Blue Moonlight (17 page)

When it’s time for me to enter, I’m not smiling. I’m walking a fine line, hiding my face in a way that enables me to avoid making eye contact with the two burly guards without
seeming
to be hiding it. I don’t want them to see the stress and strain that must surely paint my face. I walk the line, I guess, because I’m allowed inside.

So far so good.

Then I see the airport-like security operation they have going here. A full-body scanner and baggage X-ray machine.

So far
not
so good.

I tell myself to think quick or face almost certain police arrest.

That’s when the not-so-nice idea comes to me.

The Japanese tourists are packed together tightly, even though they don’t require packing together tightly, far as I can see. Must be a cultural thing. Conditions couldn’t be better suited for what I’m about to do.

Sticking out my booted left foot, I trip the punk rocker as she attempts to move forward.

She doesn’t drop so much as she careens into the old woman in front of her. They both fall, their bags and the contents they contain scattering loudly all about the stone floor.

Chaos ensues, and the guard operating the body scanner starts shouting, “Stop! Stop!” in accented English.

The old lady is wailing something and at the same time trying to gather her things, which have dispersed even beyond the body scanner. That’s when I go to work.

I drop my pack and computer case onto the belted baggage scanner, then move ahead in the line and drop to one knee, offering my help to the old lady. The punk rocker whom I tripped is also trying to help her. I dip down almost flat to the tile, as though reaching to gather the poor lady’s things. As the old woman sniffles painful tears and the punk rocker tries to assist her, I slip my automatic from its holster and slide it under one of the two cloth bags that lie on the floor. Then I push it beyond the body scanner.

All apologies and bumbling, stumbling helpfulness, I stand and cut the line, stepping on through the body scanner. The buzzer-like alarm goes off. I smile and offer an apology to the guard, who by now is more annoyed with all the commotion than concerned about imminent danger. I also offer a heartfelt apology to the little Japanese man whom I cut in front of.

“So sorry,” I say.

But he just issues me a smirk. Rude line cutting must also be standard operating procedure in Japan.

The guard uses his electronic paddle to give me a full up and down body scan. It doesn’t register anything until it comes to my head.

“I have this condition,” I tell the guard. “There’s a piece of bullet lodged in my brain.”

He looks at me like I possess two of the aforementioned heads instead of one. But he’s so annoyed he just waves me on. I grab my pack and my computer bag, and then I quickly bend down and pretend I’m retrieving the old lady’s bag for her when in fact I’m picking up my automatic and shoving it into my leather coat.

I hand her the bag.

I’m happy to see she’s stopped crying and hasn’t broken anything like a hand or a hip. I gaze into the young Japanese punker’s eyes. Rather, she gazes into mine, with eyes rimmed by black mascara. She nods, her red-painted lips tight.

“Sorry,” I mouth.

She makes like a toy pistol with her right hand and mouths, “Bang! Bang!”

Oh shit.

I make my way over to baggage check, praying to God the punk rocker isn’t a tattletale.

My pack and computer securely checked, I head up four long flights of worn marble steps, eyes in the back of my head. When I come to the top, I hand the ticket taker my ticket stub and enter into the narrow but ornate first corridor. The ceilings are painted with scenes from Renaissance Florence’s history. Palaces and cathedrals under construction, residents dressed in the formal, colorful garb of the day, gathering in piazzas that still look the same six hundred years later. The tops of the walls are framed in gold leaf. Below that can be found the hundreds of portraits of dignitaries who have come and gone throughout the centuries. Adventurers from distant lands like China and Africa, military men, bankers, artists, writers, scientists, and, of course, the hooked-nosed faces of all the Medicis, the people who financed the Renaissance with cash, greed, and blood.

I walk, trying to blend in with the hordes of people coming and going from the galleries to my left. I enter into the first room, come upon a giant painting of a chubby Madonna holding an even chubbier baby Jesus. Next to it, a graphic depiction of an adult Jesus hanging from a wood cross, metal nails pounded through his palms and joined feet. What a lot of people don’t know is that he could not have been crucified that way. The soft tissue of the palms would have torn and he would
have dropped from the cross. The more likely scenario is that Christ was crucified through the bones of the wrists to support his entire body weight. He would then have died from exposure and slow asphyxiation. Displayed directly beside the crucifixion painting, the freshly decapitated head of John the Baptist set on a silver platter. The Bible sure is pleasant.

I feel the hard steel of a pistol barrel press up against my lower spine.

“Don’t say any words, Mr. Moonlight. Or I shoot your balls off.”

The voice is deep and guttural. English spoken with a harsh Russian accent. How the hell did he get a hand cannon past security so easily? Maybe the Russians have friends on the inside. Maybe Italian security can be bribed. Too bad I didn’t think of that. Would have prevented a whole lot of pain and confusion for some innocent Japanese tourists, an old lady among them.

“Not a great place for a cold-blooded killing, is it, Boris?” I say, my eyes still staring at John the Baptist’s head and the blood dripping down from the hacked-away flesh on the neck, drop by thick red drop.

“I’ve killed in worse place. More public place,
da
?”

I’m looking at the black-leather-jacketed goon’s reflection in the painting’s glass frame. It’s definitely Boris. The one whose knee I shot off almost one year ago while he lay in the backseat of my best pal Georgie’s vintage orange Volkswagen Beetle. Why did he choose to lose his knee? Because he chose not to reveal the whereabouts of Lola, when I asked him so politely. Through the glass I can see that he has trouble standing still, and that he leans desperately to his right side.

“Knee still giving you trouble, Boris?” I say.

“I have been fitted with new knee,” he answers. “It is plastic kneecap.”

“You can’t kill me, Boris,” I say. “For one, the guards in this place would be on you like flies on borscht. And for two, you need me to bring you to the fleshy box, remember?”

“You are out of job, yes?” he snarls. “We know fleshy drive will be handed to Iranian buyers perhaps tomorrow afternoon. You are no longer needed alive. You are now nothing but dead fowl.”

“Dead duck, Boris,” I say. “Dead. Fucking. Duck. Get your fucking idioms right. And ducks aren’t fowl. They’re aquatic birds. My boy, Harrison, loves ducks. His bedroom walls were covered with them. I know about ducks, asshole. Alive ones. Not dead ones.”

My eyes still gazing into John the Baptist’s steel-blue eyes. Eyes that peer out at me like I am the last thing he will ever see before death overtakes him. Little known fact about sudden decapitation: the head lives for about thirty seconds, or until the oxygen runs out. I get the feeling the artist was well aware of this detail. You can see it in the eyes.

The pistol barrel pressed against my spine reminds me I have to think quick. I do it.

“There isn’t going to be an exchange or a drop, Boris,” I lie. “I thought you knew that.”

“No drop. How can that be? My sources never wrong,
da
?”

“I don’t know anything about your sources, but they missed the fucking boat on this one. The Iranians are out because they can’t come up with the cash our three amigos are greedily insisting upon.” Me, exhaling, staring into the eyes of a two-thousand-year-old dead man. “But you know what, Boris? I know
where the flash drive is. I. Know. Where. It. Is. In fact, I’m working on getting ahold of it.”

“We will work together, then,
da
? You and me, Mr. Moonlight, we will make the peace, stop all the senseless
bang bang
shooting and work on this together. Like Apollo/Soyuz. Like glasnost. Like Reagan and Gorby.”

I laugh. “Yeah, something like that, Boris. I’m sure you’re suddenly more trustworthy than my long-departed mom. Maybe you tried to pry some unconditional trust out of my friend Francesco before you hung him up in the shower and sliced his neck?”

“My sincerest apologies. He give us much trouble. He had nuclear-sized gun pointed at us. Quite dangerous and lethal,
da
?”

“Bet you’re not really sorry, Boris. Bet you’re lying.”

“An unavoidable casual of wear Mr. Moonlight. Even you have killed in the heat of battle. You are no stranger to taking life.”

In John the Baptist’s eyes I see my future. Inside the bottom level of hell.

“No. God. No. Boris. In America, there’s casualties of war and then there’s casual wear. See what I’m saying? Get the difference?”

A couple of people try to get by. I have no choice but to stand my ground while Boris has the barrel of a pistol jammed against my spine. But when I look closer, I can see that it’s the punk-rock Japanese girl from downstairs. The one who saw me pocket my automatic while trying to hand the bag back to the old lady.

I smile at her.

She smiles back, mouthing the words, “Bang, bang.”

“Bang, bang,” I mouth while cocking my head at Boris behind me.

She looks at him and then at me again. “Bad man?” she whispers with furrowed brow.

I close my eyes, nod slowly, as if to say,
Yes. Molto. Bad. Man.

That’s when I lift my right foot up and come down hard onto the foot attached to Boris’s bad leg. I immediately shift to the right and go down onto my side as the silenced round makes a hole in John the Baptist’s head.

Alarms sound.

Boris tries to back step, but his gimp leg seems to be planted in place. Gives me just enough time to pull out my .9 mm, roll over, rear both legs back, thighs against chest, and kick him in the bad knee.

He lets out a scream and drops to the floor, firing another round in my direction. The round drills a hole in the wood floor not six inches from my head.

People scream.

I bound back up onto my feet and make for the exit. Shoot a glance back. Boris getting back onto his feet, hobbling after me.

For a brief moment I think I can make it out of there since Boris is simply too slow to keep up. But the second I make it out into the hall, I run into another black-jacketed goon who’s working the rooms in pursuit of me. It’s the tall, football-player-sized goon. He plants a bead on me with his automatic, takes a shot that ricochets off the wood doorjamb. People are scattering, going down on their bellies. Parents becoming human shields for their kids. Between the screaming and the blaring alarm, the big goon’s pistol doesn’t need a silencer.

I make a run for it through the people, in the direction of the second Uffizi corridor and the area designated as “Café.” I know from a previous visit that the café is outdoors. I know that if I can make it out there, I can make it over the wall and down into the piazza.

If only I can somehow manage to stay alive.