“OK. I get it. You’re right. So . . . ?”
“So why are we chasing after that miserable bastard? That’s what I asked in the first place.”
And Lucia wasn’t certain she had the real answer. But she did have an easy answer, so she gave it. “We aren’t chasing the miserable bastard. We’re chasing the genius. The genius that’s in his paintings. Sometimes we have to put up with bastards—if they’re geniuses.”
And Moto seemed to accept that. It was a perfectly good answer. They were chasing the genius, not the bastard.
But Lucia wasn’t sure it was the truth.
Because still she wasn’t certain why she cared. Why she was chasing anything. Man or genius. Why she didn’t just let it go.
But Moto was satisfied, so she gratefully let it drop.
And again, for a long time, there was only the sound of traffic and the buzzing of the neon. Then Lucia sat up and her face was alive again.
She hugged Moto hard.
“OK. I’m still not sure I know who you are, but I can’t stop trusting you now,” she said. “So what do we do?”
“A good night’s sleep,” he said. “Some decent coffee in the morning. And then—we’re in Naples, there must be a few Caravaggios in this town. Right?”
The coffee was strong. The pastries sweet and buttery. Moto glanced at the morning paper while Lucia finished her research on the cell phone Moto refused to use.
She put down the phone. “OK. Three Caravaggios here. Seven Acts of Mercy. Flagellation of Christ. Martyrdom of Santa Ursula.”
Moto raised his eyebrows. “So? Which do we see?”
“Right now, I don’t care about mercy. And I’m not in the mood for another dead saint.”
Moto pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.
“Tough talk.”
“You asked.”
“So . . . a little flagellation to start the day?”
Lucia nodded. “They say the painting’s a ‘sadistic ballet.’ That feels like the story we’re in, right?”
“Suits me.” Moto’s cheerfulness was unabashed.
“And your friends? The ones who don’t answer the phone.”
“Nothing to do but wait and see.”
Lucia stood and stared at Christ’s writhing body and the dark faces grinning in the shadows behind him. The museum was quiet in the winter. They were almost alone in the gallery. The guards were bored. Lucia stared.
At one point, her cell phone rang and she hurried out into the hall to answer it.
“Thank you for calling me back. I know how busy you must be, but as I said in my message, I’m working on my thesis on the spiritual impacts of lost art, and I would love to be able to include the insights of a man as distinguished as you.”
She paused a minute, listening, then said, “Well, of course I can. I understand how busy you are. OK, Via del Cerriglio. We’ll be there.” A short pause. “My associate and myself.”
Then she went back into the gallery.
An hour later, she went back out into the hall. Moto was there. He’d given the Flagellation a good long look and had been wandering through the museum ever since.
“There are a couple of Titians here you really need to see.”
“I’m sure I do, but we don’t have time, because we have an appointment to meet with Umberto Bruno, professor emeritus of the Università degli Studi di Napoli, who has dedicated his career to the details of Caravaggio’s time in Naples.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I called him. He called me back.” She held up her cell phone. “These are really handy. You ought to get one.”
Moto’s hand automatically went to check his pocket for the phone that wasn’t there. “Where are we meeting him?”
“Locanda del Cerriglio.”
A moment of silence, then she giggled.
“How cool is that?”
“Are you crazy?”
“I know.”
“That’s where Caravaggio was almost killed.”
“I know.”
“And what about the guys that want to kill us?” Moto gestured helplessly. “Lulu . . . you’re . . .”
“I know.”
Early winter dark had fallen by the time they had walked the hour and a half—including time for getting lost—it took them to get to the Locanda del Cerriglio. Four hundred years after Caravaggio’s time in Naples, the neighborhood had almost certainly improved. There was a nice-enough hotel down the block and a few high-class stores around the corner. But Naples was a city of chiaroscuro, where there were always shadows within the light, and the corner where the Locanda del Cerriglio was tucked was more than dark enough.
And after they stood waiting for nearly an hour, more than cold enough.
Moto shivered and stamped his feet. “Apparently, professori emeriti don’t have to be on time.”
Lucia checked the time on her cell phone again. Despite the long walk, they’d been there early. The professor was more than half an hour late. As she stared at it, the phone buzzed in her hand.
Her side of the conversation was short.
“Yes . . . I . . . but . . . OK. Well, can we—”
She stared at the phone for a moment, then put it back in her pocket and turned to Moto.
“That was strange. The professor. He was so friendly this afternoon. Now he just said he wouldn’t be here. That was it. Not sorry. No offer of another time. Fast and cold and then he hung up on me.”
“Great. Now what?”
Lucia shivered and glanced around, peering into the dark. “I don’t know. Maybe we could have dinner at Locanda del Cerriglio.”
Moto started to answer, but a metal garage door right behind them rattled open, and a man in a black monk’s robe lunged out, clapped a hand over Lucia’s mouth, and dragged her back inside. Moto leapt to grab her, but a second man in black robes jumped out of the dark building, knocked him flat, kicked him in the head, and then ran to help the first man wrestle Lucia into the dark of the garage.
Moto struggled back to his feet and started after them, but a third man, in a leather jacket with a fedora jammed down on his head, rushed past him, knocking him sprawling again, and raced into the darkness where Lucia had disappeared. From inside the garage, there were shouts, the sounds of a struggle, a scream—was it Lucia? Moto tried to get up again, but his head was spinning and he had to fight to keep his balance.
Suddenly, Lucia emerged from the dark, half running, half dragged by the man in the leather jacket, who spun around, grabbed the metal door, and yanked it down, slamming it shut. He stood, breathing heavily, blood running down his face from a gash—a knife wound—across his cheek. It hadn’t been an easy rescue. He’d lost his fedora somewhere in the struggle.
“Idioti!” he spat. He grabbed Moto by both shoulders, stared him in the eye, looked as if he was about to say something, and then slapped him hard across the face.
A car roared up, and the man shoved Moto and Lucia into the back seat and clambered in after them, pressing a handkerchief against his bloody cheek as the car raced into the night.
Moto started to say something, but the man gave a wordless growl that left no room for anything else as the car surged through the streets, the impenetrable traffic of Naples somehow parting magically before them.
The car finally stopped in a narrow alley, just around the corner from the sputtering neon sign in front of the cheap hotel where the day had begun. The driver climbed out and pulled Lucia and Moto roughly into the street, leaving the other man in the back seat, blood soaking through the handkerchief and running down his jaw.
The driver raised his hand, and for a moment, he looked ready to slap Moto, the way the first man had. But then he turned his attention to Lucia.
“Get out of here.” His voice was a low growl. His accent guttural. “Go back to your fucking books. There’s nothing for you here. You’re in over your head. You’ll drown. And next time we won’t be here to save you.”
H
e glanced back at Moto again and took a step closer. He raised a finger in warning. Moto’s face was set in a scowl, trying to match the man who moved even closer and rested that single finger against Moto’s chest.
“Do you understand? We’re done. No more. You’re on your own.”
The other man was out of the car now. He had taken the blood-soaked cloth off his face, and the wound gaped, blood crusting and still trickling down his jaw and onto his neck. He leaned close, dabbed a finger into his bloody wound, reached out, and drew a line in blood down Moto’s cheek.
“Next time,” he hissed, “your blood. Not mine.”
He turned his head and spat.
Chapter 21
Roma
1605
Onorio Longhi turned down the tiny street in Campo Marzio at three o’clock in the afternoon. The cold wind whistled around the corner, biting his face. He crossed his arms against his chest, ducking his bearded chin against the gust. His stomach growled as he thought of lunch.
Artichokes. Swimming in garlic oil. Ho fame. I’m hungry, damn it!
He could already taste their clean flavor and tenderness in his mouth. No restaurant prepared carciofi better than Il Moro on Via della Maddalena.
As Longhi rapped on the door of 19 Vicolo dei Santi Cecilia e Biagio and entered, he immediately felt the draft of the frigid air pouring in through the roof.
He gazed up at the coating of black smoke coloring the walls. His eyes followed the light to the gaping hole and the charred bits of rafter.
“Why must everyone gawk up at the ceiling like a lost goose?” said Caravaggio, buckling his sword around his waist. “I can’t paint without light, damn it!”
The architect stared up and whistled. “Does your landlady know?”
“It’s none of her damned business. She let this house to me, the sour old bitch.”
Longhi shook his head.
“Enough! Let’s go. I’m hungry enough to eat my canvas.”
Longhi pointed to Caravaggio’s sword. He shook his head. “Cazzo! You know the guards will arrest you again if you carry that weapon. Leave it here. You don’t need it. I’ve got mine.”
“The guards can take it up the ass,” said the artist. “I’ll tell them I’m still in Cardinal del Monte’s household—”
“Bah! You haven’t been with him for a year now! Michele, you are no nobleman, they—”
“Shut your mouth, you swine.”
“No!” said Longhi, standing with his hands on his hips. “They’ll throw you in prison again, you hardheaded idiot!”
Caravaggio waved away his friend’s words. “I can talk my way out of trouble.”
“Don’t be a fool, Michele. Leave the sword. I can defend both of us with—”
“Shut up, Onorio, or I’ll cut your tongue out. And if we are to eat on Via della Maddalena, they’d better prepare my artichokes properly. Last time I was at Il Moro, they tried to serve them to me swimming in oil.”
“So what? Alla Romana, in oil,” said Longhi, shrugging.
“The oil way is merda,” Caravaggio said, tightening the buckle another notch on his waist. He opened the door for his friend, and they descended into the narrow backstreet off the Piazza Navona.
Longhi shrugged. “Alla Romana with oil isn’t bad. I’ve had them both ways there.”
“Some Milanese you are! The way to ruin an artichoke is to cook it in oil.”
“Cazzo, Michele. I say they are good both ways. What is your problem with a little olive oil?”
“Schifoso! To take such a delicacy and smear it in greasy olive oil. Disgusting. Rancid, I bet. Sweet butter—but these porci romani don’t understand good cookery.”
“Basta!” said Longhi. “What the hell do I care about you and your fucking artichokes? Tell me something interesting. What about that Fillide—now she’s a figa I’d like to peel.”
Caravaggio shrugged. “I paint her. That’s all.”
“Of course you haven’t had her in bed. She’d make you pay dearly to touch her sweet ass. Or Ranuccio would. Pay through the nose.”
They turned down the street to Piazza Navona.
“She’s an honest whore,” said Caravaggio. “Giustiniani has her in his bed and she doesn’t mess with anyone else.”
“Pff!” Longhi laughed, throwing back his head. “An honest whore, indeed! She’s always ready for a roll with Ranuccio.”
Caravaggio’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell I don’t! That whore has a soft spot for her pimp. And I hear she’s raging jealous. A regular hellcat.”
“Che cosa?” said Caravaggio, stopping. What?
“Here we are.”
Longhi grabbed Caravaggio by the arm and headed through a doorway crowded with men, cups of wine in their hands.
“And look who’s here!” shouted Longhi when they were inside the tavern. “Mario Minniti! My friend Bacchus.” Longhi waved wide at the Sicilian painter, and Minniti waved back from a corner of the tavern. He was wedged in between two other men who talked over his head. “We’ll have to squeeze in.”
“Aspetta! Wait! What about Fillide? Finish what you were saying, Onorio.”
“I’ll tell you everything. But let’s get a place at a table first or we’ll never eat.”
Longhi and Caravaggio plunged into the noisy crowd.
“Over there,” said Longhi, pointing to two customers pulling coins from their purses at the end of the table down from Minniti. “Grab a place, quick.”
“Amici!” said Minniti. He turned to the men sitting between him and his newly arrived friends. “Signori! Would you mind moving together here so I can join my friends? I see you have finished your meal.”
The two men grumbled, waving them away.
Longhi put his hand on the hilt of his sword, standing his ground. “Don’t make me repeat my friend’s polite request,” he growled.
The diners grumbled again but slid across the rickety bench groaning with the shift of weight.
The two artists and the architect squeezed together. Harried waiters rushed through the crowd, carrying enormous trays of pasta, salami, pig’s trotters, and roasted meats. The air was filled with the smell of woodsmoke and garlic-laced olive oil. Caravaggio spotted a terra-cotta bowl brimming with artichokes that glistened in oil.
A waiter plunked down a jug of red wine and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Signori. What do you desire? The Siciliano here has already ordered.”
Minniti grunted. “This Sicilian hasn’t been served yet. Do your job!”
“The stew,” said Longhi. “The one you served to the man with the plumed hat over there.”
The waiter looked over his shoulder. “Pig’s tripe. Spicy.”
“Sì,” said Longhi. “With bread. Lots of it.”
“Same,” said Caravaggio. “But first artichokes. Make them with butter, no oil.”
The waiter lifted his chin, then spat on the floor. Caravaggio’s back stiffened as he glared from the waiter to the glistening spittle.
“Your accent, signore. You are from the north?”
“Milano,” said Longhi. “Both of us. But we’re Romans now, aren’t we, Caravaggio?”
“Prepare the carciofi in butter, cameriere!” said Caravaggio. “The way they should be.”
“You make mine with oil,” said Minniti. “I’ve had them here. Not as good as in Sicilia, but they are good. Molto buoni—”
“You damned southerners and your fucking olive oil,” said Caravaggio. “In butter, damn it! Make them proper or I’ll leave without paying.”
“The cook will make them proper,” said the waiter. He rubbed his thumb hard against his mustache. “And you’ll pay or I’ll call the guards on you.”
“I’ll show the sbirri what I think of them. Go ahead!” Caravaggio touched the hilt of his sword. “Call them!”
“Waiter—give us more wine,” shouted a drunken man down the table. The waiter strode off, cursing.
/> “Michele!” said Longhi. “You are a colossal ass! You know he’ll spit in our food now.”
“Never mind the fucking waiter,” said Caravaggio. “Tell me about Fillide. What did you mean about Ranuccio Tomassoni?”
“What about Ranuccio?” said Minniti. “He’s trouble, that one. Always ready to draw his sword.”
Longhi took a long draught of wine. “I shouldn’t have told you, Michele. You take all a cuore, to heart. You start to pout . . . and the next minute you explode in a rage.”
“Tell me, damn you!” said Caravaggio, clenching his fist.
“Let me get drunk first,” said Longhi.
“Here,” said Minniti, lifting the jug of wine and pouring Longhi another cup. “Salute!”
“Tell me!” said Caravaggio.
“All right, all right,” said Longhi, draining his cup. “Day before yesterday, Fillide found another whore in Tomassoni’s bed. Prudenza Zacchia, the one with breasts the size of August melons. Who knows where his wife was, the slattern! That one might as well be a whore—”
“Damn you! Tell me about Fillide!”
“Don’t be impatient, amico,” said Longhi. “Anyway . . . Fillide pulled the whore out of bed by her hair and then cut her with a knife. She tried for a sfregio—a slash of revenge—across the face, but Prudenza put up her hands, warding her off.”
Longhi poured himself another cup of wine and crumpled up laughing.
“What happened?” demanded Caravaggio. “What’s so funny?”
“Prudenza ran screaming to the guards. They arrested Fillide. But when they let her go, she went straight to Prudenza’s house and tried to cut her again! She was screeching, ‘I’ll get you next time and cut you right! You’ll never work again.’”
Minniti roared with laughter. “That sounds like Fillide! What a wench—there could be no better match for Ranuccio, the son of a bitch.”
Caravaggio threw a smoldering look at his artist friend. He saw the color blooming on the Sicilian’s cheeks from the wine, reminiscent of his painting of Bacchus that so enchanted the cardinals.
Light in the Shadows Page 16
