"Wait," I said, "now there"s a type of bulls.h.i.t named after me?"

"Come now."

"Or what, you"ll cut my throat?"

"Not necessary." She considered. "Maybe I just sever Achilles tendon and leave you here helpless in the alley for whatever comes along." I didn"t like the sound of that any more than the sirens that were warbling from up the ca.n.a.l. "Those police, they are not the only ones looking for a stupid American boy tonight, you know."

"Those guys back in your hotel room were the same ones who beat me up in the alley outside Harry"s."

"They followed us."

I flashed on the body floating out of the steamer trunk. "You shot a priest."

"Monash?" She shook her head and made a noise like "pah." "Was no priest."

"He sure looked like one to me."

"Yes, and once upon a time you thought I was just a foreign exchange student."

"What"s your point?"

"You should learn to use your eyes."

"I was actually too preoccupied trying not to drown."

"There is more work to do."

"Oh, no. No more. No way."

"You should know better," Gobi said, and kept the knife where I could see it. "With me it is never just one."

12. "Here I Go Again"

-Whitesnake "He"s not dead, you know."

Gobi stopped walking. She"d been leading me down a narrow cobblestone walkway, through an arched gate between two high stone buildings that looked half a millennium old-although "leading" is probably too gentle a word when you"ve got a knife wedged tight against your ribs, close enough that its tip keeps jabbing you through a wet hotel bathrobe.

"What are you saying?"

"That guy in the water," I said. "Monash, or whatever his name was? I saw him open his eyes."

"Was reflex. I shot five times."

"Three."

"What?"

"You shot him three times." I could still hear the shots in my head. "One, two, three."

"I had already shot him twice before I even put him in trunk. Is no way could he still be alive."

"Whatever," I said. "Just let me go. It"s not like I"m going to be able to drive you around Venice in a gondola to kill more people. I can"t even water-ski."

She didn"t say anything.

"How did you find me, anyway?"

"Website for your band, what is it? Itch-worm?"

"Inchworm."

"Your tour schedule is posted online."

"You were stalking me?"

She rolled her eyes. "Perry, please. Do not flatten yourself."

"Flatter," I said. "Is it possible your English is actually getting worse?"

"I have a friend at Harry"s. I gave him your picture and told him to call me when you turned up."

"When I turned up... ?" I stared at her. "Now who"s flattening themselves?"

She gave me a look, half smile, half head shake, like I"d simultaneously amused and disappointed her.

"What," I said, "you think I couldn"t help myself? I was supposed to go straight to the hotel with the rest of the band."

"Yet you did not."

"I got lost. I needed somewhere to dry off."

"You were hoping that I would be there. Admit it."

"No, I-" What was the point of arguing? Gobi glanced up, and when I saw a slight smile on her face, I realized that in some perverse way she was enjoying this.

"Perry. This is good."

"Yeah, it"s awesome."

"We work well together, I think-a good team, yes?"

"Great." We had stopped in front of a towering old church, its cathedral rising up into the night. "How many more priests do you have to kill?"

"I told you, he was not a real priest."

"All right, how many more guys?"

"Only two."

"Are you sure about that?"

Ignored. Turning away from the church, we followed the shadows around the open piazza, turning right down an even narrower alley. A lit sign ahead hung in the darkness, the curved letters spelling out TRATTORIA SACRO EPROFANO. Even with my nonexistent Italian I could figure that one out: the Trattoria of the Sacred and the Profane.

Gobi stopped and looked over her shoulder in the direction of the church, then back at the front of the restaurant. With its stone facade and pillars flanking the entrance, the cafe almost looked like a cathedral in miniature. A cigarette vending machine stood just outside the door, gleaming softly in the rain.

"Do you even know where we are?" I whispered.

She didn"t say anything. I thought about New York, when she"d had the BlackBerry with its maps and built-in GPS, none of which we had now. Up till now I"d a.s.sumed she was familiar with Venice, but till this moment she didn"t seem so sure of herself.

"Wait, are we lost?"

She stared at me blankly, and for a second it was as if she didn"t recognize me at all. That was when I noticed something under her nose, a dark spot trickling downward over her upper lip.

"You"re bleeding," I said. Which was odd, given that n.o.body had attacked us in the last ten minutes. Gobi touched her finger to her upper lip, then wiped it on her jacket.

"Is nothing." But she sounded a little dazed and distant, not herself at all, and when she looked at me again it still was almost as if she didn"t know who I was.

I had seen her like this before, back in New York. When she"d come to live with my family as a foreign exchange student, back when I thought that"s all she was, she"d told us she had epilepsy-it had prevented her from learning to drive, and every so often she had seizures. Not the big, twitching, swallow-your-tongue kind, but more like blackouts. For a second I thought she was going to black out on me now, go into one of her pet.i.t mals.

But she"s never bled like that before, a voice murmured inside my head. That was new. I was pretty sure that epilepsy didn"t give you nosebleeds.

It didn"t matter. My legs tensed. If she went into one of her spells, I was definitely making a break for it.

But Gobi just dabbed the rest of the blood away with the back of her hand, grabbed the door handle, and hustled me into the Trattoria of the Sacred and the Profane.

13. "Church of the Poison Mind"

-Culture Club Inside, I smelled sawdust and wet marble, like the bas.e.m.e.nt of a Renaissance cathedral. Shadowy figures huddled at the tables, sipping wine by candlelight-locals or lost tourists, I a.s.sumed, at this hour of the night. The only touch of modernity was the unattended video slot machine next to the door with a handwritten sign on it that probably said OUT OF ORDER.

"Stay still," Gobi said, and started walking toward the bar. She sounded like her usual self again. My eyes had just started to adjust to this deeper, subterranean darkness. I looked again at the figures seated around us, and when I saw who they were, I felt a cold, rubber-gloved hand of dread tightening over my stomach.

The whole room was full of priests.

I went over to the bar, getting as close as I could to Gobi, leaning forward to whisper in her ear. "What are you doing? We"re in a priest bar."

"Do not lose your nerve on me, Perry." She spoke without turning her head, without seeming to move her lips. "Just turn around slowly and wait."

I did as she said, trying to figure out how long it would take me to run back out the door. The priests sat at their tables, gathered here in near silence like a murder of crows. Fat ones, skinny ones, old ones, young ones-they must have come here from the cathedral across the piazza. Was this where they hung out after ma.s.s? At first count I guessed there were eight or ten of them eating or murmuring to one another, sipping a gla.s.s of wine or reading the newspaper, candlelight glinting off their spectacles. Several of them had already taken notice of our arrival, and without staring, I tried to guess which of them wasn"t the real priest, which one wasn"t going to be walking out of here tonight. I felt the irrational urge to shout at them: Why aren"t you in church?

There was a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision.

Behind the bar, a woman reached down and brought out a long cardboard box, like the kind you"d use to deliver long-stemmed roses, and laid it on the counter with a m.u.f.fled but somehow very loud thump.

Gobi picked up the box, weighed it in her hands, and nodded. I saw her hand reappear holding a plastic bag filled with rolls of carefully bundled euros, which she placed on the counter. The woman on the other side made it disappear so quickly that it was almost like it had never been there. The entire transaction took less than three seconds. My heart was pounding hard, and I was pretty sure that I could make it to the front door in three steps.

That was when the police walked in.

14. "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here"

-Weezer It must have been sheer luck. As soon as the cops stepped through the doorway in their dark blue uniforms and berets, laughing and talking to each other, I knew they hadn"t come here looking for us. They weren"t the same ones from the hotel, and their relaxed, casual banter told me that they were on routine patrol and had just happened to walk into the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like I said, pure luck-all bad.

They stopped and stared at us, and I knew that there had to be some kind of official bulletin already circulating from what happened at the hotel, with our physical descriptions. One female, armed and dangerous, dressed in black; one male, scared and wet, dressed in terrycloth.

"Okay, listen." I put up my hands. "I"m not part of this. I"ll go quietly, okay?"

Slightly behind me and off to my left, Gobi flipped open the box that the woman behind the bar had given her and took out a sawed-off shotgun, swinging it upward in one unhesitating move. At the sight of the gun, both cops-carabinieri, she"d called them, the Italian 5-0-dropped instantly into defensive stances on the other side of the doorway, going for their own sidearms, as Gobi pumped a round into the shotgun and pointed the barrel right up under my chin.

"What are you doing?" I muttered.

The cops started shouting at us, both of them at once. Their voices sounded booming and authoritative in the confined s.p.a.ce of the trattoria. Gobi didn"t answer, just kept the barrel where it was, pointed up at my head, where twelve years of education were waiting to become paint on the ceiling. Her eyes were locked on the officers blocking the door. On either side, the priests were staring at us with unblinking, owlish eyes. Last rites, anyone?

"Allontanare," Gobi said, in what sounded like perfect Italian. Her eyes were locked on the cops. "Ottenga indietro o muore."

The carabinieri stared at her. Their faces changed and all the bravado and adrenaline drained away from their cheeks. Slowly, they lowered their guns and stepped away from the door.

"What did you tell them?"

"I said if they moved, I would kill you."

"That"s it? They looked terrified."

"They saw that I meant it."