Book of Stolen Tales (18 page)

“By the time anyone found out, I planned to be far from here, living under a different name.”

“Right. So, you sold a book you stole from your lover to fund your escape. And too bad for the buyer who ended up getting stiffed?”

“Walk away if you want but I'm willing to tell you who I sold the others to.
If
you help me get away from here.” The haughty way she spoke didn't suggest much of a guilty conscience. In spite of her beauty, I found her manner abrasive.

“You seemed pretty damned close with Mancini at the bar.”

Dina turned to me, hatred blazing in her eyes. “He forces me to stay in the palazzo. I'm guarded always and have no freedom. I can't drive anywhere or even go out for a walk unless one of his bodyguards is with me. They're called bodyguards but they're really my jailers.”

“Yet he lets you sing at a club?”

“Only because it was a private party. He likes to hear me sing. His guard was in the room the whole time.”

Her words brought back the image of the muscle man sitting alone at the club. “I had hoped to find a way to talk with you there but Lorenzo showed up earlier than I expected.” Dina's hands hadn't stopped shaking and now a few tears slipped down her cheeks. I reached over to put a reassuring hand on her arm.

She thrust me away and searched for something in the side-door pocket. When she turned back, she held a small knife with a nasty-looking blade. “Don't touch me again,” she whispered fiercely.

“Take it easy. I'm no danger to you. Threaten me again, Dina, and I get out of the car.”

She clicked the blade back into its pearl handle and dumped it into her bag. “All right. As long as the ground rules are clear.” She put the car in drive, checked her mirror again, and pulled out. “Lorenzo discovered the book was gone a few days ago. At first he thought a servant had taken it. He beat the man nearly to death with his own hands.”

“Jesus! You saw him do that?”

“No. The staff talk. The servant's wife was furious about what happened to her husband. Tonight when we got home from the club she pointed the finger at me. He flew into a rage and forced me to tell him I'd sold the book through Ewan. Then he locked me in my room. That's how I hurt my hand. I broke my window to get out.”

“Why didn't you go straight to the police?”

A strangled laugh caught in her throat. “Are you crazy? They'd never get in his way. They'd believe Lorenzo over me any day and agree I stole his book.”

“You did.”

She said nothing.

“Instead you ask a total stranger for help?”

“I had no choice. I'm desperate. But as I said before, I can help you track down the other volumes. Help me get out of Naples, out of Italy, and I'll tell you where they are.”

I mulled over her proposition in silence. Her fear was real enough and I couldn't dismiss her claims out of hand. Most importantly, she promised to tell me where the other volumes were. I made up my mind to stay with her, for the time being at least.

“An old man stole the first volume from me right after the auction. He also robbed my client.”

“An old man? What did he look like?” Her voice wavered.

“Black hair and a goatee. He used a cane.”

“With a white horse on it?”

“That's him.” She took her eyes off the road and in them I saw a spike of alarm. Her face had turned white.

“You obviously know who he is.”

“He's an … associate, I guess you could say; he does Lorenzo's bidding. If he was able to get that close to you, it's a wonder you're still alive.”

I thought back to the episode of paralysis. “This is going to sound crazy, but can he hypnotize people?”

“If I tell you anything more, you won't believe me.”

Seventeen

“
E
wan Fraser has been keeping my money safe in an account for me,” Dina said. “I'm going to meet him now to get the papers.”

“Is that wise?”

“There is no choice. He has all my funds.”

“Where's the meeting?”

“At Gaiola.”

We left the city center and drove west along Via Francesco. Dina pushed the car to its max, speeding past rows of newer condominiums and tourist resorts on the ritzy side of town. She seemed calmer after her outburst. Now that we'd come to an agreement she began to relax a little.

After a few minutes passed she spoke again. “We'll be going near a famous villa built by Pollio, a first-century Roman, called the Imperial Palace. It's named that because he left it to Emperor Augustus. Pollio was a human demon. He cut his slaves into pieces and threw them into stews, forcing the other slaves to eat them while they waited for their own executions.”

“Not very charming. Why are you telling me this?”

She shrugged. “It's on the way. We're also going near an ancient navigator's shrine to Venus close to the site of a sorcerer's house—someone I expect you've heard of.”

“Sorcerers don't tend to be part of my social register.”

“You must know of Virgil, Dante's guide in the underworld. Many believed he was a magician. The house once belonged to him.”

Her words reminded me of some of Basile's characters I'd noticed as I flipped through the English translation. They'd met equally gruesome fates. Penta, who tried to rebuff her brother's incestuous advances by cutting cut off her beautiful hands and presenting them to him in a basin. In another story called “The Crow,” a queen threatened to blind herself when she discovered the king sacrificed their children to save his brother. The most chilling of all was “The Snake,” about a crone who believed she'd become beautiful and win the king's heart if her old skin was shed. She died a horrible death when she had herself flayed. I assumed the author's dire descriptions were the product of his fertile imagination, but perhaps he'd simply faithfully recorded cruel practices from ancient times.

The road climbed. Spread out below the precipitous drop on one side, luxurious villas with their windows alight bloomed like rare flowers in a sea of green palms and pines. “Why meet Ewan all the way out here? Is this where he lives? He didn't strike me as a wealthy man.”

“He rents space in a villa overlooking the Gaiola Islands. The owner is a friend who's often away and entrusts Ewan to look after it.”

She yanked the wheel and made a sharp left onto a road that couldn't have been more than ten feet wide. High stone walls crested with vines bordered it on both sides. Dina careened down the steep route as if she were on a speedway and not a twisted canyon. The car shuddered when she hit a hole in the worn pavement. In that instant I thought we were done. But she didn't lose control and luck stayed with us the rest of the way. She eventually slowed to enter an open gate, pulling beside several cars parked in front of a stately home. “This is a private villa that takes paying guests,” she said. “It'll be all right to leave the car here for a short time.” She threw me a long look. “We can't be seen at Ewan's place.”

“Understood. Where's the meeting supposed to be?”

“Near the shore.” We locked the car and skirted the parking area and side garden to reach a narrow parting in the trees and a lengthy, precarious set of steps. The descent took us at a heart-stopping angle down the slope. Clusters of orange trees permeated the air with exotic scent. The stair ended at a rough pebble path. We followed it, and after about ten minutes I could hear the swish of waves. We emerged onto a kind of low parapet of old brick-work perched on the seashore. Below the parapet, waves washed over smooth black lava boulders. Two islets sat not thirty feet from shore off to our right. Beautiful though the landscape was with its tumbled ruins and lush flowers, fear pricked at my skin.

“Where's Ewan?” Dina whispered, glancing around anxiously. “He should have come by now.”

“He's obviously going to be careful and take his time to make sure he's not followed.”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. She paced up and down the stone platform and kept checking her watch.

I looked closer at the islets, barely more than large chunks of rock rising vertically from the sea. Spray shot up as waves collided with the boulders at their bases. Long, angled concrete piers extended from each like a lobster's pincers. The islets were joined by a narrow archway. I couldn't tell whether it was a natural phenomenon or constructed by human hands. Only a thin span with no railings, it was the most precarious bridge I'd ever seen.

A three-story house stood on the larger islet. A home in the process of decay like the ancient ruins nearby. Strangely, light spilled from the lower windows, just gaps now, missing the frames and glass, as if evil spirits had set up housekeeping there.

“What is that?” I asked when Dina came to stand beside me. She expressed surprise at seeing the windows alight. “The Gaiola Islands. Someone's over there—that's really peculiar.”

“It couldn't be Ewan, could it?”

“No. He'd stay away from it just like everyone else. That place is cursed. Everyone who has owned it has met with a terrible end. A wizard originally built the house and his spirit still haunts it. An industrialist named Hans Braun was murdered in that very spot. His wife drowned in the sea not long after. Another owner committed suicide and more misfortunes followed. No one dares buy it now. Except for a few tourists, people won't go there even during the day. Maybe it's just teenagers on a dare or something.”

I walked over to the edge of the parapet and watched the waves break on the boulders below us. Something, it looked like a dead fish, turned in the waves. It fell into a trough and disappeared for an instant; then the force of the water tipped the white flesh up again as the wave crested.

I braced myself and leaned out, peering again at the thing in the dark water. It bobbed up, disappeared, and washed in closer. As it did so, its form became clearer and I nearly slipped with the shock. “Hell! Someone's drowned out there.”

The drop was only about ten feet or so. I clambered down, skidding on the boulders slick with spray. Dina whimpered with fear and followed me. Several large waves heaved the body within a few feet of my precarious hold on a flat black rock at the bottom of the parapet. A man floated in the water; I could see that now. His bare torso and arms moved with the waves, giving the absurd impression he was trying to swim. I hadn't noticed his legs before because they were sheathed in the wet dark fabric of his pants.

I stretched my arm out as far as I dared. After a couple of misses I grasped his hand. It felt cold and slick to my touch. I grunted with the effort of pulling the heavy waterlogged body closer. A large wave rolled him toward me and he beached on the flat rock, face up.

Dina screamed.

It was Ewan Fraser. Someone had beaten his face so badly it barely looked human, one of his eyes a mass of pulpy flesh. His blond hair and beard hung like a wet fringe framing his face. The silver charm against the evil eye still dangled from his neck.

On his bloated belly was the bejeweled girdle book he'd proudly shown me at the library. Blood was still visible in the crevices of banded leather that formed the Turk's head knot. Someone had used the large, hard knot as a kind of blackjack, swinging it repeatedly into Ewan's face, and then tucked it back neatly into the belt like some kind of ghoulish signature.

Dina turned her back and sobbed. The scarf she wore blew off in the wind and floated eerily onto Ewan's damaged face before lifting again and drifting out to sea.

Perhaps it was the need to avoid that grim sight that caused me to look at the forlorn villa on the islet. A shadow passed across one of the windows, temporarily blocking out the light. A minute or so later a figure emerged through the empty doorway.

“Who's that?” I said quietly. Dina turned slowly at the sound of my voice. In the same instant, I knew. His black coat and hat, the cane that from this far away resembled a white needle, were only too familiar to me now. Alessio was alive.

Those black eyes bored into my soul as he stared directly across at us. He lifted his cane and pointed it in our direction. It was as if the wizard who'd built the place were warning us with a wave of his wand.

Dina clawed her way back up the parapet.

Eighteen