Chapter Seven #3
They climbed to the next floor in silence, accompanied only by the sounds of their footsteps and their breathing.
“I’m really trying to help if I can,” said Valerio, feeling out of oxygen. “But I need to know: If I help to get Gaetano released from jail, can he stay out of trouble?”
“How much can any of us stay out of trouble?” said Ravenna. “We can do our best, but what happens when trouble comes looking for you?”
—
Ravenna let herself into the apartment and called out, “Ines, it’s me. There’s a policeman with me. He wants to talk to you.”
She plucked a brown-haired wig off a hook and said to Valerio, “Wait for a few minutes before coming in. Don’t make her ashamed.”
—
The space was cluttered and untidy, and filled with an unwholesome odor: the smell of sickness, mildew, cigarettes, medicine, and cats.
At the center of the clutter in a sagging armchair sat a thin woman with papery, sallow skin stretched across her skull.
She was held down in the chair by tubes tentacled out from a nearby oxygen tank.
Her eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, were shaded the colors of a healing bruise.
The dark wig did little to change the skeletal appearance.
If anything, it gave a disturbing contrast to the pallid grey complexion.
But she smoothed it back with her long, narrow fingers, twisting the hair next to her ear.
Her vanity reminded Valerio a little of his sister Penelope and of his mother.
“I don’t have anything to say to you, policeman,” Ines said. Her voice was rough but she held her head aloft, casting an imperious look. “How dare you take a son away from his sick mother?”
“Signora, I did not arrest your son—”
He was about to explain his purpose, but she cut him off.
“It’s a vendetta,” she rasped. “The police don’t like me working for Luca—so they punish my son.”
She coughed, then opened her fist and spat into the tissue clenched there.
“How long have you worked for Luca Errichiello?” he asked.
“Seventeen years now,” she told him. “My husband, Azzo, was his driver. When Azzo died, Luca helped me out. They say he’s a bad man…but would a bad man do that?”
“You do know what Errichiello does? He trafficks young women and girls. He puts them in his brothels. Sells them to men who abuse and kill them?”
Valerio hadn’t planned to say this, but he couldn’t play along with the fiction of Luca Errichiello as an upright citizen.
Ines brushed this away with a hand. “Lies. Ugly lies.”
“You’ve never seen him do anything that worried you?”
“Not at all.”
She breathed deeply, a harsh sound. The nurse lifted her wrist and measured her pulse.
“I thought your questions were about Gaetano, Capo,” Ravenna said in a quiet, measured tone.
He looked at her and she returned his gaze, eyes wide and cautioning.
“When Gaetano was arrested,” said Valerio, “I understand it was a drugs charge…he was arrested with two other boys?”
“Sì,” agreed Ines. “I’m sure the other boys were responsible for the drugs. My son would never do such a thing.”
“Gaetano wasn’t living here when he was arrested?”
“No. He moved in with those two other boys during the summer.”
“How did he afford to move?” asked Valerio. “Was he working?”
She coughed and coughed some more, narrow shoulders working hard as her chest heaved.
Ravenna stroked the sick woman’s back.
“Would you get some water?” she asked Valerio.
—
In the kitchen, dirty dishes were in the sink. Valerio moved some of these aside to get to the faucet and fill a glass.
A list of numbers was taped to the refrigerator, alongside shopping lists.
There were also snapshots of Ines and her son throughout the years.
As a kid, Gaetano was dimple-cheeked, with a shy smile and an overgrowth of thick dark hair that seemed to never look combed.
As the chubbiness of youth settled into a teenage heft, the smile vanished and he grew a sparse mustache.
In the most recent photos, his expression had hardened into a distant, unsatisfied look.
The pictures of Ines were from an earlier era when her figure was slim and tight.
Before her illness, she’d been a handsome woman, although an overlarge jaw and small eyes prevented her from being entirely beautiful.
She had a clear complexion and long, dark hair.
She posed for the camera, tossing her head and peering flirtatiously into the lens.
There were also several photos of Ines next to a short, grey-haired man with a wide white smile and tanned, leathery skin.
Valerio took pictures of the photos and notes. For good measure, he checked the cupboards, where he found dishes, canned goods, pasta, an assortment of medicines, and a colony of shiny brown cockroaches.
—
Back in the living room, Valerio handed the water to Ines. She gripped it with skeletal fingers and drank, then was silent for a long time afterwards, staring straight ahead at the large flat-screen television opposite her chair.
A ginger cat had migrated to Valerio’s seat in his absence. It ignored his attempts to shoo it away, so he picked it up and plopped it onto the ground. It hissed, then stalked to Ines’s feet, where it stared malevolently at him.
Valerio waited.
“Gaetano was working for a local shop,” Ines said, at last. “Deliveries.”
“Do you have the name of the shop?”
She shook her head no, but Ravenna interjected, “He delivered produce to restaurants.”
“How do you know this?” Valerio asked.
“I saw him around town,” she said. “Making deliveries.”
Valerio took notes.
“Do you know anyone he worked with?”
Neither seemed to know.
“What can you tell me about the other guys he was living with?”
“I don’t know them,” said Ines. “Just some boys.”
“How did he know them? From school? From work?”
“I told the other police: I didn’t know them!”
Her eyelids drooped and she seemed to crumple. Her head sagged against the chair and the water glass tipped. Ravenna took it from the sick woman’s fingers and looked at Valerio.
“You should go,” she said.
—
Valerio left his card, and was glad to escape the stink and clutter of the apartment.
Taking a deep breath in the cold air of the corridor, he’d started to head down the stairs when he heard a door close and someone said, “Capo!”
Valerio stopped and looked back.
Ravenna stood on the landing above.
“You didn’t tell her,” she accused.
“Tell her what?”
“You said you were going to try and get Gaetano out of jail. Is that true—or were you just saying that so I’d let you in?”
He shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Then why not tell her?”
Valerio shook his head. “Does it matter?”
Ravenna’s dark eyes were wide. She took a step towards him. “She’s dying, Capo. There’s no help for it. The only thing we can offer is comfort.”
The compassion in her face was a rebuke.
“You heard her,” Valerio protested. “She works for Luca Errichiello, and she calls him a good man! Do you have any idea what he does? What he is?”
“So, you punish her for his sins?”
“I refuse to feel pity for someone who closes her eyes to the evil around her so she can take advantage!”
His voice sounded loud, echoing in the stairwell.
“She closes her eyes so she can survive,” Ravenna replied quietly. “Have you never done the same when you were ashamed of yourself?”
The words stung.
She reached out a hand. “Come,” she said. “Come back and tell her that you’ll help Gaetano. Give her that, at least.”
“I may not be able to get him out of Poggioreale.”
“Tell her you’ll try.”
He gazed up into those dark eyes as she searched his face.
A question hovered between them. He felt the pressure of it—as if she was invoking something from him, as if she expected or needed him to be more than he was.
For a moment he wanted to be that person she was summoning. His neck felt hot. He broke contact.
“You can tell her, if you want,” he said, then hurried down the stairs.