Joe Schreiber - Perry's killer playlist

Then she shoved the trunk over the edge and it fell.

There was a long silence followed by a splash below just as the hotel door swung open behind us. When I looked back at Gobi, she was already climbing over the railing into the night.

“What are you doing?”

She let go of the railing and disappeared.

My decision to go over the railing was pure hot-stove reflex, not involving much in the way of rational thought. It was more like a series of images, bold and simple-Kabuki risk assessment, not recommended to anyone who might ever need to justify their actions afterward to the authorities.

From the other side of the suite, I saw men pouring through the open door-they wore black long-sleeved T-shirts and black pants, and carried automatic weapons, machine pistols, heavy artillery. If these guys were cops, then Venice had a serious paramilitary budget. I could still see the copper wires dangling from the key-slot where they’d disabled the electronic lock.

The man in front looked straight at me, his face instantly familiar. Unlike the others, he was wearing a suit.

So you found it.

Your little tourist trap.

The next thing I knew, I was over the railing, the hotel bathrobe billowing out around my bare legs in the chill night air while my wet toes curled and skidded along the outer rim of the balcony.

The man in front shouted in Italian, swinging his gun up toward me.

I let go.

Spilling back through the open air, pinwheeling my arms in wild, frantic circles as if I might suddenly remember how to fly, I seemed to fall for a long, long time, long enough to think, I left my bass up there, and then, This is really going to hurt, while they kept yelling at me from up above.

And then pain, which is basically the same in any language. The water flattened me, punching the air out of my lungs-I swear for a second I actually bounced. Then my legs went numb, seemed almost to disappear, and I may have blacked out.

The water around me was freezing, squid-ink black, and I was thrashing around, wondering if anything was broken and guessing it probably wasn’t if I was swimming. But I couldn’t breathe. When I did, things started to make a little more sense.

The steamer trunk had bobbed to the surface in front of me, kind of swaying up and down in the water. The latch had burst open on impact. I felt a hand brush past my arm. I took it blindly, pulling hard.

“Perry!”

Gobi’s voice drifted from somewhere off in the distance. It didn’t occur to me to wonder how she could be so far away when I had her arm right here.

I pulled harder on the arm, clamping on to it with both hands, and that was when a man’s body floated out of the trunk and straight at me. He was older, bald, dressed in black, wearing a white priest’s collar, which had come loose when he’d hit the water and now stuck out on one side. His lips gawped, water from the canal washing in and out of his mouth, and then I saw his eyes pop open, and he looked right at me.

“Shit!” That’s what I was trying to say-it’s certainly what I was thinking, but it probably came out more like “Aiiiggghhghh!” I shoved back from him, flailing my arms in the water. “Oh shit, shit! ” I tried to say, but this time all that emerged was a spew of bubbles. Glubb-blitt-bripp.

“Perry!”

Now Gobi sounded worried. Gunfire rattled from overhead-a series of flat, popping cracks like somebody snapping rolls of the world’s deadliest bubble wrap-hitting the water like hail, splashing it up around me. When I looked up I saw two men on the balcony. Gaudy bouquets of orange and yellow muzzle-flash splattered around them.

I flung my arms out and started flurrying them hard in the direction of Gobi’s voice, paddling like hell for the stone bridge in front of me. At least it was dark under there. Grabbing a deep breath, I plunged low and kicked as hard as I could.

The sudden roar of a diesel engine filled the space beneath the bridge, above and below the surface, overtaking everything. I bobbed up to see the low white hull of the vaporetto closing in over me, too fast to dodge. I slapped the bow, tried to push myself off, and felt something grab the soaked collar of the sopping hotel bathrobe that clung to my bare skin, hoisting me out of the water to land hard on the deck. An abrupt bundle of dry fabric fell over my head.

Gobi’s eyes flashed from the shadows like a pair of unaffordable earrings in a darkened jeweler’s window.

“Hold still.”

“You…”

“Shut up.”

“. . shot . .”

“Are you deaf?”

“. . a priest? ”

Gobi reached up and clapped her hand over my mouth. I realized she’d wrapped a trench coat over my soaking wet bathrobe.

“Keep your head low.”

“You’re insane.”

She didn’t argue. I wondered where she’d gotten the dry trench coat and decided not to ask-it probably meant there was some tourist on the boat sprawled out unconscious or worse. The vaporetto lurched forward, spewing diesel fumes, its engines roaring behind us as it nosed its way toward the next stop. When it hit the shore, I could already hear the two-note European sirens dopplering up the canal, blue lights flashing from a police boat headed in the opposite direction, the night waking up around us.

“This is our stop.” She put her arm around me, pulling me upward, giving me the bum’s rush down the floating platform.

“Forget it, I’m done.”

“Idiot.” Nobody did exasperation like she did-you’d think she’d invented it. Tilting slightly to one side, she cocked her right leg, simultaneously sweeping her right hand back, and when it reappeared I saw the knife, six inches long and flickering brightly in all that remained of the light. “No more Perry Stormaire bullshit.” She pronounced it bool-sheet.

“Wait,” I said, “now there’s a type of bullshit named after me?”

“Come now.”

“Or what, you’ll cut my throat?”

“Not necessary.” She considered. “Maybe I just sever Achilles tendon and leave you here helpless in the alley for whatever comes along.” I didn’t like the sound of that any more than the sirens that were warbling from up the canal. “Those police, they are not the only ones looking for a stupid American boy tonight, you know.”

“Those guys back in your hotel room were the same ones who beat me up in the alley outside Harry’s.”

“They followed us.”

I flashed on the body floating out of the steamer trunk. “You shot a priest.”

“Monash?” She shook her head and made a noise like “pah.” “Was no priest.”

“He sure looked like one to me.”

“Yes, and once upon a time you thought I was just a foreign exchange student.”

“What’s your point?”

“You should learn to use your eyes.”

“I was actually too preoccupied trying not to drown.”

“There is more work to do.”

“Oh, no. No more. No way.”

“You should know better,” Gobi said, and kept the knife where I could see it. “With me it is never just one.”

“He’s not dead, you know.”

Gobi stopped walking. She’d been leading me down a narrow cobblestone walkway, through an arched gate between two high stone buildings that looked half a millennium old-although “leading” is probably too gentle a word when you’ve got a knife wedged tight against your ribs, close enough that its tip keeps jabbing you through a wet hotel bathrobe.

“What are you saying?”

“That guy in the water,” I said. “Monash, or whatever his name was? I saw him open his eyes.”