“Ciao, bella,” a voice called from a doorway. She focused forward.
They slowed. She stopped, pretending to study the dusty window of a bootmaker’s. But she couldn’t miss the gunman’s hand grabbing Tony’s arm or his face pressing close enough to spit.
15
TONY
Ibrahim fit an ugly gesture to an even uglier word, but Tony barely registered the hand movement or the curse spat in his direction. Not after he’d caught sight of Rina in the narrow street.
“I don’t like your looks,” Ibrahim said. “My suggestion to you?” The man stood close enough that Tony felt drops of spittle hit his cheek at the hissed words. “Be careful of your own back.”
“My back? Is that a threat?”
With another nasty epithet, Ibrahim left him standing in the road.
Tony glanced quickly to see if Rina were still watching and used her absorption with a shop window to hurry down a side alley toward his room. He wasn’t ready to explain Ibrahim to her. Or to explain himself.
And here he was, still thinking of the man as Ibrahim, when he knew full well his real name was Kamal. But “Ibrahim” would have to do until Headquarters gave him new marching orders.
What were they waiting for? For Kamal/Ibrahim to lead them to his next assignment? To his boss? To the next murder?
A murder, by the way, that might actually be his own.
Where was the tail Paola had mentioned? The man who was supposed to keep track of Ibrahim’s movements after Rome?
Tony quickened his pace. He knew he was in way over his head. He’d let his frustration prod him to say something when Ibrahim accosted him outside the falafel-maker’s apartment and all but accused him of murdering Yusuf. Why?
It didn’t make sense, not if Ibrahim had been the culprit. Unless the man were playing mind games and trying to throw Tony off. Would he do that if Achmed had dispatched him to take care of Yusuf? Paola said Ibrahim/Kamal worked for anyone who paid, so he might be here for a reason that had nothing to do with Yusuf.
But if that were the case, who would have wanted Yusuf dead? Someone who didn’t like his relationship with Natalie?
Man, this was giving him a headache.
His much-touted IQ was worthless here. Totally worthless.
He took the stairs to his rooms two at a time, grateful neither the signora nor her daughter was nearby. After shutting and locking his door, the first thing he did was to scrub at his hands and face to wash off the smell of Ibrahim’s breath, the sight of his ugly, twisted face. Proof of the man’s involvement in murder had to be out there. For Yusuf’s sake, he had to find it, and for the sake of any others on Ibrahim’s hit list, himself included. Paola had promised that help was coming, someone better at detecting than he. That someone needed to be here now, not next month.
And Zif needed to tell him what to do next.
Not only was Zif silent, but he’d heard nothing new from Achmed or Bahir.
And what about Rina? He’d created another problem when he’d befriended her. He knew what his cousin would say. He’d been stupid, foolish.
As long as his foolishness didn’t get her killed.
She must be wondering what he was up to, why he’d disappeared, why he hadn’t stopped to talk.
Of course, maybe she thought he hadn’t seen her.
He pulled at a ragged lock of hair. All he had to do was call the convent and say ciao, and this time it would mean good-bye, really busy here, take care.
He propped his chin on his crossed arms and stared at the bare walls. Bare, like too much of his life in the past few years.
How long had it been since he’d had an actual home, not just some apartment he came back to for a night here and there? One could hardly count his apartment in Amman, stark, cold, or in the summer, incredibly hot, in spite of the air-conditioner.
He shouldn’t be thinking that way. Not now, when he had a job to do, one he’d convinced himself was worth the danger and the inconvenience because it was what one did, wasn’t it? Help the homeland. Help the tribe.
Rina’s image continued to slip into his thoughts. Superimposed on everything—and distracting him from everything—were her grayish eyes that saw the ridiculous in that Italian’s proposition. They’d both called him an Adonis, hadn’t they? More shared humor. Rina was so unlike the foreign girls who wanted only to hook up with a smooth-talking playboy.
Which brought his thoughts back to Yusuf. He hated what had happened to the man who’d almost become a friend.
That’s what he should be doing, trying to solve Yusuf’s death. His murder. Not thinking about a woman.
Noticing a pile of laundry in the corner of his room that was starting to stink, he ran water in his sink, added detergent, and tossed in his socks. He could at least wash those and cut down on the odor in the room.
Wasn’t it something that Rina seemed interested in him? Or at least curious about him.
His laugh sounded like a bark.
He’d never be an Adonis. Nope, nor a hunk by anyone’s standards. Most women thought him too big, but maybe Rina liked his size. She probably dwarfed half of Italy. Still, his face would never turn heads.
He wrung out three pairs of socks, set them aside, and added his skivvies to the soapy water. A few squeezes, and he changed to rinse water. Anything to avoid the signora and her zealous daughter. The small mirror over his sink caught his smirk at the thought of them, a smirk that morphed to a real smile as he contemplated ways to circumvent their intrusion into his life.
“You ought always to smile,” his mother used to say. “It straightens your features.”
Thanks, Mom. Because otherwise his face was crooked? Good visual.
He never gave much thought to his looks, but Rina’s beauty made him come up on the minus scale, and that didn’t sit well. “Because you shouldn’t be thinking any way at all about a woman. Not now. Not here,” his image said.
“Fine. I get that.”
Besides, she was engaged.
But the truth was, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. She needed to take care of the problem for him—by running fast and far, right back to that fiancé.
He should never forget the fiancé.
Hanging his clean laundry over the chair and the sink edge to dry, he lathered his new-growth stubble and drew the razor down one cheek.
If his height, odd face, and crooked smiles weren’t enough to make Rina turn away, his light eyes staring out from this dark complexion surely would. “Nothing wrong with my great-grandfather’s Armenian coloring. Not even those slanty eyes. But, Lord,” Tony said with a swift glance at the ceiling, “couldn’t you have let me have his blond hair, too?”
Because if he were blond, not even Zif would have signed him up for this fool’s errand. And that would have taken care of his most pressing worry. A job he couldn’t seem to do well.
Rina still had to be dealt with. He owed her some sort of explanation of what he knew and didn’t know. Then he could say good-bye. She’d get it. He was busy. She was engaged. A quick visit, making sure Ibrahim was nowhere around to notice, and he’d undo the damage from that lunch. And wipe her face from his thoughts.
Passing a shop on the way to the convent, he noticed a cluster of beautifully carved miniature figurines. Rina would appreciate one of those. Maybe as a parting gift?
The convent parlor felt stiff and awkward, and the girl curled in a corner chair stared as if he were some odd specimen. He shifted the box from one hand to the other and listened for footsteps on the stairs as he waited for Rina to rescue him from the confines of this too-small room.
Still, he didn’t hear her approach until she spoke. “So, you’re here.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.” Duh. Surely he could do better than that. “I thought we might go for a walk.”
“A walk? Now?”
“It’s not that late. I was thinking just up the street where we can get something to drink.”
She squinted at him. “Are we li
kely to discover another dead body?”
“I sincerely hope not. But I would like to talk to you, and this doesn’t seem like the place.” He angled his head toward the girl in the corner. Other boarders lingered in the hall.
“Fine. Let me get a sweater.”
He didn’t think she’d need one, but maybe that was just a girl excuse.
She returned shortly, hair brushed and a dab of lipstick added. So, he’d been right.
He ushered her out and offered her an arm. She ignored it, huddling into her sweater. Maybe she was cold. Or nervous.
At the top of the street, he nudged open a café door. “How about in here? We can get something hot.” Propelling her toward an empty table, he set down the box. “What’ll you have? Coffee, hot wine?”
“Cappuccino. Decaf, please.” She focused on the table and her fidgeting hands.
He ordered. After the waiter left, he said, “I hoped I’d have more news for you about the young man we found.”
“The newspapers only said he was Syrian. You knew him.”
“Not well, but he seemed friendly, likable. Not a person anyone would want to murder.”
“I’m not sure murderers care. Not from what I’ve read.”
“It infuriates me that the police want to write it off as a robbery gone bad.”
Her surprise seemed palpable. “Why would a thief dump him out by the river?”
“Exactly what I said in my best Italian-French-English mix. Their investigator spoke enough English for me to get by, but my lack of facility in his language obviously frustrated him. About as much as having to investigate the death of a foreigner. In his town.” His fingers plowed through his hair, pushing that one stray lock off his forehead. He really needed a haircut. “I got the feeling he’d like us all to go away.”
“Can you blame him? I mean, really? He probably has enough to investigate without adding in dead foreigners.”
The waiter brought their coffees. He sipped silently, his thoughts focused on what he ought to say. He ought to tell her that as much as he enjoyed her company, he really had so much to do that he didn’t think he could prolong their friendship. She’d understand. She certainly didn’t have anything invested in it either.
But the words refused to hit his tongue. He didn’t remember ever feeling so drawn to a woman, not even to Sheila. Certainly not to Sheila.
This was not a good idea.
She hadn’t asked about Ibrahim. Maybe she hadn’t seen them together after all.
“You wanted to talk,” she said, eyeing him coldly.
He nodded. “I do. So, what have you been doing with yourself?”
She did that squint thing again. Yeah, well he deserved it.
And then she sighed. “I spent some time with Acie and her family. You may remember her from the café that night.”
“The redhead?”
She nodded.
“I remember.” He certainly remembered that evening, the first time he’d stepped out of bounds by accosting Rina on the street corner.
He was such a fool.
“Yes, well, we went to Assisi. Among other things.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It was, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Nothing. It was fun.” Her pause made him wish he were better at this, at making small talk to diffuse an awkward situation. She sipped her coffee and said, “I hope to get back there again because there’s so much more to see, and I didn’t have nearly enough time.”
When she drained her cup, pushed it out of the way, and thanked him, he realized he’d missed her last words. Something about Assisi. He tried to recover. “You enjoyed your trip.”
She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. He probably had.
“Yes.”
He’d make one more stab at it. “Do you plan to go back?”
“I hope to,” she said, pushing back her chair.
He looked down at the table where he’d stacked two towers of sugar packets. He never stacked sugar packets. What was wrong with him?
“It’s getting late.”
He glanced at his watch, nodded, and grabbed the box. “I guess so.” He’d give her the St. Francis when they got back to the convent.
He waited for more questions as they walked. And he waited for inspiration. He got neither.
He said goodnight when the door opened. All she did was give him a casual wave and follow the maid inside.
It wasn’t until he was halfway back to this rooms that he noticed the weight of the box under his arm and turned around.
16
RINA
Safely inside her room, she leaned back against the door and clenched her jaw to keep the scream locked in her throat.
She’d changed into her nightgown by the time a knock sounded. Monica handed her the small box Tony had been carrying, along with a folded note. I’m sorry. You mentioned wanting to see more of Assisi. Would you be willing to go with me tomorrow afternoon? We really do need to talk. Tony.
Well, yes, they did, but they’d just had the chance and blown it, although that was as much her fault as his. She could have told him about the break-in here, told him about being hit over the head, told him about seeing him and the gunman. She could have asked the questions. Instead, she’d watched his long fingers and his blue eyes. They’d both been as tongue tied as middle-schoolers with arrested-development issues. Hadn’t she passed the days of adolescent angst? If not, something was seriously wrong with her.
She opened the box. A tiny wooden figure peered up from the froth of tissue paper: St. Francis with a bird perched on his shoulder. Her fingertip tingled as she stroked the polished surface.
Tony knew an Arabic/Iranian/scarred-faced gunman and a dead Syrian, yet he gave her a statue of St. Francis. How did that compute?
Maybe it didn’t. Maybe the Arab thing was all coincidence—a word she was beginning to loathe—and those links existed merely because of the language. And just maybe Acie had it right when she suggested that the guy with the gun had a legitimate excuse for carrying it. Even if he were rude and ugly.
The carving had been so perfectly executed and finished. And Tony had picked this particular statue, although she’d never mentioned her fascination with St. Francis to him. Maybe she should quit obsessing and stop asking herself why he was in Perugia. Could someone who understood St. Francis be dangerous? Or was that a naïve question?
Of course it was. Fine, she was naïve, but how did a person get over naiveté without expanding horizons and meeting different types of people? Jason might be the perfect man for her, but she’d feel a whole lot better if she knew they weren’t together merely because he was the only man she’d ever dated. Because he was the one who’d claimed her before she’d had the chance to fly solo.
The most poignant love stories involved two young lovers who’d known instantly they were to mate for life. She just wished she could convince herself that her fairy tale had been written that way.
Okay. She would do this. She’d go with him to Assisi. She and Acie had barely scratched the surface of things to see there. And if she were still bothered by Tony’s Arabic background and images of desert sheiks and guerrilla fighters… well, that was absurd.
17
RINA
The buttery leather of the seats in Tony’s rental and the scent of new car—instead of the stink of stale cigarette odor in her rented Fiat—made her imagine she’d entered another world. “Did you bribe someone to get this?”
He grinned. “Long-term rental.”
“Lucky you. And lucky me today.”
He shifted gears as they hit the highway. Oh, yeah, there was power under that hood. She’d have panicked back home, but now, here, the rush felt exhilarating.
“What would you like to see while we’re there?”
“I’ve been hoping to revisit the Basilica and rent one of those guided-tour things. I want to sound like I know what I’m talking about next year when I return to
my classroom.”
If she returned. The idea of standing in front of disinterested teens didn’t hold the attraction it once had. She’d been on fire her first few years, but that had faded as class after class showed up unable to write a declarative sentence, much less understand research that didn’t involve their latest idol. How could she expect them to turn in papers if they couldn’t spell or conjugate verbs or even think of anything beyond what they were going to do on Friday night? And, honey, they started working on their weekend activities first thing Monday morning.
“What?” he asked.
She must have sighed aloud. “Just remembering the frustration of trying to teach. I was so idealistic when I started. I was going to inspire a new generation with a love of history.”
“And they weren’t interested.”
“At most, one or two.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll find new inspiration while I’m traveling.”
“Good plan.”
“I hate failing at something I thought I was called to do.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said with a quick glance in her direction, “I’ve thought about that a lot recently.”
“What? That you’re failing at your job?”
His lips tightened. “I suppose you could call it that.” He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press for details.
He zipped the car into a parking lot, steered them unerringly to the Basilica’s courtyard, and then pulled open the heavy church door, all as if he’d been there before. “Now for the tour.” He bowed slightly in front of a fresco. “Your humble guide, my dear.”
“Really?”
“With the help of this.” He held up a guidebook.
An engineer lecturing on art and architecture? He began by pointing up at the Giotto and discussing brush strokes, colors, age. When he came to a badly deteriorated fresco that looked much older than the Giotto, he proved that he had done his homework. “You see the difference between the two? This one was painted by Cimabue, born Cenni di Pepo, late 1200s.” His eyes danced. “I know. Some name. But take a look at how flat his people appear compared to Giotto’s. How much less realistic.”
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