“They call me the mayor around here. No insult intended. I’m telling you friendly,” the woman said. “Carabinieri or not, outsiders aren’t welcome here. Like that bitch who was taking out of our pockets.” She tapped her chest. “I’m in charge of collections, or was until she showed up. Mister G sent her to collect even though we’d been doing it for years. It was ours until she came. Why he wanted to use that Bosch harlot, we couldn’t figure. Unless … you know.” She made an obscene gesture.
Abruptly, she pulled her shopping bags into a doorway and closed the door behind her. A scrawny cat sprinted out just as it shut. That Aldo Gambini had an arrangement with the local churches for fairs and the shrine collection boxes was common knowledge. If the authorities interfered with the shrines, there would be civil unrest. The churches got a monthly stipend and nobody said anything, certainly not the penitents who dropped coins and stuffed their hard-earned bills into the wooden boxes. As long as someone was listening to their prayers.…
Another voice. “Please, Signora.” Natalia couldn’t tell at first where it was coming from.
“Please, I’m hungry.”
Finally she saw bony fingers wiggling out of a basement window. The face must have been eighty. Natalia stooped by the window and dug in her shoulder bag for a couple of euros. For wine, most likely.
The bullets struck suddenly. One pocked the wall above the shrine, another kicked loose some mortar close to Natalia. A grandmother, pinning socks on a line in front of her building, fell and shrieked: “I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!”
Natalia and Pino pulled their Berettas. She crouched, pistol raised. She scanned rooftops and windows for the shooter. No faces at the windows. Balconies empty. It was quiet. A baby cried. Slowly they retreated from the alley, walking out backward, weapons still pointed back at the houses.
“Are you okay?” Pino said, and offered her a handkerchief.
“I’ve felt better.” Natalia accepted it and wiped her sweaty face. “Thanks.”
“It was for your arm.”
She looked at one, then the other. Her right forearm was bleeding, the sleeve torn. Pino folded back the sleeve.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I guess a shard kicked off a façade and struck me.”
The handkerchief was soaked red. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Absolutely not, Sergeant.”
“Let’s stop at my place, then,” Pino suggested. “It’s not far.”
Natalia, shaken, nodded. An obese man in a sleeveless undershirt peeped out a window and yanked the shutters closed.
When they reached the street outside, life seemed to be normal. Younger children straggled home from school, people went about their business. If they’d heard the gunshots, there was no indication.
Pino and Natalia returned to their car and drove to his apartment house. Natalia recognized the building. It had once been elegant, but now it was worn down. The outer door was unlocked. Pino went in first and held out his hand to help Natalia over the ledge of the small door mounted in the larger one.
It was quiet in the courtyard. Most of his neighbors were at work, older kids still at their school desks struggling over sums and dates of events past.
“
Giorno
, Lilia,” Pino said to the woman scrubbing the stairs.
“
Giorno
,
tenent
.” She stopped for a moment, scrub brush in hand, watching as they passed by.
“Excuse the mess,” Pino said, unlocking his front door. He went in first. He picked up a stack of papers from the couch and put them on the floor. An empty wine glass sat forlorn on the coffee table. It didn’t seem changed from the time Natalia had been here years ago.
Pino unlatched the shutters and the doors to the balcony. Afternoon light flowed into the room. Natalia looked around. The high ceilings made it seem larger than it was. Aside from the couch, a chair, and one lamp, there was no furniture. Books were lined up on the floor along one wall. A small Buddha glowed. There was a lavender cushion on the floor in front of it. Must be where Pino meditated. Natalia identified the smell of incense.
“A mess?” she said. “Not compared to my place.”
There were no photos or mementos. She slumped onto his couch.
“Something to drink?” Pino asked. “I have flat water in bottles, and I have wine.”
“Water,” Natalia answered. “A little wine, and I might not be in control of myself.”
“Would that be so bad?” Pino asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“That’s okay,” Natalia said.
“No. I want to.”
“Okay. What?”
“It’s over with Tina.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Natalia—”
“I’m dying of thirst.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
Natalia sat on the couch and leaned her head against the cushions. She closed her eyes, falling immediately into sleep. A few moments later, Pino touched her arm, holding out the water.
“I fell asleep? I can’t believe it.”
“Drink,” Pino said, sitting next to her, as he handed her the glass of boutique spring water. “This has electrolytes and vitamins. You’ll feel better.”
Neither spoke for a moment. Then Pino pulled his chair up to her and reached for her hand.
“What are you thinking?” he said.
“I’m thinking, what’s the point?” She pulled her hand away and took a drink. “What are we and the police clearing—three percent of the violent felonies? I’m thinking the Camorra owns this town. They own us. One goes and two spring up. You know it. And I know it. We’re the bravest. The toughest, the best. We have a silver medallion on our hats and we take home a few extra euros to prove we’re formidable.
“But to the Camorra, we’re no more threatening than dust. No one can back us or really protect us, Pino. Not Colonel Donati, not the mayor, not even the president of the republic. No one. If Gambini killed Teresa Steiner and we proved it, he’d make sure we didn’t survive here. They’d have to ship us to some former colony to live under assumed names. We’re like sacrificial lambs, Pino. We could have been killed back there. Added to some plaque and promptly forgotten.” She took a sip of water and lay back. “Aren’t you ever afraid?”
“Every day. But we can’t turn away from reality—neither its beauty nor its dangers. Or so Buddha teaches us.”
“What about putting yourself in harm’s way? What does he say about that?”
“I don’t see that we really have a choice,” Pino said. “You and I have both been offered postings in Rome, at better salaries and with less dangerous responsibilities. Neither of us has left.” Taking Natalia’s hand again, he lifted it to his lips to kiss it. “Stay the night.”
Natalia got up and walked to the balcony, heart beating fast. She tried to think.
The front of Pino’s building faced Piazzetta Materdei, which boasted one tree and a collection of pigeons. There were broken cobblestones and one bench complete with the requisite widows. Today there were two of them parked with their shopping, to rest their feet and gossip.
“How long have you lived here?” Natalia asked. Pino stepped out on the balcony behind her.
“This apartment belonged to a childhood friend of my Uncle Ricci. A sweet, funny man. Beppe, we called him. Beppe never recovered from his wife’s death. He stopped going out. Started to collect newspapers. It was like a maze in here. Luckily there wasn’t a fire. Uncle Ricci visited him every week. Brought him food when he didn’t shop for himself. Ten years ago, Beppe died. He willed the apartment to Uncle Ricci. When I finished the sergeants’ course in Modena and was assigned to Naples, my uncle offered it to me. Five rooms. A palace. I was thrilled. It took weeks to clear it out. I wallpapered a room with the rarer editions of the newspapers.”
“Your Uncle Ricci sounds like a great guy.”
“He is. Natalia, listen to me—we can’t know the future. We can’t see it. There is only now. We are here today. That’s all there is.”
Pino drew her back into the apartment. He’d laid out a first aid kit. She sat while he tended to her wound. It wasn’t too bad, just bloody. It had clotted. He cleaned the wound, disinfected it, and applied a gauze pad, taping it in place. As he gathered up the swabs and debris, Natalia leaned forward and kissed him, first lightly, then with ardor.
“May I?” Pino asked, kissing her throat as he unbuttoned her blouse.
“Let me.” Natalia lifted her shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor. She unhooked her bra and slipped it off.
“Beautiful,” Pino whispered, openly staring at her nakedness. “Two roses.”
He kissed her breasts and her hard nipples. He took off his shirt. She ran her hands over his chest. She could feel his heart pounding. His skin was starkly darker than hers. He touched her cheek as they kissed again.
“Wait,” she said, “wait.”
“What?”
“I smell like a crime scene.”
“Yeah, erotic.”
She pushed him back and headed for the bathroom.
“There are towels in the cupboard behind the door. Cover your wound. Keep it dry. Look for plastic bags there, in a basket.”
Pino’s bathroom was ancient but immaculate. Figured. There was no tub, only a shower with a giant showerhead the size of a sunflower. Natalia laid out towels on the porcelain sink, crackled with age, and sat to pee. A mascara stick poked out of the hedge of toothbrushes upright in a cup. Tina’s, no doubt. Natalia flushed and the room practically shook with the rush of water into the bowl. She nearly laughed as she started the shower.
She wrapped her injured forearm in plastic and tucked the edges in. The water was quickly hot and she stepped in, reveling in the warmth that soothed her back muscles and arms as it cascaded along her body from head to foot.
Pino’s soap smelled lemony, like him. She lathered and washed, basking in the sensations, then reluctantly turned off the stream. Swaddled in a large towel, she returned to Pino.
“Your turn.”
Pino advanced into the steamy bathroom. Natalia dried her hair as she walked the living room, snooping. Aside from books and the basics, there wasn’t much. On the small table near the windows were some sheets of paper held down by a plain rock. She lifted it and read the unfinished poem beneath.
After the roses—rosehips (after the flesh, the bone)
Silver-lidded morning after sleep.
Rain, the worm in its sheath.
Beyond summer’s green.
A ruby-tinted leaf.
“White Fields,” he’d titled it. A policeman-poet. Her junior officer, her subordinate, about to be her lover. It can’t be a good idea. Good or not, it was too late. Pino was coming back, towel around his waist. She replaced the rock and looked at him.
Pino said, “I’ve wanted this for a long time.” He embraced her, slipping a hand under her breast—the other reached down to touch her. Natalia was already moist. Desire in charge.
He guided her into the bedroom, to the mattress on the floor. A small Buddha witnessed them. An offering of an orange and rose blossom occupied a small bowl next to it. Pino laid her down and nuzzled her.
“Shall I turn off the bedside light?” he asked.
“No. We are adults and this needs to be premeditated. If we’re to break the rules, we should do it with full knowledge.”
“Don’t go away,” he said, and went to a small chest of drawers, coming back with a foil packet. Kneeling next to her, he tore it open. She plucked it out and unrolled the sheath onto his penis.
In a moment, he was inside her. No preamble, no foreplay. Natalia wrapped her legs around him as he thrusted gently. Soon they were slowly rocking back and forth, staring into each other’s eyes, abandoning themselves to the pleasure, letting it take them. Mouths open, they kissed. She groaned as he kissed her collarbone, her shoulder. Soon the pulsing was unbearable and claimed them.
They made love until they were sore and their flesh oversensitive.
“Don’t touch me,” Natalia gasped, laughing, when Pino threatened her again. She turned away and he slid up behind her, an arm around her waist. Cupped together, they drifted toward sleep.
“Silver-lidded morning after sleep,” she said, kissing him.
“You’ve been reading my poetry. Spying.”
“That’s an unfortunate and imprecise term.”
“What would you call it, if not snooping?”
“Investigating.” She kissed him. “It’s my job.”
No matter how heavy the rain, people ventured out into the day, holding umbrellas or newspapers over their heads. Motorcycles and scooters splashed pedestrians and sped away.
Swallows took refuge under the eaves and in bell towers. Children in school were a bit more bored than usual, hypnotized by the water sheeting down the panes. The markets opened, with tarps and plastic roofs rigged over the goods. Sidewalk café tables leaned, folded-up and stacked, under opened awnings. Occasionally a waiter would come out to push with a broom at the bulge of water collecting overhead. Just before they went downstairs, the rain eased.
Outside, Natalia unlocked her Vespa motorbike. Cream and purple, not a speck of dirt on it.
“Want a ride?” she asked.
Pino shook his head, but she insisted. Natalia honked the horn as they accelerated and bumped off the slight curb, into traffic. At the office, she signed out the journal discovered by the forensics squad in the hollow of Teresa Steiner’s brass bedstead. The cover was a peacock-feather design. On the first page, written neatly in red ink below her name:
PERSONAL
. Natalia turned the page:
Reality is a social construct
.
Pure Lattanza.
“
How a mountain is regarded is of no importance to the mountain.
”—Kierkegaard. Interpreted by L:
Nature is indifferent.
She must have been impressed with herself when her professor showed such interest. Innocence and hope. Lattanza preys on both. Once, Natalia had been as naïve as Teresa. She quotes him again:
If an immigrant is viewed as unwanted, dirty, poor by the society he or she enters, they will forever be affected by that view.
True, Natalia thought. If only Lattanza were as enlightened in his personal affairs as in his observations about the world. It was common knowledge around the University that he came on to at least one student every semester. But he’d never actually fallen for any of them before.