by Sophie Lark
“Well, he wasn’t very discreet about the cross,” Luca said. “Where is it, by the way?”
“You could ask Angioletto, but I’m afraid you just missed him,” the thief said.
She slid off the back of the desk, standing on the opposite side from Luca.
“Why do you want it so bad?” she asked. “You’re not so terrible at thieving that you couldn’t steal something else.”
She smiled at him mockingly.
He thought that’s why she had waited around to talk to him, when she heard him coming up the stairs. She wanted to know why he was chasing after her.
“I was commissioned to get the cross,” Luca said.
“By who, exactly?”
He didn’t mind telling her. It might encourage her to be a little more cooperative.
“By Federico Bruni,” he said.
He thought that shook her little. Nobody wanted to cross the Fratellanza.
“Well,” she said starting to edge toward the back door, “I’m afraid I don’t have it.”
“Who does?”
“You’ll have to ask the turnip,” she said. “He shouldn’t be hard to find. It only took me an hour.”
She turned and opened the back door, ready to run off once more, but the Roma was waiting for her. He plunged a syringe into her neck, pushing the depressor all the way down.
“God damn it,” the thief said as she went limp in his arms.
“Was that really necessary?” Luca asked, hurrying over to help the Roma carry her down the stairs.
“She looked fast,” the Roma said, shrugging. “I don’t like to run.”
Luca had intended to take the girl’s legs, but the Roma slung her over his shoulder easily enough.
“Grab that chair,” the Roma said, pointing at one of the cheap folding chairs stacked up against the wall.
Luca complied, tucking it under his arm and following the Roma down the back staircase.
They crossed the cement lot, heading for a stack of empty shipping crates.
The Roma opened the double doors of the bottommost crate, carrying the girl inside.
“What’s the plan?” Luca asked.
“Go get my bag out of the car,” the Roma said.
Luca walked back to the car, getting the Roma’s black duffle bag out of the backseat. He hesitated, not wanting to bring him whatever was inside. On the other hand, he didn’t like leaving the girl alone in the shipping crate with that psychopath. So, he hurried back.
He handed the duffel bag over. The Roma took out a coil of rope and tied the girl’s hands behind her, with her arms pulled around the backrest of the chair.
Once she was secure, the Roma leaned back against the metal wall of the shipping container and began to smoke a cigarette.
“What are you doing?” Luca asked.
“Waiting,” the Roma said. “She’ll be awake in a minute.”
Sure enough, the thief was already starting to stir, perhaps in part because of the acrid smell of the smoke.
“Jesus Christ,” the girl muttered. “Would you people please stop drugging me.”
“Where’s the cross?” the Roma said.
“It gives you a hell of a headache, you know,” the girl said. “Also, I’m a little concerned that you might be wiping out some of my long-term memory stores. Like, not the important stuff, but maybe my Intro to Philosophy course.”
The Roma rummaged in his duffle bag once more. He pulled out a hammer. A small one, with a ball-peen head. It glinted in the dim light.
“You’re very pretty,” the Roma said. “I assume you want to stay that way. If you don’t answer my questions, I’ll use this to knock out some of your teeth. And then, if you still don’t answer, I’ll break each of your fingers, one by one. It will be difficult to do your job without fingers.”
Now the girl actually did look frightened, at least a little bit. Luca could feel his own heart racing and sweat breaking out on his skin.
“I don’t have the cross,” the girl said. “I already told him that.”
She jerked her head in Luca’s direction.
“Where is it?” the Roma said. He was as relentless as death.
“Angioletto sold it.”
“To who?”
The thief paused. She didn’t want to tell them, but she also didn’t want to get a closer look at the Roma’s hammer. And she knew they could get the same information from Angioletto, once they tracked him down.
“He sold it to some guy named Kasperian,” she said.
Luca groaned.
As the girl probably very well knew, Kasperian was an Armenian arms dealer. He lived in a fortress on Burano. Most inconvenient of all, he was not at all on good terms with Bruni. It would be salt on the wound for Bruni to find out that his long-time enemy was currently in possession of the cross.
The Roma was still holding up the hammer, uncomfortably close to the girl’s face.
“You can ask Angioletto, if you want to confirm it,” she said. “He’s probably holed up at his mother’s house.”
“We’ll have to go get it,” Luca said to the Roma, “from Kasperian’s place.”
“Just watch out for his pets,” the girl said, smiling up at Luca.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Luca asked the girl.
She hesitated.
“Lex,” she said, at last.
“Who do you work for?” the Roma said.
“Nobody,” she said.
“Who hired you to steal the cross?”
“No one,” she insisted.
“She’s telling the truth,” Luca muttered to the Roma. “Let’s go.”
“Not yet,” the Roma said.
He knelt down next to his duffle bag, putting down his hammer but reaching inside for something else.
He pulled out a short length of wire.
“What are you doing?” Luca said. “She told us what she knows.”
“She saw our faces,” the Roma replied.
He walked toward Lex, about to loop the garrote around her neck. As he reached toward her, the girl braced her feet against the metal flooring of the crate, then flung herself backwards, smashing the flimsy folding chair beneath her.
At the same time, Luca leaped onto the Roma’s back. He wrapped his arm around his neck and tried to put him in a chokehold.
Luca was much taller than the Roma, and probably had twenty pounds on him. But the Roma was as strong as a bull. He barreled backwards, slamming Luca against the wall of the shipping container. Luca’s head hit the metal with a clanging sound, but he hung doggedly on to the hitman’s back. He was well aware that if he let go, the Roma would kill the girl and possibly him as well.
The Roma was driving his elbows backward, slamming them into Luca’s sides. It forced the air out of him, and it hurt like a bitch. But Luca wasn’t letting go. He had his forearm across the Roma’s neck, his wrist clamped tight in his other hand. He pulled tighter and tighter, slowly choking him out.
The Roma hit him with three more blows, each a little weaker than the one before. He sunk to his knees. Luca thought he had him.
Then, with a strangled yell, the Roma reached back and grabbed Luca by the head. He flung him over his shoulder. Luca hit the ground hard, flat on his back. The Roma fumbled for the hammer, seizing it and raising it high over his head, ready to bring it smashing down onto Luca’s face.
That’s when Lex hit him across the jaw with the backrest of the chair. The Roma’s head snapped back, colliding with the wall of the shipping crate with a hollow booming sound. He slumped to the floor, knocked out cold.
Lex had slipped her ropes while Luca was flailing around. Instead of bolting out the door, leaving Luca to fend for himself, she had snatched up part of the broken chair, the closest thing at hand.
Now she stood panting by the unconscious body of the Roma.
“Why’d you jump on him?” she asked, looking at Luca
curiously. “Wasn’t he your buddy?”
“Not exactly,” Luca said.
Honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure why he had done it either. It was going to cause major problems for him with Bruni. But no matter how much trouble this girl had already gotten him into, he liked her. He didn’t want to see her hurt.
“Well, thanks,” she said, giving Luca a little grin.
He grinned back.
“Unless you actually want to kill him, we’d better get out of here,” Luca said.
“Gladly,” Lex replied.
Luca followed her out of the shipping crate.
They hadn’t taken two steps into the harsh, fluorescent light of the lot when a voice yelled, in English, “Stop!”
Lex stopped dead in front of him. She was staring at a tall blond man, with the look of a cop. He had his gun pointed directly at her chest.
“Don’t move an inch,” the man said. “I will shoot you.”
The cop seemed completely focused on Lex. He didn’t so much as glance at Luca. He wore plain clothes, not the uniform of the Guardia. Luca couldn’t see any police vehicles around, or any sort of backup.
Banking that this guy was alone, Luca took off sprinting in the opposite direction.
As he suspected, the cop didn’t chase after him or fire his gun.
He let Luca escape so he could capture the girl.
10
Byron Black
Venice
Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he’s turned it into hate.
Lauren DeStefano
When Black landed in Venice, he had first tried to find the woman who’d seen Lex climbing out of the window of the Doge’s Palace. Johnson said she’d given the police the address of a hostel as her current place of residence. However, when Black caught a cab to the hostel, the owners said she’d already checked out, heading for the next leg of her backpacking adventure, and leaving no forwarding address.
It didn’t matter. Black found other confirming evidence as soon as he headed to the Palace itself.
Once on the museum grounds, he had looked around for the sort of employee Lex was likely to have targeted: young, male, and stupid.
He soon found the hapless Francesco, who admitted, after some prodding, that he had, indeed, met a pretty girl at the museum in the weeks leading up to the robbery.
“I think she work here,” Francesco said in heavily accented English, looking sheepish. “I see her card, with her picture, what do you call it?”
“Her ID?” Black supplied.
“That’s right. From the gift shop. But after the robbery, I don’t see her anymore. And when I ask the gift shop, they don’t know who she is.”
“But you didn’t tell the police that?” Black said.
“No,” Francesco said. “I think I might be fired, if I tell them. And besides, the other guards see the thief. It’s a man.”
“But a woman at the restaurant across the street, she saw someone else go out the window. There was a second window broken, wasn’t there? In the chamber where the cross used to be?”
“Yes,” Francesco said. “The police think that’s where the thief comes in.”
“The window’s alarm didn’t go off when he came in, though. It went off after he grabbed the cross.”
“True,” Francesco admitted. “The guards don’t see any girl, though.”
“What was her name?” Black asked, “The girl you met at the cafe?”
“Guilia,” Francesco said.
He looked miserable.
“I like her very much,” he said.
“What did you talk about?” Black asked.
“Normal things. Football. Music. I never say anything to her,” Francesco insisted, “about the cross.”
“I’m sure,” Black said.
He knew all too well, however, how much information Lex could get out of someone without appearing to be asking anything at all.
Black only had two contacts in Venice, one an officer with the Guardia di Finanza, the other a some-time informant and frequent forger named Lorenzo.
Black couldn’t go see his police friend, since he had neither permission nor authority to be investigating in Venice at the moment, but there was nothing stopping him dropping by Lorenzo’s place.
Lorenzo had once been a talented counterfeiter and forger of fine art. Age and substance abuse had weakened his skills, until he was forced to scrounge for a living any way he could, including occasionally selling tips to the police.
He ran a grubby jewelry shop, selling fake Rolexes to tourists, and occasionally fencing stolen goods.
He was less than pleased to see Black on his doorstep.
“I don’t know anything, and I don’t have anything I’m not supposed to,” he complained, pushing his thick glasses up on his nose. He had flyaway white hair, and he wore an ancient cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows.
“Oh you don’t?” Black said, strolling around the shop, picking up an item here and there, examining it and putting it back down again.
It was a tiny shop, packed with junk and smelling of mothballs.
“What about this?” Black asked, picking up a Tag watch, and reading the engraving on the casing. “Does H.B. Vincenzo know that you’re selling his watch for him?”
“That was taken on consignment,” Lorenzo whined, trying to snatch it back.
“You’ve got a lot of consignment items,” Black said. “I wonder what my friend Cancio over at the Guardia would have to say about that?”
Lorenzo regarded him shrewdly.
“I notice you didn’t bring this police friend with you,” Lorenzo said. “Does he know you’re in Venice at all?”
Black put down the watch and folded his arms across his chest, presenting the full breadth of his imposing size for Lorenzo’s consideration.
“No need to play games,” Black said. “You know why I’m really here. What do you know about the cross?”
“How could I know anything, when all of Venice is looking for it?” Lorenzo said.
“You’re old, not stupid. You still have an ear to the ground.”
“I’ve gone completely deaf,” Lorenzo said, stubbornly.
Black sighed and looked around the shop for the most expensive thing he could find.
He spotted a Tiffany lamp that might be mistaken for genuine. He bumped it with his shoulder, knocking it off the shelf so it fell to the floor with a crash.
“Oops,” he said.
“Porca miseria!” Lorenzo shrieked. “Knock it off! I’ve got a living to make.”
“It’s a small shop,” Black said, shrugging. “I’d love to get out of here. But I need to know where the cross is first.”
He turned the other way, hitting a replica bust of Nero. It tumbled to the floor, decapitating the head from its base.
“Stop!” Lorenzo cried.
Black picked up a blown-glass vase and held it aloft.
“Tell me what you know,” he said.
“I did hear one thing,” Lorenzo said, holding up his hands. “But I don’t even know if it’s true.”
“Spill it.”
“This drug dealer Gallo was bragging that he had some big deal about to go down. But he’s probably a liar. And if there is a deal, it’s probably a kilo of canapa.”
“Where is it?” Black said.
“At the wharf. I’ll write it down.”
“Do it,” Black said, “And don’t lie to me. Or I’ll set your shop on fire.”
Lorenzo scribbled down the address, grumbling the whole time.
While he did so, Black went around the back of the dusty glass display case and searched for the hidden drawer he knew he would find.
“I’m taking this too,” he said, pulling out an old Beretta.
“I don’t have any ammunition,” Lorenzo said.
“That’s fine,” Black said. “It’s just for show.”
He had left Lorenzo’s shop and headed to the wharf, expecting to find lit
tle or nothing.
It was highly unlikely that Lex was selling the cross, especially through some low-level drug dealer. However, it was his nature to chase down any lead, no matter how small.
He had gotten to the place just in time to hear the ruckus in the shipping container, a sound like two gorillas wrestling. He had positioned himself outside, waiting to see who would emerge.
And then out she had walked, the woman he’d been searching for every day for two long years.
Her cheeks were flushed with color, her hair blowing around her face in the salty sea breeze. She looked excited, exhilarated.
The sight of her was like an arrow through his heart. It had been impossible to remember her one tenth as stunning as she actually was.
“Stop!” Black shouted.
He had pointed his gun at her, though of course it didn’t have any bullets. He was desperate, thinking that if he so much as blinked, she would slip away again and disappear.
From the corner of his eye, he had seen another man coming out of the shipping crate, but Black didn’t so much as glance his way. He assumed it was the other thief, her partner from the theft at the Doge’s Palace. He didn’t care in the slightest about the other man. He only had eyes for Lex.
Lex had stopped immediately when he shouted. Her eyes went wide, seeing him there. He had surprised her completely.
What was that other emotion on her face? Was it sorrow? Regret? Was the smallest part of her happy to see him again?
He saw her glance to the side, perhaps looking to see if there was anyone else with him. She tensed slightly, as if preparing to run.
“Don’t move an inch,” Black said. “I will shoot you.”
Nonsense, of course. Even if he had any bullets, he could never have shot her.
The other thief abandoned her, sprinting off to Black’s right.
Black had been expecting this. He didn’t allow it to distract him. He knew that if he took his eyes off Lex for even a moment, she’d be gone.
“No more running,” he said to Lex. “You’re coming with me.”
“Alright,” she said calmly. “But you’d better take that guy in there, too.” She nodded her head toward the shipping container. “He tried to kill me.”