The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (76 page)

*

At night Sami hitched himself onto the window ledge and pushed open the shutters. Too short to see into the courtyard, the boy shuffled on his forearms like some kind of creature, Peña thought. Dust stirred and sparked in the void between them. Peña stepped back from her window. It troubled her not to remember things. Names mostly. Places. But sometimes plain words.

It took some moments for her eyes to adjust; she watched as Sami edged himself forward, one hand set in a fist. With his chin on the stone lintel he stared into the courtyard. Small sounds skidded beneath them: televisions in separate rooms, honks and voices, the settling rattle of air-conditioners and the steady clap of water on stone, the less attributable snaps and tremors that came from deeper sources – the entire building contracting in the cooler night air.

There was something in the boy’s hand, and he took time to stand this object right at the edge. Another toy soldier, Peña guessed by the size, another trophy.

About an hour after Sami had set the toy on the ledge Peña heard the clack of the lock on the small portal door, then a muffled conversation as two men came from via Capasso into the courtyard. Sami came to the window then quickly ducked away – and although she could not see him she guessed that he was standing in the dark away from view.

The voices were soft, too quiet to properly understand, and when a soft chuckle rode up the side of the building the boy cautiously returned to the window ledge. They were speaking to him in whispers, words she couldn’t quite catch.
Come on
, they seemed to say.
Come on
.

The men continued talking while they smoked, the rising whiff of tobacco, their voices becoming a little less discreet. One of the men became boisterous and shouted through the courtyard, ‘Hey,’ for attention, and then softened into laughter. Peña slipped back into her room. The boy slid himself forward to watch.

In the kitchen, unaware, Anna Soccorsi stood over a kettle with her arms folded, wearing nothing more than a man’s T-shirt.

Peña slept in her armchair. She woke once and heard the voices again, men whispering to the boy words she could not hear.

Arturo Lanzetti did not always live with his family. He stopped two months in Naples, sometimes less, but two months was his median stay, then he would be gone, leaving Anna with the child, or Anna alone. The period before his departure would be plagued with silences and bitter argument so that Peña could tell even before he was gone that he was going. While Lanzetti was away the phone rang late at night, and Peña became used to Anna’s thin and unpersuasive voice sounding always like a complaint. Anna sometimes wore a ring and sometimes did not, and as was common she kept her own last name so there was no clear indication of their status. For Peña the mystery of their relationship was solved at different times to a different result.

As the train drew slowly toward the station in one long curve, Mizuki, by habit, stepped up to the door and watched the reflection, phone in hand. The towers of the business district, superimposed on the glass, slipped over the long grey container park that faced the bay. On this day she remembered a story about a woman who’d lost a bracelet, and again she couldn’t remember the title: she found the lapse funny, because wasn’t this also the subject of the story? In learning a new language she was forfeiting memories, or maybe she was simply tired? For two nights now her sleep had been broken. Nothing particularly troubled her, and neither was she hankering for something – the usual causes of unrest. She simply couldn’t sleep. Both nights she’d lain awake with the notion of a river suspended above her, a current flowing through the room that would occasionally descend and engulf her (and she would sleep), then rise (and she would wake). The water looked nothing like water: black and slick and infinite as volcanic glass. The sensation was not unpleasant, but it left her unable to concentrate. A memory of the dream stuck as an insistent ache in her arms and a pressure in her chest as if she had wrestled a strong current.

Mizuki did not purposefully look for the brothers, but was pleased to recognize one of them as she stepped off the train.
Which brother is this
, she asked herself,
the older or the younger?
Once again the man appeared to be waiting, a little less present than the previous day, perhaps even bored. This time he leaned back, puppet-like, with one shoulder bent to the grey pillar and his hands dug into his pocket, so that his body turned – loose-looking, something set aside. When she passed by she hoped to catch his eye and paused to make sure that this would happen: when he finally looked at her he registered nothing. This, then, was the younger brother.

On the upper concourse she spied the older brother at the station threshold, beside him the newspaper vendor, magazines pegged in a line, others stacked in bundles, and drinks, water, cola, wrapped in packs. She stood beside the man as she bought a bottle of water, felt her pulse quicken. If she leaned to her right her shoulder would touch his upper arm. She paid, turned about, passed directly in front of the man – and noticed how he turned his head to watch her with the same intensity as the day before. Today the men were not wearing similar clothes and she could easily distinguish one from the other. French, she decided. Definitely French. She had an eye for this. The clothes (a summer suit jacket with new jeans, expensive shoes when sandals would do), but best of all a studied casual air, a kind of self-possession she had to admit she found attractive even while she found it arrogant. Generalities, sure, but she was usually right. And was he wearing perfume, some fresh aftershave or shaving balm? Or was it just the sight of him, so clean, a man in a pressed shirt, a man in a suit jacket, European, that made her expect this?

Today the corso was clear and Mizuki reached the school before the start of the lesson, and realized, again, that she had failed to take a photograph. At the large wooden doors to the courtyard she tucked her hands into her sleeves, pulled back her hair, and turned up her collar to protect her neck, readying herself to run from the wasps.

✩

Marek rose early. He walked about the house in his shorts, prepared breakfast for Paola and laid a place ready at the table, and considered what he needed and what he didn’t. For example: he didn’t need Paola on his case, organizing him, making plans. She would bother him with schemes and details. Finding him work would become her project. He didn’t need this bother and he didn’t need his brother calling or sending messages. He needed his mother to stop her midnight walks. He needed less advice and more money.

His first idea was to visit Nenella. A
fattuchiera
, a woman from Pagani reputed to have second sight. Pagani was Paola’s village, and Paola had known Nenella as a girl. Nenella, she swore, could call out the bad fate of the most cursed. Often Paola would say that such a situation, or such a hope, such a notion could be divined by Nenella. The woman was able to advise, solicit, or intervene in any situation. Marek had no such faith, and ridiculed Paola whenever she expressed this belief, but today he thought he would see her.

A slow trickle came out of the pipes, not enough to shave and not enough to wash. He remembered the workmen and how the drilling continued intermittently for three hours, driving sleep out of the neighbourhood. He leaned over the balcony and looked for the pit the men had dug, but there was no sign of water, only a dry hole surrounded by bollards, nothing he could see, and no signs that explained the drilling. It was typical. They came in the middle of the night to disrupt his sleep and after all that noise they had achieved nothing. Further up the street he could see the magistrate’s car and his driver leaning casually against the side. As he looked down he thought he saw the man look up. Glancing back at Paola it occurred to him that the magistrate’s driver spent a great deal of time outside the apartment.

With what little water he could draw from the tap he made a coffee. As he waited for the coffee to boil he checked the wastebasket in the bathroom. Marek brought a small cup to Paola, and waking her set his hand on her stomach, and thought perhaps that he felt her flinch. Light bloomed between the shutters and Paola blinked, slowly wakening. Marek ran his hand softly over the curve of her hips as an overture, but remembering the discarded contraceptives decided against it: a child conceived today, out of duty, out of surrender, would be an unlucky child.

‘Speak with Tony.’ Paola hugged her pillow. ‘See what he has. He promised he’d find something.’

Already. Not yet up and she’s making plans. He told her about the water, happy to annoy her.

Marek hid in the café beside the
tabaccaio
. He watched Peña sweep the pavement, Lanzetti leave for work. The youth, Cecco, hung around the
tabaccaio
during the day and the Bar Fazzini at night, and seemed, oddly, to be friendly with Stefania, who otherwise sat at the counter and stitched all day without much of a word for anyone. For the boy she ordered coffee, Coke,
limonata
allowed him to sit with her and run errands on occasion.

At eight o’clock Paola sent Marek a message asking what he was doing. When he answered,
Speaking with Tony
, she responded immediately,
IMPOSSIBLE!!!! I just spoke w. him.
Moments later a third message:
He has a car for you.
Then a fourth.
Can you pick up more shirts? I need them this afternoon?

I’ll ask Tony.

As long as it happens.

He watched the palazzo. The supervisor, Peña, sat on an upturned crate in the long shadow beside the entrance. She looked like a doll, not only because she was small, but because of her high forehead, thin hair, tiny mouth and hands, and the way she sat with her legs stuck out. When she moved the action appeared mechanized. Unlike everyone else on the street she seldom spoke and he felt something in common with her because of this.

As Marek came out of the café Peña shuffled forward to slip off the crate. She waved to him, straightened her clothes, and signalled that she wanted a quick word.

Peña spoke formally but not coldly. ‘You are a driver? Yes? I’m looking for a driver.’

‘For how long?’

Peña didn’t know. She’d ask Salvatore. Two men had rented a room from her. Two brothers. She believed they were French. They weren’t from the city, and had an idea that they wanted to hire someone to drive them. She offered Marek a card with a handwritten number and asked him to copy it down. She also needed a room painted if he knew anyone who could manage this.

Marek said he’d see what he could do.

He found English Tony at the garage with Little Tony and Antonio. The three men discussed two cars raised on the loading bay; another car, a cream and grey old-style Citroën, sat on the sidewalk. English Tony broke away to speak with Marek.

‘Use this one.’ He signalled the Citroën. ‘There’s a pick-up in Bagnoli. Bring it straight back.’ Tony looked him over with sympathy, and said he wouldn’t know the extent of the damage to the coach until he’d taken a proper look. At an uninformed guess, worse scenario, the frame could be shunted back. If this was the case it would take a while to fix. Marek wondered what story Paola had told him, why he sounded calm about the matter, and why he would loan him the Citroën – a man who lost his temper at any provocation, and had once thrown a hammer at his son, Little Tony. Tony also did some dealing, nothing more serious than dope and maybe some light recreational blow for his American friends, and Marek clumsily implied that he could help, you know, deliver, you know, but English Tony didn’t take up the invitation.

‘Can I use the car this afternoon?’

Tony gave an expression Marek couldn’t read. ‘Paola needs some packages for her work. Some shirts.’ ‘Sure. Take it. But when you’re done you bring it back.’ English Tony gave a half-hearted wave, then added as an after-thought. ‘But no accidents. OK? No damage. There’s just one thing. Fuel. Don’t go by the gauge. Sometimes she just dies.’

Marek drove to the
lungomare
at Mergelina and called Peña’s number, and at first, because what was being said didn’t exactly make sense, he thought that he was speaking to an answering machine – then realized that the phone had been answered by accident.

‘If it’s not in,’ the voice said, ‘we don’t do it.’

After a rustle the call cut out.

Marek called a second time, and the answer came as a curt
pronto
. He spoke carefully, in Italian, and explained that he was a driver, and that he understood that they were looking for a driver. So . . . The call cut out a second time. Marek waited a moment before calling back. This time he spoke quickly and apologized for not having a name and said that he was a driver. The supervisor at the palazzo on via Capasso had given him the number. He understood that they needed a driver.

He felt that he had the man’s attention.

‘You need a driver?’

In the background he could hear another voice, in French, a man demanding to be given the phone.

‘Hello. You are a driver? You know the city? Can you come at four this afternoon? We can discuss rates when you come. Room 312. Hotel Grand.’

The man gave an address in Castellammare di Stabia. Did he get that? ‘It’s on the hill,’ he said. ‘On the mountain. Looking at Napoli. The big white hotel. You will find us, yes? Room 312.’

Marek said yes, and once the call was cancelled he realized that he had not taken a name, just a room number.

They called an hour later and cancelled the meeting.

By the afternoon Marek found himself in the basement stripped to his waist with two tubs of white emulsion and a roller that didn’t apply paint so much as drag grit off the walls. He couldn’t quite believe how quickly the walls absorbed the water, and then flaked. Four hundred euro made the job worthwhile. Good money from the same men who’d wanted a driver then changed their minds.

Marek worked through the afternoon and grew resentful while he painted, what choices had he made to come to this: making do by driving cars and painting rooms? Falling deeper into debt while his mother slowly lost her mind. He set himself to the task, bought new brushes and a third tub of emulsion from the hardware store at the back of the palazzo. He stripped down to his shorts and felt the air wrap round him blanket-warm, and as he worked sweat stung his eyes. Once he was done the room seemed little improved. Brighter, yes, but otherwise no different. Four hundred euro would barely service his debt. Four thousand euro would pay the debt and leave enough, perhaps, for his mother or for Paola, but no money for himself.