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Robert was shaking his head now. Joyce thought he seemed tired as he said, "You're missing the point, Harry," and she was sure he was right. He said, "Maybe you're missing it on purpose, wanting to argue. Wanting to act like you aren't scared, so you talk tough, like you don't care. I can understand that, Harry, the tendency why you do it. But I ain't gonna stick around if you keep it up, 'cause then you're not careful and it gives those guys more of a chance. You know what I'm saying to you?"

"I know," Harry said, "exactly what you're saying. It's like the price of umbrellas goes up when it rains. Right? I don't meet your price, you take off, you're a free agent."

Joyce wanted to hit him.

Robert was shaking his head again saying, "Harry, money's got nothing to do with it. It's all how you're acting."

"You can shop around," Harry told him, ignoring what he'd just said. "Go see those guys that're looking for me.... Maybe they'll pay your price."

Robert said, "Man, you're worse off than I thought." He turned to walk away.

And Joyce said, "Wait." She said, "Harry, you're drinking again, aren't you?" She watched him turn to her taking his time, getting his answer ready. Now he cocked his head.

"Why do you say that?"

Giving her his serious, interested look. Robert Gee was waiting to hear too.

She said, "Well, I know you are."

He said, "Wait now. Whether I am or not, I want to know why you said it."

She said, "Harry, for God's sake, because you're serious and trying to sound logical, pretending to be clever, and it's not you. I can tell by now when you're acting."

"You're not saying I'm drunk."

"No, you're what you used to call maintaining, drinking just enough to take the edge off, keep your central nervous system from getting out of hand. Remember when you used to say that?" Her expression turned almost to a smile. "I'm not saying you shouldn't be drinking, I'm only saying you are."

"I did have a few last Sunday," Harry said. "I was having trouble, you know, talking to people, I couldn't get going, so ... I didn't have any martinis, just plain Scotch and water. They don't know how to make martinis here anyway. That was Sunday. Since then, during the past week I haven't had more than two on any given day and a couple glasses of wine with my dinner. Ask Robert. I was my old self again after going through a -- what would you call it? -- a period of adjustment, settling in?"

"While you were being your old self," Joyce said, "did you happen to tell anyone where you live?"

Chapter
Fourteen.

Sunday evening Raylan went in the hotel lounge for a drink, not knowing what he wanted. He had learned already they didn't have Diet-Rite or Dr Pepper or had ever heard of them. Mountain Dew either. They had Coke, Pepsi-Cola, and 7-Up. Raylan sat at the old dark-wood bar seeing himself in the mirror and asked for a Pepsi, no ice, poured a glass, drank it half down, and felt his eyes water with the sting. He was tired.

He'd shown the front-face half of Harry's mug shot at all the cafes on the Via Veneto and got a few waiters to nod, yes, the American. The assistant manager of the hotel said, "Yes, the American with the same name as the river in Tuscany, though spelled a different way in his passport."

No one recalled Harry saying anything in particular and it surprised Raylan, knowing Harry to be a talker. He hadn't asked anyone in the bar, since Harry didn't drink. But then thought, Well, you hardly drink and you're in here. So he showed the mug shot to the little guy behind the bar and right away got a nod.

"You know him, huh?"

"Yes, of course, Sr. Arnaud."

"Same name," Raylan said, "as the river."

"Yes, he was here, oh, three weeks I think. Come in here every afternoon for the tea. That was the first two weeks. The third week, no. He change to whisky." The little guy smiled. "And became a more friendly person."

"Harry was drinking hard stuff?"

"Sr. Arnaud, yes, Scotch whisky."

That didn't sound good.

"You know what happened to him? Where he went?"

"I think to stay in his villa." The little guy turned, pointing to a window across the room and said, "Up the mountain," waving his arm now, "by Montallegro. Drive up in a motorcar or ride the funivia. You know the Santuario, where it is?"

No, but Raylan sure intended to find out. First thing in the morning he'd rent a car. The bartender didn't know if Harry had bought the villa. If he did, there would be some record of ownership in a government office. Wouldn't there? The bartender said the villa was between Montallegro and Maurizio di Monti, a big place you see far off from below and then close from above. He said the reason he remembered it was because Sr. Arnaud had drawn a map on a napkin to show where the villa was located and how you could see the orange trees in the garden if you went by on the road above slowly. Oh, and a persimmon tree. Two or three turns in the road above Maurizio di Monti, that was where you looked down. The bartender said Sr. Arnaud was very proud to have this villa. Raylan asked then why wasn't he staying in it before? The bartender didn't know the answer to that one.

Raylan thought of something else. He said, "I've seen orange trees growing around here. Some out in front of the hotel."

The bartender said, "Yes?"

"But you serve canned orange juice in the morning."

He went to his room and tried calling Buck Torres, forgetting it was Sunday afternoon in Miami Beach. Torres had given him his home number, so he tried that and ended up leaving a message on the policeman's machine, self-conscious doing it, talking to a person who wasn't there. He had supper and was back in his room before Torres got home and called, wanting to know first of all where he was, insisting.

Raylan said, "I know you can find out anyway from the number," and told him he was in Rapallo, as was the Zip, the guy with him, and some friends from here, it looked like, but there was no sign yet of Harry.

Torres said, "How do you know he's there?"

"I give you my word he is," Raylan said. "The reason I'm telling you all this, I wonder if you'd call the local cops, the city police, not the carabinieri, and tell them the situation, that a man is gonna get killed if they don't do something about the Zip and his guys. See, if I tell them," Raylan said, "by the time they got done interrogating me Harry's liable to be dead. The other thing, while you're talking to the cops, ask them to find out if Harry owns property here. Under his real name. I'm no good at stuff like that. Okay? And let me know as soon as you can? I spoke with the Zip. I told him Harry was set up, that he never skimmed in his life. The Zip don't care, he still wants him. Can you tell me why?"

"Try and figure those people out," Torres said. "Listen, you remember I told you we found a sawed-off shotgun? Was in a dope house. We got the guy who brought it in and sold it for twenty bucks' worth of crack, two bottles. The guy said he picked it up in a parking lot in South Beach, behind the Delia Robbia. He said a guy in overalls was laying there; he thought he was asleep."

Raylan said, "Can you put the gun in the hands of the victim? What's his name, Earl Crowe?"

"We're pretty sure it's his. It's got his prints on it. I think it's going to be enough for the state attorney to turn Harry loose. I know he wants to."

"I can't wait to tell him," Raylan said. "If I can find him."

They were winding down.

He said, "The emergency number here is one thirteen instead of nine eleven. In case you wondered."

Torres said, "What's he doing in Rapallo? Why there?"

"A friend of his lived here on and off," Raylan said. "You ever read Ezra Pound?"

Torres said, "Who?"

They got Nicky a red Fiat and gave him Fabrizio as his driver. The guy's stomach touched the steering wheel. He was okay though. Quiet, Nicky thought, for an Italian. He told Nicky he'd lived in New York, actually Brooklyn, a couple of years, but didn't like it too much and returned to Milano. Talking to Fabrizio, asking what different words meant, Nicky found out the Zip had been calling him a mama's boy, a pussy, an asshole, a queer -- the Zip's idea of being funny. Fabrizio said, "So what're you gonna do about it? Forget it."

They found out Raylan Givens was staying at the Liguria and were at the hotel by eight o'clock Monday morning. Nicky went in hoping to catch the marshal in the dining room having breakfast. Walk up to him and say, "Now it's my turn," the same way the guy had said it when he shoved the gun in his groin. Have him looking up from the table, put three nines into him, one in the head and walk out. Only the marshal wasn't in the dining room or up in his room. Shit. The desk clerk said he had asked directions to the Avis car rental office and left the hotel only a short time ago.

Fabrizio knew where it was, on della Liberta, not far. So, okay, if couldn't nail the guy at the table eating he'd do it on the street, a drive-by, only making sure the guy saw who it was.

Fabrizio said, "You do this before?"

Nicky said, "Don't worry about it."

Fabrizio said he'd do it if Nicky wasn't sure. He said he had killed five people when he was in New York, three of them with a pipe bomb. If Nicky wanted to use a bomb they were easy enough to make. Throw it in the guy's car. Nicky said he was doing this one himself, no help. He looked at Fabrizio, man, what a slob, wearing the same ugly gold sport shirt three days in a row. Nicky, wearing his black leather jacket with a white T-shirt next to his body and pressed jeans, couldn't believe how some guys didn't care what they looked like.

Fabrizio spotted him. He said, "There, you see him? Wearing the hat. A cowboy, uh?"

Walking along the left side of the street ahead of them. Wearing a dark suit today and the hat, always wearing that hat. Nicky said, "That's him," getting excited. "Go around the block so you're coming back the other way."

Fabrizio didn't get it. "Go around the block?"

"So I'll have him on my side of the car. I don't have to shoot past you."

"Get in the backseat."

"I'd still be shooting across the street. I want him close." Nicky got a good look at the marshal as they drove past him, Jesus, wearing that hat and cowboy boots with it. They were coming to an intersection.

"Via della Liberta," Fabrizio said. "The street where Avis is, to the left."

Nicky said, "Go past it and make a U-turn and come back. So we get to him before he gets to the corner."

He leaned forward to reach around with both hands and pull the Beretta stuck in his waist, pressing against his spine, as Fabrizio gunned the Fiat through the intersection and into the next block before he braked; then had to wait for cars to pass before making the U-turn. Nicky racked the slide on the Beretta. He was ready. But as they crossed the intersection again Fabrizio said, "Where's the cowboy?"

And Nicky said, "There he is."

Already walking up della Liberta. They saw him for only a second. Fabrizio turned right at the next intersection and again at the next one, bring them around the block to della Liberta.

Raylan was nowhere in sight.

Nicky said, "Where's Avis? He must've gone in the office."

"It's up the street more, behind us," Fabrizio said, creeping the Fiat along close to the sidewalk, his gaze moving from one side of the street to the other. He stopped the car. "You have to get out and look for him. Find out where he is. I go around two blocks this time and come back for you."

"I want him," Nicky said.

Fabrizio nodded, impatient. "Yes, all right. You told me. Now you going to get out?"

Nicky was on the sidewalk, the Fiat moving away before he'd thought this out, looked at it good and saw what he'd do once he located Raylan. He still had the Beretta in his hand and had to quick stick it in his pants and zip the jacket over it. He started walking, passing store windows, restaurants, a place to get ice cream, and came to a street called Via Boccoleri that seemed more like an alley. Narrow and dark in there with doorways to what looked like shops. Nicky unzipped his jacket as he started in. There was a cross street not too far ahead, another alley. He half turned as a motor scooter came up behind him and shot past with that noise, that high whine, Jesus. Yesterday, riding around in the Mercedes, Benno would drive up behind motor scooters and nudge them off the road, into parked cars, into ditches, up on the sidewalk. Not all motor scooters, just the ones he said annoyed him. What he meant was smart-ass kids on motor scooters who came too close to the car, or gave Benno the finger going past at the way he was creeping along. When they were looking for the gray Lancia. They had brought more guys down from Milano and had them at the airport, the train station, and roads leading to the autostrada; they'd paid gas station guys to call a number if they saw the Lancia. Benno said one more day they'd find it. Fucking Benno, bored driving around so he had some fun with the motor scooters. Nicky grinned thinking about it, Benno bumping the motor scooters, nudging them and watching the kids driving lose control. Nicky half turned again hearing another motor scooter on della Liberta. He waited. This one went whining past the street. Nicky turned to continue on, stopped in the same motion, and felt himself jump.

The marshal was standing about ten feet in front of him wearing that dark suit he saw now had a vest: the marshal with his thumbs hooked in his belt, his hat down more on one eye than the other.