Pronto by Elmore Leonard Page A

countryside he didn't see anything growing this time of year, the soil a color that reminded him some of Georgia, though not quite as red. There were more cornfields than he'd expected, rows of stubble. Dusty-looking olive trees with nets spread on the ground underneath. Lot of olive trees. The train would pass through tunnels in the hillsides and come out to more hills covered thick with trees, cypress, poplar, some oak, different kinds of palm trees. He saw his first aqueduct on the trip: it came down out of high country, stopped at the tracks and the autostrada, the freeway, and then picked up again, built most likely two thousand years ago. He had read about olive trees in Italy going back hundreds of years, villages up in the hills that hadn't changed much since the Middle Ages. It was an interesting, good-looking country with history you could look at, the old and the new, cops standing around with swords, some others at the airport with submachine guns.
    They stopped in Genoa at suppertime and Raylan ate his two Wendy's while they sat there. Rapallo was next. If they ever got the train moving again it wouldn't take long to get there. It was already dark out, so he wouldn't see much tonight. A picture of Rapallo in his travel guide to Italy showed date palms along the beachfront and sidewalk cafes, a resort town of thirty thousand said to be popular summer and winter. He had picked out the Hotel Liguria -- named for the region Rapallo was in -- as not too expensive and phoned from Milan to make a reservation; at the last minute but no problem. Still, he didn't like getting in so late. The last one to arrive. Joyce would have come in yesterday, the Zip sometime this morning. So about a half hour from now, Raylan was thinking, everybody would be in Rapallo.

    Chapter Twelve.
    Sunday, Raylan found out it was a city with commercial streets and residential neighborhoods up back of the postcard front it put on for tourists. Photos in the Guide to Rapallo he bought at the hotel showed date palms and flower gardens on the Via Veneto, coleus in bloom, young potted palms he wasn't sure were sabal or livistona. But there were city buses, too, traffic, and that big pink train station he came in at, all lit up last night.
    Raylan had walked past the marina -- his guidebook called it the Tourist Harbor -- and the statue of Christopher Columbus before moving away from the beach to the Piazza Cavour he judged to be near the center of downtown, where the main church was located. (Only Nashville, he believed, had more churches than towns in Italy.) And came down to the beachfront again at the south end of the postcard bay where the cafes and crowds began to thin out: down where his guidebook said "the beaches were renowned for their elegant bathing establishments." He must've missed them. The book said that "in the antique quarter" you could "participate with enthusiasm in the daily life of artisan workshops." He must've missed those, too, or else they weren't open on Sunday.
    Today he was more confident of finding Harry because when he asked at the hotel, by any chance was a Harry Arno registered there, the clerk said no, Mr. Arno had checked out Friday. Raylan was so surprised he said, "You serious?" and got a surprised look from the clerk. Harry, he found out, had been at the Liguria two weeks, up till just the day before yesterday. The clerk didn't know where he went. No, he hadn't said anything about leaving town. Raylan called hotels then and found Joyce Patton registered at the Astoria, but no Harry Arno. The operator, thinking he wanted to speak to her, connected him with her room. Raylan heard Joyce say "Hello?" in a quiet, tentative voice, and he hung up the phone. Then wondered if he should call her back, tell her to look out for the Zip. Sure the Zip was here by now. But when Raylan checked the hotels again he didn't find a Tomasino Bitonti or a Nicky Testa registered anywhere. He didn't recall this kind of situation being