The King's Gold (26 page)

“That Antonio killed the Florentines on purpose.”

“That he wasn’t mistaken.” Erik thinned his eyes at the copse that stretched farther in front of us. “He could see his—”

“That
he could see his victims
.” I finished the thought. “He knew whom he was killing.”

Erik did not respond. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, toward the vanishing point of the grove of trees.

I followed his gaze. I saw the gold leaves on the ground, the black-purple buds among the sycamores. I noticed a flicker of red from behind one of the trees.

Perhaps half an hour earlier, in the dawn’s half-light, I had thought the man was a vintner or farmer, wearing a gray shirt. But here I spied a red sleeve, a red shoulder. A royal blue backpack sat on the ground, next to the tree.

A red-shirted man leaned against one of the trees, facing away from us, writing in a leather-bound notepad while reading from a hardback book. We had disturbed him.

He turned around, gazing at us from behind the bole of the tree. We saw his black hair, dusky cheek, his dark and expanding eyes. We knew them.

He had not followed us. We had surprised Marco Moreno in this valley. And for a second, as we stared back at him, I saw that he looked almost pleased.

Shining leaves spiraled down upon the three of us. Marco rose quickly from his position at the base of the tree, his shirt a flash of blood against the transparent air. I saw with X-ray clarity the bite-bruise Erik had left on his cheek, and his black, deep-set eyes, which had extraordinarily dark shadows beneath them. He still held his notebook and pen. The open hardback book rested on a small plaid square of rubberized cloth—a mackintosh square—so as to protect the binding from the ground’s moisture. Not far from it, the royal blue rucksack, dented and stuffed, lay in the purple-flowering grass.

I walked toward him, while Erik chattered: “He’s the yellow Fiat. Let’s go. Go go go.”

“He’s got the letter—”

“Oh, damn—
right.
And you don’t remember the rest of the riddle?”

“The last time I tried out the old photographic memory—”

“We were screaming and surrounded by fire.” Erik’s eyes were huge. “Right. Okay. At the moment, though, I’m having trouble coming up with a plan for both getting the letter
and
sprinting away without getting shivved by Mr. Personality. So why don’t we just say sayonara get the f—”

“I
thought
you might come ferreting down here, Lola,” Marco sang out, much calmer than I would have thought. “Though I admit I didn’t expect you so soon.” He darted his eyes at the dripping grove behind us. About one hundred feet away, Domenico squatted by a pit he’d dug in the ground; he worked to kindle a campfire with a lighter attached to his keyring. His face was flat and very pale as he gazed up. “Look who’s here, Dom,” Marco said in Italian.

“Yes, I see,” answered the blond man, his hands shaking so the keys jangled.

“I suggested that he drive me to this valley for a little fresh air.” Marco waved at the scenery with his notepad. “Neither of us is doing very well, unfortunately.”

I could just make out that the notepad’s visible page contained a passage of sepia handwriting. The rest of the leaf was filled with what appeared to be a beautiful cross-hatched architectural sketch of Siena’s Duomo.

“Does he know why you’re really here?” I asked.

“Domenico? All he knows is that his friend is dead.”

“Because of that emerald.” Domenico’s grief-stained eyes swung from me to Erik as he crouched over smoking twigs.

Marco took a step toward the backpack. I saw no gun, and he made no menacing gestures—yet. “Do you know? Why I’m here.”

“I know you’re smart,” I said carefully. “I know you’ve figured something out.”

“I think you might be trying to flatter me, Lola.”

“Not really. What’s in the rucksack?”

“Your favorite—secrets.”

“Are you being
charming
?”

“Do you like it?”

“Not really. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I don’t think you mean
that—
”

“Well, I like it better than watching your friends kill people.”

He gestured at Erik, who moved forward to stand between us. “Yes,
or
watching Chewbacca poison Blasej to death—”

“Your friend got himself into trouble,” Erik was saying to Domenico in slow and precise Italian during this exchange.

“I heard what you said to Blasej.” Domenico pointed at Erik so that his keys jangled again in his hand. “You said it looked valuable. The emerald. You wanted him to touch it. You knew there was something wrong with it.”

Marco took a step toward the rucksack, then another. “Poor Blasej. I’ve known him for years—when I first came over to Europe from Guatemala, I bribed him and our dear Domenico here off their armies, to be my bodyguards—more like drinking companions. They became awfully close.”

“I heard you left Guatemala before the end of the war,” I said.

“It was a sabbatical, let’s say—from myself! Or my father—it was so difficult to tell the difference between us two, sometimes. But my time away wasn’t altogether successful. Even here, unfortunately, they read the papers, and Colonel Moreno’s international press was not...very good. Domenico and Blasej hoped they were attaching themselves to some barbarian grandee, didn’t you, Domenico?”

But Domenico was mouthing something at Erik.

“Oh—stop that growling,” Marco barked.

“I want you to go to our car,” Erik whispered to me. “Maybe I can get to theirs—steal it—then they can’t follow us. We’ll have to split up—opposite sides of the valley—”

“What?”

“Relax,
relax,”
Marco was saying to Domenico.

“Why should I?”

“Because—I want them to stay—I haven’t said confession in so long. And who better to absolve me of my sins than a pretty girl? You see, Lola, my association with the boys has unfortunately
not
been very good for their health, particularly Blasej’s. Nor did it benefit their reputations. The Italians call them turncoats, but I prefer to call them, or rather, now, just Domenico—”

“A
Versipellis
?”

Marco hovered over the backpack, the shadows beneath his eyes spreading down to his cheeks. “Aha,
Versipellis
—skin-shifter.

That’s very clever. How metaphorical of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Much better than my word for him. I was simply going to call him practical.”

Erik stared at me over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“She’s
playing,”
Marco answered. “She thinks she has figured me out. My weaknesses. And what’s interesting is that she is...partially...right.”

“You’re here researching Antonio,” I said.

“Rather obvious, isn’t it?” He gestured toward the book on the ground, amid the vivid blossoms. “What do
you
think happened here?”

“He killed his men on purpose.”

“
Yes
. Very good.
Very,
very quick. The question is why?” He bent farther down, but did not snatch at the backpack yet. Instead, he plucked up one of the stalks of purple flowers, with the bell-shaped petals and dangles of black berries, and waved it at me. “Careful, careful, careful,
pretty lady,”
he said.

I looked at the darkly glimmering flowers. I recognized them but said nothing.

“Ah, and
this
pretty lady sees, she remembers—something?”

Marco threw the blooms to the ground. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First things first—the she-wolf, that is—”

“If you know so much, then where were you all day yesterday?” I asked. “We didn’t see you.”

“Oh, well if you had, then I wouldn’t be much good for anything, would I? I gave Domenico a little sleeping powder in the morning. He wouldn’t stop crying. And I wanted to go hunting for you by myself, and worm into your findings like the good little weevil I am.”

Domenico snapped his head toward his employer and cursed, as he apparently understood more Spanish than I’d believed. He stood up.

“I wound up following you around for
hours
until I grew so bored I thought I’d die!” said Marco. “By the way, did you ever find that blasted wolf?”

“No.” Erik stepped away from me, toward the campfire. He began to work his way toward Domenico.

“So, I’m assuming
yes
.”

“Erik, hold on, don’t mess with him,” I said. But Erik didn’t acknowledge me.

“Straining on his leash a bit, isn’t he?” Marco purred.

I thrust my chin at him. “Why didn’t
you
find it? The She-Wolf?”

He shrugged. “My research was interrupted. I became...tired.”

“Tired?”

“Having trouble with the euphemism? By tired, I meant
depressed
. Sick. Sad. Suicidal. What do you think I mean?
My father’s dead
.
And
my cousin’s dead.
And
Estrada—who was my
friend
. I’m supposed to punish
you
—and what I’m doing instead is hobbling about Italy, digging through books, looking for I don’t know what, and getting back into some old sticky messes that I had sworn I’d given up.”

“The guards.”

“Yes. I had hoped to avoid such ugliness.” His voice sounded shredded. “But apparently that’s not possible for me.”

At his feet I saw the volume he had placed so carefully on the mackintosh square. I crouched before the backpack that I
knew
contained Antonio’s letter, but it was the book I picked up: it was an old, fine, early edition of Jacob Burckhardt’s
Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien,
an amazing history full of art and murder.

“This is a good book.” I handed it back to him.

“A classic.” He ran his hand over the opened pages before closing it.

“I don’t think you’re here because of your father, Marco.”

“Ah—”

“I think you’re trying to solve this puzzle because you’re
good
at it. You knew the clue about the map was planted in the letter. And you know something happened in this valley—”

“You’ve seen what I’m good at.” He swallowed. “In the crypt.”

“You weren’t good at all. I saw you. Blasej and Domenico killed those men. You just stood there—crying.”

“Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Because I’m very, very, very talented. I was better than he was, in the war—I was better than my father.”

“At what—fighting?”

“Fighting.” Marco tormented the shape of his mouth while saying the word; apparently it was another euphemism. “That’s why I left Guatemala! What a joke! Now I’m here, looking for this money, bumping off old men, because I’m just like the old colonel, and
I can’t change
.”

“So now you want to be—what—a dictator?”

“You don’t even know the meaning of the words you’re using. My father had a beautiful vision for the country: as a place of light, of learning, of beauty, of order—a dream far greater than Pinochet’s—and we wouldn’t require all the rigor of Miloševic. Only after a few reorganizations, and sufficient
funds,
ours could be a country that would leave Cuba, North Korea, even your United States in the shade—”

“It’s so
stupid
. If you weren’t so messed up, you’d be a scholar!”

He looked at me, bemused for a moment. “A scholar...” But then he shook his head. “No,
that
was Tomas de la Rosa.”

“De la Rosa. You’re obsessed.”

“As I said. I’m like my father. You’d just better hope you’re not like yours.”

“Why?”

“Because he
killed
himself, Lola. I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you! He committed suicide, here, in Italy. Out of guilt. Out of his guilt.” Marco picked up the backpack and shook it at me. “I can prove it. I’m going to show you. I’ve got papers in here—a death certificate—that records how he died. You’ll see
he
was as much of an animal as me.”

“Suicide?”

“Yes—he was mad—”

“That’s not possible...”

But I would have been insane to tell him anything about my brush with the tattooed stranger. I instead took hold of the rucksack’s strap, as Marco pulled it back, slowly, forcefully. I planted my feet, breathing harder.

“Tug of war?” he asked.

“I know the letter’s in here! I want it.” I pulled and yanked and tugged.

“You’re kidding, right? You’re
hilarious.”

“Just—give—it—to—me—”

“For someone so short, you’re awfully grabby—”

“Don’t you dare grin at me,” I heard Domenico suddenly order Erik, who now stood face to face with him.

“Oh, I swear, this is
nervous
laughter. That wouldn’t be a gun, would it?”

“Boss doesn’t think I should carry one in my—condition, that’s what he calls it. But this works pretty well, doesn’t it?” Domenico slipped out a long silver knife from his pocket, cradling it in the hand that did not carry the keys. He twirled the blade so that it glittered like tinsel, and then with two fast swipes ripped the flesh on Erik’s right arm.

“Erik!!”

Erik gripped his bleeding bicep, scowling—no, I saw his face: He was
laughing
. His dark, red, twisting expression suddenly lit up like a madly happy version of the beast-face I saw briefly in the crypt. Buoyed by a Satanic playfulness, he began to dart around Domenico, dancing, bobbing, howling, shaking his arms like a tap dancer as he taunted him with Spanish curses, a terrifying sight as his face was streaked with his own blood. Domenico watched him, waiting. Erik swiftly crouched and picked up a rock.

“Hey
batter, batter, batter,”
he called madly. “Swing batter.
Catch, idiot!
”

The rock flew through the air; Domenico instinctually grabbed it. The keys fell to the ground.

“
Car—
Lola—”

“What? What are you doing?”

“CAR!”

Erik swung down his arm like a bowler and snatched up the keys as he stampeded to the far side of the wood, Domenico bolting after. “Sorry, boys, did you need these?”

I suddenly understood that Erik was going to steal their vehicle so they would be stranded; I would take our manager’s Fiat.

Grabbing the rucksack from Marco, I raced like hell in the other direction.