The Medici Dagger

by Cameron West

  I opened my eyes and breathed in through my nostrils, anger and disgust swirling in my belly.

  “Why?” I demanded. “Why would he do that?”

  “Just in case I’d survived,” Greer said. “Gotten the notes to your old man somehow—double-crossed Krell. Your father didn’t have the notes, but Krell and Tecci didn’t know that. Tecci had to check. He probably tortured your old man before killing him and then burned your house down for fun. I saw the look in his eyes when he was about to kill me. I think he would have enjoyed it.”

  I stared at the pathetic, rotted out, worm-eaten log of a human being. “And the notes?” I asked slowly.

  Greer sighed. “You didn’t answer me when I asked you if you believe in destiny.”

  “You’re playing me. Nobody plays me,” I said, rising out of my seat.

  “Mmm,” he said.“No one’s immune from that.”

  I headed for the door. “So long,” I spat. “I’m out of here.”

  “No, you’re not,” Greer shouted after me. “This is your game now, Rollo Eberhart Barnett, Jr. Your parents’ killer is still out there. You find the bookseller’s notes, you’ll find Tecci.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  Greer stared me down.

  “But the notes were destroyed.”

  “There is no way they burned,” Greer said, shaking his head. “No way. And whatever the bookseller in Venice found, they weren’t the original notes. Maybe da Vinci made a duplicate. Maybe it’s a second part of—”

  “Leonardo,” I warned. “His name was Leonardo. Don’t call him da Vinci. It’s not respectful.”

  “Mmm, just like your old man. That’s even better.”

  My toes involuntarily curled in my boots; my palms began to sweat.

  “Nolo Tecci killed the Italian,” Greer continued. “Burned him down for his notes. Just as he did your father.”

  Something inside snapped and I sprang for the old man. I stood over him clenching and unclenching my fists, anger knocking the lid off the kettle. I drilled a look into his waxy eyes, my breath ruffling a wisp of his thin silver hair.

  Greer arched his neck as if he wanted me to strangle him. After a minute he lay back and whispered, “Like I said, you were raised right. Your old man wanted that Dagger, but my greed got in the way. I’m not greedy anymore. Now what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to call the police,” I said, picking up the phone next to his bed, pointing the receiver at him. “And you’re going to tell them what you just told me.”

  Greer shook his head.“No.”

  I slammed the phone down. The little bell inside resounded in the dim room.

  “For one, Krell is too powerful for the police,” Greer rasped. “For two, you don’t want police.”

  “Don’t tell me what I—”

  “The museum curator’s kid gets a degree in Art History and what does he do? Becomes a stuntman—a high flyer with no net. No, you don’t want to be a citizen,” Greer said. “You want risk. You want action. Maybe now you even want payback. This isyourquest, kid, don’t you see it? You can find the Medici Dagger. Avenge your parents’ deaths. This is your fate.”

  I closed my eyes and began to tremble. Bubbling rage awoke my demons and they began to dance on my soul, a furious, thundering dance of wrath that shook the dank walls of the cave where I’d lain in a death sleep since the fiery night in 1980. The howling heat of a thousand suns suddenly switching on, blazing through a stunned universe, lighting the word:Fate!

  I pictured the pointy tip of Leonardo’s dagger hurtling through history toward me. I felt crazy. Giddiness overtook me and for asecond I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of the moment, the profundity of it. Coming from Henry Greer! The dead courier who wasn’t really dead.

  He was right. I wanted revenge.

  I opened my eyes.

  “What happened to the original notes?”

  Greer turned his head to the side. At that moment I caught sight ofa corner of yellowed paper barely sticking out from under the edge of the pillow.

  “Take it,” Greer said, lifting his head with what little strength he possessed.

  I gently removed the paper from under the pillow and drew a deep breath.

  I was holding Leonardo da Vinci’s notes.

  Turning the fragile document over and back, I held it up to the light. To one side was a drawing of a sleek dagger and a paragraph next to it, written in Leonardo’s precise backward handwriting. And on the reverse, a circular design that resembled a delicately drawn bull’s-eye composed of ten individual rings in decreasing size, each ring made up of seemingly haphazard tiny marks. The Circles of Truth? Next to that, another drawing, this one of three triangular-shaped tubes nested together like a closed sailor’s telescope interconnected with pulleys and supported by a leg on each side.

  I pressed my fingertips to the dried ink—ink that had flowed from the quill of Leonardo’s pen. The pen that had been grasped by the hand that gave the worldThe Virgin of the Rocks,Mona Lisa—that had given me Ginevra de’ Benci.

  I pried my eyes from the page, looked at Greer. “Why didn’t you try to solve it? Why didn’t you go after it?”

  Greer surveyed the blanket that covered his ravaged body.

  “You could have toldsomebodysomewhere down the line,” I said.

  “I just did,” Greer whispered, closing his eyes.

  “Greer,” I said, moving my face close to his. “Greer!”

  The dying man opened his eyes; I could see a map of crisscrossing red capillaries.

  “If it’s true,” I said slowly, “if this is all true . . . then you and Tecci are the ones who killed us.”

  Greer coughed a visceral, painful cough. “Resurrect yourself,” he rasped.

  I drove back to the airport with the radio off, one hand on the wheel, the other clutching Leonardo’s notes. On the flight home, I studied the page, thoughts tearing at me like a thousand vultures. Greed. Fire. Endless questions.My parents murdered? Werner Krell? A man named Nolo Tecci had been in my house? Burned down my life? For this? This is what we died for?I remembered my dad’s jubilation the day he’d sentHenry Greer for the notes, certain that they’d lead to the Medici Dagger. Our conversations about the glorious things that could be done with the Dagger’s alloy—indestructible bridges, automobiles lighter than air. And then his dreams reduced to smoldering ash in the wink of an eye—Nolo Tecci’s eye.It was ten o’clock when I arrived home. A suitcase-sized package with no return address sat by the front door. I brought it inside, flipped on the lights, and opened it. The night sky was clear, and moonlight mixed with the amber of my mica table lamps. In the box was a beat-up leather satchel, the kind that yawns open at the top. I felt its weight as I hefted it out and laid it on the living-room table.

  Inside was a bulky laundry bag cinched together at the top. Loosening the rope, I discovered bound wads of cash—hundred-dollar bills in ten-thousand-dollar stacks. With clammy hands I counted two hundred bundles—two million dollars. I reach for the page of Leonardo’s notes. His words, his thoughts, brushed my fingertips.

  I called Denver information for The Willows. A woman answered after the second ring. “Hello, The Willows.”

  “Peggy?” I said.

  “Oh . . . yes, this is Peggy.”

  I identified myself and asked for Harvey Grant. After a pause she said, “I’m sorry. Mr. Grant is . . . no longer with us.”

  “Ohhh,” I said with remorse—not for his death, but at the loss of a resource. My utter disregard for the end of Henry Greer’s life registered briefly, but my heart was busy pumping icy vengeance through my veins.

  There was an awkward silence as the interstate phone line hummed; then Peggy said, “Reb, take care of yourself. And good luck.”

  I thanked her, hung up, and wandered back into the living room. A cool breeze swept in through the open window and mixed sweet night air with the foul smell of Werner Krell’s money.

  I touched Leonardo�
��s notes to my cheek.

  “Venice,” I said to nobody.

  four

  Near morning, I dreamt I was playing checkers with Julius Caesar in the middle of the Piazza San Marco. He was wearing a black toga and had a snake around his neck that kept whispering in his ear, telling him what moves to make. And Julius, the son of a bitch, was winning—getting kinged all over the place, stacking checkers up like a bunch of Oreos while the tourists and pigeons watched.I sat there, red-faced, in the middle of the vast square, trying to grab the snake’s tongue when it stuck out and wiggled. Julius was throwing his head back, going “mwa-ha-ha” each time I missed.

  It was a rotten dream. I woke up way too early, frustrated and pissed, thinking what the hell was I doing playing checkers.

  The morning paper had the same article that had run in theDenver Post. I threw it out, fixed my usual breakfast of oatmeal with dried cherries and banana, and ate robotically at the kitchen table.

  An hour later I was jogging through the foggy Malibu hills, moist, cool air filling my lungs, clearing my mind.Breathe in, breathe out. Focus. Don’t forget to laugh. At what? Life, death, fire, daggers, revenge, pain . . . searing pain. You’ve got a purpose. Get Nolo Tecci.

  “Hah!” I yelled as the beams of an oncoming car flashed through the murky whiteness.“Hah!” I yelled again, the sound of the tires dissipating as the car vanished around a bend in the road. Then I stopped thinking and things got still and clear; I finished out the run in the jungle.

  After a shower, I called my travel agent, Leah, who had a sexy voice that hardly matched her size-sixteen body. She booked me on a flight that night to Milan—first class—with a jumper to Marco Polo Airport in Mestre, just outside of Venice.

  I put on a Credence Clearwater Revival CD and listened, while I packed, to John Fogerty howl about being born on the bayou. A bunch of socks and Jockey underwear, jeans, shaving and tooth stuff, some black T-shirts, running gear, and a dripless candlestick in a small brass holder.

  No matter where I am, what hotel, what country, I always light a candle on my way to bed. The softness of the flickering light reminds me of a painting in the National Gallery by Georges de La Tour calledThe Repentant Magdalen—a picture of Mary Magdalen sitting at a desk in a room lit only by a candle.

  Leaning on the table, chin resting in one hand, the delicate fingers of the other caressing a barely illuminated skull, Mary stares into a mirror, absorbed in thoughts of mortality and forgiveness. The softness of the light playing on her pensive face and billowing sleeve has entranced me since I was a kid.

  Lying in hotel beds that have been dreamed in by countless strangers, I watch my candle flicker and search for comfort in my nightlight. Happy dancing shadows in Reb’s sleep-tight light. I can barely remember the sound of my mother’s voice.

  I closed the suitcase, turned Fogerty off, and called Archie Ferris. Archie owns a specialty gun shop calledHoo-ah!that caters to the film industry. He knows how to use every kind of weapon ever made and owns most of them, too.

  In addition to running the store, Archie makes a good living as technical advisor on action films, providing weapons as props and showing stuntmen and -women how to look authentic. He’s late fifties, five-ten, two-twenty, and stocky as a gorilla, with hairy arms and knuckles to match, and a five-o’clock shadow at elevenA.M.

  Archie started out in South Boston. Joined the Army out of highschool. Went into Special Forces and made sergeant. Did two tours in Nam. He was a victim of that war, that was obvious to me, though he never took a bullet in hundreds of firefights. He’d come back to a country that spit on his loyalty, almost the worst thing that could happen to any veteran, but particularly Archie. Archie Ferris and loyalty mean the same thing.

  After returning to the States, he drifted out to L.A., became a cop, and married the first girl who didn’t look sideways at the khaki T-shirt, battle fatigues, and jump boots he always wore. He wouldn’t tell me her name. Couldn’t say the word. All he’d said was “She was an empty-hearted woman who couldn’t love anybody, not even her own son.” This while sobbing into an Orange Crush.

  The son he was referring to was Danny, who’d been raised mostly in the custody of Archie’s ex-wife and a succession of losers.

  Archie loved Danny more than anything or anybody, even though the boy had inherited most of his personality from his mother. There was nothing Archie wouldn’t give him, even on the policeman’s salary he got after leaving the service. Actually, he’d never really left the service; he’d just swapped protecting the people of the United States for the people of L.A. County. He was a born protector, and would have kept at it, but Danny got shot dead in a bar fight. That was when Archie quit the cops, after taking the one bullet he couldn’t dodge.

  He’d faded into security work on movie sets for a couple of years, his generosity, loyalty, and professionalism masking his depression and earning him nice credentials. At first, people were intimidated by him. His body was like a block of concrete and he had a look in his eyes that told the world he’d stood the watch few could stand.

  A star-stalker pulled Archie out of his depression by making it through the rest of security and onto one of his sets—an action set with plenty of guns, all of them loaded with blanks except for Archie’s and the stalker’s. A foot chase, a screaming celebrity hostage, real gun-play, real heroism—a combat pro showing how it’s done.

  Everybody got rescued, including Archie. He ended up with a newjob: teaching movie stuntmen how to use weapons. He had a new life and some of himself back, but not enough to fill the hole Danny had left in his big heart.

  Archie got me started in the business by almost running me down in the street as I munched a vegetable burrito from La Cantina. I’d been thinking about getting into the movies and not getting salsa on my T-shirt when I’d caught him out of the corner of my eye, barreling down Santa Monica Boulevard in his black Land Rover, cell phone pressed to his ear. I was midstreet with the burrito sticking out of my face when I’d realized there was only one way to go to avoid becoming a tortilla myself, and that was up.

  Archie had tromped on the brakes two feet from me. I’d jumped and rolled over his hood and down the back of his buggy, hitting the street in a crouch—all without dropping the burrito. Our eyes had met in his side-view mirror—his in horror, watching me chew and grin and pull my earlobe. He’d grinned back.

  Over some blue drinks and a pu pu platter at The Golden China, he’d discovered I had a number of useful talents—hang gliding, rock climbing, karate, parachuting, and racing motorcycles—so he introduced me to some stunt directors he knew and that was that. I’ve been diving, driving, rolling, racing, flipping, and falling ever since.

  On top of getting me my start, Archie gave me a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter handgun, taught me how to use it, and helped me get my carry license.

  Because I was a fast learner and mastered every weapon Archie put in my hand, he quickly grew to respect me. But I knew it was more than that. We both did.

  Archie answered the phone on the first ring. “Arch,” I said a little tentatively, knowing he’d have heard about the hang-glider spin and wouldn’t let it slide.

  He blurted, “You want to kill yourself, you can use the Sig I gave you. That would be perfect. First Danny, then you. Aw, Christ. What’s up?”

  “You’ve been such a good friend to me,” I said. “I need your help.”

  “Been a good friend, huh? That doesn’t sound like a compliment. Sounds like last words. What is it—Emily? Come on over, we’ll drive up to my joint in Big Bear, talk it all out. What do you think, you’ll never fall in love again?”

  “You know I wasn’t in love with her.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’ve never been in love with anyone. Me, too. So?”

  “That’s not why I called. Look, I’m going to Venice—not the beach,Italy—and I . . . um . . . I’ll need a gun when I’m there.” The second I said it, I wanted to go back in time and not call him.

  I fi
lled the painful silence.

  “I’m sorry, but I know you’ve got that buddy from Nam who sells guns. I can’t travel internationally with mine and I can’t wait for the paperwork to go through.”

  “And?” he said. “You have my full attention. Don’t hold back.”

  “It has to do with Leonardo da Vinci and my parents. That’s all I can say.”

  “Come on,” he said angrily. “This is the real goddamn world. People actually getkilledwith guns.”

  I knew it. I’d just triggered Danny memories. Archie would be watching a video ofShane,crying into a Crush, within ten minutes after we hung up. I hated myself for being so reckless.

  “Look,” I told him. “Just forget it.”

  “Forget nothing! Shit! Leonardo da Vinci and your parents . . . what the hell is this all about?”

  “Did you get theTimesthis morning?”

  He told me he had.

  “You read it?”

  “The Lakers lost. No, I didn’t read it. Christ, cough up.”

  “Page three. Top.”

  He told me to hold on. I heard rustling, then mumbling for a minute, then, “Jesus! So what are you going to Venice for? It says the page was lost in the fire.”

  I told him everything—Greer, Tecci, the Dagger, the works.

  There was a long pause.

  I said, “So, will you set me up or not?”

  “I’ll do you one better. I’ll come with you.”

  That stunned me. “You would do that?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  I felt embarrassed, confused. It hadn’t occurred to me that Archie, or anyone, might place himself in danger for me. On a film shoot, yeah. For money. But this had nothing to do with that. Loyalty, selflessness—these were precious things that were hard for a shaky hand to hold. I sensed their great value, perhaps for the first time. I wanted to say,“Help me out.” But I couldn’t knowingly put Archie at risk.