The Take(62)

Valentina allowed herself to be pulled closer. When his hand fell to her rear and began to fondle her buttocks, she moaned and put an arm around his waist.

She didn’t mind that he wasn’t a gentleman.

She wasn’t a lady.

Word of honor.



“Strip,” commanded Valentina.

She stood near Luca Falconi in his bedroom on the top floor of a modern building a fifteen-minute walk from Le Galleon Rouge. She’d put up with his groping the entire way, allowing him to nuzzle her neck and whisper garlicky nothings in her ear. Once upstairs, he’d forgone his famous espresso in favor of generous snifters of grappa. He’d continued his seduction, playing French disco music from the 1970s and singing along as he put a hand up her skirt. After another grappa and an hour of being pawed, she decided it was time to go to work.

“Me?” Falconi smiled nervously. “My clothes? Now?”

Valentina ran a fingernail along the underside of his chin. “Yes, you. Yes, now. And, yes, all of them.”

“But the espresso…”

“Forget the espresso.” Valentina unbuttoned her blouse and, when it was open, unclasped her brassiere and thrust her bare chest toward him. “Let me show you how.”

Falconi fell upon her like a hungry wolf, kneading her breasts, putting a greedy mouth to her nipple. She gasped and threw back her head. “Luca,” she moaned.

His reply was a pig-like grunt.

She counted to five then pushed him away gently. “Strip, I said.”

Falconi stepped back, eyes wide with desire, nearly tripping over his own feet. “La diavola!” he said.

Growing impatient, Valentina helped with the last few buttons, then adroitly unbuckled his belt. By now Falconi was panting heavily enough that she feared he might drop dead of a heart attack before she could get any information out of him. Falling to her knees, she pulled his trousers to the floor, then yanked down his boxer shorts and told him to step clear.

Falconi obeyed. A moment later, he stood naked before her, his pale, flabby breasts lying flat on his chest, his belly cascading over his waist in waves of fat beribboned with stretch marks. Somewhere, she supposed, the man had a penis, but she could see only a nest of gray pubic hair peeking from the marble-colored lard.

“It takes time,” he said ashamedly.

Valentina kissed him delicately. “We have all night, chéri.”

As he lumbered onto the mattress, she took off her blouse and brassiere and unzipped her skirt. She allowed him plenty of time to regard her, feeling her power over him grow.

“Come,” he said, extending a hand.

Valentina smiled and put a foot onto the bed.

Falconi labored to sit up against the headboard, one hand manipulating himself. His eyes opened wider as she climbed onto the bed and straddled him. She moved closer, lowering herself, grabbing a fistful of hair and guiding his face to her womanhood. She felt an inexpert tongue against her and cried out. He redoubled his efforts, hands cupping her buttocks. She moaned again.

She maintained this position for two minutes by her watch, enough time for his neck to cramp, then stepped back, still towering above him.

“My pill,” he said, eyes shooting toward the bathroom.

“Go get it.”

Falconi slid to the side of the bed and, after much exertion, put his feet onto the floor. His work had winded him and he sat hunkered over, unable to stand.

She saw her moment.

“Luca? Darling?”

“Yes?”

As Falconi turned his head, Valentina wrapped her left arm around his neck and locked it into place with her right. He struggled for thirty seconds, then went limp.

Not dead.

Unconscious.



When Falconi came to, his prospects for sexual gratification had dimmed considerably. He lay on the bed, ankles and wrists bound with duct tape, another length of tape stretched across his mouth.

Valentina brandished a steel box cutter before his eyes, its razor-sharp blade extended. Her handbag was too small to carry the pistol she’d used on Delacroix. There had been no place to hide it in her skirt. Besides, it was unwise to fire a pistol in an apartment building at this hour. Even with a noise suppressor, the sound might carry through the walls. She was a polite guest. She didn’t want to wake the neighbors. The duct tape was Falconi’s.

The box cutter fell to his testicles. The blade nicked the wrinkled, sagging flesh. Falconi jolted.

“Tell me,” she said, “where I can find Tino Coluzzi.”





Chapter 33



It was past three when Simon and Nikki emerged from the hospital. Around them, the city lay asleep. Traffic was so light as to be nonexistent. There was only the creaking of the barges moored nearby, rising and falling with the tide, and the whistling of a steady breeze.

Lights burned from a bakery nearby. Nikki found the door unlocked. A bell tinkled as she entered. “Wait here,” she said.

Simon sat down on the curb and gingerly probed the bandage beneath the fresh shirt he’d been given by the emergency room nurses. He had twenty stitches to add to his inventory of battle scars, not that he was counting. Nikki had accompanied him into the treatment bay while the doctor sewed him up. She was a tough woman, hardened by dint of her job. Even so, she’d been unable to keep herself from wincing when she viewed his torso.