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Authors: Maurizio de Giovanni
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the back; an old man, maybe.
She stands up and gets ready to get off.
CHAPTER 19
Letizia flopped into a chair at Lojacono’s table. “Mamma mia, I’m shattered tonight. I really am turning into an old woman. There was a time when I bounced from one table to another like a young gazelle.”
The inspector smiled, giving her a wink. “Ah, you look like a schoolgirl, you know. Come on, it’s obvious that all the men who eat here must be interested in you, because if it was for the cooking . . .”
Letizia picked up a fork from the table and pretended to stab him with it. “Hey, how dare you? Let me tell you, there’s no better ragu anywhere in the city, which means anywhere on earth. And you know that perfectly well, since you eat it almost every night.”
Lojacono patted his belly. “Of course I do, and take a look at what you’re turning me into. When I first started coming here I was an athlete and now I look like a sixty-year-old captain of industry.”
Letizia blushed imperceptibly. “No, no, I assure you, you look fine. You’d have to eat a lot more ragu than that. But listen, I heard you were there last week when they killed the son of that nurse, Luisa. Is that right? What happened exactly?”
“Yeah, I was on call that night. Such a pity; he was just a boy.”
Letizia shrugged. “Sure, he was young, but they get started early here. I hear that he’d started to run with the wrong crowd, that . . . he was getting busy.”
“What do you mean, he was getting busy?”
“You know, easy money. Take something across town, a bit of petty drug dealing. They recruit them early. They call them
muschilli
—gnats. And then, little by little, they ease them into the business. Who knows, he could easily have broken some rule without even realizing it.”
Lojacono drank another sip of wine. “I don’t know about that. It strikes me as odd; it doesn’t seem like a typical Mafia hit. They’re arrogant, you know. When they teach someone a lesson, they want the lesson to be out there, for everyone to see. But what about the mother—can you tell me anything about her?”
Letizia extended her arms disconsolately. “What can I say? I’ve known her practically forever. She had this son, nobody seems to know who the father was, and she worked her fingers to the bone to bring him up right. She made sure he lacked for nothing. She worked for a while in some clinic somewhere and now she does home care, injections, IVs, stuff like that. There are times when she’s out all night sitting up with some invalid, which means the boy hangs out, or I guess used to hang out, on the streets, getting to know all these little losers. That’s the way the world works sometimes.”
Lojacono looked into the middle distance, lost in thought, before saying, “There were tissues on the ground, right near where the boy was killed. A number of tissues, as if the person who used them had been there for a long time. Hours, for all we know. So a guy stands there, in the dark, in the pouring rain, for hours, waiting for a kid to come home so he can shoot him in the head, one shot, small caliber pistol, a toy gun. A handgun you could carry in your pocket. That’s no Camorrista, take it from me.”
Letizia listened, holding her breath. “Tissues? You mean like paper tissues? Can’t you test them for DNA? I saw a TV show the other night—”
Lojacono waved his hand dismissively. “Forget about those TV shows, they’re full of shit. Somebody finds a fingerprint and before you know it they have the murderer’s horoscope. Giuffrè, a guy who works in the same office as me, saw the forensics report that the medical examiner sent in: lachrymal secretion. And cell flaking, which means that when he wiped the tears off his eye, little scraps of eyelid skin stuck to the tissue. They analyzed everything, but all they were able to determine was the gender: male.”
Letizia was perplexed. “What do you mean, tears? So the murderer was
She stands up and gets ready to get off.
CHAPTER 19
Letizia flopped into a chair at Lojacono’s table. “Mamma mia, I’m shattered tonight. I really am turning into an old woman. There was a time when I bounced from one table to another like a young gazelle.”
The inspector smiled, giving her a wink. “Ah, you look like a schoolgirl, you know. Come on, it’s obvious that all the men who eat here must be interested in you, because if it was for the cooking . . .”
Letizia picked up a fork from the table and pretended to stab him with it. “Hey, how dare you? Let me tell you, there’s no better ragu anywhere in the city, which means anywhere on earth. And you know that perfectly well, since you eat it almost every night.”
Lojacono patted his belly. “Of course I do, and take a look at what you’re turning me into. When I first started coming here I was an athlete and now I look like a sixty-year-old captain of industry.”
Letizia blushed imperceptibly. “No, no, I assure you, you look fine. You’d have to eat a lot more ragu than that. But listen, I heard you were there last week when they killed the son of that nurse, Luisa. Is that right? What happened exactly?”
“Yeah, I was on call that night. Such a pity; he was just a boy.”
Letizia shrugged. “Sure, he was young, but they get started early here. I hear that he’d started to run with the wrong crowd, that . . . he was getting busy.”
“What do you mean, he was getting busy?”
“You know, easy money. Take something across town, a bit of petty drug dealing. They recruit them early. They call them
muschilli
—gnats. And then, little by little, they ease them into the business. Who knows, he could easily have broken some rule without even realizing it.”
Lojacono drank another sip of wine. “I don’t know about that. It strikes me as odd; it doesn’t seem like a typical Mafia hit. They’re arrogant, you know. When they teach someone a lesson, they want the lesson to be out there, for everyone to see. But what about the mother—can you tell me anything about her?”
Letizia extended her arms disconsolately. “What can I say? I’ve known her practically forever. She had this son, nobody seems to know who the father was, and she worked her fingers to the bone to bring him up right. She made sure he lacked for nothing. She worked for a while in some clinic somewhere and now she does home care, injections, IVs, stuff like that. There are times when she’s out all night sitting up with some invalid, which means the boy hangs out, or I guess used to hang out, on the streets, getting to know all these little losers. That’s the way the world works sometimes.”
Lojacono looked into the middle distance, lost in thought, before saying, “There were tissues on the ground, right near where the boy was killed. A number of tissues, as if the person who used them had been there for a long time. Hours, for all we know. So a guy stands there, in the dark, in the pouring rain, for hours, waiting for a kid to come home so he can shoot him in the head, one shot, small caliber pistol, a toy gun. A handgun you could carry in your pocket. That’s no Camorrista, take it from me.”
Letizia listened, holding her breath. “Tissues? You mean like paper tissues? Can’t you test them for DNA? I saw a TV show the other night—”
Lojacono waved his hand dismissively. “Forget about those TV shows, they’re full of shit. Somebody finds a fingerprint and before you know it they have the murderer’s horoscope. Giuffrè, a guy who works in the same office as me, saw the forensics report that the medical examiner sent in: lachrymal secretion. And cell flaking, which means that when he wiped the tears off his eye, little scraps of eyelid skin stuck to the tissue. They analyzed everything, but all they were able to determine was the gender: male.”
Letizia was perplexed. “What do you mean, tears? So the murderer was
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