In the cramped space allotted the Roosevelt’s two NCIS agents, a short man named Alfreds smoked and read, blinking with fatigue and now and then waving his own smoke away with the hand that held the cigarette. He was reviewing message traffic, putting papers into piles that made sense to him and nobody else. When his partner entered, he hardly looked up.
“What a can of worms,” the newcomer said. He threw a pad on the desk.
Alfreds grunted.
“I didn’t get zilch.”
Alfreds grunted again. He had been holding the cigarette in his mouth; now, when he tried to take it out, it stuck to his lower lip and he peeled it away as if he were taking skin off.
“So what do I do?”
Alfreds winced. “What are you talking about?”
“The Ruiz kid. PFL 719. Assault?”
“Interview him again.”
The partner groaned and poured himself coffee. Alfreds handed him a piece of paper. “What’s this?”
“Message from NCIS Washington.”
“What, the admiral’s dog is missing?”
“Some guy. ‘Surveil but do not alert. National security implications.’ I pulled him up, Bonner, he’s ship’s company, clean, it’s just routine. I gave it a case number.” He waved at a dead computer screen.
“‘National security implications.’ Swell. What, a terrorist?”
“Probably security violation, like he left classified stuff in his locker. Something. Anyway, check him out, make a schedule for where he’s gonna be, watches, the usual. All we’re being asked to do is make sure he’s here, make sure we can contact him. NCIS Naples will pick him up if he goes ashore.”
“Jesus Christ! I got Ruiz; I got the phantom shitter in propulsion; I got nine skinheads maybe conspiring to commit a hate crime, and we barely made it to the Med yet! Give me a break.”
Alfreds took out another cigarette. “I did. I took the Jesus freak who says he can hear a fairy giving freebies in the marine head.” He snapped a plastic lighter, inhaled. “Can’t you just hardly wait until we have women on board, and see what sort of shit we get then?”
The Hotel Rienzi had a tattered elegance that had been marginally fresher in Alan’s boyhood. It had been an English hotel then, favored by those British travelers who hated Naples on principle and retreated to its tea and chintz and copies of Queen as to a little bit of England. These had been the things that had attracted his mother, too, and she had taken him there once for five days when she had left his father—temporarily, that time. Now, it was a bittersweet reminder, a kind of home. He hadn’t brought Kim here, of course.
He ate at a familiar backstreet restaurant, thought of Rose (another romantic place, alone). He walked. He tried to think of things to do, but he had done the only thing he had to: he had telephoned Reicher from Paris, told him he was moving to Naples to follow a lead; after a pause, Reicher had said, “Have a good time.”
Mike Dukas was exhausted when he arrived late in the evening. “How’d you find this place?” he groaned, looking around the Rienzi.
“My checkered youth.”
“Pretty checkered. I haven’t seen so much flower-printed shit since I visited my aunt at the retirement village. Christ, I’m tired. Anything new?”
Alan told him about the communications plans as they went up in the massive mahogany elevator. Dukas was impressed, at least until he heard that the plans were incomplete.
“How many places?”
“Eleven. I can identify Naples, Rome, Venice, maybe Athens, somewhere in Germany. You may recognize some of the others.”
“But you’re sure about Naples.”
“Absolutely.” He told Dukas about the Galleria, the telephone, the eleven o’clock and seven o’clock times. “I’ve walked over it; it all matches. Tomorrow at eleven, Donnie Marengo should be sitting there. Your people need to stake it out, ditto the landing area from the carrier, then they pick up Bonner and—”
Dukas was making sarcastic, too-vigorous head nods. “Sure they do. Sure they do!” He waited until they were in the room, which he looked at quickly with amazement—floral lampshades, flounced bedspreads, duvets, bronze statuary—before he said, “NCIS Naples has eighteen agents. They cover the busiest region in the Med. Italy’s a great country, nice people, but they’re too chummy with Gadhafi; every one of our guys here has more terrorist leads to chase down than he’s got days in the week. They also got the usual caseload of deadbeat dads, petty thieves, busted security—everything a cop in a small American city has, plus terrorists, security risks, gays, you name it. You know how many Navy people are in southern Italy and this part of the Med?” He fell backward on the bed. “I’m wiped, man. But I got a meeting at NCIS in twenty-five minutes to work it out.” He rolled on an elbow. “I’ll try for a surveillance team at your Galleria with a tap on the payphone, so we know where the kid is going from there. We’ll try to get a double team of followers, two cars and a couple guys at least on foot—the kid may have a car, right?—so we’ll ask for ten agents. Probably we won’t get them. It’s gonna be Sunday, right? Plus at least four, five, will be in Spain or someplace. Malta. I dunno. Oh, man, I’m tired.”
“Can you set it up by eleven?”
“Roosevelt doesn’t anchor until late afternoon. Plenty of time.”
“In the comm plan, the first meet time is eleven.”
“So what? Marengo goes and waits, his father’s still on the Roosevelt; he goes to the phone, no call, he goes to his hotel or whatever and comes back in the evening; then we get them. Eleven o’clock is a dry run.”
“When he should be followed, Mike! You got photos of Bonner?”
“They’re supposed to be faxing them today. Anyway, the real work starts once dad hits the beach. Seven tomorrow evening? Good, still daylight. But Jeez, if he doesn’t make that meet and it goes over into Monday, even Tuesday! Christ, I’ll have a hard time holding all those guys that long. They got jobs to do, Al!”
“We’ve got to be ready to hit them.”
“For what?” Dukas’s eyes were red from rubbing. “For what? A kid with leave meets his dad who’s on liberty. What do we hit them for?”
“If they follow the comm plan, it’s conspiracy.”
Dukas shook his head. “No, it isn’t. Anyway, your comm plan is pie in the sky until we actually see Marengo in your Galleria. Bonner may have cooked up a completely new plan. I would.”
“You’re you. Bonner’s different.”
“How do you know?”
Alan stared at the ladylike wallpaper, not seeing it. “He’s a follower. He’s afraid. He sticks to things he knows. I see it in his record.”
Dukas grunted. “We’ll see. Plus we need at least two guys to pick up Bonner when he comes off the boat tomorrow afternoon. The NCIS guys on board’ll make him before he leaves the carrier, identify the boat he takes ashore, telephone in so we can find him easily. Then they follow him until he meets his boy. Then—If they pass anything, we’re made. Anything. Pray God they do. So much as a confidential instruction manual, we got them. If not, we’ll try to surveil them; if the office here can spring for a focused mike, we’ll maybe pick them up saying something incriminating.” He pointed at Alan, and suddenly he was not a worn-out, pudgy man but a martinet. “And you stay out of it!”
“I’m in it, Mike.”
“You’re here for the ride. You let the pros handle it.”
Alan met the hard, weary eyes. “I’ll let the pros handle it until something goes wrong. I’ve come a little far to watch this get wrecked by some slob with Christmas leave on his mind. That said, I’m used to flying in the back seat, okay?”
On the Roosevelt’s flight deck, a single helicopter waited for the deck officer’s signal to take off. Most of the deck was dark, marker lights and reflectors showing safety lanes and the limits of the deck. Only the chopper pad was lit, waiting for the late COD to Gaeta to leave.
The rotors flup-flupped faster and the engine came to full power. The deck officer gave a signal.
The chopper rose.
A face peered out from the helicopter’s rear window.
POI Sheldon Bonner was airborne.
In the light of early morning, if you have eyes to see it, Naples is a fresh and sparkling place. The sea washes the quays; fishermen wash the stones where they mend nets or unload fish. The bay glitters.
But Bonner did not have eyes to see the life of the place. He hated Naples, hated the thieves and pimps and hookers he thought waited for him in every doorway. And he was afraid.
He had landed at Gaeta near four in the morning, taking the place of another POI who was supposed to be bringing in classified photos. The photo officer had okayed the change: Bonner was legal. He had a port-visit card.
Bonner had done what he was supposed to, turned over the photos to the watch officer at Gaeta, then got his ass into town; and then he had had to wait out the hours in places he neither knew nor understood. He knew there were NCIS agents on every carrier; sometime, they might come looking for him, because hadn’t they wanted to do another interview in Florida?
And then the message from Donnie. Grandad very sick.
His gut heaved. It should be as wrung out as an old mop, he thought, but still it was boiling in there, rumbling, getting ready to spurt out of him, Jesus Christ, the crud was all he needed in this godawful place. He had gone into the first hotel where he had seen a light, a place full of whores, he thought, a terrible place, not even clean, Jesus. Now he staggered into the tiny head and sat and felt his fear gush, hot, stinking, and he rubbed his eyes and held back a bubble in his throat, knowing there was more, always more, because fear was relentless.
They had got to Donnie somehow. Bonner had had to go to sea knowing that, some goddam NCIS agent jerking his son around, because of that bitch wife, he said. Well, it might be. But not likely. They were on to him, on to Donnie. Grandad very sick.
He had lain awake the rest of that truncated night, thinking it all through. Again and again. No matter how he thought it, it always came out wrong. And where was Carl?
Contact Carl. That was all he could think of. Somehow, he had to get to Carl himself. Not the substitute who had showed up, some nebbish, clueless—how could Carl hire such people? He thought of Carl, in Iran or somewhere, maybe out of reach; it was like a knife stab. He needed Carl.
Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe Donnie’ll be there, he’ll remember all the plan, he’s smart; he’ll go to the Galleria, wait, go to the phone box, get the call, then we’ll meet. Bonner tried to clean himself up, felt dirty all over, stinking, got in the shower. Cold. Jesus, what a dump. You could get the clap here. AIDS.
Drying himself, he looked out the window again. The day did not sparkle for him. He was bone-weary and afraid, and he wanted help from his control and he wanted protection for his son, and for the first time, he regretted all of it. Mostly for Donnie’s sake.
He had to unlock the hotel’s outer door himself to get out. He almost panicked when he saw it—being locked in, it was like prison! How could they lock you in a hotel—suppose there was a fire? What a hellhole.
The streets were quiet, not yet dusty. He walked. A few people out, paying no attention to him. Smells of bitter coffee, bread, fish. He walked and walked. Up the hill, not so far from that road where he had last met Carl, a million years ago. Up there on the Vomero, he found a place that sold him milky coffee and bread and little curls of butter; pretty good. A woman his age who smiled at him as she served him; she spoke a few words of English.
If he could find that place on the road again, he’d have Donnie meet him there. But he wasn’t sure where it was. He thought of asking the woman, but then she’d remember him, remember what he’d asked. He could imagine an NCIS agent talking to her, then going to the place. No good.
This place? Not bad—you could see in both directions, plus an alley across the street you could maybe cut out by. No. No, you needed an escape close by. Jesus, why hadn’t he done this years ago? He had meant to; he really had. He’d told himself that using Carl’s plan wasn’t enough, he should have his own plan, his own escape. But he hadn’t. He depended on Carl. Wasn’t that what he was for? Wasn’t that what he made so much money for? Because, of course, Carl must make lots of money.
Bonner’s guts heaved and he went to the filthy gabinetto; when he came out, the woman smiled at him, pushed something at him. Some little glass of foul shit. “Good,” she said. “For the, you know, inside.” She had heard him exploding in the head. Jesus. She meant well. She pointed at a bottle: Fernet Branca. He drank it. Bitter! Christ, like the worst thing you ever tasted! But, he thought, something that bad had to be good for you. Then she asked him to pay for the stuff, and he thought it was just more of the old con, and he went away angry.
Down into the city again, avoiding the places he usually went, walking along the seawall but avoiding the docks the Navy used; they might be looking for him. Still, he had his card, good until tonight. But if they picked him up, he thought, he was dead. Until he talked to Donnie, he was dead. Because he was worried sick for the kid’s sake, he wouldn’t know what to do or say.
Carl would have known. Anger against Carl rose up: Why the fuck had he got Donnie into this? Why had Carl made him? Now they needed help, and where was Carl?
The main thing was for them to get together. Find out why Donnie had sent him the grandad message, then calm each other down. Make up a story, if they needed one. Then contact Carl somehow. But it was hard to think, because he was tormented by questions, seeming to come at him from all over his brain: Was Donnie on the run? What happened when his own liberty expired? How close were the NCIS goons? What had that bitch said? What did she know? Had Donnie screwed up somehow?
Zurich, he thought. If he could get to Zurich, he could get at his money, another passport. Then they could buy their way to Iran.
Or Athens. Athens was the fallback from Naples. It was no good trying to leave a help message in Naples until he knew the place was safe enough to stay in a couple days; he had to feel more secure before he’d do that. Anyway, he hated Naples. Athens was okay. Stuttgart was lots better. Maybe, if he got at his money, he and Donnie would go to Stuttgart, signal Carl, get flown to Iran. If things were bad. If things were really bad.
But maybe they weren’t. Maybe it was just that Donnie was new at it and had panicked.
Of course, that was it.
But he was a smart kid, sensible. Had his shit together.
No, it was something serious.
Bonner walked out along the bay toward Mergellina and found a café a little back from the water, about a hundred feet up a kind of alley. A tiny place. You could watch both ways up and down the alley from one of the three tables, and anybody coming up or down would have to be right on top of you before he’d see there was a break in the houses right there next to the café. Bonner walked back there, found a kind of little square, three more alleys going off it. Good. Or not bad, anyway. He walked back to the café, checked it out. Got the name. Figured how to describe it, how to tell Donnie over the telephone. It would work. He felt better. Even his gut felt better. That damned woman’s bad-tasting stuff had worked. It would be okay.
It would be a piece of cake.
Unless they followed Donnie. Suppose they followed him? They’d stake out the Galleria, pick him up, they had teams of guys with nothing to do but that, all sorts of electronic shit, detectors and eavesdropping stuff, they could listen to you a hundred yards away. They’d follow Donnie here and arrest them.
For what?
For Donnie being AWOL.
Was he that stupid? Maybe, if he panicked. Jesus, not knowing was killing him!
The first meet time was eleven-ten; that was when Donnie was supposed to be at the telephone. He should get to the Galleria about ten forty-five. That was part of Carl’s plan, so his people could look Bonner over, check him out for anybody following, stuff like that. Bonner didn’t have anybody to do that now, but he saw how wise Carl was. Of course. You checked it out.
He began to walk toward the Galleria. It was a little after nine. He would do two things: check that the phone was there and the number was the same; and go upstairs and look down into the Galleria floor, see what was up. Maybe see Donnie. Then, if anything was wrong—
What?
Warn him. Somehow. The hat. The Orioles hat worn backward as a signal. He had the hat in his tote bag. Christ, that would be iffy.
Bonner walked through the still-clean sunshine without seeing it, past the curving, eroded stones of Renaissance doorways and old grandeur, not seeing them, across the Via Chiaia and along the Via Santa Croce, beginning to fill now with people heading for church, for Sunday-dinner shopping, not seeing them. This was a busy street, a main drag, a thoroughfare of choking traffic and shop after shop after shop; Donnie will walk along here in an hour. The thought made him hurt inside.
He walked past the entrance of the Galleria, glancing in, seeing the broad expanse of marble floor, the glass dome four stories above. He had waited here for the call from Carl. Only a few tables out now for the cafés, an old guy walking across in a black coat; a little huddle of men far over. Americans? He had had only a glimpse.
The Galleria took up what would have been most of a city block in the States. It had several entrances. He walked around another side, looked in. There were the same people. Yes, all men. Americans, yes, he thought so. Then he was past. He made another right turn and he was coming up on the south entrance, the street heading down toward it so that there was a flight of stone steps down from the floor level of the Galleria. Making himself walk slowly. There was the telephone. Two guys by the telephone. Behind it, sort of. He passed the entrance, looked in. There was the cluster of men. Four. Americans. One with a beeper on his hip.
Jesus. But Italians were crazy about beepers, cellphones. They called each other up just to use the goddam things. The beeper meant nothing.
The beeper sounded. Bonner made himself slow down. He made himself look away. Watch the guys by the phone.
An American voice: “Oh, shit, I gotta call the office. He through with that phone yet?”
Another American voice: “Keep it down, for Christ’s sake.”
The first voice: “Fuck you, it’s Sunday, I’m supposed to be off duty.”
Bonner stopped. He turned a little and looked at the two by the telephone.
One of them had the instrument unscrewed and was doing something with a tool.
He was bugging the fucking telephone. In broad daylight!
Bonner was astonished at how calm he made himself appear as he realized that his worst fears had come true.
An hour later, Alan and Mike Dukas were waiting where a side street joined the shopping thoroughfare. The street was busy now, cars and scooters whizzing past, people strolling, smiling, waving. Only a sliver of sunlight made it through the tightly packed buildings, and it glistened as blonde hair or white shirts flashed through it. The pace was quick, the air electric, as if everybody in the world would have a good time that day.
Alan thought they stood out as Americans, even American military, maybe even as some kind of cops. He wasn’t a cop, but Mike was; Alan felt one by association. “We should have changed,” he said. “Into what, Italians?” Dukas growled. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses and a purple warmup jacket and white cross-trainers, and he did not look inconspicuous to Alan. He was also wearing a headset that connected him with the NCIS team inside the Galleria, but maybe the headset looked like a Walkman.
“What if he sees us?”
“What if he does?”
“He knows you, Mike.”
Dukas grunted. He had still not had enough sleep. “Let the Naples guys handle it. They got it scoped.”
Alan would believe it when he saw it. He hadn’t had enough sleep, either, lying awake, going over and over it, thinking of loopholes, screwups, the scene with Rose’s parents at the truck stop eons (what, four days?) before. He willed it away: Rose was flying, his son was in good hands, and this was his only shot.
He didn’t like the part where Donnie Marengo was supposed to wait in the Galleria. It didn’t feel right. It was okay for Bonner and Efremov, he thought—Efremov had designed it, after all—because Efremovmust have had other people and it gave him an opportunity to watch Bonner; but it made no sense for Bonner, alone. Maybe they won’t do it that way, he thought. But he had thought about a lot of things during the night. Bonner, his father, Rose. And how good life would seem if this thing ever ended.
“There he is,” Mike said.
Alan jerked upright; his heartbeat jumped. He stared up the street.
“In the green jacket, the tall kid, no hat. No shades.”
“I’ve got him.” Alan had seen a photograph of Marengo; he was not sure he would have recognized him. Now, he thought, the boy looked terribly young and sick with worry or fear. He was coming down the far side of the street toward the Galleria, which was half a block beyond Alan and Mike. He walked steadily and not at all like a tourist, seeming to see nothing, avoiding people by simply swinging his body, never changing his course.
Alan looked at his watch. Ten thirty-six. A little early. If the NCIS guys weren’t in place—
When he looked up, something had changed. Faster movement was taking place near Donnie Marengo—somebody moving, Alan thought, toward the boy at an angle as if he or she had sprung from the stone wall. Somebody up there saw it too, felt it as the person shoved past; a head turned; Alan had a quick sense that he was seeing something familiar—American, out of place here, Orioles, a baseball cap on backward—and the person, man, it was a man, came up close to Marengo and then turned to the curb and began to run across the street, cars whizzing, a motorcycle roaring up and then trying to turn aside, skidding, the rider starting to spin out—
“It’s Bonner!” Alan shouted.
“What the hell—!”
Donnie Marengo—where was Marengo? Alan searched the street. Behind him, Dukas was hissing into the headset, “It’s busted, it looks like it’s busted!” The motorcyclist had saved himself but had stalled and was heeling over; a few voices were shouting; horns sounded. The Orioles cap had made Alan’s side of the street and turned away from him, and he was aware of it out of the corner of his eye and then it was gone. And, almost at the far cross street, Marengo’s green jacket was showing its back to him.
“Get the car!” he shouted at Dukas.
“Why?”
“Get the fucking car!” Alan started to run.
“Where? To go where?”
“Stay near a phone!”
He sprinted to the crowd that had formed around the cyclist, searching for Bonner, the baseball cap, some way out of the street that Bonner had used; but every shop had a door he might have gone through, and there was an alley. He cursed, saw the choices liked crossed blades, the chance to catch Bonner the broken one because he didn’t really know what Bonner looked like and he didn’t know where he had gone. He decided to cut his losses and made for the son. He used the crowd as a shield to cross the street through the stopped and now angry cars; making the sidewalk on the far side, he dodged after Marengo’s distant spot of brilliant green. He didn’t have to sprint then, only trot, saying scusi, scusi, the childhood Italian coming back. Marengo never looked behind him. He was good, in a way, because he was obedient: he had got a signal, and he had obeyed. The hat, Alan thought, it must have been the hat, the kid’d know it anywhere. Naïveté served Marengo pretty well, for he was walking away at a good clip but not running, showing no guilt, no nervousness—a sailor with leave papers in his pocket who’d changed his mind about where he was going.
They went up the Via Santa Croce, Alan a hundred feet behind, Marengo walking quickly; the boy turned down toward the harbor, a damp stone alleyway lined with vegetable and fruit stands, many fewer people; Alan had to draw back, count five, look, and then start down more slowly so he didn’t get too close. Now Marengo looked back, only a glance, more likely looking for his father than for pursuit. Did he make me? Alan wondered; and, continuing on, he took off his blazer and carried it over his shoulder, then worked the sunglasses out of the pocket and put them on, trying to make himself look different.
Marengo turned right again, crossed a double line of traffic, and headed into the vast piazza above the Palazzo Reale, where two curved arms of stone columns seem to reach to embrace the pigeons and the minivans and the people there.
Alan had to resist hurling himself among the cars—better to make no waves—but he was saying obscenity after obscenity inside his head from pure frustration, disappointment, rage. They had missed him! Somehow, Bonner had known what was going down and he had warned his son. Now where would they go? Thirteen other cities on the communications plan, and which one would they pick?
He entered the piazza and saw Marengo’s green jacket skirting a cluster of men and girls; bright colors fluttered in the breeze that blew from the bay. A glorious day. But not for this.
He had to get in touch with Mike. The Naples NCIS agents had beepers and cellphones; Dukas had taken a headset and a beeper but they had deliberately not given Alan one. He was to be an observer. Now he was the one following the quarry, and he had no way to communicate. At least Mike would warn the others. And then—? If Mike got their rental car, he would be about three blocks away now, picking it up at the hotel. Then all he had to do was find Alan in a city of two million people.
Marengo left the piazza on the far side and headed into a small street. The green jacket disappeared behind a yellow-brown corner of a building. Alan hurried his pace past the bright skirts and running suits, the laughing young men, a cat washing its underarm, and crossed into shadow on the far side, turned into the small street and—found it empty.
Empty. As if nothing moved there, nothing lived.
Halfway down, a small sign. Hotel Stella Originale.
He walked down almost on tiptoe. It was like walking through somebody else’s dream.
“Signore?”
The only living thing in the hotel was a middle-aged man with a pocked face, the hooded look of a satisfied hawk.
“C’e un’ uomo a entrato qui, momento fa?’ He met the hooded eyes—tough guy, Roman emperor, cynic, poet. “Uno giovane, nell’ verde.” It was like an old film. Alan took out a wallet, removed ten thousand lire, twenty, handed them across the high counter. “E cosa della mia sorella.” A matter of my sister. Well, why not? He would have told any lie just then, to find the boy. The fantasy sister was greeted with the faintest of smiles.
The hooded eyes opened slightly, the brows rose and the chin went up and to the left half an inch: upstairs.
“Telefono?” He handed over another ten thousand. The man took his end of the bill but didn’t draw it from Alan’s fingers, keeping a link between them like an unsealed bargain; he said in Italian, No rough stuff.
Not here, Alan said in Italian.
A cat walked in from the shaded street and jumped up on the counter and began to wash itself. Not the cat he had seen in the piazza. The man seemed to know it, stroked its head.
There was a telephone in an alcove in a paneled box like something from another century, a kind of sedan chair with a solid door. He found that his hands were shaking when he put the card in; the NCIS office number seemed to ring and ring, and he was cursing inside his head and hating them for the delay, although it was only three rings before a voice said, “NCIS, Moran speaking.”
“This is Lieutenant Craik, Case NIGHT WATCH. I’ve got to get in touch with the visiting agent from the States. Mike Dukas.”
“What’s this about?”
It’s about my life, dumbfuck! but he said what it was about; he said it was an emergency; please, he had to reach Dukas’s beeper, do it, now, get on the stick, this is my life! The man on the other end got it the second time around and said he’d see what he could do.
Then he hung up and waited for Dukas to call him. Feeling the time going by like blood dripping from a wrist.
He pushed the paneled door open with his foot and leaned out so he could watch the counter. The cat continued its bath. The man stood behind it with folded arms. Sounds of car horns came in the door. Donnie Marengo came out of the one-lunger elevator and stood by the counter to pay his bill.
Alan balanced the choices—tackle him or follow him—and the telephone rang and he sank back into the sedan chair and pulled the door almost closed and said, “Mike?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“He’s ready to split, Mike. He’s checking out of his hotel.”
“Where?”
“The Piazza Reale. The big one with the arms and the huge empty space? I showed you last night. Oh, shit, Mike, by the Royal Palace—”
“I’ll get there. Where?”
“On the west side, there’s a little street. Oh, shit. A hotel, the Stella Originale. It’s down that street. I’ll try to be outside, near the piazza. I’m wearing—”
“You’re wasting our time.” Dukas hung up.
Alan looked out. Marengo was gone.
“Dove?” he asked the hawk.
The head moved, the chin pointed. That way. Out.
“Sparutto!”
But the man was not without sympathy for somebody having a problem with a sister, even an invented one, or perhaps he merely liked melodrama. “Eh,” he said. “C’e un automobile.”
“Dove?”
A cocked eyebrow, a small gesture of fingers and thumb. Another ten thousand lire note passed between them. Then the information: the kid who parked the hotel cars rented five spaces from the police in the No Parking area next to the Palazzo. Go to the Piazza, turn right, down to the—
Alan was out the door and running, up to the Piazza, turn right, down to the broad avenue that ran along the Palazzo Reale—and there was Dukas, driving slowly, looking for him, and there was Donnie Marengo, driving fast in the other direction.
Alan began to sprint.