These Dark Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

here.”
    “We’re strapped for manpower, but I’ll give you Corporal Giulio to assist. He’s still on light duty, but he can anchor the investigation desk for you.” Donati touched the side of his nose. “Be prudent,” he said. “There is the possibility of the Camorra in this.” He glanced at his Omega. “Get some lunch.”
    In the hallway, Natalia said, “Camorra? Hell, no wonder the day shift vanished and we caught this killing. What have they got for local manpower? A couple of hundred thousand to our thirteen hundred?”
    Pino only nodded, not meeting her eyes. If they annoyed the criminal clans, trouble was almost guaranteed. Carabinieri died or disappeared as easily as anyone else—prosecutors, witnesses, judges. Colonels, even. No wonder Donati was nervous at the possibility of Camorra involvement.
    “Lunch where?” she asked.
    “El Nilo. The waitress there recognized Teresa’s picture. Said she came in almost every morning. Sometimes again at the end of the day. Recently with a young man. The waitress recognized him too.”
    The jukebox was going when they walked in: a local instrumental with lots of accordion and mandolin. The girl behind the counter wore purple lipstick. Punk-looking, but pretty, her eyebrows plucked thin. She carried trays of creamy sfogliatelle with her tongue sticking out, concentrating hard on not dropping them. She shook powdered sugar over them and laid each in the case, next to the biscotti lined up in neat rows. Pino and Natalia sat on the banquette. The proprietor polished the espresso machine. He nodded at them.
    A man in kitchen whites came out from the back, his hair as white as his uniform.
    “Tina!” He wiped his hands on his apron as the waitress scurried over. He asked if an order was ready and retreated through the swinging doors. He looked so familiar, Natalia thought. Could that old man have been Turrido, once the proprietor of Vesuvio’s Bakery?
    When she was young, Natalia had stopped there on her way home from school almost every day to pick up a loaf of pane nero , the black bread her mother had sworn by. Not just her mother, in fact: most of the neighborhood bypassed the rival fancy shop, even after it invested in chrome tables and chairs. Their bread didn’t hold a candle to shabby Turrido’s. Turrido, with white hair? He’d never been thin, but he’d been fit, his hair bottle-black. He lived above the store with his mother, a beautiful sweet-natured old lady dressed always in black. She cooked for her son in the kitchen behind the shop, the smell of her meatballs tantalizing.
    An old woman squeezed past their table and plunked down her shopping in a wide arc around her table. Her gold earrings swung like tiny chandeliers. The proprietor hurried over with her coffee, to which she added sugar.
    Natalia and Pino grimaced. They both liked it the traditional way—not so sweet. How coffee is prepared is a local obsession. The sugar went in first, then the inky coffee oozed from the nozzle of the espresso machine. If you didn’t like your coffee too sweet, you’d have to catch the bartender early. If he respected you, you got the coffee you ordered.
    The owner’s grandfather was Don Calo Gero Vizzini, the Capo di tutti Capi , a gangster so powerful that he’d greeted the American troops in 1943 wearing an apricot silk foulard Lucky Luciano had taken from his own neck and given him because he had admired it. Vizzini’s son was a smalltime hood, but as far as Natalia and Pino knew, the grandson who owned El Nilo had never been involved in anything remotely illegal.
    The baker came out with a tray of pastries. Natalia tapped Pino’s arm.
    “That’s Turrido, isn’t it? Anthony Turrido, the baker?”
    “It looks like him,” Pino said. “I remember his picture on the front page of La Repubblica after he refused to pay protection and they burned the bakery down.”
    Natalia nodded. “They didn’t want to kill him. Watched his shop for weeks, waited