When Falconi came to, his prospects for sexual gratification had dimmed considerably. He lay on the bed, ankles and wrists bound with duct tape, another length of tape stretched across his mouth.
Valentina brandished a steel box cutter before his eyes, its razor-sharp blade extended. Her handbag was too small to carry the pistol she’d used on Delacroix. There had been no place to hide it in her skirt. Besides, it was unwise to fire a pistol in an apartment building at this hour. Even with a noise suppressor, the sound might carry through the walls. She was a polite guest. She didn’t want to wake the neighbors. The duct tape was Falconi’s.
The box cutter fell to his testicles. The blade nicked the wrinkled, sagging flesh. Falconi jolted.
“Tell me,” she said, “where I can find Tino Coluzzi.”
Chapter 33
It was past three when Simon and Nikki emerged from the hospital. Around them, the city lay asleep. Traffic was so light as to be nonexistent. There was only the creaking of the barges moored nearby, rising and falling with the tide, and the whistling of a steady breeze.
Lights burned from a bakery nearby. Nikki found the door unlocked. A bell tinkled as she entered. “Wait here,” she said.
Simon sat down on the curb and gingerly probed the bandage beneath the fresh shirt he’d been given by the emergency room nurses. He had twenty stitches to add to his inventory of battle scars, not that he was counting. Nikki had accompanied him into the treatment bay while the doctor sewed him up. She was a tough woman, hardened by dint of her job. Even so, she’d been unable to keep herself from wincing when she viewed his torso.
She returned a minute later, a bag of croissants in hand. She sat down next to him, offering him one. Simon devoured it in two bites, mess be damned. “Helluva lot better than sardines,” he said between chews.
“Excuse me?”
“What? Oh, nothing.” He took a second croissant and ate it more slowly. A ruminative mood had come over him. He looked at the empty sidewalks, searching for another person. They were alone. “So,” he began, looking over at Nikki. “Why’d you come?”
“I’m a detective,” she replied, as if the answer were obvious. “You weren’t telling me the truth, at least not all of it. I didn’t have any pressing engagements so I thought I’d stop by and see for myself what was going on. I didn’t know about you, did I?”
Simon followed her eyes to the tattoo on his forearm. “Proudest day of my life when I got that.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You started young.”
“I thought I was grown up. A man. One thing’s for sure. They didn’t appreciate anyone asking about Tino Coluzzi.”
“But you’re one of them.”
“Not anymore. Guess it showed.” Just then Simon remembered the StingRay he’d cached prior to entering the bar. “Get up,” he said. “I left something back there.”
“We’re not going back to that bar.”
“Not there. Just down the street.”
“What?”
“A StingRay. A surveillance device that—”
“I know what a StingRay is. What are you doing with one?”
“It comes in handy.”
“So you didn’t expect to find Coluzzi there?”
“Odds were against it. I thought I’d let them find him for me.”
“By calling to warn him that someone’s asking questions about him.”
“That and something more.”
“Oh?”
“That it was someone from the old neighborhood.”
Nikki reacted a second late, her body lurching as if she’d received a body blow. “You know Tino Coluzzi?”
“I do.”
Nikki dropped the rest of her croissant into the bag. “Strangely, I’m not surprised.”
“This StingRay’s the souped-up model,” Simon went on, eager to get over the difficult spot. “It captures all calls made within the vicinity. It can also mirror the SIM cards, which gives us the key to extract all the data a phone holds.”
“That’s illegal.”
“If you’re caught,” said Simon. “Are you going to tell on me?”
“Depends. I’m no friend of the men who tried to beat you up—”
“To kill me.”
“But I don’t like a stranger coming into my city and taking the law into his own hands. Frankly, it pisses me off. I want to know what’s going on. All of it. Who are you and why are you really here?”
As Simon tried to stand, he felt the sutures pull. He extended a hand. Nikki eyed it warily before helping him to his feet.
“Let’s get the StingRay,” he said. “Maybe there’s something on it that will help both of us.”
Chapter 34
Five hundred miles to the south, in his cliff-top hideout, Tino Coluzzi couldn’t sleep.
Rising from bed, he walked to the kitchen, made himself an espresso, and took it onto the terrace. A three-quarter moon hung low over the horizon, casting a pale stripe across the sea. He remembered that day in the yard. He’d gotten into another scrape, one he couldn’t trade his way out of, and had drawn a sentence at Les Baums. There was Ledoux, waiting, giving him the look. He knew. What other choice did he have? It was a matter of self-preservation. If he’d waited a day longer, he would have been the one on a stretcher with a blanket covering his face. There would have been no lack of takers.
And now it turned out that Ledoux wasn’t dead after all, and that somehow, someway, he knew about the letter. What else was Coluzzi supposed to think he meant by telling Falconi that Coluzzi had something that wasn’t his? Something he still had time to return? Had Ledoux become a cop? Was that it? Coluzzi dismissed the idea out of hand. It wasn’t possible. Not the Ledoux he’d known.
He picked up his phone, staring at the blank screen, wondering why Luca Falconi hadn’t called back with news that Ledoux was dead and with a picture to prove it. He paced the length of the terrace, beside himself with worry. Something had gone wrong. He could feel it. He didn’t want to betray his anxiety by calling Falconi, but finally he decided he had no choice. Swearing to make Falconi pay, he placed the call.
The phone rang and rang while Coluzzi urged him to pick up.
And then he did. “Luca, that you?” Coluzzi waited for a reply. “Luca?” He could feel the other party’s presence on the line. “Who’s there?” he asked, fearing the worst. “Ledoux, is that you?”
“No,” said a female voice. “It isn’t Mr. Ledoux. I’m his competitor.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to give us back what is ours.”
“Let me talk to Luca.”
“That won’t be possible.”
“What did you do to him?”
“The same thing I did to Monsieur Delacroix. It’s getting dangerous to be a friend of yours.”
“Delacroix wasn’t a friend. Let me talk to your boss.”
“That is not an option.”
“Do as I say!”
“I know where you are, Mr. Coluzzi. Your friend was very talkative. He told me about your hideout on top of the cliff. In fact, I feel like I know you already. All we need to do is set a time and place for the exchange. I can be there in a few hours. Be reasonable. This doesn’t have to end badly.”
“I’ll take my chances, darling. Tell your boss I’ll be in touch. Ciao.”
Coluzzi ended the call. Immediately, he opened the back of his phone and ripped out the SIM card, dumping it down the neck of an empty bottle of wine. He found a container of ammonia, added a few fingers to the bottle, and shook it all up. He waited a minute, letting the solvent go to work on the card, then flung the bottle off the terrace, along with the phone. He had five more burners inside just like it.
Shaken, Coluzzi returned to his bedroom and retrieved the suitcase holding the prince’s money from the floor safe under his bed. He laid out the money on the dining room table. Six stacks, ten packets each.