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Authors: David Stone

BOOK: The Venetian Judgment
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Naumann drew in the smoke, blew it out slowly, and tapped on the top of the tippy tin table, his signature drumbeat.
“Micah, my son, take a pew,” he said, using his Cartier to light a candle in a glass bowl. Dalton thought it over.
He hadn’t seen Porter Naumann’s ghost for several weeks, not since Cora had been shot. At that point, Naumann’s ghost had been somehow trapped in Cortona and had troubles of his own. Dalton came over and stood by the table.
As far as he could make out by the glow of the candle, Naumann was, as usual, nicely turned out, in a long tan wool topcoat over tobacco-colored tweed slacks, a rich brown sweater, a Burberry scarf, elegant loafers in some sort of deep-brown snakeskin.
And, for whatever demented reason, emerald green socks, possibly silk.
He showed his teeth to Dalton in that same Grim Reaper smile that he had been famous for when he was the top Cleaner at the Agency, before he had gone to England to start up the investment house of Burke and Single, an Agency cover op in London.
“Sit, will you?” he said. “You look like death.”
“Do you know you have emerald green socks on?”
“I do,” said Naumann. “I think they give me an air of
insouciance
.”
“I think they give you an air of being the middle guy in the Lollypop Guild.”
“Are you gonna sit down and play nice, or do I have to go all ectoplasmic on your sorry ass?”
Dalton had, after a struggle, resigned himself to the idea, put forward by the medics, that these intermittent appearances of Naumann’s ghost were an artifact of his exposure to a cloud of weaponized peyote and datura root a while back, a trap set for him by the same man who had killed Naumann. Once the hallucinogens worked their way out of his system, the medics insisted with varying degrees of conviction, so would Naumann’s ghost.
At least, they sincerely hoped so.
Dalton’s view was that if the guy in
A Beautiful Mind
could win a Nobel Prize while seeing invisible roommates, Dalton could handle an amiable specter. In the meantime, with nothing better to do, Dalton sat.
Naumann leaned forward and extended a slim gold cigarette case, offering Dalton a selection of Balkan Sobranie Cocktails, absurd creations in deep blue, turquoise, even flamingo pink, all tipped with gold filters. Where Naumann got them, Dalton never knew: Naumann insisted that he found them in a shop in Hell called Dante’s—
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.”
He picked a blue Sobranie and let Naumann fire it up for him, leaned back in the chair, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs and letting it out slowly, a curling, luminous cloud in what was left of the moonlight. The candle glow lit up their faces, the living and the dead, as they sat there for a time in a companionable silence.
“So,” said Naumann, after a decent interval, “you owe me fifty bucks.”
“I do?” said Dalton, grinning at him. “For what?”
“My money was on Zorin.”
“Was it?”
“Yeah. Nothing personal. Guy was a rhino.”
“And what am I?”
Naumann seemed to consider the question.
“You’re more of a wildebeest. You know, top-heavy, ugly as sin, bandy-legged but agile.”
“I lucked out.”
“You fought dirty. I have to say, nobody on my side is real thrilled to have him over here. The guys in the boat—now, that was just plain showy. It was like you were
trying
to get shot.”
“Actually, I was.”
Naumann made a pouty face, leaning over to pat Dalton’s hand.
“I thought so. Poor baby. Got those bad old blue devils, have you?”
“I guess so.”
Naumann sat back, shaking his head, raised his hands, palms out.
“Christ, lock and load, will you? Look at
me
. There I am, in the prime of my life, hung like a Valparaiso jackass, the body of a Greek god, the looks of a young Sterling Hayden—”
“Who the hell is Sterling Hayden?”
“—a killer town house in Wilton Row, all my expenses paid by the Agency, I’m adored by all, beautiful women cry out my name in the night—”
“More like a shriek.”
“—and along comes some whack-job Indian psycho, he slips me a mickey, I get half eaten by wild dogs in a churchyard in Cortona, and now, in case you missed it, I seem to be dead. Do you hear me whining? Do you?”
Naumann satirically cocked an ear, looking off into the starry night.
“No, you do not. So get a grip. You about through for the night?”
“I think so,” said Dalton, stifling a yawn. “Why?”
“Bit of a backlog down in Processing. Central Command wants you to ease up for a while. Too bad it wasn’t you. We had a table booked.”
“Piazza Garibaldi?”
Naumann nodded.
“Where else? Word is, you’re getting the boot.”
“Everybody’s telling me so, anyway. Last time I saw you, you were stuck in Cortona, and these evil-ass smoke demons were rising up out of the stones to hiss at you.”
Naumann shuddered at the memory.
“Hey, don’t joke about that, Micah. Naming
calls
. Seriously. I’ve seen it happen. Those are some very bad dudes.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugged, drew on the cigarette, the tip flaring like a firefly in the shadows of Florian’s portico.
“Buggered if I know. One afternoon, they all just . . . scarpered. Had something to do with eucalyptus, I think.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“Ask? Ask who?”
Dalton raised his eyes skyward in a parody of reverent piety.
“Who, Him?” said Naumann. “Hell, over on this side God’s as hard to pin down as Barack Obama’s ears. Ask me, He’s kind of like that big head in the
Wizard of Oz
. Real power’s behind the curtain. Probably some saber-toothed power broad like Nancy Pelosi, wears a pearl-gray pantsuit and stiletto heels, a pair of killer ta-tas, has a smile so cold bourbon freezes on her lips.”
“You think Nancy Pelosi has killer ta-tas?”
“Hey, you haven’t seen her naked. I have.”
While Dalton worked that through, Naumann moved on.
“So, about leaving Venice, what are you gonna do?”
“About what?”
“Like I said, you’re getting the heave. About time, by the way, you ask me. Tourists will be back in April, and they’ll be tripping over your roadkill all around town. Probably find something moldering away in a gondola. You’re gonna need some kind of work, Micah. Left to your own devices, you go all wobbly and your wheels come off. You ever hear from Deacon Cather?”
Dalton shrugged, as if the name meant nothing.
Naumann, who knew his man, didn’t buy it.
“So, no call? Not a peep? Ungrateful bastard. Typical Cather. Dried-up old Jesuit, but slick as a pickerel’s pecker. Always reminded me of Sir Francis Walsingham—”
“Who?”
“Queen Elizabeth I’s security guy. Eighty-sixed Mary, Queen of Scots, in one of the first confusion ops? Do you
read,
Micah? Improve yourself?”
“Nope. Reading hurts my head.”
“After all we did for the Agency? That Serbian thing in Chicago—”
“
We
? I didn’t notice you prancing about the place.”
Naumann looked hurt.
“Micah, I’m
always
there. You just don’t see me, unless you’re totally fucked up. I’m sort of . . . hovering. And, for the record, I don’t prance.”
Dalton yawned again, mightily this time, drew in the last of the cigarette, stubbed it out on the stones beside the table, pocketed what was left of the butt out of habit, pushed his chair back. Naumann tipped his chair against the walls of Florian’s, brought his legs up, crossed his ankles, set his nicely shod feet on the table, and lit himself another Sobranie. The move exposed a couple of inches of his emerald green socks.
“You not coming?” said Dalton, who could have used the company. “I think there’s a couple of Bollys in the minibar.”
On another level, he was painfully aware of how heroically deranged a man had to be if he was asking a dead man’s ghost to come back to the hotel for a nightcap. Naumann shook his head.
“Not this time. You really going back to the Savoia?”
Dalton looked around the piazza, back at Naumann.
“Where else? Florian’s doesn’t open for another six hours.”
Naumann gave Dalton the once-over, as if trying to make up his mind.
“Well, I got something for you to chew on, smarty-pants. You go back to your room, there’s a surprise waiting there for you.”
Dalton was silent for a time.
“Galan said something about . . . developments. Events. Who is it?”
“You tell me, smart guy.”
“Oh no. None of that shit. You’re the one thinks he’s real. Give.”
“That, my lad,” said Naumann, “is for me to know and you to find out. Anyway, if I’m right, then you have to admit I’m a real ghost and not some bit of undigested peyote bud stuck, God forbid, in your colon.”
Naumann was starting to fade.
“Where you going?”
“Me? I’m gonna cut right along to the next time I see you.”
“Where’s that?
When
is that?”
“From my side of the mirror, Grasshopper, all those kind of questions sorta run together.”
“You haven’t got a clue, do you?”
“Want a hint?”
“Sure. Yes. Give me a hint.”
“Okay. You’ll be in a hurry. Literally.”
“I just love it when you go all Delphic on me. One last time. Who’s in the room? I’ll bet it’s just Brancati, dropping by to say
ciao
.”
“Like I said, that’s for me to know and you to—”
“It’s Brancati, and you’re
still
not telling me anything I don’t know.”
“Micah,” said Naumann, now almost gone, “
you
don’t know so damn much I hardly know where to start. Watch your back. There’s more going on than you think. Change is coming. See you around.”
 
 
 
DALTON’S SUITE
at the Savoia e Yolanda was on the top floor of what had once been a private villa for a lesser scion of the Sforza family, now a high-end boutique hotel. Dalton had three rooms and a small balcony on the top floor, with a view across Saint Mark’s Basin to the island of the Giudecca and the Palladian façade of San Giorgio Maggiore. Although Dalton had an Agency flat in London, around the corner from Porter Naumann’s old place in Belgravia, this had been as close to a steady home as Dalton had known since his marriage had ended, in tragedy, ten years ago.
Now it looked like just another trap, and he was approaching it that way, coming into the hotel through a delivery door at the rear. He had rigged the lock weeks ago and no one had noticed. Climbing the service stairs all the way up to the third floor, he walked down the service hall to a maid’s closet, where he had taken the further precaution of concealing a fallback piece behind a stone slab: a stainless-steel Dan Wesson revolver chambered for .44 Magnum rounds. A hand cannon, but he loved it.
He left the steel briefcase. It contained his alternate ID, a weak but serviceable throwaway cover as a Canadian with the unlikely name of Tom Coward who specialized in stainless-steel polishing systems. The ID would at least get him out of Europe. There was also twenty grand in mixed and nonsequential euros, another ten grand in U.S. dollars, and a small but heavy Crown Royal bag filled with .999 pure Canadian gold wafers. These days he was living on what was left over from the Agency’s operating advance during the Chicago thing, almost a half million dollars in a bank in Zurich. This was his get-out-of-town stash. If he needed all this later, it would still be there. If he got killed in the next few minutes, some workman doing a reno twenty years from now would have himself a lovely morning.
The Savoia had a roof-garden café, shuttered and winterized now, but it could still be reached by stepping out onto an old iron grid on the fifth floor that held a refrigeration unit. Using the unit, he was able to boost himself onto the sloping red-tiled roof. The footing was tricky glare ice, and the tiles had a tendency to give way under his step, but he got himself across to the front of the hotel, where he lay down and eased his way to the lip of the roof just above the balcony of his suite.
The balcony was set back into the building but open to the sky above, perhaps five feet deep by ten feet wide, with a small marble table and a couple of garden chairs. The French doors that opened onto it were ajar, and a soft light poured out from the living room, along with an aria from
Lucia di Lammermoor
and the spicy scent of Toscano cigars. A voice called from inside the room, a baritone purr with a Tuscan lilt.

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