Free Blue Moonlight by Vincent Zandri Page B

it. The structure is so large it takes me ten minutes to walk around the entire perimeter.
    My mortician dad used to purchase headstones from the Italian marble craftsman in downtown Albany. “Leave it to the Italians to build something that lasts and lasts,” he’d always say. “And believe me, Richard, death lasts a real long time.”
    Back where I started.
    I take my first good look at the many cafés that border the Duomo square. All of them are filled with patrons. Tourists, mostly.
    I try to take a close look at the people who occupy the tables and chairs in the outdoor seating areas. But not too closely. The sunglasses help. As I casually stroll past the establishments, I don’t see anyone I recognize. No Clyne, Barter, or Lola. You’d think with all the surveillance the FBI and Interpol have been maintaining on my three amigos, we’d have established which café they hang out at most often. But therein lies the problem. The three amigos don’t frequent one single café for very long. Rather, they tend to switch up a lot. Let’s face it, Barter isn’tstupid. Of all people he would know that he’s being watched. Wasn’t that long ago that he was still under federal employ to be a watcher himself.
    It’s time to plant myself.
    But I need to find a place that will give me a bird’s-eye view of the square. I settle on an empty table set directly in front of the cathedral’s marble steps. I pull out the paper and pencil that Francesco provided for me earlier and pretend to take on the guise of a poet who has come here for inspiration and luck.
    The ruse works too.
    Better than I thought it would.
    Because I haven’t even written down my first word yet when I recognize the voice of my ex-lover.

I’m careful not to look directly in the direction of her voice.
    Seated at the small table, pencil pressed to paper, I manage to sneak a peek over my left shoulder. I see three people. Two men walking side by side and a woman lagging a step or two behind.
    Lola.
    Like the men, she’s dressed in black.
    Leather boots that rise up to her knees, black jacket over turtleneck sweater. She’s wearing black-rimmed Jackie O’s over her eyes. The men wear black leather jackets over dark trousers and black shoes. They too wear sunglasses. Clyne the larger. Barter the smaller, but wiry and in cross-trainer shape.
    As they pass, I’m able to look directly at their backs. I’m resisting the almost irresistible urge to run up behind them and scream, “Guess who!”
    Then I might simply pull out the .9 mm, hold it on the two big boys point-blank while I demand return of the flash drive I’d stupidly handed to Clyne in the first place, all those months ago when my heart was bleeding for the lonely, newly divorced cop. At the same time I could grab hold of Lola, pull her to me, press the pistol barrel against her right temple, scream something over-the-top dramatic like, “Hand over the flash drive or the girl gets it!”
    But that would just blow the entire mission. It might also get me and Lola killed, or at the very least, arrested by the Italian police while Clyne and Barter make their escape.
    Best to stick to the plan.
    I pack up the pencil and paper and begin to follow the threesome. From a distance.
    I maintain a separation of forty or fifty feet between them and me as we walk across the square to a road that runs perpendicular to the Duomo square. The road is wider than some of the other roadways in the city. We pass an open area that’s home to a large five-star hotel on the left and a cobbled square that sports a couple of expensive cafés along with a brass band and an old-fashioned carousel of colorful wooden horses, tigers, and lions. My ten-year-old boy, Harrison, would have loved that carousel back when he was a toddler. Christ, he’d still love it. I wonder if he gets to ride carousels in sunny LA?
    Up ahead is a series of expensive clothing shops on both sides of the streets. Renaissance-era structures of