Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“I understand,” said Valerio. He rose to his feet. “Thank you for telling me.”
At the threshold, Valerio stopped and turned.
Federico had stayed where he was, staring blankly into the distance.
“Tell me about il Fantasma…the Ghost,” Valerio asked. “Who is he?”
Federico seemed to emerge slowly from his thoughts. “Never met him. He came to Luca after I left.”
“What do you know about him? Do you know his name?”
Federico clicked his tongue. “I know Luca doesn’t like him.”
“Why not?”
Shrug.
“Why keep him around if he doesn’t like him?” Valerio pressed.
Another shrug.
“He’s working as a go-between with Luca and Silvestri. Do you know why?”
“No—but you should stay away,” Federico warned. “From what I hear, he’s as psychopathic as my brother.”
—
Outside, it was pelting rain. Valerio hunted for cover to wait it out.
He was beginning to understand Federico better now, to appreciate the strength of mind and character that had gotten him free of Luca.
It had been a stormy winter night like this—nearly a decade ago—when he’d first met the old man. He hadn’t thought about it for a long time.
Valerio had been on his way home from work when the squall hit. Ducking into a doorway, he found it already occupied. The strange tall man exuded instability. Danger.
Federico had been tweaking—sweating, hands roving, and his voice had been rough: “You a cop?”
Rather than risk confrontation, Valerio stepped back into the rain.
But Federico called to him: “I need a cop.”
“Yeah?” Valerio said. “Why do you think you need a cop?”
Federico scratched ferociously at his neck. “Girls in trouble.”
Valerio had been reluctant to listen at first. But Federico told him about two cargo trucks parked in a warehouse on the outskirts of Rome. They were part of Luca’s smuggling operation, he said, abandoned when the Rome network was compromised.
“Luca’s waiting,” he told Valerio.
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for the heat to die down. But it’s been two days. Fuck. Fuck. Those girls.”
“What girls?” Valerio pressed.
“You gotta get them out,” Federico insisted. “They’re gonna die in there.”
With dawning horror, Valerio understood.
By the time the police broke into the warehouse and opened the cargo containers, it was already too late for two of the women.
Of the seventeen women and girls they rescued, the youngest was thirteen.
Federico had assisted throughout the rescue and investigation and, battling for sobriety, had begged Valerio to lock him up. Instead, Valerio got him into a treatment center.
—
Valerio was nearly a block away when he heard footsteps and his name called.
Federico wasn’t wearing a jacket.
“What will you do?” he asked, rain glancing off his thick eyeglasses.
Valerio shrugged. “I’ve run out of time. I can’t allow Luca and his Ghost to hurt Gemma and Davide. I have to turn myself in—tell them what I know, and the part I played.”
“You think you’re safe with the police?” Federico exclaimed. “You won’t make it past the first night.”
“I trust the guys I work with,” said Valerio.
“Luca will shoot your family first,” Federico said. “To remind you of your mistake. You’ll be in jail, and can’t do anything to help them. He’ll keep you alive for a while to make sure you feel it. Then he’ll kill you, too. Painfully. To make an example.”
Federico’s eyes were wide with concern, his strangely large hands moving in the air, as if trying to unwrite this future.
“Tell me what to do, then,” Valerio said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Federico’s hands hovered before him, reaching for an answer. None came.
Valerio clapped the old man’s shoulder. “You warned me,” he said. “I should have listened.”
—
Giorgia answered the door in a housedress.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Are the kids here?” Valerio asked.
“Why should they be here? They have friends, don’t they?”
The disappointment was a boulder suddenly on his chest. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to see and touch them, how precious it was to hold them in his arms.
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
At last, he said, “You need to call them and make them come back home. Leave town for a few days. Don’t fly. Take the train or drive. Go north. Rome or Siena. Or drive up into France.”
She brushed this aside. “You know we can’t afford to go anywhere. Where would we stay? What would we eat?”
Valerio had emptied his savings—745 euros that he gave to Giorgia now.
“This is what I have. Try to make it last as long as possible.”
She thumbed through the bills. Realization slowly emerged, and her face filled with rage.
“Fuck you, Valerio. What did you do?”
“It’s a police matter. I need to make sure you and the kids are safe until it blows over.”
“Isn’t there police protection?” she demanded. “If it’s that serious, there should be some sort of protection.”
“Not this time.”
“It’s the middle of the school week.”
“Tell their teachers there’s an emergency…a death in the family. Will you do as I say, and just leave?”
She fought him for a few more minutes, but it felt to Valerio that this was from habit, or perhaps a need to exert control over her shock. But he could see that understanding was gradually taking hold. He saw the moment Giorgia’s fear and self-preservation made up her mind.
“Fine! We’ll go!” she snapped.
“Tonight,” said Valerio. “Leave as soon as possible. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going—not even your boyfriend.”
—
He went next to his mother’s apartment and let himself in with the key.
He was met by the sounds of the television blasting. Leonora was going deaf, and always watched with the volume up.
The smell here was familiar—a comfortable, lived-in mixture of cooked food and cleaning products, and the perfume his mother had worn since he was a child.
Out of habit, he crossed into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. At the sound, Orlanda’s voice called out, “Valerio, is that you?”
“It’s me,” he shouted back.
He scanned the contents of the fridge, peeling back the foil covers of dishes to see what looked good.
He wasn’t really hungry. The lunchtime pizza had been greasy and filling and, besides, he’d been eating too much lately.
But he wanted food. Something to shove down this desperation surging through him.
He grabbed a fork and peeled the tinfoil off a ceramic dish with noodles and sauce, eating it cold as he strode into the living room, where Leonora and Orlanda were watching a documentary.
His mother was crocheting—fingers moving automatically across the edge of a red yarn quilt, hardly looking down to check her stitches.
A small Christmas tree was on a table in the corner, glowing with colored lights, and covered with the handmade ornaments Leonora had collected from her children and grandchildren over the decades.
“Mamma,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”
Leonora didn’t look up. She motioned at the screen.
“That man thinks the Vatican had something to do with it,” she shouted with an expansive gesture. “It isn’t possible!”
The two of them sitting there together like that, the Christmas tree, and the half-finished blanket in his mother’s lap, reminded Valerio of another winter’s evening long ago—when his father had gone out “to pick up a few things” and never returned.
Valerio’s appetite left him. He set the plate down and took a chair facing them.
“Mamma,” he said again.
Orlanda picked up the remote and paused the program. Only then did Leonora—blinking up—seem to notice him.
“What is it?” Orlanda asked.
Now that the moment had arrived, he realized that the truth was impossible.
“I wanted to check on you,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
Leonora’s face was suddenly radiant.
“Oh, Valerio, my sweet boy!” she exclaimed. “How thoughtful to check on your old mother.”
Orlanda rolled her eyes.
Ignoring the spasm of guilt, Valerio scooted his chair closer to his mother, repeating, “How are you feeling?”
“Every day a bit stronger,” Leonora said. “I talk to Costanzo. He reassures me. He says that my son will catch the devil who killed the girl.”
“I’m not part of that investigation, Mamma,” he said.
“Do they know who did it?” Orlanda pressed.
“They made an arrest,” he told her.
Leonora stopped crocheting, and patted his hand.
“Costanzo has faith in you. So do I. I pray for you every day. My Valerio—he leads with his heart, I tell the Virgin. He acts without thinking, so you need to keep a special eye on him.”
“Do you need anything, Mamma?” he asked.
She shook her head and reached out, caressing his face.
“If you’re offering,” Orlanda said, “the sink in the bathroom needs to be fixed. It’s leaking.”
Valerio rose from the chair, and leaned in to kiss his mother’s cheeks.
“Love you, Mamma.”
—
Orlanda launched from the sofa and followed him into the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” he said.
He covered the dish and put it back.
As he shut the door to the fridge, she was standing before him, blocking his exit, arms folded across her chest.
“You’re lying,” she said. “You don’t just stop by for nothing. And you have this stupid expression on your face…like you’re going off to do something noble and self-destructive.”
“I need to take care of something,” he said.
“Is it dangerous?”
“It’ll be fine,” he lied.
Federico had said that if he turned himself in and told his colleagues what he knew, he would be buried alongside the truth. But he didn’t know what else to do.
The sight of his sister’s desperate face made him ache. It had been a mistake to come.
“Do you know what’s actually noble?” she said. “Showing up for your family…doing dishes and laundry…shopping. Sleeping at your mamma’s house so you can wake her up when nightmares make her scream.”
Orlanda’s features contorted. He saw the wrestle of love and pain. He pulled her in, and hugged her, even as she stood rigid against his affection.
“Take care of Mamma,” he said.
She followed him to the door, standing on the threshold as he crossed into the fading light.
“Don’t you dare die. Don’t you fucking die.”
—
Valerio was already out of the neighborhood when his phone pinged.
A message from Federico: I have an idea.