Blue Moonlight (10 page)

“Your reputation precedes you.” He laughs.

“That bad, huh?” I say, and begin the long descent down six flights of stairs.

I make a check on the time.

Seems like it could be late afternoon. But it’s only ten forty-five in the morning. Italy at this time of year is six hours ahead of the States, and already I’m beginning to feel the effects of jet lag.

It will only get worse.

The cure?

Coffee. Good, strong Italian espresso.

Out the door of the building I hook a right and follow the narrow cobbled street toward the four corners. All around me fashionably dressed young people are hurrying to and from their art classes, while busy working people go about their lives in the many shops and eateries I pass by.

I cross the Nazionale and continue down Fienza just like Francesco instructed and proceed to the left before coming to a fork in the road at a local branch bank. When I get to the end of this short stretch of road, I take yet another left and lose my breath at the vision before me.

It’s a tidal wave of white marble accented in green and red lines. I move toward the tidal wave until the road ends and I enter a square that’s dominated by the Florence Cathedral and its massive dome, or Duomo. How builders were able to
construct this marble immensity six hundred years ago is an absolute mystery to me. But just looking up at it from down inside the cobbled square, I can’t help but feel somehow small and insignificant. And maybe I am.

I decide to take a brisk walk around the entire cathedral, stopping only long enough to get a better look at a detail or a bronze door or at the tourists who have climbed the interior stairs and now occupy the cupola and gaze down upon me from hundreds of feet up. Not a happy place for those people who have a fear of heights or, like me, a sudden and uncontrollable habit of passing out when they least expect it. The structure is so large it takes me ten minutes to walk around the entire perimeter.

My mortician dad used to purchase headstones from the Italian marble craftsman in downtown Albany. “Leave it to the Italians to build something that lasts and lasts,” he’d always say. “And believe me, Richard, death lasts a real long time.”

Back where I started.

I take my first good look at the many cafés that border the Duomo square. All of them are filled with patrons. Tourists, mostly.

I try to take a close look at the people who occupy the tables and chairs in the outdoor seating areas. But not too closely. The sunglasses help. As I casually stroll past the establishments, I don’t see anyone I recognize. No Clyne, Barter, or Lola. You’d think with all the surveillance the FBI and Interpol have been maintaining on my three amigos, we’d have established which café they hang out at most often. But therein lies the problem. The three amigos don’t frequent one single café for very long. Rather, they tend to switch up a lot. Let’s face it, Barter isn’t
stupid. Of all people he would know that he’s being watched. Wasn’t that long ago that he was still under federal employ to be a watcher himself.

It’s time to plant myself.

But I need to find a place that will give me a bird’s-eye view of the square. I settle on an empty table set directly in front of the cathedral’s marble steps. I pull out the paper and pencil that Francesco provided for me earlier and pretend to take on the guise of a poet who has come here for inspiration and luck.

The ruse works too.

Better than I thought it would.

Because I haven’t even written down my first word yet when I recognize the voice of my ex-lover.

I’m careful not to look directly in the direction of her voice.

Seated at the small table, pencil pressed to paper, I manage to sneak a peek over my left shoulder. I see three people. Two men walking side by side and a woman lagging a step or two behind.

Lola.

Like the men, she’s dressed in black.

Leather boots that rise up to her knees, black jacket over turtleneck sweater. She’s wearing black-rimmed Jackie O’s over her eyes. The men wear black leather jackets over dark trousers and black shoes. They too wear sunglasses. Clyne the larger. Barter the smaller, but wiry and in cross-trainer shape.

As they pass, I’m able to look directly at their backs. I’m resisting the almost irresistible urge to run up behind them and scream, “Guess who!”

Then I might simply pull out the .9 mm, hold it on the two big boys point-blank while I demand return of the flash drive I’d stupidly handed to Clyne in the first place, all those months ago when my heart was bleeding for the lonely, newly divorced cop. At the same time I could grab hold of Lola, pull her to me, press the pistol barrel against her right temple, scream some
thing over-the-top dramatic like, “Hand over the flash drive or the girl gets it!”

But that would just blow the entire mission. It might also get me and Lola killed, or at the very least, arrested by the Italian police while Clyne and Barter make their escape.

Best to stick to the plan.

I pack up the pencil and paper and begin to follow the threesome. From a distance.

I maintain a separation of forty or fifty feet between them and me as we walk across the square to a road that runs perpendicular to the Duomo square. The road is wider than some of the other roadways in the city. We pass an open area that’s home to a large five-star hotel on the left and a cobbled square that sports a couple of expensive cafés along with a brass band and an old-fashioned carousel of colorful wooden horses, tigers, and lions. My ten-year-old boy, Harrison, would have loved that carousel back when he was a toddler. Christ, he’d still love it. I wonder if he gets to ride carousels in sunny LA?

Up ahead is a series of expensive clothing shops on both sides of the streets. Renaissance-era structures of brick, wood, and tile, now retrofitted with big glass storefront windows bearing the names Chanel, Gap, Prada, Old Navy, and so on. There’s even a Hard Rock Café in Florence now. I might as well be back in Albany at the mall. But then, I don’t go to the mall.

Not far up ahead, the Ponte Vecchio and its many jewelry shops. The street used to house butcher shops, which made sense, since the butchers could simply toss the discarded bloody carcasses through the openings in the floor and into the river. When they had to relieve themselves, that would go into the
Arno too. The residents of this town might have been smart enough to initiate the modern era of architecture, literature, and art, but they didn’t know enough not to drink the putrid river water. Many of them nearly died in a typhoid epidemic of 1696. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but so is protracted death.

For a moment, I think the three amigos might head on to the bridge, but instead they hook a left down a narrow alley located directly across from the open-air leather market. I keep my distance as they come out upon another major square, this one housing the giant marble Poseidon and the near-perfect replica of Michelangelo’s
David
that stands guard outside the Palazzo Vecchio entrance. I feel my pulse elevate at the sight of these statues, just like I did when I first laid eyes on them as a kid soon after my mother died, and again later as a slightly-drunk-on-Chianti young adult. But it elevates more when Lola and her companions stop outside one of the half dozen open-air cafés and seat themselves at a table that overlooks the entire square.

I see that there’s another café right beside theirs, and I take a table that allows me a clear and unobstructed view of their table. I order a tall beer from the neatly dressed waiter. When the beer arrives, along with a small plate of green olives soaked in olive oil and fresh ground pepper, I once more pull out the pencil and paper, settle in for a quiet afternoon of observing my ex-lover and the men who are holding her against her will in a foreign land.

They order drinks. Or the men order drinks. Beers.

Lola orders a coffee.

When it comes, she simply stares down into it, as if the dark, frothy vision is her only means of escape.

The men talk. I have no idea what they’re saying. Discussing their next move? Or, more likely, just shooting the shit while they wait for a potential buyer. Stands to reason that they’re remaining in Florence for as long as they have for one reason and one reason only: to meet a buyer. But I can bet the title to Dad’s pride-and-joy 1978 Cadillac funeral hearse that said buyers haven’t arranged a specific time to meet them. Not yet, anyway. They’ve merely told them where they will meet them, and to be in that exact place every day at a specific time. Only when the buyers are ready—if they’re ever ready—will they then come to the sellers.

It’s the only explanation for their taking the chance on staying in the same city for as long as they have, knowing they’re being watched by both the good guys and a variety of bad guys. Stands to reason that today’s choice of café isn’t indiscriminate either. My guess is that they were instructed to make this move. And if that’s the case, the potential buyers are probably getting closer to meeting their sellers and making a deal.

I’m familiar with this kind of thing from my days in the APD. Drug dealers use the wait-and-observe tactic all the time. They ask a potential client to meet them at a specific place. But they don’t offer up a specific time of the meet. For two good reasons. It gives the buyer a chance to spy on the would-be client, make sure they’re not the police in disguise. And two, constantly showing up every day, day after day, displays serious intention on the part of the client. Means they’re not about to jerk the buyer’s chain and waste his or her time. If one were to require a third reason for making their seller wait, it would be to make certain that the buyer isn’t about to walk into an ambush. Conversely, it allows for the buyer to at least prepare for the worst should a buy go bad. That is, if the lead starts to fly, the buyer will already have his gunners and sharpshooters in place in and around the square, from the windows and rooftops.

Something happens.

Lola says something to the men. Whatever she says causes Barter to lean in tight to her, his mouth so close to her face she can probably smell his halitosis. He clamps his hand around hers on the table and says something back. Something with a little heat sprinkled on top. She yanks her hand away. Hard. I hear the distinct cry of “Go! To! Hell!”

He tries to grab her hand again.

It’s all I can do to remain seated and anonymous. But I have no choice.

Lola, however, gets up from the table.

She walks away.

Barter starts to laugh. “Don’t get lost, Lo!” he barks. “I might not see you with my eyes. But I fucking see you, all right.”

She raises up her right hand, flips him off over her shoulder.

Fuck you, Barter.

I couldn’t agree more.