him and then she spoke in an impatient whisper.
“In the Dorsoduro. Near this church. In the Calle dei Morti. Numero quindici. Number fifteen.”
She pulled the book away, closed it slowly, and went back to her folding. The thing was done, her manner said.
Dalton was almost at the door when he heard her calling to him. He turned around. She raised a clawed hand and tapped the side of her skull with a blackened nail.
“Il Pellerossa. Ha dei grilli per il capo. Capisce? Guardatevi dal vecchio, scolaro.”
the echelon vendetta | 77
Dalton understood some of it. She was telling him to be... careful? Gentle? To be gentle with the old man? And she was calling Dalton scolaro, a schoolboy. The rest was gibberish to him.
He bowed his thanks to her and walked back out into the sunlight. He was halfway through the Campo San Stefano and headed for the bridge over the Grand Canal that led into the residential district of the Dorsoduro when he finally worked out the translation of grilli per il capo. She was telling him that the old man named Pellerossa had maggots in his head. And guardatevi dal vecchio didn’t mean be gentle with guy. It meant beware of him.
THE DORSODURO NEIGHBORHOOD was a warren of narrow lanes and back alleys on the far side of the Grand Canal. The workers and waiters and laborers and gondoliers, the people who kept the Grand Guignol theatrics of Venezia up and running for the tourists, lived down here in this maze of ancient stone alleys, along with the students and backpackers and eco-vagrants who could not afford the grand hotels along the canal or the villas behind San Marco.
The Calle dei Morti was at the far eastern end of the Dorsoduro. It was a tiny medieval laneway off the broad boardwalk. The waterway was used by freighters and cruise ships that docked along the Giudecca across the bay. The boardwalk was essentially deserted. The temperature had dropped in the hour it had taken Dalton to reach the turning of the alleyway, and a wind with a knife edge to it was blowing scraps of paper up the lane as he walked slowly along the street, looking for number fifteen.
He found it at the corner, where the calle turned into a wider canyonlike lane. He stopped in front of a battered ironbound wooden door set deep into a stucco-covered three-story house no wider than ten feet. Three narrow slitted windows with rusted iron bars rose upward above the door, one above the other. The eaves hung over
78 | david stone
the street, supported by old hand-hewn beams. In the middle of the door was a heavy lion’s-head knocker.
Dalton lifted it up and struck the wooden door twice. On the second blow the door popped open about an inch. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open slowly, revealing a narrow flight of worn stone stairs rising into a gloomy darkness. Motes of dust floated in the cold sunlight. There was a scent in the air.
Something familiar. Cigarillos. Toscanos.
Not fresh, but present, drifting in the dead air like a miasma. Under the tobacco scent was the smell of unwashed clothes and dried sweat. Dalton leaned in to look up the stairwell. Beyond it there was only shadow.
Inside the door there was a dented bronze mailbox with three compartments. Two of them had names scrawled in pencil on scraps of paper: Alessandra Vasari had Numero Zero, and someone named Domenico Zitti had Numero Due.
The third compartment, Numero Tre, had no name card at all.
Dalton looked through the bronze grillwork and saw a thick sheaf of letters for Alessandra Vasari, many of them with American stamps. It appeared that no one was writing to the entity known as Domenico Zitti, at least not this week.
The third one, the unmarked one, was empty as well.
He gave up on the mail and went slowly up the narrow stairs, painfully aware of what a vulnerable position he was in as he climbed them, trapped by the pressing stone walls on either side, nowhere to go if somebody appeared at the top of the stairs with ugly intentions.
He
“In the Dorsoduro. Near this church. In the Calle dei Morti. Numero quindici. Number fifteen.”
She pulled the book away, closed it slowly, and went back to her folding. The thing was done, her manner said.
Dalton was almost at the door when he heard her calling to him. He turned around. She raised a clawed hand and tapped the side of her skull with a blackened nail.
“Il Pellerossa. Ha dei grilli per il capo. Capisce? Guardatevi dal vecchio, scolaro.”
the echelon vendetta | 77
Dalton understood some of it. She was telling him to be... careful? Gentle? To be gentle with the old man? And she was calling Dalton scolaro, a schoolboy. The rest was gibberish to him.
He bowed his thanks to her and walked back out into the sunlight. He was halfway through the Campo San Stefano and headed for the bridge over the Grand Canal that led into the residential district of the Dorsoduro when he finally worked out the translation of grilli per il capo. She was telling him that the old man named Pellerossa had maggots in his head. And guardatevi dal vecchio didn’t mean be gentle with guy. It meant beware of him.
THE DORSODURO NEIGHBORHOOD was a warren of narrow lanes and back alleys on the far side of the Grand Canal. The workers and waiters and laborers and gondoliers, the people who kept the Grand Guignol theatrics of Venezia up and running for the tourists, lived down here in this maze of ancient stone alleys, along with the students and backpackers and eco-vagrants who could not afford the grand hotels along the canal or the villas behind San Marco.
The Calle dei Morti was at the far eastern end of the Dorsoduro. It was a tiny medieval laneway off the broad boardwalk. The waterway was used by freighters and cruise ships that docked along the Giudecca across the bay. The boardwalk was essentially deserted. The temperature had dropped in the hour it had taken Dalton to reach the turning of the alleyway, and a wind with a knife edge to it was blowing scraps of paper up the lane as he walked slowly along the street, looking for number fifteen.
He found it at the corner, where the calle turned into a wider canyonlike lane. He stopped in front of a battered ironbound wooden door set deep into a stucco-covered three-story house no wider than ten feet. Three narrow slitted windows with rusted iron bars rose upward above the door, one above the other. The eaves hung over
78 | david stone
the street, supported by old hand-hewn beams. In the middle of the door was a heavy lion’s-head knocker.
Dalton lifted it up and struck the wooden door twice. On the second blow the door popped open about an inch. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open slowly, revealing a narrow flight of worn stone stairs rising into a gloomy darkness. Motes of dust floated in the cold sunlight. There was a scent in the air.
Something familiar. Cigarillos. Toscanos.
Not fresh, but present, drifting in the dead air like a miasma. Under the tobacco scent was the smell of unwashed clothes and dried sweat. Dalton leaned in to look up the stairwell. Beyond it there was only shadow.
Inside the door there was a dented bronze mailbox with three compartments. Two of them had names scrawled in pencil on scraps of paper: Alessandra Vasari had Numero Zero, and someone named Domenico Zitti had Numero Due.
The third compartment, Numero Tre, had no name card at all.
Dalton looked through the bronze grillwork and saw a thick sheaf of letters for Alessandra Vasari, many of them with American stamps. It appeared that no one was writing to the entity known as Domenico Zitti, at least not this week.
The third one, the unmarked one, was empty as well.
He gave up on the mail and went slowly up the narrow stairs, painfully aware of what a vulnerable position he was in as he climbed them, trapped by the pressing stone walls on either side, nowhere to go if somebody appeared at the top of the stairs with ugly intentions.
He
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