Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

He looked De Carlo in the eye. ‘Silvio.’

‘Ercole.’

‘Your cases going well?’

But the assistant inspector wasn’t interested in small talk. He looked past Ercole and up and down the corridor. His rich brown eyes settled on the Forestry officer once more. He said, ‘You have been lucky.’

‘Lucky?’

‘With Dante Spiro. The offenses you have committed...’

Offenses?

‘... have not been so serious. He might have cut your legs out from underneath you. Stuck you like a pig.’

Ah, a reference to the Forestry Corps.

De Carlo continued, ‘Yet you received what amounted to a slap with a glove.’

Ercole said nothing but waited for the insult, the sneer, the condescension, not knowing what form it might take.

How would he respond?

It hardly mattered; whatever he said it would backfire. He would make a buffoon of himself. As always with the Silvio De Carlos of the world.

But then the officer continued, ‘If you want to survive this experience, if you want to move from Forestry into Police of State, as I suspect you do — and this might be your only opportunity — you must learn how to work with Dante Spiro. Do you swim, Ercole?’

‘I... yes.’

‘In the sea?’

‘Of course.’

They were in Naples. Every boy could swim in the sea.

De Carlo said, ‘So you know riptides. You never fight them, because you can’t win. You let them take you where they will and then, slowly, gently you swim diagonally back to shore. Dante Spiro is a riptide. With Spiro, you never fight him. That is to say, contradict him. You never question him. You agree. You suggest he is brilliant. If you have an idea that you feel must be pursued and is at odds with him then you must find a way to achieve your goal obliquely. Either in a way that he can’t learn about, or one that seems — seems , mind you — compatible with his thinking. Do you understand?’

Ercole did understand the words but he would need time to translate them to practical effect. This was a very different way of policing than he was used to.

For the moment he said, ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Good. Fortunately, you’re under the wing of a kinder — and equally talented — man. Massimo Rossi will protect you to the extent he can. He and Spiro are peers and respect each other. But he can’t save you if you fling yourself into the lion’s mouth. As you seem inclined to do.’

‘Thank you for this.’

‘Yes.’ De Carlo turned and started to walk away then looked back. ‘Your shirt.’

Ercole looked down at the cream-colored shirt he had pulled on this morning beneath his gray uniform jacket. He hadn’t realized the jacket was unzipped.

‘Armani? Or one of his protégés perhaps?’ De Carlo asked.

‘I dressed quickly. I don’t know the label, I’m afraid.’

‘Ah, well, it is quite fine.’

Ercole could tell that these words were not ironic and that De Carlo truly admired the shirt.

He offered his thanks. Pointedly he did not add that the shirt had been stitched together not in Milan but in a Vietnamese factory and was sold not in a boutique in the chic Vomero district of Naples but from a cart on the rough and rugged avenue known as the Spaccanapoli by an Albanian vendor. The negotiated price was four euros.

They shook hands and the assistant inspector wandered off, pulling an iPhone, in a stylish case, from a stylish back pocket.

Not in Kansas anymore.

Walking down the residential portion of this Neapolitan street — dinnertime and therefore not so crowded — Garry Soames thought of this clichéd line from The Wizard of Oz . And then he whispered it aloud, glancing at a young brunette, long, long hair, long legs, conversing on a cell phone, passing by. It was a certain type of look, and she returned it in a certain way, eyes not exactly lingering, but remaining upon his sculpted Midwest American face a fraction of a second longer than a phone talker would do otherwise.

Then the woman, the epitome of southern Italian élan, and her swaying, sexy stride, were gone.

Damn. Nice.

Garry continued on. His eyes then slipped to two more young women, chatting, dressed as sharply — and as tactically — as any hot girl on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.

Unlike Woman One, a moment ago, they both ignored him but Garry didn’t care. He was in a very good mood. And what twenty-three-year-old wouldn’t be, having exchanged his home state of Missouri (sorta, kinda like Kansas) for Italy (Oz without the flying monkeys)?

The athletic young man — built like a running back — hitched his heavy backpack higher on his shoulder and turned the corner that would take him to his apartment on Corso Umberto I. His head hurt slightly — a bit too much Vermentino and (Heaven help him!) cheap grappa at his early supper a half hour ago.

But he’d earned it, finishing his class assignments early in the afternoon and then wandering the streets, practicing his Italian. Slowly, he was learning the language, which had at first seemed overwhelming, largely because of the concept of gender. Carpets were boys, tables were girls.

And accents! Just the other day he’d raised eyebrows and earned laughs when, at a restaurant, he’d ordered penises with tomato sauce; the word for male genitalia was dangerously close to penne, the pasta (and to the word for bread too).

Little by little, though, he was learning the language, learning the culture.

Poco a poco...

Feeling good, yes.

Though he would have to rein in the late-night parties. Too much drinking. Too many women. Well, no, that was an oxymoron; one could not have too many women. But one could have too many possessive and temperamental and needy women.

The kind that he, naturally, ended up bedding all too often.

Naples was far safer than parts of his hometown of St. Louis but instinct told him he probably shouldn’t sleep over in strangers’ apartments quite so much, waking to the girl, bleary-eyed, staring at him uncertainly, muttering things. Then asking him to leave.

Just control it, he told himself.

Thinking specifically of Valentina, a few weeks ago.

What was her last name?

Yes, Morelli. Valentina Morelli. Ah, such beautiful, sexy brown eyes... which had turned far less beautiful and far more chilling when he’d balked at what he’d apparently suggested as they lay in bed. It seemed he’d told her — thank you, Mr Brunello or Barolo — that she could come to the United States with him, and they could see San Diego together. Or San Jose. Or somewhere.

She’d become a raging she-wolf and flung a bottle (the expensive Super-Tuscan, but empty, thank God) into his bathroom mirror, shattering both.

She’d muttered words to him in Italian. It seemed like a curse.

So. Just be more careful.

‘Spend the year in Europe, kiddo,’ his father had told him, upon his departure from Lambert Field. ‘Enjoy, graduate at the bottom of your class. Experience life!’ The tall man — an older version of Garry, with silver in his blond hair — had then lowered his voice: ‘But. You do a single milligram of coke or pot and you’re on your own. You end up in a Naples jail, all you’ll get from us is postcards, and probably not even that.’

And Garry could truthfully tell his father that he’d never tried any coke and he’d never tried any pot.

There was plenty else to amuse him.

Like Valentina. (San Diego? Really? He’d used that as a come-on line?) Or Ariella. Or Toni.

Then he thought of Frieda.

The Dutch girl he’d met at Natalia’s party on Monday. Yes, picturing them being on the roof, her beautiful hair dipping onto his shoulder, her firm breast against his arm, her damp lips against his.