The Eighth Day (20 page)

Though it was late in the States and he knew that he’d be waking people up, he didn’t want to wait until mid-afternoon to call. So he telephoned Preston, who wasn’t in, and Jake, who was. Unfortunately, he was also stoned and hadn’t seen Caleigh since the show at the Petrus.

“Where are you calling from?”

“Rome.”

A pause.
“Italy?”

“Yeah.”

A moment’s silence. “What are you doing in Italy? You on . . . vacation?”

“No. I’m working. Though, mostly, I’m trying not to get killed.”

Jake laughed. “My man! Magnum PI!”

“I’m serious!”

“Of course you’re serious. But that’s what you do. You get in harm’s way. Just like an aircraft carrier, except . . .” He thought for a moment: “Smaller.”

“What are you smoking?” Danny asked.

“What do you
think
I’m smoking?” Jake replied. “I’m an artist.”

After a minute or two of this, Danny asked him for Michelle Peroff’s telephone number. She was Caleigh’s best friend, and the four of them had double-dated once or twice. If anyone knew what was happening with Caleigh, Michelle would.

And so she did.

“You’re amazing,” Michelle said when he got her on the phone.

“I am?” The way she said it, “amazing” did not sound like a compliment.

“You’re such a dickhead! How
could
you?”

“How could I
what
?”

“Send her that thing.”

“What thing?”

“That . . . attachment.”

He didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about. “What ‘attachment’?”

“The video clip—in your e-mail? As in ‘download now.’ Well, she did.”

Danny shook his head, as if to clear it. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled. “Listen Michelle—”

“You must be sick or something!”

“I didn’t send her anything,” Danny told her. “I don’t even have a computer with me. What kind of video clip?”

“
You
know.”

She was beginning to irritate him. “No, Michelle, I really don’t. That’s why I’m asking. What are you talking about?!”

“I’m talking about you and your little friend.”

“My ‘friend’? What friend?”

“How should I know? She’s your friend! What were you,
bragging
or something?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“Did you think it would make Caleigh jealous—”

“No—”

“Because it didn’t. It just . . . lost her for you. How drunk
were
you, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Danny confessed. “I mean, I’m not sure what we’re talking about.”

Michelle scoffed. “No?” She paused. “Look, I used to think you were a nice guy, but . . . don’t call me again, okay?” And with that she broke the connection.

He stood where he was for what seemed like a long time, reprising the conversation in his head, trying to make sense of it. He had a sinking feeling that, somehow, Michelle was talking about Paulina. Because, when you thought about it, Paulina was the only thing she
could
be talking about. What was it she’d said? Something about his “little friend.”
That’s what women call other women,
Danny thought,
when the other women are . . . the Other Woman.
But an e-mail attachment? How could that be? There would have to have been a camera in the room, and . . . Could Zebek do that? Danny thought about it and decided,
Yeah. If he could fix the Palio, he could bribe a couple of maids to put a camera in the room.

Which would explain Danny’s sudden, and really rather astounding, popularity with the opposite sex. Turns out: He wasn’t irresistible, after all. Just a sucker. What was it Paulina said?
Are you supersized, too?
He shook his head.

Muttering to himself, he stumbled back toward the hotel, stripped his clothes off, and headed for the shower, which turned out to be more of a drizzle than a downpour, more tepid than hot. Even so, he stood beneath the showerhead for ten minutes, thinking and soaking. It wasn’t like he really had any kind of brainstorm, but he had to do
something
. So he dried off in a hurry, pulled on some clothes, and took the stairs down to the lobby two at a time. He remembered an Internet café that he’d seen the night before, and headed in its direction. It was only a couple of blocks away, just off the Via del Corso. As he walked, he thought about what he was going to do.

The cops were out, and so was going home. Which left . . . Plan C. Find out what’s going on—or enough, at least, so that when he
did
go to the police they’d have to listen to him. Unfortunately, the only real leads that he had were the handful of phone calls that Terio made just before he went incommunicado. A couple to Palo Alto, a couple to Istanbul, one to Oslo.

Palo Alto was a dead end (literally), but the guy in Istanbul might still be around. Danny thought hard, trying to remember his name.
Remy Something. Then a B. Balzac, maybe. Remy Balzac. Something like that.
And the Agence France Presse. Terio had called them, too. Which might or might not be helpful, depending on how many people they had in the Istanbul bureau. Two or three? Ten or twenty? The only way to find out was to call and ask.

Turning a corner, he found himself outside the café he’d remembered. Tucked away in a baroque building of no particular distinction, the coffehouse was one of those hard-edged high-tech places with lots of plastic and primary colors. Ordering a double
macchiatto,
Danny paid an attendant for an hour on the Internet and sat down in an Aeron Chair at one of a dozen computers. Then he logged onto Yahoo and, out of habit, checked his e-mail. The only message of interest was from Lavinia, who reported that
Flash Art
had promised to be at the opening, and how were things coming anyway?

Everything’s hunky-dory,
he typed, happy that he did not have to explain his whereabouts.
Working like crazy!
Then he clicked
SEND
and sat back to think.

Caleigh . . .

What could he say? That he was sorry? That he’d been drunk? That he’d never do it again? With a soft groan, he leaned forward and clicked on the
COMPOSE
button. A new window opened, and he entered her address. Below that, he typed:

Caleigh—Luv

Then he sat back and watched the cursor blink. A minute went by; then a second minute, and a third. Finally, an idea occurred to him. Sitting up, he leaned over the keyboard and began to type:

*You can’t believe your eyes.* I know it sounds crazy, but please—just read what I have to say.

He paused for a moment, rereading the words on the screen.
This is bad,
he told himself.
But losing her would be worse. I wouldn’t lie to her if I didn’t love her.

I’m in a situation.

Without getting into a lot of details, I’m tangled up with this high-tech psycho-billionaire who’s got this technology that lets him make films “starring” anyone he wants in any role. Using old film clips as templates, he can create—I’m not making this up—he can create “a virtual actor” by making what he calls “a personality engine.” In other words, he could remake
Stars Wars
with Humphrey Bogart—or me—as Luke Skywalker.

And not just
Star Wars
. He could also remake
Deep Throat
and, judging by what Michelle says, he has.

She says you got an e-mail, supposedly from me, with a video “attachment.” I swear to God, *I didn’t send it.* Why would I? I mean, how stoned would I have to be? (Think about it: could anyone even *get* that high?)

But I don’t blame you if you think I’m lying. Seeing is believing. I know that. Only it shouldn’t be—not anymore.

Which brings me to the next point. This guy, Zebek, can do the same thing with voices that he can with images. So don’t take any calls from “me.” Because I’m telling you right now, they won’t be *from* me. They’ll be from him.

Don’t believe anything that comes from me until I’m standing in front of you. And remember, no matter what happens, I love you. Always have. Always will.

D.

P.S. Delete this.

There was one other e-mail that he needed to send. Mamadou Boisseau was a twenty-four-year-old intern at Fellner Associates. A graduate of Sidwell Friends and Rensselaer Polytechnic, he had grown up in Washington, the son of an Ivoirian diplomat and his American wife. With a major in management information systems, Dew was intensely idiosyncratic. A sci-fi nut who’d learned to play the bagpipes (and played them well), he was a database maven whose office was dominated by a huge poster for
The Matrix
. Danny liked Dew a lot and was sure that he could be trusted. The fact that his Honda was plastered with sun-bleached bumper stickers urging people to kill their television sets and
Question Authority
suggested to Danny that Dew was not the kind of guy who’d go to the boss if someone asked him for a favor.

Dew—

I’ve got a big problem with one of our clients. Which is that he’s trying to kill me. (And no, that’s not a joke.) I was doing some work on the side, and now . . . well, it hasn’t worked out so great.

Anyway: I will owe you big-time—and by that I mean I will put up those track lights you were talking about, stretch canvas, reframe your
Matrix
poster, whatever!—if you’ll check out a couple of companies for me. (And the guy who owns them.)

The first is Sistemi di Pavone, S.A. It’s headquartered in Siena (Italy). The second is Very Small Systems, Inc., in Palo Alto. Both companies are owned by a guy named Zerevan Zebek (aka Jude Belzer).

I’ll take anything you can get, but basically I need to know what they do. Neither company is publicly traded (as far as I can tell), but Zebek must have some kind of credit facility. I’m interested in their finances, the kind of R & D they’re doing—and whatever you can find out about the work we’re doing for them at Fellner. Also, anything you learn about Jason Patel—a Very Small Systems exec who was murdered in California—would be helpful.

When the e-mail was on its way, Danny wandered out to the Via del Corso. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper but moving fast in a thick haze of ozone and carbon monoxide. Walking past the Rinascente department store, Danny went inside to buy a change of clothes. Twenty minutes later, he came out with a shopping bag containing a couple of polo shirts, some socks and underwear, and a pair of khakis. Heading back toward the Piazza di Rotonda, he bought a backpack from a street vendor and stuffed it with his new clothes.

The day was heating up.

Pausing at the entrance to a travel agency, he studied the peculiar display in the window. It consisted of a totem pole covered with colored squares of paper, each of which was emblazoned with bargain fares and package tours to faraway places. Tenerife, Prague, Majorca, Bangkok, Orlando, and—
hello
—Istanbul was on sale for 350,000 lire. How much was that, anyway? Danny did the calculation in his head and came up with something less than two hundred dollars. Which surprised him. But why not? It wasn’t all that far, really—not from Rome, anyway.

A few minutes later, he found himself in the shadow of the Pantheon. Barbaric and immense, the prehistoric structure seemed as if it were radiating time itself. Danny could feel the hours coming off the stone, like heat rising from an asphalt road in the dead of summer. Drawn to its massive doors, he climbed its worn steps and, almost tentatively, stepped inside.

The walls of the building were in perpetual shadow, but the structure’s heart was bright with sunlight, streaming through a circular hole, or oculus, in the ceiling far overhead. Seeing the building’s interior for the first time, Danny was stunned by the grandeur of the setting and, for a moment, forgot his cares.

Then, as he wandered more deeply into the building, a cloud came between the oculus and the sun, eclipsing the ancient temple and casting a gray pall over everyone inside. Danny’s steps slowed, then stopped, as a feeling of dread spiked through his heart.

Now the great dome seemed like a bell jar haunted by ghosts. Tourists milled in the deepening twilight, whispering among themselves. Slowly, and with enormous apprehension, Danny raised his eyes to the ceiling, half expecting to find Zerevan Zebek gazing down through the oculus as if it were a crystal ball.

I’m losing it,
Danny thought.
Got the heebie-jeebies, bad.
The phrase made him smile to himself, and as he did the darkness eased as suddenly as it had come. A shaft of sunlight pierced the roof, illuminating a fresco. A glimpse of angels and sunbeams lightened his heart.

Walking back outside, he was crossing the square toward the Abruzze when he saw them, coming out of the hotel. Two guys, big in the shoulders and impeccably dressed. Dark suits and sunglasses. They didn’t look like tourists. More like professional wrestlers who’d just had a makeover.

Danny stepped into the shade of a café umbrella. The men were standing on the sidewalk outside the hotel, looking around. Then, one of them took off his sunglasses. Even at a distance, Danny recognized the Brow. He was one of the guys in the Admirals Club who’d been eating honey-roasted peanuts while Danny met with “Belzer.” His was the asymmetrical face with the worm of scar tissue snaking through one eyebrow.

But how had they found him? How did they know where to look? Had they followed him the night before from the Casa Clera, when he’d gone to warn Inzaghi? Maybe. But if so, why not grab him then and there?

Turning, he began to walk away, distancing himself from the scene. Every instinct he had told him to run, but running would attract attention and that could get him killed. So he walked, putting one foot in front of the other, oblivious to where he was going—so long as he got there in one piece.

It wasn’t until he’d crossed the Tiber that he began to relax, and by then he was starting to wonder if he’d been seeing things. Walking into a bar on the Via della Renella, he ordered a Campari-soda and, using the bar phone, called the Abruzze. When the desk clerk answered, Danny asked if he had any messages.