The evolution of the so-called Arthur Avenue Little Italy in the Bronx, just west of the Botanical Gardens and the Zoo, goes on at an easy pace with newcomers taking over storefronts and old-timers staying put for decades upon decades. Mario’s, Enzo’s, San Gennaro, Roberto’s and Zero Otto Nove are the mainstays of a food culture now added to by Eastern Mediterranean restaurants like Gurra Café, Çka Ka Qëllu, Cakor and Avenue Gyro.
      One of my enduring favorites, as much for its cordiality as for its superb Italian food, is Tra di Noi (“Between us”), where chef/owner Marco Coletta, from Abruzzo, offers an extensive blackboard menu (as well as a table menu) of dishes based on what he finds daily in the extensive markets in the neighborhood.
         Recently this meant he could obtain the fattest, sweetest softshell crabs I’ve had in ages, delicately sauteed tender in a velvety lemon-white wine sauce ($MP) I sopped up with a hunk of good Italian bread from a basket on the table. Other days the specials might include gnocchi with pesto ($24); swordfish Siciliana ($MP); lentil and escarole soup ($11); fusilli with fava beans or broccoli di rabe ($24); or hearty veal stew ($28).
         A robust tomato sauce, both a marinara and meat ragù, is the key to any Italian kitchen’s individuality, and Coletta’s is deeply flavorful, intensely red and balanced in spices and olive oil, with the sweetness coming from the tomatoes themselves.  It most delightfully appears in the Abruzzese pasta dish of rigatoni all’amatriciana, studded with pieces of pancetta ($22). It coats the generous portion of lasagne ($23) and the tender beef braciola ($30) swims in it. If you like tripe, here it is cooked in that same sauce, Roman style ($24), while a rich lamb ragù is lavished on a potato gnocchi of just the right size, lightness and tenderness  ($24).
        Beyond the tomato sauces, there are so many good dishes on the regular menu, beginning with perfectly fried, crisp calamari ($17). Clams oreganato are not overstuffed with breading, leaving the meat to carry the flavor ($14). The linguine with vongole ($24) holds an abundance of the clams in their shell, the sauce rich with garlic and olive oil, while the fettuccine Carbonara ($23) is silky from beaten eggs and pancetta.
    Among the meat dishes there are fat pork chops with vinegar peppers ($30) and the best osso buco ($45) in the area, floating in a moat of chopped, simmered vegetables. With main dishes you get nicely cooked white potatoes and green beans. 
      For dessert go with the cheesecake, which Marco makes fresh several times a week.
      Tra di Noi is a pretty restaurant, with predictable but welcome décor of red checkered tablecloths, sturdy wooden chairs, a painted mural of Pavarotti to the rear and a window on the street. When you walk in (and reservations are necessary on weekends for both lunch and dinner), you’ll be happily greeted by a fleet-footed staff, be presented with a bread basket and olive oil immediately and handed a slender wine list, full of familiar labels and fairly tariffed.
      To the right will be Marco Coletta himself, shelling fava beans, making the cheese cake batter, having his own lunch. He’s like a guiding presence throughout your meal.
      The improvement in the restaurants along and flanking Arthur Avenue—which is easier to get to from Manhattan than it is to get through the congestion and traffic to go to the tourist-driven Little Italy downtown—has made it a destination where many will go for the traditional Italian-American food that is better done there than elsewhere, but at places like Tra di Noi there is always a surprise for those seeking a wide menu of personalized regional cooking.

Open for lunch and dinner Tues.-Sun.

    Katie, David and Max Finger thanked Alice Cuddahy and returned to Garda headquarters. Finger asked two of his colleagues to join them and introduced Katie to Sgts. Scanlon and Horan. 
         “Cuddahy tied a lot together,” said Finger, opening his notebook. “For one thing, she made it very clear that those nuns who were murdered had plenty of enemies who had plenty of reasons for takin’ revenge. Cuddahy herself is way too old and frail to have committed any of the murders, but she seems to be in contact with the small number of former Laundries women who are still alive in Dublin.”
         Katie and David sat quietly.
         “We’ve got records on a few,” said Scanlon, “and we’re workin’ with the Archbishop’s office to see what information they can provide.”
         “And how’s that goin’?”
         “Like pullin’ teeth,” said Horan. “The Archbishop’s people say they have very incomplete records and those would take time to pull together.”
         “Did you tell them these might not be the last of these murders?”
         “We did,” said Horan, “and I think they’re scared, Inspector.”
         “Because they think they might be next?”
         “Not as much as they think there’ll be a lot of shit—‘scuse me, Miss Cavuto—thrown up by this case. This gives the Church a very bad image just as they thought all the Laundries publicity might be dyin’ down a bit. They think we’re goin’ down some sewers better left in the dark.”
         “Well,” said Finger, “we know there were priests who seem to have used the Laundries as their own private whorehouse. But until now, the killer is turnin’ his or her rage against the nuns.  And in each case the nun was known to inflict her own favorite kind of punishment on the women.”
         Finger then told the sergeants about the nun hitting the girls with her rosary, another with her pointer and the third notorious for slapping girls senseless.
         David said, “Excuse me for butting in, but do you think it’s possible there are three killers, sort of banded together to commit these murders?”
         The officers all said such was possible, but there’d thus far been no evidence of more than one perpetrator being in any of the rooms where the murders took place.
         David said, “They might be taking turns, after planning and setting up the murders.”
         “Or could it be that there was one organizer paying someone to commit the murders?” asked Scanlon.
         “You mean a hired assassin?” asked Katie.
         “Either that or someone who talked the killer or killers into it as some kind of deviant ‘mission’ to right a wrong,” said Finger. “A lot of these woman were severely psychologically damaged, and the strongest among them might have great sway convincin’ them to do somethin’ they’d only dreamt of doing.”
         “Or it might even be that the son or daughter of one of these women carried out the murders to avenge their mum.”
         David kept it to himself that that sounded too pat. He was more convinced there was either one killer or three who knew each other but were not under the spell of anyone else.
         “Well, now that we know about the eccentric punishments these three nuns preferred durin’ their time teachin’,” said Finger, “let’s find out exactly when they were involved in either teachin’ or overseein’ the laundry factory. Then we can hope to find women like Cuddahy—younger and not so weak—who were capable of murderin’ these nuns.”
         “The last of the Laundries just closed four years ago,” said Scanlon, “and it appears that new girls were enterin’ the Laundries as recently as the mid-eighties. That would make put some of them in their thirties or forties now. Certainly robust enough to murder an elderly nun.”
         Max Finger signaled that his sergeants keep as many men on the case as possible and to meet in the morning with any new information at hand. 
         “And keep the fuckin’ press out of me face! Oh, no offense meant to you, Katie.”
         Katie just waved her hand.
         “There’ll be wakes and funerals for these nuns,” he told the Americans. “Might attract some interested parties, I would think. One last look in the eyes of their tormentors. I’ll let you know. Have a good night and we’ll speak tomorrow.”
        Katie and David went off to a pub on Grafton Street named The Duke to have an early dinner and talk. 
         “Pretty awful day, eh?” said David.
         “Sadder than any I can remember. These poor women, girls. And what happened to their babies! It’s so horrible that it’s difficult to have any sympathy for the nuns.”
         “I’ve been on a lot of murder cases and seen what men can do to another when there’s a revenge motive. The guys who got murdered, sometimes tortured first, were usually as bad as their murderers. Other times some poor schmuck was ordered offed just to send a message to the other mob.”
         David was not about to detail the dismemberings and blowtorch atrocities he’d covered, especially since he saw how deeply affected Katie was by the stories of how the nuns were killed.
         “Y’know, David, when I hear about those mob killings and what happens to people in wartime, I ask myself how can human beings do that to one another? But in this case, however horrific the means of murder, I can kind of understand why they happened the way they did.”
         Katie felt a shiver go through her, remembering that she and David had almost been murdered three times—twice by drowning, once by poison.
         “Feeling sorry for someone who’s been badly hurt is the most natural thing in the world, Katie. Hey, it’s what every revenge movie’s based on: A guy’s wife is murdered and the guy goes nuts. And by the end, the audience is not only cheering for the guy but actually wants to see the bad guy killed off in a particularly grisly way. Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson made careers out of them. Ever see Cape Fear?”
         “The original or the Scorsese re-make?”
         “Well, both, now that you mention it. The plot just twisted the usual story on its head. Psycho gets out of jail and seeks revenge against the D.A. who put him away.”
         “And he goes after the D.A.’s family first. Very scary movies, both of them.”
         The two friends seemed to find some release from the day’s activities by debating whether Robert Mitchum  (above) in the 1962 version or Robert DeNiro (below) in the 1991 re-make of Cape Fear was a creepier villain.
         “I couldn’t watch the scene where the psycho tries to seduce the D.A.’s teenage daughter,” said Katie. “Really freaked me out.”
         “Well, there seems to be a lot of pedophile priests who went down that road, too, though they probably don’t figure into this case.”
         “I know that, and it makes me sick every time I think of it, like it does when I think of the names of these nuns’ orders—Sisters of Charity,
Good Shepherd Sisters and Holy Child Sisters. I know they didn’t all run Magdalene Laundries but a lot of them were vicious women in their own right.”
         “Yeah, and I’ve got the scars to prove it,” said David. “Back then, though, if a nun or a priest beat you up, you didn’t dare tell your parents because they’d take the nun’s and priest’s side, saying you must’ve deserved it.”

Erewhon grocery in Los Angeles is selling a single bag of ice, formed into eight perfect spheres, for $31.99. The ice “ballz” are the work of Penny Pound Ice, who also makes gold flake rocks ($28 for eight rocks) and round balls filled with edible orchids ($40 for eight balls).