Holding the pack in his damaged left hand, he pulled out his Zippo, flipped it on, and held it over the top of the pack as he thumbed the lid back. Skin rippling, holding his breath, he leaned forward and stared down into the container. Black shadows played around the six remaining cigars as he moved the lighter around. When the glow of the flame caught a shimmer of emerald fur in one corner of the pack, and then two tiny red glitters sparkling at the bottom of the pack, he jumped a yard and let out a castrato’s shriek. The spider raised two of its legs and waggled them defensively in the light of the flame, and then scuttled backward into the shelter of the cigarillos.
It was real.
And it was right there.
He snapped the lid shut and kept his right hand on the lid while he fumbled around with his left in the desk drawer until he found some elastics. He wrapped the box around and around with them until it looked like a shredded baseball, rattled the box viciously several times just for some payback, and set the pack down hard on the desktop. He leaned back into the chair, blew out a long ragged breath, and closed his eyes. Sixty silent seconds passed and then a shrill metallic howl like a dental drill shot up from somewhere in the room and struck him right between the eyes, lodging itself in his brain like a crossbow bolt. He staggered across the room. The awful skull-cracking whine was coming from somewhere around the bed.
No. Under it.
He dropped to his knees beside the bed and fumbled around blindly until he got his hands on his cell phone, which he scooped up, punching the Send key savagely.
“Yes! Hello! For Chrissake hello!”
“Mr. Dalton?” An Italian voice, a woodwind baritone.
“Major Brancati?”
“Yes. I catch you at a wrong time maybe?”
“No. Not at all. Absolutely great.”
He lowered the cell phone to check the time. It was a little after one in the afternoon. He’d been asleep for… he had no idea. Hours.
“I did not wake you, Mr. Dalton?”
“No. I just got out of the shower, that’s all.”
“Good. You are well, I hope?”
“Yes. Yes I am. I’m absolutely fine.”
He managed to shut himself up before he said “peachy” or “top-hole.” He wasn’t at all fine, but that was his own fault. He pulled himself together and shoved the nightmare of the past several hours back into the darker recesses of his mind, where it had no doubt come from in the first place. He sat down on the bed and shook the flask, a little reassured by the gurgle of leftover cognac.
“Good,” said Brancati. “I was worried about you.”
“About me? Why?”
“There was trouble in the Piazza San Marco last night.”
Dalton’s hangover went away in a buzzing of wasp wings. His mind was painfully clear at this moment. He tried not to show it.
“What kind of trouble?”
“You did not see it? Hear the police boats?”
“I was in bed. Sound asleep. What happened?”
“Two men were badly injured. In some kind of fight.”
Dalton could not repress the next question. “How badly injured?”
“One is in a coma. They think he will come out one day. His face has been greatly disfigured and he will need much plastic surgery. The other one lives too but has no feeling in his body. His spine has been broken. Near the neck. He will not walk anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
Brancati laughed, not persuasively. “Do not be. They were garbage. Serbs and Croats, from Trieste.”
“How did it happen?”
“Well, that is why I was worried about you. Because this fight was just around the corner from your hotel there. Also because the witnesses—”
Dalton’s recollection of the evening came into sharper focus.
“If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear.”
“—there were several of them. Turisti. Backpackers. They describe the man who did this thing. The girls they lie a great deal but the Venice police think that these two Croats, they tried to — how do you say?”
Never finish a cop’s sentence. It’s a trick.
Dalton finished it anyway.
“Mug?”
“Yes! To mug this man, and he resisted them.”
Brancati’s tone contained an element that Dalton finally pinned down. Satisfaction.
“Was he hurt?”
“We do not know. But the girls, they give a description. And the description is of a man very much like you. Tall. Strong. Long blond hair. Well dressed. He was a good fighter, they say.”
“That’s every Italian man in Venice.”
“They say he had an American accent. And he sang and danced while he did this. He sang ‘People.’ You know this tune?”
“I know it. I hate it.”
“I too hate this song. Once it gets into your head, it flies around and around. You cannot get it out. Now it is in my head. Right now. Like a wasp.”
“I know. Now it’s in mine. Thanks for that.”
That made Brancati laugh. “Ha! Now you know! We share this, eh? Anyway, this ugly thing, this very terrible fight, so close to you. I worry about you.”
“Well, I appreciate that. But it wasn’t me. I’m fine.”
“But you were in the piazza last night.”
It wasn’t a question. Had he paid cash or used his AmEx card? He couldn’t recall. Too much wine. He recalled Naumann’s warning, from a company field-training session in Munich many years ago.
Tell as much of the truth as you can get away with, kid.
“Yes. I had a drink at Florian’s.”
“Of course. I remember your friend loved to do that. I thought you would go, as a remembrance. A drink for your old friend. And you stayed until the tocsin rang? From the Campanile?”
“No. I left early. I was still pretty shaken up.”
“About Mr. Naumann?”
“Yes. Do you have any news about him?”
“And you are okay? You had no avventura last night?”
“No. Just a drink and then to bed.”
“Really? Good. Because, you know, I am a little worried for this man who did this thing. To defend oneself is a man’s right. To dance and sing ‘People’ while kicking a man so hard he becomes a cripple is different. A man who could do such a thing, perhaps he has some sickness. In his heart.”
“Couldn’t agree more. But I didn’t see a thing. Sorry not to help.”
“Also, there is the family of these men.”
Family?
This was nuts. Guys like that didn’t have families. They multiplied on the underside of toilet tanks in flophouse latrines.
“Family? I don’t understand.”
“You would not think it, but it seems that the one in the coma, his name was Gavro Princip. He is the youngest son of a large Serbian crime family. Very famous. Do you remember the name Gavrilo Princip, perhaps?”
He did. It rang a distant chime. But he couldn’t—
“His great-great-uncle was the man who shot the Archduke Ferdinand. In Sarajevo. They say he started the First World War. It is a matter of much pride, so I am told, in parts of Serbia. Even today, he is seen as a hero. Anyway, his family, the Princips, they are now part of a crime organization run by a very bad man named Branco Gospic, who lives in Split, and the Branco Gospic organization, they make money in mysterious ways and are well known to the police, as the saying goes. So although Gavro Princip is a thief, still he is connected to the Branco Gospic family, and it is very likely that Branco Gospic will take what has happened to Gavro as an affront, an insult. As a matter for vendetta. Such things are taken very seriously in Serbia and Croatia. Look at the Bosnian War. The lex talionis, you know this?”