When they arrived at Nikki’s house, Valerio diverted to the kitchen and began making coffee.
“Don’t you need to get back to work?” Nikki called from the back room, where she was changing.
“I’m on leave,” he shouted back. “Where are your espresso cups?”
Nikki pulled on a new shirt and jogged back into the kitchen.
“I’m antisocial,” she told him. “You think I have cups for guests?”
She rummaged in cupboards and located shot glasses. Then she opened the window and metal shutter, letting in the morning light and street sounds.
“Did you know the fortune teller?” Valerio asked.
Nikki shrugged. “I interviewed her last week—after the murder.”
“What did she say?”
“She claimed Claire knew her killer,” Nikki said. “But then she admitted she hadn’t even talked to Claire. I think she was just trying to trick me into paying more.”
Nikki had been repulsed by the fortune teller’s exaggerated playacting. Maybe that was why she hadn’t followed up after those initial questions. She regretted this now. If Signora Dorotea had known more, she’d taken it with her.
“Predatory leeches,” Valerio said with disgust. “My mother paid an assisto for years, for messages from my father. And the numbers, of course.”
It was a prevalent, if secretive, superstition: that the dearly departed sent dreams with winning lottery numbers beyond the grave. Interpreting dreams had likely been a large part of Signora Dorotea’s business.
“Did she ever win?” Nikki asked.
“No.”
She cleared space on the table.
“So, why are you on leave?” she asked.
Valerio shrugged, and turned his back to her, checking the coffee as it heated slowly on the burner.
“I fucked up,” he said, still not turning around. “Did a favor for someone I shouldn’t have. A boy got killed.”
Nikki studied him for a long moment: the hunch of his shoulders, the tension in his neck—and a purple bruise behind his right ear.
“What happened to your head?” she asked.
He leaned on the countertop, and gave a dark laugh.
“I’m really fucked,” he said.
Turning to face her, he took a seat.
Last summer, he told her, his daughter had gone missing. He’d turned to the human trafficker Luca Errichiello for help. He said this calmly. Dispassionately. As if giving court testimony. If Nikki didn’t know better, she might believe her friend was unaffected. But he seemed heavy, and his right hand pressed against the table as he talked.
He told her about his efforts to return Errichiello’s favor, to release Gaetano Mancusi from jail, only to have Luca’s men gun down theboy. He described his investigation into the billionaire socialite Paride Silvestri, and Silvestri’s abuse of underage girls.
Nikki was cold with disgust.
“Silvestri…Errichiello—will they get away with it?” she asked.
“They have so far,” Valerio said. “Like Beppe says: They have people everywhere—in the police, the judicial system. You know how it is.”
This reminded Nikki of Adriano’s words about the system:To kill the beast, you need to understand it completely.
