Chapter Seven #2
Luca stretched out his jaw with a click, like a snake preparing for a large meal.
“You appear to care for your offspring,” he said. “Society considers this laudable. It only interests me as a means to achieve your attention. I see I have it. Next time, I expect you to come when I ask.”
“You want something, you deal with men,” Valerio said. “Leave the children the hell out of it, or I will hunt you down. I promise I will kill you.”
“Pointless threats don’t interest me, Alfieri.”
“What the fuck do you want?” Valerio demanded.
Luca chewed. “You owe me a favor.”
“I found my daughter without your help,” Valerio said, even as he felt the futility of trying to constrain the borders of his debt.
“Yet, you asked for my help, and I gave it. And who knows what may happen to your daughter next?”
Valerio’s rage flared. “Is that a threat?”
“Not at all,” Luca said, picking something out of his teeth. “I only mean that young ladies have a way of wandering into a fox’s den. You may wish to request my services again.”
Valerio thought of Gemma, the knock-kneed little girl who transformed every day, becoming a woman. It should make him happy. Instead, he burst with near-constant dread, and a profound helplessness.
“What’s your favor?”
Luca sipped.
“It’s a very small thing, really. Not much at all.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“An eighteen-year-old boy was arrested yesterday. Gaetano Mancusi. Sweet kid. His mother works for me. Housekeeping. He was pulled over on a routine traffic stop. The idiot was carrying a very small—extremely small—amount of cocaine. Well, they arrested him. But the little fool wouldn’t tell them about himself.
So, they looked into his phone. And what do you think they found there? ”
He seemed to expect a response. Valerio didn’t give one.
“Well,” Luca continued, “an app on his phone led the police to where Gaetano was living with two other boys. They found more drugs at this location. So all three boys are arrested. Gaetano says that these were not his drugs. I believe him. He’s a good kid. I think the other boys are to blame.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’d like you to speak with the magistrate…ask to release him until trial. You see, his mother is alone. She has cancer. Gaetano is her only son. She relies on him.”
The anxiety in Valerio’s chest was slowly easing. He’d been bracing, expecting something illegal or unethical. This was neither.
“And you can’t help her?” he said, looking at the elegant garden and house.
“I can hire lawyers to reduce his sentence,” agreed Luca calmly. “But what she really wants is her son back. Jail is no place for a young boy. You’ve been to Poggioreale. You must know that’s true. Would you want your son there?”
Even without Luca’s request, Valerio would have advocated to keep a teenager out of Poggioreale. He’d done this sort of thing before. The overcrowded jail was a law unto itself; young men, trapped with the wolves, were brutalized.
“I can’t get the charges dropped,” Valerio said. “The magistrate decides that. We can only give our recommendation.”
Luca nodded. “I understand. Look, relax. What I’m asking from you is completely legal. One friend to another.”
“Not friends,” said Valerio.
Luca raised an eyebrow. “As you wish.”
“I’ll need to confirm what you’re saying.”
“Of course. Speak with Gaetano’s mother. You’ll agree, I’m sure, that you should talk to the general prosecutor’s office.”
Valerio examined him. Luca Errichiello’s smooth, well-fed face looked nothing like the ancient, tortured apparition that was his brother.
For years, Valerio had watched the anguish and fear of the old addict, and the daily labor he performed to keep up the small storefront salumeria.
It contrasted disconcertingly with the luxury and ease of this life—and Luca’s neutral, disinterested face.
“This is all you want?” Valerio asked.
“You do this for me, and I’ll consider your debt paid.”
“And you leave my family alone.”
“You have my word.”
Valerio was cautious. Alert. But relief eased his burning mind.
Luca’s lips twisted. It could have been a smile. “You should see yourself. What did you think I would ask?”
Valerio grunted. “I haven’t agreed yet. Give me the name and address of Gaetano’s mother. I’ll talk to her. I’ll talk to the kid. If what you say checks out, I have no problem calling the magistrate.”
—
Gaetano’s mother lived in the Forcella district.
There was a time, not long ago, when Valerio would have thought twice about walking alone down these streets, even out of uniform as he was now.
The difficult neighborhood and Camorra stronghold had been cleaned up by a government eager to accommodate the tourist economy.
A thriving contraband trade was still visible on the periphery, but Valerio was less likely to be attacked by thugs or jabbed by a discarded needle wedged between the cobblestones, or to catch a bullet from a random spray.
Still, he preferred to be here in daylight.
Valerio called Maurizio when he arrived.
“Where the fuck did you go?” his partner demanded.
“Urgent call. Hey, I’ve been asked for a favor: to look into the arrest of an eighteen-year-old kid.”
He described the situation, but omitted Luca’s name.
“I’m here at his mother’s house now—to see if the story checks out. Can you take a look on your side?”
“Fuck,” Maurizio sighed. “You should have brought me with you.”
“Can you take a look?”
“Yeah. Text me his details. I’ll see what I can find.”
—
The apartment was on the fourth floor of a large building with rusting railings and chipped concrete.
Valerio buzzed the apartment number, but there was no response.
He strode along the street, looking for another way in.
The first open storefront was a cheap jewelry shop featuring twisted wire necklaces, beaded earrings, glass gems, and hundreds of cornicelli.
The woman behind the counter had grey hair and a sour expression.
“We’re not open.”
“The door is open,” Valerio observed.
“We’re closed.”
“I’m trying to get into number forty-one.”
She took off her glasses and stared at him. “Who do you want there?”
“Ines Mancusi.”
“You a debt collector?”
“What makes you think I’m a debt collector?”
“They’re the only ones wanting forty-one.”
“I’m not a debt collector.”
“Well, whatever you want, she’s not well,” said the woman. “And her boy was just arrested. So, it isn’t a good time to be bothering her.”
“I may be able to help,” he said. “I’ve been asked by a family friend to look into the situation of his arrest.”
She looked him up and down, taking in the wrinkled clothing, the ruined shoes. She looked doubtful and Valerio thought she was going to kick him out. At last she seemed to surrender.
“She has a friend…a nurse who usually comes by around this time. Ravenna. She should be able to let you in.”
Valerio waited by the building entrance.
He felt worn out. Uncomfortable. A deep unease ran through his mind like a sewer beneath the city streets.
For months, he’d carried the contamination of this obligation to Luca—whether he acknowledged it or not.
Now that the corruption had worked its way to the surface, it itched. He wanted this to be over.
A group of teenage boys buzzed past on their motorbikes.
He waited and paced for nearly forty minutes, then strode into a nearby café for a cornetto and espresso, keeping an eye on the street and the door to the building.
He ate rapidly, shoving the pastry into his mouth.
He was brushing crumbs from his shirt when he saw a woman striding towards him—in her thirties, curvy, dressed in scrubs and sneakers and carrying a canvas bag.
She had glasses and short, tightly curled hair.
“Ravenna?” he said, stepping forward.
She hesitated, looked him over.
“Sì?”
He showed his badge, introduced himself.
“I’d like to speak with Ines Mancusi. I understand you’re her friend.”
She shook her head. “Ines had her chemotherapy yesterday. She’s very ill.”
“It won’t take long. I’d like to know more about the situation with her son.”
She reached out for his badge and he handed it to her. She inspected it carefully.
“Am I required to let you in?” she asked.
Valerio sighed.
“No,” he admitted. “But I’m here to help. A family friend asked me to look into Gaetano’s situation, and see if there was something I could do.”
“What can you do? He’s arrested. He’s in jail.”
“If I’m convinced that he’s no risk, that his mother needs him, I’ll talk with the magistrate and see if they’ll release him.”
She examined him a moment more, and Valerio saw beneath the curtain of ringlets: her large soulful eyes and full cheeks. She reminded him of an angel painted on the altarpiece of a church.
She handed back his badge.
“Follow me.”
—
The old building was dreary, the unfinished, rough concrete of the rectangular interior like an open box leading straight up to the grey sky and misery of rain. The floor was smoothed with grime. On the walls, patches of mildew erupted like an infection. Exposed rebar in the concrete leaked red.
Valerio followed Ravenna to the end of the hall and the entrance of a stairwell.
“I’ve known Gaetano since he was a baby,” Ravenna said as they climbed the stairs. “I used to watch him for Ines.”
“You’re a nurse?”
“I am…now. But in those days, I was just a schoolkid. His babysitter.”
“Ines was a single parent?” he asked.
“Her husband died just after the baby was born.”
“What can you tell me about Gaetano?”
She took a few steps before answering.
“He has a good heart. But I worry about him.”
“What are you worried about?”
“Well, there isn’t much for a teenage boy, is there? The unemployment is bad, and the jobs for kids his age don’t pay well. They can make so much more money dealing drugs, or working for the clans as transport or security.”
“Is that what Gaetano was doing?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know, Capo.”