“…you just need to stop,” Brizio was saying. “He says you’re cutting into his profits.”
“That’s bullshit,” Tito replied. “He just doesn’t like it because he’s too stupid to do it himself.”
“He says he’ll fucking shoot you if you don’t stop.”
“Armo’s all talk,” Tito said. “He’d never dare.”
But he was wrong.
—
On the day of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a group of laundry women found Tito bruised and bloodied, unconscious, in an alley near his home. His arm and three ribs were broken, and his face was so swollen and purple and red, Nikki hardly recognized him in the hospital bed. But she recognized the glint of hardened steel in his eye.
“Tell me what you need,” she said, anger and sadness making her voice shake.
He had the names memorized: the boys he’d recognized from Armo’s group. He made her write them down.
“Find out where they live,” he instructed. “Find out who their friends are. Find out where they park their bikes at night.”
Nikki wanted to complete this assignment herself, but she didn’t have as much freedom at night as the others. So, she recruited two of the top boys to help. In little more than a week, by the time the swelling in Tito’s face was beginning to subside, the report was complete.
Tito thanked them all in that strange way he had: looking them each in the eye so solemnly while he spoke the words, so that you wanted more than anything in the world to volunteer for the next job, to take another turn at receiving those thanks.
But Tito didn’t ask Nikki to complete the next part of the assignment. She only learned about it after the fact, when it was too late to argue against it or, as Tito likely feared, report it to her carabinieri brother.
On Christmas Eve, when the bells struck midnight, signifying that all of Naples had gone to mass, fires were lit simultaneously across the city. Five motorbikes burned, along with the homes of the couriers and anyone else foolish enough to stash their supply.
Nikki thought about those flames—which she’d only seen in her imagination. They danced, black and orange, against the night sky, thick smoke racing upwards like the billowing smoke of the studio fire.
—
Nikki picked up Preston’s copy ofBeowulfand read aloud to him, but this seemed to increase his agitation, so she stopped and sat silently for a long time, until fatigue overcame her and she half slept in the bedside chair.
—
In the late afternoon, the shadows lengthened and the windows reflected the fluorescent lights as the world outside darkened. Driven by hunger, Nikki left Preston’s room long enough to find the hospital canteen and get a sandwich and small bag of salted macadamia nuts.
Preston was still asleep when she returned.
She went through her rucksack for her stack of cards, and peeled away the rubber band. The details were already in her mind—no needto reread what she already knew by heart. Instead, she tapped the pen, mentally sorting the pieces that still didn’t fit.What made Claire leave the yacht on Saturday night? What happened during those missing three days? Why was she at the church? Why had Monica thrown the knife?
Then the new gaps—the lie about seeing Claire…the cocaine…the missing bag.
The facts were piling up, but they felt disconnected and wrong tonight, loose threads she couldn’t grip. Her body was twitchy and restless, unable to calm, unsettled by the sight of Preston in that bed, and thinking about the bleed in his brain. She imagined it as a sort of invading force, decimating everything in its path: the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and all the other poets who lived as friends inside his mind.
—
Nikki’s phone chimed and she went into the hallway for a signal. She’d missed several text messages: a dozen from Audrey Lake—a series of laughing-face emojis and hearts interspersed with jokes:
Where do fruits go on holiday? Pear-is!
What did one wall say to the other? I’ll meet you at the corner!
The final text message read,Can you come over?
I can’t come over, Nikki texted.Out of town.
—
