AFTER THE medics had more or less stitched him back together-with his shirt off, Dalton's scarred and bullet-pocked body looked like an aerial map of Antietam-a corporal of the Carabinieri, a rangy young Venetian with the features of an assassin and the air of a kindly priest, helped Dalton to his feet and walked him down the steps of the chapel, clearly meaning to see him all the way back to the Savoia e Yolanda on the other side of the piazza, down along the Quay of Slavs, two bridges east of the Palazzo Ducale. medics had more or less stitched him back together-with his shirt off, Dalton's scarred and bullet-pocked body looked like an aerial map of Antietam-a corporal of the Carabinieri, a rangy young Venetian with the features of an assassin and the air of a kindly priest, helped Dalton to his feet and walked him down the steps of the chapel, clearly meaning to see him all the way back to the Savoia e Yolanda on the other side of the piazza, down along the Quay of Slavs, two bridges east of the Palazzo Ducale.

Dalton stopped to gather himself in the campo outside the chapel, taking a deep but careful breath, looking up at the sky. The clouds were shredding apart in a rising wind off the Adriatic, and the snow had stopped falling. The moon pierced the tip of the Campanile in the Piazza San Marco. The air was sharp and cold and burned in his lungs like chilled grappa. Far in the east, over the black cliffs of Montenegro on the far side of the Adriatic, the indigo sky was shading into a pale pink glow.

"What is your name?" he asked the young corporal.

The lad stiffened into a formal parade brace.

"Sono Corporale Orinaldo Zargozzo, Commendatore!" he barked. Being assigned to walk the Crocodile home was a signal honor. Dalton's role in the defeat of the Gospic he barked. Being assigned to walk the Crocodile home was a signal honor. Dalton's role in the defeat of the Gospic sindacato sindacato in Venice was spoken of in whispers all over the service, but it was also making him nervous. in Venice was spoken of in whispers all over the service, but it was also making him nervous.

He had just finished watching the medics clean up what was left of a man named Zorin Vinzcik, found dead in an alcove near the Calligari steps across from La Fenice. It had taken three men to get the corpse on a gurney. The head had been twisted so far around that the body seemed to be looking back over its own shoulder.

The Crocodile was perhaps a touch over six feet, broad in the shoulders, but otherwise built like a horseman, lean and supple, with an air of latent menace, yes, but no match for a creature like Zorin Vinzcik, who reminded him of a rhino he had seen in a zoo in Palermo many years ago.

"Corporale Zargozzo, may I trouble you for a favor?"

"D'accordo! Certamente, Commendatore."

"May I walk home alone?"

The soldier's face was all confusion, unease, regret.

"Mai . . . Il Signore Galan-"

"I promise you, I will go home and pack. But this will be my last night in Venice for a long time. I'd like to walk it alone. Con permesso? Con permesso? " "

Corporal Zargozzo gave it some thought. The Crocodile was clearly in some sort of bad place in his heart, and Galan, who obviously valued him, had been forceful on the necessity of seeing him safely to his hotel.

On the other hand, there was the dead rhino.

"Please. Tell Issadore I insisted insisted. He will understand."

After a moment, the corporal nodded, his dark face conflicted. Dalton offered his hand, they shook, and he turned to walk away. He had gone a few steps when the corporal called out to him. Dalton stopped and looked back at the boy, silhouetted in the warm light pouring from the chapel.

"Signore Dalton, mi perdoni?"

"Yes?"

"Con la grazia di Dio, Commendatore, un giorno, Lei ritornera a Venezia."

"Will I?"

The young man nodded again, smiled hugely, snapped off a razor-edged salute, spun on a heel, and walked away. Dalton saw him up the steps of the church and then turned back to the darkened streets of Venice.

He made his way back through the Calle 22. Someone had already cleaned Belajic's bloody handprints off the security shutters covering the Cartier store-"Like pythons eat rats," Galan had said-and, in the Calle de L'Ascensione, there was no sign that a careless Albanian bodyguard had caught a .22 slug in the temple just outside the west gate of the piazza.

Dalton stepped through the arch and into the most beautiful open space on the planet, the serene perfection of the Piazza San Marco; flanked on three sides by the ordered cloisters and three-part harmonies of the Museo Civico and the Procurates, paved in intricate cobblestones, closed at the eastern end by the Moorish domes of the Basilica, all of this dominated by the redbrick spire of the Campanile. To Dalton, the square of Saint Mark's in Venice always seemed to float in a timeless present, as if the whole murderous planet, with all its centrifugal cruelty and whirling insanity, was spinning like a well-balanced top on this one utterly still point.

The floodwaters had subsided during the night, but there were still pools standing in the cobblestones, and they reflected the stars just beginning to show through rents in the cloud cover.

Dalton stepped his careful way around the standing pools, heading for the turn next to the Palazzo Ducale and the short walk along the Riva degli Schiavoni to his suite at the Savoia. His mind was clear, and for some strange reason he felt more at peace with himself than he had in many weeks.

Perhaps he found killing therapeutic. Maybe he should do a paper on it for Cora Vasari, who was a professor of psychology at the university in Florence. On the other hand, maybe not.

When he came abreast of the shuttered windows of Florian's Cafe, he was suddenly aware of a dark figure seated at a table just beneath the archway. He reached for his Ruger, realizing as he did so that Galan, a prudent man, had kept it in his pocket. There was a motion, a dry click.

Dalton waited for the bullet, thinking that it was typical of whatever old Norse gods ruled him that he would finally get himself shot once he had decided not to die. A flaring yellow light rose up to a blue cylinder: someone was lighting a cigarette in the dark.

The glow of the lighter flame lit up the craggy face and cold blue eyes of Porter Naumann, killed in Cortona some weeks ago and left in a chapel doorway off the Via Janelli to be ripped apart by the village dogs.

Naumann drew in the smoke, blew it out slowly, and tapped on the top of the tippy tin table, his signature drumbeat.

"Micah, my son, take a pew," he said, using his Cartier to light a candle in a glass bowl. Dalton thought it over.

He hadn't seen Porter Naumann's ghost for several weeks, not since Cora had been shot. At that point, Naumann's ghost had been somehow trapped in Cortona and had troubles of his own. Dalton came over and stood by the table.

As far as he could make out by the glow of the candle, Naumann was, as usual, nicely turned out, in a long tan wool topcoat over tobacco-colored tweed slacks, a rich brown sweater, a Burberry scarf, elegant loafers in some sort of deep-brown snakeskin.

And, for whatever demented reason, emerald green socks, possibly silk.

He showed his teeth to Dalton in that same Grim Reaper smile that he had been famous for when he was the top Cleaner at the Agency, before he had gone to England to start up the investment house of Burke and Single, an Agency cover op in London.

"Sit, will you?" he said. "You look like death."

"Do you know you have emerald green socks on?"

"I do," said Naumann. "I think they give me an air of insouciance insouciance ." ."

"I think they give you an air of being the middle guy in the Lollypop Guild."

"Are you gonna sit down and play nice, or do I have to go all ectoplasmic on your sorry ass?"

Dalton had, after a struggle, resigned himself to the idea, put forward by the medics, that these intermittent appearances of Naumann's ghost were an artifact of his exposure to a cloud of weaponized peyote and datura root a while back, a trap set for him by the same man who had killed Naumann. Once the hallucinogens worked their way out of his system, the medics insisted with varying degrees of conviction, so would Naumann's ghost.

At least, they sincerely hoped so.

Dalton's view was that if the guy in A Beautiful Mind A Beautiful Mind could win a Nobel Prize while seeing invisible roommates, Dalton could handle an amiable specter. In the meantime, with nothing better to do, Dalton sat. could win a Nobel Prize while seeing invisible roommates, Dalton could handle an amiable specter. In the meantime, with nothing better to do, Dalton sat.

Naumann leaned forward and extended a slim gold cigarette case, offering Dalton a selection of Balkan Sobranie Cocktails, absurd creations in deep blue, turquoise, even flamingo pink, all tipped with gold filters. Where Naumann got them, Dalton never knew: Naumann insisted that he found them in a shop in Hell called Dante's-"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita."

He picked a blue Sobranie and let Naumann fire it up for him, leaned back in the chair, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs and letting it out slowly, a curling, luminous cloud in what was left of the moonlight. The candle glow lit up their faces, the living and the dead, as they sat there for a time in a companionable silence.

"So," said Naumann, after a decent interval, "you owe me fifty bucks."

"I do?" said Dalton, grinning at him. "For what?"

"My money was on Zorin."

"Was it?"

"Yeah. Nothing personal. Guy was a rhino."

"And what am I?"

Naumann seemed to consider the question.

"You're more of a wildebeest. You know, top-heavy, ugly as sin, bandy-legged but agile."

"I lucked out."

"You fought dirty. I have to say, nobody on my side is real thrilled to have him over here. The guys in the boat-now, that was just plain showy. It was like you were trying trying to get shot." to get shot."

"Actually, I was."

Naumann made a pouty face, leaning over to pat Dalton's hand.

"I thought so. Poor baby. Got those bad old blue devils, have you?"

"I guess so."

Naumann sat back, shaking his head, raised his hands, palms out.

"Christ, lock and load, will you? Look at me me. There I am, in the prime of my life, hung like a Valparaiso jackass, the body of a Greek god, the looks of a young Sterling Hayden-"

"Who the hell is Sterling Hayden?"

"-a killer town house in Wilton Row, all my expenses paid by the Agency, I'm adored by all, beautiful women cry out my name in the night-"

"More like a shriek."

"-and along comes some whack-job Indian psycho, he slips me a mickey, I get half eaten by wild dogs in a churchyard in Cortona, and now, in case you missed it, I seem to be dead. Do you hear me whining? Do you?"

Naumann satirically cocked an ear, looking off into the starry night.

"No, you do not. So get a grip. You about through for the night?"

"I think so," said Dalton, stifling a yawn. "Why?"

"Bit of a backlog down in Processing. Central Command wants you to ease up for a while. Too bad it wasn't you. We had a table booked."

"Piazza Garibaldi?"

Naumann nodded.

"Where else? Word is, you're getting the boot."

"Everybody's telling me so, anyway. Last time I saw you, you were stuck in Cortona, and these evil-ass smoke demons were rising up out of the stones to hiss at you."

Naumann shuddered at the memory.

"Hey, don't joke about that, Micah. Naming calls calls. Seriously. I've seen it happen. Those are some very bad dudes."

"So what happened?"

He shrugged, drew on the cigarette, the tip flaring like a firefly in the shadows of Florian's portico.

"Buggered if I know. One afternoon, they all just . . . scarpered. Had something to do with eucalyptus, I think."

"You didn't ask?"

"Ask? Ask who?"

Dalton raised his eyes skyward in a parody of reverent piety.

"Who, Him?" said Naumann. "Hell, over on this side God's as hard to pin down as Barack Obama's ears. Ask me, He's kind of like that big head in the Wizard of Oz Wizard of Oz. Real power's behind the curtain. Probably some saber-toothed power broad like Nancy Pelosi, wears a pearl-gray pantsuit and stiletto heels, a pair of killer ta-tas, has a smile so cold bourbon freezes on her lips."

"You think Nancy Pelosi has killer ta-tas?"

"Hey, you haven't seen her naked. I have."

While Dalton worked that through, Naumann moved on.

"So, about leaving Venice, what are you gonna do?"

"About what?"

"Like I said, you're getting the heave. About time, by the way, you ask me. Tourists will be back in April, and they'll be tripping over your roadkill all around town. Probably find something moldering away in a gondola. You're gonna need some kind of work, Micah. Left to your own devices, you go all wobbly and your wheels come off. You ever hear from Deacon Cather?"

Dalton shrugged, as if the name meant nothing.

Naumann, who knew his man, didn't buy it.

"So, no call? Not a peep? Ungrateful bastard. Typical Cather. Dried-up old Jesuit, but slick as a pickerel's pecker. Always reminded me of Sir Francis Walsingham-"

"Who?"

"Queen Elizabeth I's security guy. Eighty-sixed Mary, Queen of Scots, in one of the first confusion ops? Do you read, read, Micah? Improve yourself?" Micah? Improve yourself?"

"Nope. Reading hurts my head."

"After all we did for the Agency? That Serbian thing in Chicago-"

"We? I didn't notice you prancing about the place."

Naumann looked hurt.

"Micah, I'm always always there. You just don't see me, unless you're totally fucked up. I'm sort of . . . hovering. And, for the record, I don't prance." there. You just don't see me, unless you're totally fucked up. I'm sort of . . . hovering. And, for the record, I don't prance."

Dalton yawned again, mightily this time, drew in the last of the cigarette, stubbed it out on the stones beside the table, pocketed what was left of the butt out of habit, pushed his chair back. Naumann tipped his chair against the walls of Florian's, brought his legs up, crossed his ankles, set his nicely shod feet on the table, and lit himself another Sobranie. The move exposed a couple of inches of his emerald green socks.