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am a hedonist and couldn’t help myself. I loved Italy as soon we had endured two insanely delayed connecting flights (during which Marco’s thugs monitored my every move), and stepped off the plane at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome. Enthralled by art, nauseated by fear, I gawked at the tiny streets, the deathly mopeds, the streets littered with ancient monuments. As I stared at the scattered fortunes of Roman public sculpture, my “companions” dragged me to the Colosseum to barter with a baggy-panted scoundrel for two small, cloth-wrapped items, which I did not see but suspected might be pistols. Next, trips were made to camping stores, to inexplicably purchase pulleys, axes, and knives. Finally, we traveled to Tuscany. Now dazed by the sight of the Duomo’s miraculous red breast and a battalion of vendors hawking mini priapic David s, I bumbled around this Florentine palazzo. The fifteenth-century haven of the Medici blooms with marble nudes and trompe l’oeil paintings of satyrs and vixens. Scaffolded all around its exterior, the palace gyrated with sexy workmen built like Atlas. Below their vertiginous heights our host, this round-hipped, red-spectacled mandarin, whose hair matched her glasses, quick-footed through the foyer alongside a dark-haired North African lady of about twenty-one. This sylph wore a black dress cut with a stoical simplicity, as well as a resigned look on her pretty, very serious face.
    “I am Dr. Riccardi. Most welcome, most welcome!” the older woman cried in English, grasping my shoulders with such force my head wobbled precariously. “Marco said you would be arriving with him, Lola, you lucky thing.” She peered over her glasses at his immaculate shave, his smooth hair, and his wool and cashmere clothes. “How are you doing, dear?”
    “Much better now that I’m finally seeing you, again, Isabel.” He grinned.
    “Ooooh, you are wicked. Looking quite as dashing as I remember, isn’t he, Adriana?”
    “I—”
    “This is my assistant,” Dr. Riccardi said to me, gesturing at the sylph.
    “Hello—”
    “And here are your two friends — the big, strong, silent types?”
    Blasej and Domenico just stood there, huge and granite-headed, and said nothing.
    “And that’s all?” she went on, counting us. “I was expecting a larger group.”
    “Just us.” Marco laughed. “What, did you think I’d bring an entire team of experts? I’m not one of your Getty friends, Isabel.”
    “No, but I thought—what was it—Adriana here was saying something about a phone call from a rather voluble young man—”
    “He— I— We—” Adriana tried to explain.
    “Yes, well, it must have been one of those ghastly telemarketers,” Dr. Riccardi continued. “No matter. Because here you are, in the flesh , dear Marco. Please do forgive the scaffolding.
    Florence is constantly under repair, you see. No—but you barely notice, do you? My dear Signor Moreno. Always so focused, and still honking on about that letter—eight months you spent here, driving me wild with your questions.”
    “You were very helpful in my researches, Isabel—”
    “Yes, right — which is why you’ve now dragged this lovely little creature back here with you?” She turned back to me. “So. Lola. Sweet, isn’t she? Like Marco, you too have been bewitched by his little letter? He must have told you how it was written by Antonio Medici, and all that tosh about gold, and werewolves, and Montezuma, and I don’t know what? He had me helping him research the thing last year—I quite admire you for putting up with this man. Seduced you into working night and day, I’ll bet. He has that capacity, I’m afraid—”
    I jabbered, “Actually, he kind of abducted me—”
    “Hmmmm?” Dr. Riccardi goggled. “Oh, yes! Hilarious—he is a beast . But that’s fine, the more the merrier. The palazzo was made for madcapping around the archives, so let’s get you settled, come on—superb!” Dr. Riccardi walked