Venetian Masks (27 page)

Cleve nodded. “I know. I’ve known that since… almost since we met. But maybe I can have a little fun first.”

Jeff had been silent the entire time. His mouth was so dry he wasn’t sure he could have spoken if he tried. Instead, he attempted to catch Cleve’s eyes, to find out one last time if he could see the truth there. But Cleve kept his gaze on Eddie.

After a few pensive moments, Eddie inclined his head. “All right. Let me just take care of a few loose ends first.” He turned, raised his arm, and pointed the gun at Jeff.

What happened next must have been very fast, but to Jeff everything seemed in slow motion, like in the nightmares when he was trying to run and save his brothers and couldn’t get there in time. Jeff bent his knees and raised his arms defensively in front of his face. Eddie clicked off the safety. And Cleve lunged for Eddie, screaming something incoherent. Eddie spun around and a shot rang out. Cleve’s body jerked back. Jeff jumped upright and took a long step forward.

But before Jeff could reach Eddie, Cleve hurtled forward again, and this time his momentum toppled Eddie to the ground. Cleve fell on top of him. The gun blasted again—once, twice—and the struggling men went still.

Chapter 19

T
HE
hospital looked like every other hospital he’d ever been in—when he was eight and broke his collarbone on the playground, when he was twenty and sliced a finger open at the deli where he worked, and of course when he was fifteen and crashed the car—and it smelled the same too. Medicine, cleaning fluids, plastic, sweat.

People were talking at him. They were throwing questions at him in Italian and English and mixtures of both, and he wasn’t processing any of it. And worse, none of them were answering
his
questions, the ones he kept asking over and over: “Where’s Cleve? Is he okay? Can I see him?”

Finally, the doctor aimed a rapid barrage of Italian at the policemen and the other people crowding around, and they shuffled out of the room with expressions of irritation. When she turned back to Jeff, she looked tired but compassionate. “Your embassy has been contacted and someone should be here soon. Now let me finish with you.”

He held out his injured hand obediently, watching as she checked the stitches and rewrapped the white bandages. “Please,” he said as she worked, “can you tell me what’s happened to my friend? I think he was shot.” His voice broke on the final word.

“I do not know.” Her long dark hair was escaping from her ponytail. She used the back of a gloved hand to push it out of her face. “If you leave the room now, those policemen will be on you at once. Stay here. I will see if I can learn anything.”

Jeff nodded gratefully at her and allowed his shoulders to sag. She left the room, closing the door firmly behind her, and he considered fetching his phone and calling Sacramento. But the phone was in his jacket, which wasn’t quite within reach of the exam table on which he was sitting, and walking seemed like too much at the moment.

The doctor returned fifteen minutes later, grim-faced. Jeff forgot how to breathe as she placed a small hand on his shoulder. “Your friend was shot two times. He is in surgery now.”

The air escaped his lungs in a noisy
whoosh
. Cleve was in surgery, and that meant he was still alive. He hated to ask the next question, but he had to know. “Is he….”

“His condition is quite serious, but the surgeon is a very good one. I will pray for your friend.”

Jeff wasn’t religious, but he figured that under the circumstances, Cleve could use all the help he could get. “Thanks.”

The embassy person arrived just a little later. Mrs. Barone wasn’t what Jeff had expected. She was short and plump with curly russet hair. She looked like a slightly stern grandmother and wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She sat in the room’s plastic chair and listened to his entire story—scratching notes on a pad of paper the entire time—and never appeared judgmental about anything. She made sure that while he talked, he had coffee and bottled water, and a sandwich that she insisted he eat. She asked a few questions now and then, and he spoke until his voice was hoarse and he was nearly faint with exhaustion.

“Please,” he said when his tale was finished. “Cleve. The doctor said he was in surgery….”

“And he probably still is. I’m going to have a few words with those detectives and then we’re going to find you someplace to clean up and rest. I’ll make sure you’re kept up-to-date on Cleve’s status.”

He wanted to kiss her.

She eventually walked him to a small hotel less than a block from the hospital. He didn’t catch the name of the place and didn’t care. Somehow she also magically procured a clean T-shirt—he was still bare-chested under his jacket—and a few toiletries. “I’m going through a lot of toothbrushes on this trip,” he told her wearily.

Two men who must have been cops, even though they weren’t in uniform, accompanied Jeff and Mrs. Barone. They waited patiently while he set his messenger bag down and went into the bathroom to clean off some of the dried blood. It wasn’t an easy task, due to his bandaged left hand. But when he looked slightly less like an extra in a zombie movie, he pulled on his new shirt and padded back into the main room, where the cops and Mrs. Barone waited for him.

The older officer looked annoyed and slightly disgruntled, but the younger was almost cheery. Good cop, bad cop, Jeff thought, but it turned out to be mostly the good cop who spoke to him.

“You can ask for a solicitor—ah, a lawyer, Signore Dawkins, if you want,” said the younger cop. “But I do not think you will need one. We will not be charging you with a crime.”

Jeff was too tired to be relieved, but he mumbled his gratitude anyway.

The policeman smiled and continued. “I have just a few questions for you and that is all.”

The questions didn’t take long. The officers seemed mostly to be double-checking some of the details of what Jeff had told Mrs. Barone. Jeff answered as best as he could, but he was feeling a little shocky and was distracted with worry over Cleve. Finally, the police seemed satisfied, and they stood up to leave. “Do not leave Venezia until this is settled, yes?” said the younger one. “We will telephone you if we have more questions. If you change hotels, make sure the embassy knows where you are.” The officers left.

Mrs. Barone stayed for a few more minutes. She set two bottles of pills on the nightstand. “One is for pain, if you need them in the morning. But the other is for now, so you can sleep.” He’d told her about the nightmares, even though he wasn’t sure if they were relevant. He’d told her everything.

He shook his head. “I can’t. Cleve—”

“I’m going back to the hospital right now. I’ll contact you with an update, okay?” She waved her cell phone. “Then you need to rest. You’ve had quite a vacation.”

After she left, he paced the room nervously, ignoring the throbbing in his hand. He kept seeing Cleve’s paper-pale face and his unmoving body on the floor of Ca’ Luna, covered in blood.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone buzzed. He ran to answer it. “You can come visit him in the morning,” said Mrs. Barone. “He’s going to be all right.”

H
E
SLEPT
without dreams and woke up surprisingly refreshed. His hand hurt, but tolerably so, and he didn’t take more pills. He was actually more bothered by the annoyance of having to keep the bandages dry, and he ended up showering with a plastic bag over his left hand.

Mrs. Barone was waiting for him at the hospital. “Edvin Weibull is dead,” she told him almost immediately.

Relief flooded through him and he almost had to sit down. “Good.”

She nodded. “The police think so too, and not just here. A lot of people are relieved to have Mr. Weibull safely deceased.”

“What about Bob?”

She raised her thick eyebrows. “Bob?”

“The goon.”

“Ah. Bob is going to need some facial reconstructive surgery and he’s lost an eye. He’s also very pleased to tell the authorities anything they want to know, now that his boss isn’t around to save him. His story matches yours, so you and your friend Cleve are off the hook. Cleve has some visa issues, but I think we can talk the Italians into overlooking them.” She grinned. “Did you really take that man out with a Kindle?”

“It’s all I had,” he answered with a shrug.

A nurse came and led him to Cleve’s room.

Cleve was lying very still in the bed, a white sheet folded down to his waist. A tube was stuck in one arm, and his entire upper body was a knot of bandages, but he peeled his eyes open and smiled faintly. “Just Jeff.” His voice was weak and cracked.

Jeff was almost afraid to touch him but couldn’t resist settling a hand on one tattooed forearm. “You came back.”

“Told you. If I ever had something worth keeping, I would.”

T
WO
days later, Jeff checked out of the hotel where Mrs. Barone had taken him and walked to the time-share. He’d already confirmed that a room was available, and he’d e-mailed his boss back in Sacramento to let him know he’d be detained in Europe for an extra week or two. Jeff could do some of his work from Venice, he said. His boss was agreeable but made Jeff promise to tell him the whole story when he returned.

“Signore Dawkins!” Mita cried when he entered the building. Her hair was mostly purple, and although he wasn’t positive, he thought she might have a new piercing. “I saw your name on the list this morning. You love Venezia so much that you couldn’t leave?”

“Something like that.”

“And your
ragazzo
? Did you find him again?”

He smiled. “I did. And then he found me.”

“Ah, molto bene!” She peered around him. “And where is he?”

“In the hospital.”

“No!” Mita looked genuinely stricken.

“It’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”

He had a different room this time, although it had roughly the same layout. He planned to walk to Billa soon and stock the kitchen. It was cheaper than eating out, and his budget was running a little thin. Besides, he was spending as much time as possible at Cleve’s bedside and didn’t want to waste his waking hours sitting in restaurants. At least his wounded hand had been upgraded to stitches and a Band-Aid, which made getting things done a lot easier.

He had some other shopping to do as well, he reminded himself. His mother needed a replacement set of earrings.

And with that thought, he dug out his laptop, turned it on, and with a considerable amount of trepidation, prepared to Skype his parents.

C
LEVE
twitched in his seat. “Man, first class is a hell of a lot more comfortable than this.”

Jeff poked him—carefully, so as to avoid the healing wounds, one in Cleve’s upper chest and one at his hip. Cleve was still a little sore, but he could walk now with only a slight limp, and they’d made love three times in the past two days. “You’re probably never going to get first class if you stick with me.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Cleve poked him back. “Maybe when I figure out what I wanna be when I grow up, I’ll make us millionaires.”

“I thought money wasn’t your thing.”

“’S not. But I’d love to buy you the biggest mansion in Sacramento, Just Jeff.”

Jeff bonked his head lightly against Cleve’s. “I don’t need a mansion, dope. Just Cleve.”

A few minutes later, the flight attendant made them put up their seat backs and tray tables. Cleve was jittering his leg and biting his lip, looking almost as pale as when he’d been shot. In an attempt to distract him, Jeff asked, “What’s the first thing you want to do now that you’ve returned to the States?”

“I want a Pop-Tart. And I wanna go someplace that has crappy food and pushy waiters and enormous Cokes with free refills.”

“Is that all?” Jeff purred in his ear.

Cleve whispered back, “No, I want you to fuck me until neither of us can walk straight, but that’s not gonna happen in your parents’ spare room.” The whisper wasn’t all that quiet, and the middle-aged woman on Jeff’s other side snorted with laughter.

“We’ll send my parents out on a date,” Jeff countered.

The jet bounced onto the runway and began to taxi toward the terminal. Cleve looked more terrified than Jeff had ever seen him. “It’s going to be okay,” Jeff said.

Cleve nodded uncertainly.

They were sitting near the back of the plane, and Cleve was a little slow due his injuries, so they were among the last people off. Then they had to wait in a long line to get through immigration. At least they didn’t have any luggage to collect. Jeff had his messenger bag and a backpack containing a few changes of clothes, a couple of souvenirs, and his oft-repurchased toiletries. Cleve had even less than that: just a yellow plastic Billa bag that contained everything he owned in the world. Except Jeff’s heart.

After raising an eyebrow at their lack of luggage, the customs inspector waved them through, but Cleve was dragging his heels. He looked as if, given half a chance, he’d turn around and climb right back onboard the 747. Jeff grabbed his elbow and tugged him along.