Blue Moonlight (16 page)

There are people who will tell you that it’s impossible to dream when you pass out. Bullshit. These are the same dolts who will tell you nobody dreams in color. Again, bullshit.

I do both.

Just like I am now…

In the dream I’m running down a narrow back alley of Florence. There are three men chasing me. They have guns in their hands. Automatics. They’re wearing Obama masks. They are dressed in black. They are yelling at me in Russian, so I don’t understand a word they’re saying.

When they start shooting at me, I feel the bullets enter into my back. I feel the hard kick and the sting of the hot steel entering my flesh. I fall forward, I’m about to hit the solid rock cobbles head-on—but find myself falling through them. Falling right through stone, down into a black space until I come to a dark place surrounded by water…

I’m all alone, sitting on this mud-covered rock, staring out into a vast nothing. Just cold ocean. But soon people start to gather. Like me they are all alone, but unlike me they all seem to be oblivious to one another. They just look lonely and forlorn, like they’ve been banished from somewhere, like heaven maybe. A great wind blows across the rock and seeps into our bones. Behind me, one of the dead, this one a woman,
wails in lonely agony and begins digging in the mud. Suddenly aware of my dead presence, she starts tossing great chunks of mud at me…

And then I fall some more.

This time I land in a river. There are other people floating in the river. I’m having trouble keeping my head above water. I’m swallowing rancid-tasting water and sinking. But soon I come to a riverbank and someone or something pulls me out and lays me out onto the mud-covered shore along with a whole bunch of other moaning dead people. The sky is murky and thick, but it’s daytime. Flashes of lightning strike all around me and explode in thunderous quakes.

From out of nowhere a series of massive stone wheels start rolling toward us, crushing the people along the way. Each one of the stone wheels is as big as a house, and they are headed right for me. I want to move out of the way but I can’t. I’m paralyzed and helpless. From behind me I hear a laugh. Evil, squealing laughter. When the first stone begins to roll over my feet, I feel the bones, skin, and flesh being crushed…

And then I fall some more.

When the fall stops I find myself naked and on fire. There’s a monster standing over me. It’s a half-man, half-beast kind of thing with one eye in the center of its forehead. It’s holding a pitchfork and it’s prodding me with it, drawing blood each time. The stabs are agonizing, but the wounds heal themselves as fast as they are inflicted. The fire burns and tortures, but the skin remains whole and undamaged, as do my nerves. The people around me are all men, and similar beasts are torturing them. I recognize some of the men. There’s Napoleon and Hitler to my right. To my left, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Lee Harvey Oswald are sharing an anguished laugh. Not far behind them, the Islamic extremists who took down the Twin Towers with two fully fueled 747s.

How the hell did I end up here?

In hell.

I’m not evil.

I don’t kill people.

Well, scratch that. I do kill people. I mean, I have killed people. But they were the evil ones. I didn’t want to have to kill them. It just happened.

I look up at the beast, into its one-eyed face.

He stabs me yet again with the pitchfork, making my chest feel like it’s being ripped open. This time, instead of pulling the pitchfork back out, the beast leaves it in there…

When I come to, I feel a dull pain in the center of my chest.

I roll over, land on top of my mobile phone. My hand is trembling when I thumb the speed dial for my FBI contact, Agent Crockett. As the phone rings, I try to calculate what time it is on the East Coast of the US. It’s about five in the morning. I’m going to be waking her up. But then, I’m sure the brutal murder of my Italian contact is a pretty good excuse.

The phone connects.

“Agent Crockett’s phone,” I hear in a man’s deep, dry voice.

Agent Zumbo. Tell me it ain’t so…Crockett and Zump together. I picture his naked barrel stomach rubbing up against her tight little body. Shudder away the image as if it were spider crawling on my face.

“Zumbo, it’s Moonlight. Where’s Crockett?”

“Say it in Italian, sweetie,” he answers with a belly laugh. Like this is all some kind of a joke.

“Fuck you, Zump!” I scream. “Get me Vanessa Crockett.”

“She’s a little indisposed at the moment. How can I be of assistance?”

More images of a naked Zump together with Crockett. I’m going to have to burn my brain when this is finished.

“It’s fucking five in the morning. She’s got to be still in bed.”

“Not us, Moonlight. We’re working. Pulling yet another all-nighter to make sure your mission succeeds…you know, the one you’d better pull off if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life getting fucked up the ass by some black bull stud in a four-by-seven prison cell.”

I’m not sure why I feel relieved the ex-football star doesn’t appear to be presently bedding down with the female agent, but I can’t help but feel that way. Then comes a commotion, another Zump belly laugh. I’m guessing the phone’s been snatched from his hand.

“Mr. Moonlight,” comes the female voice. “I asked you not to call unless it’s an absolute emergency.” It’s Crockett.

“Tell you what, Agent Crockett,” I say, lifting myself from the floor and heading back into the bathroom. “I got something I want you to see.” I snap a picture of Francesco and forward it as a multimedia text. “Take a look at that and tell me if what you see does not, in fact, constitute a fucking emergency.”

While the image transmits it dawns on me that I have yet to take the piss I so badly needed to take ages ago. Holding the phone between my right cheek and shoulder, I unzip, pull myself out, and wait for some sign that Crockett received the picture. It comes in the form of an exhale.

“OK, Moonlight,” she says. “Here’s what I’d like you to do: gather your things and leave that place.”

“What about the body?”

“Leave it. We have people who will take care of it. You’re in danger there, obviously enough. Security has clearly been
breached and your cover is entirely blown. Whoever did this to your contact will do the same to you if they find you there. Leave.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice. Any ideas where I might find a safe roof over my head until I can find the flash drive?”

“I don’t think that will be possible. Abort the mission and come home.”

“Not a chance. I came here to collect the flash drive and to save all humanity. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Bravo for you, Moonlight, although the truth is that you went to Florence to save your girlfriend.”

“She’s a part of the package.”

“I’ll try to find you a place to hide out. In the meantime, keep a low profile until you hear from me.”

“When will that be? There’s these Russian bastards who know precisely where I’m—”

Call ended. Crockett has hung up on me before I can even finish my sentence. My ass is on the line and she cuts off communication.

No time for brooding.

Time instead for peeing.

When I’m done, I fill up my pack with all my things, strap it over my shoulder. I pack up the computer. Unlocking the deadbolt, I slowly make my way out into the narrow hall, my .9 mm leading the way. When I come to the guesthouse door, I slowly open it and slip on out, careful to make sure no one is waiting for me on the landing. Then I haul ass down six flights of stairs and out into the streets of Florence, a most beautiful and unhealthy place.

I make a check of my watch face.

Noon.

I’m trying to think of a place I can go without risking being spotted by a whole bunch of Russian goons who want to see me dead. Then it dawns on me. The Uffizi Palace art gallery. It will be packed with students, tourists, art experts, artists, and some of the most crack Italian police and security guards in the country. It’s just a matter of getting my automatic past that same security.

In terms of weaponry, I’m a walking arsenal. I’m carrying the .9 mm in a shoulder holster along with two of the three original additional nine-round clips. I’ve got a fighting knife strapped to my belt and another .22 snub-nose five-shot revolver duct taped to my lower left leg. I’ll be more or less protected in the Uffizi, but no way I’m heading in there unarmed. If the Russians follow me into that place, they will somehow manage to do so along with their own personal hand cannons.

But that doesn’t mean I can walk in with every lethal tool I’d like to have on hand to defend myself against former Russian soldiers turned mobsters.

Within sight of the Uffizi, I spot a Dumpster inside a narrow alley positioned perpendicular to the Piazza della Signora.
Actually, a series of three small plastic and metal Dumpster on wheels that collect both refuse and recyclables. Thank God for a green Italy.

I sneak a quick look over both shoulders, make an about-face to see what’s happening behind me. All clear, I head to the Dumpster and kneel down before the one in the center. I rip the tape from my boot and release the .22. Then I unsheathe the fighting knife and pull out the two remaining .9 mm clips.

Down on my knees, I feel around underneath the Dumpster, searching for a place that will effectively conceal the weaponry while also allowing me easy access should I return to this place on the run. I locate just such a space beside the left front wheel: a flat piece of metal attached to the mobile Dumpster’s chassis. I slip the stuff onto it, careful to set the pistol grip and knife handle so that they face me.

Standing, I take another look around, heft my pack up onto my back, and head back up the road, until I come to the square. From there I turn left and make the short trek to the Uffizi Palace, a museum guarded by an eight-foot-tall Perseus. The Greek god holds a sword in one hand and the decapitated head of Medusa in the other.

The Uffizi is a long, concrete-and-stone structure that wraps around a rectangular courtyard. All the floors aboveground are supported by thick pillars. Displayed in between the pillars are statues of all the great Renaissance geniuses, like Brunelleschi, who designed the Duomo, and my friend Dante Alighieri, the writer who lately has been plaguing my dreams with his particular version of hell.

My. Hell.

Moonlight the doomed and the damned.

I enter into the No. 2 entrance, where the ticket window is, and purchase a day pass for fifteen euros. Then I head to the No. 1 entrance and the long queue that’s already formed outside it. I take my place at the back. There’s a Japanese girl in front of me. She’s got colorful tattoos on her neck and the backs of her hands. I imagine the tattoos run up the length of her arms, but her worn leather biker jacket is concealing them. What it doesn’t conceal is her tall, gravity-defying punk-rock Mohawk. It’s painted bright red. Around her neck, a chain-link dog collar. Timeless punker fashion. Standing directly before her is an old woman, and in front of her, an entire group of Japanese tourists of all ages. Doesn’t take me long to figure out they’re all a part of the same tour group.

I feel the weight of the automatic hanging on my shoulder, and I know that I have to figure out a way to smuggle it in with me. Over my shoulder, I watch the people coming and going inside the open square. Some are sitting for the painters who have set up easels at various positions throughout the cobbled square. In between them, uniformed police casually walk from one end of the square to the other, their sunglass-shielded eyes peeled for security breaches, big or small. Wasn’t that long ago a terrorist cell exploded an IED here, killing half a dozen innocent bystanders and wounding another two dozen.

The line moves.

The Japanese are granted access, two by two, by a pair of armed guards manning the entrance. The tourists are giddy, happy and excited, their beaming, ear-to-ear smiles reflected in the safety-glass doors as they enter into the building and approach security.