I called the palazzo. No answer. Not even a machine. Typical Italy.

I tried again, and again, and finally at nine-thirty, the phone was picked up and I heard a pleasant, “Pronto.”

“Elena?” I said.

“Justina.”

“Oh, Justina, this is Isabel. Elena’s niece.”

“Chiè?”

I tried again to explain who I was. What was the Italian word for niece? I had no idea. Finally we managed to connect.

“Elena is no here,” she said, switching to English.

“Do you know where she is?”

“She went to Poseidon.”

“Poseidon?”

“Poseidon is waters. How do you say…healing waters. Si.”

“And where is that?”

“Ischia.”

Ischia. That was where the Rizzato Brothers were from. “It’s a little island,” I said. “Is that right? Outside Napoli?”

“Sí.” Justina kept talking, saying Elena wouldn’t be back in the office for a few days, in fact, she wasn’t even sure when she would return.

In my mind I kept hearing Alberto-You want the Camorra, you go to Napoli.

When Maggie finally got into town, I was standing at the Fiumicino Airport, just outside the baggage area.

She emerged, blowing her honey-colored bangs out of her face, her tiny body about the same height as the large teal-blue suitcase she lugged behind her.

“Mags!” I shouted.

Her mouth opened in a wide grin. She ran around the fencing and hugged me tight. “Happy almost birthday!”

“Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Me, too!” She hugged me again, standing on her toes the way she does.

I pulled the luggage out of her grasp. “Jesus, what do you have in here?”

She laughed. “I had no idea what to pack for Rome these days. I mean, what do people wear now?”

I stopped, looked her in the eye. “What if I told you it didn’t matter?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re not staying in Rome. Don’t kill me, but we’re going to Ischia.”

She opened her mouth. She seemed stumped for words, finally settling for, “What?”

“It’s an island off the coast. It’s not that far.” I put my hand on her arm. “Mags, we’re getting a train to Naples.”

Dez Romano’s man from the antimafia office called at 10:00 a.m. It was good to have his people everywhere, especially in organizations that were trying to fuck him.

“It’s me,” his mole said in Italian.

“Sí.” Dez gestured to his secretary that she did not need to leave his office. This mole wasn’t important, wasn’t any kind of clandestino supersleuth, just a watcher, there to report on certain topics when he came across them. The mole was Antonio Sandello, not that his name was of any significance. It was his heritage. He’d grown up in the System-what everyone on the inside called the Camorra-and although he now worked for the other side technically, as a video tech for the antimafia office, the kid harbored a dream to move to America, to live a big life there. Dez had promised to help him do that someday in return for a heads-up when information came through the office, usually from feeds from office cameras, dealing with anything that had to do with the Camorra and the United States.

“An American came into the office today,” Sandello said.

“Is that right?” The System had never been successful at establishing a strong foothold in America, but Dez was going to change that. And people like Sandello were going to help him.

“Said she was looking for her father, someone working on a Camorra case when he disappeared.”

“What kind of case?”

“Rizzato Brothers.”

“Who was the person working the case?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Did the office give her anything?”

“Just the door. You know they do not hand out information.”

“Certa,” he said. Obviously. Of course. It would be so much easier for him if the office was loose with their information. “Did she come in cold?”

“Sí. She did not have an appointment. Walked in off the street.”

“Interesting. Name?”

“Isabel McNeil.”

Sandello pronounced it all wrong, but Dez recognized the name right away. She’d been on his mind for days.

He put down his pen and gestured for his secretary to leave. He asked Sandello a multitude of questions and learned that after being turned away, Isabel McNeil had walked down the street with a staff member of the office. A notary. The office’s cameras recorded the direction they were heading, but then she’d gone out of range.

He told Sandello to talk to the notary, told him exactly how to do it, then he hung up, a little disappointed. She had seemed quite intelligent to him, but how fucking stupida did you have to be to run from the Mob and head straight for Italy?

Then again, maybe he was the stupid one. Could there have been any basis to the words she’d thrown out in that goddamned butterfly room-that she was a federal agent? Was she the one playing him?

Maggie and I took a seat in front of the travel agent’s desk. In Italy, travel agencies are as plentiful as tomatoes, and they’re always the most orderly places to book a trip in a very disorderly country.

“Tickets to Naples, please,” I said, telling the agent we wanted to leave as soon as possible.

“Sí,” the agent said. “Napoli Centrale. Regular or Eurostar tickets?”

Maggie sat, rubbing her head. “I still can’t believe all this. I cannot believe it.”

I’d told Maggie everything in the cab from the airport. The night on the stairwell, Dez and Ransom chasing me from the museum, finding Alyssa in Sam’s apartment, our teary goodbye. I even told her about the fact I had been working for Mayburn. Mayburn would kill me, but I simply could not hold it back any longer. And it felt damn good to have my best friend once again knowing all.

But Mags was having a hard time wrapping her head around it. “You?” she was saying now. “You have been doing undercover work?” More rubbing of the head. “And your dad? You think he might be alive?”

I asked the ticket agent about the Eurostar price, did the math. “Shazzer,” I said.

Maggie frowned. “What’s shazzer? Is that an Italian word?”

“My replacement word for shit.”

“Are you still on that kick? It’s not working, by the way. You always end up saying the swearword because you have to explain it.”

“Allora,” the clerk said, “regular or Eurostar?”

“How much is the Eurostar?” Maggie asked.

“I can’t afford Eurostar,” I said.

Maggie dug a credit card out of her purse. “I’ll get it.”

“Wait. Mags, I don’t want you paying for everything.”

“Well, I’m paying for this.” She gave the agent her card. “Do you remember the time we went to Florence on a ‘regular’ train? ‘Regular’ means the local line, in case you’ve forgotten.”

I had a flashback-Maggie and me, an un-air-conditioned train car, the press of bodies around us. People were packed onto the seats, some standing one after another in the aisles, some huddled at the end of the cars, near the broken, powerfully smelly bathrooms. The heat had been junglelike, the moods of all the passengers beyond surly. When the train finally spat us out in Florence, Maggie and I had practically kissed the ground. We’d stayed an extra three days just to recover.

“Eurostar,” I said definitively to the agent.

She nodded. “Passaporti, please.”

After we gave them to her, Maggie nodded at my chest. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is that necklace?”

I lifted the amber stone and gazed at its bevels, which seemed to manufacture sunlight. “Elena gave it to me. It was my grandmother’s.”

“Stunning,” Maggie said. “It suits you.”

At the Termini, the main Rome train station, the heat was thick and the crowds thicker. The open-air nature of the place only supported humidity and prolific sweating, and yet the Termini was nicer than when I was last in town. A huge Nike store and other designer shops resided next to the tabacchi, and the place had a little sparkle where before it had been gritty-city.