Somehow, that doesn’t make me less worried. “He was pretty explicit.”
“I’m certain he was.” He tries another smile that isn’t comforting. “Does this unpleasantness affect the offer you made to my father?”
“Only if Lucca kills me first.” I say it like it’s a joke, which it isn’t.
“Of course.” His face turns more serious. He didn’t think it was a joke, either.
We wave Gianna back to the table and chat a little as we all finish our drinks. She doesn’t say much, just pecks at her sparkling white wine and watches us both to make sure we’re not cutting her out of anything. Angelo seems like an okay guy for an apprentice mobster, which makes me feel guilty about scamming him… but not enough to stop.
While we wait for the check (the longest single operation in an Italian restaurant, it seems), a pumpkin-orange Iveco transfer truck with a medium-blue canvas bed cover double-parks in front of the café. The driver, a burly guy in a blue jumpsuit, sets the flashers and trots toward the hotel being renovated across the street. This not only kills what little view we had, but it blocks direct street access to the café.
I finally get to pay the tab. As the receipt whirs out of the waiter’s handheld terminal, a white panel van slides behind the transfer truck. This driver disappears too.
Angelo’s texting somebody. “Signore Hoskins, may I offer to take you to your next stop? Your hotel, maybe?”
Just what I’d hoped for. “Thanks, but I don’t want to inconvenience—”
“Not at all. I take Gianna to her gallery, so we will be near the center. I most appreciate that you have told me of this situation. Please, I wish to repay the favor in a small way.”
I put on my aw-shucks face. “Well, I guess you can drop me at the Duomo, if it’s no trouble. I want to visit the Museo del Novecento before I go.”
He smiles and gestures toward the front door. “Of course. Come.”
Angelo’s walking tree trunk holds up his hand to signal “stop” when the three of us reach the glass door. Part of his bulk is body armor, and there’s a pistol holstered against the small of his back. It’s just a few seconds, but I’m glad I swiped two of the bright yellow cocktail napkins from the table to soak up the sweat on my palms.
Angelo’s Range Rover swoops in to double-park in front of the truck. The bodyguard pulls open the café’s door and waves us out. I trot to keep up with Angelo and Gianna—she’s got his arm again—as the guard rushes them toward the Range Rover.
Tires squeal on asphalt. A black brick of a Suburban skids alongside Angelo’s ride. The back driver’s-side window is open. I see a black ski mask in the dark interior.
I yell “Get down!” and tackle both Angelo and Gianna just as a whole army’s worth of guns start shooting.
Gianna screams and lands on top of Angelo. We roll against the silver Toyota parked next to the Range Rover. My heart’s going at warp speed.
The windows in the empty storefront across the sidewalk splinter into waterfalls of glass. The people who used to be sitting in front of Deep Café are now shrieking and running south, away from the incredible racket.
The bodyguard gets off a few shots, then falls on his back, clutching his chest. Gianna screams again. I don’t see blood, which is fine, because I’m worse with blood than I am with people shooting at me.
“You okay?” I yell at the other two.
“Si! Si!” Angelo launches into a string of angry almost-Italian I can’t decode. Gianna tries to wriggle into the sliver of space between Angelo and the Toyota. There’s a lot of hail-on-tin-roof sounds happening a few feet away as the shooters hammer on the Range Rover.
“Come on! Follow me!” That’s the adrenaline talking. I fast-crawl past the Toyota to the white Renault minivan parked in front of it. Gianna throws her pumps at me, yanks up her skirt and scoots toward me on her hands and knees. Angelo follows after a moment. When they catch up, I move on to the midnight-blue Mercedes station wagon ahead of the Renault.
I make the mistake of popping up to see what’s happening behind us. A guy completely covered in black is climbing out of the Suburban’s passenger side, carrying an especially ugly machinegun.
“Hurry!” I bark at Gianna and Angelo. They go into fast-forward. We’re all panting like horses after a race. Gianna’s eyes are enormous and her lips have disappeared. She’s sticking closer to me now. Angelo doesn’t look as scared as I feel. Is he used to this? I point to our left. “Look!”
“What is it?” Angelo yells back.
“Garage.” All we have to do is cross about twelve feet of open sidewalk to get there, while people shoot at us. “Guy just got out of the SUV. Gotta go before he gets us.”
Angelo’s head whips around to check. The gunman’s busy blasting white divots in the Range Rover’s bulletproof windshield. Angelo’s guards are trapped inside.
I grab Angelo’s shoulders and aim him toward the driveway. “Go! I’m right behind you!”
He nods way too fast, gathers himself into a crouch, then rockets off toward the garage.
The moment he disappears, Gianna clamps her arms around me from behind. “What happens?” she squeaks. “What is this?”
“Life with Angelo.” I twist around to face her. My plan had been to follow Angelo—the last thing I want is to stay out here—but I can’t leave Gianna, not with her looking at me the way she is, plus she’s got a death grip on me. “Don’t move. They’re not after us.”
“How do you know this?”
The noise cuts out like somebody turned off the CD. The guy who’d been cratering the Range Rover’s windshield steps onto the sidewalk, aims south, then north… toward us. I stifle the natural whimper that comes from looking down the barrel of a machine gun. Gianna’s trembling in my arms with her face pressed into my throat.
The gunman nods at me, then storms back to the Suburban.
After the hitters screech away, we join Angelo in the garage behind a yellow Ford Transit van. I don’t ask where he got the small gun he’s holding. I make sure he sees Gianna clutch my arm instead of his. Other than scraped knees, she’s okay, thank God.
Now maybe she understands what joining up with Angelo really means.
“Signore Hos—Richard. Gianna. You are well?”
“We’re fine,” I say. “You okay?”
“Si. I thank you.” He picks a contact on his phone, then starts a long stream of high-energy almost-Italian. He says “Hoskins” a couple times. A good thing?
Far-away sirens are getting closer. Cops aren’t on my agenda, and I doubt Angelo’s going to be glad to see them.
After a good minute of back-and-forth, Angelo stows his phone. “I rang for help. Someone will come in ten minutes, maybe less.” He claps my shoulder. “I’m grateful to you. If I was standing when they began to shoot…”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.”
I really am.
If he wasn’t, this whole production would’ve been wasted.
Chapter 52
Carson’s lounging on my bed when I get back to the Spadari. Yes, it’s the only place in the room where she can see the TV—which is playing RAI News 24—but it’s still a little disturbing. “Like being an action hero?” she asks.
“I never wanted to be an action hero. I wanted to be the romantic lead.”
She rolls her eyes.
I lean against the stainless-steel railing surrounding the pit my bed is in. “What’s on the tube?”
“Dunno. It’s all Italian.” She hefts her laptop off the white duvet and plops it on her lap. “Web’s saying ‘attempted assassination of an unidentified Mafia figure.’ No suspects yet. Cops busted Angelo’s security detail. Lots of ‘it’s a miracle nobody was hurt.’” She gives me her lopsided smile.
“I believe in miracles.”
I have no idea how much Olivia had to lay out for the talent or how many arms Allyson had to twist, and I don’t really want to know. It’s
more than a little scary that I work for somebody who can pull off something like this in less than twelve hours.
“Now we need somebody to link this to the gallery bombing.”
“AFP’s already there.” Carson leans back into her nest of pillows and folds her hands behind her head. She looks awfully comfortable down there. “Angelo was grateful?”
“Intensely. Let’s hope Salvatore is, too.”
My black Brioni slacks and Z Zegna green-and-gray microprint shirt are dirty, but somehow I managed to not rip them. I ship them off to the hotel laundry, switch to jeans and a red polo, tank up on Tylenol (the action-hero act has my ribs screaming) and rejoin Carson. She’s lugged the aqua desk chair into the pit, so I don’t have to throw her off the bed, which I doubt I could do in my condition. I sit on the warm spot she left. Now we watch and wait.
We wait to see if security-cam footage splashes my face all over the Web.
We wait to see if anybody identifies Angelo.
We wait to see if any of our gunmen get caught.
We wait for a telephone call.
We wait for a knock on the door.
The knock on the door finally comes, but it’s room service, which I discover after my heart attack. Carson and I use the bed as a table and keep watching TV and checking the Web for news. Now other outlets are linking the “attempted assassination” to the gallery bombing, and talking heads spin out their theories about whodunnit. Some of them are pretty wild. When somebody on Sky News mentions IS, we both laugh our butts off. The tension release feels great.
My work phone rings around nine. It’s a local Italian number I don’t recognize. “Hoskins.”
“Richard. It is Angelo.”
Yes! It’s the call I’ve been waiting for. I snap my fingers at Carson, then do the Charades version of muting the TV. “Hey, you’re someplace safe, right?”
“Si, si. My father wishes to talk to you. I will use the speaker. One moment, please.”
I mute and tell Carson, “Salvatore wants to talk.” She gives me two thumbs up.
“Ricardo?” It’s Salvatore’s voice, echoing in that special speaker-phone way. “Here is Salvatore Morrone. You are there?”
I un-mute and switch to speaker. “Right here. What can I do for you?”
“I must say ‘thank you’ for what you do for my son today. He says to me that you save his life.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just glad I was able to help.”
Carson rolls her eyes.
“I, too, am happy. Angelo is my only son. He is prezioso, ehm… precious to me. He takes my business when I am gone. It is the tragedy if he is hurt, si? I cannot allow. I am full of thanks for you.”
I hope he’s leading up to what I think he is. “I appreciate that, Salvatore.”
“I talk about our deal now, si? I cannot say ‘no’ to the man who saves the life of my son.”
Yes yes yes…
“You ask to see the art in the storage, si?”
…yes yes yes…
“I show this to you. I let you take any you want. I give you the very good price to show my thanks to you.”
…YES YES YES!
Carson flings both fists straight up over her head like she’s scored a goal.
Which we have. Finally.
Chapter 53
That night, I’m like the kid in that Disneyland commercial—“I’m too excited to sleep!” Actually, I’m too busy figuring out all the ways this can still go wrong. Plus my vestigial conscience is bugging me. Our plan worked, but despite all the effort we sank into shielding the café from the action, we put a lot of people in danger. This could’ve been the prize epic fail if the rent-a-thugs had been a little sloppier.
Even scarier: Allyson was all for this. Her only question was, “Will it work?” not, “What if you kill somebody’s granny?” I got more moral guidance from Gar. Either Allyson is the last person in the world I should be working for, or I’m spectacularly right for this job. Trying to decide keeps me up stupid late.
I finally get up at six—my usual time on this job, way late in my real life—and put on my running clothes. No way I can run today, but I can probably manage a brisk walk. Before I leave, I see that Carson’s left me a text: Out all day. C u @ 6p.
Great. She’s gone, and I can’t do anything until ten tonight. Morrone has “important business” to do before then. It’s Friday—the deadline for both the project and Lucca’s threat—and I have to twiddle my thumbs all day while Carson does God-knows-what.
Last night, Carson asked her version of my “Do you own a skirt?” question: “How’ll you know where you are?” She meant, at the art cache. She explained that if Morrone’s really hard over about security, he’ll probably take away my phone. He might even blindfold me or stick me in the trunk. Seeing the cache doesn’t do us any good if I can’t tell where it is.
I hope she’s working on this problem. My last try at tracking something turned to shit.
I desperately want to visit Gianna at Diciannove. It doesn’t help that I see her in every passing pretty brunette. I can’t do it. The temperature warmed up after I “saved” her from the fake hit on Angelo yesterday; but then, Angelo’s had time to make it up to her. I can’t bring her anything she needs and I can’t keep my promise to help with her gallery, which makes me feel more scummy than usual.
I wander around central Milan instead. I browse a couple of the Castello museums, revisit the Duomo, cruise Monte Napo (every bit as bizarre as Rodeo Drive) and its Armani department store, and tour Villa Necchi Campiglio (a restored Art Deco mansion).
In between, I take random turns to see what’s on random streets and try to shake the eyes I feel on me from the moment I leave the hotel. It doesn’t work. I never see an actual tail, not that I expect to. Lucca must be having me followed; after all, he’s supposed to kill one of the important women in my life at midnight. Talk about feeling helpless and useless.
It doesn’t occur to me until I’m walking back to the hotel from the Metro that I’m saying goodbye to the city. No matter what happens, I’ll never be able to come here again.
“How’s that feel?” Carson asks.
“Like I’ve got a Lego in my shoe.” I try to get my toes happy with the GPS chip and battery (the same kind I used in the Fantin) duct-taped inside the narrow toe of my left black Ferragamo loafer, but it’s not working. I still limp when I walk around, not much but enough to notice.
Carson crosses her arms and leans back against the rail around my bed pit. “Tell him you hit your knee when you saved Angelo.”
“You just better hope the battery leads don’t break.” I shuffle to the window and watch the eastern sky turn purple. “Where are you going to be?”
“Close as I can get and not get made. Just in case.”
She wouldn’t tell me what she did all day, and she didn’t ask what I did. The thaw we’d been working on all this week seems to be cooling off. She was quiet and thoughtful at our early dinner. Is she plotting the end of her project, or is this her shoving me away?
Carson pushes off from the rail and strides toward the door. “Pack your shit, just in case.”
“There’s lots of ‘just in case’ going around here.”
“Don’t know what Morrone’s up to.” She stops with her hand on the door lever and looks back. “Tonight’s it. Play it straight, like we went over. If Morrone’s on the level, we’ve already won. If he isn’t…” She shrugs. “See you at nine-thirty.”
After I pack, I check the news alerts I’ve set up for all three Morrones, Lorenzoni, Belknap, and Gianna. There’s lots of activity on Lucca’s news feed. When I see why, I nearly fall off my chair.
On thelocal.it: “In the latest brazen attack in central Milan, Lucca Morrone, suspected of being second-in-command of the Milanese branch of the Calabrian mafia, was killed this morning in a hail of gunfire…”
Lucca’s dead.
; My fault.
That was Salvatore’s “important business.”
Chapter 54
The Piazza Duca d’Aosta is a huge concrete prairie stretching between the Via Vitruvio and the enormous Milano Centrale train station. The Metro’s street exit is curbside in the middle, meaning everything around the edge of the piazza—even the towering Pirelli Building—seems way far away. Like everywhere else downtown at night, there are people all around me, but unlike the rest of downtown, nobody’s strolling. Fast and heads-down is the rule.
It’s 10:15. Morrone’s late. Carson dropped me here thirty minutes ago, and since then I’ve been trying to walk off the worry chewing at my gut. The station’s fascist-nouveau-deco façade is lit dramatically and the streetlights in the forecourt are very bright, so once again it feels like I’m on a stage with all the spotlights aimed at me.
Something Carson said last night comes back to haunt me: “This is a great way to make you disappear.” It would be way too easy to go from hero to goat in Morrone’s eyes. Did Belknap get to Morrone and tell him about the real me? Did Morrone’s thugs catch one of our shooters and hear the true story behind the “hit” on Angelo?
At 10:28—when I’m wondering whether Salvatore’s been killed on the way here, and what happens to me if he has—a black S-class Mercedes glides to a stop at the light a few yards west of the Metro exit. Its emergency blinkers go on. The driver’s door swings open and a black-suited security goon stands. He calls out, “Hoskins?”
My throat’s so dry, I have to swallow to get a sound out. “Yeah?”
The goon waves me to the car. By the time I reach it, he’s let Salvatore out of the back and circled around to meet me on the curb.
“Ricardo!” Salvatore calls out. His white dress shirt glows in the streetlight. “I am delayed. Mi dispiace. If you please, Egidio must see what you bring with you. It is, ehm, sorry, but the security wants it, si?”
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