The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (84 page)

And this was the deal: if he wanted the hotel for the weekend, if he wanted a little luxury, he had to find two women. One (and this was easy), an Asian woman, Japanese, who worked for or attended, or lived above a language school close to the palazzo. This was pure curiosity, someone they’d seen a number of times at the station and going into the school, and they wanted clarity, they wanted to know her name. The second woman (a little trickier) worked as a prostitute. A she-male, Paul had said, a very particular she-male. Looks just like a woman. Exactly, every part, with only the one small exception he supposed (ha-de-ha). Paul spoke with fascination and mock-horror, and wouldn’t let the subject go once it was raised. The task was simple. Marek didn’t have to find her, as in
bring her back
. They just wanted to know her location, where she was, because, as far as they understood, she wasn’t in Naples any more. They just wanted to know either way. Marek didn’t like Paul’s humour. He didn’t like the word
she-male
either, and if he thought about it, he didn’t like much of anything that came out of Paul’s mouth. He knew Paul’s type: the wiseacre loudmouth who became quieter and more unstable the more he drank. Marek asked for his money upfront, and wanted assurance that the arrangement with the hotel was legitimate.

Marek thought he knew who they were talking about, from watching the women outside the palazzo, he thought he knew. He concerned himself with this, the familiarity, not the issue of whether or not he should be helping them, because, in truth, he didn’t understand what this was, and yes, the offer of a luxury hotel for one entire weekend was worth a few hours of idle enquiry. They wanted to know where she was, this she-male, this star. Simple and straight.

The woman walked with her hand out to steady herself. Her hair, an acid yellow, long and crimped, tugged back from her face. She wore a silver jacket and a frayed denim skirt, short and too small to allow her to step easily onto the kerb. From the way that she walked, busy but unsteady, she veered toward the cars in thick-heeled sandals that slipped from her feet, it was clear that she wasn’t sober. When she approached Marek he wound up his window and looked blankly ahead, ignoring her. He needed to take a photograph and he didn’t have his phone ready. The woman waited at the window, and then knocked. Marek continued to ignore her. He watched her walk on and lean into another car, once he had his phone out of his pocket he flashed his lights. The woman drew out of the car, turned and paused, and Marek flashed the lights a second time.

When the woman returned Marek ignored her and re-lit the joint. The phone sat on his lap. He didn’t know why he was doing this, but he wanted to ignore her. The woman tried the doors, front and back, but found them locked. She knocked on the window again, but quickly tiring of him she slammed her hand against the glass and walked off. Marek waited until she was back at the car, and again flashed his lights. Leaning half-in half-out she shouted at him, and gestured that he should go fuck himself, but this time Marek held his wife’s small red leather purse up to the windscreen. The women squinted back. Marek continued to flash the car lights and the woman returned, a little unstable on thick heels, shouting, what, what, what did he want? Marek opened the window just wide enough to squeeze the purse through, and he held it there, undecided whether he would let it go or not. When the woman came to the window she curled her fingers over the glass, and asked what it was, what was in the purse. Her voice and hands unfeminine, her make-up crudely defined her lips and eyebrows. Close to the glass he was certain now that he recognized her but doubted that this was the one the brothers wanted. Her face, thickly powdered, eyes and lips drawn with delicate care, but her eyes were dark, a little red, and very distant. She took the purse, looked quickly inside, and tried again to open the door. Finding the door locked, she pulled down her top and pressed her breasts to the window. He took the photo and managed to catch her face before her breasts spread against the glass. A small necklace, the letter ‘A’ on a chain, trapped against the glass. Laughing, she backed away, then hitched up her skirt and waggled her ass.

Marek squinted into the sun as he drove away. Between the shipping containers he spied a man on a moped. He doubted that the prostitute would keep the purse. The money would go to the man on the scooter.

As he drove back he regretted that the lipstick, which had passed over Paola’s mouth, would now belong to a prostitute.

Marek came through the hotel to a terrace and a lawn prepared for another wedding banquet. The Grand Hotel sat on a wide plate high above the gulf; the walls and stuttered tiers of gardens could be seen from the city as a series of white slim-stepped blocks on the mountainside. As he followed after the waiter (a waiter, a clerk, who exactly were these people?) he made a note of the pool, the Jacuzzi, a sign for the spa, the viewing terrace called
Napoli a Piedi.
The man led Marek by tables laid out across a lawn to a lower terrace and a view of the city starting at Castellammare and ending only where the broad sweep of coast rubbed out at the horizon. Marek, as invited, sat at a table with his back to the cliff feeling the suck of all that space behind him, made worse by a swimming pool built right into the edge. He sat with his arms folded, thinking how odd it was to have so much water abutting so steep a drop when the whole point of water was to find the lowest point in any landscape.

‘Would you like something to drink while you wait?’

Marek lit a cigarette and blew smoke out over the terrace. A day spent zipping back and forward, but not unproductive. The smoke hung over the drop. The idea of it, suspended, slowly dissipating, made him uneasy. Two nights, two days. Paola would be in her element. When the man returned he told Marek that the brothers had already checked out, but that the room was ready.

He wanted to check the room before he brought Paola, see if the brothers had left anything, luggage, belongings, so that he might get a better understanding of them.

The room faced the bay, and he was surprised to see a large bed and a single cot, but no luggage, and no keepsakes.

Late-afternoon Marek waited outside the language school. He recognized the sign for the bakery – he’d come to the small square many times and sat under the palms, drank at one of the two bars because it was literally just around the corner from the palazzo, a last stop on a night out before going home. The faint whiff of dope hung in the shadows under the long and weedy palms. The older parts of the city divided into micro-neighbourhoods (he’d heard Americans talk this way about their cities), so you could speak of Forcella, Sanita, Fontanella, as if they were distant towns, when in reality they might be side by side. Those really in the know could shave these districts even closer, so that you might refer to half-streets, blocks, as if they were distinctive, unique cultures with particular habits and codes. This idea only served the city’s bad reputation, despite the mythology that the poorest neighbourhoods held the best eateries, the finest tailor, the original pizzeria, the freshest mozzarella /
sfogliatelle
/ pasta /
limoncello
, the cheapest shoes, it spoke louder about the mysteries of clan-like associations, habits of use, of gangs, of safe and unsafe, when in reality after three years all Marek could see was a jam of dog-poor neighbourhoods scrabbling for breath. In Poland that kind of romance would be seen for what it was, a useless snobbery about poverty. As an outsider the best way to see Naples was from a boat or a hill, where it looked coherent as one single effect; come down to street level and everything started to fracture.

Marek couldn’t quite work out what he was expected to do. If he asked in the school he would have to give reasons for looking for the woman, reasons he didn’t understand himself. He had no name, which made this stranger, and he didn’t understand the aim of this – except for his reward. In the end it wasn’t hard at all. He stood at the doors, buzzed the doorbell and said he was looking for . . . and then he mumbled. When the reply came that they didn’t know who he meant he gave the brothers’ description of the woman.

‘She’s Japanese. Short. Black hair. About thirty-five but she looks younger.’

‘Oh! Mizuki?’ The voice sounded mechanical, metallic.

‘That’s right. Is she there? I’m supposed to meet her.’

‘She isn’t very well.’

Marek got the information he needed, the girl had been stung by a wasp two days ago and had to go home. She was all right, they insisted, but she was staying in Portici. She’d be back next week. They expected.

Marek said thank you. He’d done his work. Now it was time for his weekend.

Rafí had a new watch. A Seiko. He told Lila that he didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to find the men, he wanted to find them and hurt them. This was a promise. Arianna had gone. It would be easier without her, and Lila would be safe as long as she remained at the Stromboli. She couldn’t help but follow the reflections from the watch, the way sunlight splintered off the face, bright and sore.

‘She took everything,’ he said. ‘We have nothing. She took your clothes, money. The rents. My savings. Everything. It’s all gone.’

Lila pressed for details, had Arianna said anything about where she was going? Why had she left? Had he seen her? Had she called? Lila could see herself wearing upon him. Pushing.

He liked her more when she talked less, he said. What was so hard to understand?

‘She took everything. Your friend. This is how she treats you.’

And this was true, Lila remembered Arianna crouched over her, promising that she would return, money in her hand rolled in the same way that Rafí rolled his money.

And later: Lila wasn’t the only victim. Arianna had also spoiled his chances. This was typical, just his luck, to get stuck like this. The money he’d saved, yes some of it was Lila’s money, but most of it was money set aside from the rents, the money he’d borrowed, money which could have set them up anywhere they wanted. Madrid, why not, or Barcelona again? Barcelona hadn’t been so bad. He could probably go back there now. He could have opened a nightclub, a nice little place with a select membership. He could have, it would’ve been possible. A private club providing for every taste, every possible experience, but no, in robbing them Arianna had ruined these chances. He was done with Naples and with this way of living.

Rafí took off his shirt and straightened his back. He asked Lila how old she thought he was. His family were mixed blood, Spanish and Arab, and this was where the fine dark looks came from, the olive skin, the heavy balls. The women were freaks, he said, weak, feeble, little more than creatures, but the men were vital and strong. It was a pity for Lila that he didn’t go for whores, because he knew how much she liked him.

Arianna would not come back. Couldn’t Lila see this? Rafí held Lila’s face close. Why would she come back, he asked. Think it through. What would she come back for? Every cent was gone.

Rafí left her in the afternoon. Lila lay awake, aware for the first time of other noises hiding behind the dog’s incessant barks. Behind this animal hid a whole city, and deeper even, behind the traffic, the crude honk and buzz, the gasp of brakes, the market shouts, beyond these sounds were others, more ancient. Bells first, through which you could map the entire plain, the distinct differences between one church and another, the tinkering off-colour sounds, out of tune and out of time. And something else, something more than the city’s daily shouts and murmurs, sounds she could not calibrate. When she couldn’t sleep Lila saw herself poised above the muddle, neither rising nor falling, but holding place above the rucked red roofs, the churches, the palaces, the archives, the ancient halls and houses. No longer running, no longer falling, but suspended above the city.

Lila woke to smell burning. A small column of black smoke curled and collapsed on the balcony. She recognized, without interest, a pair of her shoes, the T-shirt from the hospital, and Rafí dropping these items one by one onto a grill. He was burning her clothes. From the flat roof two floors below came the crazy coughing barks from Rafí’s dog.

Rafí, done, stood in the doorway, with blackened hands and a pair of tongs, telling her that she should stay where she was.

‘I’ve thought it through,’ he said. Lila didn’t have to work at Fazzini or on the corso. She didn’t need to go to hotels any more. Until they had to leave he would bring men to her. She didn’t need clothes. She didn’t need shoes. ‘I’ll provide what you need.’

And one more thing: with Lila momentarily out of action he’d devised another plan, involving Cecco. Everything now depended on Cecco helping out and pleasing a few of his friends. They had to take opportunities when and as they came. These friends, they wanted a boy.

Rafí dug his phone out of his pocket, and worked a bad smile as he scrolled through finding photographs. Cecco on a bed, soft, loose and compliant on Rafí’s dope. Cecco arranged across a bed with his shirt hitched up, eyes closed to half-moons, arms propped behind his head. Cecco with his legs spread wide, so deeply relaxed that he appeared as something hunted, a trophy. He showed Lila the photographs and said they weren’t half-bad, given that the camera on his phone was a piece of shit. Rafí’s concentration did not last long, and while Lila could not guess the details of this new plan, she didn’t doubt that he would replace her.

She came down in the late evening and waited outside Rafí’s door. Hungry, she wanted food. Rafí stintingly provided what they needed, going out after midday to bring back ready-cooked meals from an
alimentari
opposite the Fazzini, usually something simple, pasta and beans, or pasta and tomato, which they shared sitting in front of the small balcony overlooking the roof. While he ate, Rafí would coo to his dog and taunt it with scraps. Lila had never needed to remind him before, but there was no coffee, no bread, no sugar, nothing sweet at hand, and she had woken hungry and dizzy.