“Ravenna?” he said, stepping forward.
She hesitated, looked him over.
“Sì?”
He showed his badge, introduced himself.
“I’d like to speak with Ines Mancusi. I understand you’re her friend.”
She shook her head. “Ines had her chemotherapy yesterday. She’s very ill.”
“It won’t take long. I’d like to know more about the situation with her son.”
She reached out for his badge and he handed it to her. She inspected it carefully.
“Am I required to let you in?” she asked.
Valerio sighed.
“No,” he admitted. “But I’m here to help. A family friend asked me to look into Gaetano’s situation, and see if there was something I could do.”
“What can you do? He’s arrested. He’s in jail.”
“If I’m convinced that he’s no risk, that his mother needs him, I’ll talk with the magistrate and see if they’ll release him.”
She examined him a moment more, and Valerio saw beneath the curtain of ringlets: her large soulful eyes and full cheeks. She reminded him of an angel painted on the altarpiece of a church.
She handed back his badge.
“Follow me.”
—
The old building was dreary, the unfinished, rough concrete of the rectangular interior like an open box leading straight up to the grey sky and misery of rain. The floor was smoothed with grime. On the walls, patches of mildew erupted like an infection. Exposed rebar in the concrete leaked red.
Valerio followed Ravenna to the end of the hall and the entrance of a stairwell.
“I’ve known Gaetano since he was a baby,” Ravenna said as they climbed the stairs. “I used to watch him for Ines.”
“You’re a nurse?”
“I am…now. But in those days, I was just a schoolkid. His babysitter.”
“Ines was a single parent?” he asked.
“Her husband died just after the baby was born.”
“What can you tell me about Gaetano?”
She took a few steps before answering.
“He has a good heart. But I worry about him.”
“What are you worried about?”
“Well, there isn’t much for a teenage boy, is there? The unemployment is bad, and the jobs for kids his age don’t pay well. They can make so much more money dealing drugs, or working for the clans as transport or security.”
“Is that what Gaetano was doing?” he asked.
