by Cameron West
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if someone’s injured on your boat, we’ll come right over and pick him up. Procure him some restorative remedies. Where are you?”
“You mean you can’t see us?” I said. “Must be all the smoke on your boat. We’re right off your bow.”
“Hey,” he said, “I only wanted to chat with your lady friend.”
“You’re going to have to learn some manners first. The carabinieri will help you.”
“Don’t get too invested in them, Flame Boy.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to teach you myself,” I said through clenched teeth. “So long, Nolo.”
“For now,” he said. I clicked the radio off. A sensation of relief flooded me. I understood it. I had asked Satan to dance.
Antonia was sitting on the backseat, her hands over her mouth, eyes wide and blank. I sat next to her.
She said softly, “That’s the guy? Nolo Tecci?”
“Not just him. He works for Werner Krell,” I said.
“The German with all the money? He’s had a long affiliation with Professore Corta.”
“Tell me.”
“Corta knows Krell, brokers art for him, and did for his father before him. Both of them sought out Leonardo artifacts, especially the Circles of Truth and the Medici Dagger, which, of course, haven’t been found.”
“Of course.”
“Krell will pay any price for Leonardo pieces. Corta brokers to him for a fat fee. The competition for Leonardo artifacts is brutal.”
“I know that.”
“Do you also know that Krell’s father, and Krell, lost more than one piece to the National Gallery?”
I studied Antonia’s eyes as the implication of that statement sank in. Werner Krell and my father had known of each other, had been adversaries.
I suddenly felt the need to defend my father. “He was an honest man. A good man. My father wasn’t Werner Krell.”
“I didn’t say he was. I’m not making any assumptions about your father.”
We watched a lone sea gull swoop down near the boat and quickly flap away.
“I wonder if my father and Krell ever met,” I said. “Maybe not. Maybe Krell just sent Tecci to meet him. To exterminate the competition.”
This had happened when my only dream was to be Luke Sky-walker as I waved my Toys “R” Us lightsaber at a three-dollar poster. Now, here I was, six feet from a dead man; Fausto Arrezione, the bookseller, was also dead; and others had died, some of them at my hands.
Antonia’s face had turned ashen. She grabbed her stomach. “Oh, God, I’m going to throw up.”
She got to her knees and vomited off the back of the boat, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “God, they were trying to kill me! They’regoingto kill me.” She turned her face to me, her hair wet with sweat. Pushing it back with a finger, she tucked it behind her delicate ear.
“No,” I said, “they would have been glad to kill me, I think, but not you. You heard Tecci. He thinks you know something. Now tell me. What is it he thinks you know?”
I heard nothing but lapping waves while she stared at me for what felt like a week. Then she reached for her big leather bag, pulled out a blank manila 9 x 12 envelope, and handed it to me. Between two pieces of heavy cardboard was a cellophane sleeve.
Inside was a yellowed page that looked very much like the one Greer had passed on to me. My face flushed, the sensation rippling across the rest of my skin. The sound of the waves slapping the creakingboat dissipated until they vanished, leaving Antonia, Leonardo, and me in the yawning breadth of time.
I opened my mouth to speak. My tongue felt dry and I had to clear my throat.“This . . . is . . . the page the bookseller found.”
It was definitely different from mine. To one side, a large bull’s-eye of tiny marks in concentric rings similar to the one on my page and a drawing of what looked like an astonishingly sophisticated system ofpulleys. And on the other side, one line of Leonardo’s backward handwriting and a picture of a harness, like the kind of thing infants bounce up and down in to amuse themselves.
“Fausto Arrezione is my uncle. Was,” Antonia confided. “He called me the day he found the page. Leonardo is my specialty. I told Corta about it right away, and we set up a time the next day for Fausto to bring in the notes. It would have been a major acquisition for the Gallerie. I wasn’t really thinking much about the Dagger itself. But then something must have spooked Fausto, because he brought the page to me. He seemed unusually nervous and asked me to hold it for him. And later that night . . . oh God . . . Corta must have told . . .” She started to tense up, fear grabbing her, folding her in like a strand of rope. “Corta told Krell and Tecci and they . . . oh God. Itwasmurder.”
Antonia held her palms together, the tips of her index fingers just brushing her nose. She began to rock back and forth, staring intently at nothing, accepting that her uncle had been killed for the notes she’d been carrying in her bag.
“What am I going to do?” she muttered. “They want these notes and they’ll kill me for them.”
I wanted to grab her small wrists, feel her throbbing pulse, and tell her, “I’ve got you.” But I didn’t; I couldn’t.
Instead I extracted the leather portfolio from my red bag and carefully handed her my own page of Leonardo’s notes.
Antonia’s eyes went as wide as rainbows. Mouth hanging open, slowly shaking her head from side to side, she removed it from the large Ziploc Bag I had placed it in, turning the page over and back, the way I had with hers. She looked at me quizzically, awestruck.
It was my turn. I told her everything—Greer, Tecci, the Georgetown fire. I held the two pages of notes side by side. We sat silently, comparing what we hoped were the Circles of Truth.
“These pages could lead us to the Medici Dagger,” I said.“Leonardo wrote that the key to the Dagger was in the Circles of Truth.”
“They’re definitely not duplicates,” she said.
“No. They’re obviously different. Two Circles of Truth. We’ve got them both and Krell and Tecci must have nothing.”
“What should we do?” Antonia asked.“Should we go to the police?”
“Are you kidding me? Did Tecci sound scared of the police to you? Krell is connected. Besides, if you wanted to go to the police, why didn’t you call them after the fire?”
“I . . . because it’s Leonardo and I thought maybe I could . . .”
“Jesus,” I said. “You didn’t hand over the notes because you were working on them. You were hiding out and scared, but you didn’t want to let them go, did you?”
“Well . . . no,” she admitted.
I was impressed. I asked her if she’d translated the line on her page.
She nodded. “ ‘Let he who finds the dagger use it for noble purpose.’ ”
A shiver traveled through my body.
“He’s talking to me,” I whispered. “I can’t explain it, but I know Leonardo is talking to me.”
I could feel Leonardo’s strong hand on one shoulder, my father’s gentle one on the other.I’m the “he” who will find the Dagger.
I took a deep lungful of sea air.
“Well,” Antonia said, “what do we do now?”
In my mind I saw a collage of splintered wood, broken glass, the dead driver spreading red, heard Tecci’s threatening voice crackling on the walkie-talkie. I took in the sight of Antonia—the sunshine on her raven hair, the eager look on her face.
“Well?” she repeated.
“Simple,” I stated flatly. “You translate my page and lend me yours, and I’ll be on my way.”
“What? What about me, you prick? You brought me out here, got me shot at. You think you’re just going to send me home?”
She took her page of notes from my hand. “This stays right with me. And I stay right with you.”
“Antonia, you don’t understand. I can’t . . . do this with you. I . . . don’t . . . want you with me.”
Every cell in m
y brain knew that was a lie. I did want her. In that moment it didn’t even matter why. But I knew if I lost my focus one or both of us would get killed.
“Don’t want me, huh? And you think I want you? Like a horde of locusts, I want you. Listen to me, Mr. Reb Barnett. I came out to meet you and this happened. Now you’restuckwith me.”
She was right.
A shiny fish with an emotionless eye surfaced, then plunked back under the water. For an instant I envied that fish.
Antonia opened her bag to slip Leonardo’s page inside. “Hey,” she said. “What’s this?”
She held up a small, white envelope. On the front were three block letters:REB.
She looked at me suspiciously, her face flushing crimson. “When did you put this in my bag?”
“I didn’t touch your bag,” I said.“Not once.”
“Oh my God. Outside the Danieli, right before I met you. This guy bumped into me, practically gave me whiplash. Then he disappeared into the crowd. What’s going on here?”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“He practically knocked me down. Scared me half to death. No, I didn’t get a look at him.”
“Can I see the envelope?”
She gave it to me.
Inside was a small key labeled “104” that looked like it belonged to a lockbox, and an address written on a card.
“That’s near the Gritti Palace,” she said. “Do you have any idea who it could have been?”
“No.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
“We have to.”
“It could be a trap. Look, Reb, we have Leonardo’s pages. We can leave town. Once we’re safe, I can translate them. We can unravel the Circles of Truth.”
“Antonia, I have to check this out, alone.”
“Forget that! We both go. So . . . now what do we do, drive this damn boat back to the Danieli?”
Looking over at Big Nose I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Wait,” she said. “I’ve got access to a car.”
“Where is it?”
“In Chioggia. It’s a fishing village a little south of Lido.”
“Great.” I stepped over to Big Nose and hefted him by his armpits. “Could you give me a hand?” I asked.
Antonia looked as queasy as I felt.
“I really don’t think he needs to go to Chioggia today,” I said to her. “Do you?”
six
We tossed Big Nose overboard and washed down the deck with a bucket. It was rotten work. Ten years in a slaughterhouse wouldn’t have prepared you for it. I reluctantly threw the Tomcat in after him. Though I preferred to be armed, I couldn’t afford to be caught carrying the weapon that had killed Tecci’s men.Antonia navigated us to Chioggia. As we wove our way through the collection of masts and booms, no one even noticed our shot-up boat. Ditching the water taxi at an open slip, we proceeded on foot into the crowded town.
On the way to where Antonia’s car was parked, I asked if she’d told anyone where she was meeting me.
“No. No one,” Antonia said. “You?”
“No.” I thought for a moment. “Corta saw me at the Accademia. He had to have leaned on Francesca, or been eavesdropping from the hall. He must have told Tecci where I was staying.”
“Cazzo, porco Dio,”she swore, waving her hand with an Italian flourish. “That son of a bitch!”
“No, wait,” I said. “That’s not enough. Tecci had the yacht in place, and the water taxi. How would he know we were going to take a taxi at the Danieli unless . . . damn . . . the maid.”
“What maid? At your hotel? But you asked her to wait five hundred minutes.”
I frowned at Antonia, winding my way to reason. “Not that one.The first maid. She came in earlier. She must have bugged my phone. Right in front of me. I’m an idiot.”
“You led them right to us!” Antonia shouted, slapping me hard on the shoulder.
I stopped in my tracks and faced her down.
“What’s with you? First you punch me in the stomach, then you hit me.”
She looked at me and laughed. “I thought you said you were a stuntman, for God’s sake! Can’t take a little hit?”
“You don’t know anything about what I can take, and I suggest you don’t make it your business to find out.”
“But I have to,” she said, a tear collecting in the corner of her eye. “I have to know.”
I felt as if I’d eaten a bag of nails. “Let’s both take it easy,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to do. All right?”
She nodded.
At the next corner we took a left down a narrow cobblestone street. Each house in Chioggia was a different color, red next to blue next to yellow; they all seemed slightly off-kilter, as if the road had sunk in places. Venice was like that too. I never knew if it was me reacting like a landlubber to the watery feel of the place, or if everything was literally askew. Antonia stopped in front of a garage next to a faded red house and lifted a noisy tin roll-up door. There, in the musty old shed, was a small blue Fiat that must have been twenty years old.
Antonia walked around to the driver’s door. “Good. The key’s in there.” She got in and started it.
“Shouldn’t I be driving?” I said. “You could translate the other page.”
“Reading in a car makes me sick. Come on.”
I stepped around to the passenger side. The Fiat was as roomy as an egg.
Antonia flipped on the windshield wipers and stepped on the washer button. Now each of us could see out through a clear wet patch the width of an open book. She ground the shifter into first, lurchedout of the garage, and swerved down the street in Keystone Kops fashion.
“Why do you keep your car out here?” I said over the whine of the engine.
“It’s not mine. It was Fausto’s.”
“Oh . . . your uncle. Could you slow down, please?”
“You didn’t mind my driving in the lagoon. Am I making you nervous?”
“Absolutely!”
She pulled over and hopped out. We switched places.
I scrunched in behind the wheel and pushed the seat back, practically into the trunk. The car still felt as if it were made for a Muppet.
We parked where everybody parks when they go to Venice and made our way by ferry into town. No one was overtly watching us. The address on the card was for a small Mail Boxes, Etc.–type shop.
We stopped across the street from the place. I pulled my Leonardo page from the red backpack and passed it to her.
“Why are you giving me this?” she asked, puzzled.
“I said before, you shouldn’t be going in there, and I meant it. If I’m not out in five minutes, take off.”
Antonia looked astonished. “You’re trusting me with this?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am. Now put it away.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that she might run.
“Here,” she said, practically forcing the page on me. “Keep it. I’m going in there with you. Don’t argue with me.”
A half-dozen people were going about their business in the building,sifting through mail, filling out forms. Two old ladies badgered the clerk, a young man with long dark hair.
Box 104 was large enough to hold a good-sized toolbox. The key fit. Inside was a brown, corrugated shipping carton that almost took up the entire space. I slipped my fingers in around it and pulled it out. It was unmarked and weighed at least ten pounds. I gave it a shake.
Antonia just about jumped out of her skin. “Are youcrazy?”she hissed, clutching my arm. “What if it’s a bomb?”
“If it was a bomb, they’d be blowing up Leonardo’s notes along with us. Now let go of me.”
“No.” Antonia looked at me pleadingly, her fingers bunching the fabric of my jacket. “I want to get out of here right now. We can open it at the car.”
I glanced at the clerk, who was trying to calm the old ladies. He had three more people waiting impatiently in line. I had intended to press him about the rent
er of box 104.
We headed out the door and hustled over to the ferry, again watching to see if we were being followed. Though the boat wasn’t crowded, Antonia stood right next to me, leaning against the rail and looking around nervously.
“Do you see that man over there?” she whispered. “The one with the windbreaker and black hat pretending to read the newspaper?”
“What about him?”
“He’s been looking at me.”
I checked him out as we chugged along the canal. He seemed like an ordinary guy reading a paper. I watched the other passengers. Either everyone looked suspicious—or I was just getting Hitchcocky. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the guy with the black hat steal another glimpse at Antonia.
“You see that?” she said.“He just did it again.”
I immediately understood the look.“He’s checking you out.”
“That’s it? That’s why he’s looking at me?”
“Yeah. He digs you.”
“Digs me,” she snorted. “Nobody says ‘digs.’ Not since the sixties. Where did you grow up, in a commune?”
“Almost. Berkeley, California.”
The ferry docked. As we made our way off, I pushed past the guy with the windbreaker, giving him a little shove with my shoulder. I couldn’t help it.
We caught the bus for the short ride to the parking lot. My pulse began to race as we approached the car. The second we got there, I tore open the package.
“Guns?” Antonia gasped.
“Guns,” I repeated, feeling excitement mixed with confusion.
There were two Sig Sauer P-229s, my gun of choice, and a Miami Classic woven double shoulder holster with extra ammunition. Beneath them was a purple, velvet-covered case and a brown box. I opened the case first. It held an extremely small handgun. It was light, but substantial—super-modern-looking, mostly handle. I checked out the barrel.
“Whatisthat?” Antonia asked.
“The tiniest bore I’ve ever seen,” I told her, astonished. “Looks like it shoots mini BBs.”
I opened the box. On top was a three-inch-long piece of rubber cut from a motorcycle inner tube. Under the tube was a word-processed note. Antonia grabbed it and read:
