When he emerged, ten minutes later, the salon was filled with sunlight streaming in through the open doorway leading to the balcony. Valeria, now also decently clad, leaned over the railing. A light breeze ruffled her hair.
'Good morning/ she said, as he appeared. 'Did you sleep well?'
'Very well, thank you/ he replied, taking her cue that this was to be their first meeting that morning.
'That was Orestina. Apparently their evening ended better than it began. They met some people who invited them to something called a 'rave'. I'm not sure what that is, exactly, but they seem to have had a good time.'
From the balcony, there was a magnificent view extending right over the city to the coastline near Pompeii and the brooding mass of Vesuvius. From the gardens and terraces below, a heady mixture of scents awakened by the sunlight rose up to envelop them. In the middle distance, Zen could clearly see the cranes and warehouses at the port. And that grey block, slightly to the left, was the Questura.
'Well, I'm glad someone is/ he said resignedly.
Cava semplicita, quanto mi piaci The Greco, at the foot of Via Chiaia, seemed to Dario De Spino the right sort of venue for his purposes. Its slightly faded gran caffe elegance, the sense of tradition and history, the waiters in their starched uniforms, to say nothing of the view of the former Royal Palace and of the San Carlo opera house — all this was calculated to impress the pants off these two babes who'd grown up in some mosquito ridden hovel in Hoxha's Albania. They'd think they'd died and gone to heaven!
Not that Dario was interested in removing their pants himself, although he had been known to dip into the other side of the gender pool from time to time, both by way of demonstrating his versatility and confirming that he was better off where he was. But his resources in that respect were already overstretched, what with Mohammed out at Portici — a thirty-minute commute each way, on top of everything else — and the demands of social life here in town. With his extensive range of business interests, it was essential to remain on good terms with a large number of people, many of whom could get distinctly snippy if he didn't make a pass at them every so often.
No, Dario's interest in the albanesi was, he would have been the first to admit, purely professional. And from that point of view, the outing had already been a success.
Even in the bizarre gear they had brought with them from that Stalinist hell-hole, they were getting plenty of attention on the street. By the time Dario had taken them to the sweat-shop in Via Spagnoli and fixed them up with some of the fake designer duds they run up there, he would need a cattle prod to keep the young studs at bay.
It also wouldn't do them any harm to see the conditions in those airless bassi, where children, young women, mothers and old crones stitched and sewed from morning to night for piece rates that would make the plaster Madonna on the wall weep tears of blood. If they took exception to Dario's proposition, once he finalized it, he could ever so gently remind them of the alternative.
But that was still some distance in the future. For now, all he wanted to do was to wean them away from the idea this Alfonso Zembla had given them that their long-term salvation lay with Gesualdo and Sabatino. The trick was to demonstrate that he was a much more important and well-respected figure, and, given his actual reputation, this needed to be approached with some care. Which was another good reason for choosing the pricey Caffe Greco, where it was extremely unlikely that they would run into anyone he knew — or that still more embarrassing class of people he did not know, or had forgotten, but who turned out to remember him only too well.
There was little risk of that sort of unpleasant encounter here. As he escorted the girls in, they caught sight of themselves reflected in the antique mirrors in their ornate frames, and gasped. At one end of the marble bar an elegant gentleman in a superb suit of slightly old-fashioned cut was holding forth to two younger underlings each carrying about a million lire's worth of tailoring themselves.
Carefully choosing a moment when none of the trio was looking his way, Dario nodded respectfully.
'Buon giorno, cummendatbl' he murmured. 'Comme state? Sto' bbuono, grazzie.'
He turned to his two charges with a confidential air.
'One of the top men in the Regional Council. If Vitale sneezes, half the city catches a cold. I would introduce you — he's a great admirer of female beauty, even at his age — but I know those two with him and I can guess what they're talking about. It'll be all over the papers tomorrow, but for now discretion is the key word. No, don't stare!'
This to Libera, who was ogling one of the younger men with a directness Dario attributed to her unspoilt innocence.
Who knows, he might actually have a couple of virgins on his hands here! From everything you heard, the Albanians had a code of behaviour which made the Sicilians look frivolous. Libera's ingenuous eye-contact certainly had a remarkable effect on the recipient of her attentions, who was now listening to the elderly buffer whoever the hell he might really be — with little better than half an ear. Dario slipped a 5,000-lire note to a passing waiter.
'Give that to the barman. The name's De Spino. He's to treat me like a regular, but with respect.'
The girls could hear this, but of course they understood the local dialect about as much as Dario did Albanian.
And the results were certainly gratifying.
'Dottor De Spino!' the barman called out as they approached, his expression a perfect mime of deferential goodwill. 'What a pleasure to see you again. And such charming young ladies! What may I have the honour of serving you?'
They ordered coffee in various forms, all minutely prescribed as to strength, quantity, heat, and presence and abundance of milk and foam. This ritual took the best part of a minute, following which De Spino broached the matter in hand.
'Yes/ he mused, as though the idea had just occurred to him, 'I could introduce you to so many people, people who really count, moving in the top ranks of society.
Whereas those two lads upstairs… They're pleasant enough fellows, but frankly they wouldn't be allowed past the door in the sort of houses I'm talking about.' 'I thought they were friends of yours/ replied Iolanda pertly.
Dario De Spino smiled in a wise, worldly, mildly self deprecatory way.
'A man like me has to mix with all manner of people/ he murmured, waggling his hand to illustrate the degree of social flexibility involved. 'Many of them think that they are my friends. If I allow them to cultivate this illusion, it is because it suits my purposes.'
A shrug of vast condescension.
'Gesualdo and Sabatino are useful to me in various ways. They are of the people, you understand, the lower orders, and move naturally and widely in that milieu.
Then again, they are linked to one of the most powerful criminal clans in the city. That makes them extremely helpful for facilitating… various enterprises.'
The effect on his listeners was all he could have wished.
'You mean they're gangsters?' gasped Libera, openmouthed.
Dario gave a pained look, as if gently reproving her crassness.
'Everyone in Naples is more or less a gangster, my dear.
It's a question of degree. So far as I know, neither Sabatino nor Gesualdo has been blooded…'
'Blooded?' repeated Iolanda with a look of alarm.
'A technical term/ Dario returned, inspecting his fingernails.
'I mean that as far as I know they haven't killed anyone yet. Not in the line of work, at least. Their private lives are, of course, another matter. But there is no question that they are intimately associated with various figures whose activities are — how shall I put it? — of considerable interest to the authorities.'
He smiled apologetically.
'But enough about them! What interests me is you, and your problems. The question is, where do we go from here?'
He did not have to spell out what 'here' meant. It was clear from his companions' disconsolate expressions that they appreciated the position only too well. Their attempts, the night before, to make contact with the two young men recently installed upstairs had ended in the most abject failure.
Libera made the initial approach, appearing at the door of the upper apartment to solicit Gesualdo's assistance with a time-honoured line: 'Excuse me, but our lights have gone out.'
Gesualdo summoned Sabatino, and the two men came downstairs, located the fuse-box and threw the switch which De Spino had deliberately tripped. Catching sight of their friend as the lights came on, they gasped.
