Blue Moonlight (8 page)

In a place like Albany, Clyne would stick out like a sore thumb among the pastel-clothed white-bread population. But not in Florence, where every other man or woman is dressed in dark clothing and looking European chic. Just like Lola appears in her photos. Long dark hair, tan face, black scarf wrapped around her neck. Barter is also dressed to blend. Dark suit and sunglasses, his goatee and mustache trimmed to precise specifications.

I go through all the pictures searching for anyone with whom the three might engage in conversation other than themselves. But all the shots are the same: Clyne, Lola, and Barter sitting at the table, drinking coffee, the men’s faces painted with great expectations. As for Lola, her expression is always the same: one of doom.

I set the computer aside and pull the leather bag closer to me. Tip it upside down, the rest of its contents spilling out onto the bed.

There’s a folded map of Florence. I unfold it. A few of the streets are highlighted in blaze yellow. One of the streets contains the guesthouse where I’ll be staying. The second street shows the location of Harry’s Bar. I guess the rest is up to me to figure out.

I set the map back down.

Next I pick up an envelope.

“Itinerary” is written on the outside in black Sharpie.

I open it, slide out the folded pages. I check out the electronic vouchers for the flights. Departure is at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow from JFK. Arrive in Frankfurt at 6:00 a.m. the next day. A quick flight over the Alps and I’m in Florence by 9:30 a.m. From there I’m to meet up with my contact, one Francesco Tasi,
at a guesthouse called Il Ghiro, where I will be set up in a private room. Tasi will provide me with information when I get there. He will also outfit me with a weapon and ammunition. It’s going to be one of those kinds of trips.

The bag has more goodies for me.

A modem for direct Internet communication with Agent Crockett and her gang. A small portable printer with fax and scanning capabilities. More credit cards besides the ones already stuffed into the wallet, including an AmEx and a Visa, both with $50K limits. Or so the Post-it notes stuck to them attest. There’s also a debit card that accesses an ING cash account that contains a fifty-thousand-euro balance.

“Please hand in all receipts at the end of the project,” insists yet another handwritten Post-it note attached to the debit card.

What else? Toothbrush, dental floss, toothpaste, deodorant, razors, shampoo—the whole kit and self-grooming caboodle.

And one more thing.

An additional bottle of Valium, to which Crockett has attached one more Post-it note with a hand-drawn smiley face on it.

I’m beginning to think she really likes me.

Later that night I dream:
I’m riding in a gondola with Lola. It’s night, the black sky backlit with a full moon. We’re somehow riding down the middle of Broadway in downtown Albany, the black crumbling macadam having given way to canals of gray-brown water. We’re holding hands, listening to a song sung by the gondolier. It’s sweet music by moonlight. Lola holds my hand tightly. She turns to me, kisses me. But then she pulls away, lets go of my hand. She says, “I can’t do this.” Lifting herself up, she jumps overboard and disappears into the lagoon, never to return…

Early Tuesday morning I land in Florence, Italy.

I’m groggy and disoriented from having self-medicated for the entire ten hours’ worth of flying time. What can I say? Flying—the safest means of transportation there is—scares the living daylights out of me. Valium, ingested in the right amounts with the correct infusion of alcohol, will knock you out cold. Only when we started flying over the Alps did I wake up from the severe turbulence that occurs naturally from the up and down mountain drafts. So they tell me. Just the thought of kissing one of those beautiful white-capped summits head-on is enough to snap me out of a drug-induced near-death.

Standing outside the Santa Maria Novella train station where the airport cab has let me out, I check the map Crockett provided me back in New York. The guesthouse is only a few blocks away. Slinging my pack on my back, I wrap my leather carry-on around my shoulder and take a quick look around.

Florence.

Home of the Renaissance.

Home of Leonardo da Vinci.

Home of Dante and the
Divine Comedy
and all those levels of hell. Not that I remember much of it from my English and
art history classes at Providence College. But this might be the perfect time to brush up.

I can’t help but notice, coming and going from the marble-sided, art deco train station, dozens of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen. Many of them with long, flowing hair, and outfitted stylishly in short skirts, tall leather boots, and leather jackets to match. The way the language flows off their tongues as they speak to one another only enhances their attractiveness. So does the way they walk arm in arm, like lovers do in the States.

I shake the Valium fuzz from my brain and cross the busy street. I head down the Via Nazionale past the McDonald’s and a Chinese restaurant toward the Via Faenza. The streets are narrow here, as are the sidewalks, which are full of people, young and old. Many of them look like natives, but there’s a big Asian contingent here.

As I negotiate a space on the sidewalk, the Florence experience washes right back over me, like I never left here more than twenty years ago. Once again I’m exposed to that curious language mixture of Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and English. American English. Which makes sense, since there are so many American art schools in this town. What was it someone once said to me during my visit here right out of college? There are more Americans in Florence than Italians. Possibly. But this urban landscape, created from centuries-old stucco and stone buildings, their glass facades showing off fresh meats, cheeses, fruits, and wines—this place is all Tuscany. All Italian.

I move on past a two-man crew carrying a big gold-framed oil painting out through the open doorway of a townhouse toward a small, three-wheeled flatbed truck parked up on the slate-covered sidewalk. The men are smoking and yelling at one another.
I have no idea what they’re saying, but it seems like their yells are in the normal course of their working relationship.

Up ahead of them, I spot some kids on motor scooters. Teenagers, riding white Vespas that look about as old as I am. The boys in skinny jeans drive while their miniskirted girlfriends press themselves up against their backsides, hanging on by wrapping their arms around their boyfriends’ belted waists. As soon as the boys spot a couple of policemen on the corner, each of them shouldering automatic weapons, they slow down and pay attention to the road.

Farther up in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella resides a collection of beggars. One man with his right leg missing from the knee down. I see a woman dressed in a long, filthy dress and moth-eaten sweater, a kerchief covering her head. She’s old, her face pockmarked with disease, age, and poverty. She holds an empty espresso coffee can out for the passersby to toss coins into. I make my way past them, until I come to something that sends a shiver up and down my spine. He’s a man, but his limbs are so disjointed that his legs and knees are twisted one hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction, almost as if his hips were installed backward. He’s got shoes on his hands and feet, and looks like a human who’s been bred with a big dog or a small horse. With his inverted knees, he doesn’t walk so much as he trots. In the cool, moist air, he’s wearing only a T-shirt and cutoff jeans, and despite his condition, he’s not a bad-looking guy of thirtysomething.

He catches my glance from just a couple of feet off the cobblestones. “
Ciao
,” he greets. He’s a got a small plastic bowl set in front of him. It’s half-filled with coins.

“Hello,” I say.

“You’re American.” He nods. “New York?”

“All from one word?” I say. “Yeah, you got it. Upstate. Albany.”

He smiles, I smile. It’s like we’re two working-stiff strangers hitting it off at the local bar. You can spend a lifetime trying to connect with some people. Just ask my ex-wife, Lynn. But on some occasions, connecting can take only an instant. There’s no explanation for it. Who knows, maybe this deformed man and I were friends in another life.

“Moonlight,” I say. “Dick Moonlight.”

“Carlo,” he returns. “The magnificent half man, half animal. I was a superstar in the circus. But kids no more interested in the circus. Just Xbox and Wii.”

I get it. I fish out a five-euro note from my pants pocket, drop it into his bucket.

“
Molto grazie
,” he says, smiles. “Thank you, Moonlight.”

I nod.

“Moonlight,” he laughs. “Luna illuminata. Your name,
bellissimo
. Except for the Dick part.”

“You had to say it, huh, Carlo?”

“
’Scuse
…could not help myself.”

“I’m sure I’ll see you around. You’re a tough man to miss.”

“You here on vacation? To see the Duomo?” He reaches back with his left hoof, or hand I should say, while balancing on the other. He sheds the shoe and reaches into the pocket of his cutoffs, comes back out with a business card, hands it to me.

I take it, give it a peek.

“Carlo the Great. Circus Actor and Tour Guide.”

His cell phone number is located below that.

“Never seen a beggar who carries a business card,” I say, pocketing the card.

“Tough times,” he says, cocking his head. “You do what you have to do to survive.”

I purse my lips. “I’ll call if I need a guide.”

“Call soon. I book up fast.”

“I’d expect nothing less for a man of your talents,” I say, and head on into the ancient city.

The air is a combination of roast coffee, cooking meats and sauces, and even perfumes. The fact that the aromas combine with exhaust from the old cars and trucks does little to make it any less appetizing. Am I really here to steal back a flash drive for the FBI? Or was all that just a bad dream while I slept a Valium-induced sleep on the plane? A big part of me just wants to sit down at a café and drink espresso. Fuck the FBI.

Soon I find myself at the corner of Nazionale and Fienza. On the corner beside me, a coffee bar. Across the street from that, another coffee bar. Farther up ahead on the right, an old convent. The building I’m seeking, the Il Ghiro guesthouse, is located directly across from it.

I walk the stone street until I locate the building. I thumb the buzzer on the wall-mounted intercom and wait for a voice to emerge from the speaker.

“
Pronto
,” says the tinny voice.

Facing the speaker, I say, “I’m looking for Francesco. He’s expecting me.”

“
Ahhh, si, si,
” comes the happy voice. “Come in, yes, come in.”

There’s a loud buzz and click-clack sound of a mechanical bolt releasing, and the old heavy wood door opens on its own.

“All the way up, Mr. Moonlight,” adds the voice.

I look directly up at a skylight through the center of a wraparound staircase constructed of marble treads and a brass banister.

“
Bella
,” I whisper to myself. I sound stupid trying to speak Italian.

“Welcome to Italy,” echoes the voice from up on high.

I begin to climb six flights with a fifty-pound pack on my back and a leather shoulder bag filled with computer equipment. By the time I get to the top, what’s left of my Valium haze has mostly been sweated out. As I catch my breath, a narrow blue door opens and out steps my contact.

Francesco.

“Welcome to Florence,” says a forty-something, slim man dressed in Levi’s and a pressed baby-blue button-down. “Shameful you are not here to see the museums and to soak in the culture.”

“It’s all cloak-and-dagger stuff from this point on,” I say, nodding.

He tells me to come in.

I do it.

Behind me, the guesthouse door closes with a resounding slam. A heavy-duty deadbolt engages. Reminds me of a prison lockdown.

I follow Francesco down another narrow corridor to an open room that serves as his office. There’s a desk that sits in front of a terrace and balcony separated from the interior with two slim french doors. The doors are open. Mounted on the plaster wall to my right is a giant map of Florence. Beside that, another giant map of the Italian boot. Beside that, a map of the globe.
Under the maps, running the length of the wall, is a counter that holds an automatic espresso machine. I begin to salivate just looking at it. Moonlight the exhausted.