Blue Moonlight (19 page)

My rotten luck…Dick Moonlight kind of luck.

Yet another Japanese tour group is on the way down.

The stairwell is simply too narrow for two full-grown human beings to pass without one of them pressing his or her back up against the stone wall. I don’t bother with politeness. I pull out the .9 mm, shout out, “
Polizia!
”

It does the trick.

The Japanese group reacts as one, pressing their backs up against the circular wall, allowing me ample space to slip on through.

I continue my roundabout climb to the second level.

I bound through the stairwell door and onto another narrow stone walkway identical to the first one. Although this walkway also runs along the perimeter of the rotunda, it offers a much closer bird’s-eye view of the Duomo’s interior from just below the cupola. To my right, I once more come face to face with evil. I’m so close I feel like I can reach out and burn my fingers by touching the horned beast himself.

It’s Dante’s evil angel.

Satan.

The horned beast.

Gray-brown skin, black eyes, bald head, bat-like ears, and two bony horns topped off with sharp points. The keeper of the fire inside the lowest level of the inferno. He takes my breath away. I can only pray he is not my eternal future.

To my left I gaze out another narrow slit of a window, back down onto a piazza that’s now far below. But I still see Brunelleschi looking up at me. Keep going, he tells me.

Vi! Vi! Vi!

I know better than to argue with a Renaissance genius.

Lungs flaming, I climb until entering into the third and final stairwell. I trek up the last flights of stone stairs until I reach the Duomo’s top parapet walk. Pistol in hand, I ascend the short ladder that accesses the exterior. When my head emerges from the hatch-like opening at the top, I find myself surrounded by more Japanese tourists. A swarm of them occupy the parapet with their cameras and video cams.

Worked once: I climb all the way out and once more shout, “
Polizia!
” and then follow it up with “
Vi! Vi! Vi!
”

The tourists make a mad dash for the exit, leaving me alone at the top of the cultural world. Heading out onto the narrow exterior walk, I look for a way off the dome aside from simply jumping to my death. I make a quick inspection of the entire circular parapet.

The only way out of here is to climb down. This is not the most pleasant of prospects.

If I can get over the tower’s metal suicide barrier and out onto the dome, it might be possible to slide down the tile ceiling and onto the cathedral roof. Possible.
Might
be.

Voices coming from the interior of the Duomo.

“Moonlight!” I hear. “Son of bitch! Moonlight motherfucker! Dead man, Moonlight!”

I can either die here or take my chances out there.

I jump up, grab hold of the metal bars, and begin to chin myself up and over the suicide barrier, as if hell-bent on killing myself for real.

I make it over the barrier as I hear at least one goon enter onto the parapet walkway. I cautiously ease myself down, ass-first, onto the copper flashing. The downward angle is sharp, but not so steep I can’t keep my footing with my rubber-soled combat boots. Heart in throat, I take a crabwalking step out onto the orange/brown tiles. I feel the tile crunching and shifting under my feet. At this height, I feel the cool wind blowing against my face and against my sweat-soaked chest and neck.

Behind me, a limping Boris and his big goon are making their way around the narrow parapet walkway. I once more flash to the sliver of .22 caliber bullet in my head that, during times of extreme stress, can cause me to pass out. Now is not the time to pass out. Passing out would mean a fall of five hundred feet and certain death.

I continue my crabwalk out onto the dome, knowing that it will be impossible for Boris to follow me out here with his bad leg and just plain suicidal for a bigger-than-Zumbo-sized goon with a wounded collar to follow.

But then it’s me…Dick Moonlight. Captain Head Case.

I’ve been known to be wrong on occasion.

A tile slides out from under me.

My right leg slips out and I drop down onto my ass, pressing my full body weight against the angled dome so that I don’t begin a deadly slide over the side. More tiles come loose and skate off the dome. Coming from down below I hear the cries of the massive crowd that has gathered. I hear the sirens from the police cars and EMS vans. I know it’s only a matter of minutes or seconds until helicopter rotors can be heard chopping through the cool air. What a television spot my presence on the dome will make.

Then I hear the crack of an automatic, and I know the Russians are shooting at me, as if they’re shooting at the pigeons that nest up here. I want to look back at them but I can’t. Both hands are pressed flat against the tile while the soles of my booted feet cling to the angled dome. Only a foot or two of rooftop separates me from a portion that’s even more severely angled downward and will send me careening south like a helpless child falling down a schoolyard slide.

I look to my left and pick out the concrete seam that runs perpendicular to both the parapet and the base of the dome. I was so quick to get over the suicide barrier and onto the dome that I didn’t think to look for some kind of support ladders roofing contractors must use during their constant repair work on the dome’s tile roof. If the ladders exist, these concrete seams are all that could support them.

The wind picks up. It blows cold on my sweat-beaded face. My body begins to tremble while my injured left hand throbs up and down the length of the nerve bundles. But I hold on tight and run my eyes down the gray concrete seam.

It does indeed support a ladder. Rather, the metal rungs of a ladder are embedded into its concrete. Now it’s just a matter
of shifting myself the twenty feet to my left in order to access the metal rungs.

Sounds easy.

But not with a spray of bullets raining down on me from above.

I don’t give my next move any more thought.

I don’t give the pain in my hand, the sweat burning my eyes, or the five-hundred-foot drop any more thought, either.

I just do it.

I begin to slide and crab my body to the left toward the concrete seam. That’s when I see the injured goon to my right, crawling on his belly, a pistol in his hand aimed at me. He’s wearing sunglasses, black pants, and a T-shirt. He’s stripped himself of his leather coat, exposing the wound in his left collar. It’s a larger wound than I thought. I didn’t just graze him. I actually put one through him. Through the upper shoulder area. He must be supporting himself on his sheer size, strength, and loyalty to Boris, his boss.

He fires once and the round whizzes past. It’s a near miss. But he’s close enough that the second shot will likely find its target either in my head or chest.

No choice.

I pick myself up onto my feet and, leaning into the stiff wind and balancing myself like a man on a severely angled high-wire, make a run for the ladder.

I don’t approach the ladder on foot so much as I dive for it.

I grab hold of the topmost rung with my good right hand and pray to God the rung holds without popping out of the old concrete.

I bear my entire weight upon it.

The rung pulls out from the concrete seam, sending my heart into my mouth. But it doesn’t pull out the entire way. I have no choice but to find a foothold on a lower rung and begin the downward climb. It’s exactly what I do.

I can only pray the concrete-embedded ladder rungs hold.

More bullets.

They zip past my head as the big Russian takes my cue and gets up on his feet. It’s only a matter of time until one of those bullets connects. Problem is, the big goon has terrible aim. Maybe because he’s got no sense of balance now that his shoulder has been shot through. He runs at me and shoots, all the time his body slowly sliding in toward the steep-angled dome. It’s as if his feet are giving out from under him in slow motion. He doesn’t make it another five feet before the black soles on his boots give way, as if the dome were alive and purposely slipping out from under him.

From where I’m holding on to the metal rungs, I see his dark eyes go wide, his mouth ajar with terror. The automatic slips out of his hand and careens down the dome, click-clacking its way over the tiles until it goes silently airborne, then cracks to the piazza. The goon tries to hold on by digging his fingernails into the tiles. An understandable but futile gesture because, let’s face it, dude is truly fucked.

Gravity wins the day, and he begins to slide.

Slowly at first.

Then faster and faster, his chin bouncing over the tiles, fingernails scraping and tearing as he tries to stop his ever-speedier downward progress. He’s eyeing me the entire time he’s slipping, dropping, picking up speed. Until he’s made it all the way down the length of the dome and disappears, falling as soundlessly as his weapon before joining it with a soggy thump on the cobbled piazza below.

My entire body trembling, I descend what remains of the concrete-embedded metal rung ladder. Even from five hundred feet up on top of the tiled Duomo with the wind buffeting against my head, I’m hearing the horrified screams of the bystanders who gather around the dead Russian. For the first time all day I feel like I might live to see the sun set on sunny Italy.

I. Might. Live.

I maintain a steady climb down, trying to look neither down nor up, but only at the concrete band just inches from my face. I descend as fast and as safely as I can until I come to the long, angled rooftop of the cathedral.

With the Russian goon having fallen to his death, much of the attention that had been focused on me must have shifted to his crushed remains. It’s very possible the people are confusing him for me. He’s the bigger man, but we are both dressed all in black, both wearing sunglasses, both carrying weapons. From a long enough distance or, in this case, height, the Russian fits my description to a T. If all those tourists are making this mistake, it’s possible the police are too.

It takes only a few seconds for me to make it to the cathedral parapet. I climb up onto a narrow marble walkway that runs perpendicular to the cathedral roof and make a crouching search for a door or a trapdoor opening. I know there has to be some kind of access to the interior of the structure because it only makes sense that the rooftop be accessible for repairs.