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Then, abruptly, Boniface slammed the book shut, so sudden and loud that Benny jumped a little. Boniface put the book back in its place and resumed his seat behind the desk. “We do nothing for now,” he said. “Tell your people to keep watching and to report immediately if anything unusual happens. Unusual, hm?” he said, raising one eyebrow.
Benny nodded. “You got it,” he said.
* * *
—
Monique was coming apart at the edges. I could almost see the little strands of her poise peeling apart like string cheese and flopping to the floor. She wasn’t used to this kind of thing, and the strain of pretending to be somebody else, surrounded by people who would imprison or even kill her if they knew the truth, was picking off little pieces of her and spitting them back in her face. It wasn’t like that for me—this was what I lived for; the adrenaline rush of swimming out into the deep water with no life preserver, knowing that all you’ve got between you and a quick lights-out is your brain and your balls.
Monique wasn’t built that way. She was kind of academic, and in spite of making her living on the dark side of the street, she never had to do it in a way that made her aware that she was actually living a life of crime and staring at prison if she got caught. Out here in the field with me, she got her nose rubbed in it every second of every day. And on top of that, the fate that awaited her if we failed was a lot worse than prison. It also didn’t help that this whole piece of the plan depended on her to do some of her best work.
That would have been crazy-hard under the best of circumstances. But to do it here, in what amounted to enemy territory—no. It was way the hell out of her comfort zone, and it was getting to her. I watched her carefully, and I could see that a dozen times every day she reached the point where she absolutely had to scream, throw her paintbrush out the window, and run for high ground. And the only thing that stopped her was me reminding her that if she did, she was signing her own death warrant.
So far, she had managed to pull it together and keep going. But I knew the time was coming when she couldn’t do that again, and then she really would scream and run away. She knew it, too. She tried hard, but it wasn’t going to last forever. I don’t even think she knew she was doing it, but I could see her muttering under her breath, “I’m Katrina,” over and over in and endless mantra. “Katrina Katrina Katrina.” I knew the signs. She was cracking.
But Katrina soldiered on. Sprawled on top of the rickety scaffolding, surrounded by all her paints and brushes, she labored away at making a cartoon of The Liberation of St. Peter. Not the kind of cartoon that might feature SpongeBob or Bugs Bunny, of course. This was the kind of cartoon that Raphael himself would have made in preparation for painting a fresco such as this one.
For Raphael, and for anyone creating a fresco, there’s this basic problem. The image has to be painted onto the wall while the plaster is wet. And plaster dries quickly; there is no time for anything but to slap on a finished image fast, without standing around and scratching your ass and wondering if maybe the pineapple ought to go over there.
But a fresco is a permanent work of art. It will last as long as the wall it’s painted on lasts. The artist wants it to be perfect—and the cartoon solves this problem. You work all that stuff out ahead of time, on paper, exactly to scale, so you can see it before you make it forever. And then, from this full-size full-color picture, you copy right onto the wet plaster.
That picture is called the cartoon. And if you think they should call it something else so you don’t get it confused with Looney Tunes, tough luck. Raphael was there way before Chuck Jones.
A cartoon of The Liberation of St. Peter was an absolutely vital part of my plan. We were dead and fucked without it.
It was one of the big reasons I insisted on having Monique come along. And it had to be a totally perfect copy. One tiny screw-up and we might as well have stayed home.
So Monique—“Katrina Katrina Katrina!”—was laboring away to make the cartoon. This was the sort of thing she was normally very good at—better than good. She was one of the very best ever. But normally, she could do her work in the safety and privacy of her studio. Here she felt exposed and threatened, in constant danger. And although the plaster was not wet, she faced a time limit just as definite, and the consequences of going over were a lot more serious than having to face dry plaster.
And that put one more time limit on me. Besides getting it done and getting out before I got caught, now I had to do it before Monique flipped out.
I could feel the breath on the back of my neck, too. It wasn’t just Father Matteo’s stumble-ass attempts to be “normal,” or his I-am-not-hiding-anything attitude. Whoever had put the good father up to it was getting close. It was all coming to a head, and soon.
Normally this part gets my adrenaline going, my brain working full speed, and I feel totally alive and ready to kick ass on anything and everything that comes at me. That’s normally. This was not. Nothing about this whole thing had been normal. Ever since I woke up on Étienne’s boat it had all gone sideways, and for the first time in my career I knew I wasn’t driving and I fucking hated that.
But as a very wise man once said—I think it was Lincoln, or maybe Shakespeare—“It is what it is.” And this was. So the sooner I got it done and got back to being Me again, the better.
Something was going to pop, and soon. I just had to make my move sooner.
37
It finally came, the moment Monique had been waiting for—the moment when she absolutely had to throw her paintbrush across the room and yell, “Motherfucker!” And she actually did throw the brush—but she ca
ught herself just in time, and instead yelled, “Arschloch Scheisskerl Saftsack!!” which was nearly the same thing, except in character, and that sent a tiny trickle of pride sliding through her veins.
It also had exactly the desired effect. Riley came racing over to her, a look of extreme anxiety on his face. “Katrina?” he said. “Che cos’è?”
And because of the mood she was in—the mood that had caused her outburst—Monique looked at him for a long moment and then, weirdly, giggled. “I kind of like your hair like that,” she said in English.
It was very gratifying to see the look that came over his face. “Ssst!” he whispered. “Someone could hear you!”
“Oh, okay,” she whispered back. “Then let’s get the fuck out of here, okay?”
His mouth moved like he was a giant fish trying to breathe, and he obviously thought she had either snapped under the pressure or totally flipped out, and so Monique giggled again.
And then he got it. “You’re finished?” he whispered.
“I am!” she whispered back. And totally caving to the feeling of exhilaration, she darted her head forward and gave him a huge sloppy kiss. Before he could react, she backed off again and said again, “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
