Strange Gods

by Peter J. Daly

  Before them, along the ground floor, were some abandoned shops. A few women had set up tables in the corridors that ran the length of the building. They were selling nothing but condoms and syringes.

  As Nate and Sandra stood there, a big black SUV cruised through the parking lot and came to a stop at the end of the bridge. A little kid ran out with a paper bag, tightly wrapped around what appeared to be a block or brick. The Camorra was collecting its drug money. Every two or three hours they cruised through to make their collections.

  Nate and Sandra stepped around the syringes at the entrance of the Vele and made their way to a long open corridor that ran the length of the giant building. A little child’s toy motorcycle, a wheelie toy for riding, was smashed at the entrance. Garbage was everywhere. The odor was stifling in the summer heat.

  The corridor was in a kind of atrium. Back in the 1970s, this ultramodern design had won awards. It might have looked nice on paper. People could look over the balconies and see who was coming and going. They could also drop crap down on them, which it appeared they had done.

  The elevators were, of course, broken, and long since boarded up, so they took the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase was an iron gate. Miss Orsuto told Nate that these gates were not put there by the housing authority, but by the Camorra. They could be locked by drug dealers to slow down the policemen. This was a city of thieves.

  Sandra got out her cell phone and called the number for Mrs. Luppino. She got directions to the apartment, which was on the tenth floor. The staircases looked like something out of the fantastical imagination of Salvador Dali. They crisscrossed between wings of the building in flying forms, open and dangerous. Each floor of the Vele was set back from the floor below to create a large terrace. It was a design idea gone horribly wrong. It gave the buildings the look of a Babylonian ziggurat, but there were definitely no hanging gardens. They were platforms for danger, fights, and drug use.

  When they got to the tenth floor, Giulia Luppino had come out to the staircase to greet them. She was a friendly, grandmotherly woman, short and wide. Her gray hair was pulled tightly in a bun. She wore black from head to toe and walked with the help of an aluminum cane that had four little feet on the bottom. The cane stood up by itself when she let go.

  “Benvenuti,” she said to them perfunctorily. She led them down the corridor-balcony to her apartment, past a number of other apartments, all of which appeared to be abandoned, their doors wide open. The three entered through a metal-reinforced door that had a security gate of iron bars.

  Italy is a nation of public squalor and private splendor. The contrast between the corridor-balcony outside and the apartment’s neat interior couldn’t have been greater. Outside all was chaos and filth. Inside all was order and cleanliness.

  The floor shined from washing and waxing. The glass on the windows was sparkling clean. The furniture was covered with lace doilies. On the wall hung an olive-wood crucifix, probably brought back from the Holy Land by a church pilgrimage.

  The small sitting room opened into a tiny kitchen. On the wall in the kitchen Nate could see holy cards and other images taped to the wall near the Formica table, which doubled as an altar for the household shrine. Very near the table were two cheaply framed prints of saints, one of Padre Pio, the patron saint of Southern Italy, the other of St. Francis, the poor man of Assisi. According to Catholic lore, both Padre Pio and St. Francis had received the stigmata, the marks of the open wounds of Christ. Consequently, they were the great patrons of people who suffer and the natural patron saints of these apartments in the Vele.

  There was also a holy card of St. Anthony taped to the wall, holding the child Jesus. In Italy, St. Anthony is the go-to saint for impossible or difficult causes. He is considered so powerful in the Italian Catholic pantheon that they just call him il Santo, the Saint. No further explanation needed. If you need something, just ask “the Saint.”

  Nate quickly looked around the apartment like a police investigator, noticing the family photos in a display case in the corner of the living room. There was a wedding photo with a young Giulia, standing next to a handsome man in uniform.

  There was also a smiling photo of a teenage boy on a beach. The boy was suntanned and strong, in the prime of life. Nate walked over to the display case and looked at the photo, but he did not touch it.

  Mrs. Luppino watched him carefully. “Mio figlio, Gianluca,” she said to Nate.

  Nate nodded. “Handsome,” he said to Sandra, who translated. “Bello il tuo figlio.”

  Giulia motioned for Sandra and Nate to sit down on the overstuffed living room sofa. She went into the nearby kitchen and came back with a tray on which she had put a bottle of mineral water and a little espresso coffee pot in the Italian style. She poured the water into glasses and the espresso into dainty ceramic cups that she took from her china cabinet. She offered them sugar for the coffee. Then she sat down in a worn easy chair opposite them. In the corner of the room a flat-screen TV perched on a small stand was playing at a high volume. Sandra asked permission to turn it off, so they could talk. “Si,” said the lady of the house. “It’s nothing,” she said in Italian, waving her hand at the TV as if to dismiss it.

  Talking through Sandra’s translation, Nate explained that he worked for the Vatican and that he had come to Mrs. Luppino to learn about the events that took place forty-two years ago. Mrs. Luppino nodded slowly and swallowed hard, her face expressionless.

  “I’d like to ask you about the circumstances around the death of your son, Gianluca,” Nate explained.

  “Luca,” corrected the old lady. “We always called him Luca. Only Luca.”

  “Tell us about Luca,” said Nate.

  Her eyes filled up. Clearly after all this time, it was still painful for her. “He was my boy,” she said. “What can I say? He was my only son. He was the moon and the sun of my life. He was a good boy, always happy, always singing.” Her voice trailed off. Sandra stopped translating. Her eyes were also filling up with tears. Nate paused for a moment. He felt ashamed to be pressing on such a painful memory.

  “Tell us about that night he went on the ferryboat to Sicilia,” said Nate.

  “Luca was in my little trattoria near the port. He worked there, waiting tables. I did the cooking. My husband, Giogio, wasn’t there. He was in the merchant marine and always away on ships. So, it was mostly just me and Luca.

  “The restaurant was crowded that night. I was busy. Those two monsignori came in. They sat at the table near the door and had quite a bit of wine. They seemed happy. The captain of the traghetto was also in the restaurant that night.

  “The two priests were talking to Luca. They told him they were going to Sicilia on the overnight ferry. Luca always wanted to go to Sicilia. He wanted to visit his cousins there. I never would let him go. It was too expensive, too dangerous. I never had time to take him. His father was always away, and when he was home he never wanted to go back out on a ship again.

  “The priests offered to take Luca. ‘He will be safe with us,’ they said. Luca begged me. ‘Please, Mama. Please, Mama,’ he said. ‘Please let me go! I never go anywhere!’

  “I wouldn’t have done it, but the captain said, ‘Oh, Giulia, let the boy go.’ He was the captain of the traghetto. He promised he would bring Luca back in a few days. I never should have listened. Never! Never! Never!

  “So, I said, ‘Va bene.’ But you stay with your uncle and come back after two days.’ Luca was so happy. He ran to get his things. He kissed me and kissed me. I gave him a rosary for his pocket. O Dio! O Dio! O Dio!”

  Giulia Luppino was now rocking back and forth in her chair. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She was back in the events of forty-two years ago, reliving the nightmare, trying to take back her awful decision.

  “What did they tell you happened onboard the ship?” asked Nate gently.

  “They said he fell overboard late at night. But I know that was a lie! A lie!

  “Luca was not a drinker.
He was not stupid. He grew up here in Naples. He was always on boats and around the water. He was a great swimmer. He was very strong. Look at his photo. You can see how strong he was. He never would have fallen off the ship, and he never would have drowned. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I never believed it!

  “The captain came to see me. I never saw those two priests again. They never came back to see me. They didn’t come to the funeral. The whole city of Napoli was at the funeral, but not those two. Bastardi! Bastardi!

  “The captain said it was an accident. That they pulled Luca out of the ocean and that he was dead. But when I saw my boy, there were marks on his neck. Marks like someone had bitten him. Blood marks.

  “The Camorra came by and paid me two million lira.” Miss Orsuto guessed that was about ten thousand dollars at that time. “They told me that they appreciated my silence.

  “I didn’t know what to do. When the Camorra tells you to be silent in Naples, you are silent. But I knew that Luca did not drown.” Mrs. Luppino paused and looked blankly at the wall behind Nate, as if staring at a distant object.

  “Two years later, I went down to the funeral home. I asked to see the records. The signore there said he had no records, but I didn’t believe it.

  “I left the funeral home and went down to the medical examiner’s office in centro. The man there also said he had no records, but I knew there must be something. A lady in the office remembered me from the newspaper articles and the stories on TV.

  “After the medical examiner left the room, she told me to call the reporter from Il Mattino who had written about Luca’s death. She said the reporter had a copy of the examiner’s report at the time and that he might still have it.

  “So, I called the reporter. He met me at a café in centro.

  “He said yes, he still had his notes, but he had not brought the files with him. He gave me only a clipping from the paper that I already had. But he told me one important thing I did not know before. He said there was no water in Luca’s lungs, according to the medical examiner. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “A few weeks later, I asked a friend about no water in the lungs. He didn’t know what it meant either, so we called the doctor at the clinic here in Scampia. The doctor said it meant that Luca did not drown. My boy was already dead when he fell in the water. They killed him. Then they threw him in the water. That’s what those bastards did. Killed him! O Dio. O Dio.”

  Now Giulia was rocking back and forth, not sobbing but moaning.

  “My son, my son,” she moaned.

  Sandra sat there for a little while and let the poor woman grieve.

  “What do you think happened, signora?” she asked.

  “They killed him. Those two devils. Those two priests. And they killed me at the same time. Luca was a good boy. He was everything to me. They never even called me. They never even offered a Mass for my son.

  “After he died, I could not go on. I closed the restaurant. My husband left me. We separated, no divorce. The Church does not approve, so he just left me. He said he could not stand the memory of Luca either. He blamed me!”

  She paused, sobbing. She wiped her eyes with a paper napkin, then she continued.

  “Years later, when my husband died, we were still married, so I got his pension from the merchant marine. That’s how I live. They send me a check every month. I still wear black. People think I’m mourning for my husband. The widow Luppino, they call me. But it’s not for him, not for my husband. It’s for Luca I mourn.”

  Nate noted the black dress of a traditional widow. This little woman had spent most of her adult life in mourning.

  Nate asked her, “What would you like to see happen to those men, signora?”

  “Suffer,” she said. “I want them to suffer as I have suffered.”

  There was a pall of sadness over the room. Sandra asked to use the bathroom and excused herself. Nate could hear her crying on the other side of the bathroom door. Nate pulled a kitchen chair over to the old lady and sat there holding Giulia Luppino’s hand in wordless communication.

  After a minute or two Sandra came back in the room, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Nate stood up. Sandra and Nate stood facing the mother who was still weeping. Nate suddenly thought of all the victims of child abuse and their families. “We will try to get you justice, signora. I will see to it that these men are punished.”

  Then Nate looked at the photo of Luca. “Signora, could I have a photo of Luca?”

  “Si, certo,” said the old lady. “Take that one. I have many copies.” She pointed to a photo in a small metal frame on the end table near Nate. He put it in his coat pocket.

  As they made preparations to go, Sandra remembered that the taxi had left them. They were stranded.

  When Sandra explained, Giulia said, “Don’t worry. I will ask my neighbor to drive you to the centro. He has a car. He would be glad to do it.”

  Then she added, “You are the only people who have ever come by to see me about Luca in more than forty years. Grazie. I feel closer to him just talking about it. I’m glad someone remembers.”

  Before they left the apartment, Nate stood in front of the grieving mother. She was still seated in the easy chair, a real-life Mother of Sorrows. His eyes filled up with tears again. When he tried to speak, nothing came out, so he leaned over and kissed Giulia on the top of her head and squeezed her hand gently.

  They rode downtown in the neighbor’s car. Neither Nate nor Sandra spoke. It was not until they were on the train back to Rome that Nate was able to speak.

  “I’m going to fry their fucking asses, Crepi and Salazar. I’m going to see to it that they rot in a hell worse than where that poor old lady lives.”

  He held the picture of Gianluca tightly in his hand, looking out the window as Naples flashed by.

  20

  TWO STEPS DOWN

  “TWO STEPS DOWN,” SAID SISTER PERPETUA IN A HIGH-PITCHED voice with a heavy Italian accent. She was dressed in a black Benedictine habit, a plastic bag on her head to keep her veil dry from the water that dripped from the roof of the catacombs. Sister was tired. It was the last tour of the day.

  She carried a rolled umbrella, which she used as a pointer, and she held it over her head to lead her tour group of giggling American schoolgirls through the Catacombs of Priscilla.

  Sister Perpetua was annoyed. “Please, girls, stay with the tour. There are forty miles of maze beneath these streets. If you get lost, you might never be found.”

  She pointed a bony finger at the errant girls. That sent the girls into paroxysms of hysterical laughter, which only made Sister Perpetua even more annoyed.

  The Catacombs of Priscilla are located underneath the modern Via Salaria, perhaps the oldest road in the city of Rome. It runs from the Adriatic Sea to the Sabine Hills. It is called salaria because it was the path of the salt trade between the Sabine people and the Romans.

  Ancient Romans valued salt for food preservation and cooking. For a time, they even paid their legionnaires with salt, as a form of currency. Hence, the word “salary.”

  On either side of the tunnel, the tufa walls were lined with niches; in neat rows, three or four levels high from floor to ceiling, ancient Christians had been entombed there during the years of persecution. The niches, once covered with stone façades, were now open and empty, like shelves in an unused pantry.

  Students on field trips test boundaries. Despite the nun’s admonitions, three girls wandered off from the tour, down a dimly lit tunnel. After about fifty meters, the escaping students turned a corner and found themselves in a small, dark room. Now they were disoriented and had to feel their way along the walls looking for an exit. One of the girls reached into a dark recess, thinking it might be a door. Her hand touched something damp and slimy. She let out a scream and pulled her hand back. As she did so, the slimy object tumbled out onto the floor.

  Sister Perpetua came running with her umbrella in one hand and a flashlight in her other. T
he dim light revealed that the slimy object was a naked corpse. The body was so bloody and disfigured that its sex was not immediately apparent.

  The girls grew hysterical. Sister Perpetua made the sign of the cross and began praying. The school chaperones ushered the girls quickly out of the catacombs.

  Even in jaded Rome, the discovery of a bloody body in an ancient catacomb is big news. Within minutes, satellite trucks from Rome’s news channels had arrived at the entrance to the catacombs on the Via Salaria. The evening news showed a body bag on a gurney, being lifted into a police van.

  Later that night, the police received an anonymous call from a disposable mobile phone. “The body from the catacombs is a priest who could not keep his vow of omerta.” The caller hung up.

  It took the medical examiner about eight hours to positively identify the body. Monsignor Ackerman was dead.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, Nate received a courtesy phone call from the Italian police, telling him that the monsignor had been murdered. Nate had mentioned to the police at the Questura that he would be meeting with Ackerman at the Columbus. Nate immediately telephoned Cardinal O’Toole, who was at breakfast in his apartment.

  “Your Eminence, have you heard the news? Monsignor Ackerman is dead. They found his body in the catacombs, badly beaten.”

  “Oh, God,” said the cardinal. “What the hell is happening? Do they know who did it?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Nate. “But they have reasonable suspicions. The police got a call, saying he broke his vow of omerta.”

  The cardinal grunted.

  “Can you come over here now?” asked O’Toole. “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” said Nate.

  He threw on his jeans and a polo shirt and grabbed his laptop. It was a fifteen-minute walk from the Columbus Hotel to the cardinal’s apartment, down the Via della Conciliazione, past the entrance to St. Peter’s Square, and a block over to the Piazza Leonina.