by Jan Weiss
No one had a bank account here, no credit cards, and only the children ate decently. The residents all looked sinewy and gaunt. Half the men under thirty were unemployed, and three quarters of the women.
Two Bangladeshi trailed them for a block. At first Natalia worried about their designs on Pino and her, then realized they were just more undocumented stateless souls trawling for casual labor: a floor needing sweeping, a display window requiring washing. Failing that, they might grab up an unattended handbag. Natalia clutched hers closer, momentarily concerned not to lose her weapon to a cutpurse too naïve to recognize the special bag carried by plainclothes policewomen and female Carabinieri.
“Where’s my money?” a woman yelled at her companion. A drug addict, judging from the sunken cheeks and the sores on her lips. The sequins on her T-shirt flashed. She had on fashionably torn black jeans and leopardskin boots. An alley filled with Chinese women, sweatshop workers taking a rare break. The dozen streets of the quarter were a grid laid out in military precision, perpendicularly crossed by another eighteen, most no more than a dozen feet wide. They were too narrow even for sidewalks and were paved with large, flat stones. Five hundred years earlier, Spanish invaders had built the district to quarter their troops. The six-story buildings dated back centuries and looked their age. Repairs layered repairs.
Natalia and Pino reached their favorite trattoria and greeted their regular waiter. He was happy to have customers for an early lunch. The place was empty. He gestured toward their usual table, a step into the open-sided restaurant near the cash register. Neapolitans passed by, shopping bags and briefcases in hand, heading toward the tram station and the funicular car that would winch them from the cramped and weathered alleys of the quarter up the steep incline to the wide boulevards and tree-lined residential streets atop the ridge.
There was shouting in the street outside.
“Now what?” Natalia exclaimed. “Go ahead and order. I’ll be right back.”
A crowd stood gathered at the top of the street, watching several dogs snarling at one another, fighting over rotted meat they’d extricated from a ripped garbage bag. The yelping dogs were sinewy but muscular, tough as the streets they inhabited. The latest scourge to befall the city—feral dogs. Packs of them came down from God knows where in large numbers to feast on the garbage.
The wild dogs were too mangy to appear pedigreed, but the aspects of German shepherd, bulldog, terrier, and Doberman were present. Running in a pack, they roamed where they pleased, baring their teeth at any creatures foolish enough to interfere with their scrounging. They turned their attention to a small woman clutching her shopping and her baby.
“I can’t get into my house,” she cried. “They’ll bite.”
She was a gypsy, scarf tied around her head. The lead dog growled, eyeing a packet of meat poking out of the top of her bag. Natalia approached the woman steadily. She reached into the bag and tossed the meat. As most of the pack ran off, Natalia escorted the woman into her house. Then she put in a call to the dog-catchers. They were horribly overtaxed, but she got through after a dozen rings. Her lucky day. An animal-control van was nearby on a call in the quarter and would come over.
“That didn’t help my appetite,” Natalia said, rejoining Pino, who was already enjoying their pizza.
“I took the liberty of ordering wine,” he said. “May I?”
“Please.”
He poured, and she immediately took a sip. “That’s definitely nicer than wild dogs.”
“Or garbage,” he said. “The paper this morning said thirty-nine landfills are completely overloaded and not accepting any more from Naples.”
“The public is coming unhinged. A mob of irate citizens attacked the police station in Pianura last night, set buses ablaze, broke windows.”
“When is Bianca going to defy Gambini and unleash her trash collectors?”
“God. Soon, I hope. Colonel Donati’s wife is agitating for them to move. She can’t stand it any more, he said.”
Pino sighed. “Why are we talking about this at lunch?”
“What should we be talking about?”
“Us. Last night. Its greater cosmic meaning.”
“Last night was wonderful,” she said.
“You think people can tell?”
Natalia took ravenous bites of pizza. “If you keep fondling my knee, I think they might come to suspect.”
“Sorry. I can’t help it.”
“Look. Last night was great. I told you already.”
“But?” he said.
“Do I have to fill in the blanks? We work together. Today is today.”
“What’s that—a Zen koan? I’m not familiar with it.”
“Pino, please. If we become a couple, we can’t remain partners.”
“We are a couple, Natalia. As of midnight last night.”
Natalia sighed. “I don’t know, Pino. We have to keep it a secret, but you know as well as I, there aren’t any secrets at the station. Somebody will find out and tell everyone else. I’m worried too that our feelings could jeopardize our lives out here on the street, never mind our careers.”
“What about our careers?” Now he looked a little grim too.
“The regulations. Sergeant fraternizing with a superior officer. Superior officer fraternizing with her subordinate. They would make us choose. One of us would go. I don’t want it to be you. And it won’t be me. I can’t abandon another career and start over. I don’t want to.”
“I don’t want you to. You’ve worked too hard, have too much invested.”
“And you?”
“Yeah, me too.” Reality began to sink in. “But you should know. I’m not giving you up.”
The guards and groundskeepers were finishing lunch when Natalia reached the Orto Botanico. They were discussing last night’s football game and ignored her as she walked through the iron gates and climbed the stairs. After the fumes of the city, the green crown of trees was a relief. The garden had been a favorite of hers when she was a child, her parents’ destination after church and on her father’s one day off. Every Sunday, if the weather allowed, they’d stop home after mass to change. Her mother packed up the salami sandwiches prepared the night before, along with a jug of lemonade, and they’d set off. Sometimes Mariel or Lola would come too.
Natalia’s father could name all the birds chattering round them as they picnicked—kestrels, wrens, robins. At home he had books with photographs and names of hundreds of species and records of their songs. One year, Natalia’s mother saved up and bought him a splendid pair of binoculars.
Natalia sat on the bench in front of the greenhouse where she and Lola had agreed to meet. Giant purple and red blossoms hung off of thick green stems. A bright yellow bird flew over her head. Below the chestnut trees, a gardener trimmed hedges. Otherwise, it was the birds, and distant traffic.
A butterfly landed at her feet. Black-and-orange wings paddled open and shut. A brief life, but nearly perfect. Odd that Lola wasn’t here yet. Appearances aside, she had always been the more punctual. As Natalia took out her phone to call, she heard the explosion. Hundreds of birds rippled out of the trees.
So much for peace and quiet. She’d catch up with Lola later. She dropped her cell phone into her purse and sprinted toward where the sound had come from.
Sirens grew louder.
Three blocks away, the car was black and twisted. Local police were already there. Natalia flashed her badge and pushed through the crowd. A woman sat at the curb, screaming, her face bloody, blouse and stockings spattered with blood. Lola.
Natalia crouched, took a handkerchief from her bag, and wiped Lola’s forehead.
“Frankie,” Lola said, sobbing hysterically. “Nico, my poor baby. Nico.”
“Sssh. There’s no pain, Lol. They’re gone, Lola. They’re gone.”
“It’s my fault. He shouldn’t have gone with Frankie. It’s my fault.”
“No, Lola. No.”
Natalia pulled Lola
closer and rocked her like a child, blocking her sight of the car and the thick black gasoline smoke curling skyward.
* * *
13
* * *
The police guard at the door waved Natalia into Lola’s room. Her beautiful hair was jagged, partly cut away to get at the cuts in her scalp. She was sitting up, her eyes closed. Natalia walked to the bed and touched her arm. Lola opened her eyes. Dead eyes, Natalia thought.
“They got Frankie and Nico.”
“I know,” Natalia said, touching her cheek.
“I have to tell you—”
“You don’t have to do that now.”
“No. I do.”
“He can kill you and your two younger ones. We won’t be able to guard you three all the time. Lola, your kids are down to one parent.”
“I know, I know. The damn girl.”
“Teresa Steiner?”
“Yes. We worked together, she and I, for the last six months. Frankie was as much of a prima donna as she and quickly got sick of her. But Gambini seemed so taken with this girl Teresa, and was determined to bring her in. Frankie flapped around and said he wanted to quit the organization. He couldn’t, of course. It would be betrayal. So I took over working with her.”
“On the shrines?”
Lola nodded. “I knew all about the shrines—my uncle ran the collections years ago. Gambini thought we’d make a good team. He had big plans for her. The shrines were nothing. He wanted her moving heroin for him. No easing into it, maybe starting her in hashish or kobret. No, he just drops her on us—boom. She had plans as well and wanted to know everything about us. How everything worked, what everyone did. Made us all leery of her.”
“Gambini had her running part of the drug operation?”
“I know—odd. I’d keep track of the shipments coming in and Teresa would move them out—to our local people operating open-air markets and to distributors in Germany. She was perfect, Gambini said. Spoke Italian and German fluently, of course, and easily traveled back and forth. Who would suspect a beautiful young girl—an honors student on her way to becoming a professor?”
“Did she want to be a professor?”
“She wanted everything, sure. Except for this problem with her adviser.”
“Lattanza?”
“Yeah. Said he was a devious shit. Just scum. He was, but she had led him on too. He threatened to ruin her academic career if she didn’t take him back. She still wouldn’t come around and he threatened her, the fool. He had no idea who she was associating with. Teresa laughed about him. Said the University was worse than the mob.”
“Was she afraid of Lattanza?”
“Not even a little. She said he didn’t have the balls to hurt her.”
“Did Gambini know about her relationship with Lattanza?”
“He knew. Lattanza was lucky Gambini didn’t dip him in a boiling fondue. Teresa wouldn’t have it. She liked his wife too much.”
“Did Gambini know she was sleeping with his nephew Benito?”
Lola sat up. “He knew. Didn’t seem bothered. Gambini figured since she was doing research on the shrines already, it was a perfect setup. She said she needed to see them up close and operating. And needed some money for her mother’s medical treatment—a lie. Gambini laughed and laughed when we told him and acted like he was proud of her con. He said her mother had cancer, but had died from it when Teresa was in her last undergraduate year. You knew that too, right?”
“From the beginning. Go on. But don’t tire yourself out, okay?”
“No. It helps to talk. Teresa wanted us to take a bigger cut than Gambini had authorized. To hold out on him. Totally nuts. Suicidal. As if Gambini wouldn’t find out. She was willfully naïve. She thought she had him wrapped around her little finger. Funny thing is, she did. We thought he was gonna drop her in the Mediterranean. Instead, she came back from a holiday wearing a spectacular necklace he’d bought her. Rubies and pearls. We’d never seen him behave like that. Then she sort of hit on Frankie and scared him to death. That was the last straw for him.”
“Was he jealous of her?”
“I suppose. He’d always been Gambini’s boy. His future wasn’t so shiny once she came along. When she came on to him, he got worried about what Gambini would think or do.”
Lola reached for her water. Natalia handed her the glass.
“Thanks.” Lola took it, hand trembling. “Teresa boasted about everything. The necklace she said was worth a quarter of a million. Said we’d be able to buy our own jewels soon enough. She had the names of the German narco contacts. They’d told her they’d be delighted to do business with us. I told her she was crazy. She wanted to know everything about the Camorra. About the Camorra women, how they’d come to power. Teresa called us the ‘new feminists.’ She said this was our chance, our opportunity. We’d make a killing.”
“Easy, Lola.” Natalia took the glass and tipped it gently to Lola’s mouth.
“Thanks. The girl was an idiot. I told her she’d get both of us killed. When I said I wouldn’t go along, she said she’d go it alone. She made fun—teased me. Such a fool.”
“Gambini too, from the sound of it.”
“There was something going on there. When he took her to Frankfurt, he told her everything about our legit business interests there and introduced her to the biggest drug dealers we service. He was planning to put her in it big time. Zazu Gambini invested in Teresa Steiner like no one else, emotionally and otherwise. And she disrespected him. It was a ‘no-brainer,’ as Mariel would say. It was certain he would kill her. He’d have to, given what she was doing. There was no stopping her. I was going to say something, warn him maybe, so it wouldn’t come back to bite me. Frankie said no, keep away. He was trying to slide away himself and go out on his own. I didn’t listen to him.”
“You told Gambini what she was up to?”
“I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t be seen to side with her. Can you imagine—belittling Gambini?” Tears spilled from Lola. “My baby!”
She sobbed convulsively. A nursing nun in traditional habit rushed in and poured her a cup of water and handed her a small yellow pill. Lola swallowed. The sister motioned for Natalia to follow her. As the nun’s dark habit swept away, Natalia was reminded of school, when she and Lola were both still girls. It felt like a million years ago. Just outside the door, she ran into Mariel, who kissed both her cheeks as they embraced.
“She’s just taken a sedative,” Natalia said.
“Ah, not the right moment to visit. You have time for a coffee?”
The friends left together and retired to a café nearby. The University wasn’t far, and the place was crowded. They grabbed the last outdoor table.
“Looks like tourist season has begun,” Mariel said. A troop of red-faced Germans in sun hats marched past, guidebooks in hand, cameras suspended chest-high. The customers on the dark patio were mostly locals and university kids. The tourists were like colorful tropical birds attracted to the shiny chrome in the cafés ringing the upscale piazzas.
“How is she?” Mariel said.
“Not good.”
“Poor baby.”
They ordered espresso from a young waiter with dark wavy hair. “And how is your young swain?” Mariel asked.
“Determined.”
“Excellent. Then all you have to do is maintain your energy and keep up with your young beau.”
“Listen, Em,” Natalia said, rifling through her bag, “while I have you here.…” She extracted the photocopies of primary source material Teresa Steiner had acquired in her research. “What can you tell me about this?”
Mariel took out reading glasses and examined the oversized sheets.
“You need an antiquarian book dealer for this. Ah, Athanasius Kircher. Medieval text. Copied from the original at the Collegio Romano—you know, the palace built by Ignazio of Loyola, the soldier who founded the Jesuits.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t think the
library is open to civilians. Someone had to intercede for her to get this: her professor, or someone in the order.”
“A Jesuit?”
“Yes.”
Natalia continued: “Teresa Steiner evidently was looking for evidence to support her idea that all the Black Madonnas venerated by the faithful were inspired by depictions of Isis. Likewise the Madonna and Infant Christ seemed inspired by Isis holding her infant in the same pose.”
“Aren’t there several Black Madonnas in Italy? Hey, remember when we were fifteen, we went to Montolvo to see one and the priest wouldn’t let me because I had on a halter top and short skirt?”
“Yes.” Natalia stabbed the air with a finger for emphasis. “And that old crone took pity on you and lent you her shawl. And a hanky to wear on your head.”
“Damn paparazzi,” a man shouted behind them. “Get the hell out of my face or I’ll break yours.”
Both women turned. A seated man swiped at a photographer crouched close by, grabbed his camera by the lens and toppled him backward onto his buttocks. Chairs scraped as patrons got up from their tables and helped the elderly man up. It was Luca, the photographer who specialized in crime and the Camorra. He had pestered them for years, catching them unawares, sometimes unconscious, passed out in clubs, often dead in the streets—executed. Three cameras hung from his neck.
“Take another shot and it will be your last,” the patron shouted. Natalia recognized him from a photo array of Camorristi recently taken arriving at the airport. This one was in the cement business in Albania, home undoubtedly for a vacation from his overseas assignment for his organization.