“Don’t get mad-it’s just me. Giorgio. Anybody here?”
The owl hooted and ruffled its wings.
“Hey there, Glaucus, I’ve missed you. You miss me?”
He dropped his bags on the floor and his coat on the couch, then sauntered into the kitchen, where Escher could hear a kettle being filled. He had keys, but he wasn’t expected-or perhaps even permitted, which would explain his not ringing the buzzer, and his timid entry. Escher pegged him for an old boyfriend-and when he came back into the front room and started sorting through a pile of CDs on the stereo, and tossing some into his saddlebags, Escher figured he knew what was going on. The old beau had come back, on the sly, to retrieve some of his stuff.
Escher had been in this very spot himself, more than once, but he’d always left a present behind to show he’d been there. Once, it had been a dead rat in the microwave, and oh, what he would have given to see his ex’s reaction to that!
The kettle boiled, and Giorgio went to make his instant coffee, or tea. Escher feared that Julius would give himself away, but so far it looked like the boyfriend had no desire to open the curtains either.
And Escher didn’t believe he would stick around in the apartment long.
But what if there was something he wanted in the closet?
Escher ran his eye over the clothes. As far as he could tell, they were all dresses and other women’s things. It was only when he looked down that he saw the hiking boots, shoved almost all the way to the back-and they were plainly a man’s.
The boyfriend came back, and although Escher couldn’t see him, he heard him sit down in the desk chair and rummage around in the drawers. Then, he hit the play button on her answering machine and listened to her messages. Escher had planned to do that himself.
But how long was he going to take? Standing in the musty closet was growing uncomfortable, and it was only a matter of time before Jantzen gave himself away somehow.
“You hungry?” Giorgio was saying to the damn owl, and he’d gotten up to feed it something.
Then, as Escher listened carefully, he heard him closing the straps on his saddlebags-was he finally done?- before snapping his fingers, as if he’d forgotten something. It was unmistakable-he was coming to the closet, probably for those fucking boots.
The door opened, and since the boyfriend was already looking down, Escher was able to head butt him, like a piledriver, without much trouble. But because of the bad angle, he ended up catching him not just on the forehead but the bridge of the nose, too. The guy stumbled back, stunned, not knowing what had just hit him, when Escher stepped out of the closet and cracked him under the chin with a swift uppercut.
He was actually lifted off his feet before going down hard, smacking his head for good measure on the edge of a low table. He was unconscious, the blood streaming from his broken nose and split lip, when Julius popped out from behind the drapes and said, “What the hell just happened?”
Escher was already going through his pockets, taking his wallet-he had a faculty card that identified him as Giorgio Capaldi, an assistant history professor-and his BlackBerry.
“Is he dead?” Julius gasped, coming no closer.
“No. But he’s going to have a very bad headache when he comes to.”
Dragging the body into the bedroom, Escher hoisted it onto the bed, then cut the cord on the bedside phone and used it to tie his wrists.
“Make yourself useful,” he said to Julius, who was watching slack-jawed from the doorway. “Find me a scarf, or some stockings.” He tied the remaining length of cord to the iron bedstead.
Julius found a silk scarf, and Escher stuck it into the boyfriend’s mouth before knotting the ends behind his head. Then, almost tenderly, he lifted the man’s head and rested it on the pillow.
“That should do it.”
Turning, he ripped open the bedside table, spilling the contents onto the floor. On the dresser, he opened the jewel box and threw the worthless costume jewelry around the room. But just to make things seem convincing, he stuck a couple of necklaces and earrings in his pants pocket.
Jantzen stood mute, as if transfixed, until Escher said, “Let’s go,” and pushed him back toward the front door. On the way, he swept a few things onto the floor and kicked the owl’s perch over. The bird hopped onto a stack of books, hooting and fluttering.
At the top of the landing, he listened for any noise, then gently closed the door behind him and led Julius back down. To add insult to injury, they found a parking ticket on the Volvo.
“I’m not paying that,” Jantzen protested, finally finding his voice again.
“Good,” Escher said, tearing it up. “Neither am I.”
Chapter 17
Too long, David thought. It was all taking him too long. While his sister lay dying, he was stuck here, thousands of miles away, struggling to find an antique looking glass that might, or might not, hold the key to her salvation.
When he’d made his regular call the night before, Sarah was actually back home, but she still sounded so weak. Dr. Ross had gotten her into the new protocol, and while it was too soon to tell if it would work, at least she had not rejected the new drug. “And they say that’s a very good sign,” Sarah said, doing her best to sound upbeat. “Tolerance has been a problem with a lot of other candidates.”
David had done his best to sound enthusiastic, too, and so had Gary, who chimed in on the extension, but sometimes David felt that they were all just acting a part for each other. Gary had asked him if his new promotion had come through, and David had said, “If I’m lucky with my assignment here, I don’t see how it wouldn’t.”
Sarah said she knew it would-she had always been his biggest booster-and when David hung up, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep for hours, which might explain why he was having trouble staying awake. The late- morning sun was spilling through the clerestory windows of the reading room in the Accademia di Belle Arti, and taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes and yawned.
For the previous three days, he and Olivia had been holed up in their alcove at the Biblioteca Laurenziana, combing over the various drafts and versions of Cellini’s manuscripts-his treatises on sculpture and goldsmithing, in addition to the many copies, some in his own hand, of his unfinished autobiography. They were searching for any mention of La Medusa, or anything like it, which might point them in the right direction. But there had been nothing so far.
In an attempt to hurry things along, David had left Olivia in charge of the Laurenziana research, while he had taken this ten-minute journey to the Piazza San Marco, and the Accademia library, where the Codice 101, S- yet another draft of Cellini’s life-was kept. David knew the director here, Professor Ricci, from his days in Florence as a Fulbright scholar, and though David had thought he was an old man then, Ricci was unchanged, still shuffling around the echoing halls and cloisters of the library-founded by Cosimo de’Medici himself in 1561-in his bedroom slippers, with the bottoms of his pajamas peeking out from under the cuffs of his trousers. His skin was as yellow and crinkled as very old paper.
“So you are going to write about our Benvenuto?” Ricci said, in that proprietary way that Florentines displayed toward their legendary artists as he deposited the original manuscript on the desk in David’s carrel. “The Laurenziana, they have some fine things over there,” he said, sniffing, “and that Dr. Valetta, he will go on. But they are attached to a church, after all, not a museum.”
David had the distinct sense that there was a cross-piazza rivalry here.
“Superstition reigns over there,” Ricci concluded, “while reason alone prevails at the Academy.”
David had to smile. “Actually, I’m not writing about Cellini himself,” he confessed, “but looking for evidence of something he made. A mirror with the Medusa’s face on one side.”
Signor Ricci scratched the gray stubble on his chin, and said, “I never heard of such a thing. He made the Medusa only once, for the great statue of Perseus.” Shaking his head, he said, “No, no, you must be mistaken, my friend.”
It was the last thing he wanted to hear. Unless it existed, and he could find it, he would never be able to
