The Fallen (13 page)

“I expect,” said Varone, “he’s just been waiting for an invitation.”

High above, the sun shone through the empty girders of the vaulted ceiling. The glass roof of the Galleria Umberto Primo had succumbed months earlier to the bombardments: navy ships lying off the coast had laid siege to the city through the early weeks of September. Whenever it rained, the long marble arcades of the shopping precinct were as slick as ice rinks—but today they gathered the heat of another springlike afternoon, and Greaves could feel the warmth radiate from the pale stone floor.

The waiter came across the arcade from the taverna, carrying his tray with both hands. He seemed impossibly tall to Greaves, and thin, like a wraith, with pale skin the colour of his apron and his hair a dusty grey. The slight hump in his back from years of having to bend from his great height made him appear all the more a figure from the other side. He set the tray on the table and removed the glasses of vermouth. His long, trembling fingers threatened to spill the drinks. Greaves paid him twice the cost and watched as he shambled back towards the bar.

“You do know that it is an act,” said Luisa. “Only a play for sympathy.”

“I do, yes,” Greaves said. “But he’s quite convincing, don’t you think?”

He looked at her. Her short dark hair framed her face, softening it, drawing attention to the paleness of her skin. And there was a gentle V-shaped crease in the middle of her brow that deepened when she sipped her drink.

She set the glass down and made a face. “It tastes horrible.”

Greaves tried his vermouth. It was foul and bitter, the herbs overpowering the wine, and it left a sour film on the tongue.

“Would you like something else?” he asked her.

Luisa shook her head.

On the walk from the section office, because he could think of nothing else to say, he had told her about his visit to 21st General Hospital and about what the chief clerk had said. He’d told her, too, about his visit with the assistant port officer. She’d walked beside him with her arms folded across her chest, and though she nodded on occasion, he couldn’t be sure that she was listening.

“I was wondering,” he said now, “about the music box. Did you like it?”

She glanced away and her cheeks coloured slightly. “Yes. It is very lovely. But you shouldn’t have done that.”

“I wanted to.”

She smiled.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you do that,” he said. “Smile, I mean.”

“Well, there is not so much to smile about.”

“No, I suppose not.”

He saw that he was making her uncomfortable and so changed the subject. “How is Dottore Cioffi making out at the museum?”

“Aldo,” she said plainly. “Aldo is a thief.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ever since he was a boy, he has stolen from the museum.”

“But why wouldn’t the
professore
have said anything to me?”

“Aldo is his nephew,” Luisa said. “He isn’t going to say anything against him to you. You are the security police. Besides, Augusto thinks he will change.”

“But you don’t,” said Greaves.

“His sort cannot change.”

“And what sort is that?”

Luisa stared down at her glass. “The sort that thinks only about himself.”

“I see.”

At a table behind theirs, an argument started between two young women who had been sitting with an English soldier. As they yelled at one another, the soldier stood up and started to walk away. The bickering stopped and the women went after him, each taking an arm, and the three of them went off together.

“People sell themselves cheaply in Naples,” Luisa said. She took another drink of her foul vermouth, and then looked intently at Greaves. “What will you do when you find them?”

“What will I do when I find whom?” asked Greaves.

“The ones who are stealing the medicine.”

“Oh, I won’t find them.”

“What do you mean?”

“My inquiries are just for show. So we can put something in our report that will keep the commanders happy up at Field Security HQ.”

“But what if you do? What if you are able to catch them?”

Greaves shrugged. “I’ll arrest them, I suppose.”

“And what would happen after that?”

“They would go on trial at Castel Capuano, likely be found guilty, and then be sent to Poggio Reale or to the prison on Porcida. That’s the way these things usually play themselves out.”

“And the medicines?”

“They would be confiscated. Returned, I assume, to the supply depot or to 21st General Hospital, or sent along to the evacuation hospitals and field stations up north.”

“Shouldn’t it go to the people who need it?”

“It would,” said Greaves.

“You mean the soldiers.”

“Yes, of course.”

Luisa considered this for a moment, then she stood up from the table. “Thank you very much for the drink,
tenente
.”

“Do you have to leave so soon?”

She nodded. “Yes, I must get back to the museum.”

“Perhaps we could do this again?” said Greaves.

“Perhaps,” she said, and turned and began to walk away. Greaves watched her, hoping that she might glance back, but she did not.

The private boxes at the San Carlo rose like the tiers of a pink wedding cake, the carved balcony fronts like seams of pale icing between the layers. The house lights were dim; the lamps in the sconces, four tall on each pillar, shone low, as if they’d been starved of their brightness. In the pit the orchestra tuned its instruments, an atonal accompaniment to the chaotic scene of patrons finding their seats. The effect was a dissonant murmur that put Varone in mind of a herd of goats clambering through a rocky laneway. A shout came from the next box over, and an American soldier leaned out over the railing and waved his arms to get the attention of another soldier in a box on the opposite side of the theatre. He put two fingers into his mouth and let loose a piercing whistle. Varone’s younger daughter, Giulia, put her hands to her ears. When the American whistled again, Varone’s wife leaned forward and loudly shushed him.

The soldier frowned at her. “What’s it to you, lady?” Then he looked at Varone. “Hey, ginzo, what you starin’ at?”

“Nu’ sputa’ ’ncielo, ca ’nfaccia te torna.”

“What was that?” the soldier said. Varone’s stare did not waver and the soldier gave a nervous laugh. “Crazy fucken wop,” he said, and retreated into his box.

The house lights went down. The hum of the audience swelled momentarily, then settled into a respectful silence. The curtain lifted to reveal a bare stage, the boards lit by a single light. The cloth backdrop was painted in dreary greys: a monochrome of colonnades and a lacklustre countryside beyond. There were no set pieces, no props, and it made Varone sad to see the magnificent San Carlo humbled so.

But as the opening aria began, his mind wandered from the performance. Other matters occupied his thoughts, foremost among them Renzo Abruzzi. The night before, dreams of the young man had disturbed Varone’s sleep: visions of Abruzzi sipping cappuccino on the balcony of his apartment and playing with his daughters. It wasn’t so much the young man’s boldness that worried him; hijacking the shipment from the port had been a calculated move to get his attention, and he had to give him credit for that. Rather, what bothered Varone, what nagged at him, was Abruzzi’s relationship with the
dottore
and the security policeman. If Abruzzi had managed to make a connection within the security police, it could spell trouble for Varone. If this were, in fact, the case, his own friends in the American military police would be of little help to him.

He looked out over the darkened theatre. The lead tenor was midway through his solo and the audience was enthralled. Giulia, at his side, had slipped her arm through his. Varone leaned over and kissed his daughter gently on the top of her head.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he whispered.

“Yes, Papa,” she said, and nuzzled against him.

Varone turned his eyes to the stage and to the singer illumined in the weak glow of the spotlight. He would have to be careful with Abruzzi, he decided, until he knew for certain the extent of his connections.
The torch beam splashed a puddle of light across the marble floor. Cioffi quickly shielded the lamp with his hand. His knee hurt. He had banged it against a packing crate in the corridor. A nail, or a loose sliver of wood, had torn a hole in his trouser leg and pierced his flesh. He could feel the warm trickle of blood run down his shin; it itched.

From the street outside, he could hear shouting: drunken GIs causing a commotion in the square. There came the noise of smashing glass; someone had thrown a bottle. Every sound was amplified in the dark emptiness of the museum—even his own breathing, which rasped loudly, as if he were panting into his own ear. He kept his hand over the torch as he passed through the main gallery, the statues’ shadowy faces staring down at him from behind their sandbag bulwarks.

In the side corridor he stopped and took out his handkerchief. He wiped away the sheen of sweat from his face, then he carried on.

When he reached the narrow gallery at the end of the corridor, he switched off the torch. From here he would work in the dark. The display case he wanted was just inside the doorway. He found it easily and opened the glass door. The cabinet was crowded with statuettes. He felt for the one he was after: a smoothly carved quartzite dog that he had failed to make note of that afternoon when he was entering the pieces into the ledger. He took it from the shelf and put it into his pocket, and carefully rearranged the surrounding statuettes so as not to leave a conspicuous void in the exhibit. Then he closed the cabinet and hurried back into the corridor.

He turned the torch on but again shielded the lamp, using only the weak light that leaked between his fingers to guide his way back across the main gallery. He could hear the soldiers in the square again, shouting now. They would keep the
carabiniere
at the front entrance occupied, but Cioffi was sure that the American MPs would soon come to break up the argument. He did not want to be there when
they arrived, so he went quickly along the next corridor to the service entrance on the north side of the building. He found the door and removed the shim he’d used to wedge it open. He put the piece of wood into his pocket with the statuette and went out into the alleyway.

“Turn off that light, you fool!”

Lello stepped from the shadows, a panicked look on his face.

Cioffi switched off the torch. “Sorry.”

“You’ll be sorrier if anyone saw you,” Lello hissed back at him.

Cioffi smiled calmly at his friend, though his heart continued to pound. “You worry like an old woman,” he said, and patted his pocket. “Come on, let’s go get a drink.”

A truck was stopped in the square and a crowd had begun to gather round. They milled about it in a loose circle, weighing the resolve of the Kiwi rifleman standing at the tailgate. He held his carbine out before him like a cudgel. The cargo lay uncovered in the bed: a load of crated field ration kits bound for the divisional camp on the flood plain below Monte Cassino. In the cab, the driver turned the ignition, while the second rifleman, only half visible under the open hood, fiddled with cylinder wires. The engine sputtered but did not catch. Then a small boy scrambled forward. He climbed the rear tire and reached over the side. But before he had a chance to grab anything, the rifleman leapt over the crates and brought the butt of his carbine down on the boy’s hand. The child fell to the ground and held his broken fingers out in front of him; they were at odd angles, pointing off in different directions. His screams masked the starting of the engine. The second rifleman dropped the hood and hurried around the tailgate. He clambered up and fetched his carbine from where he’d left it lying in the cargo bed and pointed it at the crowd. He almost fell over when the truck lurched forward and started across the square towards Via Santa Caterina.

Major Woodard turned away from the window. “I hate this place,” he said to Greaves, who stood on the far side of the desk. In the major’s hand was the official request for a prisoner transfer that had been
delivered by a courier from the Questura during morning briefing. “And now we have this nonsense to deal with—again. The third time inside of a month. It really is ridiculous. I mean, how are we to do our work—our proper work?” The major ran a hand through his thin, sandy hair. His face had begun to redden. “It’s Biblical, is what it is. All this eye-for-an-eye foolishness.”

“Yes, sir. It is.” As much as he disliked the major—Greaves found him for the most part petty and narrow-minded, and was always reminded of those dull-witted boys he’d gone to school with whose view of the future ran no farther than their next rugby match—he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He’d been dealt a bad hand with 803 FSS. In the last week his staff of six had been whittled down to four. Sergeant Roylance had been sent to Sorrento to take over the detachment there after the intelligence officer in charge, a young captain, had been co-opted for administrative duties at Castellammare. And two days earlier Sergeant Jones, while driving one of the Nortons on the Lungomare, had taken a spill and ended up with several stitches to go along with the badly wrenched knee that had him hobbling about the section office on crutches. While the manpower available had always been stretched thin, now it was alarmingly so.

“I understand that a vendetta is a serious thing,” Major Woodard continued, as if explaining himself to Greaves. “It can be a destabilizing factor. If people start taking sides, the whole district could split. And if we don’t step in, then the Camorra will. But honestly, lieutenant, sometimes I just don’t understand these people.”

The major dropped the request onto his desk and rummaged through his pockets for his cigarettes. He lit one for himself and then passed the packet to Greaves.

“You know this fellow,” he said. “You don’t suppose he just wants to fob off his prisoner on us so he can go about his business, do you?”

“No, sir,” Greaves said, leaning across the desk to light his cigarette off the burning match the major held out to him. “If Brigadiere Maglietta is asking for help, sir, then I would say that it’s very likely that he needs it.” In the back of his mind, though, Greaves didn’t doubt that Francesco Maglietta also saw the prisoner transfer as an opportunity to share some plum brandy and a few games of
tresette
.