Read Online Blue Moonlight by Vincent Zandri - Free Book Online

American.” He nods. “New York?”
    “All from one word?” I say. “Yeah, you got it. Upstate. Albany.”
    He smiles, I smile. It’s like we’re two working-stiff strangers hitting it off at the local bar. You can spend a lifetime trying to connect with some people. Just ask my ex-wife, Lynn. But on some occasions, connecting can take only an instant. There’s no explanation for it. Who knows, maybe this deformed man and I were friends in another life.
    “Moonlight,” I say. “Dick Moonlight.”
    “Carlo,” he returns. “The magnificent half man, half animal. I was a superstar in the circus. But kids no more interested in the circus. Just Xbox and Wii.”
    I get it. I fish out a five-euro note from my pants pocket, drop it into his bucket.
    “
Molto grazie
,” he says, smiles. “Thank you, Moonlight.”
    I nod.
    “Moonlight,” he laughs. “Luna illuminata. Your name,
bellissimo
. Except for the Dick part.”
    “You had to say it, huh, Carlo?”
    “
’Scuse
…could not help myself.”
    “I’m sure I’ll see you around. You’re a tough man to miss.”
    “You here on vacation? To see the Duomo?” He reaches back with his left hoof, or hand I should say, while balancing on the other. He sheds the shoe and reaches into the pocket of his cutoffs, comes back out with a business card, hands it to me.
    I take it, give it a peek.
    “Carlo the Great. Circus Actor and Tour Guide.”
    His cell phone number is located below that.
    “Never seen a beggar who carries a business card,” I say, pocketing the card.
    “Tough times,” he says, cocking his head. “You do what you have to do to survive.”
    I purse my lips. “I’ll call if I need a guide.”
    “Call soon. I book up fast.”
    “I’d expect nothing less for a man of your talents,” I say, and head on into the ancient city.

The air is a combination of roast coffee, cooking meats and sauces, and even perfumes. The fact that the aromas combine with exhaust from the old cars and trucks does little to make it any less appetizing. Am I really here to steal back a flash drive for the FBI? Or was all that just a bad dream while I slept a Valium-induced sleep on the plane? A big part of me just wants to sit down at a café and drink espresso. Fuck the FBI.
    Soon I find myself at the corner of Nazionale and Fienza. On the corner beside me, a coffee bar. Across the street from that, another coffee bar. Farther up ahead on the right, an old convent. The building I’m seeking, the Il Ghiro guesthouse, is located directly across from it.
    I walk the stone street until I locate the building. I thumb the buzzer on the wall-mounted intercom and wait for a voice to emerge from the speaker.
    “
Pronto
,” says the tinny voice.
    Facing the speaker, I say, “I’m looking for Francesco. He’s expecting me.”
    “
Ahhh, si, si,
” comes the happy voice. “Come in, yes, come in.”
    There’s a loud buzz and click-clack sound of a mechanical bolt releasing, and the old heavy wood door opens on its own.
    “All the way up, Mr. Moonlight,” adds the voice.
    I look directly up at a skylight through the center of a wraparound staircase constructed of marble treads and a brass banister.
    “
Bella
,” I whisper to myself. I sound stupid trying to speak Italian.
    “Welcome to Italy,” echoes the voice from up on high.
    I begin to climb six flights with a fifty-pound pack on my back and a leather shoulder bag filled with computer equipment. By the time I get to the top, what’s left of my Valium haze has mostly been sweated out. As I catch my breath, a narrow blue door opens and out steps my contact.
    Francesco.
    “Welcome to Florence,” says a forty-something, slim man dressed in Levi’s and a pressed baby-blue button-down. “Shameful you are not here to see the museums and to soak in the culture.”
    “It’s all cloak-and-dagger stuff from this point on,” I say, nodding.
    He tells me to come in.
    I do it.
    Behind me, the guesthouse door closes with