“And he accepted that explanation?”

“I assume so. I have not heard from him since.”

Wind whipped through the street, and I shivered, more from the idea that someone other than me had been looking for Peruggia’s diary than the cold. I asked again if anyone else might have known about the journal, my mind still dwelling on the break-in and the collector of rare papers.

“The only person, other than myself, would be my secretary. She types up my lectures and emails, all my correspondence. But she is a lady of seventy-eight years old, has been at the university for almost fifty years, and is entirely trustworthy.”

“Do you mind if I speak to her?” I asked.

“Signore Per-own-nay,” he said, enunciating every syllable of my name. “Signora Moretti is the soul of discretion. But if you insist, it will be, as you Americans say, your funeral.”

9

He has followed the two men from the restaurant, allowed plenty of space though there was no chance of losing them, the fat man’s pace so slow he has had to stop, duck into alleyways, or hide behind parked cars. Not that they would recognize him. But he knows them, has viewed their pictures on his computer screen: Perrone, taller and more striking than he appeared in two dimensions, Quattrocchi fatter, leaning against a fence now and gulping for air like a fish out of water.

He sees them head toward the university, stops alongside a line of bicycles and motorbikes and lights a cigarette, watches college students coming and going, talking and laughing. He can’t remember a time when he felt so carefree.

The smudge of a memory: his brother, falling. He drags the back of his hand across his eyes as if to erase it, though it lingers, an afterimage that carries with it an emotion he was certain he had disposed of years ago.

He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them when he hears the fat Italian laughing like a girl. He imagines he will scream like one too. He studies Perrone, strong and arrogant-looking, the kind of man he likes to bring down.

10

I found my way back to the Palazzo Splendour, got my key from the same guy behind the front desk, on the phone again or perhaps he had never gotten off. There was no elevator, my room two flights up, and he didn’t offer to help with my bag.

I didn’t expect much for a hundred and twenty euros a week, and I was right. My one room consisted of a tiny bathroom (sink, toilet, shower with no curtain) and kitchenette (half-sized refrigerator, hot plate, sink), a nonworking fireplace with a bare mantel above, a twin-sized bed with a worn chintz spread, a dresser topped by a wood-framed mirror, and an armoire so narrow that the three hangers only fit on an angle. The lone window had no shade, but it hardly mattered as it faced a dark alley.

Finally unpacking, suitcase opened across the bed, I felt the excitement of the long day starting to wear off. Thoughts of everything I had left behind—my job, my loft, my friends—came over me in a rush, along with a conversation I’d had with my Chelsea art dealer less than a week ago: