I’m not the only person out jogging every morning. Besides Carson, I usually see a dozen or more other runners. So I don’t pay much attention to the guy in black sweats who cuts ahead of me on the cobbled Via Dante pedestrian mall on my way to Parco Sempione. I’m too busy thinking about all the missed opportunities at Morrone’s place yesterday, even the ones that didn’t really exist.
Then I run into the guy.
He’s made of bricks and has arms like steel straps. Before I can even think what the hell? the world’s biggest bee stings my neck. I taste garlic. A metal door slides open behind me. I’m falling down a well. After what seems like forever, I hit bottom.
My head feels like somebody’s beating on it with a two-by-four. Maybe that’s why I feel like I want to puke.
I’m on my back. Whatever I’m on is smooth and hard. When I tell my arms and legs to move, they don’t. They’re still there… I think. There’s straps. I pry open my eyes, get the whirlies, and close them again.
Now there’s smoke. A cigarette. “Put that out!” I shout. It comes out like a gargle. “Barf on you.”
Laughs. At least two men. A panicky little voice in my head says you’re gonna die. They’ll boil you in olive oil. Slice you up like pepperoni. The shape I’m in, I believe it.
I try opening my eyes again. This time, the world doesn’t spin, it just rocks. The ceiling’s fuzzy. No, acoustic foam. Explains why the room’s dead. Heh heh heh he said “dead.” My head rolls to my left. I see a hand that might be mine with an IV line in it.
My first coherent thought: what the FUCK?
A guy slides into view. Olive skin, acne scars, brush-cut dark hair, a faded blue tee. The smoker. Harsh downlight shines off his nose and forehead and highlights the little thread of smoke rolling off his cig. He watches me like I’m an interesting bug. That’s how I feel, minus the “interesting” part.
He says something in not-quite-Italian, then smirks. Somebody off to my right laughs. I turn my head through thick Jell-O to see the other guy. It’s Mongo from Blazing Saddles. Don’t shoot him, you’ll only make him mad.
“Signore,” Smoker says.
I figure he’s talking to me. I push my head through some more Jell-O and focus on him as well as I can focus at all. I’m still more confused than scared, though the balance is tipping the other way now. “Who you?”
He takes a drag, drops the butt on the floor, then pulls another from a red pack I can’t read. “I ask you that question, signore. Who are you?” A chain-smoker’s voice, raspy.
Who am I? Can I conceal myself for evermore? No, that’s not right. But that question jolts me out of the fog. The fear’s taking over. My cover’s broken. Did Belknap sell me out to Morrone? Is this my last stop before I become part of a footing for a parking garage?
My brain goes from stoner to blind panic in a heartbeat. Like when the FBI came through the gallery door and put cuffs on me. I close my eyes and work very hard to concen—
Something long and thin slams into my stomach. Whack. My eyes jerk open, my body bucks automatically and the straps chew into my arms and legs. It triples the pain and shock. I catch Mongo pulling away one of those bamboo swords they use in kendo. He looks bored.
“No sleep, signore,” Smoker says. He’s not bored exactly, but he’s seen more exciting stuff. “You pretend to be a Hoskins. Why?”
I try to scrape together my few coherent thoughts while I wait for my heart to stop crawling out of my chest. “I’m Hoskins. Richard Hoskins. U.S. citizen. What is this? Who are you?”
Whack.
Shit!
“That is not so, signore. You are Matthew Friedrich, U.S. citizen. We know this, it is true. Why do you pretend?”
“Who told you that?”
“You do.”
What? While I was drugged? “I wouldn’t say that. It’s—”
“You do not.” Smoker pats the fingers of my left hand. His skin feels like 40-grit sandpaper. I almost scream. “Your fingers say it. Fingerprints, si? We have friends in America.”
Where’d they get my fingerprints? How…
The party. My Champagne flute.
Another fear flare: did they run Carson’s prints too? Is she here? What are they doing to her?
“What do you want?” It comes out like a squeal. “Who are you?”
Smoker takes a couple long drags. He’s got plenty of time. “Why do you pretend? What do you want with Morrone?”
I don’t even know what I start to say because the kendo sword crashes into me. I buck and my arms feel like they’re coming out of their sockets. Plus, on landing I slam the back of my head into what sounds like stainless steel. It’s a gurney. I’m on a gurney. I’m gonna die on a gurney.
Smoker fiddles with something I can’t see. “We try a new thing, signore. Make the talking easy for you.” He brings up a syringe. The light glints off the needle.
I hate needles. I fucking HATE needles. I try to yank my arm out of the way when he reaches for my hand, but it won’t move. He holds my hand against the steel table, pokes the needle into the plastic thing on my IV feed. Garlic again.
I have no idea what happens next.
The next thing I remember, I’m still on the gurney. I still have a headache. Everything between my armpits and my knees aches like a sonofabitch. This time, I do barf. Not much comes out. It’s not the first time—my face feels crusty.
What happened? Did I talk? What did I say?
I try to shift and still can’t. I move enough to tell I’ve peed myself. My inner five-year-old burns with the shame. Jason Bourne wouldn’t do that.
You’re not Jason Bourne.
“Mr. Friedrich. You come back to us.” A familiar voice. A few seconds later, Lucca Morrone saunters into view. His shirt is a deep red, the color of port or coagulating blood. He stands at the edge of my gurney, gently tapping his fingertips on the steel. “You talk… very much. You tell us many things. Some of these things interest me, many do not.”
What did I say?
“This Allyson—” oh, Jesus, no “—she is a very interesting woman. And the girl who works for Lorenzoni, what is her name? Yes, Gianna. It surprises me, you are so attracted to both, but I think they are very different, yes?”
What did I SAY?
“And the Carson woman.” He shakes his head. “Why do you not have the sex with her when you want to? I think she is very fond of you, yes?”
WHAT DID I SAY?
My face must be putting on a show, because he laughs and slaps the edge of the gurney. “Do not worry so. Your women do not concern me. What interests me is why you are here.”
I blabbed everything. I probably told him my shoe size. This is the most epic of epic fails. I have to look up to see whale shit. If I’m lucky, he’ll shoot me now.
Please shoot me now.
Lucca crosses his arms and looks at me like I’m the most miserable invertebrate in the world. “You think you can find all those paintings my brother keeps.” He chuckles. It’s that ridiculous.
Stop gloating and kill me. My only regret is I can’t warn Gianna and Carson. What will he do to them? I finally scrape up enough will to speak. “Don’t hurt them.” Even whispering takes all the wind out of me.
He frowns. “Hurt? Who?”
“Gianna. Carson. Please. Not them.”
He laughs again. I’m just amazingly stupid, I guess. “To hurt them does not interest me. Yet. I want them to be alive. And you.” He plants his hands on the gurney and leans close to me. “I want to find the paintings also. You find them and give to me, yes? If you do, you can go. You can do all those things to your women.”
Uh… what? “You don’t… know where?”
“No.” He straightens and folds his arms again. His expression says I’m still a bug, just not as interesting. “For more than the year, no. He hides them from us, from the locale.”
My brain is starting to put itself back together again. Unfortunately, that means I’m becoming coherent enough to be scared. What happens if I don’t find the paintings? “Why’d he hide them from you?”
“My brother hides them from everyone. It is how he stays alive.”
My brain’s still stuttering, so this doesn’t make sense at first. But then I flash back to something that zipped through my mind when we were waiting to see Morrone at the party: Why haven’t the Russians killed him yet? Why is he still alive?
And it clicks. He’s still alive because only he knows where the art is. The Russians know this; so do his own people. As long as he has it, nobody will risk killing him and flushing all that money. “They’re… not his?”
“No. They belong to the locale. It is our money. He forgets this.”
I pick up a little brotherly resentment there. “How many paintings? Dozens?”
Lucca turns up his hands. “I do not know. A year past, there are two hundred maybe.”
Two hundred? Holy shit. That explains how they can peel off a dozen for a coke deal.
“You will do this.” Lucca looms over me. “I do not tell anyone what I know… yet. You find these paintings and give them to me so the locale may control them again. I give you five days. If you do not succeed, I kill one of your women. You choose which.”
He says it like he’s talking about replacing the carpet in my hotel room. My throat twists shut.
“Then you have four days. If you still do not succeed, I kill another. Then three days. Then I kill the third. Every time, I give you video so you can watch. Two days after, I tell my brother, and he will kill you himself. It will not be an easy death. Do you understand me, Matthew Friedrich?”
I can’t get a word past the brick paver in my throat, but yes, I fully understand. I finally manage to nod.
“Very good. If your women hide, we find them, the way we find you. If you tell my brother of this, I will kill you—” he snaps his fingers “—in the way the Russians do. Very painful, very ugly. If you tell the polizia, I do the same. Do you understand this?”
I nod again.
“Very good. This is the end of our business for now. I give you the number you can ring if you have information. Arrivederci, Mr. Friedrich. Yes, I will see you again.”
Then Smoker puts out my lights.