Nicky turned to the Zip. "Who the fuck is this guy?"
"You want to know?" Raylan said. "Well, I'm the law, that's who the fuck I am, a deputy U. S. marshal. You want to see my star I'll show it to you. But he knows, your boss. I'm going to advise the both of you to go on home and forget what you think you have against Harry Arno, 'cause it ain't true. That story about him skimming on you was made up so you'd do something dumb and we'd come after you. I'm telling you the truth. There's no reason for you to persist in what you're doing, since Harry never did nothing to you." Raylan paused. "Well, outside of shoot that scudder you sent to do him. But you can't fault him for that, can you? He still has to answer to it in court and that's where I come in. In other words you can put your head on your pillow, not have to think about getting back at Harry. How's that sound to you?"
The Zip sat there staring at him for what seemed the longest time. Finally made up his mind about something and said, "You act like Harry's your pal and you're looking out for him. That's what you're saying to me, that you and him are on the same side. Only you don't know where he is, either, do you? I can see that." The Zip nodding. "So who you think's going to find him first?"
He got up from the table, looked at Nicky, turned, and walked out to the street.
Raylan watched Nicky take time to stare at him with a fairly cold look, meant no doubt as a threat, like saying, Just wait. Raylan said, "You want to look mean, squeeze your eyes closed a little more." Raylan grinned at him then and said, "Go on, boy, I won't hurt you. 'Less that's what you want."
He watched him walk off before he noticed Joyce's purse, on the table with his Guide to Rapallo.
They drove around looking for the gray Lancia, Benno at the wheel of the Mercedes doing most of the talking, glancing at Tommy in the front seat next to him. Telling him, Nicky believed, some story why he didn't recognize the car after following it all the way from Milan, for Christ sake. The other genuine Italian, Fabrizio, in the backseat with Nicky, sat hunched forward so he could listen and put in his two cents, all three of them talking Italian a mile a minute. Benno had come up from Naples. Fabrizio was from Milan. Nicky had asked him this morning what stronzo meant and found out it didn't mean strong. He listened to them, the car creeping from street to street, until he'd had enough of all this Italian shit, not knowing what was going on, and yelled out, "Hey, talk fucking English, will you!"
It did the job. There was a silence, the Zip and Benno looking at each other. Nicky said, "You want me to get out of the car? You want, I'll go home. Say the word, I'm outta here. I'll tell you something, though, before I leave I'm gonna do that guy, that marshal. I'm gonna find out where he's staying and I'm gonna fucking take him out." Looking right at the Zip's profile. "I'm telling you that now so you'll know."
The Zip said something to Benno in Italian and Benno pulled the Mercedes to the curb in front of an apartment building. The Zip turned in the front seat now to look at Nicky, Benno and Fabrizio watching him.
"You say you want to whack this guy," the Zip said to him. "I'm going to tell you something, Joe Macho. If that guy had pulled on me, or on Benno or Fabrizio, we wouldn't be in the car saying I'm going to take him out. You know why? Because he would be dead. We wouldn't, any of us, we wouldn't walk out of that cafe and leave him sitting there. We would shoot him and put one in the head, here," the Zip said, touching a spot on his temple, "when he's laying on the floor, to make sure. Okay, then it's done, no more to talk about."
Nicky saw Benno nodding as the Zip spoke.
"Maybe you don't understand something," the Zip said then. "Why bosses send for us. Benno and Fabrizio have both been to the States. I went over and I stayed. They send for us because the guys they have at home to do jobs are punks who don't have the nerve. Pussies, afraid to use the gun. They sit around in the social club and talk about what they going to do, but they don't do it. What you do, Macho, you insult us. Here we are in Italia, my country, and you say speak English. Then we suppose to listen to you tell us you want to whack this guy you let pull a gun on you, that, and we suppose to believe you going to do it." He said to Benno, "Is that right?" and then looked at Fabrizio.
Both of them nodded.
"I am gonna do it," Nicky said, careful now as he tried to remain calm. "I give you my word."
Benno said something in Italian. Fabrizio laughed, the Zip smiled. He said to Nicky, "Benno wants to know if we can watch. Maybe learn something."
Chapter
Thirteen.
Harry looked different. He seemed smaller. Or it was the high ceilings.
She couldn't get him to stand still and talk.
He led the way, showing off his villa. The yellow drawing room, full of chairs from different periods; the study, with framed portraits Joyce guessed were from the thirties and forties, black-and-white and sepia photos of mostly men with small mustaches; the library walled in leather-bound books and more portraits, men from the early 1900s.
All the rooms with sixteen-foot ceilings, at least.
Harry talking nonstop, telling her the place was frayed, cracked, flaking, smudged here and there with two-hundred-year-old stains; not what you'd call cozy, but villa living, you weren't looking for cozy. Harry putting on kind of a casual strut, acting cool. Telling her it needed lamps more than anything else. Light. Lamps and a new heating system. Harry wearing a wool scarf with his sport coat, the bookmaker turned landed gentry. Telling her he had just over twenty-five hectares, enough for a nine-hole golf course, except it was almost all downhill.
Joyce said, "Harry."
He said, "Ten-thirty we turn on the TV and watch Colpo Grosso, a nudie game show, Wheel of Fortune with tits. There's all kinds of nudity here, on TV, in the advertising, on magazine covers. I mean even on the news magazines, Panorama, L'Espresso." He said to her, "You could've made a lot of money here in your day."
"My day," Joyce said.
"You know what I mean. When you didn't mind taking your clothes off."
They were in the formal garden now, as frayed as the inside of the house, waiting for a good soul to rake and prune. Joyce saw a way to keep herself busy if they were stuck here. She followed a path of crushed stone to the concrete railing at the edge of the yard. Harry reached her as she looked down at Rapallo crowded around the bay, at terraced farmland, the autostrada coming out of holes in the hillside, the road winding up from Rapallo that they'd taken. Three kilometers as the crow flies, Robert Gee had told her on the way -- Robert most of the time looking at his rearview mirror -- but close to twelve kilometers following the scary curves without railings and the long, sweeping switchbacks. They passed through a village Robert said was San Maurizio di Monti and approached Harry's place from above, looking down at red tile roofs, the villa and several farm buildings close by. Robert Gee said, "Home at last," and Joyce said, "Wow," impressed. There was even a swimming pool, but no water in it. Robert said it leaked, needed work. He pulled the car into the structure nearest the house, a long shed with heavy wooden doors, its earth-colored stucco chipped and crumbling to show bricks underneath. Harry brought her out of the car saying, boy, was he glad to see her, taking her in his arms saying everything was going to work out now. She got to say, "Harry, they're here," and that was it until he was ready to, what, listen and accept the facts? She wasn't sure what his game was; he didn't give her time to think. He said, "You're here and that's all that counts." She told him she didn't have clothes with her, her luggage was still at the hotel; and she'd left her purse with her passport, all her money, at the cafe. He told her not to worry about it. She said, "How do I get home if I don't have a passport?" He told her she could stay here with him. Harry was different: trying to act unconcerned, or believing that if he didn't think about those guys or talk about them they'd go away.
They were in the garden, not one of the high-ceilinged rooms, and he still seemed smaller.
Joyce watched him.
His gaze moved from Rapallo. He said, "Sant'Ambrogio is over that way, just past the edge of town. Remember my telling you about it? Where Ezra Pound lived for a while?"
She kept looking at him as he stared into the distance.
"Harry, there are people here who want to kill you."
He didn't say anything right away and she knew she had him, trapped against his view. So he took his time, coming around to look at his villa for a moment before, finally, he turned his head to her and she could see his eyes.
"Who's here?"
"There's a young guy with muscle, broad shoulders, he looks like a bodybuilder."
"It sounds like Nicky Testa, Jimmy Cap's bodyguard. You didn't see the Zip?"
Joyce shook her head.
"I suppose he could've sent Nicky," Harry said, "told him to pick up some guys over here." He thought about it and shook his head. "No, Nicky's too dumb. He wouldn't be able to communicate. The Zip was told to handle it, so he's either here or he's coming."
"There were three other men in the car," Joyce said. "I'm sure of that. And there's Raylan."
"You brought a whole convention with you," Harry said, "didn't you?"
That sounded more like the old Harry, who could piss you off without even trying. "Raylan's here," Joyce said, "because you told him a story one time you'd never told another soul in your life."
"I did?"
"In Atlanta, that time at the airport."
"I might've told him."
Not ready to admit it. Joyce let it go. She said, "What about Jimmy Cap? Did you tell him?"
Harry shook his head. "I'm positive I didn't. Or the Zip. I've never sat down with those guys where I'd tell them any kind of story. You know, we were never sociable. Raylan, I don't know. Maybe I told him."
"He came up to me," Joyce said. "He was there, he saw those guys and they saw him."
Harry waited. His eyes didn't move.
"He wants to talk to you."
"I bet he does. He have court papers with him?"
"He's here on his own."
Harry shook his head. "He's a weird guy."
"He wants you to go back with him."
"I hope you set him straight."
"I told him you wouldn't," Joyce said, "but it's different now. I don't mean you should go back, but talk to him. You might need him."
Harry hesitated, then grinned. "He have his cowboy hat on? No, I don't need him. 'Cause I don't see how they're going to find us." His gaze moved past her as he spoke.
Joyce turned enough to see Robert Gee coming through the garden. She waited and said, "Harry doesn't think they'll find him." Speaking to a friend she'd gotten to know on the ride here from Milan, a man she trusted.
"I was about to mention," Robert Gee said, "I think you all ought to be in the house. There's a stretch of road up there where you can see right down to where we're standing."
"They have to look for me in town," Harry said, "before they ever come up that road. I know where you mean. You can see the garden, but it's like that" -- Harry snapped his fingers -- "for a split second. You'd have to know where to look, and you'd need a pair of binoculars to identify anybody."
Robert Gee said, "You want my advice?"
"Okay, what?"
"Go on in the house. The only time you come out here is after it's dark."
"My bodyguard," Harry said to Joyce. "And my cook. The one keeps me alive and the other tries to kill me with pasta carbonara."
Joyce was watching Robert. Neither of them smiled. Robert said to Harry, "I'm not fooling. Maybe you're thinking, your age you can act brave, like you don't give a shit what happens to you. Or I'm wrong, I don't know where your head's at and shouldn't try to guess. But I'm here too. You understand? I'm here and now Joyce is here. We saw those people Joyce say want to kill you. I know they serious. You understand? So we have to be serious. They ever come in here with guns they gonna shoot everybody they see. You know them. Am I right about that or not? How these people are."
Joyce watched Harry, frowning now like he was squinting into the sun. Overdoing it.
He said, "What're you trying to say?"
As though he didn't understand. Putting on an act.
And Robert seemed surprised. "What I just said. I didn't make it clear enough for you? I'm trying to get you," Robert said, "to be serious about this and come in the house, do what I tell you. See, you not thinking about anybody else here, like Joyce and myself, if these people find out where we are and come in the house, like I say, with their guns."
Harry kept frowning at him.
He said, "You know a certain amount of risk goes with the kind of job you have. It's why you carry a gun. Am I right in assuming that?"
"Always," Robert said. "I understand sticking your neck out for pay there's risk. What I don't like is having to stick it out farther than I'm getting paid to stick it out."
Harry grinned.
"Now we're getting to it. What you're telling me is you don't think what we agreed on, five bills a week, is going to do it. You want to renegotiate, on account of you see now you might actually have to earn your money. And if you don't get what you want, you take a walk. Is that how it is? I'm asking," Harry said, "'cause I guess I don't know you as well as I thought I did. You take these other people now, that kind I've known all my life. You pay them to do something, they do it. You can take their word."