say. The two chuckled.

  The dead driver was a bloody mess. On what was left of his head sat black devil’s horns like those a child might wear on All Saints Night. His thick white hair was streaked with blood. She would know that pompadour anywhere. Angelo Tortorino. Proprietor of a popular gourmet shop and restaurant in the Fontanelle district. He was nearly unrecognizable, the single shot having taken out an eye and most of his mouth, which was stuffed with euros, a comment apparently on his fatal greed.

  Natalia flashed on the man she’d seen lying dead in the street when she was eight. Her schoolmate’s father, a shoemaker who worked out of a tiny shop below their apartment. He had often treated the two of them to biscotti and hot chocolate in the winter, apricots and strawberries in spring. He’d missed a payment and mouthed off to the collector, the neighbors said. And then he was dead, like this.

  According to scuttlebutt, which Natalia had been privy to, Tortorino had spoken against Gambini and the rotting garbage ruining his restaurant business, had even put up a picture of the mob boss wearing devil’s horns.

  Cervino dispatched officers to protect the immediate family. The immunity the Sicilian mafia reputedly had once granted family members and innocent civilians had never been accorded by the Camorra. If the offender was “in the wind,” relatives were substituted: wives, mothers, cousins, even children. No one was exempted from the Camorra’s wrath and vengeance. Not old girlfriends or distant cousins. Priests, policemen, prosecutors, investigating magistrates—all had been targets of Camorra assassins.

  A Sorrento detective approached her, his ID clipped to his lapel.

  “Tried to cart away his own garbage, from the looks of it. I guess he got desperate—but, Jesus, what was he thinking?”

  “Yeah,” Natalia said.

  Neapolitans were an odd lot, living as they did at the edge of a volcano. When an eruption threatened, the city would activate its plan to evacuate the populace in a forty-eight-hour window. Police and firemen would be deployed and all roads would be made outgoing. Yet no one would leave town. The beltway and highways would remain empty, the citizens ensconced in their favorite cafés.

  “The horns?” the detective said. “Driven into his head with a nail gun.”

  “You missed an important call-out, Sergeant,” Natalia said, looking up from her notes at Pino.

  “My bike had a flat. Sorry.”

  Natalia had given up on her campaign to insist that Pino wear his watch, which she had bought herself, from the Bangladeshi by the train station. Pino had worn it for one week, forgot it the next.

  “Maybe,” she said, “you need to think about giving up that bicycle of yours.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  She held out the report she’d just typed. “Angelo Tortorino. Gunned down this morning, trying to haul away some of his garbage.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yeah. The man died for a load of garbage.”

  “Sorry to have missed the call-out, Captain.”

  “Apology accepted. But Pino, it really is time you joined this century, know what I mean?”

  Pino took the report and began scanning it.

  “Colonel Donati,” she said, “has called a meeting in a few minutes to discuss this killing and the garbage crisis. A female resident of the Spanish Quarter is in the hospital. They suspect cholera. Likewise an elderly priest who took ill last night. He died on the way to the hospital.”

  They were the last to enter the conference room. Colonel Donati was already at the lectern.

  “Tourism is being negatively affected. The mayor is pissed. She hates the publicity the garbage crisis is generating and would just as soon let the rival mob carters settle their problem as they always have—violently and privately. Except there’s nowhere for the garbage to go, really. The landfills are full and officially closed, despite the insistence of the prime minister, who is carrying on about the unfinished incinerator project, but that’s not happening either.”

  “Why kill Tortorino?” Marshal Cervino asked.

  “Disrespect. An object lesson for everyone else. A week ago, he put up a picture of Gambini in his store showing him with devil’s horns. A week later.…”

  Cervino cleared his throat. “I hope he was already dead when the nails went in.”

  “The medical examiner hasn’t said yet.” Donati shook his head. “Just when things couldn’t get worse, a child fell ill yesterday after eating buffalo mozzarella. Seems the accumulation of garbage is poisoning the water runoff, which is poisoning the water table, which is contaminating the local water itself, whose flavor gives our mozzarella that distinctive taste.”

  Pino said, “Yeah, E. coli. Who is challenging Gambini on the garbage removal?”

  “The consensus guess is that Bianca Strozzi’s group is ramping up, leasing and buying heavy hauling equipment. Since Gambini began expanding beyond Naples and looking abroad, his group’s power base has dissipated a little at home, making Miss Strozzi more ambitious. And more aggressive. What is happening is a struggle between Camorra factions over the right to haul garbage. Never mind that it has nowhere to go at the moment. I suppose it’s the principle of the thing.”

  “I don’t think it is that alone,” Natalia said. “I suspect that the trash collection is vital for another reason.”

  “That being?” Donati asked.

  “I think Gambini has been using the trucks to camouflage the transport of major drug shipments. This trash-collection crisis has forced them to invent alternate methods and reduce the size of the quantities they can move at a time, probably considerably smaller than the shipments the massive garbage trucks cloaked. They want to hold on to their means of making big deliveries undetected.”

  All eyes turned to Natalia. “Gesù,” Donati said. “That gives me pause.”

  “Sort of perfect,” Cervino added. “Who is going to crawl through all that crap to search for illegal drugs? You may well be right, Captain.” It was the first positive nod the marshal had ever given her.

  Colonel Donati collected his papers. “Marshal Cervino will handle this murder investigation. We will keep you abreast of developments at further briefings.”

  Finally, work was over for the day. Pino arrived home and collapsed in his armchair. On the coffee table sat his bracelet made from the seeds of the tree beneath which Buddha sat and found enlightenment. Ordinary-looking brown seeds carved and strung on elastic. Sometimes Pino wore it, mostly not.

  Pino had only been a practicing Buddhist for five years. He had left the Church when not yet an adolescent, soon after his mother died. And even if she had lived, he might have come to the same decision. He hated the Church’s take on sin and damnation. Life on earth was enough of a challenge.

  Impulsively he slipped the bracelet on. There was a knock on his door. It was close to ten P.M.—late for a visitor, and Pino’s visitors were few and far between. Natalia? More likely Signora Lucci from upstairs, with a plate of food—or a new scheme to save his soul. Just in case it wasn’t, he took along his pistol, holding it barrel-down behind his thigh.

  “Yes?” He cracked the door open, expecting to see his neighbor. But it was the girl from the bakery—Tina. In a black lace skirt—the style they were all affecting—with a petticoat sticking out. And leggings, in spite of the heat. To top it off, she was wearing hiking boots. But her midriff was bare and smooth, her lips moist and red.

  She lau
ghed. “You look funny in pajamas.”

  Her hair was pinker than last time, when he’d seen her crying in the meditation room of the Zendo. Christ. He rubbed his beard. Barefoot, he was in cotton pajama bottoms with umbrellas printed on them. No shirt.

  “What are you doing walking around so late?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Can I come in?”

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “Do you think I’d make a good detective?”

  “I’m going to call a cab for you.”

  “Don’t. Please. I’m eighteen. You’re safe … sort of.” She leaned into the doorway. “I have a problem.”

  “A police problem, or another problem of the heart?” he asked.

  “The latter. And it’s the same romantic problem as before.”

  “What?”

  “You, Sergeant Loriano.”

  Pino sighed. “You are not an adult.”

  “Nor am I a child. I know what I’m doing.” The pout was perfect: sullen and erotic.

  “You think you know what you’re doing. You are involved in a case I’m working on. I could lose my job.”

  “Shhhh. Nobody will know. Please?”

  Pino led her through to the kitchen. He’d give her a drink of juice or water, he thought, then call a cab. Knowing all the while that he was lying to himself. You’re a coward, he admonished himself. If anyone at the station could see this. If Natalia … Christ!

  But Natalia had made it clear that she was not interested in him. And who could blame her? She could do better than a solitary, eccentric man, he a lowly sergeant, she a captain. His last girlfriend had accused him of being a monk. Some monk. Weaknesses of the flesh, Pino thought, and loneliness. Rationalizations, he knew, as he reached for the drinking glasses, and the girl pressed up against him, wrapping her soft arms around his back.

  * * *

  8

  * * *

  When Pino woke, it was daylight. His neighbor across the courtyard had already hung out his laundry. Everything he owned was either black or white. His clothing punctuated the faded pink walls. Pino’s arm brushed a soft breast. Pink hair blossomed on his pillow. She’d draped one leg over his, and she was snoring. He couldn’t resist looking at the child’s tuft of hair covering her sex. He took in the magnificent body that had been his last night.

  A dragonfly floated into the room. Gauzy wings. Tiny beads, like emeralds, along its back. Pino could hear the old woman in the apartment above, talking to her cat. No doubt she had already been to confession. For her, a day without its burdens, its suffering, didn’t count.

  Pino showered and returned wrapped in a towel. He found Tina awake.

  “Come here, baby,” she said.

  He walked to the bed and kissed her.

  She grabbed his shoulders, trying to pull him down.

  “I have to get to work,” he said.

  “Can’t you take a day off?”

  “Not today.”

  “You know something odd? Really weird?”

  “What?”

  “Turrido.”

  “Who?”

  “Turrido, the baker at El Nilo.”

  “What about him?” Pino pulled on his pants.

  “I don’t know. He’s a loner. A little odd. Three days ago, he came to work dressed in black. Except for his apron. But nobody had died. It’s not like he’s married or anything. He’s too strange.” She laughed. “And a couple of times when I went into the kitchen, he was down on a knee, praying. I know he’s religious, but … I think he knew the girl who was killed—Teresa Steiner.”

  “What?”

  “See? Now I have your attention.”

  “Tina, this isn’t a game. Why didn’t you say something before, when we came around?”

  “I didn’t think it was anything. Then I remembered. About a month ago, I left a scarf in the bakery, and I went back for it late in the afternoon. Turrido was sitting at a table talking to a woman. He never sat down, so that was odd. I figured she was a relative or something. Her back was to me. But I could swear she had red hair. Wouldn’t I make a good detective? We could work together.”

  Natalia thumbed through the files of open cases on her desk. The stack was growing. The oldest and thickest file was one she had just signed out: Vesuvio’s Bakery, in which Turrido’s mother had died. She and Pino spent an hour with it, then left in the unmarked Fiat. They drove through the Forcella district past the main railroad station, down the hill toward the bay. The city flattened as it progressed to the sea. Near the harbor, government buildings and boxy sixties hotels paralleled the strand. They followed a band of green parkland toward the seedier waterfront farther east. Finally arriving, Natalia got out and stretched. Freighters and cruise ships plied the harbor, emitting melancholy sounds of arrival and departure that carried across the water. She closed her eyes. For just a moment there was only wind and sea.

  “Fuck,” she said. Pino was surprised, as she rarely cursed.

  Two little girls twirled umbrellas. One was blond, and the other dark-haired—“Snow White and Rose Red,” as Natalia recalled from a childhood tale. They followed after as she and Pino walked.

  “You’re a police!” the youngest announced, pointing at Natalia.

  “Not police, stupid. Carabinieri! Don’t you know anything?” the older one said.

  “We’re national police. It’s almost the same,” Natalia said to the dark-haired one. Her name was embroidered on her jumper. She couldn’t have been much older than three, and she looked like she was about to cry. “Anna, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She smiled, dignity restored. A front tooth was missing.

  Natalia and Pino found the address. Natalia went to the downstairs door alone, carrying a box. The kitten inside it, by some miracle, had fallen asleep. Natalia rang Turrido’s bell. There was no intercom. If he didn’t want to answer the door, what could she do? But he did—unshaven and disheveled.

  “I went by Nilo. They said it was your day off.”

  The kitten stirred. “What’s that?” Turrido said.

  “I brought you something. Would you mind if I come up?”

  “If you want,” he said, letting her in.

  They climbed the stairs without talking. When they got into Turrido’s room, Natalia put the box down.

  “I remembered how much you loved cats,” Natalia said, opening the box. A tiny gray kitten jumped out and rubbed languidly against Turrido’s legs.

  “See? The kitten wants to stay with you. I brought some food for her,” Natalia said. She took cans out of her bag. “Keep her for a week. If you don’t want her, I’ll take her back. Okay? For me?”

  “Okay, I’ll take the kitten. For now.”

  There were clothes strewn on the bed. Dirty dishes in the sink. And a rotting sack of garbage. The kitten nibbled on a dead potted plant.

  “What happened to your plant?”

  “I’m a good cook and baker, not a gardener.”

  “What shall we call the cat?”

  “Purity.”

  The kitten ran right up to him. He picked her up and handed her to Natalia.

  “Purity. Good. I brought some extra food. For Purity.”

  “Thanks.” Turrido said. “Listen, I’m cooking a chicken. You ever have my chicken? You could stay? It’s my mother’s recipe. Delicious. There’s more than enough.”

  “Turrido, maybe you shouldn’t dwell so much on the past. Remember you told me that once?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Another time,” she said, “I’d love to. But I’m on duty. We’re in the middle of cases. Remember the Teresa Steiner murder I told you about? The girl who patronized your café?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Perhaps you remember when she’d had a fight with her professor and went to El Nilo for coffee and your wonderful bread—for solace. Was she crying?”

  Turrido nodded.

  “Did you bring her her coffee?”

  Turrido nodded again. “And
bread.”

  Natalia could see it. He was a shy man. Not attractive to women. But perhaps attracted.

  “Teresa was grateful,” he said. “She was nice to me whenever she came in. She kissed me once, the way she would have kissed an uncle. I misunderstood at first. I thought.…” He gave a dejected wave. “I am very sorry she is gone. She cheered up my day.”

  A tear trailed down Turrido’s cheek. Purity purred at his feet.

  Natalia touched his arm. “Good-bye,” she said, pulling the door tight behind her.

  Pino was waiting outside. “Well?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Colonel Donati motioned Natalia and Pino to the handsome wooden chairs that faced his desk. The military haircut was clipped tight at his neck, evidence of his daily trip to the barber. Over the years various people had urged Colonel Donati to modernize his office; he always refused, preferring the Spartan appearance.

  “Do you mind?” Donati asked as he shook a cigarette out of a package. “I’ve fallen off the wagon, so to speak.”

  He opened the window behind his desk. In the past couple of years, gray had overtaken his thick black hair, and lines now eroded the once-youthful smoothness of his skin.

  Once a year, between Christmas and the New Year, the colonel hosted a dinner for the detectives. Everyone drank too much and said things they probably didn’t really mean to. Instead of bonuses, there were gifts. Thoughtful ones, probably selected by Elisabetta: Gucci scarves, leather belts, excellent bottles of wine. Last year, Pino had opened his small gift box and found a laughing Buddha.

  “I had a call from Gambini’s lawyer just now.”

  “Mmmm.” Natalia pushed forward on her seat. “We believe Teresa Steiner was working for Gambini, collecting shrine money.”

  “Was Gambini involved with the girl?”

  “There’s no hard evidence of it,” Pino said, “but they met socially before he employed her.”

  “And the other suspects?”