Free Midnight Angels by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page A

kick the appetite into full gear. Kate frequented the restaurant often, usually choosing a corner table less than a dozen feet from the front register. She was treated as a regular by both the owners and the staff, and had grown to trust the tastes of her favorite waiter, Louisa, often allowing her to select her meal.
    “You can’t be serious about any of this?” Marco demanded. He sat across from Kate, leaning forward, a thick slab of Tuscan bread hangingfrom the fingers of his right hand. “You do realize we would be arrested if we were caught? And you might even risk getting deported? You might want to think about all of that before you decide to move forward.”
    “You can stay out of it if you want,” Kate said, undeterred by his outrage. “This is something I need to do. And whether it’s alone or with you, I’m going to go ahead with it.”
    Marco quietly lifted his glass of red wine and took a long, slow drink. He glanced down at his bowl of rigatoni and grilled sausage mixed with a fresh tomato and basil sauce and shook his head. “What makes you so sure there’s something in there?”
    “It’s a gut feeling, not something I can explain,” she said. “But the only way for me to be certain that there isn’t anything there is to look inside for myself.”
    “There is no one allowed in there,” Marco said, lowering his voice as a middle-aged American couple sat down at the table to their left. “I’m sure they put a rule like that in place for a reason.”
    “If there is something hidden,” Kate said, glancing over at the woman to her right, “that’s where it would be.”
    “It’s a small space,” Marco said, “with limited access and right by the entrance to the Uffizi in full view of two security cameras. It’s blocked off by a barrier and a yellow strip of tape. If we step anywhere near it, we are certain to be spotted.”
    “It’s the one section of the Vasari Corridor that has never been open to the public,” Kate said, “not now and not in the days of the Medicis. I checked the original designs of the corridor, both the ones we have in school and whatever I could find on the Internet. It’s a little less than a quarter mile long and curves along the Uffizi and ends up at the north end of the Ponte Vecchio. It’s one of the few places left in the city that hasn’t been touched by the modern world. That alone is reason to walk through it, no matter the risks involved.”
    Marco rested his fork against his plate and leaned in closer to Kate. Buca Mario was now filled with customers, and a small squad of waiters, young and old, zoomed past them, platters of pasta and appetizers and baskets jammed with bread held aloft as they curved their way around chairs and trays stacked high with empty plates. Diners at many of the tables were loud and boisterous, while others kept their words soft and warm, content to eat their food and drink their wine in relative peace.“Let’s say that by some miracle you actually do find something,” he said to Kate. “What happens then? Will the discovery alone be enough? Or will you need to take it a step further?”
    “Depends on what I find,” she said.
    “What is it you really want, Kate?” Marco asked. “What I mean is, why did you really come to Florence?”
    “I don’t have any sinister motives, Marco,” she said. “I’m here to study, same as you.”
    “There’s more than a good chance you already know all there is to know about Michelangelo,” he said. “And what little you may not know, you won’t learn from either the lectures at school or the books we are assigned to read. So there must be another part to your agenda. But I will understand if you don’t want to share it with me. We’ve only known each other for a short while, and there’s quite a bit you don’t know about me, either. But if you want me to take a big risk and join you in an attempt to sneak into the sealed area of the Vasari Corridor, then I do need to