The Medici Dagger

had electricity. Running water, too. Half-shell sconces and brass lamps. Light-blue wallpaper, Berber carpet, and cushy chairs with braided piping. The place was furnished with a king-size bed and a velvety couch with embroidered pillows positioned in front of a black marble fireplace. Old books and stubby round candles were parked on the white wood mantel on either side of a rectangular wicker basket of silk flowers. An oval tin wood bin near the fireplace was stocked with split and seasoned birch. Abe would have liked it here.

I called Mona, waking her up to tell her we’d arrived safely. She asked if I’d met Pop. I said yes and inquired how she knew him. She laughed a laugh that has no age.

When I apologized for rousing her, she said the stars would have anyway, and besides, she wasn’t dreaming yet. We rang off. I washed up, feeling confused and ungrounded. After climbing into bed, I lit a candle.

The image ofThe Repentant Magdalenflashed before me, making me melancholy. I thought of Ginny next door.

“Swell dreams and a peach, Ginny,” I whispered, my eyelids falling.

The next morning I awoke to rapping on my door. My eyes pried themselves open and squinted across the sunlit room. Out the slidingglass doors to my back porch, I viewed a small Renoir-like flower garden and what looked like the entire West Coast.

We were on a bluff, all right—about two hundred feet up. And below it, deep blue—blue-whale blue—as far as a gummed-up eye could see. It was stark and serious, as if God had looked down his nose over his half-glasses, waved a finger, and thundered, “Okay, now put that there,” and sploosh, the entire Pacific Ocean got dropped right at the border of Little River.

“You awake?” Ginny yelled.

My candle had burned down in the night, leaving a hole in the middle surrounded by a vampire’s cape of wasted wax. Gone was my candle and the comfort of sleep.

My mind flashed on the hang-glider stunt I’d done a few days earlier,diving unparachuted and unafraid. For a second I wished I could fly off the back porch and sail out over the vast Pacific, a faceless shadow to a lounging whale, too distant for it to know or care what I was.

It was eighta.m.I pulled my pants on and stumbled to the door, the coarse carpet tickling my bare feet. I hesitated for a second before letting Ginny in. One more knuckly knock. The flip of a latch, the turn of a knob, and there she was, freshly scrubbed, keen-eyed, and lovely.

She thrust a bacon and egg sandwich and a container of coffee at me. “I assumed you hadn’tgottenany,” she said sardonically.

I didn’t answer, just stood there devouring the food. We stared uncomfortably out the sliding doors at the view. The only sound was the surf below and my occasional swallowing.

“Tell me something,” Ginny said. “When you think of isolation, what painting comes to mind?”

“The Mill,”I replied reflexively, referring to the Rembrandt of a lonely windmill up on a bluff overlooking a dark river.

“Mmm,” she said.“The Mill.I’m not surprised.”

I tossed the paper cup in the wastebasket, my stomach strangling my breakfast. “Ginny,” I said. “About last night . . .” I reached for her. She pulled away, turned her back to me, and started sobbing.

I handed her a tissue from the box on the nightstand. She snatched it, leaving me with a torn piece.

“You hurt me,” she said.

“Please . . . let me explain. The last thing in the world I want to do is—”

Ginny slapped me across the face. “Wake up!” she cried, as I stumbled back two steps. The sting of shame hurt more than my cheek.

“What a waste of mascara,” Ginny sniffled, inspecting her Kleenex.

Then she looked past me out the open front door. “There’s Pop. Let’s get the directions to Mona’s.”

I slid the big Baggie with the two Leonardo pages and the translation under my T-shirt, tucked it into my jeans, threw on the double gun rig and my leather jacket, and followed her out.

Pop was standing in front of the main house with a woman dressed in waitress garb. He spotted us and waved us over, shouting, “Holmes, Watson, front and center.

“This is Sue Ann,” Pop announced. “Help me out. She’s bringing up two kids by herself. What do you think, I should give her a nice raise, right? Of course.”

He noisily chewed a piece of candy from a gold box of Godiva chocolates. “She gave me these to butter me up and it worked.” He grinned. “Smart broad. I mean girl. Aw hell, I don’t know.”

“Broad,” Sue Ann jumped in, smiling at Pop. She looked sturdy, but worn. Up near her collar, she wore a stickpin—a ceramic pig in a black top hat, smoking a stogie. I asked her where she got it.

She told me she made them, sort of a side thing. “I sell them for twelve-fifty,” she said.

“Will you take twenty bucks for him?” I asked.

“Um. . . sure.”

I handed her a bill. “Andy Jackson says hello.”

Sue Ann passed me the pin and I carefully threaded it through Ginny’s lapel. She actually blushed.

“Well,” Sue Ann said to Pop, tucking the bill in her vest pocket. “Must be my lucky day.” She strolled off toward the restaurant.

Ginny pulled on her collar and went eye to eye with the pig. “Is there some cruel significance to your choice of gift?”

“Not at all,” I said with utmost sincerity. “I may be a lot of things, but cruel isn’t one of them.”