by Jack Barnao
That made him stiffen angrily. I guessed he was a wheel in town, everyone was supposed to know him by sight. But I didn't. After a pause he pulled out a little leather folder, flipped it open and showed it to me. It was official enough, a good likeness, a thumbprint and his rank, Tenente Giacomo Capelli. I noted that he was with the Polizia, the city department, not the Carabinieri, which is federal.
I stood up. He was tall but I was taller and he didn't like that. He said nothing as I unbuckled my belt and pulled it free of the loops on my pants and the holster in the small of my back. I held the holster with my left hand and brought it around. He reached out his hand to take it but I didn't give it to him. You don't hand over guns that way, not in the army. I took it out of the holster and slipped the magazine out, then opened the action and handed over the gun.
He took it and closed the action then held out his hand for the magazine. I was flipping the rounds out, one by one, with my thumb. He clicked his fingers impatiently but I kept on until all seven were out, then handed over the magazine.
"The bullets," he said. He was enjoying himself. There's a lot of sexuality about guns and disarming people is good for the macho character.
"You'll get them when I have a receipt with the serial number of my weapon on it," I told him.
He snorted but produced a notebook and took a property receipt from the back of it. He made it out and handed it to me. I nodded thanks and checked the number. It was correct and he had his name and rank on it and it was signed properly, the same way his ID had been. I handed over the shells and he slipped them into his pocket. "When you leave our city I will let you have the gun back, but not the bullets," he said. There was no arrogance now. He'd done his job, he was going. A professional, I reckoned, grudgingly.
"I'll look forward to it."
He turned on his heel and went out without speaking. Herbie was sniggering. "You sure told him," he said.
"Don't worry," I promised. "If anyone tries to shoot you, I'll show him this receipt. That'll cool him out." My mind wasn't on the conversation, I was wondering how the grapevine had heard so soon that I was tooled up. Either the tenente had a direct line to airline security at the top level, or else someone in Canada had given him the word. It changed everything.
Chapter 6
Herbie didn't finish his coffee and after a few minutes more we went out onto the street and wandered down towards the Ponte Vecchio. It was one of those glorious cloudless Tuscan days with a sky so blue you wished you could paint. The city was crowded but it wasn't a menacing busyness, it was more like walking into an entertainment ground with everybody on holiday. The locals were zipping around in cars and on swarms of little Vespa scooters, but there were tourists everywhere. The space against the river wall in front of the hotel was lined with tour buses, German, French, English, and there were dozens of Americans and Canadians on the street, wearing the pastel shirts and pants that make them stand out everywhere in the world, all chattering to one another excitedly, half drunk on the atmosphere.
The streets in Florence are mostly narrow. Except for the piazzas and the main thoroughfares the biggest you find is barely wide enough for traffic after the endless cars are parked down both sides. We didn't pass a spot big enough to park a bicycle. I figured that Italians who are driving around are just looking for a place to park. It's the national sport, bigger than cycle racing. But it was fun to be out amid so much bustle.
Herbie ignored it all. He had his hands stuffed in his pockets, making a point of looking dead ahead, shutting out the sights. Nothing was going to impress him, he'd decided.
I walked a pace or two behind him on the narrow sidewalk, studying the rounded shoulders and the overlong mousy hair. He was no different from a thousand other middle-class misfits I had met, except that he was under my charge and away from all of the stresses that had turned him into such a chronic sorehead. I felt sorry for him and his anger and decided to do what I could to shake him loose.
We found our way along the network of narrow side streets, jostling through the noisy, friendly crowds until we came to the Piazza della Signoria, the biggest square in town. I'd caught up with Herbie by now and was chatting to him as we walked. Not lecturing, just pointing things out. He was still ignoring me but it was becoming an effort. He was beginning to feel the warmth of the city and was excited, despite himself. Typically, his comments were sneers, but at least he was noticing things. He waved at the statues. "What is this place, Queer City? All these guys with their dorks hanging out?"
"Quite a few of the artists kicked with that foot," I said, "But it doesn't take anything away from their talent."
"Buncha fairies," he snorted, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from David.
"That's just a copy," I told him, "the real one is inside, away from the acid rain. It'll take your breath away."
In one of the open air restaurants a tourist had thrown a crust for the pigeons and immediately hundreds of them swooped around until one of the waiters ran out and anxiously shooed them away. Herbie laughed. "Wants to keep the pigeon shit out of the spaghetti," he said, "Although how the hell they'd tell the difference I don't know."
We wandered around the square, among all the tourists and the locals, many of them spectacularly pretty girls. I saw that Herbie was looking at them, shyly. What do you know, I thought. The kid wants a girlfriend. I wondered what kind of hassles he'd gotten into with his grandmother's maid and the other women. Probably put his hand up their skirts, I imagined, although it didn't seem like something he would do, so far in my acquaintance with him. He didn't seem sexually unhealthy. Ignorant and unpleasant a lot of the time, but nothing pathological.
We found the Savonarola marker and Herbie looked at me curiously so I told him the story.
"Savonarola was a priest who got the locals annoyed. He preached that art was decadent, poetry and paintings were the work of the devil. This was at a time when the Renaissance was just rolling and all the rich people were surrounding themselves with beautiful things. So after a while they got tired of his badmouthing and they tried him and hanged and burned him and a couple of his disciples, right here."
While I was talking Herbie pretended to ignore me, his eyes darting everywhere but as we walked on he asked suddenly, "How come everybody was so goddamn churchy? I mean look at this place, there's priests and nuns everywhere."
"Religion has always been very real in this city. God is part of the scenery. But besides that, a lot of people, particularly anyone with talent, went into the church so they could live comfortably while they got on with their painting or sculpting or whatever."
He frowned, then tossed me the question clumsily, not looking at me, embarrassed by the subject. "Yeah, but that meant no screwing, eh?"
"Some of them were dedicated enough that they didn't mind. Some had girlfriends anyway and some were gay. But in the meantime they didn't have to play politics to stay alive. They lived in the monastery and did their thing and nobody killed them, as long as they didn't get the world in an uproar like Savonarola."
An Italian boy of about Herb's age roared by on a scooter with a pretty girl hanging around his waist. Herbie started back, then swore. "Sonofabitch nearly hit me."
"Teenaged arrogance," I told him. "There's a lot of it going around."
We found an indoor restaurant on the edge of the piazza where there was a spare table and went in. I didn't have to persuade him, he was becoming more docile and I was starting to wonder whether I was needed at all. So far he wouldn't have put any strain on a maiden aunt.
He said he wasn't hungry but accepted prosciutto with melon and a glass of red wine along with me. We could see out onto the square and he couldn't keep his eyes off the crowds, the girls particularly. That was the answer, I thought. If I could line him up with something soft, my worries were over. It didn't have to be sexual, by the look of him he wasn't ready for that yet, he wanted somebody to care for him. Nobody at home did, except for his grandmother, and she didn't see
enough of him to make a difference. I figured he probably had the same daydreams that sell so many copies of Playboy but was ripe for the holding hands in the moonlight treatment, if it could be arranged.
We were eating our ham when a guy about thirty came into the restaurant and stood at the doorway looking around like a bright-eyed bird. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and black slacks but he had the lean look of a lifelong grifter, somebody who gets by on his wits, but only just. I judged him to be either a tour guide or a tout for some store or service in the city. You see them everywhere although they're less obvious in Europe than they are in the Arab or South American countries.
He finally settled on us and it was as if a light had gone on behind his eyes. He straightened and smiled and came to our table beaming. "Signori."
I nodded at him. Herbie went on eating.
"Signori," he said again. "You are American, yes?"
"No." I said and he made that explosive little sound with his lips and threw his hands up.
"Then you are from Canada. Perhaps from Toronto. I have a cousin in Toronto. He is in the plastering business there."
I don't like touts of any kind but the guy was working, so I was polite to him. "Signor. I don't wish to be rude but we are having lunch."
He bowed from the waist and straightened up again, an apology in human form. "A thousand pardons, signor. My name is Mario Di Tursi. I am in the travel industry. It is my work to welcome visitors to our city."
"I appreciate that, signor, but I would appreciate a little privacy until we have finished our lunch." There was a sharpness to him that had my hackles on edge. Nobody else was being accosted, so why us? I'm not the kind of person who attracts touts. I guess they don't see me as an easy mark. There's something in deportment that discourages panhandlers and muggers. Was he appealing to the kid? And if so, why?
The waiter was watching us from his place near the wine bin. He looked nervous, wondering if the guy was going to have an adverse effect on his tip.
Di Tursi didn't take the hint. He pulled out the vacant chair beside Herbie. "Signor, with your permission."
"You don't have permission, Mr. Di Tursi. I would appreciate it if you left, right now."
He stood up, fluttering his hands in apology. I stared at him until he took the hint and bowed and backed himself right out of the restaurant.
"Why'd you lean on him like that?" Herbie asked. He was interested, at least Di Tursi had done that much for us.
"Nobody else is getting bugged," I said. "How's the ham?"
"Okay, I guess." His plate was empty. "I never had it with melon before."
"Don't your folks take you out to Italian places in Toronto?"
He humphed. "I wouldn't go out with them," he said, and added the clincher, "even if they asked me."
Poor little rich kid, I thought. Give him a day or two of attention and he'd come right around.
"Do you see much of your father?"
"Naah. He's always at the office or out of town. He's got deals cooking everywhere. This year it's real estate, last year it was oil. He's always looking to make another buck."
"That's what business is all about," I said but he snorted again, bitterly.
"Then business is a crock," he said. "How much goddamn money do you need for Crissakes?"
"More, usually," I told him. "If you go into the family company, that's going to be your life."
"Yeah, well I'm not gonna make myself a slave, like him."
A heaven-sent opportunity for some of the Locke charm. "What would you like to do instead?"
He closed that door with a bang. "Nothing," he said. "I'd like to spend the money having a good time."
"That way lies alcoholism and suicide," I told him. "You have to get excited about something, whether it's business, danger, art, something. Man wasn't made to lie around eating peeled grapes."
"How would you know?" he sneered. "You've had to work all your life, you think it's the only thing there is to do."
I laughed. "Fifteen years ago that could have been me talking. I was a spoiled rich kid, just like you."
He sniggered as if I'd told him a dirty joke. "You? Rich? Then how come you're working for my old man?"
"This is what I like to do," I said. "Not necessarily babysitting but traveling and eating well and running into the occasional donnybrook."
"Bullshit. If you had money you'd be on a beach, same as me." He was certain of it.
"Have it your own way." I finished my prosciutto and reached for the wine bottle. "Want some more of this?"
"Naah." He waved me away, then stood up. "Let's get outa here."
"Sit down, I'll call the waiter and get the bill." I wondered if he would sit down, but didn't let my concern show. If he thought he could make me jump by making arbitrary decisions, life would be miserable for the next six weeks. I just beamed, not begging or commanding and he sat. The waiter bustled over and I said, "Il conto, per favore, signor."
Herbie shook his head. "What is this shit? You know about ten words of the language and you make like you're a native, who're you fooling?"
"Not a soul," I agreed. "It's just politeness, if you give the pleasantries in anybody else's language, they'll help you with the tricky bits. If you don't they're liable to be stone deaf if you have a complaint."
"Yeah, well you don't have to worry, you picked up a bundle of money to take care of things."
"I'm earning every nickel."
I paid and left a little change for the waiter and we left. We were both starting to flag, the glass of wine along with the heat and the jetlag was reaching us. Whatever it was, Herbie yawned. "I wanna sleep," he said.
"Why not? Just an hour, most of Italy closes down for noon anyway, we'll do the same. We've got three weeks to check out all the artwork."
"Three weeks!" Herbie said. He made it sound like a sentence.
We were about halfway back to the hotel, walking Indian file through the crowds on a side street when I saw the girl coming towards us. She was devastating. Tall for an Italian, slender and regal, as gorgeous as a sailor's dream. She was wearing a light green summer dress that floated around her as she moved, striding confidently along the outside of the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. She was carrying her purse in her left hand and as I watched her, enthralled, a Vespa hurtled alongside and the driver reached out and grabbed it from her, dragging her sideways so that she sprawled in the street as she lost her grip on the purse.
I reacted automatically, lunging three strides across the street to cut off the Vespa and clothesline the rider with my left arm straight across his throat. He tried to duck but I bent my knees to match his movement and my arm hooked him off the machine which skidded across the roadway making people on the other side scream and scatter.
My arm was pulled but the man was down, struggling to find his feet as I rolled him prone and pinned one arm up behind his back.
The girl was on her feet and she ran up and grabbed her purse, babbling in Italian. The only words I made out were "Grazie mille, signor."
"I'm sorry, I don't speak Italian," I said, looking up at her. She was beautiful, flushed and excited as she clutched her purse with both arms.
"Signor, thank you. You were so brave."
It's hard to look modest while you're still wearing your shining armor but I just shrugged. "Do you want to turn this man over to the police, signora?"
"My purse. I have my purse. The polizia will do nothing." I wasn't sure if she was right but I didn't want to get involved in court appearances so I straightened the guy up and patted him down until I found his wallet. He was squirming and swearing at me in Italian. I made out "cazzone," which meant he thought I was an oversized sex organ but he shut up when I increased the upward pressure on his arm, bending him in half.
I flipped the wallet open with my free hand and offered it to the girl. "Check his name, anyway, it will maybe scare him a little."
Then, surprisingly, Herbie was there. "I'll do th
at," he said.
He took the wallet and leafed through the contents. "There's something here says Paolo Catena."
A crowd was gathering and I was starting to feel a little conspicuous. "Toss it on the ground," I told Herbie. He looked at me in surprise but I nodded at him and he did it. I let go of the kid, who was about twenty-two and, as he stooped to grab the wallet, booted him firmly in the seat of the pants. He fell full length then scrabbled to his feet and ran for his scooter. Within ten seconds he was around the corner.
The girl was still standing there, holding her purse in both hands and looking at me. I stuck out my hand. "John Locke, signora, delighted to be of service."
She took my hand and held it firmly. I noticed she was wearing about a quarter pound of careless gold in bangles and chains but she had no rings. "My name is Carla Fontana, Signor Locke, and I am very grateful that you were so brave."
My left arm was sore from the impact of the kid's chest, but not enough to slow down my eye for the main chance. "Anybody would have done the same thing," I told her. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to join my friend, Herbie Ridley, and me for a drink or a coffee."
Herbie was staring at her and she turned on him and smiled a smile bright enough to give him a tan. "I would be honored," she said.
A knot of tourists had gathered around us, anxious to get in on the action. One of them was a middle-aged man wearing a Yankees baseball cap. He said, "That was quick thinking, fella. You a cop?"
I didn't want to hear his war stories so I smiled politely and said, "Not exactly," and took the girl's arm. "Let's go in there." I pointed to the nearest restaurant.
The three of us edged through the crowd that was blocking the entire street now and went into the restaurant. The help fell over itself to find us a table and we sat down. "What would you like?" I asked and she beamed. "I think a cappuccino, please. But please, I pay. What would you like?"
Herbie and I had a beer, she had the cappuccino and she sighed, as if she had just finished a sprint. "In all my life, this has never happened to me," she said, then shrugged and pouted to make her point. "In Firenze, it does not happen. In Roma, yes. And in Napoli—" she let the sentence dangle and made the flipping motion with the fingers under the chin that means disgust.