Italian Romance

by Jayne Castel

  “Well then,” Kay sighed in resignation, “we’d better get ready to eat some humble pie.”

  The End

  Neapolitan Encounter

  by Jayne Castel

  The moment Luisa Durasanti heard the scooter turn into the narrow street behind her and gun its engine, her instincts flared.

  Something terrible was about to happen.

  There was nothing in her surroundings to suggest it, but the intuition was so strong that Luisa stepped back from where she had been photographing a basket of garlic, and flattened herself up against the rough stone wall.

  Around her, the daily life of Naples' Spanish Quarter played itself out as it had probably done for centuries. Washing snapped in the breeze above the street like brightly colored flags, and the appartamenti at street level all had their front doors open so the street became an extension of the inhabitants' living rooms. It was late morning and the aroma of frying garlic wafted out onto the street, followed by the clanging of pots and pans as someone prepared lunch. An elderly couple sat outside squabbling in dialect, while a young woman with a toddler in a pram stood chatting to a middle-aged woman who plied the small child with sweets. Nearby, a young man crouched next to his scooter, his hands blackened with grease. Naples appeared to be full of over-confident young men like him and they all dressed the same - tight jeans and a muscle t-shirt, buzz-cut black hair and Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. He had stared at Luisa as she walked by, his gaze boring into her as she wandered along the street, taking photographs of whatever took her fancy. Her guidebook had warned her to take care in the Quartiere Spanolo but she had been captivated by its raw vibrancy.

  Until this moment she had felt perfectly safe.

  The scooter, a dusty red Vespa with dented sides, roared down the street. Its rider was a thin young man wearing a quilted vest, jeans and combat boots. His tanned, sinewy arms were bare and his face was partially hidden under wrap-around, mirrored sunglasses. He rocketed past the mother, pram and older woman, only just missing them.

  Metal flashed, followed by the crack of a single gunshot.

  The young man, who still crouched near his scooter, had turned at the noise of the approaching Vespa.

  He never had time to cry out for the bullet caught him in the forehead. He sprawled back against his scooter, gore splattering against the stone-wall behind him.

  Two things happened then. Luisa screamed and the assassin, so intent on hitting his target, lost control of his Vespa. The scooter swerved, toppled and skidded up the street. Bike and rider came to a halt a meter from where Luisa stood, terrified, still clutching her camera.

  The fall had not appeared to injure the assassin for he rolled out from under the bike and leaped to his feet. He had lost his sunglasses but still clutched the gun. For a second, he and Luisa stood eye to eye.

  The world stilled and for a long, slow heartbeat, the assassin and Luisa stared at each other.

  Luisa stood there, powerless, frozen in terror.

  "Murdering bastard!" The young woman's hysterical scream echoed off the walls behind them. Her child forgotten, the woman grabbed a beer bottle that lay at her feet and hurled it at the man. It bounced off his back and shattered on the cobbles. "You've murdered my Michele!" she wailed, rushing to the dead young man lying just meters away.

  "Michele!"

  The street exploded in an uproar. The elderly couple, with no thought for their own safety, ran shouting towards the killer, one armed with a broom, the other with a frying pan.

  The assassin had run out of time. He shoved Luisa into the path of his elderly assailants and fled.

  Luisa collided with a broom and a frying pan. She and the elderly couple sprawled across the road. Her chin hit the cobbles and she tasted blood. Head reeling, Luisa picked herself up off the street and helped the elderly couple to their feet.

  The assassin had vanished, leaving behind the Vespa that lay on its side, wheels spinning, and the body of a young man with grease-stained hands who lay spread-eagled over his scooter.

  ***

  The wail of police sirens got gradually closer before two Alfa Romeo blue and white patrol cars screamed into the street and slid to a spectacular halt. The sirens cut with one last wail. Uniformed polizia leaped out and barked orders at the crowd of bystanders that had swelled over the past ten minutes.

  Moments later, the whole area was cordoned off with police tape, and the witnesses were huddled together in a small, defensive group. The toddler was screaming while his mother sobbed. The two elderly witnesses shouted over the top of each other as they poured out their version of events to the police. Luisa stood, still clutching her camera, and looked on in mute silence. Her Italian, though good enough to get her by in most occasions, had completely deserted her for the moment and the voices around her sounded nothing more than a cacophony of noise.

  It was then that another Alfa Romeo, this one a gleaming blue with a detachable siren on the roof, pulled up behind the two police cars. As Luisa watched, a tall, dark-haired man dressed in jeans, combat boots, and open-necked shirt, got out, took off his sunglasses and ducked under the police tape. The policemen made no move to stop this man, although one stepped up to him and spoke quietly. The man nodded. Unsmiling, he looked across to where Luisa and the other witnesses stood.

  A physical jolt went through Luisa and her stomach dipped as if she had just stepped off the edge of a cliff. Dizzy, she looked down at her camera and felt her cheeks burn.

  “Signorina, ha fatto una foto dell’assassino?”

  The voice, low and masculine, made Luisa look up sharply – straight into a pair dark, intelligent eyes.

  “No,” Luisa replied shakily, “I didn’t take a photo of him, although I looked him in the eye. I thought he was going to kill me.”

  “According to the other witnesses, he would have killed you if he’d had more time,” the man continued in Italian, “I’d say you had a narrow escape.”

  There was something about the intensity of his gaze that made Luisa squirm. He was ignoring the other witnesses and focusing on her as if she alone held the key to catching the assassin.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how much help I can be,” Luisa burbled. She inwardly cursed as she felt her cheeks burn. He was making her so nervous. “I mean, I saw him but I froze during the whole thing. I don’t know if I can remember all the details.”

  The man nodded, unbothered by her assertion. Instead, he held out his hand for her to shake.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get a detailed report from you at the station. I’m sure you’ll remember the details once the shock fades. I’m Commissario Valerio Catanese, and your name is?”

  “Luisa Durasanti,” Luisa replied. She wasn’t surprised he was a police inspector – he had an air of calm intensity – a man who missed nothing.

  “Luisa, you have an Italian name but you speak with an accent – you aren’t from here?”

  “No, I’m Australian,” Luisa smiled. She might have an Italian name but to her it was obvious, even before she opened her mouth, that she was not Italian. Her father, an immigrant from southern Italy, was small, sturdy and dark with a beaky nose that her brother had inherited. However, he had married a tall, slender girl with red hair and Luisa had taken after her mother. “I’m here visiting relatives in Napoli.”

  They shook hands. His hand was warm and strong, and the feel of his skin against hers made Luisa’s heart jolt once more against her ribs. What was wrong with her? The shock had obviously turned her into a nervous wreck.

  After the break-up of her engagement two years earlier, she had been determined not to let a man affect her – and she had been successful. Maybe fear and shock had lowered her defenses, but whatever it was, Luisa did not enjoy it. She liked being in control and Commissario Catanese made her feel as if she was about to step out into the unknown.

  Luisa swallowed hard and crossed her arms across her chest in an effort to distance herself from the inspector. She looked across
at where a blood-soaked white sheet covered the corpse of the man who had, just a short time earlier, ogled her as she had walked past. Her gaze rested on one, grease-stained hand that the sheet did not cover.

  “Who is he?” she asked, hugging her arms tightly against her chest, “what did he do to deserve being gunned down like that?”

  Commissario Catanese turned his gaze from Luisa and looked across at the corpse. He sighed, as if he had seen sights like this far too often, and ran a hand through short dark hair.

  “The reasons for such an act are both simple and complicated,” he began cryptically. “His name is Michele Esposito. He’s 25 years-old and currently out of work. He has no previous criminal convictions but may have got himself involved in things too big for him. His girlfriend,” Catanese motioned to the young woman who sobbed in the arms of relatives nearby, “has recently had a baby. I’d guess he had money pressures and took what he thought was the easy route to cash.”

  Valerio Catanese’s expression darkened then. “They learn too late there’s no such thing as easy money. Unfortunately, it’s not a lesson they live to pass on to others.”

  ***

  Luisa shifted in her chair and glanced at her watch. It was getting late and she hoped her uncle and aunt were not starting to worry. Outside the window, the late afternoon sun cast long shadows against the walls of the nearby buildings, and a scooter gunned its engine on the street – reminding Luisa of the violent scene she had recently witnessed, and the reason she was here in the police station.

  She sat in the middle of a drab room furnished only with a small wooden table and two chairs. The walls were blank and the door had a formidable array of deadbolts.

  Commissario Catanese had driven her back to the police station in his car. They had travelled in silence through a web of narrow streets and crumbling tenements. At the police station, he had escorted her to this depressing room and promised to return shortly. That had been nearly an hour and a half ago. Now Luisa was becoming hungry, thirsty and more than a little irritated as she suspected she had been forgotten.

  She glanced at her watch again and with a sigh of annoyance got to her feet. She paced around the room, looked out of the window, crossed and uncrossed her arms and chewed at her bottom lip.

  He has forgotten me, she thought in annoyance. She understood a police inspector had many demands on his time but she did not appreciate being dumped in a room and left there as if she had committed a crime. I’m going home, she decided, I’m damned if I’m waiting here for another hour and a half until someone realizes I exist!

  Luisa tried the door and was relieved to find it open. She stepped outside into a featureless corridor with the same whitewashed walls and worn tiled floor. There was no one about so she turned left, the way Catanese had brought her, and made her way down the corridor to a set of stairs which led down to the ground floor of the building.

  Downstairs, she entered a grimy foyer area where disgruntled members of the public waited to report crimes. A uniformed policeman sat behind armored glass and grunted when Luisa motioned to him that she would like him to release the door and let her out into the street. He did as she asked and moments later Luisa had stepped back into the humid Neapolitan afternoon, onto a busy street thronged with pedestrians, fume-belching buses, and scooters.

  Luisa took a deep breath and felt the tension of the afternoon slowly ebb from her neck and shoulders. All she wanted now was to get home to the safety of her aunt and uncle’s apartment, enjoy a glass of prosecco and a bowl of pasta. Her relatives lived in Naples’ prosperous hill-suburb of the Vomero and she could not wait to return to it.

  In the couple of weeks Luisa had been in Naples she had got a good sense of the city’s major landmarks, and had figured out how to get about using Naples’ public transport. Up the street was a metro station that would take her to the Vittorio Emanuele metro and funicolare stop where she could catch a cable car up to the Vomero. She figured if she did not have to wait too long for connections she would be home within half an hour. Then she would be able to put this awful afternoon behind her.

  ***

  A figure, hidden from view on the other side of the street, watched the young, red-headed woman emerge from the central police station and walk in the direction of the metro station. She was striking and noticeably exotic in a city of petite dark-haired beauties. The man who watched her was not doing so out of lust. She had stood face-to-face with him only hours ago. In a police lineup, or if they showed her mug shots of men who met his description, it would not take the police long to identify him as the shooter.

  Mario Ponte was known to the police. He had a long and varied criminal record. He had robbed his first jewelry store at fifteen and spent the last ten years in and out of prison. Sometimes they caught him, sometimes they did not. However, this time he could not afford to let the police discover he was responsible. He had killed before and he had been lucky. There had been no one to witness those assassinations. If he was caught it was not the police that concerned him, but the men who had hired him. Even in jail they would have him ‘silenced’, for fear he would eventually talk. Not only that, but this victim had been a relative of one of the clan bosses – and he had no wish to make himself known to them either.

  Mario broke out in a cold sweat every time he thought about what they would do to him if he was caught. He had seen what they were capable of. Not for the first time, he regretted the path his life had taken. He should have followed his mother’s advice and got out of Napoli once he finished school. Instead, he had fallen in with those who preferred to steal rather than work and, for a while, he had not cared. Recently however, as the stakes grew higher and the crimes more serious he knew he had entered a one-way street there was no escaping from.

  The woman had to die.

  He watched her retreating back and, once she was half-way up the street, Mario slipped out of his hiding place and quietly followed.

  ***

  Luisa was two stops away from Vittorio Emanuele cable car station when she realized she was being followed.

  It was an odd sensation that came upon her suddenly. One moment she was sitting on the crowded metro, reading a poster on the wall opposite, and the next the hair on the back of her neck prickled and she was struck by a sense of danger.

  She sat still for a moment, heart pounding, before she slowly turned her head and took a good look at her surroundings.

  It was rush hour and the metro was busy. A group of university students stood by the door chattering and laughing together excitedly. An old man sat opposite her and gave her a leering smile when her gaze rested on him. Luisa gritted her teeth and moved her gaze on. There were plenty of creepy men on the streets and buses of Naples. They were an annoyance but it was not this individual who scared her. There were businessmen and women, mothers, children and teenagers all packed into the rattling carriage, but none caused her intuition to scream danger.

  Then she saw him.

  He had squeezed himself into the far corner of the other end of the carriage. He was wearing a leather jacket instead of the padded vest, but at the sight of the mirrored sunglasses, aggressive buzz haircut and gaunt tanned face, Luisa’s heart started hammering triple time against her ribs.

  He was pretending not to see her but Luisa knew it was a ruse. She had to get out of this carriage now.

  This train was one of the newer models that allowed passengers to move from one carriage to another with ease, rather than the old-style trains that trapped you inside your carriage until the next stop. Luisa casually got to her feet and moved down the carriage as nonchalantly as possible. She dared not look behind her, but she was sure he would realize she had spotted him and try to follow.

  As she wove in and out of the crowds of tightly packed passengers, Luisa’s mind whirled in panic. What was the best way to escape him? Should she jump off at the next stop and run? Should she try to get on another train? Or should she try to get the cable-car and make it home to he
r aunt and uncle?

  She could not let him see where she lived. The moment she got on the cable car he would know she lived in the Vomero and even if she managed to lose him before she got to her aunt and uncle’s building she would be terrified he was still lurking in the area every time she went outside.

  The only options open to her were to either get off at the next stop and try to raise the alarm or jump on a metro going back in the direction she had come and try to make it back to the police station.

  Luisa had almost reached the end of the train when she felt the brakes come on, signaling they were approaching the next station. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the gleam of mirrored sunglasses moving towards her, around six meters behind. This carriage was the busiest yet. It was packed with teenagers who, oblivious to anyone around them, where kidding around and jostling each other near the doors. Usually, Luisa would have either been intimidated or annoyed by such raucous behavior but now she welcomed it. She pushed her way into the centre of the group. Some of the teenagers jostled her and one of the boys made a crude comment. Luisa ignored them and jammed herself up against the door as the train squealed into the station.

  The doors slid open and Luisa bolted like a rabbit out onto the platform. There was a crowd of passengers waiting to get on and, in typical Italian fashion, they all tried to get on to the train while passengers were disembarking. Once again, this was usually something that made Luisa’s blood boil – however today she could have hugged them. She threw herself through the crowd, ignoring their protests as she elbowed her way through. Breaking free of the tangle of humanity, she sprinted through the narrow tunnel between the platforms.

  Luck was with her for a train, heading back in the direction she had come, had just pulled in. The doors started to beep, warning they were about to close, and Luisa flung herself into the carriage. She felt a whoosh of air as the doors slammed shut behind her. She grabbed hold of the pole in the centre of the carriage for support, ignoring the bemused glances from the other commuters.