The Medici Dagger

“He doesn’t say anything about the Dagger.”

She yawned. “I just couldn’t keep going, had to give my eyes a rest.”

“Well, can I coax you to do a little more now?”

“Hey,” she snapped. “Using a compact mirror to read tiny backward handwriting takes time and a clear head. I haven’t exactly had a peaceful day. I’ll finish it in the morning, unless, uh, you want to.” She faked going for the compact, turned toward me, and smirked. Then she flopped into the desk chair.

“Leonardo sounds depressed,” I said.

“Definitely. And ‘alone in his workshop’ and ‘secrets of life’ sound to me like he’s referring to his anatomy studies.”

“What does that tell you?”

“By itself, not much.” Antonia studied Leonardo’s notes, pointing to the two drawings on the back of her page. “What do you make of these?”

“Well,” I said, “this one is a harness—you know, like for rock climbers or bouncing babies. But the other one, this complex hoist, isincredible. I’m sure this didn’t exist in Leonardo’s time. It couldn’t have.”

“That’s fabulous,” she said. “Did you see the picture of his bicycle inAtlanticus?”

“The one that Pompeo Leoni pasted on the verso, the back side of the page?”

“Your father taught you well,” she said.

“Well, actually I have a degree in Art History, too.”

“You do?” She looked surprised.

I didn’t respond.

“A stuntman with a degree in Art History? Hmm.” She moved from the desk and flopped onto the bed.

“A bicycle,” I said emphatically. “Leoni must have seen it, but he didn’t know what it was, and nobody else saw it until they took the book apart and turned the page over. If there were nothing else on these pages, we’d have Leonardo’s hoisting system. I wonder if it had anything to do with the Dagger?”

“Got me. Leonardo wrote and drew all kinds of things, many objects on the same pages, that had absolutely no relation to each other.”

I regarded the translation. “Il Magnifico was Lorenzo de’ Medici. At least we’ve got Medici on the same page as a set of Circles of Truth. Doesn’t exactly point us to the Dagger, does it?”

Antonia covered her face with a throw pillow. From under it she mumbled, “First thing tomorrow morning I’ll take a quick run and get back to the translation.”

“A run first?”

“Yeah. Helps me think.”

eight

Itook Leonardo’s notes and, stopping in my room to grab most of the money and the extra ammunition, went down to the lobby. Renting a box in the hotel vault, I placed everything in it for safekeeping. I returned to my room with the deposit-box key in my hand and Leonardo’s words repeating in my head: “Every obstacle yields to effort.”

Leaving the guns on my nightstand and my clothes in a heap on the floor, I climbed into bed.

It occurred to me I hadn’t bought a new candle when we’d shopped. No dancing shadows tonight, only the outlines of those in my own frozen heart.

I breathed in slowly through my nose, counting to four, and breathed out through my mouth to a count of eight. Soon my eyelids began to sag. My thoughts became syrupy and dripped into the waiting night.

I dreamt I was an abacus, or a billiards scorekeeping rack, I don’t know which. Faceless fifteenth-century soldiers, with dirty fingernails and knee-length tunics of chain mail, kept sliding my alabaster Life Savers over, keeping track of something. It hurt every time, but I had to take it, their grubby mitts, greasy with chicken fat, sliming up my counting stones. I knew I couldn’t ever get clean.

I woke up early with my face pressed into my pillow, my cheek and lips wrinkled like the crotch of a linen suit. The gray morning lightpeeked in around the curtains as the dream replayed in my mind. I rolled onto my back and scratched my head, trying to figure out what the hell it meant.

What would Freud have said, or Emily, my ex? That I was involved in a dirty business. That everyone was counting on me and somehow that hurt. Like Antonia, I wanted my life back. But I couldn’t get it back without going forward. Maybe that Dagger was out there. As far as counting on me, well, there was Antonia “Ginny” Gianelli for sure. My parents, or at least my dad, waving his virtuous fist. There was the late great Henry Greer, peering at me with rat eyes from memory’s trench. Then there was Leonardo. I was certain the master himself was counting on me. And who was I to say “I’m busy” to Leonardo da Vinci?

And what about Nolo Tecci?

Ah, yes, Tecci. We’ll dance.

The phone rang at a little past six-thirty. “Ginny?”

“That’s what you plan to call me?”

“Um. . . yes,” I said. “Ginny.”

“Do I have any choice in that?”

“I don’t think so.”