Pronto (15 page)

He said, "Nicky, you looking for me?"

Raylan saw Nicky's hand touch the front of his jacket at the waist and hesitate there, the boy catching himself in time. Now his other hand came up to fool with the thumbnail, it looked like, of the hand already there.

Raylan said, "Well?"

Nicky still didn't answer. Though he'd narrowed his eyes, maybe getting into the game, Raylan wasn't sure. Narrowing your eyes wasn't that hard to do. He said, "You didn't want to talk to me yesterday either. Told me to stay out of it. So I have to wonder why you're looking for me. I see you drive by and come back. I see you get out of the car with a pistol in your hand... So I guess what you're wondering, if you can get it out again before I get mine out. Am I right?" It wasn't the kind of question likely to get an answer, so Raylan said, "What we might have here is the kind of situation you see in real life out there. Like it was a contest, who could pull the faster." Raylan shook his head. "If you wanted to shoot me, Nicky, for some personal reason you might have, would you walk up and tell me? Or would you wait to catch me unawares?" Raylan paused now. "You're not telling me what you think about this. What's wrong?"

"I'm trying to figure out," Nicky said, "what the fuck you're talking about."

"You know but don't want to let on," Raylan said, seeing Nicky's hands right there at his waist, the boy still in the game, "waiting to see if you have a move. Well, I'll tell you something. Shooting at a person is not the same as shooting out on a firing range. Even if you're a dead shot, it don't mean you can look a man in the eye and be able to pull the trigger. I know this for a fact, partner, cause I taught the use of firearms at the training academy."

The way Nicky kept staring at him Raylan was dying to know what was going on in the boy's head. He believed some confusion, as the boy didn't seem to know what to do. Scratched his jaw. Shoved his hands flat down in the pockets of his jeans. Raylan could see the blue steel grip of the automatic against his pants. It looked as though it was going to stay there this time. Raylan raised his chin and nodded toward the street.

"Your car's out there." He waited until Nicky turned and was walking away before he said, "Nice talking to you."

The Fiat was parked now on della Liberta across the street from the Avis car rental office.

"I'm trying to understand this," Fabrizio said. "You didn't say nothing to him?"

"What was I suppose to say?"

"You know he had a gun?"

"Sure he did."

"You saw it?"

"I did yesterday."

"But you don't know he had it today."

"He has it 'cause he's a U. S. marshal and they pack. The son of a bitch, he knows I'm going to kill him I get the chance."

"What was that, before?"

"What was what?"

"When you were talking to him. Wasn't that a chance to do it?"

"He was waiting for me."

"You think so?"

"He knew I had a gun, he saw it and told me he did. So I knew he had one. He wouldn't have stopped me if he didn't. He was waiting, hoping I'd touch my gun."

Fabrizio said, "Yes?" He was going to ask why he didn't, but saw Nicky's expression change and it was too late.

"There he is," Nicky said, sitting back, not as anxious as he was before.

Fabrizio looked across della Liberta to see the cowboy with the Avis man, the cowboy taking the keys from him and a folder and then getting into a blue Fiat sedan standing at the curb. Fabrizio waited for Nicky to tell him to follow the marshal.

"Okay, follow him."

He made a U-turn and trailed behind the blue Fiat almost to the seafront, della Liberta to Via Gramsci, where the car turned right and then right again into the courtyard of the Astoria Hotel and stopped facing the entrance. From the street they watched Raylan get out of the car and go inside. Fabrizio waited for Nicky to say it.

"That's not his hotel."

"It's the woman's."

"What's he doing in there?"

"I don't know," Fabrizio said. "But maybe it's a good thing you didn't shoot him."

Raylan had the key to Joyce's room he'd taken from her purse, the one she'd left on the table in the cafe and was now in his hotel room.

He turned the key in the lock and entered knowing her room might have been tossed already and it was, her clothes everywhere, her bags open on the bed, empty. They would have been looking for something bearing a Rapallo address or phone number, the name of a hotel maybe, no one believing Joyce didn't know where Harry was.

Raylan assumed they didn't find anything worthwhile or that boy with the muscles and no brain wouldn't be outside waiting for him. He pushed open the shutters covering the window and looked out from the second floor past a magnolia tree to the red Fiat in the street. The magnolia surprised him. Beyond the red car were date palms, and the walk along the beach: a better view than his room at the Liguria offered. He'd keep her things there with his until this business was settled. Which meant he'd have to pack her bags.

Doing it gave him a strange feeling, touching her clothes, her skimpy underwear, her bras, folding and arranging them as neatly as he knew how inside her nylon bags, nothing that looked like Winona's and everything in smaller sizes. He found it wasn't possible to handle a woman's things, even her slacks, sweaters, and jeans and not have a feeling about the woman and wonder about her. She had T-shirts, too, with Florida scenes on them. Wherever she was he bet she missed having her clothes. He remembered Joyce hunching her shoulders in that navy wool coat sitting in the cafe. It took nerve for her to come here, hook up with a guy who'd jumped his bond. He wondered if she loved Harry or was just used to him. She had curlers in the bathroom and all kinds of beauty aids that went into a smaller plastic bag and then into her carry-on. He wanted to be able to say to Joyce, once he found Harry -- that had to come first -- "Oh, I brought your things," and she'd know he was thinking of her while this was going on. See what she thought of that.

Raylan turned the key in at the desk. He didn't even mind putting her bill on his credit card. She would insist on paying him back and he'd say don't worry about it. Something to that effect. It was another scene he could play in his mind waiting for it to happen.

They watched him come of the Astoria with luggage in both hands, a bag hanging from his shoulder. Fabrizio said, "Right now would be a pretty good time, uh?"

In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, they remembered Fabrizio as Ladykiller. Of the five people he had taken out during his tour in the States, four were women. One he shot sitting in a car with her husband, who was the target, and three in the dry-cleaning establishment when the pipe bomb came through the plate-glass window and exploded.

Nicky had hold of the door handle.

They watched Raylan set the luggage on the pavement, open the back door of the Fiat, and begin to load the pieces inside.

"It's still a pretty good time," Fabrizio said.

Nicky opened the door of the red Fiat and moved to stick his leg out just as Raylan closed the door of the blue Fiat and turned to face the street. Nicky hesitated and Fabrizio helped him out.

He said, "But if the cowboy knows where they are, since he's picking up her baggage? ... You better wait, uh? Not kill him yet."

Fabrizio having some fun with this stronzo from the States. He waited.

And Nicky said, "So we follow him."

Chapter
Fifteen.

Raylan noticed the Zip preferred Vesuvio's as his hangout, there yesterday and again today. A couple of his guys were eating, it looked like, while the Zip had only an espresso cup in front of him. There weren't as many people here as Sunday, so it was easy to keep an eye on him. Which is what the Zip was doing, facing this way at his table.

Tuesday, December 1, some of the tourist places along the Via Veneto, like the ice cream parlor, were now closed for the season. People here loved ice cream, so there were other places to get it. That was something he could mention.

So he did, sitting at the Gran Caffe with coffee and a plate of pasta with meat sauce, writing postcards to his two boys in Brunswick, Ricky and Randy.

That part of South Georgia had about the same weather as here. He'd already mentioned that on a postcard. He'd told them the spaghetti here wasn't like the spaghetti their mom made with tomato soup, and that they put all kinds of things on top of their spaghetti here. Like octopus, honest. He'd told them people liked to eat outside here even when it was kind of chilly.

What else?

He could tell them he'd rented a car yesterday, a blue Fiat, and was driving around. That maybe today he'd drive up into the mountains that were actually like hills in eastern Tennessee, up in the Smokies, but with different kinds of trees on them, not so piney as back home.

The Zip was getting up from his table.

Tell them about the olive trees on hillsides with the nets under them. So you wouldn't have to chase a mile after the olives that dropped on the ground.

The Zip looked like he was coming this way. Alone.

Tell about the Doris Day movie on TV last night, Doris flying a plane for the first time after the pilot had a heart attack, it looked like, and landed the plane getting instructions from the tower. In Italian. Doris talking Italian back to it.

The Zip was standing by the table now. He said, "I know you haven't found him. After you go to all the trouble to come here?"

"You either, huh?" Raylan said. He broke off a piece of bread and mopped his plate with it.

The Zip, watching him, swallowed. He brought a wad of currency out of his inside pocket, straightened and smoothed the bills, and dropped them on the table. It made a pile of money.

Raylan looked at it and took a sip of coffee.

"How much is that?"

"Thirty million lire. Pick it up, it's yours."

"I mean how much in dollars?"

"Twenty-five thousand."

"You think that's my price?"

"This is between you and me," the Zip said, "nobody else. So why don't you take it, uh? Go to Rome and get laid, get drunk, have a good time, spend it all and go home. Sound good?"

"Or what?" Raylan said.

"No or what. Take it, go on, and spend it."

"Only do it," Raylan said, "someplace else. I understand what you're saying, only I'm not going anywhere. So where does that leave you? That's what I mean by 'Or what?'"

"Well, you could disappear," the Zip said. "You not scared of Nicky? Okay, somebody else can do it."

Raylan said, "Am I talking to him?"

The Zip said, "I think you could put me in that business again," nodding, as if considering it.

Raylan said, "It's hard to imagine you in a pair of Big Ben overalls, like that scudder you sent to do Harry. I'm told they found the shotgun he carried that night and somebody walked off with. Soon as they put it on him, Harry's home free. Does the fact he shot your guy in self-defense move you any?"

"To begin with he wasn't my guy," the Zip said. "Even if he was, this is between me and Harry, nobody else. The same as this money's between me and you. Uh, what do you think? You can't do everything by yourself. Take it, have a good time."

Raylan waited and said, "Tell me why you want Harry."

"It's not your business."

"He didn't skim on you."

"How do you know he didn't?"

"You're using him as an example," Raylan said.

The Zip shrugged.

"Only he hasn't done anything."

"I want to talk to him," the Zip said. "See if he'll go home with me. It's the same thing you're doing. You told me you're here by yourself? You don't have any court papers, nothing asking the police to help you. Okay, but you're in my way; so, I offer you something to step aside. How do you think about that?"

"I already called the police on you," Raylan said. "Pretty soon they'll be asking what you're up to. You can bet they'll keep an eye on you."

The Zip said, "You think so?" giving Raylan a faint smile, like telling him he didn't know what he was talking about. He said, "Okay, this is how you want it," turned, and walked off around the tables.

Raylan picked up a postcard and looked at it: a view of that worn-out castle on the edge of the bay. He turned the card over and wrote:

Hi Boys. Remember that castle we saw at Disney World? This is what a real one looks like. People lived in it till they got tired of getting soaking wet every time they stepped out the door, so they rented an apartment in town.

What else?

Ask the boys if they could believe there wasn't any Dr Pepper in Italy.

He might've mentioned that already.

Tell them there didn't seem to be any dryers here? People hung their clothes out the window on lines, even four and five stories up.

He raised his gaze enough to see the Zip on the sidewalk now in front of Vesuvio's. The Zip motioned and Raylan saw the red Fiat standing at the curb. The young guy in the leather jacket, Nicky Testa, and the fat guy who drove the car were getting out. The fat guy went over to the table where the two guys were eating. Nicky went to the Zip's table -- about a hundred feet from Raylan watching them. He saw the Zip say something to Nicky and now Nicky turned and was looking this way. Going to be sent over, Raylan thought. But for what?