Blue Moonlight (12 page)

I feel the T-shirt filling with blood. I need a hospital, but I can’t risk blowing my cover. Maybe I should call Francesco. Maybe he’ll know what to do. Or maybe he’s working with the Russians. Fucked if I know what to do. I’m bleeding. I’m badly cut. I let the injury go, I risk gangrene by first light. I risk losing my entire hand. I happen to like my hand. Francesco is the only one who can possibly help me. I decide to take a chance on calling him.

I fumble for the cell on the nightstand.

But before I can grab it, I hear the sound of footsteps climbing the six flights of stairs that lead to the top floor of the guesthouse. I pull my piece out from under the mattress, where I placed it for easy access before getting into bed, just in case some Russian goons might pull a B and E and torture me. Go figure.

The footsteps stop.

The guesthouse door at the top of the stairs opens.

I thumb back the pistol hammer.

This time I’ll shoot at whatever moves in the dark.

Ask questions later.

The guesthouse door slams shut.

Running. Down the narrow corridor.

The door to my room flies open.

“Ricardo!”

Francesco enters.

My host is eyeing an empty bed. An empty bed with blood on it. My blood.

My. Fucking. Blood.

Francesco takes a step forward. A slow step, like he senses an ambush.

He should sense an ambush.

I press the barrel of the Walther up against the back of his head with my good hand, my bad hand pressed between my naked thighs.

“Down,” I say, through clenched teeth. Grinding teeth. “Down on the fucking floor. Now. Down. Now.”

Francesco raises up his hands like he knows the protocol. Slowly he descends.

“I am too late to save you,” he says, his voice an octave higher than I remember it from this morning.

I cock back the hammer.

“You, Francesco,” I say. “How do you say double-cross in Italian?”

“It is not like you think. It is truly—”

“Let’s see, cross is
croce
, right?”

“Please take the gun away, Ricardo.”

“
Croce
, am I right, you fuck? Am. I. Right?”

“
Si, si.
Yes, you are right.”

“And double is
dople
or something like that. Tell me! Tell! Me!”

“
Doppia
.”

“Say it all. No wait. Say ‘I am a bad
doppia croce
.’”

“It is not…I am not.…”

“Turn around.”

“
’Scuse
?”

“Turn around! On your knees!”

He does it.

I press against his nose. Not directly on the nose, but on the side, his left nostril pressed in like an almost-flat bicycle tire.

“Say it. Now. Say it or I blow your nose off. That would be better than killing you. I lost a finger and now you can lose a nose and then we’re even. Say! It!”

He releases a breath while I press the gun even harder against his nose. So hard a tear falls from his left eye. He clears his throat. “I. Am. A.
Doppia. Croce.
”

“Again. Faster.”

“I am a
doppia croce
.”

“Again…faster.”

“I am a
doppia croce
.”

“Faster, louder.”

“IAMADOPPIACROCE!!”

I see the elbow fly into my crotch before I feel a pain that only God Himself could have personally designed—on the eighth day, when He invented torture.

I drop the gun.

I drop the blood-soaked T-shirt.

I drop myself onto the floor and assume the fetal position on my right side.

Francesco picks up the Walther, aims it at me.

I manage the strength necessary to make a pistol with my injured hand. I point my extended index finger at my left temple.

“Shoot. Me,” I say. “Shoot. Me. Dead. Now.”

My hand falls. My balls inflate and pulsate with gut-tearing excruciation.

And then, by the grace of God, I pass out.

When I come to I’m back on the bed. The pain in my balls has receded, giving way to more pain in my left hand. My Walther is resting on the nightstand beside the bed. My initial instinct is to go for it. But just the sight of Francesco standing at the end of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest, his face radiating tight-jowled annoyance tells me maybe I was all wrong. Maybe my host isn’t a double-crosser after all. A
doppia croce
. Maybe, just maybe, he was trying to tell the truth.

“I saw the three men leave the building over the security system. It was too late by then. My apologies for not paying better attention, but such is the nature of my business. I am only one man.”

“We’re on camera? Even in here?”

He makes a sweeping gesture with this open right hand. “Look around you. You can’t see me, but I can see you.”

“How the fuck could they have gotten in?”

“Any number of ways. My guess, Ricardo?”

“Try me.”

“More than likely, they waited for the meter man to make his rounds. He comes every Monday afternoon. They simply walk in behind him, when the front door to the building is opened.”

“OK, but how about getting through that prison lockdown of a door out front? How did they get the four-digit code?”

He shakes his head. “I have no answer for the code, but it is not impossible to discover it, with the right inside connections. As far as the lock is concerned, it must have been picked.” He holds up his skeleton key. “Perhaps it’s time for a better security system.”

We both stare down at my injured hand, now wrapped back up in the bloody T-shirt.

“Again,” he says after a time, “I can only offer you my sincerest apology. I must ask you to dig deeper as well and to trust me.”

I look at him. His wide brown eyes, his slim build, his thick black hair. He seems like a very nice guy. Someone I would gladly share a beer with in different circumstances.

“OK,” I say. “But from now on, I want you here at all times. OK?”

He nods. “Agreed.”

“I need a hospital,” I say, my left hand trembling under the T-shirt. I can feel the clipped finger curled into itself like a frightened caterpillar.

Francesco flips on the overhead. The light stings my eyes, adding to my collection of bodily pain.

I remove the T-shirt, expose the bloody tip of a finger.

“They did this to me. Those fucking Obamas.”

“Obamas. Like the president. I saw their masks on the monitor.”

He sits down, holds out his hands like he wants to examine my wound. “May I?”

Fucker throbs and stings. But I nod OK.

He gently takes hold of my forearm, peels back the pinky finger. The sting shoots electric up my arm into my neck.

“Knife?”

“Big one,” I say.

He cocks his head. “It’s not all bad. The fingertip is still there. But he gave you a very deep cut. I will fix it, however.”

“You?”

“Stay where you are,” he says, getting up, heading out of the room and into his office. “I hope you don’t mind the feel of needle and thread.”

“Love it,” I say. “Compared to your elbow slamming into my balls.”

He comes back in with a small tray. There’s a surgical needle wrapped in clear plastic and a spool of medical thread also wrapped in plastic. A bottle of rubbing alcohol occupies the tray beside a bottle of Betadine ointment, along with a fistful of cotton balls. Aside from that, the tray also sports a syringe that’s been locked and loaded with something, and one more thing: a drinking glass half full of an amber-colored liquid. Something tells me Francesco has seen his share of wounds before.

“Drink this,” he says like an order, handing me the drinking glass. “It’s American whiskey. Jack Daniels. Your brand, I believe.”

“You shouldn’t have, Francesco,” I say, holding the warm glass in my right hand. “Fuck that. Yes, you damn well should have.” Then I add, “Salute!” and down the entire two shots.

Setting the glass back onto the tray, I feel the calming warmth of the whiskey enter into my system. Meanwhile, Francesco takes hold of the syringe with his fingertips, takes aim with the needle tip.

“I don’t have to tell you this is not going to be a pleasant experience.”

“Just…you know…do it. Do. It.”

He pushes the needle into my finger. The sting shoots up the nerve canal, all the way up my arm, into my neck and head. It brings tears to my eyes.

“This is a cocktail of antibiotic and tetanus,” he informs. “One can never be too careful in these matters, my friend.”

The memory of my holding a gun against his nose only fifteen or so minutes ago flashes through my brain. Now I’m allowing him to inject me with some chemical concoction. For all I know, I’ll be paralyzed within a few seconds or just plain dead. But then, what choice do I have? I need this man more than he needs me. It’s a matter of trust or faith. How did my dad describe faith whenever he’d console one of his numerous grieving customers? It’s about believing in something you can’t see, hear, or feel. In this case, my faith in Francesco is more than that. It’s now an official leap of faith.

The needle extracted, I wipe my eyes with the back of my uninjured hand.

“These Russian fellows,” he goes on, “they want the same thing you want? What you have been sent here for?” He’s asking the right questions, but I’m sure he already knows the answers.

I nod while he pats at the wound with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

I cringe at the sting, but it’s not quite as bad as having that three-inch-long needle impaled in my flesh.

“Please be still,” he adds.

“Yes, the Russians want what I want. Always have.”

“They are from the Russian government. Mr. Medvedev’s government. Or should I say Mr. Putin’s?”

More patting on the wound.

“Jeez, you done there, Francesco? This is worse torture than the Russians’. Worse than your bony elbow.”

He giggles, pulls away the cotton ball. “But of course,” he says.

I take a quick glance at the finger. The blood is all gone. But Francesco is getting ready to apply the first stitch. He looks at me looking at him and the finger.

“This is going to sting. Again.”

“Got any more whiskey?”

He retrieves another two fingers for me, which I immediately shoot.

“You should refrain from too much alcohol while on duty,” he suggests.

“Never thought about it like that,” I say, once more setting the empty glass onto the tray. “On duty with the FBI in order to save my ex-girlfriend. Save the world. Save my ass.”

“Yes, it all sounds very strange, doesn’t it, Ricardo.”

He tells me to set my palm down flat onto the table. Taking firm hold of my damaged pinky finger, he prepares to enter the needle and stitch.

“I don’t have to tell you about the hurt,” he whispers before beginning, echoing his previous warnings.

“You are one painful son of bitch, Francesco,” I say. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

He smirks.

“Yes,” he says. “My ex-wife used to say something like that all the time.”

He presses the needle deep.

“She was right,” I say and exhale. “So. Fucking. Right.”

When I’m sufficiently sewed back up, Francesco packs up the soiled medical waste, sets it onto the tray, puts it aside.

“Try to stay off the finger for a few days,” he says, beaming.

I say nothing while the pinky tip throbs.

“That’s a joke,” he adds. “Get it? Stay off the finger.”

“Your English is excellent,” I say. “I don’t pick my nose with that digit anyway.”

Laughing, the guesthouse owner exits the room and comes back in a few minutes with a bottle. The Jack. I guess he’s decided that we might as well get drunk. Damn the danger that lurks right outside these walls in the form of Obama-masked Russian thugs.

“I had been saving this bottle as a surprise for you when your mission was accomplished. But now that you have been injured in the line of duty, I see no reason to hold back any further.”

He pours us each a small glass. He hands me mine.

I raise it up to him. “For tomorrow we die,” I toast.

“You mustn’t talk like that.” He winks, sipping his whiskey. His eyes light up as he adds, “Strong. But sweet.”

“I just think of it as sweet,” I say, downing my third drink of the night.