Free The Last Promise by Richard Paul Evans Page A

grabbed a ceiling strap.
    At the next stop a couple boarded who reminded Ross of a Duane Hanson piece he had once seen on display at an art gallery in Minnesota: Tourists. They might as well wear a sign, Ross thought, looking at the camera hanging from the man’s neck. A bent tourist guidebook stuck out of the back pocket of his shorts. The woman wore a sleeveless shirt and pink-lens sunglasses, and a large bag hung over her arm.
    The doors shut behind them and the couple hovered near the bus’s stamp machine. When they spoke, Ross recognized the accent immediately. They were from Minnesota or Fargo, close to where Ross once called home.
    “Judy, will ya just put the darn ticket in the machine?”
    “What for?”
    “It’s what the man in the tobacco shop said to do. It stamps it or something.”
    “Which machine? There’s two of them.”
    “How would I know?”
    “What if I put it in the wrong one?”
    “Try them both.”
    Ross didn’t speak, but he pointed to the orange box mounted to the wall.
    “Did you see that?” the woman said. “That man just pointed to the orange one. Grazee, signora.”
    “You just called him missus.”
    “I can’t ever remember which one it is. He’s a good-looking Italian man. Grazee, signori,” she said, speaking loudly, with a large, deliberate stretch of her lips. “Th-ank y-ou.”
    She looked so comical Ross tightened his mouth so as not to laugh. “Prego, signora.”
    “That means you’re welcome ,” her husband said.
    Just then a young man slid past Ross. Ross had noticed him as he boarded the bus and watched him as he moved closer to the couple, who were all but oblivious to what was happening around them. At a corner all the passengers leaned with the bus and the young man brushed against the tourists, easily lifting the man’s wallet from his back pocket. Ross was waiting for it and caught the thief’s wrist, lifting it with the black leather wallet he held. “Ha trovato qualcosa?” Find something?
    Fear flashed across the thief’s face. The woman screamed. “Martin, that man has your wallet!”
    The tourist spun around. “Hey!”
    The pickpocket, his wrist still in Ross’s grasp, dropped the wallet. As the bus slowed for the next stop, the thief yanked his hand from Ross and jumped off the bus, knocking an elderly woman over as he did so. He quickly disappeared down a side street.
    The man stooped down and picked up his wallet. “That was close,” he said to Ross. “Thank you.”
    “Give him a reward, Martin,” the woman said.
    He fished a couple of ten-thousand-lire bills from his wallet and offered them to Ross.
    Ross waved them off. “No, grazie.”
    “I insist.”
    “Say, insist-a. Just add an ‘a’ to it, sometimes they understand that.”
    Ross just waved. “Veramente, no.”
    “I don’t think he wants it,” Martin said to his wife. He turned to Ross. “Well, I sure as heck appreciate it,” he said, shoving the thick wallet into the same back pocket it had just been lifted from. “Grand-ay gra-zee.”
    “Prego,” Ross said again. They stood in silence as the bus jogged along, until a few minutes later, when the woman pointed ahead. “There’s the big dome up ahead. I think the next one’s our stop.”
    A moment later the couple stepped from the bus, and turned back before the doors closed. “Grazee, again.”
    Ross smiled. “There are a lot of pickpockets in Florence, sir. It’s best to leave a wallet that big in your hotel.”
    The couple just stared at him in wonder as the door closed.
    At the next stop Ross stepped off the bus and walked a half block to the Uffizi.
    Even before he entered the gallery’s courtyard he could feel his mood begin to change.
    The Uffizi was more than a gallery to Ross, it was a temple, and standing before its art was a religious experience.
    During his darkest hours, when faith deserted him, art had been his closest link to divinity and it still sustained him. He felt his work a calling in the