“All right, all right,” he said, “thanks for the word.”
Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw Jantzen holding the hand hose and washing some ashes and bone dust down the sink. Every few hours, just for safety’s sake, they poured in some drain cleaner, too.
“You feel like an outing?” he called out.
Jantzen turned to look at him, a numb expression in his eyes. His whole body, haggard enough to begin with, looked stooped and defeated. Why, Escher wondered, didn’t he just prescribe himself some uppers?
“Come on,” Escher said, tossing his gloves onto the blood-soaked table. “I’ll buy you a gelato.”
Passing through the courtyard, a squirrelly young man appeared out of nowhere, wringing his hands, and said, “Dr. Jantzen? Dr. Jantzen? I need to see you, sir.”
Another one of his friend’s fine clientele, Escher thought.
“Not now, Giovanni,” Julius said.
“But I need to see you,” he pleaded, clearly strung out on some substance and plucking at Julius’s sleeve.
“He said not now,” Escher intervened, and the man, after taking one look into his hard blue eyes, fell back, silent, nearly toppling into the stagnant fountain.
Julius’s car—a Volvo, exactly as Escher might have guessed—was parked outside the tobacconist’s, and as Escher waited for him to unlock the doors, he couldn’t help but notice that there were several people inside the shop, jabbering excitedly, and a dark, beetle-browed woman, in a headscarf, with a couple of children clinging to her coat. More Turks. As Escher slung his satchel onto the floor of the front seat of the car and got in, the woman in the headscarf came to the shop window, looking fixedly at him, and then—making the bell above the door jingle—came bustling out.
“Drive,” Escher said, as Julius started the car.
The woman was shouting in bad Italian—something about her husband not coming home—but Escher’s window was up, and when she rapped her knuckles on the glass, her rings clattering, he gave her a level stare but said nothing. The children capered about in the street, as if to impede their escape, but Escher said, “Run them over, if you have to.”
“For God’s sake, Ernst …”
But Escher leaned over and blasted the horn, and the kids jumped out of the way.
The woman spat on the window, and for the rest of the ride—maybe ten minutes in slow, thick traffic—the spittle clung like glue to the glass. Escher told Julius where to go, and once they’d reached the Piazza della Repubblica and found one of the very rare parking spots, he picked his satchel up off the floor and got out.
It was a brisk, sunny morning, and Escher mounted the steps of the apartment building two at a time, with Julius lingering behind. First, he rang the buzzer, to make sure no one else was home—just because Olivia was accounted for didn’t mean she had no roommates—and when there was no answer, he rang all the others, until someone buzzed him in. When he heard a door open down the hall, he called out, “Delivery for Levi!” and swiftly climbed to the third floor, with Julius close behind.
The door itself, decorated with a postcard of some ancient sculpture, was easy work—Escher could pick any lock, and this wasn’t even a good one—and the curtains were drawn. The place was like a cave. Sweet Jesus, Escher thought, don’t any of the Florentines live in decent places? He finally located the light switch, turned it on, and found himself staring into a pair of big, blinking eyes.
An owl, with one mangled wing, was perched on a rickety stand. It was free to fly, if it could, and hooted several times at the intruders.
“This city is pazzo”—crazy—Escher said.
The rest of the apartment was also strange. Every sofa and chair, every table and counter, was covered with books and papers. There were cinder-block shelves groaning under the weight of crumbling encyclopedias. The bedroom in back looked like no more than an annex to the library in front. Escher could barely make out the bed.
But it was all in keeping with what Dr. Valetta had reported about Olivia Levi; despite her good looks, he had warned Escher, she was not empty-headed. She was smart. Very smart. She had graduated at the top of her class from the University of Bologna, Italy’s oldest and most prestigious school, then traveled to the States to do further research in New York. She had written some provocative papers, published in academic journals that almost no one ever read, and was apparently working on some secret magnum opus while she supported herself leading tour groups around the city. Judging from the look of the place, tour guides didn’t get paid all that well.
“So, what are we doing here?” Julius asked.
“You’re standing at the window, keeping an eye out for any unexpected visitors.”
“All right,” Julius said, dutifully taking up his post where he could peek out between the drawn drapes. “But what are you doing?”
“I’m looking for library cards,” Escher said, sounding as puzzled as he felt.