Pronto (16 page)
"So you had two chances to take him out," the Zip said. "On the street, Fabrizio tells me, and in front of the hotel."
Nicky said, "What?" frowning, acting more confused than he was. "He told me don't do it, Fabrizio did. The guy rents a car and picks up the broad's luggage? What's that look like? He knows where they are, he's bringing her stuff to her. Right?"
"He don't know nothing," the Zip said. "He never did and he still don't."
"What's he doing with her bags then? They could've called him, couldn't they?"
"What I'm telling you," the Zip said, "he don't know nothing. You believe me?"
Nicky wanted to go over to the other table, sit down with those guys talking Italian, he didn't care, have some pasta and a beer.
The Zip said, "You believe me?"
"Yeah, I believe you."
"He don't know nothing."
"Right." Christ, like repeat after me. "He don't know nothing."
"So," the Zip said, "you want to take him out?"
Nicky wanted to tell him to keep his big fucking nose out of this.
"Do you?"
"Yeah."
"Haven't changed your mind?"
Shit, he could see it coming. He said, "I have to set it up first."
The Zip motioned toward the cowboy hat at the cafe next door, dim in there but the hat easy to see.
"He's set up. He's sitting there waiting for you." The Zip said something in Italian to Benno, Fabrizio, and another guy with them at the next table, and right away they were quiet, all three of them turning to look at Nicky. Now the Zip said, "You going to do it or not?"
Raylan watched him approach the table: man, those arms and shoulders of his filling that leather jacket. He'd be a hard one to take down 'less you hit him with a ball bat. Raylan brushed crumbs from the green tablecloth, dropped both hands to his lap, and sat back in his chair, ready for Mr. Testa. He said, "Mr. Zip sent you ever here, didn't he? Well, it couldn't be to tell me anything. I think it's all been said. He offered me money -- did he mention that to you? -- thirty million lire, which sounds like a lot more'n it is, if I'd go away and quit bothering you people. To me, that was an insult. Not the amount, you understand, but that he'd entertain the idea I might take it. A man like him thinking everybody has a price. Well, there was a time he could've had me for fifteen dollars a day -- hell, less'n that -- when I was a boy working in the coal mines. Anybody ever asked what was my price, that would've been it, fifteen a day. I've worked deep mines, wildcat mines, I've worked for strip operators, and I've sat out over a year on strike and seen company gun thugs shoot up the houses of miners that spoke out. They killed an uncle of mine was living with us, my mother's brother, and they killed a friend of mine I played football with in high school. This was in a coal camp town called Evarts in Harlan County, Kentucky, near to twenty years ago. You understanding what I'm saying? Even before I entered the Marshals Service and trained to be a dead shot, I'd seen people kill one another and learned to be ready in case I saw a bad situation coming toward me."
Raylan bent forward a moment, brought his right hand up from his boot, and laid his 357 snub-nose on the table. He watched Nicky's eyes lock on the gun and stare like he might never look away.
"In other words," Raylan said, "if I see you've come to do me harm, I'll shoot you through the heart before you can clear your weapon. Do we have an understanding here?"
Chapter
Sixteen.
Fabrizio watched Nicky walk away from the cowboy, out to the sidewalk. Now he was coming this way, toward them. He saw Tommy at the next table watching Nicky, Benno watching, everybody watching and wondering what Nicky was going to say to Tommy. The kid wasn't looking this way or showing any kind of expression on his face. Tommy wasn't either. Tommy showed pleasure, anger, contempt, all the same way.
Nicky -- wait a minute -- was walking past them, going past the cafe.
Tommy turned his head this way and said, "Where's he going?"
So Fabrizio called to him, "Hey, Nicky, where you going, man?"
Tommy said, "Get him."
Fabrizio saw Tommy turn his head to look back at the cowboy, who was standing now, walking away from his table at the Gran Caffe, and Tommy said it again, "Get him," louder this time, still meaning Nicky.
So Fabrizio got up from the table and went after him, because the cowboy was his and Nicky's responsibility. Only it was getting to be tiresome. If Nicky didn't take the cowboy this time, Fabrizio believed he would have to. Man, to get it over with.
Raylan's idea was to have them in view but looking the other way when he made his move. He left money on the table, picked up his revolver and his postcards, and got out of there, over Via Veneto to the corner and then up to where his car was parked off the Piazza Cavour. He drove through downtown streets in light traffic, working his way around buses, hoping to get some space between him and them, sure they'd be on his tail in a matter of a few minutes. He found the road that curved around the perimeter of the city and the turnoff where the sign pointed to Maurizio di Monti and Montallegro. A guy wearing sunglasses, his arms folded, leaned against his car at the side of the road. Raylan watched him in his rearview mirror, expecting to see the guy jump in the car and come after him, but pretty soon he was out of sight and the road remained clear. Raylan felt somewhat relieved, but not much.
Coming up out of the plain the hill became steeper and the switchbacks longer, straightaways that extended close to a quarter of a mile between curves: different from eastern Kentucky, though it was still mountain driving and Raylan had done enough of it to last him. The trees were different too: there weren't any cypress that he knew of in eastern Kentucky, or olive trees. They made the land here seem older, from an ancient time, a way he had never looked at the land back home.
There was hardly any traffic in either direction, letting him get a good look up and down on the straightaways. Some of the homes were right smack on the road or behind low stone fences. Get through the curve to the next straight section of road and he would be looking down at the same houses and see farmyards and outbuildings. Going through Maurizio di Monti he passed a cluster of houses built close to the road and came to a car parked at an intersection, another one with the guy standing outside, watching the world go by, this one smoking a cigarette. Raylan passed him. Then in the rearview mirror saw the guy throw away his cigarette and reach into the car through the window. Now he saw the guy with a hand radio, speaking into it, telling somebody about the blue Fiat he'd just seen whiz by, the guy getting smaller and smaller in the mirror. It reminded Raylan of an old Waylon Jennings number, "When You See Me Getting Smaller." One of his favorites when he was still home in Kentucky. On the same record as "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille," the one he thought of right after Winona told him she was getting a divorce and he was alone in Miami Beach without his family. Without his boys anyway; the real estate guy could have Winona. He thought of Waylon and wondered if there was such a thing as Italian country music. He remembered reading somewhere that Clint Black was half Italian, his mother being full-blooded.
Raylan kept glancing at his mirror, but nothing seemed to be coming after him. Somebody would, though, before too long. Right now he'd concentrate on locating Harry's villa. Somewhere, the hotel bartender said, between Maurizio di Monti, which he'd just passed, and the church at the end of this road, the Sanctuary of the Holy Virgin of Montallegro. Driving north on straight stretches of road, he'd look for houses above him. Then around a curve and driving south, he'd try to look down the slope, at places directly below him, without going off the road. There weren't any guardrails to speak of. Seeing vegetable patches cut out of the slope reminded him of home, people scratching to have enough to eat. He wondered if they had food stamps here.
The thought vanished from his mind as he jammed on his brakes and the Fiat skidded to a stop close to the shoulder. Raylan backed up until he was looking directly at the villa, a plain square structure, kind of a dirty yellow in color, a gravel drive that needed to be weeded leading up to it. He backed up some more and now had a view of the garden behind the villa with its hedges, its plants in concrete pots, orange trees, four of them, and a persimmon tree. Raylan put the car in drive and crept past the house, noting a building, back and to the side, with wooden doors that might be a garage. Out beyond were a couple more farm buildings, all the structures with red tile roofs. Raylan glanced at his mirror and right away pressed his foot down on the accelerator. A car flashing red in the sunlight was coming fast out of the hairpin behind him.
"As I pass his car," Fabrizio said, "you shoot him. How does that sound? Stick your gun out the window and pop him. Where's he going to hide? You have him."
Nicky had his Beretta in his hands, ready. He'd already racked the slide. All he had to do was put the gun on the marshal and pull the trigger. He liked what Fabrizio said about where was he going to hide. He liked it when he could see ahead of time what was going to happen. Where's he going to go? Nowhere. He'll see the gun pointing at him and try to duck. Guess when the piece was about to go off and then duck, try to, keep from getting shot and the car from going off the road. So the guy would duck -- okay, wait for him to come up and bam.
He said to Fabrizio, "Hurry up if you're gonna get next to him. Goose it."
"After the turn coming up. We get through, I'm going to put it on the floor. Come up on him, he'll be two feet away. You think you can take him?"
Fucking Fabrizio having a good time. All of them, the genuine Italians, thinking they were pretty funny, the things they said about him. Asking if they could watch and learn something. Nicky held on going through the hairpin curve and still got bounced around. They came out on the straight and ... Shit, where was he?
"Where'd he go?"
Fabrizio didn't answer, looking around and then looking at his rearview mirror.
"Could he have gotten behind us?"
Fabrizio still didn't answer. It meant he didn't know. They both kept quiet now, looking around. No sign of the blue Fiat. They kept going. Two more turns and a long stretch with only a few bends in it and they were approaching the Sanctuary of Montallegro, a pretty big church.
"You know why they built this?" Fabrizio said. "Four hundred years ago the Virgin Mary appeared to a man who lived here, a poor man. She told him she would grant favors to the people who came here and prayed to her. You know, to ask for different things, money, a husband... All the cars, it means a service is being held in there. You want to go in?"
"Yeah, light a candle," Nicky said.
"No, I mean it," Fabrizio said. "Ask the Virgin Mary to help you find the cowboy. And then if you do, grant the miracle that you shoot him and don't think of an excuse why you can't."
"Fucking comedian," Nicky said.
Fabrizio drove past the parking area so they could look over the cars, then stopped and got his radio off the top of the instrument panel. He spoke into it in Italian and a voice in Italian came back to them.
When he was finished, Fabrizio said, "That was the man in Maurizio di Monti. He says the cowboy didn't come back that way. It means he has to be still up here somewhere. Maybe turned off one of the roads that don't go nowhere, waiting for us to leave. So, we go back that way and sniff, uh? See if we can smell him, this cowboy."
They had gone no more than a half mile when Nicky said, "There he is," excited now, seeing the blue Fiat standing a short distance up a side road, pointing away from them. They came to the road and turned in and the Fiat took off, topped a rise, and was gone.
Fabrizio said, "Now what's he doing?" sounding puzzled. "He was waiting for us."
"We had him set up for a drive-by," Nicky said. "Now he's thought of something and he's setting us up."
"How does he do that?" Fabrizio said, hunched over the wheel now. "There two of us, one of him."
"I don't know," Nicky said, "but I'm telling you that's what he's doing, setting us up."
"I better do this one," Fabrizio said. "I think you starting to come apart again."
Raylan brought them to high ground, an open field of scrub on what he would call a hogback ridge that sloped to valleys choked with brush. He turned the car around to be facing them when they came over the rise, took out his revolver, and checked the loads, spinning the cylinder to hear the sound of it, Raylan getting the feel of the weapon again in his hands. Nicky hadn't seen this one yet, his Smith & Wesson 357 Combat Mag, stainless steel with a six-inch barrel. He watched for them now, expecting the red Fiat to come flying over the crest of the ridge, then brake hard and fishtail as they saw him waiting, and that was how it was. The car stopped about a hundred feet away, maybe a little less, and sat there.
Deciding how to do it, Raylan thought. You go at him from over there and I'll go at him from over here. Why didn't he drive up close?
'Cause it's show-off time, Raylan thought. The Italian gun thug is going to show the boy how it's done. What do you bet?
"We're going to walk up to him," Fabrizio said. "You leave the car and walk toward him, but out that way. You understand? I do the same on this side. Go toward him but out, so he has to turn from me to you. You understand? We have our guns in our hands. No cowboy stuff. Okay? But don't say nothing to him."
