These Dark Things (3 page)

He handed her several photographs—the dead girl mugging for the camera, and then one with a man, his arms around her, face turned away. Posed on a dock, the sun in the girl’s eyes.

“She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;” Pino quoted from memory. “And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu.”

Natalia looked at him. “Why do you know that?”

“Keats? We had to memorize it because Keats loved Italy so and died in his little room by the Spanish Steps. If we missed even a word, beautiful Sister Mary Frances rapped us with her stick.”

They divided the photographs, lingered for a moment on the steps of the church. The beginning of March. Not yet spring. But the sun was already warm. A lovely morning, with birds singing.

Natalia emptied the girl’s purse into her lap, and they took inventory. A large zip-lock plastic bag. A lipstick and cell phone, a wallet with identification: Teresa Steiner, twenty-three. From Ulm. German. Studying at the University.

Natalia scanned the faces of the onlookers, who were waiting for any crumb of information, which they’d convert to gossip and transmit across the old city in minutes.

She recognized a few of them—Falcone Gaetano, the caretaker of the government offices around the block on Vico San Paolo. And Falcone’s retarded brother, Paolo, with his amazing cauliflower ears.

“If you have no information regarding the crime, we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“Public street,” a shopkeeper hissed as she passed.

“I’d like to know how the killer got into the locked church with a body and got it down there,” Natalia said when the crowd had gone.

“It’s not much of a lock. It’s ancient, easily picked.” Pino stared at the shrine, the light of the massed candles steadily surrendering to the dawn. “You think the killer lit all those candles?”

The palazzo where Teresa Steiner lived was only two blocks from where she had been murdered. Natalia and Pino decided to walk. Something scurried nearby as they set out, a rat edging past the wall.

Pino said, “A politician from the North once called Naples a sewer inhabited by rats.”

“There are no rats up north?” Natalia asked.

Laundry hung like banners from lines strung across the alley between the residential buildings. Giant brassieres beside tiny skirts. Underpants of varying sizes; trousers and shirts. To clean what is dirty—to purify. A major preoccupation of her city. On the sidewalk in front of an open doorway: a tiny rack with the clothes of an infant lovingly laid out to dry. Innocent. As if the wearer could escape growing up into the hard life of Naples.

A prostitute stood her post in front of the seedy Hotel Internazionale, across from the railroad terminal, waiting for the next surge of travelers off the Rome train. Checking her watch, the woman took a drag on her cigarette, then threw it down, adjusted her cleavage, and nodded at Natalia and Pino as they passed. Her red wool skirt stopped just below her ass. She wore gold heels. They had to be nearly four inches high—a hazard on the uneven cobblestones. A hazardous profession. Not to mention AIDS and kinky johns, both on the rise. Where were the Jesuits now? Today only a few Carmelite nuns reached out. A few years earlier, Natalia remembered, she had given this same woman a card with the name of their clinic. “
Grazie
,” the streetwalker had managed in a tone that conveyed:
You’ve got to be kidding!
Sad, a prostitute of fifty. But somehow she had stayed alive.

Natalia admired the bold choice of shoe. No doubt she had a closet full. Natalia’s mother had owned only three pairs at any one time. Two were sensible—flats with laces. The pair with low heels she wore once or twice a year for special occasions. Natalia’s grandmother, who had worked in a sardine cannery, never wore heels in her life.

How has she avoided breaking a leg? Natalia wondered.

A block later, they found Teresa Steiner’s former residence. The building wore decades of grime and diesel fumes. By the door, written childlike under the name Lucia Santini, was the word
pensione
. Natalia pressed the caretaker’s buzzer and they waited. She was about to ring again when the intercom crackled.

“
Pronto?
”

“Carabinieri.”

The door clicked and Natalia pushed open the small door cut into the massive one. Climbing three flights, they arrived out of breath. The landing was dark, one door open—a woman with a dog beside her. The dog was a husky, one eye green and the other blue. She stepped aside to let them in.

In the hallway, a table and a chest of drawers. On top of the drawers, magazines and a vase of dusty-looking plastic flowers. Lucia Santini wiped her hands on her apron. Her eyes were swollen, the flesh around them red.

“They came. They told me already. She’s dead.”

“Sorry to disturb you again,” Natalia said, “but we’d like to ask you some questions. Can we come in?”

The dog sniffed Natalia.

“
Basta!
” Lucia Santini grabbed his ratty collar and pulled him away.

“No, it’s okay,” Natalia said, “I like dogs.” Lucia, however, was already dragging the creature down the corridor, soothing him as they went. “Everything is all right, my sweet baby.” She bent down and kissed the dog on his large woolly head.

Lucia Santini was a big woman, arms puddled with fat. Close to seventy, yet her hair was blue-black, pinned up on her head like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A few hairs of a moustache stuck out above her upper lip. The living room looked to be where Lucia spent most of her time. A cigarette burned in an ashtray by the couch, and the TV droned. Lucia trundled over and turned it off.

“Was Teresa Steiner here last night?” Natalia asked.

“She was in her room, studying. Armando—he rents a room in the back—Armando had gone to bed. He works on the freighters and gets up early. My sister was here. We stayed up watching television. I knocked on Teresa’s door and asked if she’d like to watch with us. Sometimes she would. But she said she had to finish a paper for the next day. She seemed tired, not her usual self.”

“What was her usual self?” Pino asked.

“Cheerful. And with energy, like young people. Not like us—eh, Osky?” she said to the dog, creeping toward her. “Teresa wanted to know everything about Naples. She wanted to try new things. She loved to go dancing. Can you imagine: she wanted me to go tango dancing with her. But she was a serious student. Sometimes her light would be on till two or three in the morning. I’d look in and she’d have her nose in a book.”

The dog wandered back to its mistress’s side. She patted him on the flank, starting up his tail. Natalia took out her notebook.

“Do you remember what she was wearing when she went out last night?”

“Nah, but I can tell you she was dressed up in something pink. And high heels. I thought she might have been going dancing.” She pulled her housedress closer. It was missing buttons. A pocket hung limp.

“How late were you up?” Pino asked.

“My sister left at ten, or just after, when the TV show finished. I cleaned up and went to bed.”

“Did the girl receive any phone calls?” Natalia’s pen was poised.

“No. Not on my telephone. But she has one of those mobiles they all carry. My room is at the other end of the apartment, so if she did go out, I wouldn’t have heard her. You want to see her room?”

They followed her across the dim corridor. The door was open, towels and sheets folded on the bed.

“Excuse the mess. I was just taking them in from the line.”

“Don’t worry,” Natalia said, looking around. A sadlooking room. Maybe the walls had been white once. The bed was like the one Natalia’s
nonna
slept in after her husband died. It was barely big enough for one. The mattress sagged and it had an iron frame. As if she were doing penance for still being alive.

Teresa Steiner must have used the small table to study. The overhead bulb didn’t look like it provided much light. Natalia imagined the TV or radio going constantly in the adjoining living room. She wondered how the girl could concentrate enough to study here anyway. Probably she spent some time at the library. Natalia remembered how she had adored the library’s quiet when she was a student.

Lucia sighed. “I was born here.” She crossed to the unmade bed and smoothed the sheets.

Natalia sifted through a drawer crammed with colorful silk scarves.

“My mother didn’t like hospitals,” Lucia added. “She had a friend who died in one, giving birth. I was her only child, the only one who survived.”

“I’m sorry.” Natalia closed the drawer. Pino was down on his knees, looking under the bed.

“It was God’s will that she live with me her last year,” Lucia said. “Hot in here, isn’t it?” She opened the louvered doors to the balcony. The men working on the church across the way shouted to one another.

“Would you like coffee?” Lucia offered. “I was just going to make myself a pot.”

Pino looked at Natalia. “I have to get going.”

“I’d like some. That would be great,” Natalia said.

“I’ll see you out,” Signora Santini said to Pino. “I can tell you about the dog.”

“The dog?” Natalia asked.

“Not a big deal,” she said. “He’ll give you the report.”

Pino winked at his partner. She frowned and proceeded to explore Teresa Steiner’s room.

In a plywood cabinet against one wall hung Teresa’s expensive designer clothes. Gucci and Prada. Apparently Teresa could have afforded a better room, even an apartment in an elegant palazzo. Why did she rent a seedy room here?

Natalia closed Teresa’s door and walked back into the living room. She sat down at the end of the couch. Lucia put their coffee on the table and sat herself, tugging her raveled sweater into place. Natalia was reminded of crazy Maria, who sold the only bad-tasting tomatoes in Italy at a table on the corner of Via Capozzi. She sheltered three or four dogs under it. Her hair never combed, face dirty, clothes scavenged from the garbage—but her dogs were always bathed and groomed.

Petting Osky, who had settled at her feet, Natalia could imagine coming home to a soft friendly creature rather than to empty rooms. A dog would generally be glad to see its owner. Men were another story.

Lucia pushed a plate of biscotti to Natalia. The coffee was surprisingly good.

“Did Teresa Steiner have gentlemen coming to her room?” Natalia asked as she reached for a cookie.

Lucia bit into hers, scattering crumbs. Whiskers spiked from her chin.

“She had a lot of boyfriends, but the professor was the one she saw most. Said he was her thesis adviser, and they were going to her room to work. I’m making coffee in the morning when he slinks past without even a
buongiorno.
I can always tell when they’re married. They bring me sweets the first time and then they don’t want to have anything to do with me. Far be it for me to speak ill of the dead,” Signora Santini added, “but your boss is gone and you’re a woman. You understand.”

“He’s not my boss,” Natalia said. “Actually, I’m his.”

The dog jumped up and stretched out between them.

“I seen her with Gambini.”

“Zazu, the mob boss?”

“Yeah. Aldo Gambini. Twice. Signor Rocco, he called himself—like I was stupid! So I got suspicious and followed her. Guess what? I watched her open a collection box at a shrine and stuff money into her fancy bag. She had a key. Right in the alley where she was killed. It figures. But still, it did surprise me. She was a nice girl. Brought me treats.”

“Are you sure? Taking money?”

“Sure I’m sure. That hair. You couldn’t miss it. One night she came home late. Said she wanted to talk. Did I mind? Of course I didn’t. I thought she was gonna confess to a broken heart. Instead, she says she’s working for Gambini, collecting shrine money. Told me her mother had cancer.” Usually even the Camorra hesitated to commit crimes near the shrines under the eyes of the saints or the Madonna and Jesus. In the old days, thieves had strung ropes across the dark alleys to trip people at night and rob them. A Dominican friar had persuaded the Bourbon king to sponsor oil lamps, but the thieves destroyed them. So the king installed votive candles before statues of the saints. People loved the shrines. But the Camorra took over and the shrines became one more business, like bingo or festival games: a cooperative venture between the Camorra and the Vatican.

A small man with black hair walked into the living room carrying a bucket. Without a greeting, he set it down by the television and set to his task. The TV occupied a place of honor on a metal rolling cart surrounded by artificial plants and silk flowers. He dipped the rag into the bucket, squeezed it, then proceeded to wash the screen in smooth strokes.

“Armando,” Lucia offered finally. He looked at Natalia but didn’t say anything. A tidy man, obviously, but today he’d missed a wedge of shaving cream crusted on his ear. “From Chile,” Lucia added, as Armando turned back to his chore. Lucia set down her cup and continued the discussion.

“‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Teresa said. And the next day, she brings me a bottle of Giorgio perfume. Must have cost fifty euros!”

“What is the boyfriend’s name?”

“I don’t remember.”