Pronto (12 page)

"You said nobody followed you."

"I said I didn't see nobody follow me. There were cars behind us all the way here from Milan. To put your mind at ease you say, well, that's what they do on the autostrada, they come here from there, nobody following anybody."

Harry moved in his pacing, hands in the raincoat pockets, to the open French doors, Robert Gee watching him.

"I should get you a cellular phone. You can stay up here and call anybody you want in the world. In the meantime," Robert Gee said, "do I pick up Joyce or not?"

Harry stood looking out at his garden now and the sky full of white clouds, waiting to catch a glimpse of the sun. He knew that weather could affect your disposition and he wasn't going to let it.

"She's going to be, lemme see, sitting in the Caffe Rapallo at noon. Ezra Pound Garden at three, Vesuvio's at five. What we worked out." Robert Gee looked at his watch. "It's coming on noon. You want me to get her, you have to let me know in the next few minutes."

"I've had forty-seven years to make up my mind," Harry said, "if I want to live here. And now I'm not sure."

"We back to that," Robert Gee said. "Or, it's the question everything else is all about. Without even giving it a chance, you saying it's not like you thought it was going to be." Robert Gee looked up at the ceiling. "I don't see any leak where you said. There might've been one two, three hundred years ago, the way it's stained, but it's dry now. This is villa living, man. You have to get in the right frame of mind for it. Dig architecture, history, art, different related kinds of shit like that. You know what I'm saying?"

He looked over. Harry was gone, in the garden now. Robert Gee followed him out to the concrete railing where Harry was taking in his view of Rapallo on the bay: way down there about fifteen minutes on the funivia, and all the green countryside in between, spots of tan that were villas and farms, twin holes like a shotgun muzzle in hillsides where the autostrada tunneled through.

"I imagined myself sitting here in the evening," Harry said, "watching the sun go down, the red glow sliding into the sea."

"That from one of Ezra's?"

"He didn't write that kind of poetry." Harry turned all the way around to face his villa. "What color would you say that is?"

Now Robert Gee turned. "Your house? Kind of a hot mustard with a red tile roof. You don't like it, change it. But leave the white stone around the windows, that's cool."

"I lease the place last year, I'm here two weeks even before last Sunday, when you tried to sell me an umbrella."

"I believe I said at the time, I knew you weren't going to buy one."

"Two weeks in a hotel while this place is sitting here," Harry said. "You know why? I felt like I was in first gear all the time, couldn't seem to get going."

"'Cause you weren't able to talk to people in your own style," Robert Gee said, "like you want."

Harry was nodding. "That's part of it."

"You sounded okay to me."

"Yeah, well, that picked me up, talking to you, but now ... I can't get used to this place."

"You been here two days."

"It's damp, it's cold..."

"It is today, yeah, a bit chilly. Got to turn the heat up, get a fire going in your main room. Man, you can walk into that fireplace."

"It's cold other ways," Harry said. "All that old furniture. I need a bed, a comfortable chair. Some lamps. It's dark in there."

"Have to decorate it the way you like," Robert Gee said. "Nothing wrong with the kitchen, though, it's nice and big. You got enough supplies to last you awhile, I packed the freezer." Robert Gee hesitated. "Now, if you like how I cook, least that'll be taken care of."

He waited for Harry to comment, say something about the pasta carbonara he made and left for him, full of bacon and rich cream, Harry's first meal in his villa.

"I didn't tell you," Harry said, touching his chest, "I got a hiatus hernia. It acts on you like heartburn and you have to watch what you eat. Nothing too spicy. Otherwise, yeah, the pasta was great."

Robert Gee watched Harry turn to look out again at his view. "Joyce cook any good?"

"She's okay, nothing fancy."

"Maybe that's why you anxious to see her."

Harry was staring at Rapallo, way down there on the bay, church spires sticking up, the tourist harbor full of boats. "I wish I knew if they followed her," Harry said. "It's possible, but did they? The Zip would have friends in Italy he could get to help him. Maybe he's not here but found out Joyce was coming, called one of his friends to follow her when she got off the plane. Are they watching her? Is the Zip here? If I knew... The thing is, forty-seven years I've been planning, working on coming here, dreaming about it, and now I got all this going on. I have to decide something in two minutes." He looked at Robert Gee. "You know what I mean?"

"You're saying you don't want nothing to happen to you," Robert Gee said, "till you find out for sure if you like it here."

Harry stared at him for several moments.

"Yeah, something like that."

Raylan said to Joyce Patton, "You know what I'm going to ask you." Raylan sitting with her now at the Gran Caffe Rapallo, five rows back beneath the awning, his guidebook lying on the table. Joyce wore a navy wool coat and held her coffee in beige wool gloves.

She said, "I still don't know where he is. I'm not even sure he's here."

"But you're waiting to hear from him."

Joyce said she wasn't even sure of that and asked Raylan how he'd known enough to come to Rapallo. When he said, "You may not believe this, but Harry told me a story one time--" Joyce stopped him right there. She said, "One he'd never told another living soul -- I believe it."

Raylan ordered coffee, then sat there rubbing his hands together. He said it seemed colder than fifty-eight degrees out, didn't it? He said they went by centigrade here. But all you had to do to convert to Fahrenheit was multiply the centigrade by one-point-eight and add thirty-two. Joyce said, "Is that what you're going to do, talk about the weather?"

Raylan opened his guidebook and read her the part where it said "Rapallo offers to its guests magnificent surroundings and various plants for leisure time activities in whatever period of the year." He asked her what she thought they meant by "various plants." Joyce shrugged in her navy coat. He showed her a photograph in the book of the new auditorium and the caption that said it "disposes of 340 seats."

When she didn't smile Raylan closed the book. He put it on the table next to Joyce's purse, saying to her, "I want to talk to Harry. Get him for his own good to go back with me."

Joyce said, "He won't do it," shaking her head. "Not if he has to go to prison."

"It's better than getting shot."

Joyce said, "Your job's worth that much to you? You'd shoot him?"

"I hate to tell you this," Raylan said, and told about Tommy Bucks, the Zip, and another guy with him flying to Milan, following the same itinerary she did.

Joyce was quiet for a minute, hunched up in her coat. Her gaze moved past him to the street, then came back and she asked if he knew for certain they were here.

"I suspect they are." Raylan watched her and said, "I wish you knew where Harry was."

She didn't say anything, staring out at the street again. A dark-blue Mercedes sedan was holding up traffic, cars behind it blowing their horns. Raylan turned to look over his shoulder. He said, "I don't know which makes the most noise, the way people over here lay on their horns or all those motor scooters flying around. Man, they're loud."

They watched a boy about twelve years old step out of the shrubs and palm trees separating the street from the seafront walk on the other side. The boy crouched behind the Mercedes to light a match out of the wind. They saw him touch it to something in his hand, drop it on the rear deck of the car, and run off as a string of firecrackers began to explode, sounding to Raylan like low-caliber gunfire.

He said, "I just read in my book they love fireworks here. They have what they call pyrotechnic matches between different neighborhood clubs, see who's best at lighting up the waterfront. You ever hear of anything like that?"

Joyce didn't answer. Raylan turned again to look at the Mercedes. The rear door on this side was open and a young guy in a leather jacket was getting out. The Mercedes didn't move, horns still blowing, raising a racket as the young guy came across the street toward the cafe.

"I thought he was going to chase after that kid," Raylan said. "Didn't you?"

He watched a heavyset guy in his shirtsleeves, a white shirt, get out from behind the wheel of the Mercedes and start toward the back of the car. The horn blowing died off and then stopped.

The young guy was in the aisle now looking this way. Raylan noticed how his shoulders filled that leather jacket; zipped up, it reached almost to his hips. The young guy was coming toward them now, to their table, his eyes on Joyce, his hands hanging free; big hands. He reached them and the tips of his fingers touched the edge of the table next to Raylan, that close to him.

Raylan said, "What can we do for you?"

The guy didn't bother to look at him. He said to Joyce, "There's a friend of yours in the car wants to see you. That Mercedes."

Joyce said, "Oh?" glancing toward the street. She said, "What's my friend's name?"

The young guy said, "He wants you to come over to the car."

Joyce said, "Tell me who it is first."

The young guy motioned with his hand. "You'll find out. Come on, let's go."

Raylan said, "She wants to know who this friend is. Don't you understand that?"

The young guy looked down at Raylan for the first time. He said, "I'm not talking to you."

"She still wants to know who it is."

The young guy said to Raylan, "Stay the fuck out of this," and turned to Joyce again. "You want, I'll pick you up and carry you."

Joyce was looking toward the street. When she got up all of a sudden Raylan said, "Wait now," putting his hand out to stop her. She brushed past him, past the young guy, and Raylan turned to watch her. He said, "Joyce?" seeing a gray car at the curb now, on the near side of the street, that blocked his view of the Mercedes, the two cars pointing in opposite directions. Raylan started to get up, again calling to Joyce, and the young guy shoved him down in the chair and held him there with one hand, pressed against the table. Raylan didn't move, except for his right hand. It reached down his leg beneath the table, down into his boot to touch the grip of his Smith 357 wedged in there. He paused then, still intent on Joyce, seeing her walking toward the gray car and expecting her, about now, to go around it to the Mercedes. But she didn't. No, the door on the passenger side of the gray car swung open, Joyce ducked inside, and the car was down the street before the door slammed closed.

There was a pause then, Raylan surprised, taking a few moments before he finished his move: pulled the 357 out of his boot as the young guy let up on him, turning to leave, and jammed the stubby barrel into his groin. The young guy grunted.

Raylan said, "My turn," and told him to have a seat.

Horns were blowing again on the Via Veneto. The Mercedes had come to life, trying to U-turn in that narrow street: backed into the parkway, into shrubs and flower beds to come flying out of there, but now traffic was lining the cafe side of the street, blocking the way. The Mercedes tried its horn for a while and gave up. A door opened.

Raylan watched the Zip step out and come toward the cafe, the Zip wearing his dark suit, his sunglasses. Finally, there he was and it was strange, to watch him coming and feel a sense of relief, in a way glad to see him, or glad to see him in plain sight, in the open. The Zip seemed to be staring back at Raylan until he reached the table and stood with his hands on the back of a chair. Now he looked down at the young guy, ignoring Raylan.

"What's the matter with you?"

The young guy looked surprised. "What?"

"What're you doing sitting there?"

"I asked him to," Raylan said. He sat close to the table, his hands out of sight.

The Zip looked at him, no more interested than before, and turned to the young guy again.

"You see her walk off, whyn't you go with her?"

The young guy said, "I can give you the long version or the short version. The short version is he's got a fucking gun he pulled on me and now prob'ly has it pointing at you. So you tell me what you want to do. I don't even know who the fuck he is."

The Zip didn't say anything, not until he pulled the chair out and sat down, ignoring the young guy now. He said to Raylan, "Okay, what're you doing with Harry? You over here to extradite him?"

"I'm on my vacation," Raylan said. "How 'bout yourself? You been here before?"

The Zip kept looking at Raylan but didn't answer; he seemed tired, maybe feeling jet lag, all dressed up but not too happy.

"You're wasting your time," Raylan said. "All you can do here is get in trouble." He looked at the young guy. "You must be Nicky Testa, sometimes called Joe Macho? I'll stay with Nicky. I've read your sheet." Raylan shrugged. "I've read a lot worse. All I can say is you better keep your nose clean over here or they come at you with swords. I mean it. Go on up to carabinieri headquarters on, I think it's Via Salvo D'Acquisto, and you'll see what I'm talking about."