Serafina scribbled. “Lola. Tell me about her.”
“You met her the other day.”
“But I want to hear what you have to say about her. And this time, I don’t want a fantasy. The more I learn about the dead women and those who kept their company, the more pieces of the puzzle I can fit together, the greater our chance of finding-”
“Enough! Lola appeared in the doorway one day, did our Lola, homeless and in rags, with whip marks on her back. My blessed day. From the moment she started, one of my best. She has style, has Lola. Oh, our Lola can do anything with her hands when she wants to. And droll? She is ever so gay. Trusses up our hair, doesn’t she, carved the sign hanging on the gates, even draws pictures. Makes us laugh, an actress, our little Lola.” She chuckled, and her corset creaked. “Where was I with Nelli?”
Serafina read from her notes. “’So clever Lola became a sister to her.’”
Rosa nodded. “Under Lola’s care, Nelli changed. Got repeats. Became popular with the priests. Now I’ve lost her.”
Rosa’s voice grew wispy. “Last month it was…but you know all about Bella.”
Serafina said, “Tell me about her, what she did, her friends, her customers.”
“You know not to ask about customers. Respectable, my customers.”
Serafina pictured Falco surrounded by a group of Rosa’s prostitutes at Bella’s wake, his arms around one while he flirted with another, but decided to save him for later. She didn’t know if what the madam told her would help. She invents a fantasy, our Rosa. Ever so droll.
Rosa continued. “Bella could embroider the bodice of a dress with her eyes closed. Beads and tassels, oh, all over and where they belong, too. Dreams our Bella had. Saving to buy her own dress shop.”
Rosa paused, cocking her head to the side. “Close to thirty and getting sour, Bella, but customers, they asked for her, and she couldn’t refuse. Now she lies stiff in her grave. Oh my sweet, sweet girls, how they suffered.”
Rosa dabbed her eyes. She waited until Serafina’s pencil finished scratching. “Don Tigro’s men are useless. They lurk in the shadows with their filthy clothes and flat eyes. I won’t let them near my house.”
“Describe finding Gemma’s body.”
“Came down here, didn’t I, to count the money. Early, about midday. The angelus had just rung.” The madam flapped her fingers to illustrate the campanile bell.
“What day?”
“Been through this before.”
“Day of the week, I meant.”
Rosa canted her eyes. “Let’s see, too warm outside it was, bad for business. A Tuesday, I know because Bella asked me if I had anything to mend, and Tuesday was the day she did the mending. Monday was her night off, and I had something for her, my crinoline with the iron hoops.”
“Go on.”
“I came in here to count the money and got a feeling.”
“Feeling?”
“Like a spider crawling up my neck. I looked around. Nothing. I opened the door to the back, and there lay Gemma with her face all stiff, wearing the mask of death, my dear beautiful girl, the insects already buzzing above her open mouth.”
“What did you do?”
“Sent for the inspector,” Rosa said.
“And Nelli?”
Rosa’s jeweled fingers caught the candlelight. She pounded her chest and said, “I found her body. In the same place as Bella’s, it was, by the door leading to the sea.”
The two women were silent.
Serafina heard the rasp of the wind. “Do your women go out at night after work?”
Rosa shrugged. “I’ve told you. I don’t ask them questions. I trust them. They take pride in their work. Every morning I give them their share of the take. If they receive tips, they share them with me, unless they’re trinkets-those they keep. They want to know who earned the most. The best girls clamor for a spot here, or at least they did. Now, who knows what will happen, although I still have a steady stream of knocks at the door. Unrivaled, my house.”
“No doubt. The grounds, beautiful.”
“And the girls are free to graze. They go down and bathe in the sea, walk on the shore, some of them. Carmela, for instance. Good exercise, climbing up and down the rocks.” Rosa winked.
Serafina rubbed her forehead. “Scarpo and his men watch the doors?”
“Yes, but they saw no one except for the customers.”
“A list, do you keep one?”
“Of what?” Rosa poured herself another Marsala, offered the bottle.
“You know what I mean. A list of customers.”
“List? Never. It would ruin me if word got out that I keep a list. This is a respectable house. Why do you keep asking that same question? Stop trying to trick.” She quaffed her drink, tapped the side of her nose and whispered, “But I know most of the men and if I don’t, Scarpo does. Some of them come to the door in costume-priests and council officials, mostly. We pretend not to recognize them. The police commissioner, for instance, he wears a wig.” She paused. “Don’t write that down, Fina. Are you mad?”
“Have you entertained strangers recently?”
“Admit a stranger? Never. Unless he has a recommendation from someone we trust, a member of the city council, for instance. That’s different.”
“So you reject?”
“All the time.”
“Make a list of the rejected in the last few months,” Serafina said.
Rosa pulled the cord.
“Get Scarpo,” she said to the maid.
• • •
Candlelight reflected from the bumpy surface of Scarpo’s pate. It reminded Serafina of a scarred cabbage. He wore red suspenders and his stomach was a flat rock. The butt of a revolver stuck out of his belt. A shepherd’s knife hung from the other side. He bowed to Rosa, nodded to Serafina, arranged himself in the chair facing La Signura.
Serafina smelled week-old sweat. What is it about him? She said, “Rosa tells me you turn men away all the time. Can you describe any of them?”
He snapped his braces, directing his gaze toward Rosa. “There is one who keeps coming back, Signura, a stranger, he has a funny smell, not from around here. Pigheaded, too. Returns many times. Wears a brown cloak and hat. The other day he’s in town when I go to the smith.”
Serafina asked, “Same man? You’re sure?”
He shrugged. “Same smell.”
“When did you last see him?”
Scarpo sucked his mustache. “Remember, Signura? Middle of last week. I wait for him to finish his business. I sniff. I think, that smell. It’s the same one who comes around here. I wait. He talks, talks, talks with the smith. I wait more. Same man I tell ‘no girls for you tonight.’ And something else I note: he wears gloves. Not cold.”
“That’s one, Scarpo,” Serafina said. She ran a hand through her hair and wrote down Scarpo’s description of the gloved stranger. When finished, she frowned at the page.
“Write what the man tells you and be done with it. You can rely on Scarpo. Whatever he says, take it. Customers arrive soon and you are slow as usual. Even as a child, you ate the cannoli like a toothless hag.” Rosa looked at Scarpo, waved her pinched fingers in Serafina’s direction. “She doesn’t change, that one. When we were children, she always had to have the last bite and there I sat, wishing I had more while she poked and played and dreamed.”
Serafina chewed her cheek.
“Well, what is it? Slower than a child eating spinach, you are.”
She told them about the begging monk she’d seen last week. “Smelled of foreign dung. Said he was from a monastery north of Naples. Didn’t like my questions.”
Scarpo shook his head. “Not a monk, the stranger. And not begging.”
“I want to know about all of the others you’ve told to leave. And anything else unusual that comes into your head-men walking outside or in the back, someone sneaking in the shadows, anyone who picked a fight or followed you in the Centru.”
“Well, there’s another, he limps, one of Don Tigro’s men. Keeps asking for a turn, such like that. You told me, ‘Nothing on the house,’ Signura, you know the one I mean.”