“Who was the man in the long blue coat?”
“Ah Jeez. Hey. Fuck you. You’re not really Milo. How you know about Huey Longbourne I have no idea. I guess you hadda cut it outta Milo before you got to me. If you were really Milo, then you’d know. There’s nothing I could tell Milo about Trinidad that Milo didn’t already know. None of us knew who the man in the long blue coat was. Not Willard. Not Pete or Crucio. Not even Moot. Maybe Bob Cole knew.”
“Bob Cole called him Cicero.”
“Cicero. That’s what we called him. His name was Cicero.”
“Bob Cole called him Cicero. What was his real name?”
“We were never told. And Bob Cole’s dead. We all called him Cicero. Remember? That’s how it works. That’s fieldcraft. Nobody knows the cleaner’s name on a thing like Trinidad. Everybody has a legend, other names — we all did, you skanky freak. That’s the way it’s always done. Know what, man? I’m through talking to you. You wanna know what happened at Trinidad, go ask somebody else. Ask Barbra Goldhawk, why don’t you? See what you get outta that old bucket of grits. I don’t like you, pal — I don’t like how you do business, I don’t like your fancy-ass Hollywood boots with the little silver toe tips like you’re some kind of pansy fucking homo-on-the-range fairy, and I’m not telling you shit. So it’s howdy-go-bye-bye time, Hop along. Let’s get her done. Either unass my AO or start in cutting.”
“Who was the man in the long blue coat?”
“Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell a Jody like you. Lock and load.”
The man stood and stepped into the light. Runciman looked at him, at the man’s face, at what was in it, and he knew that he had come to the final hours of his life. The first cuts were not the deepest.
2
During the night a heavy fog had gathered around the ruined Medici fortress on the crest of Cortona and spread itself down through the ancient city. By early morning the squares and towers and narrow medieval streets were shrouded in mist, and a cold slanting rain was beating against the shuttered houses along the Via Berrettini. Beyond the shoulder of the young policeman in front of him Dalton could just make out the image of another man in a trench coat, looking down the narrow lane at them as they made their way up the hill. The man, his face partially hidden under a wide-brimmed black fedora, was standing by the iron gate that led into the stone-walled courtyard of the ancient Roman chapel of San Nicolò. Dalton got the impression of an angular jaw, a large gray mustache like an inverted crescent, lined and haggard cheeks. A cigarillo drooped from the corner of his mouth and his hands were shoved into the pockets of his coat, his collar turned up against the rain and the wind.
The column of men escorting Dalton up the hill passed an open laneway, and glancing to his right, Dalton saw through a curtain of dripping laundry the stone parapet that ran beside Via Santa Margherita: beyond the parapet he could see the faint outline of Lake Trasimeno. A memory came to him of a summer afternoon and the sunlit terrace off the Piazza Garibaldi, where he and Laura had once sat watching the cloud shadows drift across the olive groves far below them, the lake in the distance glimmering in a pure southern light. They had talked of Hannibal and Rome and the Etruscans while they shared a bottle of chilled pinot grigio, well pleased with the day, with Tuscany, with each other.
The memory had only half-formed when he shut his mind against it, concentrating instead on the rain beading up on the navy blue tunic of the carabiniere in front of him, on the rounded old stones beneath his shoes, on the graveyard reek of the running gutters, the damp-wool smell of the rain itself. In a few more minutes they reached the chapel gates. The senior carabiniere — a dark-skinned man with craggy Sicilian features whose difficult name Dalton had heard but not retained — snapped out a tight salute, to which the trench-coated man returned an ironic bow.
“Ecco ’inglese, Commendatore. Il Signor Dalton.”
“Sì. Mr. Micah Dalton,” said the man in the trench coat, stepping toward Dalton, his right hand out. He shook Dalton’s hand once, twice, a firm dry grip, strong lean fingers. His regard was direct, penetrating, but not unfriendly. He had the air of a man who was willing to be favorably impressed. His smile was wide and revealed strong yellowish teeth. He had a gap between his upper middle incisors, and deep brown eyes with a clear light in them. Dalton, whose trade required him to make rapid assessments of everyone he met, put him down as smart, professional, experienced, and therefore dangerous. The man’s voice was a baritone purr, and he had a cold.
“I am Major Alessio Brancati. I am the chief of the Carabinieri criminal division for Cortona. We thank you for coming.”
“Good morning, Major Brancati,” said Dalton, trying not to look beyond the major’s left shoulder, where he could see that a black nylon crime scene tent had been set up against the doors of the chapel.
Brancati’s lined and weathered face broke into a wry smile.
“This morning is not so good. Rain, and this wet wind from the north. It sinks into your lungs. This fog. A terrible morning. I offer you a cigar?”
He held out a crumpled packet of Toscanos. Dalton saw there were only two left. The major pulled his shoulders up in a very Italian way and grinned fiercely at him. “Take! You will help me to quit.”
Dalton took one and the major held out a very worn and apparently solid-gold lighter with the crest of the Carabinieri engraved on its face. Dalton drew the smoke in deep. The major seemed to approve of his obvious pleasure in this. Dalton looked past the man at the crime-scene tent. Rain drops beaded on the slick surface and pooled in the sagging folds. Two glum-looking boys in sodden police uniforms stood on either side of the tent, which had been zippered shut against the rain. A blue-and-red police tape with the words Polizia non passar — Polizia non passare had been stretched across the heavy wooden doors of the chapel. On a bench by the chapel gates an old man in an ill-cut tweed jacket and brown corduroy slacks sat limply, staring into nowhere, fingering a green-glass rosary, his eyes as dull as quartz. A tall athletic-looking young man in a black suit and a clerical collar stood next to him, staring at Dalton with a fixed intensity. The priest, if that was what he was, had a sharp-featured, almost brutal face.
“May I ask,” said Dalton, looking away from the priest’s disconcerting glare and exhaling a blue cloud of smoke, “who that man is? The priest.”
“That is Father Jacopo. He is the pastor of this chapel.”
“He looks like an assassin. What’s his problem with me?”
Brancati shrugged and pulled the edges of his mouth into an exaggerated downward curve, making him look briefly like a Venetian mask.
“He has some belief about you. It is of no importance. Superstition may be found even among the educated. I thank you for coming all the way to Cortona.”
“I was grateful for the call. I do wonder why the identification could not be done at the hospital.”
Brancati lit his last cigarillo and dismissed the Sicilian carabiniere with a nod while he considered Dalton’s question. The other men drifted away and began to talk in low tones, their voices lost in the sighing of the wind.