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The funny thing to do would be to bang loudly on the window and watch this guy go flying.
It’d also be the stupid thing to do.
Canidy looked around some more and found that the lights were out all around the university’s building, the doors locked tight.
At a corner, he came to a coffee shop. Its door was open, and he could hear the sound of voices floating out.
He walked to the door and looked inside. There were eight students at the small round table and they had books with them. But judging by the fact that a couple of the girls were sitting in the laps of the boys, it appeared that the last thing they were there for was the study of academics.
One of the girls—a beautiful twentysomething with dark, inviting eyes, jet-black hair, and large breasts barely restrained by her sleeveless blouse—noticed Canidy at the door and smiled at him.
He grinned back, then walked on.
Love conquers all.
He turned onto a street named for Leonardo da Vinci—earlier, he’d passed one named for Michelangelo—and followed it downhill. He could see the port in the distance.
When he reached the bottom of the hill, he saw that there were a number of boats moored in the port. They were tied either to the long pier or to buoys in the harbor.
He also saw that there was absolutely no one around.
He surveyed the area.
At the pier was one large cargo ship, eighty, ninety feet long, with a flat deck that had large hatches and tall booms. It was the biggest vessel in sight. The rest were all fishing boats of various brightly painted wooden designs, six of them about forty feet in length, but the bulk of them were about twenty feet long and, interestingly, pointed at both ends. There were a half dozen more of these twenty-footers pulled up on the shore of pebbles, lying on their side, apparently in for repair of some sort.
Overlooking the port were apartments and homes built almost to the water’s edge. They were dark and quiet.
Dockside was a series of shops, including what looked to be a fish market, their doors and windows closed and locked. Lining the outside wall of the fish market were wooden tables painted in bright greens and yellows and reds. He had seen similar ones at the Fulton Fish Market. They were built at a thirty-degree angle, with deep sides to hold ice, for the display of fresh-caught fish.
Something on the dock moved and Canidy crouched behind a corner of an apartment.
He looked again, and saw a cat standing next to where one of the twenty-footers was tied. The boat was covered almost completely by a tarp, and as Canidy watched the cat leapt from the pier and landed in the middle of it.
Almost immediately, the cat came flying back onto the pier—and not by choice, Canidy saw.
The tarp was pulled back and an angry male stuck his head up. He slurred something in Sicilian at the cat, then threw a bottle for good measure.
Canidy chuckled softly.
Sounds like someone had a bit to drink tonight and had to sleep on the boat.
Or maybe that’s where he always sleeps.
I’ve had worse….
Canidy caught himself in a yawn.
I’d like to settle into one right now myself.
But no matter which one I pick, that’ll be the one where the owner is casting off lines at oh-dark-hundred—and finding me aboard, snoring, will not be the highlight of his day.
Or mine.
Canidy then looked back at the beached twenty-foot boats.
But no one’s going fishing in those anytime soon.
He walked down to the second-farthest one. It was turned on its starboard side, its hull facing the fish market and shops. He pulled back on its tarp and saw that the interior had been gutted. There was a very long, smooth area where he could crawl in and pull the tarp back for concealment.
