Cold Tuscan Stone by David Wagner (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📗

This really is happening, thought Rick. He looked down at the book in his hand and toyed with the idea of leaving it at the hotel desk, but decided he didn’t want to miss this chance. It was what he was here for. He walked around the car, opened the door and ducked in, tossing the dictionary into the back seat.

“My dictionary,” he explained, as the car surged ahead in first gear.

The man threw him a strange look and turned his eyes to the street. “I don’t think you’ll need it.”

Sergeant DeMarzo was smiling down at his sandwich on the counter next to the glass of mineral water. Yellow cheese oozed out the sides, its golden color contrasting nicely with the dark grill marks on the toasted bread. It had been a long time since his morning cornetto, and with the baby carrying on he probably hadn’t digested it very well. Just as DeMarzo picked the sandwich up and opened his mouth, the red car sped past the front of the bar and started up the hill into the center of the city.

Rick looked over at the man. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“What is it you’re going to show me?”

“You’ll see that too.”

The driver stared straight ahead and Rick decided he wouldn’t get much out of him, at least not during the drive. There would likely be someone at the other end, wherever that would be. One thing for sure, this was not the voice of the man who had called him outside the church. The car turned onto a narrow street which ran around the outside of the main piazza, passing the building which housed Polpetto’s office, while the driver kept his eyes tightly on the road. Just ahead a small boy stepped out of a doorway, causing the driver to honk and curse under his breath. At the corner the car turned onto a bigger street, though still not wide enough for two lanes of traffic. It dropped steeply down to one of the city gates, and suddenly they were outside the walls. The views changed from solid gray stone to trees swaying in the wind. The road went past rows of small houses, the spaces between them widening as they drove farther from the city itself. After a few minutes the scenery was mostly woods and fields, with an occasional house tucked back off the road. Leaves of tall trees further reduced the waning afternoon light. Fifteen minutes later the car slowed suddenly and pulled off the pavement onto a dirt road. The maneuver was so fast that Rick barely had time to look around. I am not going to remember any of this, he thought. The Opel rolled to a stop at a clearing and the man turned off the engine and got out of the car. Rick opened his own door and stepped to the ground.

They walked to the front of the car and looked down into a deep ravine. In New Mexico it would have been called an arroyo, though here in Tuscany there was considerably more vegetation than in the American Southwest. Rick glanced around and noticed other tire marks in the soft earth around where the car was parked. The clearing was small, bordered on two sides by trees which rustled softly, their leaves holding on as long as they could before the cold dropped them into a dry carpet on the ground. The man stood silently and then pointed down into the ravine.

“Down there is where we are going. Follow me carefully, I wouldn’t want our American buyer to break a leg.” His laugh had the cackle of a heavy smoker. Rick thought it better not to mention his rock-climbing experience.

There was a path, though it would have taken Rick a while to find it himself. It started steeply and then ran parallel to the ravine edge before cutting back in the other direction. As they descended the trees closed in on them, making the path even harder to see. The man had shed his sunglasses and now he pulled a dark metal flashlight from his coat, but didn’t turn it on until they reached the bottom of the ravine. Here the ground was somewhat clear, probably due to water which ran through the ravine during rain storms, tearing up any plants that tried to grow. After walking about fifty feet the man climbed up one side of the gully and stopped, pointing his flashlight at some bushes. Rick wondered what was going on, but then noticed that the bushes seemed out of place, their color slightly different from the rest of the vegetation. The man stepped forward and pulled them aside, revealing wooden planks crudely nailed together to form a door. He slid the door to one side and bent down to squeeze into the small opening.

Rick followed, but once inside he could see only the circle of light formed by the flashlight moving around the floor. He stood still and watched as his guide found what he was looking for with the flashlight, a wooden table directly ahead of them. The man walked to the table and the sound of a switch brought a pale light to the cave. Under the table was a row of automobile batteries that connected by ground wires to four pole lamps lighting the low ceiling. Rick noted that it was flat and even, carved by human hands rather than formed by nature. Rick lowered his eyes, immediately noticing the reason for their descent into the cave. Along the far wall were three large rectangular niches, each about four feet wide and three feet tall. One was empty. In the other two were Etruscan burial urns which looked strikingly like the one Rick had seen in Beppo’s office.

***

Detective LoGuercio stared at the papers on the desk in front of him but read nothing. His thoughts were on choices—his own. Most Italians took government jobs for secure employment, decent pay, and a