“Io sono Luigi.” He offered his hand to me. “Maggie?”
“Sí, ciao,” I said, using a tenth of the Italian words I know.
“S’okay,” he said. “I got pretty good English.”
“This is Jean-Paul,” I said.
“Luigi Cadelago,” Luigi said, giving Jean-Paul’s hand a virile pumping. “Sorry I’m late. Delivery, you know? So, where we go?”
“What’s your schedule?” Jean-Paul asked, ushering me into the van. There was a single, not very wide bench seat to accommodate the three of us. Very cozy, but at least the cab did not smell of fish.
“After Ravenna, next is Bologna,” Luigi said, holding the door for Jean-Paul to climb in beside me. “Then a stop here, there, some other places. Last is Parma. Every day the same. Deliver the fish, pick up the meat and cheese, drop it off in Ravenna, go home, sleep, meet the fishing boats tomorrow morning, start all over.”
He ran around and climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. The Barber of Seville blasted from quad speakers. Shouting over the music he said, “Except today, deliver fish, pick up friends of Guido. So, where you go?”
“Bologna first,” I said, gesturing toward the volume knob and smiling at him.
“Sure, sure.” He turned down the sound. “Then where?”
“And then maybe on to Parma. I’ve always wanted to see Parma. Have you, Jean-Paul?”
“Of course, yes.” He looked at me and shrugged. Why not? “Unless we are charmed and decide to stay on in Bologna.”
Bologna, the first stop, was a fast hour’s drive away. Luigi wended his way through the narrow streets of the ancient market area—the Quadrilatero, he told us—and parked half-on, half-off the sidewalk. I could smell the market even before he opened the van door. Curious, happy to stretch our legs, we got out and kibitzed with him while he prepared his delivery. A cloud of cold vapor washed over us when he opened the van’s double back doors. First Luigi checked a computer-generated order form atop a clipboard, climbed inside and pushed half a dozen cartons toward the doors. He pulled a barcode scanner off his belt and flashed it over a line of code on the order form and then the line of code on the end of each carton. Satisfied, he loaded the scanned cartons onto a hand truck, told us he would be five minutes, and set off at a jog into the narrow alleyways of the market.
I smelled bread, and meat, garlic and earthy spices. I turned to Jean-Paul. “Who knows what’s ahead. Think we should lay in some emergency provisions?”
With a nod, he took my hand and we followed Luigi, but at a somewhat slower pace. To save time, we divided our list and dashed into the shops nearest the entrance, regretting that we didn’t have longer to explore the medieval marketplace. When we met again, Jean-Paul had collected a chunk of mortadella and a wedge of Parmigiano, a bottle of still water and a bottle of Prosecco. I held open the net bag I had acquired and he added his purchases to the carrots, figs, apples, and bread still warm from the oven that I found in the shops. As an afterthought, we ducked into a cutlery shop and bought a paring knife with a five-inch blade. Luigi was just locking the back of his van when we rejoined him.
Luigi set our bag behind the seat. Immediately, the smells of fresh bread and garlicky mortadella filled the cab.
“Makes me hungry,” Luigi said with a grin as he maneuvered through the narrow streets of the city center and out onto the toll road toward Parma.
“Would you like something to eat?” I asked.
“No, no,” he said with a glance at the dashboard clock; it was just nine-thirty. “You keep for later. We get to Reggio nell’Emilia, we get a little caffè corretto, maybe nice little snack to keep our strength up until lunchtime.”
Luigi wanted to talk about television. His cousin, Guido, was a big shot in the family because he worked in Hollywood. I didn’t have the heart to tell Luigi that our studio was out in the far-from-glamorous San Fernando Valley, and anyway Luigi, clearly happy to have people to talk to during his time on the road, didn’t leave an opening in his conversational stream for us to add much more than a nod or two-syllable response. He told us that Guido made sure that his family saw every bit of film he worked on. Luigi’s grandmother, who was Guido’s aunt, would invite all the neighbors in to watch whatever Guido sent over. They thought that Guido was handsome enough to be a movie star, and maybe were a little disappointed that he wasn’t, but they were still very proud of his job. And of course, then, they knew who I was because my name and my face show up on many of the films Guido has worked on over the last fifteen years.
“Soon as I saw you, I knew it was you, Maggie MacGowen,” Luigi said, dodging a big rig that was straining up a steep grade. “I see you all the time on the TV. You look pretty good. My grandma thinks you should let Guido talk sometimes. You know, let her see his face.”
“Something to think about,” I said. Guido, I knew, didn’t want to be on camera. He was very happy doing what he does so well. But that was a topic my film partner could discuss with his family, not I.
We came out of gently rolling foothills, barren in winter, onto a broad, flat plain. Luigi exited the toll road at Modena and made a round of fast deliveries at several small restaurants while we waited in the van. The last stop before returning to the toll road was at the Lamborghini factory.
“They eat good at Lamborghini,” he said, climbing back into the driver’s seat when he was finished. “Better than across the river at Ferrari.”
We were on a secondary road headed toward the town of Reggio nell’Emilia when the phone in Jean-Paul’s pocket dinged. There was a text from AnoNino. As soon as Jean-Paul opened it, a cascade of texts followed.
“Merde alors,” he muttered.
“What?”
“I asked AnoNino to sign up for crouchingdragon’s challenge to hackers so that he could monitor everything that came in.” He held the phone so I could see the images people had sent in hope of winning the prize for locating us. One after the other, shots of men and women that resembled us in some way, sometimes couples, sometimes singles, had been posted, with location. Many of the images were grainy, apparently taken by security cameras, others were quite sharp, perhaps snapped by telephones. Most were shots of strangers. But some were of us.
There was a sequence of shots following our progress up the Canale Candiano in the yacht’s motor launch that morning. Boats carry transponders. Clearly, someone had hacked the system and tracked Roddy’s yacht to Ravenna harbor, and then hacked into security cameras attached to the cabins along the fishing pier. Each shot came from a different angle, had different quality, but they were all clear enough to be recognizable; Jean-Paul, me, Horst, and the first mate, all in profile, motoring up the canal. The very last entry in the sequence was a video, just a few frames, shot at such a long distance that we were visible as little more than dark gray blobs moving along the water until we debarked the launch at the cemetery. Taken with the whole, that last piece made it clear enough where we were at ten minutes after eight that morning.
“Clever little buggers,” I said. “There are a lot of mistaken sightings, but your friend Sabri Qosja will pick us out of the mass right away.”
“I’m sure he will.” Jean-Paul’s phone dinged again. This time the image AnoNino sent showed us, very clearly, standing beside Luigi’s van at the Bologna marketplace twenty minutes earlier. I glanced at Luigi. As far as I knew, all he had agreed to do was give a ride to his cousin’s friends. I doubted he knew anything about the dogged mercenary on our tail.
“How far is Reggio nell’Emilia?” I asked Luigi.
“Pretty close. You can wait maybe fifteen, twenty minutes? I make a delivery to nice little hotel. We take a break there, get a caffè, go to toilet.”
“Sounds good,” I said. A coffee did sound good. A toilet wasn’t a bad idea, either. At the next town, I hoped, we could say good-bye to Luigi before he was dragged even further into our mess. But maybe, I thought with rising dread, it was already too late.
The road w
e traveled was straight, the terrain flat, traffic light. I kept checking the side mirrors for a tail, but saw nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. I caught Jean-Paul doing the same. We were so focused on the road that we both startled when an incoming message dinged the phone in his pocket.
“Game’s changed,” he said after he read the message. “The prize has been upped for the first person who can not only spot us, but stop us.”
“Stop us how? And do what with us?”
“There are no rules about how and what.”
“Crazy guy,” Luigi said, eyes on his side mirror. He steered to the right, edging toward the narrow gravel shoulder, put his arm out his window and waved for someone behind us to pass. “What’s he trying to do? Fuck my bumper?”
“What is it?” Jean-Paul asked, looking around.
“Proprio uno stronzo.” Luigi laid on his horn. “What you say, big asshole? Guy on a motorcycle. Pass me, idiota, pass.”
Like a sudden gust of wind, the motorcycle came up on our left. The helmeted driver seemed to pause when he was abreast of Luigi’s window. He took a good look inside, made eye contact with me, then raced on.
“Basta,” Luigi said with a big sigh. “Crazy man, eh?”
“Luigi,” I said to get his attention as the motorcycle sped out of sight. “What did Guido tell you about us when he asked you to give us a ride?”
“Tell me? Not much. He says you have some kind of trouble and you need some help. What can I say? I owe Guido too much. Here I am.”
“The trouble is, someone is stalking us.”
Both of Luigi’s hands were on the wheel, but he directed a thumb toward Jean-Paul. “I didn’t want to ask before about your face. Not nice, you know? But this guy, he the one did that to you?”
“Probably a friend of his, but yes.”
“Not that guy on the motorcycle?”
Jean-Paul shook his head. “Different guy, but same problem, I think. Look, there’s a reward offered on the Internet for anyone who can stop Maggie and me. I am afraid, my friend, that the idiot on the motorcycle wants to collect the reward. He may be back.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, touching Luigi’s arm. “You didn’t bargain for this. Please, drop us off at the next place we come to.”
He looked out the windscreen, scanning the vista. There was nothing around us except broad, empty fields covered with frost. “No,” he said, bringing his focus back to us. “No. I promised Guido. That’s sacred, sí?”
“It’s sacred when you know what you’re promising to do,” I said. “But you didn’t know.”
“We can talk later.” His eyes were on the road ahead. “Like you said, the guy’s coming back.”
He was. Coming toward us, fast.
“Hand me the Prosecco,” Jean-Paul said as he rolled down his window. I reached back and dug it out of our shopping bag, having a general idea what he intended to do with it. As he took it from me, he caught Luigi’s eye. “Can you give me an angle?”
“Sí. Get ready.”
The bike accelerated as it switched into our lane, approaching us head on. Luigi did exactly what the biker would expect him to do. He veered into the oncoming traffic lane to avoid a collision, but he waited to do it until the bike was no more than twenty feet away. Just as the bike’s front wheel crossed the plane of the van’s front bumper, approaching on the passenger side, Luigi pulled hard to the left. At that moment, Jean-Paul, eye-to-eye with the motorcycle’s driver, flipped the heavy Prosecco bottle out the window. It exploded against the pavement inches from the bike’s front wheel, showering bike and driver in a spray of amber glass and foaming liquid. The bike spun out as Luigi corrected course and sped forward.
I watched the motorcycle lay over, dumping the driver in an ass-over-teakettle roll as it skidded along the pavement, spewing bits of glass and metal along the road as it went.
“Did he get up?” Luigi asked, looking concerned.
Jean-Paul, watching the side mirror, said, “He’s sitting. He’ll be all right, but his bike won’t. Good driving, mon ami. Good driving.”
“Good team.” Luigi held out his palm for Jean-Paul to slap. “When I see him, I think we have a highway pirate.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Not so much,” he said. “There’s nothing to steal except fish. Drivers don’t carry cash. Everything’s electronic, you know? I scan the fish going out of the truck, the buyer scans it coming in to say delivery is complete, and boom, his bank pays mine. Safer that way, yes?”
With a sinking feeling, I asked, “Your buyers can track delivery?”
“Sí, sure. Go on the Web any time, find out where I am, what time I get there.”
Jean-Paul muttered, “Merde. I’m a fool.”
“We’ve accomplished what we set out to do,” I said, patting his knee. “You said that when you want to know where the enemy is, sometimes you have to run out of the forest to draw his fire. We’re out of the forest, my dear, and we drew fire. Now that we have some idea where to aim, I think it’s time for us to fire back. What prize is crouchingdragon’s employer offering to stop us?”
He frowned as he sent the question to AnoNino. The answer came back immediately: a five-hundred-euro electronic gift card. And bragging rights.
I took my camera out of my pocket and scrolled to the photos I had taken of Blondie and Qosja in the department store in Venice. Using the camera on Jean-Paul’s phone, I took a screen shot of each one.
“Send these photos to AnoNino and ask him to launch a challenge to his hacker buddies. Find the current location of either of these men, last seen in Venice early this morning, and win a thousand-euro gift card. The winner is the person who sends in the most recent location, with time-and-date-stamped photos as proof.”
“Why not?” he answered, his thumb already busily tapping the phone’s keys.
“Some kind of game?” Luigi asked, a furrow between his brows.
“A deadly game,” I answered. “The problem right now is this: It looks like someone saw me and Jean-Paul with your van in Bologna and hacked into your business’s tracking system to find us. Even if you drop us off somewhere, they may still be tracking your van and come after you. Is there any way to disable the system?”
“Disable it?” Luigi wagged his head from side to side as he thought. After a moment, he said, “Only one way. I call in, say the truck is broken and I got a tow to Reggio nell’Emilia. Mamma—Mamma runs the office—posts to customers that the equipment is down, deliveries will be delayed. The truck still sends a signal so Mamma always knows where to find me, but we park the truck and we leave it for one day, maybe two. No good tracking a truck going nowhere, yes?”
“What about your deliveries?” I asked.
“Everybody gets their fish today, don’t worry. I got a friend drives the same route; we meet for caffè corretto in Reggio every day. He’ll get me and my load to Parma and get me home tonight. Won’t be the first time one of our delivery trucks broke down on the road.”
I turned to Jean-Paul to see what he thought. He shrugged his good shoulder, which I interpreted to mean, Why not?
“Could work,” I said. “Unless someone pops up between here and Reggio. You need to park the van right away.”
“Okay.” Luigi seemed doubtful. He thought for a moment, and then he pulled out his phone and sent a text. “I know a good place, not far. We can get a nice caffè while we wait for my friend and be back on the road quick. No worries.”
“Luigi, Jean-Paul and I need to bug out, now.”
Luigi looked at the open farmland all around us and shook his head. “I can’t leave you alone. What if another guy comes?”
“We’ll be okay. I’ve seen a couple of bus stops along here. Jean-Paul?”
When he nodded I looked back at Luigi. “Will you drop us at the next bus stop?”
“Where do you go?” Luigi asked, brows again furrowed.
“Depends on where the bus is headed,” Jean-Paul answered. “As
long as it’s away from Reggio.”
As soon as he saw the next bus sign in the distance, Luigi took his foot off the accelerator. I knew he didn’t like our plan and was playing for time, trying to come up with a good argument. But he did pull over and stop. He grabbed our shopping bag from behind the seat and got out with us.
“I owe you, Luigi,” I said, kissing his cheek.
“You owe me nothing.” He gripped my shoulders and kissed both cheeks. “All in the family, eh?”
Jean-Paul offered his hand. “Thank you, my friend. I hope we meet again. But be careful, please.”
“For a guy with one arm, you throw damn good,” Luigi said, taking Jean-Paul’s hand in both of his. “You should get another bottle of Prosecco. For protection.”
We saw an old green bus lumbering up the road.
“You sure?” Luigi asked, watching it approach.
“Luigi, I’m not sure about anything right now.” I reached for the shopping bag dangling from his shoulder. “But this is the best we can come up with for now. When you get home tonight, promise you’ll call Guido and tell him you’re safe. He’ll get the message to me.”
“Sure, sure. You, too, tell Guido.” He patted his chest over his heart. “All day, I worry.”
There was another round of cheek-kisses and handshakes, and then the bus stopped and the driver opened the doors. The sign on the front announced per s. faustino. Without being asked, Luigi got up onto the bus’s first step to speak with the driver, a round little man with a huge white mustache. After an animated discussion with much gesturing and arm-waving, Luigi climbed back down and gallantly took my elbow to help me up.
“He’s going north,” he said over my shoulder to Jean-Paul. “It’s the local, lots of stops. But in San Faustino you can catch the express bus to Milano, or if you want, get the bus south to Firenze. Is that okay?”
Jean-Paul said, “Very okay. Grazie.”
From the bottom step, I turned and gave Luigi a little wave, worried about what might happen to him on the road ahead. His last words were, “Make my grandmother happy. Put Guido on the TV.”
Number 7, Rue Jacob Page 11