These Dark Things (6 page)

A professor passed—an older portly man in a linen suit and gray straw hat. A briefcase stuffed with books and brimming with yellowed papers was clutched to his side. How many times had he delivered the same lecture? He’d probably been teaching when Natalia was a student, though she didn’t recognize him.

Her first year at the University, Natalia was one of hundreds of students streaming into the shabby gray and white stone building. She did well in her studies—the first year, her paper on the female iconography of the Church won a prize, and in her second year she was honored with an invitation to a conference in Rome. She had only been to Rome once before, on a religious pilgrimage with the nuns when she was thirteen. When her professor told her she was going, her mother made a special outfit for her. She hadn’t thought of it in years. Lemon-colored, the dress had a fitted bodice and a full skirt. Her mother made a little jacket to go with it. They even found shoes to match. Afterward, she never wore the dress again. Natalia felt a stab of anxiety as she entered, for the first time in years, the place where she had suffered her disgrace. She walked across the marble foyer, feeling badly until she remembered Teresa Steiner.

Bypassing the elevator, she went to the stairs. A group of students was discussing the latest Almodovar film: “What do you mean, gay theme? There is no such animal!”

Maybe there was progress, after all. One could not imagine this discussion when she’d been a student. She climbed the stairs to the third floor. At the end of the corridor, the Titian poster was a little more faded than when she’d last seen it. The Olivetti typewriter had been replaced by a computer. The same cactus with the deceptive, soft-looking growth sat on the sill.

“
Buongiorno
.” A woman looked up from a pile of papers.

“
Buongiorno, signora
,” Natalia said, holding up her ID. “Is Professor Massone in her office?”

The red lipstick bled into the cracks around the mouth, and her face had a few more wrinkles, but it was the same department secretary. A devoted Catholic woman, she began the majority of her sentences with “If God wishes it.” Or was it “If God wills it”? She still wore her signature high heels. When she stood, the crooked seams of her stockings marked her thin calves.

The day Natalia’s thesis was refused, she had taken her, sobbing, into an empty office, brought her coffee, and sat with her until her friend Mariel arrived.

Professor Massone was reading a journal as Natalia was shown in.

“Excuse me,” Natalia said, “I’m here about Teresa Steiner.”

Professor Massone stood up. “Come in.” She extended her hand, “Please, sit down. Terrible. I can’t believe it. She wasn’t my student officially, but she came to me to talk about her work. She didn’t want her thesis adviser to know. Most of the male faculty is hostile to the idea of feminist studies. I am in the enemy camp.”

“Please elaborate, if you will.”

“She felt terribly alone. She’d just found out that her mother had cancer. Her mother responded well to treatment, but the prognosis wasn’t good. She had taken some time off and had come up with an idea about our street shrines, that they represented the female.”

“Female?”

“Yes, because they were originated by men but were female iconography and tended by women from the earliest days. Her work was cutting-edge. She would have been an academic star. She was on to something. We Neapolitans take the shrines for granted. We don’t see them really. Teresa was—how can I say this? She refused the compromises that become necessary as we get older. You know better than I, the Camorra involvement with the shrines. If you think about the thousands of shrines that exist, you realize how lucrative they are. At the very least, a way for the women tending them to ease their poverty, feed their families, maybe start a bank account. There wasn’t a day my mother didn’t toss a few coins into the shrine on our block.”

“My mother too,” Natalia said. “We think Miss Steiner was collecting for Gambini.”

“You know, I was afraid of something like that. I tried to warn her without spelling it out, but she had a beautiful enthusiasm and you didn’t want to clip her wings. Whatever she was doing, she knew Professor Lattanza would disapprove of her decision to use the shrines for her thesis topic. He’s not a mobster, don’t get me wrong: he’s a snob.”

“And her lover?”

“Yes. To make matters worse. But you know that already.” She made a fist, then stretched her fingers. “Teresa Steiner was one of the most interesting students we’ve had in a long time. Are you all right?”

“Maybe a glass of water.”

Professor Massone opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Pellegrino and a glass.

“Here. It must be the heat.”

“Probably,” Natalia said. “Thank you.”

Teresa Steiner’s thesis adviser and her own years ago were one and the same man. Natalia too had been close to completing her doctorate, until the same Dr. Marco Lattanza pressed against her as they rode alone in an elevator at the conference they were attending in Rome. She pushed him away, refused to sleep with him. A month later, he scrawled
Indefensible
across her black-and-white title page in blood-red ink.

Too ashamed to tell her parents what had happened, for a year she lived at home, not doing much of anything. It was Mariel who’d finally rescued her from depression, encouraging her to join the force.

“Better?” Professor Massone asked.

“Much. Thank you.”

“I’d like to publish Teresa’s thesis—posthumously—as a tribute to her.”

“Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“She was a nice girl. Polite. Ambitious. If she had lived, she would have commanded attention.”

“Ambitious enough to use Dr. Lattanza to advance her own career?”

“Hard to say. I had the feeling she came from a poor background. I never saw her in a pair of jeans. Always a skirt or dress. They were colorful but cheaply made. We are—were—about the same size. She was slimmer, but close enough. I had a couple of Prada pieces I couldn’t fit into any more. I didn’t want to offend her, but I took a chance. I needn’t have worried. Like a child, she was so excited. She ran around the desk to kiss me.… oh, God!”

“I’m sorry,” Natalia said.

“No, it’s okay. We have to find out who killed her,” Professor Massone said firmly. “I feel confident with you on the case. It will not be ‘overlooked,’ as so often happens when it is a female who is killed. Meanwhile, will you excuse me? I have a class in forty-five minutes, and I have not even peeked at my notes.”

“Of course. About Teresa’s paper? I’m curious.”

“Professor Lattanza will not facilitate its publication, I can assure you of that. But I am persistent when I want to do something.”

“Would jealousy of her work upset him enough for him to kill, do you think?”

Professor Massone laughed. “Well, if academic jealousy led to murder, the halls here would be strewn with bodies. I am not fond of that man, but murder.…”

“That was Dr. Francesca,” Pino said to his partner, who had just walked in as he put down the phone. “She’s established the time of death—between three and four
A.M
.”

“You’re not going to believe this,” said Natalia. “Teresa Steiner’s adviser was Professor Lattanza.”

“I know. What about him?”

“Mr. Adviser, the one I told you about?”

“Jesus. He’s coming in to sign a statement. You may not want to be in the office.”

“I wouldn’t miss it, but no, I don’t want him to see me.”

The phone rang. Pino answered. “Yes, perfect,” he said and hung up. “Speak of the devil.”

The professor appeared an hour later. Pino escorted him to an interrogation room. Natalia stood behind the two-way mirror. It had been ten years. Lattanza’s hair was mostly gray now, but he was thin as ever. He probably still got up at five
A.M.
and jogged several miles from his home in Posillipo to the University. And sewed the pockets shut on his suits and sports jackets. To avoid unsightly bulges in his clothes and be confident of the figure he cut.

Today he sported an orange silk tie and a lavender shirt. Bold, you had to give him that. He was still showing off his sartorial splendor. And he was still pulling the same shit. Wait until she told Mariel.

The collar of his shirt was flipped up. The day was hot, but he was prepared for intense air conditioning.

“Professor,” Pino said, taking the chair opposite. “I hope you don’t mind a few questions.”

“Not at all.” In spite of the air conditioning, suddenly he was sweating.

“Teresa Steiner’s landlady said that Teresa asked her if she could keep a dog. Teresa said she’d found it in Pompeii, that she wanted you to take it. She was angry because you wouldn’t. She told Signora Santini she didn’t want to see you any more. Her landlady let her keep the dog overnight, but she couldn’t have another dog in the apartment because her own is quite old.”

“The stray we found in Pompeii. It was a mangy thing, for one. And for another, how would I explain it to my wife? Teresa was furious. She took the dog and left me at the station. I heard she found a woman to take it. She stopped attending classes and she refused my calls. This sounds trite, but I missed her. How can I say it—I was, am basically a lonely man. I even went to the lady, Signora Lucci, and tried to buy the dog back.”

“If you didn’t have any contact with Teresa, how did you know what had happened to the dog?”

“The students talk.”

“Did the other students know about your affair with Teresa?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t care if people knew?”

“It’s not that I didn’t care. I just couldn’t live without her. Haven’t you ever felt that way?”

“We’ve located the person who left a bowl of water near the body to ward off the bad spirits.”

He rolled his eyes. “Ah, yes. The evil eye.”

“We also have someone who might have seen the murderer.”

“Who is that?”

“We are not at liberty to give out such information. Did you see Teresa Steiner any time after she broke up with you?”

“No. I volunteered to continue as her adviser, but she refused.”

“That didn’t bother you?”

“It broke my heart, but I only wanted the best for her.”

“I’m sure your wife will be pleased to hear that.”

“Marissa is a mature woman. She understands I have need, sometimes, to go outside the marriage. If you must know, it was Teresa who insisted we become lovers, not I.”

“You were in love with Teresa Steiner. And when she broke up with you, you threatened her.”

“That’s ridiculous. No. You’re wasting your time. There was someone else she was involved with—after me.”

“How do you know that?”

“She as much as told me.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m trying to help you. Let me come clean. A confession, if you will. She broke my heart—but only a little. I was obsessed—for a week, maybe two. She wouldn’t take my calls. I wasn’t used to rejection. But let me speak man to man. There is an endless supply, don’t you agree?”

“An endless supply?”

“Girls. Women, if you want to be ‘politically correct.’”

“I suggest you didn’t get over Teresa Steiner. That you followed her, up to and including the night she was killed. It was you who killed her.”

“Absurd. The week before she was killed, I did follow her, but that’s all. She was walking out of the University ahead of me at lunchtime. I remember it was a Monday and I’d just given my first exam of the semester. She met a man outside Cappella Sansevero. They slipped into the alley and kissed. I pretended interest in the antiques in the window of the little shop across the street. But they wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d walked right past them. I waited, and they went in together. As far as I know, only clergy have the key when the chapel is closed, as it usually is on Tuesdays. But obviously I am wrong about that. When the door didn’t close fully, I thought of following them in, but the chapel is small and it would have been more than obvious.

“I was curious, though, so I waited. I wondered if she’d taken up with one of my colleagues. But she came out alone. I was going to try to speak with her, but she rushed away. I knew she was interested in Sansevero. In fact, I was going to take her there myself, but she broke it off. Frankly, I was surprised she was interested. The Sanmartino Christ, of course, magnificent. But the ghoulish reproductions of the blood vessels in the anatomical models—and that two servants may have been murdered to create them. Barbaric! I thought she was more sophisticated. She was raised Catholic but didn’t go to church. I guess that made her even more curious. You know how that goes.

“After her mother died, she said she hated God. As if God was a magical creature who could grant our wishes. She was a child in some ways. A gorgeous, lost child. You wanted to protect her from something. It was as if she wouldn’t recognize evil or danger, even if it came up to her face.”

“And you weren’t that danger?”

“Hardly.”

“Could you identify him—the man she was with?”

“I was too far away to get a really good look, but he seemed about my height and build. I’d say he was close to my age.”