She shrugged. “I don’t know, Capo.”
They climbed to the next floor in silence, accompanied only by the sounds of their footsteps and their breathing.
“I’m really trying to help if I can,” said Valerio, feeling out of oxygen. “But I need to know: If I help to get Gaetano released from jail, can he stay out of trouble?”
“How much can any of us stay out of trouble?” said Ravenna. “We can do our best, but what happens when trouble comes looking for you?”
—
Ravenna let herself into the apartment and called out, “Ines, it’s me. There’s a policeman with me. He wants to talk to you.”
She plucked a brown-haired wig off a hook and said to Valerio, “Wait for a few minutes before coming in. Don’t make her ashamed.”
—
The space was cluttered and untidy, and filled with an unwholesome odor: the smell of sickness, mildew, cigarettes, medicine, and cats. At the center of the clutter in a sagging armchair sat a thin woman with papery, sallow skin stretched across her skull. She was held down in the chair by tubes tentacled out from a nearby oxygen tank. Her eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, were shaded the colors of a healing bruise. The dark wig did little to change the skeletal appearance. If anything, it gave a disturbing contrast to the pallid grey complexion. But she smoothed it back with her long, narrow fingers, twisting the hair next to her ear. Her vanity reminded Valerio a little of his sister Penelope and of his mother.
“I don’t have anything to say to you, policeman,” Ines said. Her voice was rough but she held her head aloft, casting an imperious look. “How dare you take a son away from his sick mother?”
“Signora, I did not arrest your son—”
He was about to explain his purpose, but she cut him off.
“It’s a vendetta,” she rasped. “The police don’t like me working for Luca—so they punish my son.”
She coughed, then opened her fist and spat into the tissue clenched there.
“How long have you worked for Luca Errichiello?” he asked.
“Seventeen years now,” she told him. “My husband, Azzo, was his driver. When Azzo died, Luca helped me out. They say he’s a bad man…but would a bad man do that?”
“You do know what Errichiello does? He trafficks young women and girls. He puts them in his brothels. Sells them to men who abuse and kill them?”
Valerio hadn’t planned to say this, but he couldn’t play along with the fiction of Luca Errichiello as an upright citizen.
Ines brushed this away with a hand. “Lies. Ugly lies.”
“You’ve never seen him do anything that worried you?”
“Not at all.”
She breathed deeply, a harsh sound. The nurse lifted her wrist and measured her pulse.
“I thought your questions were about Gaetano, Capo,” Ravenna said in a quiet, measured tone.
He looked at her and she returned his gaze, eyes wide and cautioning.
“When Gaetano was arrested,” said Valerio, “I understand it was a drugs charge…he was arrested with two other boys?”
“Sì,” agreed Ines. “I’m sure the other boys were responsible for the drugs. My son would never do such a thing.”
“Gaetano wasn’t living here when he was arrested?”
“No. He moved in with those two other boys during the summer.”
“How did he afford to move?” asked Valerio. “Was he working?”
She coughed and coughed some more, narrow shoulders working hard as her chest heaved.
