These Dark Things

by Jan Weiss

  “Pretty girl,” he said. “Luca’s photo in the paper didn’t do her justice.”

  “We heard she was doing some work for you at the shrines in Naples.”

  “A lot of people work for me maintaining the shrines. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand,” he said.

  “Yeah. It must be hard to keep track,” Pino said.

  “This one is dead,” Natalia said. “Murdered below one of your shrines.”

  Gambini shrugged. “People die. Whaddya gonna do?”

  “Have you talked to your nephew lately?” Natalia said.

  “Which one?”

  “Your nephew Benito, who lives with the Capuchin monks. Have you spoken with him recently, in the last day or two?”

  “My nephew is a holy person. A novice monk. I am fond of him, but we are separated by age and interests and don’t communicate much. Besides, I’ve been traveling.”

  Natalia referred to her notebook. “Yes. Nine countries in eleven months: the U.S., Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Germany twice, England, the south of France.”

  “I travel for business. What of it?”

  “Drug business.”

  “Pharmaceuticals. And cruise ships and art galleries, among other ventures.” Gambini tapped the ends of his fingers together.

  “Yes.” Natalia turned a page. “You have quite a portfolio.” She read down the list: “Spring water bottling, shoe manufacturing, meatpacking, earth moving, cement. Travel agencies, restaurants, movie theaters, farms, apartment complexes, service companies, clothing factories, wineries, a sugar refinery, travel agency, professional soccer team, iron foundry, a private school—and your very own bank, and a half interest in another in Monaco. Yes?”

  “Mmmm. My financial advisers are always urging me to diversify. But investing responsibly is a real challenge. There are so many charlatans in the financial world.”

  “You mean diversify into prostitution, usury, gambling, smuggling, drugs, extortion, protection—?”

  “Lies, Captain. Allegations by jealous rivals.”

  “Were you and the deceased girl involved—romantically, I mean?”

  “I am a married man, Captain.”

  “Are you saying you weren’t involved with her, or that your wife was unaware of it?”

  Gambini laughed. “You are a fresh one. No, I wasn’t intimate with the young lady. I met her by accident and hired her to do some work for me in Naples. She said she was German, in Italy studying, and wanted to study the shrines. She said she wanted to experience them personally. Also to examine our whole organization from a sociological perspective, with the idea of reporting how we interacted with the Church and the federal government in carrying out our operations, our fiduciary duties with respect to the group’s income, its further dispersal to parties in the government, dependents of deceased members and those currently detained by law enforcement, reinvestments locally of our profits, investments internationally. Et cetera, et cetera.”

  Pino and Natalia were dumbfounded hearing this. Pino said, “She wanted permission to study your…?”

  “Business interests. Yes.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “The cleaning services, the casinos, rubbish collection, construction companies, credit unions, import-export.… She intended to do a graduate paper for the University, maybe write a book, and wanted my blessing and cooperation.” He laughed. “Outrageous, eh?”

  “How did you respond?” Natalia said.

  “I said I admired her gumption and could arrange something for her about the shrines. But the rest”—he swept the air with the back of a hand—“would be inadvisable, her interest unwelcome.”

  “You put her to work collecting from the shrines,” Natalia said.

  “Yeah. As sanctioned by Church representatives. Perfectly legal.”

  “And she was reliable in her work and satisfactory?” Pino said.

  “Not completely, but enough.” He seemed momentarily wistful. “She should’ve been a boy.”

  “Was Signora Gambini aware of her … employment?” Natalia asked.

  “No, nor of anyone else’s.”

  “Is the signora available for a brief interview?”

  Gambini colored. “You would not want to approach my wife or question her … about anything.”

  “That is not your decision to make.”

  “It would be unwise to contact my wife, Captain,” he said. “She has no part in our dealings, yours and mine, and there is no need for her to be interrogated or exposed.”

  “We are officers of the Republic,” Natalia said. “The Law says we may. You can’t be threatening us?”

  “Heaven forbid,” Gambini exclaimed, all innocence. “You have a law degree from the Officers College in Rome. Bravo. But you are Napoletani—both of you. You know how we are.”

  She pulled out the envelope of cash pushed on her in the night by her first beau and tossed it on the table in front of Gambini.

  “What’s this?” Gambini darkened.

  “A Valentine I received the other night. Fifty thousand euros. Maybe Signora Gambini has charitable interests.” Natalia put on her hat. “We’ll be in touch,” she said as she walked to the door. Sergeant Loriano followed.

  They strode down the long corridor again and out the front. Outside, the gravel crunched underfoot. A curtain flickered in the caretaker’s house next to Gambini’s garage and stables. Pino’s hand went to his holstered weapon.

  “Christ!” Natalia said to her partner as they got into the car. “Bad idea, this.”

  “Maybe not. I liked your move with the bribe money. Why would he try that if he wasn’t involved?”

  “Yeah. He reminds me of a viper.” Natalia wiped a patch of sweat from her lip. “Calm when you come across it, but ready to spring the next instant.”

  “Well, you unsettled him, anyway.”

  “How could you tell? He’s as cool as they come.”

  She put the key in the ignition and snapped her seatbelt on. Pino rolled down his window.

  “Your seatbelt,” Natalia said.

  “What?” Pino seemed confused.

  “Fasten your seatbelt,” Natalia said.

  “Yes, Mama.” Pino smiled and obeyed.

  “That’s ‘Big Mama’ to you.”

  The day was nearly used up, and the last shrine that Teresa Steiner had collected from was on the route back. Natalia and Pino decided to check it out, since they had the safety of their uniforms and the shrine was deep in a Camorra neighborhood. By the time they reached the piazza outside the Metro station, the sun was dipping toward the sea. The uncollected garbage seemed even higher in this part of town.

  Natalia and Pino entered the small park. It smelled of urine, and the benches were broken. At a folding table, four men played cards. Below, on Cavour, orange buses spewed black smoke. Natalia took a drink from the water bottle she carried. Three large bony dogs appeared, gobbled chunks of sausage, then drank, splashing water onto the pavement.

  “You want some?” she handed the bottle to Pino.

  Several elderly men sat around a concrete table. Off to the side, another old-timer was smashing a chair against the ground with impressive vigor. Broken legs and splinters of wood surrounded him.

  Approaching the group, Pino said, “Gentlemen, we have some photographs we’d like you to look at.” The men put down their cards. The chair-smasher abandoned his pile of wood and joined them.

  “Is this shrine around here?” Natalia held up one of Teresa’s photos of it.

  “Ask him,” the chair-smasher gestured with his chin.

  Natalia and Pino hadn’t noticed the man sitting apart from the others. He was dressed like a boulevardier—pressed trousers and long-sleeved white shirt, albeit frayed and the pants stained. His sandals were held together with tape.

  “Are you students?” one of the card players asked Natalia.

  The chair-smasher laughed. “Students! What are you, an idiot? Vaffanculo. Fuck off.” He spat. Pino and Natalia recogn
ized two of the men. Once they had been mules for the Provenzanos, questioned numerous times at headquarters and even held a night or two in jail.

  “Don’t mind him,” the dignified loner said. “It’s over there, past Via Cimitile. You can’t miss it.”

  Natalia next held out a picture of Teresa. “Maybe you’ve seen her around here?”

  The chair-smasher pushed his face forward to get a better look. “Sure! That girl was here. A few times. Took our photograph. So what?”

  “She’s dead,” Pino said, trying to get a reading from their expressions.

  “Was she alone when she was here?” Natalia asked, wiping her forehead.

  “There was a priest,” the chair-smasher said. “I remember, because to see a priest with a pretty girl.…” He winked and kissed his pinched fingers.

  She and Pino thanked the group and continued on. A short distance farther, they came upon the shrine. Paint was flaking off it. A can with a spray of cheap white carnations, neatly arranged, rested at its foot. Natalia and Pino walked up to the niche. A plaster limb hung lashed to the outside; a bunch of half-dead wildflowers lay on the ground in front of it. Inside the frame of the shrine was a photograph of a priest with a white moustache. He too was fading, courtesy of time.

  The glass on the box was fogged with grime. Two figures were barely visible—the Madonna and Child. Natalia stepped closer and peered inside. Framing Mary were the long horns of a cow and a solar disk. The figures were actually an ancient bas-relief. Crudely done but recognizable—Isis, the Egyptians’ Queen of Heaven, and her son, who was also her reincarnated husband. A virgin birth, Natalia recalled. The sculpted figures predated Christianity, having somehow survived in this recess of wall left from Roman times, when the Empire’s legions had them up as a favored deity.

  Natalia bent down to get a better look. Teresa, Teresa, she thought. You were on to something.

  “Looking for tomorrow?” came a female voice.

  The woman couldn’t have been more than fifty. Plump, her hair dyed blue-black. Red pants and a yellow shirt. Lime-colored sandals. A few yards behind her stood a few young mothers, curious about the intruders. Their toddlers wandered the cobblestones. Growing up here, they didn’t even have the luxury of school beyond the earliest grades. A girl became a woman as soon as she sprouted breasts and could lactate. Few toiled at labors, other than the hard work of raising large broods and keeping house. “Go home,” the woman said to the mothers, who immediately disappeared.

  “They call me the mayor around here. No insult intended. I’m telling you friendly,” the woman said. “Carabinieri or not, outsiders aren’t welcome here. Like that bitch who was taking out of our pockets.” She tapped her chest. “I’m in charge of collections, or was until she showed up. Mister G sent her to collect even though we’d been doing it for years. It was ours until she came. Why he wanted to use that Bosch harlot, we couldn’t figure. Unless … you know.” She made an obscene gesture.

  Abruptly, she pulled her shopping bags into a doorway and closed the door behind her. A scrawny cat sprinted out just as it shut. That Aldo Gambini had an arrangement with the local churches for fairs and the shrine collection boxes was common knowledge. If the authorities interfered with the shrines, there would be civil unrest. The churches got a monthly stipend and nobody said anything, certainly not the penitents who dropped coins and stuffed their hard-earned bills into the wooden boxes. As long as someone was listening to their prayers.…

  Another voice. “Please, Signora.” Natalia couldn’t tell at first where it was coming from.

  “Please, I’m hungry.”

  Finally she saw bony fingers wiggling out of a basement window. The face must have been eighty. Natalia stooped by the window and dug in her shoulder bag for a couple of euros. For wine, most likely.

  The bullets struck suddenly. One pocked the wall above the shrine, another kicked loose some mortar close to Natalia. A grandmother, pinning socks on a line in front of her building, fell and shrieked: “I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!”

  Natalia and Pino pulled their Berettas. She crouched, pistol raised. She scanned rooftops and windows for the shooter. No faces at the windows. Balconies empty. It was quiet. A baby cried. Slowly they retreated from the alley, walking out backward, weapons still pointed back at the houses.

  “Are you okay?” Pino said, and offered her a handkerchief.

  “I’ve felt better.” Natalia accepted it and wiped her sweaty face. “Thanks.”

  “It was for your arm.”

  She looked at one, then the other. Her right forearm was bleeding, the sleeve torn. Pino folded back the sleeve.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I guess a shard kicked off a façade and struck me.”

  The handkerchief was soaked red. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “Absolutely not, Sergeant.”

  “Let’s stop at my place, then,” Pino suggested. “It’s not far.”

  Natalia, shaken, nodded. An obese man in a sleeveless undershirt peeped out a window and yanked the shutters closed.

  When they reached the street outside, life seemed to be normal. Younger children straggled home from school, people went about their business. If they’d heard the gunshots, there was no indication.

  Pino and Natalia returned to their car and drove to his apartment house. Natalia recognized the building. It had once been elegant, but now it was worn down. The outer door was unlocked. Pino went in first and held out his hand to help Natalia over the ledge of the small door mounted in the larger one.

  It was quiet in the courtyard. Most of his neighbors were at work, older kids still at their school desks struggling over sums and dates of events past.

  “Giorno, Lilia,” Pino said to the woman scrubbing the stairs.

  “Giorno, tenent.” She stopped for a moment, scrub brush in hand, watching as they passed by.

  “Excuse the mess,” Pino said, unlocking his front door. He went in first. He picked up a stack of papers from the couch and put them on the floor. An empty wine glass sat forlorn on the coffee table. It didn’t seem changed from the time Natalia had been here years ago.

  Pino unlatched the shutters and the doors to the balcony. Afternoon light flowed into the room. Natalia looked around. The high ceilings made it seem larger than it was. Aside from the couch, a chair, and one lamp, there was no furniture. Books were lined up on the floor along one wall. A small Buddha glowed. There was a lavender cushion on the floor in front of it. Must be where Pino meditated. Natalia identified the smell of incense.

  “A mess?” she said. “Not compared to my place.”

  There were no photos or mementos. She slumped onto his couch.

  “Something to drink?” Pino asked. “I have flat water in bottles, and I have wine.”

  “Water,” Natalia answered. “A little wine, and I might not be in control of myself.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Pino asked.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something I wanted to tell you.”

  “That’s okay,” Natalia said.

  “No. I want to.”

  “Okay. What?”

  “It’s over with Tina.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Natalia—”

  “I’m dying of thirst.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  Natalia sat on the couch and leaned her head against the cushions. She closed her eyes, falling immediately into sleep. A few moments later, Pino touched her arm, holding out the water.

  “I fell asleep? I can’t believe it.”

  “Drink,” Pino said, sitting next to her, as he handed her the glass of boutique spring water. “This has electrolytes and vitamins. You’ll feel better.”

  Neither spoke for a moment. Then Pino pulled his chair up to her and reached for her hand.

  “What are you thinking?” he said.

  “I’m thinking, what’s the point?” She pulled her hand away and took a drink.
“What are we and the police clearing—three percent of the violent felonies? I’m thinking the Camorra owns this town. They own us. One goes and two spring up. You know it. And I know it. We’re the bravest. The toughest, the best. We have a silver medallion on our hats and we take home a few extra euros to prove we’re formidable.

  “But to the Camorra, we’re no more threatening than dust. No one can back us or really protect us, Pino. Not Colonel Donati, not the mayor, not even the president of the republic. No one. If Gambini killed Teresa Steiner and we proved it, he’d make sure we didn’t survive here. They’d have to ship us to some former colony to live under assumed names. We’re like sacrificial lambs, Pino. We could have been killed back there. Added to some plaque and promptly forgotten.” She took a sip of water and lay back. “Aren’t you ever afraid?”

  “Every day. But we can’t turn away from reality—neither its beauty nor its dangers. Or so Buddha teaches us.”

  “What about putting yourself in harm’s way? What does he say about that?”

  “I don’t see that we really have a choice,” Pino said. “You and I have both been offered postings in Rome, at better salaries and with less dangerous responsibilities. Neither of us has left.” Taking Natalia’s hand again, he lifted it to his lips to kiss it. “Stay the night.”

  Natalia got up and walked to the balcony, heart beating fast. She tried to think.

  The front of Pino’s building faced Piazzetta Materdei, which boasted one tree and a collection of pigeons. There were broken cobblestones and one bench complete with the requisite widows. Today there were two of them parked with their shopping, to rest their feet and gossip.

  “How long have you lived here?” Natalia asked. Pino stepped out on the balcony behind her.

  “This apartment belonged to a childhood friend of my Uncle Ricci. A sweet, funny man. Beppe, we called him. Beppe never recovered from his wife’s death. He stopped going out. Started to collect newspapers. It was like a maze in here. Luckily there wasn’t a fire. Uncle Ricci visited him every week. Brought him food when he didn’t shop for himself. Ten years ago, Beppe died. He willed the apartment to Uncle Ricci. When I finished the sergeants’ course in Modena and was assigned to Naples, my uncle offered it to me. Five rooms. A palace. I was thrilled. It took weeks to clear it out. I wallpapered a room with the rarer editions of the newspapers.”