The Venetian Judgment by David Stone Read Free Book Online

personal interest.

    He stood as Dalton came into the light, still holding the Dan Wesson at his side. When he got a better look at Dalton by the light of the wood fire, his expression changed, and all his jovial humor fled in a flash of sudden anger.

    “ Bocca al lupo! Issadore said you were not badly hurt.”

    Dalton put the revolver down on a small side table and sat down in the other wing chair, leaning back into it with a long, uneven sigh.

    “They patched me up. I’ll do, Alessio. I’ll do. I could use a drink.”

    Brancati shook himself out of his shock and stepped across to the granite-topped bar that filled one side of the main room, tugging the Bollinger out of an ice-filled silver bucket and carefully filling one of the tall crystal flutes to the brim. He brought it over to Dalton like a man carrying nitro, put it into Dalton’s slightly unsteady hand, and stood over him while Dalton put the flute to his lips, his powerful arms folded across his chest.

    “So,” he said, with grim emphasis, after Dalton had drained half the flute, “now our private war is finito , yes? No more of ”—he lifted his arms, taking in the room, the city, the situation, in one encompassing Italian abracco —“your personal vendette ?”

    Dalton sat forward, eased off his tattered blue topcoat, and sat back again. His turtleneck had been sliced open where Zorin’s blade had reached him, and fresh white bandages showed through the rent. His face was bandaged and taped. He could feel the stitches in it when he drank, and his entire left cheek from jawline to temple was turning into a Mark Rothko tone poem in bloody blues, smoky blacks, and lurid purples. He was looking forward to a hot bath and a deep, dreamless sleep.

    “How did Galan get onto it? I thought I was flying under his radar.”

    Brancati delivered himself of a kind of eloquent snorting huff and went back to his wingback, poking an iron into the fire with some suppressed anger. The fire flared up and made a gargoyle of his fine Italian profile.

    “Galan’s radar is impossible to get under. He knows more about me than my wife and daughters. Sometimes I think he knows too much of everything. If he was ever turned—”

    “Not him, Alessio. Not ever. He has no . . . handles.”

    Still staring into the fire, Brancati said “Seriously, Micah. This thing tonight, it cannot ever happen again. The Prefect must be . . . handled. I cannot handle him if you cannot handle . . . you. Capisce? ”

    “I know that, Alessio. And I apologize for . . . the inconvenience.”

    “Hah,” he said, with a wry grin. “Five dead men is to you an inconvenience ? Anyway, it is done. Over. Now we have . . .”

    His face set again, the smile fleeting and gone.

    “. . . I think, Micah, you will have to leave Venice. For a time, anyway.”

    “Yes. I know that too. Galan explained . . . the situation. He also said something about events? Developments? That you would explain?”

    Brancati stopped churning up the flames, sat back and let the fire glow and the champagne ease him into a better humor. He glanced across at Dalton, a sidelong look.

    “In a moment. You are . . . in a better place . . . now?”

    Dalton caught all the levels in the question and gave the matter some careful thought. Brancati had a right to the truth.

    “Actually, yes. I think so. Makes no sense, but there it is.” Brancati nodded, as if his instincts had been confirmed.

    “I too find this. There is always this . . . tranquillity? After action, yes?”

    “Maybe. I ran into Porter Naumann, on the way back.”

    Brancati’s expression remained carefully neutral. He and Dalton had met during the major’s investigation of Porter Naumann’s death, which had caused something of a sensation in the superstitious population of Cortona. There had been some talk of a walking demon in a red skin, and one of the elder citizens, a chapel verger, had claimed to have seen Porter Naumann’s ghost standing