Free A Few Drops of Blood by Jan Merete Weiss Page B

her fences?
    Mama Scavullo had on a fancy white dress printed with daisies. Not a trace of mourning black. Hardly funereal. A bouffant hairdo with a real daisy anchored above one ear. She looked to be attending a festive bon voyage gathering, seeing someone off on a happy journey. Or was she there to savor Lattaruzzo’s demise? Gloat over some vengeance?
    The priest made his way to the altar. Everyone sat. Natalia glanced back for Renata Scavullo, but the old woman had slipped off. The ceremony proceeded.
    An hour later, the coffin was carried out into the intense sunlight and placed in an open hearse bedecked with ten-foot bouquets of palms and orange chrysanthemums. In this heat, the flowers would be as dead as the corpse before the procession reached the graveyard. An official car trailed behind,
Carabinieri
written large in white along its side.
    The forensic techies identified a thumbprint on the
lupara
as Ernesto Scavullo’s, head of the DePretis clan and boss of the Vasto and waterfront districts, among others. Nataliaand Angelina changed into their uniforms, gathered up weapons and cuffs and set out. They decided to evade the district’s heavy traffic and walk to the hill train. In minutes they reached the funicular station at the bottom of the steep incline leading up to the Vomero district. As they were both in uniform, the attendant waved them through, and they joined the crowd in the cool of the marble waiting room.
    The cable tram whirred down. The exchange of passengers took no more than seconds, with passengers exiting from one side and passengers boarding from the other for the quick trip up in the staggered car, constructed of narrow compartments that were like joined steps which together ascended the hill.
    The doors closed, and the car wrenched upward. Minutes later they stepped out at the last stop and followed the other passengers into the ritzy section high above the city.
    They exited onto Via Kerbaker. Outside the station it was leafy and breezy cool. A Bengladeshi vendor assembled bouquets of roses and chrysanthemums, wrapping them in pink and orange crepe paper before setting them out to sell.
    They crossed Piazza Vitelli, a vast space named, Natalia explained, for the eighteenth-century architect responsible for many of the city’s neoclassical gems, and walked along a boulevard flanked by gracious apartment buildings for the two blocks to their destination. A guard posted outside Scavullo’s grand estate closely examined Natalia and Angelina and said something into his walkie-talkie. Instantly the gates swung open, and he waved them in. Natalia and Angelina followed the driveway up to Scavullo’s split-level villa, a virtual copy of Salvatore “the Beast” Riima’s digs in Palermo, Angelina said, right down to the date palms over the drive.
    It never failed to annoy Natalia the way the dons and
madrinas
added wings to their overstuffed mansions, gold toilets to their boudoirs and Ferraris to their car fleets, while Neapolitan monuments crumbled, and museums and cultural institutions cut staff and hours.
    A black woman pulled out of the garage in a white Mercedes. She was a vision in pink: pink jacket, pink scarf, pink sunglasses. And a black chiffon blouse. A large topaz and a silver
cornetto
hung from a thick pink gold chain around her neck.
    “The girlfriend?” Angelina said.
    “Who knows? Doesn’t look like the African in the file pics.”
    A young man opened the front door before they rang the bell.
    “Paolo,” Natalia exclaimed, as they stepped into the white marble foyer. “My God.”
    The once slim boy was beefed up, heavily muscled.
    “Natalia! Natalia Monte,” he said.
    “Paolo.” She took his hand.
    “It must be twenty years, easy. You haven’t changed.”
    “Oh, Paolo. Tell me you’re not working for him?”
    “Yeah … well. How’s Mariel?”
    “Still beautiful. In fact, your name came up the other day.”
    “Don’t bullshit me.”
    “No, really. But