The Medici Dagger

by Cameron West

  I lay back on my elbows and stared, saucer-eyed, at the cloudless sky until I was able to draw a steady breath. I continued to lie there, half in the tall weeds, half on the cold rock, for maybe ten minutes before I finally sat up.

  My stomach hurt, my shoulder blade hurt, I’d killed two guys, my would-be informant had just turned into pâté, and Ginny was starring inGone with the Landscapers.All I had was an aching heart and a crunched-up porkpie hat.

  With a quivering hand, I picked the damn thing up, inched over to the edge of the precipice, and tossed it over the cliff.

  I shrugged out of my jacket and inspected it. There were two four-inch tears to the left of the mid-back. I reached over to feel my shoulder blade where it hurt. Two big slivers of glass protruded.Painfully, I plucked them out with my thumb and forefinger. Each piece was triangular, from the sliding glass door Mr. Muscles had shattered. I flung them at the ocean.

  I couldn’t very well cruise into town looking for Ginny; if the cops got me, I’d be no good to her. I had no choice but to wait for Pop. I trudged up the stairs to the Baby Face Nelson Suite.

  I entered the cabin, expecting to walk into a faceful of cobwebs. Instead, I found Pop’s quaint private little hideaway.

  In the center of an oval, braided rug stood an old easel with an amateurish watercolor of a bird in a tree taped to it. A padded piano stool—the kind you can lower or raise by screwing or unscrewing— stood in front of the easel.

  A well-made rocking chair sat in the corner by the fireplace, a neatly folded Mexican blanket draped over its back. A handsome oak pirate’s chest was placed next to the chair; on top of it sat a tall kerosene hurricane lantern and an open box of kitchen matches. In the far corner of the room was a sink with an iron-handled pump.

  I cranked it a few times to get the water running and splashed some on my face and the back of my neck. The cool water refreshed me. I pulled Leonardo’s notes out, soaked my shirt, and dabbed my wounds.

  I didn’t see a mirror so I went outside and looked over my shoulder-at the reflection in the window. I crossed my arms as if I were doing some chest warmup exercises to see how far the cuts opened. Both needed stitches. Though I kept a fully stocked first-aid kit in the trunk of my car, it wouldn’t do me much good by myself.

  I slipped my jacket on and sat down on the front steps and pulled Leonardo’s pages from my pocket. To my relief, they didn’t look any worse for the wear.

  I peered long and hard at the drawings. A hoisting system? A harness? What about those nested tubes? They could be connected to each other, or to the Dagger. But maybe not. Probably not. And those Circles. Twenty rings of what? And would they lead to the Dagger?

  The afternoon sun bowled its lazy way across the western sky while Leonardo and I camped on the porch, rocking back and forth together, alone at the edge of the earth.

  I was ruminating over how cruel the moon looked as it rose in the gold-spotted heavens when Pop appeared, driving a golf cart through a narrow clearing I hadn’t even noticed. As he pulled up in front of me and parked, I tucked Leonardo’s notes back in my jacket.“Pop!” I shouted. “Did you hear anything about Ginny? Have you seen her?”

  “Nope and nope,” he said, extricating himself from the vehicle.

  I felt crushing dismay.

  “Saw a bunch of coppers, though,” he added. “They had a regular party scooping up the stiffs. Don’t get much mayhem around here that isn’t on TV.”

  “What’d you tell them about me?” I managed.

  He pulled a brown paper grocery bag out of the floor well of the cart, shot me a grin. “Oh, forty-five, five-eight, two-ten. You know, short and squat. Now come around here and get these sleeping bags.”

  I did. They were the green ones with the red flannel liners.

  “Where’s that pecker who punched me? You find the rope in the shed? Got him tied up there, or what? I’m gonna kick his ass.”

  I told him what had occurred.

  “You’re kidding me,” Pop said, hobbling up the steps and into the house.“He tell you what you wanted to know first?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Pop said, setting the groceries down on the pirate’s chest.

  I dropped the sleeping bags, lit the lantern, and slipped off my jacket.

  “Whoa, Holmes,” he said. “Those cuts need attention. I better go get some stuff to fix you with. I patched a few guys up in my day, you know.”

  I told him about the kit in the car and stepped out to get it. The firewood must have been well seasoned; Pop had a blaze going when I got back.

  He had me pull the piano stool over in front of the rocker and sit down with my back to him, while he broke out a bottle of Cuervo Gold and two shot glasses. He poured me one.

  “Drink this,” he urged. “It won’t make your back hurt any less, but it’ll take your mind off of Watson.”

  “Nothing could do that,” I told him.

  “Then drink it ’cause you’re sitting on my piano stool.”

  I took it and knocked it back while he poured one for himself. Then he cracked open the first-aid kit and went to work.

  “Gee,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the rocker seat. “ Betadine, sutures, Lidocaine, syringe . . . What are you, a spy or something?”

  “Actually I’m a stuntman.”

  “Well that clears everything up, don’t it. You were just practicing over there at the inn. Now let me see here, I’m gonna poke you with the needle and then stitch you up like a mattress. You pour us each another slug of apple juice. It’ll boost our doctor-patient relations.”

  I did as he requested. Pop took a snort. “Ooh, that’s tasty,” he said. “Okay now, Sherlock, I’ll knit and you’ll tell me the tale like you promised.”

  Pop took his time sewing me up while I told him the wholestory—my parents, Greer, Tecci, Krell, Venice, Archie, Ginny, Beckett, Gibraltar, Leonardo, and the Circles of Truth.

  When I got to the part about Mona, he let out a hoot. “So you’re the one she was talking about! You’re Mona’s Reb.”

  He dressed the wounds with sterile pads and adhesive tape.

  “As far as I can tell there’s three possibilities,” Pop said. “One, my hearing aids have been picking up an Orson Welles broadcast; two, you just laid twenty miles of the sweetest-smelling shit that ever came out of a pucker; or three, this is a genuine case of truth being a whole lot stranger than fiction. I can’t come up with a reason why it’s not number three.”

  I fished the Leonardo notes out of my jacket.

  Pop regarded them carefully, squinting to bring them into focus. “By goddamn jingo . . . Number three it is.”

  By the firelight I saw his smiling eyes taking in the mystery and wonder of it all, like a kid looking at a Buck Rogers comic book.

  “Leonardo da Vinci,” he uttered slowly, the tequila making each word glisten. “Mona have the slightest inkling the kind of hellacious pandemonium’s following you around?”

  “Haven’t told her a thing. Just that I was coming.”

  “I didn’t figure, because she would have said more than ‘oh baby’ when we were in the sack night before yesterday.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Yup,” he said.“Me and Mona. Right over Viagra Falls. No barrel.”

  The old guy pulled out some roasted turkey sandwiches. “Have one of these,” he offered. “Fresh bird.”

  I refused; the nagging worry over Ginny wrung out my stomach like a wet mop. I slugged another tequila.

  “Some people are diamonds and some are glass,” Pop said, taking a bite. “The average Joe wants to tell them apart, he just hits ’em both with a hammer. Me, I’m a specialist. I can feel a fine-cut facet through an oven mitt, see the real thing shining through the blackest night. It’s a gift, I guess.”

  He turned his gaze from the fire to me. “After hearing your story, seeing these pages, and watching you in action, I figure you weigh in at about forty-six carats. That’s a half-carat more’n the Hope D
iamond.

  “Now, Watson, I can’t say how many she is, but I figure a lot, by the way she’s shimmering in your eyes. I’m telling you she’s out there somewhere right this minute, safe and sparkling. I’d bet my eyeteeth on it—if I still had them.”

  Pop took another bite, his cheek stretching out over it as he chewed. “Now here’s the thing, Reb,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to turn off Ginny’s shimmer to eat.”

  He shoved my sandwich at me.

  I took it and munched it down, grateful for his words. He was right about Ginny. She was precious. And I was going to find her, and keep her.

  We sat in our respective seats and ate by the fire, wading further into the Cuervo.

  After a while I said, “I apologize for bringing this on you, Pop. About your place getting ruined, and you getting hurt.”

  “Aw hell, kid,” Pop snorted, “I liked it. You think I’d be here if I didn’t? And about the money, I don’t want a goddamn nickel. As far as I’m concerned, that sumbitch Krell owes it to you for what happened to your folks.”

  I poured him another shot. He sipped it like nectar. “You know, I’m an orphan, too.”

  A lump rose in my throat.

  “Yup,” he said, “my old man was in the bootlegging business. You know what that was, bootlegging?”

  “Transporting black-market booze when it was outlawed.”

  “Uh-huh. Made a nice dollar doing it. Lot of bad seeds, though, in that line of work. My dad was one of ’em. He had some wheat in him, I suppose, but he was mostly chaff. That’s what my mother said. Her name was Beatrice. She had a bakeshop in town—doughnuts, pastry, cinnamon buns that smelled so good they’d make you pant. Everybodywanted those buns. Bing Crosby even came through one time when he was getting to be real popular. Said he’d heard about ’em from somebody down in Hollywood. Bought eight boxes.”

  Pop sipped some more tequila. “Mm, I like this stuff,” he said. “Anyway, where was I?”

  “Bing,” I reminded him.

  “Oh . . . you see, my old man was using the back of the bakeshop for stashing booze. He had a guy named Drymouth Dan Hollister helping him, would keep things sorted out when my dad was making deliveries. Dan always sounded like he’d been sucking on a Sugar Daddy for two weeks. Made a clicking sound like he was out of saliva, ya see? That’s where he got his moniker. But he was a handsome bastard, maybe as good-looking as you, without all the muscles. How’s your back, anyway? You sore?”

  “No,” I lied, and prodded him on. Pop’s voice and the rhythm of the rocking chair had a soothing effect.

  He continued. “Old Drymouth, he got a taste for my mom’s buns, too, only not the ones came out of the oven, you understand. And I guess she liked the way he combed his hair. He had wavy hair slicked back with lots of Vitalis, like Victor Mature, remember him?”

  “Yeah,” I said, sipping, “wavy hair, lots of Vitalis.”

  “That’s the one. So, my dad walks in on them while they’re docking,so to speak, near the deep-fat fryer, and surprises the living piss out of them. In a fury he lunges at them and knocks over the hot oil and it splashes right in my mother’s face. She screams and grabs the nearest thing she can find, which is a kitchen knife, and stabs my old man. He stumbles out of the room and into the front of the store where everybody’s lined up for the sweets, and croaks right on the floor next to the cruller case. My old lady realizes what she’s done and that her face is ruined so she grabs Drymouth’s Saturday-night special and blasts herself right in the ticker. And that was that. Put a dent in the bakery business, I’ll tell you.”

  Neither of us laughed.

  “So, anyway, Drymouth felt sorry for me and ended up taking me in. I saw my share of shot-up guys—that’s how I knew how to stitch you up. Like a bicycle, you never forget. Or is that an elephant? Anyhow, Dan went legit in the liquor business when prohibition was repealed. Over the years, he stashed away a bundle, which he passed on to me and I used to buy the inn when I got out of the service. Named it after him.”

  “What’d you do in the service?” I asked.

  “Engineer. Army Corps of Engineers. Bridge builder.”

  He picked up a log, poked the burnt ones with it, and tossed it on top. The crackle of the revived fire and the distant pounding surf made me long for Ginny.

  Pop eyeballed me for a second, reading my face.“So,” he said, picking up the notes, “you’re back on Watson. I mean Ginny. Damn! Antonia.”

  “All three of ’em,” I answered. “I’ve got to figure out the Circles of Truth. Without Ginny’s help. I’ll need Mona more than ever now.”

  “I could go for Mona myself right now,” he said. “Or a doughnut.”

  “Ginny’s a mountain tiger.” My tongue was thick with alcohol.

  “Mountain tiger? What kind of bullshit is that?”

  I was in the clouds with Ginny when Pop mumbled, “Doughnuts and mountains.” Then he hiccuped. “Nerts!” he swore. “I hate the hiccups.”

  “What’d you say?” I asked, picking up one of the pages of Leonardo’s notes.

  “I said, ‘Nerts, I hate the hiccups.’ ”

  “No,” I said, staring at the Circles of Truth. “You said ‘doughnuts and mountains.’ Doughnuts and mountains . . .” Searchlights flickered in my mind, illuminating what?

  “Yeah, well, you know, tequila’s good,” Pop said, his speech slurred.

  I pointed to the Circles, excitement prickling as the outline of a concept emerged. “Say these rings here were tossed onto a mountain; you know, like that Fisher-Price kid’s toy with the different-colored plastic doughnuts in graduated sizes?”

  “Yeah, sure. Look like dildoes with the rings off.”

  “The point is that the plastic rings are parts of a puzzle. A simple puzzle. In order to solve it, the kid has to line them up in the right order so they’re touching. Do you get me? The doughnuts . . . have to touch. They have totouch.”Thrill radiated through me.

  “Hold it,” he said, trying to catch my wave of Cuervo insight. “What’re you saying?”

  “Here,” I said, tapping the page. “Maybe Leonardo’s rings are all pieces of the same circle, only sliced apart and shrunk to ever smaller sizes, and each set of ten of them makes up one complete Circle of Truth, whatever that is—a code or something. So in order to solve it you have to blow each inner ring up until they all touch, forming one circular message. Two in this case, because there are two sets of them. I’m on to something. I know it.”

  Pop let out a gush of air that smelled like turkey and tequila.

  “I think maybe you are. Hard to tell, though. I’m pretty much in the bag.” He closed his eyes, laid his old head back. “In the morning I’ll take you to Mona’s.”

  “Do you know if she has a scanner?” I asked.

  Pop folded his hands over his belly. “Course she’s got standards, Holmes. Got high ones. She’s seeing me.”

  fourteen

  Idreamt I was a fresh cruller in a brightly lit case in a doughnut shop, clad in nothing but a sugar glaze, lying back, feet crossed, hands covering my groin, in a line of other crullers. Outside the case, a crowd of people looked in, pointing at me, singling me out. Mean-looking, wavy-haired men in zoot suits; women with full lips and hats with netting over their faces; children with comic books and cowlicks, eyeing me with lip-smacking hunger.The crullers to my right were perched up on sugary elbows, gawking at me: Krell, the maniacal treasure hunter; Tecci with his wriggling wraparound snake; ring-polishing, coldhearted Beckett.

  To my left, Mom and Dad reached glazed hands out to me. Next to them was Ginny, also reaching—to take me in her arms. And next to her was Leonardo—the only one not looking at me. The Dagger was between his teeth, and he was wearing a harness attached to a long rope. He slowly pulled it, eyes on something above him at the top of the case. I tried to see what it was, but couldn’t make it out. It surprised me that he didn’t seem to care he was a cruller.

  I heard the sound of water splashin
g and momentarily panicked. If you’re a cruller and get soaked, it’s all over.

  More water, like the drip from a turned-off hose. Then singing— terrible singing. A cross between Ethel Merman and a wounded raccoon. It was Pop crooning “It Had to Be You.”

  I opened one heavy eyelid, facedown on the sleeping bag. The doorwas open, Pop standing at the edge of the front porch, zipping his pants. He’d been serenading his dick. Behind him, the morning coastal fog spread out like dingy carpet.

  “Top of the floor to you, Pop,” I croaked.

  “Morning, Reb. You hungry? I brought some breakfast from the inn.” He waved a finger at a round picnic basket.

  Springing up, suddenly fully awake, I asked him, “You went to the inn? Any sign of Ginny?”

  “Afraid not. Manny the landscaper, he said him and Kurt just about crapped in the truck when she jumped onto the tractor. They pulled over right away to find out what the heck she was doing up there, and while they’re pumping her for information, they hear gunfire. So they hop in the cab and take off, and don’t look back for a couple of miles. When they do, she’s gone.”

  “Damn,” I said. “She could have spent the night in the woods, for all we know. Or Tecci could have snatched her.”

  “Don’t go thinking the worst,” Pop said. “It won’t help.” He sat down in the rocker beside me, handing me a biscuit. I chewed it absently.

  “Do you think it’s possible she could have found her way to Mona’s?” I said.

  “Shit, no. I’d have heard about it. Did she have any money?”

  “Some.”

  “Well, see, that’s good,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, my brain clearer now. “If Tecci or Krell were up here, they wouldn’t be lurking around on Highway One. They’d be in some hotel nearby, not cruising the coast road, right?”

  “I suppose so,” Pop said. “They’d be waiting for word from those peckers you laid out. You’ve got to think positive. Now turn around so I can check my knitting, make sure you’re not getting infected.”