A red, beating bug bite on top of his hand was provoking him a disproportioned amount of discomfort in comparison to such small affliction.

His back had been screaming in protest for the last hour due to the large amount of time he had spent hunched over the papers on his desk, carrying his weight. Regardless, he was still in decent shape for his fifty nine years of age, considering that forty of which he had spent them on the force. Back in those days he could patrol the streets from dawn to dawn with only the aid of coffee and street meat. Currently, with the days numbered for his retirement, Captain Arbogast put out his smoke on the ash tray, which was close to overflowing, and lit up once more. He inhaled profoundly, to the point in which his lungs burned as hot as his back, and exhaled in direction of the roof. Someone knocked on the door before he could take another puff.

"Are you busy, captain?" said the scrawny young man of blonde hair and pointy chin. He only poked his head in, as he wouldn't enter until his captain allowed him to.

"Come in, Santiago. What do you need?" the captain asked, the cigarette hanging from his mouth and his gaze locked on his desk.

Hesitant, Detective Santiago made his way into the office, carrying several papers under his arm and extending a single sheet towards his captain.

"I need your signature before I request a warrant from the judge," he answered.

The captain too the paper and started checking for errors. "Is this about the fire in Elm street?"

"Yes, sir," the detective answered. "I need to get my hands on the building's blueprints. They found some irregularities in the floor during cleanup but we are unaware of what could it be."

Sighing, Captain Arbogast signed the warrant and handed it back to the young detective.

He saw a lot of himself on the boy. Smart, cunning and very serious about his job. He was lacking on experience, but the captain had the feeling that he would get far by listening to his gut.

"You seem aggravated, captain. Is everything okay?" Detective Santiago asked.

The captain rubbed his forehead, frustrated by an approaching migraine. "I took away this case from Hawkins this morning. I thought he was only drooling over the police reports, but now I see that it's more complicated than it looks."

The young man scanned the papers spread out on the desk.

"Is this the case of Vito Agostoni's disappearance?"

The captain nodded, lighting another cigarette.

"Do you happen to know how a man and his buddies vanish from the face of the earth overnight? Because if you do, I would love to know how." He exclaimed. "We have police reports, medical examiners, witnesses and the statements of all their wives but nothing seems to fit."

"Isn't Agostoni one of the main suspects of being head of the mafia?" Detective Santiago asked. Once again, the captain nodded.

"His wife says that he went out five nights ago, along with a group of his friends, just like they do every Thursday. They were supposed to go bowling or something. The wife says that they do it every once a week but when we asked around the bowling alley, employees swore to never had seen the man in their lives. Now we don't have a lead. I'm telling you, this one is a head scratcher."

"But we have a suspect in custody, captain."

"That makes no difference, son." He waved him off. "Questioning is going nowhere and we're going to be forced to set him free in a couple of hours anyway."

"So what are we going to do, captain?"

The old captain passed his hand through his thinning hairline and huffed.

"At this point, I'm waiting for divine intervention, detective."

"In that case, may I suggest you come to my desk?" the detective said with a sly smirk on his face. "I believe this will interest you."

Curios, Captain Arbogast got up from his chair, put out his cigarette and followed the detective to his desk. There, sitting on a plastic chair, surrounded by the precinct's other work stations where detectives, cops, lawyer and the custodians carried on with their labors, was the most peculiar woman the captain had ever laid eyes on.

She was an old woman, wrinkled, with a pointy nose and gray hair covered by a silk kerchief. She couldn't be taller than four and a half feet, soo short that her feet hung off the ground. She swung them to the sound of her humming. She wore a multicolored, long skirt and fabrics where golden bells hung. Her blouse was white, loose on the sleeves and her black vest had too many pockets to count. Golden jingle bells hung from her ears too, heavy enough to stretch the lobes. They hung and rocked with the movement of her head. She had tan skin, a wide forehead and was clearly blind from her left eye, the iris having turned white.

As he approached, the discomfort that the old lady caused in the captain forced him to scratch the bug bite on top of his hand.

"Captain, this is Madame Istrati," the detective said, introducing the dwarfing old lady. "She is here waiting for her grandson to come out of questioning."

Immediately he recognized the name as the same as the young man's that they had under custody for the disappearance of Vito Agostoni. He had been found in possession of a credit card that belonged to one of the missing men, and therefore was arrested on the spot.

Confused as to why his detective had brought him to such peculiar old woman, the captain sent him a skeptical stare. The detective's answer was to encourage him to sit in front of her.

"Good evening, I'm Captain Arbogast What can I do for you, Madame... uhh...?"

"Istrati," the old lady said. Next, she extended a bony hand towards the captain. She wore multiple rings in each finger, all of them incrusted with beautiful jewels. Arbogast had experience with the local gypsies, so he knew that those were either fake or stolen. "And the question here is what can I do for you?" Madame Istrati answered.

"I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean, Madame," the captain said, confused.

"I'm here to tell you that you have the wrong man in that room." Madame Istrati pointed to the interrogation room.

"Are you saying that your grandson didn't do it?" asked the captain.

"That's correct," she answered, nodding her head. The light in the precinct showed the long, gray hairs that grew from the old woman's chin.

"And what makes you so sure?"

"Because I saw who did it," Madame Istrati responded. "I saw it last night, just after you arrested my poor Alexandru. They approached me in my dreams and showed me everything that happened. I saw how a group of men in black suits ambushed Mr. Agostoni and his companions. Then suddenly, I was in a building with green walls and a steel door. They were inside, tied up and gagged. Their kidnapers spoke a strange language. Italian, maybe, and one of them had a tattoo in the shape of a fish that leaped over the surface of a body of water. I woke up then. You see, I was blessed with the gift of clairvoyance, and this is not the first time I see how a crime was carried out."

When the old woman finished her tale, Capitan Arbogast leaned back on his chair, thinking about the amount of paperwork he would have Santiago file for making him waste his time in such manner.

"Very well, Madame, it was a pleasure meeting you but if you excuse me, I have an investigation to lead," the captain said, getting up from his chair.

"You don't believe me," Madame Istrati declared.

"Madame, I can understand that you're worried about your grandson, but that's no reason to lie to me," Arbogast said. "In a few hours we'll decide if we let him go or we put him under state's custody, so please just relax and go back home."

"Detective, I'm giving you the answer to your mystery. Putting it right on your lap and you're throwing it on the ground," Madame Istrati contended with indignation. "What you want is a proof of my abilities."

Rubbing his forehead in frustration, the captain turned to the old woman. "Fine. How would you prove it?"

"Predicting your future, of course." She closed her eyes for an instant and hummed, only to open them slowly, a worrisome expression on her face. "You will be punished for not paying attention to me," Madame Istrati said, followed by a bewitching laugh.

"Of course I will," Arbogast said sarcastically.

"Do you not believe in the supernatural?"

"Madame, allow me to share some wisdom with you," he exclaimed, now irritated. "If I were to believe in all those fantasies of astrology, spirits or any—"

"Young man! Young man!" Madame Istrati interrupted, turning her head back to where detective Santiago was checking on some documents with a female cop. "Would you be so kind as to take three steps to your left?"

Puzzled, the detective did as he was told. Afterwards, Madame Istrati turned back to Arbogast, satisfied.

"Please continue," she told him.

An instant prior to the captain continuing with his scold, a blunt thump echoed through the precinct, startling him. Madame Istrati was so short that the captain did not needed to stretch his neck to see what had happened: A heavy box filled with documents had fallen over from the upstairs balcony, right where Detective Santiago had been standing just a second prior.

"Is everyone okay?" an overweight cop asked, leaning over the balcony. Next to him, a tan skinned young man was also looking down, his face exuding mortification.

"The sound scared me a little, but I'm fine," Madame Istrati said. "Would somebody be so kind as to get me a cup of tea?"

"I'll go, ma'am," the young man said, immediately running out of sight.

"That proves nothing, Madame," Arbogast challenged, though he was not completely sure it had been just a coincidence.

"In that case, how about I tell you that on the wall behind your desk there are framed newspaper clipping of all the arrests you have made on your career?" Madame Istrati told him. "You want more? Among those there is the arrest of the bugler of 8th street, the successful investigation of the doll murderer and your collaboration in the capture of the Central Park cut-throat killer. You believe me now?"

The captain scratch the bug bite now with more intensity as he looked over to see the door to his office closed and the curtains on the window drawn. Never before had he believed in visions, but each of the old woman's predictions were accurate. It bothered him deeply.

When Detective Santiago passed by, he decided to put the issue to test once and for all.

"Do we have any record of competing mafias acting under the symbol of a fish?" he asked, hating how insane it sounded. The detective showed himself skeptic, but one look at Madame Istrati's toothless grin made him comprehend.

"The Aringa family," he answered.

"Send notice to anyone patrolling through their territory. Tell them to look for a green house with a steel door," he ordered.

"There's one watching over the Elm street fire," he replied.

"Send them," Captain Arbogast concluded.

The detective rushed to carry out his orders. Meanwhile, Captain Arbogast sat in front of Madame Istrati as the old lady sipped placidly on her newly arrived cup of tea.

It was ten minutes to ten at night, at which hour the captain was forced to set Madame Istrati's grandson free.

"I hope they find that poor man," the old woman commented. Promptly, she held her grandson by the arm and they both walked towards the exit.

"How did you knew all those things would happen?" the captain asked, hopeful to keep some of his sanity. "The box. The newspapers. How did you knew?"

"Sometimes we're too blind to see even the obvious," Madame Istrati answered and without another word she strolled out the door.

The news that made their way to the captain's ears only further convinced him that he had been witness to something extraordinary. After confirming the existence of the green house, and that the Aringa family had established it as their base of operations, the police department, under the insistence and influence of Captain Arbogast, carried out a formal arrest.

They organized a raid that same night, which to his relief was thoroughly successful. Five members of the mafia family were captured and in the empty lot behind the house they found several brand new sports cars, property of Vito Agostoni.

Arbogast feared that the news of an old gypsy clairvoyant helping the police solve such mystery would make its way to the hands of the media sooner or later. Without a doubt it wasn't a report he would want to put up in his wall, but no one could argue against its truthfulness.

He had just emerged out of the interrogation room, where each one of the detained had sworn over their mother's graves to not knowing anything about Agostoni's disappearance, when Detective Santiago asked to speak with him in his office.

Captain Arbogast sat on his chair, took the last cigarette from the pack and lit it. The detective closed the door behind him and pulled down the curtains on the windows.

"Captain, do you remember that search warrant I asked for?" Santiago asked, his tone indicating bad news were coming. "Turns out there wasn't any irregularities on the floor of the building that burned down on Elm street."

The detective threw him a folder of documents and photographs. The images showed a group of scorched bodies, black, covered in ash and huddling in front of what seemed to be a door.

"There was a basement we didn't knew about. Five bodies were found inside, and you'll never guess who one of them was."

The cigarette slip from his mouth.

"Vito Agostoni and his friends arranged meetings inside that building. It is in right in the middle of the most gypsy populated part of the city. Agostoni would charge protection to the gypsies, so they had a motive for wanting to get rid of him."

"But what about the cars in the Aringa house?" the captain protested.

"Their alibies were flimsy, but all their stories had one thing in common, sir: they all swore that the cars were stolen," the detective said. "It left a jarring question hanging over my head, so I checked our records and found the answer."

Detective Santiago pulled out a sheet from between the papers on the folder. Inside, the police record of a young man named Marius Istrati, the same one who had brought the cup of tea to Madame Istrati and had been in between the crowd that night.

"Istrati sent her grandson to steal Agostoni's cars and handed them over to the Ariga," the captain muttered. "Then afterwards, he locked them up in the basement and set the building on fire. I bet Marius was the one who made that box almost fall on my head."

"Forcing us to turn our attention to the Aringa until we had to let her other grandson go," he concluded.

He felt back on his chair and exhaled loudly. Then he leaned forwards abruptly. "But how did Istrati knew about my newspapers?"

"She's an old woman, captain," Santiago said. "Those cases on your wall were real famous at the time. Surely she made her research before coming to see you."

"God dammit, you're right." He slammed a hand angrily on his desk. "Send a car to their address immediately."

"Already did, captain," Santiago replied. "The place was empty. They had a couple of days to make their escape. They could be on the other side of the world by now."

Enraged, Arbogast took the papers on his desk and swept them aside, throwing them on the ground along with his phone and mug of coffee. It wasn't just the idea that an old woman had lied right to his face and he hadn't even noticed. His rage didn't came from the fact that for the first time in forty years, a criminal had slipped right through his fingers. No, the part that enraged him the most were Madame Istrati's words during her first prediction.

"You will be punished for not paying attention to me," Madame Istrati said, followed by a bewitching laugh.