Chapter Eight #2
“She brought Adriano into her world,” Nikki repeated back to Raoul now. “What do you mean?”
“Oh,” he sighed. “You know how those two were…like bread and onions.”
Nikki remembered Adriano at the kitchen table while their mother cooked, talking politics and philosophy—the two of them speaking in that secret language they used.
Raoul clinked the small spoon around his empty espresso cup, scraping the remnants of sweet dark foam.
“Maybe I’ll do my own investigation,” he said. “I’ll ask around…see what people say.”
His eyes gleamed with replenished enthusiasm.
“Let the police do their job,” Nikki warned. “They might not like you getting in the way.”
“But the police don’t know this place like I do. Tell me about the murder. What have you heard?”
“I can’t discuss it,” Nikki said.
Raoul looked surprised.
“So, you’re part of the investigation!” he exclaimed. “And that means it involves the Americans.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
She closed her lips to keep from swearing.
His face changed. His attention, which had roved around all morning, was suddenly focused, expression hard.
“I don’t like you being in another murder investigation.”
“It’s my job,” Nikki said.
“Can’t they get someone else? Aren’t there men on your team? Let them do it.”
These had been Nikki’s very thoughts when she’d gone to the station in the middle of the night, but hearing her father speak them aloud brought a current of irritation.
“So, it’s acceptable for you to conduct your own unauthorized investigation, but it isn’t alright for me to do my job?”
“It isn’t the same thing. I just don’t like the thought of my daughter being in a dangerous situation again. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted it either.”
“Adriano did dangerous work,” Nikki said. “Would you have said this to him?”
“That was different,” Raoul said loudly. “He was older.”
Some door inside Nikki swung shut. “I’m older than he was when he died.”
The words seemed to silence him.
“This is what I do,” she said tersely. “And I’m good at it.”
She didn’t look back as she strode across the piazza and out of sight.
—
Nikki walked brusquely through the chilly city streets, rapidly covering the few blocks to the cathedral.
Two policemen stood at the entrance to the piazza on Via Benedetto Croce, directing foot traffic from the church square. A middle-aged woman in an oversize coat and orange scarf was shouting.
“You’re stopping my business! How do you expect me to live, to feed myself?”
She patted the metal cart beside her—filled with boxes and bags and, strapped to the side, a folded card table and stool. Everything bristled with snips of bright ribbon and thread, and hundreds of rattling, shining charms.
One young officer with an artless expression was clearly uncomfortable.
“There’s an investigation of a serious matter,” he told her. “Can’t you go someplace else?”
“Oh, say what it is,” she shot back. “Everyone knows that there was a murder in the church! This piazza is where I work. People need to know where to find me.”
She looked to the other policeman as if for reinforcement. But he busied himself directing people away. He gestured to a grey-haired priest, motioning him into the square.
“You let him through!” the woman shrieked. “Why him, and not me?”
“He’s a priest,” said the policeman.
“Why should that matter?” she said. “I’m as important as that priest. Ask your mother…your grandmother! They may go to him for confession, but for the things that matter—the things they truly care about—they come to Signora Dorotea!”
“Please, just go,” he pleaded. “Nobody can come to you for advice in the piazza today. Nobody will be there.”
Nikki sidestepped them and, showing her Phoenix Seven identification card, walked through, to the complaining protest of Signora Dorotea.
—
The cathedral was a brutal and imposing structure: a grey stone wall extending along a city block, faced in a bizarre, unrelenting matrix of stone spikes. This was interrupted by three doors, the center door flanked by marble Corinthian columns and draped in police tape.
A pale blue police cruiser was parked in front.
Nikki wasn’t sure exactly why she felt the need to visit now.
She’d been in the cathedral enough times to know the place where Claire Sexton had been murdered: the chapel just beyond the western transept.
There was probably nothing left to see. Forensics had been collected; the scene combed for evidence and cleaned.
But she wanted to fix it in her mind somehow, as if being in the church would give her the chance to talk to the dead woman herself.
She moved towards the uniformed officer in the car and, showing her Phoenix Seven ID card, introduced herself and asked to be let inside.
“Nobody’s allowed,” he said. “You’ll need to ask the officer in charge.”
—
Nikki turned to the center of the piazza, towards the enormous Baroque obelisk, the Guglia dell’Immacolata.
Built in the eighteenth century to invoke the Virgin Mary’s protection from the plague, the sides were decorated with saints and scenes from the life of Mary.
Atop the column, facing the distant port and sea, stood the Immacolata herself—crowned, in flowing robes.
The place was usually filled with tourists, school groups, beggars, and vendors selling jewelry and flowers and umbrellas. It was empty now, and all the businesses—restaurants, a small bookstore and information booth—closed.
—
She was leaving the piazza when a loud, clear voice called, “You were betrayed!”
Nikki turned and saw the oversize coat and orange scarf of the woman who had been arguing with the police. She was at the base of the obelisk, and unstrapping her stool and table from the cart.
Nikki strode towards her.
“What did you say?”
Signora Dorotea’s bleached hair was styled into large soft curls, her lips bright red. She beckoned with a manicured hand.
“You’re a seeker. Come. I’ll help you find what you’re looking for.”
She began unpacking her cart, hefting two boxes and a sizable canvas bag onto the cobblestones.
Everything was bedecked in ribbons and trinkets: a dozen metal ex-voto cutouts used as offerings in the local churches; hundreds of the red chili-pepper-shaped cornicelli charms, the Neapolitan symbol of good luck and good sex; a plastic figure; and a bright silver talisman with a pair of twined snakes.
Dorotea unzipped the canvas bag and rummaged inside, extracting a stack of shabby, damp-looking tarot cards.
She snapped off an elastic band, and sat on the stool with a sigh.
“Were you here night before last?” Nikki asked.
“I see it,” said Dorotea. “I don’t ask for this gift. It comes to me. I see things.”
“Did you see the woman who was killed?”
For several seconds Signora Dorotea serenely shuffled and sorted her tarot. Then she spoke in a matter-of-fact singsong: “I know that you’re angry. He betrayed you. He let you think he was different than he was. Perhaps he wanted to be the man you believed. But it was impossible.”
To Nikki’s irritation, the woman’s words triggered an electric chill along her spine. She saw the darkness of the cave, and the face of her former friend Durant Cole in the harsh light of the sizzling red flare.
O my dear Guide, who more than seven times hast rendered me security…do not desert me…
It’s just a fucking trick, she reminded herself, hating the weak, hollow sensation in her chest.
Nikki scoffed, “Does that actually work? Say that to any woman, and she’ll think of a dozen men who betrayed her.”
Dorotea looked from beneath a fringe of false lashes. Her eyes were shiny and black, pale powder settled in the creases.
“But he was more than that. He was special to you, so his betrayal was a thief, robbing your trust.”
She seemed to hear Durant’s voice: …in this nether world I will not leave thee…
“I’m not playing this game,” said Nikki brusquely. “I just want to know if you were here two nights ago when the woman was murdered.”
The fortune teller seemed to consider. “Give me your palm and I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen.”
Nikki sighed, then countered. “Ten.”
The woman agreed with a grudging look.
Nikki stomped her feet against the cold, then surrendered her hand.
Dorotea snatched it, a cluster of sparkling bracelets jangling on her wrist. Her grip was cold, skin chapped as she spread Nikki’s fingers wide, pulling back the thumb, and angling the palm close to her face.
“You do not trust,” she said. “Walls of deception are built around you. Secrets…in your past and future. You’re driven to root out those secrets. You systematize and analyze…to find your way through the maze of lies. You will find answers, but pay a high price. You’re in danger—”
“That’s enough!”
Nikki tugged her hand—gently at first, then wrenched it back. “I thought you were supposed to tell people about coming into riches, or finding good husbands.”
“I tell you what I see,” said Dorotea with a sly smile and a shrug. She pointed a finger heavenward. “What do you see there? When you look at the statue?”
“What do you mean?”
Nikki tilted her head to gaze at the statue high above. From where she stood, she saw the back side of the Virgin Mary, robes billowing behind her.
“On one side is the Immacolata—the face of the Madonna,” said Dorotea. “But on this side…do you not see the hooded figure with the scythe? This is Napoli! Here, light and darkness are bound together. On the one side? Grace and mercy. The other? Death.”
Nikki tried to calm herself, to bring back that measured control she used when responding to incidents, but her annoyance was tipping into anger. “What I’m interested in is what you saw at the church night before last. Were you here with your cards during the evening mass?”
“I was here,” agreed the fortune teller.
“Can you tell me what you saw?”