The Faces of Angels (47 page)

Despite my best efforts, I end up getting on the wrong bus. Then I get lost, so it's late when I finally find Vita Nuova.

From the outside the clinic looks as if it's seen better days. It's the ground floor of a concrete-block building with wired-in, plate-glass windows, and somebody's painted the front bright yellow, presumably as a sign of optimism. Or maybe because it was Dante's favourite colour. Who knows? Outside there's a bench that's chained to bolts in the sidewalk. When I try the door, it's locked.

I'm more annoyed by this than I would expect myself to be, and I stand there for a second, frustrated, but telling myself I can come back tomorrow. Then I notice the security camera, and remember what I've read about drug-treatment places, how they keep the doors locked because of the stuff they have inside. I start to knock and notice the bell, camouflaged because somebody painted it yellow too. I don't hear the ring when I push, but the black eye of the little camera is watching me, so I look right into it and try not to be threatening. I even smile. It must work, because a second later the buzzer sounds, and I push the door open.

The clinic's front room is painted yellow too, bright yellow that collides with an icky brown rug that has worn patches. Plastic modular chairs are lined up below bulletin boards covered with notices and posters, and there's a round table with stacks of leaflets on drug addiction, AIDS and STDs. The reception desk is behind a thick panel of glass, like one of those things you see in the Mafia trials. It's brightly lit and empty, just like the room, and I'm wondering what to do, knock or holler or just wait, when a young woman in jeans and a white lab coat appears from somewhere in the back of the building. I imagine Billy would pinch me if she were here, because the woman's name tag reads, ‘Beatrice Modesto.'

Beatrice has a suitably sweet-looking face, of the kind, gentle-nurse variety. When she sees me, she puts down the files she is carrying and smiles, which presents me with a dilemma because I have no idea what I'm going to say. The jumpy feeling comes back and my palms feel sweaty. I can't just ask about Caterina out of the blue, so I fall back on the only thing I know. I smile broadly and say I'm a journalist. That I'm doing a piece for an American women's magazine on drug-abuse treatments and single families and wonder if she can spare me some time? The babble comes out of my mouth so fluently I amaze myself. My nose must be growing longer by the minute, like Pinocchio's, and I'm sure Billy's grin hangs like the Cheshire Cat's above my shoulder. Beatrice apparently doesn't notice either, because she buzzes me into the back office and offers me coffee.

For the next fifteen minutes, I dredge up everything I've ever heard, from Ty, or on TV or anywhere, about methadone. We discuss the number of patients the clinic treats, the rate of recidivism, and the whole question of the treatment itself, or rather, thank God, Beatrice does. I listen and nod a lot and take notes in what is actually my address book.

The clinic, it turns out, is funded by the city, which also gives them money for outreach. Four doctors rotate through it on a regular basis, and others come in from the major hospitals as volunteers. The youngest kids, the teenagers, are the hardest to reach, Beatrice says. The older ones, who know exactly how much your life can get screwed up, mostly come and get help on their own. In fact, the place has a waiting list. When I have the wit to ask if they operate a ‘three strikes you're out' policy for those who fall off the straight and narrow, Beatrice smiles and shakes her head.

‘That is a very American idea,' she says. ‘Here, we just keep trying. Some of the people who come here are already lost, and they always will be. We know that. Others only look lost, and make it. The problem is, unless you're God, how do you know the difference?' She shrugs. ‘It's amazing how many times some people can get knocked down and get back up again. You can never tell. The ones who have children especially. People will try hard to keep their kids.'

‘Like Caterina Fusarno?'

I try to say it matter-of-factly, but my heart goes still. This is the moment when she's either going to clam up or talk to me. A cloud passes over her face, and I reach into my bag, produce the article and hand it to her.

‘That's how I heard about you. It sounds like a really sad story.'

Beatrice picks up the article and shakes her head. Suddenly she looks tired, and I wonder for the first time how old she is. Probably not even thirty. Her fine features crumple into a frown and she pushes her long brown hair off her forehead as if she's hot.

‘She was going to be OK, you know? She even had a line on a real job, at the day-care place where her son went. They'd agreed to take her as a secretary, part-time, if she kept up the good work here. Then this happens.' She hands the article back and shakes her head. ‘The police were such pigs about this,' she says.

‘How?'

‘Oh they were here about fifty million times. Wanted all her medical files, probably to prove she was nothing but a junkie. And they wanted other patient files too. Of course we weren't about to give them to them. We even had the fucking cardinal.'

‘D'Erreti?' I ask, surprised.

She nods. ‘God himself. He's trying to cut our funding because we counsel on contraception and abortion instead of preaching abstinence. Then he used Caterina to try to make the case that if we didn't give methadone to hookers they wouldn't get murdered. I'm not sure how that works,' she adds. ‘Frankly, I just think men are animals. Every last goddam one of them. Probably we should do castration here too, like they do for dogs.' And to think, when I first saw her, I thought Beatrice looked kind and gentle.

‘Did you ever run into a priest, a sidekick of D'Erreti's called Father Rinaldo?' Beatrice looks up at the ceiling, thinking for a second, then she shakes her head.

‘No,' she says. ‘I don't think so. I don't remember that name at all. Why?'

‘He's Opus Dei. I thought it might be the kind of thing—'

‘—they really get into?' She actually laughs as she finishes the sentence for me. ‘Well, you're right there. But no,' she says, shaking her head again. ‘We haven't actually had any trouble with them, but others have though, especially if they touch abortion.'

‘Same thing in the States,' I agree. ‘I guess,' I add as casually as I can manage, ‘that the university's felt some heat about that.'

‘Yeah.' Beatrice frowns. ‘It's a damn shame,' she says, ‘about that poor girl who threw the eggs at His Cardinal-ness.'

‘Did you know her?'

‘No.' She grins. ‘But I'd have liked to shake her hand.'

She glances at the clock, and I realize my time here is up.

‘Caterina wasn't into that kind of stuff, I guess? Protesting and all?' I ask it as I stand up, hoping that somehow she'll miraculously hand me a connection between the two women. But she shakes her head once more.

‘I don't think so. At least not that I know of. She was probably too busy with Carlo. But you could ask her mother. Carlo lives with Rosa now,' she adds. ‘Which is good because he stayed at the same care place and everything. It's no fun losing your mom when you're five. That's him right there, in the front.'

Beatrice points towards a picture on the wall. The group of people in it wear baseball caps and T-shirts and hold up paint brushes. Some of them have spatters of yellow on their faces. All of them are grinning. In front is an older woman holding a little boy. They're standing outside the clinic, with the bright yellow wall and the reinforced metal door behind them.

I peer at it, something niggling at the corner of my brain. One of the faces seems almost familiar, but with the baseball caps it's hard to tell. Those things make everybody look familiar, little white half-moon faces with yellow bills where their eyes should be.

‘Church volunteer group,' Beatrice says. Not all of them are bad. Even I have to admit that. This one does work at the hospital too. Repairing things, painting, stuff like that. You know,' she adds quickly, ‘if you go now, you can probably catch Rosa waiting for Carlo. He gets out at five, and it's just round the corner.'

‘Would she talk to me?'

‘She talks to anyone,' Beatrice says, leading me towards the door to the front room. ‘Especially about this. She's very angry with the police, that they never really did anything, after making such a big fuss. It's disgusting.' Beatrice buzzes us back into the yellow front room. ‘It was as though all they really wanted to know was did Caterina do drugs and have AIDS.'

Beatrice waves as she lets me out. ‘Send us a copy of what you write,' she calls as I head off down the street. ‘And mention our name, it's good for the money!'

Unlike Vita Nuova, the day-care centre is not hard to find. It fronts a small triangular park. The building is concrete block too, but this time the windows are open and someone has painted a mural of giant sunflowers on the outside wall. A red lion and a blue-striped zebra peer through the stalks. A pink giraffe pokes its head above the flower faces. Probably the church group again. There's the sound of children babbling from inside the building, and a bunch of women, and a few young men, sit on the round benches that circle the park's trees. The women chat among themselves, the guys read their newspapers. The big clock above the front door of the centre says ten minutes to five.

At first, I can't see anyone who even remotely looks as if she might be Caterina Fusarno's mother, and I'm about to give up and make the long trek back to the bus stop, resigned to coming back tomorrow, when a group of people walking their dogs move, and I spot an older lady sitting a little off by herself, knitting. She's wearing the kind of nylon flowered smock that house cleaners wear, and a big raffia shopping bag that's seen better days sits at her feet. Her fingers move over the navy-blue wool so fast it's almost possible to see the arm of the little sweater take shape as I walk towards her. This time, I think, I'll try just telling the truth.

When I get up close, I stretch out my hand and tell Rosa Fusarno my name. Then I ask if she's Caterina's mother. She studies me for a second before she puts the needles in her lap and asks what I want. Her voice is deep and determined, and she doesn't flinch. She's had practice, I think. She's been through this with the police, and the press, and God knows who all else.

‘I'm a journalist,' I say. ‘From America. And I'm a friend of the woman they just found murdered up at the Belvedere. I wondered if you'd have a minute to talk to me?'

‘A journalist from America?' Rosa Fusarno laughs, which is not what I expected. ‘What good is America to Martina?' she asks. ‘Unless maybe it embarrasses the bastards.' She has a point, and I'm trying to figure out how to answer it when she pats the seat beside her, and moves over so I can sit down.

She knits for a few seconds, then, without looking up, she asks, ‘How old was she? Your friend?'

‘Thirty-five,' I reply, and realize with a shock that Billy's birthday is coming up. She wanted to go to Venice. Stay on the Lido. Ride in a gondola.

‘You think the same person did it?' Rosa's needles click like summer crickets.

‘I think maybe. That's what I'm trying to find out—if anything, or anyone, connected them. My friend and Caterina. Somehow he had to know them both.'

‘Maybe. Maybe not.' Rosa doesn't look up from her tiny sweater. ‘Maybe he was just mad at his wife and felt like killing,' she says. ‘Evil son of a bitch. It's not women, you know,' she adds, ‘who go around cutting people up with knives.'

‘No. Not usually.'

Rosa glances at me out of the corner of her eye.

‘You sleep at night?' she asks. ‘They give you pills?'

‘Yeah, they did. But I threw them out.'

‘Pills for this. Pills for that. As if they can cure everything. My Martina, she was thirty-two.'

‘I talked to Beatrice at the clinic. Your daughter sounds like she was a remarkable woman.'

Caterina's mother shrugs. There's the hint of a smile on her face, but it vanishes as quickly as it came. ‘America,' she says again. ‘So, are you going to tell them in America that no one's done a goddam thing here to find the man who killed my child? Maybe in America,' she adds, ‘they won't care that she was a whore.'

The word isn't said with anger, or even bitterness. Rosa just states it as a fact. This was what her daughter did for a living.

‘They looked at her room,' Rosa goes on. ‘They took some things away. Some of her pictures. And said they'd bring them back, but they never did. She had a job, you know,' she adds, ‘here at the day care.' Her words peter out. She stares off at the building, as if she might see her daughter, along with the zebra and the lion, hiding in the bright green sunflower stalks.

‘She was going to start the week after it happened.' Rosa's fingers slow and stop, the clicking winding down to silence. ‘She was so proud of herself. She took a course on the computer and everything. At least she knew she got the job before she died.'