Peril Is My Pay Read online

  “Where’s Hilda?” he asked again. “Where have they got her?” And then he saw us. He was a good-looking kid, varsity type, with a strong jaw, a high-bridged nose, dark blue eyes and a blond brush cut. Standing there all in white and beginning to look surprised, he resembled a bewildered Mr. Clean.

  I said, because I could think of nothing else to say at the moment: “You look like a bewildered Mr. Clean.”

  “Pardon me for busting in on you,” he told Lois caustically. “Is this what you call helping Hilda?”

  “She’s had a hard night,” I said.

  “I can see that.”

  I put Lois down on the bed. Her right hand clung to my neck for a moment, then let go.

  “You don’t understand, Kyle,” she said.

  “Okay, so make me understand.” He shut the door and strode belligerently into the room. “You were supposed to set it all up for Hilda and me. You were supposed to see Mozzoni and—”

  “Mozzoni was murdered,” I said.

  “Who asked you to stick your two cents’ worth into this?” Kyle Ryder snapped.

  “Me,” Lois said. “Chet’s a private detective.”

  “Him? He’s just a friend of my father’s.”

  “He’s going to help us find Hilda. Aren’t you, Chet?”

  “What makes you think,” I asked both of them, “the Reds didn’t ship her back to Czechoslovakia on the first plane?”

  “Jeez,” Kyle said. “I never thought of that. They beat up Wolfgang. He said they took her, but I never thought—”

  “When were you at Spanish Villa?”

  “Before,” Kyle said vaguely.

  “Who else was there?”

  “Wolf, downstairs. And someone was moving around upstairs. That artist female, I guess, Simonetta. I don’t know.”

  Kyle, I decided, must have gone to Spanish Villa after the cops left the first time and before they returned when Talese became convinced that Pericles Andros was alive. I said: “You haven’t been at Olympic Village since early this evening. What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. When I didn’t get Miss Hackett’s call I started feeling edgy. Hilda and I had arranged a secret meeting place in case something went wrong. Even Miss Hackett didn’t know about it.”

  “Where?”

  “A trattoría on the other side of the Tiber. I went there, just in case. One of my buddies at the Village knew where I could be reached. He didn’t call and Hilda didn’t come, so I took a cab to Spanish Villa. Wolf told me they’d taken Hilda, told me Miss Hackett had been to Spanish Villa with a big American—that would be you—and had probably returned to her hotel.”

  “You didn’t happen to see a dapper little guy at Spanish Villa, did you? Wearing a white linen suit, with white hair and maybe dark glasses?”

  Kyle scowled at me. “Not this time I didn’t.”

  “You mean you’d seen him before?”

  “The first day I arrived in Rome. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone there. I know I wasn’t supposed to. I should have kept my distance from Hilda’s brother just in case the Czechs had put a plant on him. After all, he’d skipped out from behind the Iron Curtain himself years ago. But he’d done us a favor all year long, acting as intermediary for our letters. I wanted to thank him.”

  “And you met the little white-haired man there?”

  “I went at night. He was just coming downstairs from Simonetta’s place.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing much. He went back upstairs, that’s all. I didn’t see him again. What’s this stuff about Mozzoni being murdered?”

  I told him. He looked grimmer with every word. Then I said: “You’d better get back to Olympic Village, Kyle. Mead Lederer’s worried.”

  “He’d better get used to it. I’m not going back there till I find out what happened to Hilda.”

  “Find out how? Prowling the streets? Snooping around Spanish Villa? Going back to that trattoría of yours? Where is it, by the way?”

  “Nuts to you, mister,” Kyle bristled. “If you’re a private dick, my father probably hired you to keep me and Hilda apart, didn’t he?”

  “To keep you out of trouble.”

  “I can take care of myself.” Kyle took his frustration out on Lois and me. “Is this your idea of keeping people out of trouble?” he said, giving Lois and the bed a level stare.

  “Don’t make a big thing out of that,” I said. “You’ve got it wrong.”

  Lois didn’t say anything. Her face had reddened at his words and her eyes were downcast. She wouldn’t look at either of us.

  “Look,” I told Kyle. “There’s going to be a meeting in the morning at Olympic Village. A cop named Talese and Lederer and a Czech bigshot will be there. They want to find Hilda as much as you do.”

  “As much as I do, hell,” he said bitterly.

  “Come on, I’ll take you back to the Village. Get a night’s sleep and join us in the morning. Okay?”

  Kyle shook his head stubbornly.

  “I’m not leaving without you,” I said.

  “You don’t have to. I’m leaving without you.”

  “Going where?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “The trattoría? She won’t show up there if she hasn’t already.”

  “It’s closed,” Kyle said. “But I’ll be there in the morning.”

  “Then come on back to the Village now.”

  “The hell I will.”

  “Where’s the trattoría?”

  “Nuts to you, mister,” Kyle said again. “Go on back home and tell Dad I’m a big boy now. I don’t need you to blow my nose.”

  “That’s not fair,” Lois said. “Chet only—”

  “Yeah, I know, Miss Hackett. He’d be in bed with you now if I hadn’t busted in on you.” Kyle bowed mockingly. “My apologies.”

  It had been a long, hard night. When upset, Kyle Ryder wasn’t the easiest guy in the world to like. I said: “Stop running off at the mouth about that. Lois almost got herself killed trying to find Hilda tonight. They aren’t playing games. It could happen to you.”

  “Is that a threat?” Pent-up rage made Kyle’s voice hoarse.

  “Damn it, no. You just won’t—”

  “Shut up!” Kyle shouted. “You say I’m going back to Olympic Village tonight. I say I’m not. You going to do anything about it?”

  I said nothing. I wanted him to cool off. Lois stood up and touched my arm. “He has to, Kyle. For your own good.”

  For a moment my eyes met Lois’. “That’s all I wanted to know,” Kyle Ryder said.

  I had time to shove Lois out of the way, time to remember that aside from being intercollegiate javelin-throwing champ Kyle had been the Southwest Conference’s best heavyweight boxer in a decade, time to tell myself that if I wanted to stop him I’d have to use judo or even its lethal Okinawan relative, karate—and even then I’d need luck—time to remind myself I didn’t want to hurt him anyway because whatever he did he was bewildered and angry, and wild with fear about Hilda.

  What he did was feint me out of position with a left that stopped an inch short of my breadbasket, while I was still getting Lois out of the way. Then he let the big right fist go. It moved maybe ten inches. He wasn’t a pro, but he was as good as an amateur gets. His right cross connected with the side of my jaw. It didn’t ring bells, it didn’t even hurt much. I just fell the one way you will fall when you are going to take the count for sure, which is forward. I may have broken the fall slightly with my hands. When I looked up, Kyle wasn’t there. Hardly any time seemed to have passed. Lois was squatting near me with a worried look on her face.

  I lurched to my feet, reeled to the door. Opened it and stared out into the empty hall. Gleaming shoes stood outside almost every door.

  “Take it easy,” Lois said. “What are you going to do?”

  I walked back inside on old man’s legs and to the phone. “Phone … night porter … where he went.…”

  “He’s been g
one for ten minutes.”

  I looked at the phone, at the door, at Lois. My jaw ached.

  Lois was sober now. I didn’t put her to bed after all.

  She put me to bed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I WOKE UP TO BRIGHT sunlight and Lois’ contrite voice.

  “I’m sorry about last night, Chet.”

  “You didn’t know he’d take a swing at me.”

  “I don’t mean that. The way I acted.”

  Lois had slept on the chair. A blanket was still draped over its arm. Lois had showered and was dressed in a black sleeveless blouse and an OD wash-and-wear dacron skirt.

  “I never did anything like that before. I don’t know what came over me. I’m really not.… Please don’t stare at me like that. How do you feel?”

  I fingered my jaw. It had sprouted beard stubble. It still ached. “Like a hit-and-run victim. You wouldn’t happen to have a razor?”

  “A tiny little one. Forgive me?”

  “Because the razor’s a tiny little one?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. You’re just making it harder by pretending it didn’t happen.”

  “Look,” I said. “I knew a girl once who was married to a run-of-the-mill boxer. She used to pray he’d lose his fights. When he did he’d come home to her as gentle as a lamb. When he won he was a holy terror.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Here was a guy who was a first-class louse, up to and including being a wife-beater. But you’d never have known it—if he took a beating in the ring. His reaction to that kind of violence was to turn around and be a decent guy.”

  Lois was staring out the window. “So?”

  “So your reaction to getting shot at was—well, your reaction. It wasn’t you. Okay?”

  Lois nodded slowly. She smiled at me. “Better watch your step anyway, Chester Drum,” she said softly. “I’m beginning to learn what Marianne sees in you.”

  That was another direction I didn’t want to wander off in. “Marianne is over three thousand miles away without a tiny little razor,” I said lightly.

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  While she did, I called Olympic Village. It was after ten. Mead Lederer told me Talese and the others were waiting for me.

  I went into the bathroom to shave. I passed my rumpled, slept-in trousers out to Lois and said: “See if the hotel valet can do a rush job on them.”

  “In the height of the tourist season? Not a chance. But I come complete with one of those little folding travel irons. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  Shaving with Lois’ little leg razor was like mowing an eighteen-hole golf course with a hand-operated reel mower. Lois had the pants ready by the time I finished. She’d also ordered coffee and rolls. They were waiting on one of those go-carts in the middle of the room.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked her.

  “Go with you to the Village. All right?”

  “I was thinking you could cable this guy Roberts that it’s been fun but you’d rather stick to your typewriter.”

  “That wouldn’t be true. I like Hilda and Kyle. Don’t let how he acted last night throw you. Kyle’s a nice boy.”

  “It threw me, all right,” I said.

  We finished our breakfast and went outside and caught a cab to Olympic Village.

  Under the cloudless blue Roman sky the complex of buildings that was Olympic Village resembled something out of the twenty-first century. Seventeen million bucks had been poured into it. There were dormitories for over eight thousand athletes, stores, post offices, a medical dispensary, more restaurants than I had fingers, and a modernistic administration building—all suspended on reinforced concrete columns above the landscaped grounds of the Olympic center near the Foro Italico.

  Our cab let Lois and me off at the administration building. I asked one of a bevy of girls, all pretty, at the long reception desk, where I could find Mead Lederer.

  “You are a journalist, signore? I regret to say that—”

  “I’m no journalist. He expects me. The name is Drum.”

  “Mr. Drum. But of course.”

  A few minutes later we entered a room on the top floor that had a wall of glass looking out over Olympic center toward the Stadio Flaminio. Four men were waiting for us there, two of whom I knew. Mead Lederer was wearing a seersucker suit and the haggard expression of an insomniac, probably a spanking-new insomniac, on his. wide, lantern-jawed face. Colonel Talese had come in uniform. As the Italian Narcotics Bureau chief he was an officer in the Guardia Finanza; the uniform was gray green and as ruthlessly pressed as last night’s raw-silk suit.

  The other two men were Roman Police Chief Battaglia, who was in mufti, was absolutely bald and wore a huge, fierce, black mustache, and the Czech Security Officer, Emil Hodza. The Czech wore a wide-lapeled double-breasted chalk-stripe gray suit. Either it or worry was making him sweat. During the introductions he kept mopping his round face with an already limp handkerchief. He was a plump little guy with thinning gray hair over a pink scalp, big brown bovine eyes and dewlaps hanging on either side of his chin. He looked as sad as an undertaker at a convention of gerontologists.

  After the introductions Colonel Talese explained: “Three years ago Mr. Drum succeeded in capturing Pericles Andros, after Interpol had tried and failed for years.”

  “Let’s hold off on Andros a minute,” I told Talese, and turned to Mead Lederer. “I thought your first concern was finding Kyle. And Hilda Henlein.”

  “Of course it is,” Lederer said.

  “We saw Kyle last night. Or rather, early this morning,” Lois said.

  “What!” Lederer gasped.

  Chief Battaglia said: “The police have been searching all Roma for this boy. You have find him?”

  “He dropped in on us,” I said, and explained what had happened at the Hotel Flora. “But the point is,” I finished, “you seem to be wandering off in all directions at once. Do you want to find Kyle and Hilda—or Andros?”

  “The three of them, of course,” Chief Battaglia said stiffly.

  “Well, Hilda’s probably back in Czechoslovakia by now. She was abducted from her brother’s place at Spanish Villa last night.”

  Emil Hodza gave me a horrified look. “I swear to you, pan, I swear to all of you, we Czechs know nothing about the abduction of Hilda Henlein.” The horrified look became a calculating one as he accused Mead Lederer. “How do we know you Americans haven’t abducted Miss Henlein? She would never have defected willingly. She is a loyal citizen of the—”

  “Say naive, not loyal,” Lois suggested.

  Lederer shouted: “Because we don’t pull stunts like that, Hodza!”

  Hodza’s dewlaps quivered with suppressed anger. “You say, pan. You say.”

  “Gentlemen,” Colonel Talese said. “Gentlemen, please.” He took out a pack of Due Palmes, found it empty, and crumpled it. “The one thing of paramount importance is that we must co-operate. At Spanish Villa my men learned nothing. We did not gather here for you to argue among yourselves.”

  “That,” Chief Battaglia pointed out, “would be a catastrophe. Last night at the Babuino Police Station a journalist—”, he said journalist the way you would say hired killer—“learns Miss Henlein and Kyle Ryder are missing. This morning all the press has the story. This morning there are more journalists than athletes in Olympic Village. They want headlines. They want a story. Do not give them this kind of story.” He drew both hands apart in air to indicate a banner headline: “‘Czechs and Americans accuse each other while Roman police are helpless and athletes remain missing.’” He sighed. “You see? You see what we must avoid?”

  Hodza bowed slightly and mopped his forehead. “As you say, pan. But can Mr. Lederer prove the Americans did not take Hilda Henlein?”

  “We’d have no reason to. What’s between Kyle Ryder and your discus thrower is personal.”

  “They want to get married,” Lois said. “I guess there’s no reason
to keep that secret now.”

  Hodza’s dewlaps quivered again. “If it was a secret until now, as the lady says, then can Mr. Lederer tell us how he knew there was something personal between them?”

  “Kyle’s friends on the squad,” Lederer said. “I questioned them. What about you, Hodza? You Czechs would have every reason to snafu—”

  “Please?”

  “To prevent the affiance. Can you prove you didn’t take Hilda back to Czechoslovakia against her will?”

  Hodza seemed disconcerted. His moist brown eyes had narrowed and he was shaking his head. “Love,” he mused. “I did not know they were in love.” Then he cleared his throat and said in a loud voice: “I cannot prove it, pan. Nor can you prove the reverse.” He turned the moist brown eyes, wide again, to Colonel Talese. “But I can inform you of something most interesting. Most interesting.”

  Talese just waited.

  “This Greek, this man Pericles Andros, this international smuggler and capitalistic killer, this Insurance?”

  “What about him?” I said.

  “This international smuggler Pericles Andros … we were discussing before Pan Drum arrived … this capitalistic profiteer and fascist lackey, was for several months in Czechoslovakia during the early days of the People’s War. That is to say in late 1939 and early 1940.”

  “You are sure of this?” Talese looked startled.

  “Absolutely, pan. Even then he had important connections in five or six countries. Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, Germany, my own Czechoslovakia.”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  “In Czechoslovakia Pericles Andros was—how would you say it?—a procurator—”

  “Procurer?” This was Lederer.

  “Exactly. A procurer for the fascist rapists of my country, a procurer of expensive women and good wine and the best foods of Nazi-occupied Europe. Keeping the fascists fat and sleek in Czechoslovakia, he grew rich. And more than that; he knew Gerhard Henlein, who then was the largest wine distributor in Praha. In Prague.”

  Plump little Hodza, sweating copiously, dewlaps aquiver, held center stage now. With his unexpected story torn from the pages of Czechoslovakia’s tragic history, he had us all eating out of the palm of his hand, but he didn’t seem to realize it. He was as nervous and agitated as ever as he went on.