Blue Moonlight (14 page)

I have a decent idea of where I’ll find his leather-goods stall, but still I feel like I might be looking for a sewing needle in a stack of sewing needles.

But then my gut speaks up and tells me that I don’t have to worry about recognizing Abdiesus.

In all probability, he will already know me.

Here’s what I learned in college, just before coming to Florence for the first time as a young man: leather has been big business here since the Romans founded the place more than two thousand years ago when, for some reason that defies all conventional logic, they decided to place a soldiers’ encampment on the swampy, mosquito-infested valley. To further defy logic and wisdom, the area became a stopping-off point for travelers and adventure seekers of all kinds. Merchants seeking trade who originated from all ends of the known earth. Spice merchants from India. Chinese selling textiles. Persians selling rugs, bronze cookware, swords, knives, animals, and even slaves who would become gladiators.

The markets have remained for all these years, making the city a vibrant melting pot of hawkers, bargain hunters, and adventurers. And the police rarely make an appearance inside its tidal river of people.

It’s been awhile since I’ve traipsed through the tent-covered markets. But here’s what I know: it’s easy to get lost inside them and even easier to get pulled away and abducted.

Especially when you’re traveling alone to a place where you have enemies. Mortal enemies.

I head down the flights of stairs to the Via Faenza. I hook a right and head toward the busy four corners where Faenza crosses over Nazionale. On the opposite left-hand corner stands a policeman, his blue uniform tight over a hard body, black-shaded sunglasses hiding eyes that just might be staring me down. Sharing the corner with him is a beggar with bare, hobbled feet that resemble dark, scaly, distorted tree branches. Carlo comes to mind. The half man, half beast, with hooves for hands and feet. I think about our immediate moment of connection. My own sliced hoof throbs in my pocket.

Behind the cop and the beggar is a newsstand that sells newspapers, drinks, lottery tickets, and souvenirs that include underwear mimicking Michelangelo’s
David
. Not the whole
David
, but his infamous
package
.

There’s also a large poster mounted to the exterior wall outside the store in a glass frame. The poster depicts the levels of Dante’s hell, or Inferno. Peering over my left shoulder, I cross Nazionale as soon as the traffic permits. My eyes still glued to the Inferno poster, I don’t have the time to study all the levels since I’m simply passing by while trying not to raise the attention of the cop. But I look at it long enough to make out a level entitled “Gluttony.” The word appears over an illustrated landscape of darkness, hard rock, filthy mud, filthy water, and a heavy cold rain.

Another level bears the headline “Wrath.” People trying to stay afloat in a fast-moving river while they lash out at one another.

In another level, called “The Violent,” naked bodies are burning while dogs with humanlike faces stab at them with pitchforks. It’s not hard to recognize the face of Hitler in this
level. Also, I clearly see Napoleon, Oppenheimer, and Osama bin Laden. The perfect poster for your teenage kid’s bedroom.

Now that I’m past the newsstand I pick up my pace along the narrow, cobble-covered street. Past cheap trattorias and sandwich shops, past shops run by Asians selling only cheap beer and wine, past sexy-underwear stores, and one store that sells custom-made masks, some of which look Satan-inspired, with their grossly long noses and evil, bulging eyes. The road is filled with Americans, Peruvians, Germans, Africans, Iranians, Syrians, you name it.

There
are
Italians in Italy, right?

I walk past tourists and art students, both young and old, and I feel the good weight of the .9 mm tucked away in the shoulder holster bobbing gently against my rib cage. If I could wear it on my right hip I’d feel like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western.

The Good, the Bad, and the Head Case…

I go left at Via Zannoni and eye the first tent on the corner to my right. There are two steady streams of leather-hungry tourists congesting the narrow path between the two long parallel rows of tents and booths, but that shit doesn’t concern me. When I spot the little waif of a man seated behind the tent, my gut tells me I’m looking at Abdiesus.

I approach the man carefully, so as not to startle him. He’s so little and suntanned dark I feel like a sudden start might cause him to crack down the middle.

I’ll say it again: he’s a little man. Skinny. Dark-skinned, dressed in a gray or off-white thawb, an honest-to-goodness fez balanced on the back of his bald skull. He’s old, maybe eighty or more, and sports a sparse white beard. The type of Middle
Eastern man who might get pulled out of line at airport security for a full anal cavity and shoe check back in the States. He’s smoking a cigarette lovingly, like it’s what he has now in the place of true affection, and it isn’t until he’s finished smoking it that he looks up at me.

I reach into my pocket, pull out the pack of Marlboros, thumb open the lid, silently offer him one. He reaches out with a hand that’s as bone thin and brown leathery as the leather jackets and belts he sells on the other side of the tent. With long, bone-colored fingernails, he plucks out four cigarettes, sliding one into his mouth and the others into the chest pocket on his robe-like thawb.

I pull out the Bic lighter, fire it up for him.

“How much for one of your leather belts?” I pose. “I’m particularly interested in a black one.”

He nods, smokes, stares at the burning end of the lit cigarette. Then, reaching out with his stick-thin right hand, he pulls one of the black belts from off the rack.

He stares at my waist.

“I will have to punch one or two new holes in the leather for your narrow waist.”

Popping the cigarette between dry, cracked lips, he picks up a metal hole punch and, in a surprising display of strength, punches two new holes out of the leather belt. Coiling the belt and its metal buckle into a round, compact package, he slips it inside a brown paper bag, hands it to me. I slip the belt into my side coat pocket and dig out a twenty-euro note to complete the sale.

“Keep the change,” I offer.

He writes up a receipt, hands it to me. I stuff it into my right pants pocket.

“You know who I am,” I say after a beat. It’s a question.

“I’ve never been to America,” he says in a voice that’s gravelly, soft, and sad. The voice of a man who has lost something precious to him, like a wife or a child or both. “Is it like they tell me it is?” he goes on while slowly, painfully sitting back down. “Corrupt and evil?”

I shake my head, light up a smoke of my own. “My country has its faults,” I say, releasing a cloud of blue smoke that combines with his. “But it has a wonderful heart. And we care about people. Not just our own. I make no apologies for her.”

“Is that why you have come for the flash drive, Mr. Moonlight?”

His question takes me by surprise. But I’m not sure why it should. It makes sense that he would know of my mission. Especially if Francesco filled him in on it. Naturally I’m concerned about trust. But it’s a little late to be concerned about that now.

I smoke a little more. Then, “Yes. It’s why I have come.”

He crosses stick legs, revealing bony feet protected with leather sandals, and considers my answer for a moment. Just a few feet beyond us, the crowd moves at a steady, browsing pace. Rarely does someone stop to view Abdiesus’s goods. Makes me wonder how he makes a living. But then something dawns on me.

I reach into my pocket, shave off two fifty-euro notes, go to hand them to him. He holds up his free hand. “Not now,” he says. “There will be time for that after we have spoken.”

I can’t help but notice the plain gold band wrapped around his wedding finger.

“I understand,” I say. “Buyers. Are there buyers like we’ve been hearing? Are you prepared to tell me who they are?”

“How will you utilize this knowledge, Mr. Moonlight?”

“The flash drive contains dangerous information that could be used against my country and other free countries should it fall into the wrong hands. Last time I heard, many Iranians weren’t too fond of Americans.”

He cocks his head. “I don’t have a particular problem with Americans, Mr. Moonlight,” he offers. “They might be loud and fat, but they spend money on my leather jackets. So how can I complain?”

“Your president isn’t such a fan of our free market society. He also denies the Holocaust ever happened.”

“Ahmadinejad is a cruel joke. A Nazi. A puppet of Supreme Islamic statehood. He is the Goebbels of my country. His words are air. Nothing more.”

“Is he the one buying the flash drive?”

He laughs as smoke billows from his nostrils and mouth. “I like you, Mr. Moonlight. You think big.”

“Is he?”

“It’s possible the men who want the flash drive and are willing to pay one hundred million dollars for it are working for him. Yes, indeed, it is possible.”

I take that as a definite yes.

He smokes the cigarette all the way down to the filter, then drops it to the street, where it rolls into the narrow linear space between the square-shaped cobbles. I half expect him to light up another, but he decides to give his lungs a rest for the moment.

“Listen carefully,” he says. “The men you seek have been observing Mr. Clyne and Mr. Barter for days now. They have decided to reveal themselves in order to make the deal for the flash drive.”

I feel a start in my heart. “When will this meeting you speak of take place?”

“In two days, inside the Palazzo Vecchio. At midday when the square is at its most crowded. Do you understand?”

I understand perfectly well. It means I have at most forty-eight hours to retrieve the flash drive or this thing is shot.

“Who are these men? What are their names?”

“None of those things are important, Mr. Moonlight,” he says. “What’s important is that you know they are serious investors and that they are most likely watching us right now.” Lighting up one of the three Marlboros he has left. “Now that you have the knowledge you came for, you can pay me what you wish. Then you must go.”

I hand him the two fifty-euro bills.

He looks up at me, the new cigarette burning between his lips. His deep steel-blue eyes scream
“More.”

I reach back into my pocket, pull out another fifty and two twenties. Hand them to him. He smiles, nods in thanks. “And…” he adds, gesturing toward the chest pocket where I store the box of Marlboros. I get the hint. I hand them over.

He smiles.

“May I ask you a question?” I pose.

He nods.

“Why are you willing to hand over this information when it must place you in considerable danger?”

“How old would you say I am, Mr. Moonlight?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please be so bold as to venture a guess.”

I stare into his leathery face. Into steel-blue eyes surrounded by mud-stained whites streaked with jagged broken vessels of blood red.

“Eighty,” I guess. “Eight-five.”

He laughs again. “I will celebrate my sixty-third spring in March of next year,” he informs.

I feel a shot of ice-cold liquid shoot up and down my backbone. I feel the eyes of the Iranian buyers lasering into my skin and flesh. I eye the many tourists coming and going, listen to their nonstop banter coming at me in an endless variety of languages.

“I was once a rich man,” he goes on. “I went to college and owned a leather factory in Tehran. I had a wife and three sons. This is back in the good days before the Islamist revolution and the shah was overthrown.”

“The shah lived rich at the expense of his people,” I say. “That’s what I’ve been taught.”

“The shah provided my country with a stable economy and the freedom to earn much money. When he was deposed, my sons joined the revolution. Today they are dead, hanged by their own people for insubordination when the day came to steal my factory, my money, my possessions, and my house in the name of Allah and the revolution.”