A Glancing Light

taped to the back of it. All right, are you satisfied? Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll take these and leave.'

He said it as if he didn't think he'd get away with it, and he didn't.

Ettore ignored him. 'Pietro, I'll drive out there and see if it's all right.'

'I assure you–' Croce said.

'If it's all right I'll call, and you can let him have the paintings. Then drive back to where we started from. You understand?'

Pietro frowned while he absorbed this. 'What if you don't find it?'

'He'll find it, he'll find it,' Croce bleated.

'Well, I guess I'll go now,' I put in. 'I've done what I came for.' Croce was lying, and I didn't want to be there when they found out. I wanted to get the hell out of there and get on the telephone to Antuono.

I didn't get away with it, either. 'You stay, too,' Ettore said.

'What for? I've done what I was paid for. I—'

'If I don't call in half an hour,' Ettore told Pietro, 'take the paintings and get out of here.'

'Now you'd better listen to me—' Croce began.

'What about these two?' Pietro asked.

'Take them with you. If they don't want to go, beat the shit out of them. If they give you too much trouble, just shoot them and leave them.'

Pietro nodded and patted his jacket, over the holster.

This exchange effectively silenced Croce. I wasn't making much noise, either. But a few minutes after Ettore left I probed for a little more information from Croce.

'Who's your buyer?' I asked offhandedly.

He frowned at me. His eyes swelled with affront. No stratum of society is without its code of ethics.

'Shut up,' Pietro said. He sounded edgy. 'I don't want any more talking. Sit down.'

We sat. So did Pietro, first meaningfully unzipping the front of his jacket. It had begun to rain. For a long time the only sounds were the water thrumming against the window, the traffic noises, and the occasional whine of a jet.

Pietro looked at his watch frequently. After the ninth or tenth time he spoke: 'Ten more minutes.'

'Don't worry,' Croce said with an unconvincing laugh, 'he'll call. That vent isn't so easy to find.'

Fifteen minutes later the increasingly uneasy Pietro looked at his watch a final time, chewed his lip, and came to a decision. He stood up, shoved a big leather suitcase across the floor with his foot, and pointed at Croce. 'You.'

'Me?'

'Put those wooden ones in there.' The more nervous he got the more he slid into a kind of slow motion.

'These?' Croce said. 'The panels?'

Pietro's heavy eyelids drooped. The big muscles in his heavy jaw moved. He took a ponderous step forward.

'All right,' Croce said hurriedly. 'Very well. They'll have to be wrapped first. I can—'

'No wrapping,' Pietro said. 'Just put them in.'

'But he's right,' I said. 'You can't just toss them into a suitcase without protection. They'll be—'

The gun came out: stubby, nickel-plated, toylike in the big hand. It waved me quiet, then leveled at Croce. 'Do what I say.'

'Certainly, at once.' Croce knelt, opened the suitcase, and lay the two Madonnas side by side in it, handling them with more reverence than I imagined him capable of.

He glanced up from his knees. 'At least let me—'

'Now you,' Pietro said. The shiny little gun jerked in my direction to indicate which you he was talking to. 'Put the rest of them in there, too, quick.'

I didn't see much room for argument. I picked up the first rolled cylinder, placed it in the suitcase as carefully as I could, and reached for the next one.

It was too methodical to suit him. 'Come on, come on, just throw the damn things in.'

'Look—' I said.

Pietro gestured for silence again, then stood motionless, head tipped, sleepy eyes suddenly alert. He was listening intently. All I could hear was the rain. He edged up to the window, his back against the wall, and scanned the street, shielding his body behind the casing. I was reminded of a hundred old movies. This was the scene just before the final barrage of bullets from the cops killed all the bad guys. Or maybe it was Indians, arrows, and ranchers.

Pietro turned back to us. 'That's it. We're going right now. You, close the suitcase and pick it up,' he told Croce. 'You'—me again—'grab the rest of them and let's go.'

'What do you mean, grab them?'

'Just scoop them up. Hurry up.'

'Scoop them up?' I echoed. 'You mean just—just—'

With his left hand Pietro reached around the side of the gun's barrel. There was a click that I recognized (those old movies again) as the safety being released. I gulped, bent to the table, and, as carefully as I could, gathered them up in my arms, all twenty-two of those precious, irreplaceable masterpieces, like so many old window shades to be taken down to the dump.

'Now,' Pietro said, 'out the door.'

But at that moment the door, about four feet to Pietro's right, exploded from the wall with a window-rattling crash. Even before it hit the floor a stream of men in heavy vests and blue police uniforms burst into the room, shouting incomprehensible orders and brandishing handguns and rifles. Croce was swept out of the way. Pietro was still blinking with surprise, waiting for his brontosauruslike nerve impulses to make it to his brain and tell him what was going on, when the gun was deftly plucked from his hand. Two burly officers spun him roughly around and shoved him face-first against the wall. More men crowded in; there were brown carabinieri uniforms along with the blue ones. The room was all dust and pandemonium.

I couldn't believe it. I was so relieved I wanted to cheer. I think I did cheer. I know I laughed. 'Your timing's great!' I shouted over the racket. 'We—'

'Alto!' several of them screamed. 'Zitti!' I didn't have to be told that these amounted to the Italian equivalent of 'Freeze!' At the same time three pistols—heavy, malevolent black weapons, nothing like Pietro's shiny tiny toy— were thrust out at me, trained on the bridge of my nose. All were held by palpably overstrung men in the classic shooter's posture: tautly crouched, gun hand stiffly extended and supported at the wrist by the opposite hand. All three of the weapons were quivering.

Me too. It took me a moment to find my voice. 'Gentlemen,' I said in my softest manner and without moving a finger, 'I . . .'

I what? I wasn't really heading for the door with $100,000,000 worth of stolen art in my arms? It only looks that way? I shrugged and closed my mouth. Things would work themselves out. The worst was over.

Almost. A slight figure approached from the side and peered at me. There was a long-suffering sigh.

'Weren't you supposed to be in America?' asked the Eagle of Lombardy.

'I can explain,' I said, staring straight ahead. 'Really.'

'If you will put those paintings down over there,' he said quietly, 'I will do my utmost to see that these gentlemen don't shoot you.'

At his nod and a few murmured words, they lowered their weapons—rather reluctantly, it seemed to me— and turned away. Antuono, in his black undertaker's suit, looked down his fleshless nose at me as I placed the rolled-up canvases back on the table.

'Colonel—'

'You could have been killed,' he said. 'Worse, you might have ruined the entire operation.'

His prioritizing of possible outcomes did not escape me. 'Colonel—'

'Do you know,' he said musingly, 'if you hadn't turned up blundering about in the midst of things—with the best of intentions, of course—I think I would have felt a sense of disappointment . . . of incompleteness.'

He hadn't wasted any time getting under my skin again. I faced him angrily. 'I didn't have to be here, you know—'

 'Indeed.'