of roundhouse wallop, the old woman’s body went akimbo in a manner that mimicked the way Matisse had liked to paint her.
As he was pondering that notion, Domino acted. She stepped between the professor and her aunt as if they were silly, quarreling children. “Enough,” she announced evenly. “You gentlemen must leave here at once. This is an official request, and if it is not honored, then matters will be turned over to our chief of security.” With a nod of her head, a toss of her glossy brown hair, she indicated the joker on stilts—and it was then that she and Switters made eye contact for the first time that evening. Something went leaping between them, something intimate and lively, but also quizzical, wary, and a wee bit weird.
Acknowledging his role, Switters bellowed at the men in his rudest Italian. “
As if activated by a switch, Scanlani sprang. He took five lateral steps with the quickness of an NBA point guard and thrust out his right leg with the force of a Thai kickboxer. The leather sole of his expensive Milano- cobbled boot smashed into one of Switters’s stilt poles. Instantly losing his already precarious balance, Switters tumbled wildly backward. With a splintering crash, he landed in a jasmine bush. Broken twigs dug into his back like daggers, but what was left of the shrub served as a buffer between him and the earth. His feet had not touched. A trickle of blood ran from a deep scratch on his cheek. “Another damn scar,” he lamented. “I tell you, the gods are jealous of my good looks.” Two or three fragrant petals were plastered to the wound. He sniffed. “It smells like the junior prom in here,” he said.
Scanlani’s generic expression was unchanged, but Dr. Goncalves laughed derisively. “Your chief of security?” he asked with a smirk. Pippi and ZuZu made an effort to help Switters out of the shattered bush, but he waved them off. “Go get my starship,” he whispered to Pippi. “It’s in the car parked at the gate.”
Domino glared at the professor. “If he’s injured,” she said, indicating Switters, “you will
“Oh?” Goncalves raised his eyebrows. “So you are saying that we may be given it?”
“That depends. Our order will have to discuss various—”
“Over my dead body!” exclaimed Masked Beauty.
“Now, aunt, let’s keep an open mind. At some future date, after certain conditions have been met, certain concessions granted, it may be in everyone’s best interest to—”
“It is in everyone’s best interest that you surrender the stolen document immediately,” Goncalves said. His tone was as threatening as a green sheen on mayonnaise. He shoved Domino aside in order to confront Masked Beauty directly. “Look at you!” He forced the words through clenched dentures. “Just look at you. How can the likes of you think to defy the authority of the Holy Father?” The old abbess blinked. Had she any lingering worry about still being beautiful, it was all gone now.
“I defy the authority of the Holy Father!” came a loud cry from the bush. “I defy the authority of the Holy Authority! I defy the authority of the unholy authority! Fuck authority and the Polish sausage it rode in on!” Then he added, because his back was being painfully gouged and because he was on a roll, “Fuck the Dallas Cowboys!”
“Oh, do watch your tongue, Mr. Switters,” chimed in Maria Deux. “All is lost through sacrilege.”
“Silence that heathen oaf,” commanded Goncalves. He said it to Masked Beauty, upon whose rococo rhino polyp his beady eyes remained fixed, but it was Scanlani who moved catlike toward the busted bush, not walking so much as gliding. The jurist hadn’t gotten far, however, before three shots rang out in rapid succession.
Mr. Beretta had spoken. Mr. Beretta had barked at the stars.
Disturbed again, the cuckoos took flight with a fluttering of feathers and shrieks of protest and alarm. The sound of scrabbling goat hooves was heard, and from the henhouse a great chorus of nervous clucking suddenly ensued. Scanlani froze. Switters leveled the gun at him. He fully expected Scanlani to whisk a pistol of his own from inside his fine jacket. He imagined the move would be as slick as a magician’s. It would be pretty to watch. Even his stance—well-shod feet wide apart, both hands on the gun—would be instinctive and classic. So, Switters was actually disappointed when Scanlani made no move.
Switters’s position was awkward and uncomfortable, laid out as he was on a bed of organic nails, but he held the 9-mm steady. His intent was to try to shoot the gun out of Scanlani’s hand without hitting him. He’d accomplished that feat once in Kuwait City, blasting a Czech-made CZ-85 apart in the fist of a double agent. Particles of metal had flown off it like cold black sparks. Dropping what was left of the pistol, the man had whimpered. He’d held up his vibrating hands to watch their hue redden, his fingers already swelling like microwaved frankfurters. But, as they say, “That was then and this is now.” (What would Today Is Tomorrow make of such a maxim?) Switters was not at all convinced he could duplicate the marksmanship, even if he was on his feet. He steadied the barrel and waited. For whatever reason, Scanlani failed to act.
“Throw down your gun,” Switters ordered. He wasn’t sure he’d gotten it right in Italian, so he repeated the command in French and English. Scanlani shrugged, a big arrogant Neapolitan shrug. “Okay, pal, have it your way,” said Switters. “Remove your jacket.” The alleged attorney understood, for he slipped out of his suit coat, folded it carefully, and placed it on the ground. The shoulder holster Switters had expected to be exposed was nowhere in sight. “Damn!” he swore. He couldn’t lie in that position much longer.
Waving the Beretta, he had Scanlani remove his shirt and twirl like a fashion model. There was no handgun stuck in his waistband, front or back. “Okay, clever boy, take off your pants.” The man refused. For the first time, he displayed emotion, and the emotion was outrage and disgust. Switters’s back felt like the time clock in an anthill. This was becoming unbearable. “Remove your damn pants!” he repeated vexatiously. Dr. Goncalves and the sisters looked dumbfounded.
Again, Scanlani refused to comply. Switters squeezed off a volley of shots at the dirt alongside the handsome calfskin boots. Everyone shrieked. Scanlani hastened to unbuckle his belt. And several moments passed before Switters realized three things:
1. Scanlani was unarmed.
2. Inadvertently, he had asked the fellow not to remove his trousers but, rather, to pull down his panties, a linguistic gaffe that could be traced to certain nights in Taormina and Venice, when he’d desired a clearer view of what the Italians, speaking clinically, referred to as
3. One of the bullets fired at Scanlani’s feet had ricocheted off a rock and struck Masked Beauty in the face.
“It was an honest mistake,” said Switters, referring to the gunpoint disrobing of Scanlani: he hadn’t yet noticed that Masked Beauty was bleeding. “I gave you credit for being something more than just another scumbag lawyer. Please accept my apology. And my condolences.” Domino, who likewise was oblivious to her aunt’s wound, rushed over to add her apologies. Switters’s heart seemed to liquefy when he witnessed the characteristic and irrepressible compassion in her concern. Nevertheless, he called out, “Keep your distance, sister love. The man may be unarmed, but his manners are deplorable.”
He thought he heard her mutter, “No worse than your own,” but he couldn’t be sure, for about that time Pippi had barged onto the scene, pushing his wheelchair. Toufic was with her. Together, they lifted him out of the tangle of twigs (it resembled an oversize cuckoo’s nest) and onto the “contour plus” cushion that still adorned the “drop- hook, solid-folding” seat. Continuing to brandish the automatic pistol, he waved it at the rapidly dressing Scanlani and at Goncalves, who was one big eel-mouthed gash of petulance. “Toufic, ol’ buddy, our guests were just saying their good-byes. You’re supposed to chauffeur them to Deir ez-Zur for their overnight lodging, as I recall. In the dark, no road, a good sixty kilometers as the camel flies: I suggest that you organize an expeditious departure.” It was then that he—and Domino—had noticed the Pachomians huddled around the abbess.
Once it was ascertained that Masked Beauty was not gravely injured, he ushered the Italian and the Portuguese to the gate. The former was mutely furious, the latter loudly vocal with accusations and threats. As Switters was removing his belongings from the car, Domino rushed up and insisted that he give the Vatican delegation his satellite phone number and e-mail address. She told them she was sorry that things had gotten out of hand—both sides were at fault, she said—and she urged them to contact her and the abbess when tempers had
