Chapter Seven
Seven
Valerio’s phone was dead. Arriving at the station, he gave it to the techs to see if they could fix it.
Maurizio looked up from his paperwork when he entered the office.
“I’m happy to be wrong,” he said. “Seems it went better than I thought.”
Valerio stared blankly at his partner. “What?”
“Just some detective work.” Maurizio grinned.
“You’re in your best shirt and shoes. You weren’t wearing these when you left the office yesterday.
But your clothes are wrinkled, and your shoes are ruined, which tells me you were out in the rain last night and haven’t had a chance to go home and change. So, Maria was the real deal?”
Valerio felt a rush of irritation.
“No,” he grumbled. Then, before Maurizio could say anything else, “I don’t want to discuss it.”
—
It was a quiet morning, with a full slate of catch-up. Valerio, usually annoyed with paperwork, was relieved to settle into the monotonous tasking.
Just before lunchtime, a tech knocked on the open door and strode into the office. He was a scruffy man with an overgrown beard, glasses, khaki pants, and an ill-fitting shirt.
“I can’t believe I have to say this to you, an important capo,” he announced in the dramatic voice of a TV presenter. “When you take your phone swimming with you, or store it in the toilet, it’s very bad for the phone. Do you understand? It is not designed to operate in such environments.”
Maurizio laughed. Valerio pushed up from his desk.
“Did you fix it?” he asked.
“I can’t always perform miracles,” declared the man. “This time you were lucky.”
“I could kiss you,” said Valerio. “Shave that ugly beard and I’ll think about it. Right on the mouth. With tongue, if you ask nicely.”
The phone took some time to boot up—and Valerio had nearly forgotten the password for the SIM. He made some failed attempts on his way to the toilet.
At last, the phone was unlocked, and he was annoyed to see that he’d missed a dozen messages.
He tapped on a number he didn’t recognize.
Someone had sent him several pictures. It took a moment to register what he was seeing.
They were photos of his children—Davide and Gemma.
The first two showed them on their way to school.
The others were at the school entrance, as they greeted their friends and walked inside.
All images had been shot with a telephoto lens.
Valerio was barely aware of himself as he rushed down the hall, down the stairs, and out of the building. It was only as he raced through the streets on his motorbike that he knew where he was going.
—
Luca Errichiello’s home was nearly an hour’s drive northeast from the center of Naples.
Fueled with rage, Valerio barely noticed the winter countryside flicking by.
He crossed into the depressed outskirts of Caserta, bled dry by the parasitic Camorra.
Here, the asphalt was patched and torn, the spray-painted husks of abandoned buildings jutting like shipwrecks from the rising tide of trash.
Beyond these, as he approached the foothills and the compound of Luca Errichiello, doubt worked into him like a shard of glass.
—
Valerio had no excuse. No justification. Federico had warned him.
He owed Luca Errichiello a favor. And he knew what that meant.
He hadn’t exactly forgotten Luca these past months.
If anything, he’d been vigilant—hungry to learn any scrap of news or whispered intelligence about Luca’s network and operations.
He’d asked questions and listened in on briefings, dove into databases, and read the transcripts of trials involving Luca’s peripheral network.
But this investigator part of him, rabid and ravenous, had somehow quarantined itself from the man he’d been on that frantic summer night when he’d driven this road with Federico.
Desperate to know if Gemma was tangled in the web, he’d gone straight to the spider.
At that moment, Valerio had been entirely a father—filled with such clarity of purpose, he would have gladly traded his soul for Gemma’s safety.
Until Federico’s appearance this morning, Valerio had barely been conscious of the disconnect between father and investigator. Now, the walls of that separation began to crumble, flooding him with shame.
He keenly experienced the loss of his integrity, the bargain he’d made, and the revolting nature of the man with whom he’d made it. Worse, his decision had not secured the safety of his children.
—
Valerio shook himself. He couldn’t afford to carry this burden through the gates of Luca’s compound or it would get him killed. He needed to be sharp and responsive.
Worry about this moment, he told himself. Only this moment.
—
His approach took him through a vineyard to a high fence and metal gate, and he thought of that other visit months ago, and the armed men he’d seen at Luca’s compound. On that occasion, Federico had called ahead to secure safe passage.
Valerio stopped his bike and called the number used to text him the pictures of his children. When a man answered, he said, “Tell Luca I’m here as he asked. Don’t shoot.”
The man didn’t respond, but the gate slid open. Valerio drove through.
The winding road was picturesque, hemmed in on both sides by fruit trees—lemons and oranges. This far inland, the weather was clear and warm. The air smelled fresh, with a hint of woodsmoke.
Valerio approached another gate and was waved through by two men in combat gear with automatic rifles, and approached a sprawling mansion.
It was constructed of grey stone and freshly painted stucco, with iron railing and red metal shutters, tile roof, and white pillars at the entrance.
A square courtyard was formed by Luca’s villa and two outbuildings, and in the center was a Baroque marble fountain, water pouring across the statue of a naked woman and a dolphin.
—
As Valerio drew close to the house, five men in black and carrying weapons came through the front door. The first man, broad-shouldered with sunglasses, pointed a handgun at him.
“Stay where you are,” he ordered. “Turn off the motor. Hands raised.”
Without the growl of the bike engine, the world fell suddenly quiet, the air thick with birdsong and the buzz of insects. Far away, a dog barked.
Valerio slowly raised his hands, and one of the armed men patted him down, removing the Smith & Wesson Bodyguard he kept in his waistband. This was his personal weapon. His service weapon was too bulky to carry without a harness.
“Be careful with that. I’ll need it back,” Valerio snarled as he felt the gun lifted. “Are we done?”
The obvious leader of the group was a lean, muscular man in his late thirties, with broad foreign features, pale mottled skin, and a thick crop of snowy hair.
His posture was relaxed and he kept his weapon in his holster—a contrast to the alert tension of the other men, who flexed and gripped theirs.
They looked to him, clearly awaiting instruction.
He gestured languidly.
“Come with me,” he said in English.
Without looking to see if Valerio followed, he strode away.
They walked onto a gravel path on the outside edge of the house, under a bower overgrown with grapevines.
“People call me Ivan,” said the man. “And you’re Capo Valerio Alfieri, of the Naples police—the Sezione Falchi Squadra Mobile. Are you going to make trouble for me?”
He spoke with a thick accent, in a mix of English and Italian. Valerio struggled to decipher the words, then answered in Italian: “Is there a reason for me to make trouble for you?”
“Not at all,” Ivan said. “I have many friends in your unit. We get along well. Who knows? One day, you might be grateful for a friend like me.”
“You know what I think, Ivan?” said Valerio. “Liars and bullies are like mushrooms: everywhere. I’m never impressed by men like you. I put them behind bars. Who knows? One day, I might see you there.”
Ivan laughed.
“The ego of a man who lies to himself!”
His pale eyes held a manic gleam. He said something in a language Valerio didn’t understand. Then, in English, as if to let Valerio in on the joke: “If you listen to your own lie, you can’t see the truth. See? I know you better than you know yourself. I’ll enjoy this. I’ll enjoy you, Capo.”
Valerio glared back.
“If you know me so well, then you should know I don’t respond to threats,” he warned. “Keep out of my business, and I’ll stay out of yours.”
Ivan shrugged and continued walking.
They emerged to an elaborately tiled pool glinting blue in the sunlight, a handful of faded grape leaves curled on the surface.
—
Luca Errichiello sat at a tile-topped metal garden table, drinking Coca-Cola, a platter of salami and cheese before him.
As with their last encounter, Valerio was struck by the banality of Luca.
He was an unremarkable man in his fifties with mild, forgettable features.
Today, he wore leather loafers, a puffer jacket, and a tan felt hat.
The unassuming, even features and bored expression gave no suggestion of what he really was.
Luca exploited immigrants and refugees, cashing in on EU money for asylum seekers, pressuring and starving the most vulnerable: populating his brothels with them, and exporting sex and agriculture workers and domestic slaves throughout Europe and Russia.
The only prosecutor able to get close to proving the case against Luca had been killed by a car bomb in Licola last year.
“Capo Alfieri’s here,” announced Ivan in a cheerful tone. “Want me to stay and protect you, Errichiello?”
“Fuck off,” snapped Luca, the hot burst of irritation disturbing an otherwise expressionless face.
As Ivan strolled away, Luca ate salami and watched Valerio.
“You took your time,” he said, voice flat. “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
Valerio had meant to stay cool, but now he battled for control against his fury.
“Don’t you ever, ever threaten my kids again!” he growled.