The Medici Dagger

by Cameron West

  I looked at my own fingers. They hadn’t written much poetry. Instead, they’d hung on to airplane wings and motorcycle grips, steering wheels, window ledges, rock walls, and elevator cables. Punched calculator keys, doing the physics of falls and crashes. Signed contracts and checks, even the odd autograph.Decent fingers,I thought, holding them up to the light.An occasional tremor, but overall reliable.

  There was a knock at the door. I peeped through the brass fisheye: the maid—about four and a half feet tall, middle-aged, closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, white gloves, light blue uniform. I let her in. She slid past me, eyes down, and hastily dusted the furniture with a real feather duster. I moved out of her way and stood at the window.

  The splashing sun and aquatic activity drew me back to my daydreams, where I rummaged amid the spare parts of thought and fancy,unable to overturn anything resembling real cognition. The click of the door as the maid left brought me back from that intangible place.

  I remained at the large window for a while, contemplating why Francesca’s friend from the Accademia would be hiding out, when my phone rang.

  A throaty voice, a little deeper than the average female’s, spoke into the receiver: “Francesca Rossi gave me this number. With whom am I speaking?”

  “My name is Reb,” I answered.

  “What do you want, Reb?” She spoke perfect English without an accent. It threw me.

  “World peace . . . and a pony,” I replied.

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “Why don’t you have an accent?” I asked. “I thought you were Italian.”

  “I’m going to hang up in three seconds if you don’t tell me what you want.”

  “I thought maybe you could help—”

  “Youwant help? Who’s going to helpme?”

  “What do you need?” I heard the maid’s hamper squeaking down the hall. A thousand dollars a day and they had squeaky hampers.

  Silence. I was getting nowhere. “Okay,” I offered. “I’ll help you.”

  “How?”

  “I know who’s trying to find the Medici Dagger.”

  A gasp and then a whispered “Who?”

  “Look,” I said, “could we meet somewhere?”

  I heard squeaking wheels again, closer. There was a knock at my door.

  “How do you say ‘wait’ . . . in Italian?” I asked.

  “Aspettare.”

  I put the phone to my chest and shouted at the door,“Aspettare, per favore. Um, cinquecento minuti.”

  The maid hesitated before saying,“Si, signore,”then squeaked away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The maid was at the door.”

  “You told her to wait five hundred minutes.”

  “I did? I meant fifteen.” We were both quiet for a few seconds while I figured out how to recover. Finally I said, “Do you think she’ll do it?”

  I heard a mini-chuckle over the phone.

  “I may not be able to help you,” I said.“But at least I’m not scared.” That wasn’t true, but she didn’t know it. “Will you meet me somewhere? I promise nothing bad will happen. Are you hungry? I could buy you some lunch. How about . . . what’s the name of that place on Torcello Island. That inn?”

  “You mean Locanda Cipriani?”

  “That’s the place. A ferry takes you there from—”

  “In front of the Hotel Danieli, I know,” she said. I could feel her on the edge of commitment and didn’t dare say a word. “All right,” she said firmly. “I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes. That’s not five hundred.”

  She hung up.

  I combed my hair, brushed my teeth, threw on my jacket, grabbed my red backpack, and headed out.

  It was a short walk to the Danieli, a huge place that looked like a cake that had won a bake-off for the most intricate icing. All of Venice looked that way to me, as though a giant pastry chef had gone wild with a frosting bag. Spires and arches and bridges, double- and triple-deckers with cutouts and dollops and swirls. I could picture the chef in his baker’s whites leaning over his creation, eyes twinkling, squeezing the last of the icing out of the big cloth bag, then bellowing,“Mia bella Venezia!”

  I took my post across the street from the Danieli, wishing I’d found out what my mysterious informer looked like, figuring that Francesca must have told her what she knew about me. I played a little game, trying to pick her out. Using the Sherlock Holmes method, I checked out the females in the crowd. Holmes just kept ruling things out until he arrived at a conclusion, and then, if there was only onething left, it had to be right—no matter how improbable. I had used this method countless times to find missing socks.

  The teenage girl with the platform shoes? The tour guide with the red umbrella? The fiftyish lady in the elegant suit? Maybe. One of those two girls striding arm in arm? No way. How about bushy brows, like Francesca? I kept looking.

  Then someone tapped on my shoulder. She was a slight woman, maybe thirty, in a long print skirt, light-blue jacket, and dark sunglasses, with a scarf nearly covering her straight, shoulder-length black hair. She had high cheekbones, a thin nose, and a wide mouth with full red lips. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Reb?” she asked, fingering the strap on her huge shoulder bag.

  I swallowed hard and stuck out my hand.

  She gave it a rigid shake. Her small hand was cold from fear. I wondered what had motivated this frightened woman to come out in broad daylight to have lunch with a stranger.

  I asked her name.

  “Antonia.” Her voice had a smoky quality, like a young Lauren Bacall.

  “Thank you for coming, Antonia,” I said, attempting to see her eyes through her dark glasses. “If you want to stand here and talk for a while . . . if that would make you more comfortable . . .”

  “I’m in danger,” she whispered. “Serious danger.”

  “I believe you,” I said, forcing myself to maintain eye contact, rather than check around for anyone who might be a threat. It was imperative to demonstrate that my real concern was for her safety. It was, but I was worried about me, too. And I needed to know what she knew.

  “I want to know why you’re in danger,” I said. “So I can help you if I can. I’m not out to hurt you. Maybe you’d feel safer here than on a boat.”

  I could sense her stare though I couldn’t see her eyes. She turned on her heel and started walking quickly across the street. “Let’s go.”

  I noticed her running shoes as I caught up to her. Together we walked briskly to the boat dock. She looked nervously over her shoulder a couple of times.

  After exchanging a few words in Italian with a uniformed hotel employee, Antonia said, “The boat for the restaurant left at noon. We can either take the ferry or get a private water taxi. A taxi is much more expensive.”

  “Taxi,” I told the guy, handing him some money. One was just making its way in.

  Antonia made a deal with the driver, a stocky man with a big nose and a cigarette hanging off his lower lip. We boarded and found seats at the back in the open air as we headed out into the lagoon.

  “So . . . Antonia,” I said over the rumble of the motor. “Would you take your sunglasses off? I can’t see your eyes.”

  She stared at me. Though masked by her shades, the penetration was palpable.

  I looked away, scanned the other boats. Taxi, taxi, taxi, ferry. Black and silver yacht maybe three hundred yards off to the right.

  “Well . . . are you hungry?” I asked her, trying to break ground. “I’m starving.”

  “Whoareyou?” she asked, still staring. The disarming intensity of her presence cracked me wide open.

  “I . . . I’m nobody.” The words burst from the marrow of my being. I was stunned.

  “Do you always ooze melancholy?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “What are you talking about, melancholy?” I recoiled. “You don’t know me from the driver.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said to herself. “All right, so tell me.
What do you do?”

  The yacht was closer now, maybe two hundred yards. Sharp-looking boat.

  “I’m . . . a Hollywood stuntman. Please don’t give me grief about that.”

  “What an odd thing to say.”

  “What?”

  “You have no sense of value in what you do.”

  “I didn’t say that. In fact I may be the best in the whole damn business.”

  “Oh great . . . an enigma. In Beatle boots, no less.”

  The wind picked up. Antonia cinched her scarf down, slid away from me.

  “Enigma. I’m not the one hiding out under the scarf and shades,” I said.

  I needed to get what I could out of this girl and get the hell away from her. She was a pain in the ass. She hooked a finger over the bridge of her glasses and pulled them down a half inch. I still couldn’t quite see her eyes, but she looked mad. Good, but mad.

  “So,” I said. “When Fausto Arrezione discovered Leonardo’s notes, he called you at the Gallerie.”

  She pushed her glasses back with one finger. “That’s right.”

  “But he died in the fire, which I think we can safely say at this point was not an accident. It had to do with Leonardo’s notes and somebody who wanted them very badly.”

  The wind whipped up. We were accelerating.

  “Tell me who,” she insisted. “Wait . . . why are we heading into the gulf?” She pointed to the left. “Torcello’s over there.”

  The boat picked up more speed. I glanced at our driver. He was looking off the starboard bow, a walkie-talkie to his mouth. I followed the direction of his gaze. The black and silver yacht. It was pointed at us a hundred yards away and our boat was heading right for it. I squinted. Three men in dark clothes and sunglasses on the deck. A guy in an Aloha shirt at the wheel. Someone next to him with a handheld radio to his ear, looking through binoculars in our direction.

  I stood up. Antonia looked up at me, terrified.“What’s happening?”

  I made for the cabin.

  “Reb!” she shouted after me.

  “Get down on the deck now!” I ordered her. The yacht was fifty yards away.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped. “What are you going to do?”

  “Just get down!”

  She hit the deck as I stepped into the cabin behind the driver. He spotted me and threw an elbow at my face. I caught it on my forearm, but he quickly launched a side-kick at my stomach. I saw it coming and stepped around it, laying a good straight-arm punch into his ribs. He groaned and dropped the walkie-talkie. It skittered across the floor, sputtering Italian.

  I grabbed the wheel and started to spin it left. The driver swung a backhand at my nose and I caught it on the side of my face. My head rang for a second. He hit the boat’s kill button, yanked a gun out from under his shirt. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, slamming my right elbow into his mid-back. He yelped and arched forward, dropping the gun. I kneed him in the face and heard his big nose break before he collapsed in a heap.

  The huge yacht was now fifteen yards away, dwarfing us. The man with the binoculars held them casually against his chest and I could clearly make out his Caesar haircut. It was Nolo Tecci, under the same sky as me, smiling like a coyote with a paw on a groundhog.

  I fumbled for the start button.

  Antonia screamed. Two men on the yacht moved to the bow railing. I caught the gleam of a handgun.

  “Get in here now!” I shouted. The driver groaned and turned his head toward me, his face streaked with blood. I kicked him as hard as I could from two feet away.

  Antonia burst into the cabin and hit the floor facedown as if diving for home plate. She held up her hand, covered with Big Nose’s blood, and screamed again.

  I found the black start knob and jabbed it; the motor roared to life. Turning the wheel left, I pushed full-throttle as the first bullets shattered the glass at the back of the cabin.

  “Find his gun,” I barked.

  Antonia looked around frantically. “Where? I don’t see it.”

  “Lookunderhim.” The big boat followed, its bow lifting out of the water like a shark about to take a seal.No way we’re gonna outrun them. Think. Smaller boat, sharper turns. Maneuver.

  Antonia reached around Big Nose but she couldn’t budge him. “He’s too heavy! I can’t—”

  “Take the wheel,” I shouted.

  She sprang to her feet and grabbed the wheel just as two more shots ricocheted off the roof. Instinctively, I put my hand on her head and pushed her down low. I hit the floor, pushed Big Nose over, and found his gun. A Beretta Tomcat, seven-shot. I lurched for the back door, grabbing the jamb. I took a wide stance, aimed at one of the guys on the bow, and squeezed off three rounds. He grabbed his chest and went over backward.

  Our right window splintered. Antonia screamed and swerved the boat, covering her face with her arm.

  “Are you hit?” I shouted.

  “No, I don’t think so!”

  I spotted a ferry three hundred yards off to the left. “Head for the ferry!” I yelled.

  More shots chipped wood off the stern. I crouched, squinted, and squeezed off two more rounds at another shooter on the bow. His leg burst red and he grabbed it, lost his balance, and fell overboard.

  Antonia screamed, “Reb! What do I do?”

  “Give me a minute. I’m thinking!”

  “We haven’t got a minute!”

  Three more shots splintered the doorframe. I tore open a closet. A dented old gas can. I grabbed it, gave it a shake. More than half full. I spotted a screwdriver and quickly poked a dozen holes in the top of the can.

  “What are you doing?” Antonia shouted.

  “Give me your scarf,” I ordered, spinning the cap off.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Shots tore through the cabin, exploding the windshield. Warm liquid-splashed the side of my face and Antonia screamed again. I felt my cheek. Wet, but no pain. I checked out Big Nose. His neck was spurting like a burst garden hose.

  Antonia glanced my way and saw the blood. “Oh my God!”

  “It’s not me.” I pointed at Big Nose. “It’s him.”

  Over Antonia’s shoulder, I could see we were closing on the ferry; its horn honked loudly. A crowd of tourists pointed at us.

  I stuffed most of the scarf into the gas can. I reached into Big Nose’s pocket and found his lighter.

  Antonia was at the wheel, crouching low, the wind whipping her straight dark hair. “What now?” she shouted.

  “Go around the front of the ferry, close to it. Cut hard and come up behind the stern of the yacht, full speed.”

  “But they’re shooting at us!”

  “Full speed!”

  “All right! Don’t yell at me!”

  We were bearing down on the ferry and I could see people waving and screaming.

  “Cut around it now!”

  I staggered my way onto the back deck, Beretta in one hand, gas can in the other. The third man stood at the bow in a shaky firing stance with what looked like a submachine gun tucked into his armpit. He was taking aim. I raised the pistol and fired the last two shells at his midsection. He fell back out of sight. I dropped the gun.

  Antonia gunned the motor and arced around the ferry, our boat throwing off heavy spray. The yacht slowed and started to follow, but there was no way for it to compete with Antonia’s tight turn. Just like that we were completing the circle, heading for the black boat’s low stern.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught Nolo Tecci rushing toward the back of the big boat, one hand going inside his black leather sport coat.

  I lit the scarf, swung the gas can around like a discus, and let go. It sailed up and over the gleaming rail of the yacht, the scarf in flames, and crashed onto the deck, exploding with a gigantic whoosh.

  Antonia straightened our boat and headed full throttle for the open sea.

  When we were about five miles from anywhere, she cut the engine and stepped back onto the
deck. We stood there looking at each other, bobbing in the Gulf of Venice, awash in blood, sweat, and adrenaline.“You promised nothing bad would happen, you son of a . . .” She balled a small fist and punched me right in the stomach. It caught me totally off-guard and half-knocked the wind out of me.

  “Jeez, why’d you do that?” I groaned. “I saved you.”

  “Saved me? If you hadn’t taken me out here I wouldn’t have needed saving, you big jerk. Did that occur to you?” She rubbed her knuckles.“My hand hurts. What do you have, rocks in your stomach?”

  “I guess I deserved that.” I slumped back on the seat, massaging my gut. “I did save you, though,” I huffed.

  She placed her hand on my shoulder. “Well . . . maybe I shouldn’t have hit you. Are you all right?” She removed her shades.

  I looked at her face, framed by the shot-up boat and pale blue sky. Almond eyes. Just a little eyeliner and mascara that had streamed down her lovely high cheekbones like black rain.

  From the cabin, the walkie-talkie crackled and squawked: “You still there?” There was a pause and then: “Hey, you still there?”

  Antonia looked up with panic. We both scanned the horizon. Not another boat in sight.

  I stepped into the cabin, trying not to tread in Big Nose’s blood. It wasn’t easy. I spotted the radio, picked it up, and stepped back out on the deck. “Hey,” it squawked again, “Flame Boy.”

  The voice on the walkie-talkie was the last voice my father had ever heard. Those vocal cords had vibrated in my house as I lay upstairs in bed. I wanted to cut them out, hang them on a chain around my neck. I was hotter than the center of the fucking sun.Get still. Now. A deep breath, then I slipped into the thick, damp jungle.

  I pressed the talk button. “Well . . . Nolo Tecci.”

  “Who? I don’t know anybody by that name. Who are you?”

  “One of your goons accidentally nailed your man here,” I said.