“Luca? Darling?”
“Yes?”
As Falconi turned his head, Valentina wrapped her left arm around his neck and locked it into place with her right. He struggled for thirty seconds, then went limp.
Not dead.
Unconscious.
When Falconi came to, his prospects for sexual gratification had dimmed considerably. He lay on the bed, ankles and wrists bound with duct tape, another length of tape stretched across his mouth.
Valentina brandished a steel box cutter before his eyes, its razor-sharp blade extended. Her handbag was too small to carry the pistol she’d used on Delacroix. There had been no place to hide it in her skirt. Besides, it was unwise to fire a pistol in an apartment building at this hour. Even with a noise suppressor, the sound might carry through the walls. She was a polite guest. She didn’t want to wake the neighbors. The duct tape was Falconi’s.
The box cutter fell to his testicles. The blade nicked the wrinkled, sagging flesh. Falconi jolted.
“Tell me,” she said, “where I can find Tino Coluzzi.”
Chapter 33
It was past three when Simon and Nikki emerged from the hospital. Around them, the city lay asleep. Traffic was so light as to be nonexistent. There was only the creaking of the barges moored nearby, rising and falling with the tide, and the whistling of a steady breeze.
Lights burned from a bakery nearby. Nikki found the door unlocked. A bell tinkled as she entered. “Wait here,” she said.
Simon sat down on the curb and gingerly probed the bandage beneath the fresh shirt he’d been given by the emergency room nurses. He had twenty stitches to add to his inventory of battle scars, not that he was counting. Nikki had accompanied him into the treatment bay while the doctor sewed him up. She was a tough woman, hardened by dint of her job. Even so, she’d been unable to keep herself from wincing when she viewed his torso.
She returned a minute later, a bag of croissants in hand. She sat down next to him, offering him one. Simon devoured it in two bites, mess be damned. “Helluva lot better than sardines,” he said between chews.
“Excuse me?”
“What? Oh, nothing.” He took a second croissant and ate it more slowly. A ruminative mood had come over him. He looked at the empty sidewalks, searching for another person. They were alone. “So,” he began, looking over at Nikki. “Why’d you come?”
“I’m a detective,” she replied, as if the answer were obvious. “You weren’t telling me the truth, at least not all of it. I didn’t have any pressing engagements so I thought I’d stop by and see for myself what was going on. I didn’t know about you, did I?”
Simon followed her eyes to the tattoo on his forearm. “Proudest day of my life when I got that.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You started young.”
“I thought I was grown up. A man. One thing’s for sure. They didn’t appreciate anyone asking about Tino Coluzzi.”
“But you’re one of them.”
“Not anymore. Guess it showed.” Just then Simon remembered the StingRay he’d cached prior to entering the bar. “Get up,” he said. “I left something back there.”
“We’re not going back to that bar.”
“Not there. Just down the street.”
“What?”
“A StingRay. A surveillance device that—”
“I know what a StingRay is. What are you doing with one?”
“It comes in handy.”
