Peril Is My Pay Page 8

  “Almost there,” Talese muttered, then cursed under his breath as headlights impaled us from behind and a large ambulance or hearse cut out and passed us on the left, the eerie ee-ooo, ee-ooo of its horn like a lament for the dying or the dead it was rushing through the night to fetch.

  “Imbeciles!” Talese hissed. “Why rush? Carnuvale will wait. He is dead.”

  We pulled up a few minutes later behind the hearse. Two men carrying a furled canvas stretcher between them had just reached the edge of the excavation. Three other cars were parked there. From one of them a spotlight shone on what remained of the frail barrier the Peugeot had crashed through.

  As we got out of the Fiat, a uniformed policeman saw Talese, came over and saluted. They spoke for a moment in Italian.

  “You wish to see it?” Talese asked me.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  A moment later I followed Talese along a truck ramp that led down into the excavation.

  One of the policemen had given Talese a flashlight. In its light we could see black skid marks veering diagonally across the raw wood of the ramp. Talese turned and pointed his light back up toward the lip of the excavation. The break in the barrier was ten yards to the left. The skid marks angled across the ramp downward from left to right. A novice in police work could have reconstructed what had happened. Plunging through the barrier fast enough for momentum to carry it to the ramp, the Peugeot had swerved across the wood planking and gone off its far side.

  Talese stood where the skid marks began. “How far would you say it is from the barrier here, signore?”

  “Maybe fifteen feet straight down.”

  “Five meters. Yes. And from where the truck left the ramp to the bottom of the pit?”

  I walked across the ramp and peered over the edge. “No more than twenty feet,” I said. “Maybe less.”

  “Bene. The truck falls five meters and strikes the ramp. You will notice the wood is undamaged. It landed on its tires, signore. Then it falls six or seven meters more, and Carnuvale is dead. Would you say he is a very unlucky man, signore?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “If the fall killed him. Come.”

  The Peugeot truck lay on its side. One headlight was smashed, the safety glass in the windshield had splintered and gone opaque, the front bumper had torn loose at one end and dangled, and one front fender was badly battered.

  Two kerosene lamps, probably from the night watchman at the excavation, cast a lurid, flickering glow on the wreck. Three cops were prowling around it and two more stood over Carnuvale’s body, while a man in civilian clothes got up from his knees, dusted his hands off, said something which made one of the cops laugh softly and self-consciously, and picked up a black leather bag.

  I lit a cigarette while Talese conversed rapidly in Italian with the doctor and the police. I’d chain-lit a second cigarette and had smoked most of it when Talese came back to me.

  Carnuvale’s skull is crushed,” he said. “From repeated blows, the doctor thinks, though he will not be positive until a thorough examination is made at the morgue. Repeated blows, signore.”

  “Not caused by the accident?”

  “There is much blood on the seat of the truck. None whatever on the windshield. But of course Carnuvale was thrown through the right front window as the truck fell, and it is possible the ‘repeated blows’ resulted from his fall.” Talese shook his head. “Possible, but the doctor thinks not. The doctor believes Carnuvale was already dead when the truck went through the barrier.” Pointing to the tarp-covered corpse, Talese said: “Ècco-la. The man was murdered.”

  Which, I thought, made the murderers Kyle Ryder, Hilda Henlein and her brother. I didn’t say anything, and then Talese spent a few moments examining the dead man’s effects. He brought two items over to me.

  The first was a small blue folder about seven inches long and three inches wide. It had been crumpled. “In his hand, signore,” Talese told me. “They found this in his hand.”

  Talese held the flashlight steady while I looked at the folder.

  0261 1464440

  Passenger Ticket and Baggage Check

  PAN AMERICAN

  World Airways System

  issued by

  Pan American World Airways, Inc., World’s

  Most Experienced Airline

  Member of International Air Transport Association Each passenger should carefully examine this ticket, particularly the conditions on Page 2.

  Page 1

  The folder was empty. The ticket had been ripped out.

  “You will notice the issue number in the upper right-hand corner,” Talese told me. “We can check with Pan American’s office at the airport to learn what the ticket-holder’s destination was.”

  “Or when his plane takes off. If it hasn’t already.”

  Talese clapped a hand to his head, which for the colonel was like springing over a seven-foot wall and doing a handstand on the other side. “Of course!” he shouted. “Why Carnuvale? It doesn’t have to be Carnuvale. Perhaps one of the Henleins, or the American, Kyle Ryder. Perhaps the plane hasn’t taken off yet.”

  He rushed over to one of the cops and spoke to him. The man nodded, saluted and ran up the ramp. “He will radio the Guardia office,” Talese explained. “They will call the airport.”

  Then Talese showed me a lottery ticket. On the back someone had scrawled in red ink: K. Farmer—Villa di Spagna—V. Margutta.

  Carnuvale had been instructed to contact Kenny Farmer at Simonetta’s villa. But by whom? I remembered the big, lazy-looking but cat-quick American. Carnuvale knew and had worked for Pericles Andros. Simonetta had denied knowing the Greek, at least by physical description. But Fassolino, on his deathbed after the carabinieri had shot him down on the Spanish Steps, had sworn Andros had gone there with him to kill Lois and me. Because Andros had been at Villa di Spagna immediately after the hit-and-run homicide on the Via Veneto, had he heard me question Simonetta? Then where did Carnuvale fit in? As a go-between for Andros, who was again a fugitive? To arrange tonight’s pickup at the Trattoría Crespi? But Carnuvale wouldn’t have needed Kenny Farmer for that, would he?

  Talese was saying, “… another visit to Villa di Spagna, as soon as we hear from the airport. I was thinking, Signor Drum. You are very lucky.”

  “Lucky how?”

  “Mozzoni knows Pericles Andros in the old days. Mozzoni is dead. Fassolino knows Andros in the old days. Fassolino is dead. And Carnuvale the same.” We started up the ramp. “You knew Andros in the old days too, signore.”

  “So did you.”

  “I? I am of the Guardia; that is different. I am Andros’ natural enemy, as the lion is the zebra’s.”

  We reached the top of the ramp. “Yeah, but who’s the lion and who’s the zebra?” I said.

  Talese laughed, said, “Perhaps when all this has ended we will know,” and then waited expectantly as the cop he’d sent up the ramp earlier trotted toward us from one of the police cars.

  First Talese looked triumphant, then he looked furious. He barked something at the cop, who stuttered into silence. “All right,” Talese said. “Bene, signore. Now we have them. But if not for the metropolitan police, we would have had them in Rome.”

  “The plane took off?”

  “Yes. The ticket was issued to Wolfgang Henlein, Czech citizen with Italian naturalization papers. With him on the flight were Hilda Henlein, Czech passport, and Kyle Ryder, American. But Battaglia’s police—bah! They watch the airport. They watch the train stations, the bus terminals. Through their fingers our three fugitives slip. You call this police work?”

  I didn’t say anything. The cops at the airport could have been coffee-klatching. They could have grown fatigued with their long watch. Like cops anywhere in the world, they could have been understaffed, with just a handful of them to cover every departure desk at the airport. They even could have been bribed. It didn’t matter now. The Henleins and Kyle Ryder had taken off.


  “Now we have them,” Talese said again. “The Pan-American night flight to Paris, Signor Drum. It lands at Le Bourget Airport 0:30 hours tomorrow morning.” He shrugged. “Why they have flown to Paris I don’t know, but an agent of Interpol will be waiting at the flight stairs. It seems, signore, we have your elusive lovebirds in our hands at last.”

  Talese opened the door of his Fiat. “But now of course they may no longer be lovebirds. Now they may be murderers.”

  We drove in the Fiat to Spanish Villa.

  It turned out to be one of those frustrating nights any cop anywhere, public or private, has to face often enough to make him wish he’d decided on selling TV sets or building bridges or even diving for buried treasure—anything but police work.

  All the lights burned on the second floor of Spanish Villa. Phonograph or radio music floated out the open windows. Two plainclothesmen were loitering outside.

  The only thing wrong with Spanish Villa was that it had no occupants.

  When we’d returned downstairs one of the plainclothesmen told Talese that was clearly impossible. Talese suggested acidly he see for himself. He saw for himself. Worried now, he let us know that a truck had arrived a couple of hours earlier to deliver artists’ supplies, among other things several heavy canvases and a big easel. Doesn’t Simonetta produce mammoth paintings? the plainclothesman protested. The truck had backed right up to the stoop of Spanish Villa, and the delivery men had struggled noisily with their supplies. It was a hot night, they had complained. Why did anyone want such heavy material brought on a night like this? They were very clumsy and very droll. They had stayed only fifteen minutes.

  Apparently they had taken Simonetta away with them. Simonetta and the big American as well, the plainclothes-man admitted sheepishly. He had been in Spanish Villa. Neither of the plainclothesmen had seen either Simonetta or Kenny Farmer enter the rear of the panel truck. From where they had stationed themselves they couldn’t see the rear of the panel truck.

  One of them had written the name of the artists’ supply company on a pad he carried.

  Talese sighed. We drove to his office, where Talese checked out the owner of the panel truck and found a home address for him. Talese called, spoke for exactly one minute on the phone and hung up.

  “A joke,” he said. “Simonetta and Farmer told the truck driver they did it as a joke. Simonetta, she is famous, you understand. A would-be artist was waiting outside to show her some miniatures he had done. Incredibly inept, she said. The man was a nuisance. Would the truck driver help her and Farmer slip away? Just a few blocks? He would and did.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes, both.”

  I called Lois at the Flora.

  “Chet? I’m so glad! It’s been hours and hours. I was starting to get worried. Have you found them?”

  “Almost,” I said.

  “I really mean it, I was worried. It’s been quiet as a mouse here. What happened?”

  I told her most of it, leaving out the possibility that Kyle, Hilda and Wolfgang, or any one of them, or any combination of them, were murderers.

  “Just promise me you won’t leave a girl in the dark that long without calling. Okay? Can you come over tonight? I’m getting into the Roman habit of a late dinner.”

  “I want to hang around here till we get the call from Paris.” I added: “I’d like to see you too, Lois,” and meant it. The thought of spending some time with Lois Hackett suddenly appealed to me.

  She laughed self-consciously. “Thanks for the kind words, anyway. But after last night—”

  “Do us both a favor—forget about last night. I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe all this will be over by then. Late breakfast at Doney’s?”

  “Sounds wonderful.” There was a pause, then: “I miss you, Chet.” Another pause. “I shouldn’t have said that.” A longer pause. “Marianne would want to cut me into little pieces. And I wouldn’t blame her.”

  Lois thought she kept putting her foot in her mouth. I didn’t see it that way at all. It was her naive frankness which appealed to me. I had never known a pretty girl less cut out for the sort of intrigue she had got herself into than Lois Hackett, and who wants to go chasing after Mata Haris all the time?

  “I wouldn’t blame her at all,” Lois said in a very small voice.

  “Stop running yourself down. Have some chow, get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.” I almost added, “I miss you too,” but didn’t. After all, Lois was right: Marianne had introduced us.

  The Paris call came at a few minutes after one in the morning. Talese hardly said a word. He just listened. His face was bleak.

  When he hung up he told me:

  “They did not land at Le Bourget. There was fog. Orly Airport lies across Paris from Le Bourget, and they landed at Orly. Interpol was notified, but not soon enough. The pilot made the decision at the last moment. Orly was clear, you see.”

  “Then they got away?”

  “For several months last year the French worked to make Orly the most efficient airport in all Europe, modernizing the customs and immigration sheds.” Talese gave me a wan smile. “Apparently they succeeded all too well. Twenty minutes after Pan-American’s night flight landed, all passengers had left the airport. Five minutes later the Interpol agent arrived. They are in Paris somewhere. Or on their way somewhere in France. God knows why.”

  Talese gave me another wan smile. It was one of those nights.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “IT’S ONE OF THOSE DAYS,” Lois Hackett said the next afternoon, which was Wednesday, as we sat at a table on the Via Veneto outside Doney’s. “Look at that sun. I can practically feel the freckles popping out all over my face. Every time there’s a sun like this I get a whole new crop of them.”

  “Relax. Some people like freckles.”

  “Oh, sure. Little boys with toads in their pockets and a can of worms and a willow switch for a fishing pole.”

  “Me, for instance,” I said.

  “You for instance what?”

  “I like freckles on a girl with red hair and green eyes.”

  Lois made a face, but said: “Anyway, I like to hear you say it.”

  This was our second stop at Doney’s. We’d had breakfast on the Veneto, then made like tourists for several hours, window-shopping on the Condotti, prowling through the ruins of the Imperial Forum and Capitoline Hill, conjuring up images of gladiators in the Roman brick shell of the Colosseum, bouncing in a taxi over the ancient paving stones of the Old Appian Way and listening to the ghost tread of Caesar’s legions marching back from glory.

  It had worked for a while. We could almost forget why we’d come to Rome, even though I’d called Mead Lederer before breakfast to learn only that Junius Ryder had cabled and was on his way to Rome. That hadn’t been news to me. I’d called Ryder the night before, after leaving the Guardia Finanza.

  “Damn it!” Ryder had stormed on as clear a trans-Atlantic connection as I had ever heard. “What the hell kind of a detective are you? I get it from the newspapers before I get it from my own man. Kyle’s missing under mysterious circumstances, they say. What the hell’s going on out there?”

  I told him, and he stormed some more, and I asked him if he wanted me to fly to Paris and start looking for Kyle without any leads. “I wouldn’t get any hopes up, though,” I warned him.

  “Don’t you get any hopes up, Drum. If you think I’m going to pay you a hundred bucks a day and expenses to go gallivanting all over Europe without the faintest idea where to find my son, you’re nuts. You came with pretty high recommendations. They told me you were the best private dick in D.C.”

  I let that one ride. I didn’t blame him for yelling. I’d been hired to keep an eye on Kyle, and Kyle was missing.

  “Just sit on your hands, Drum. The way you seem to have been doing all along. I’ll want a full report when I see you. I’m flying to Rome.”

  At breakfast I’d had nothing to tell Lois that I hadn’t told her
the night before, except that Junius Ryder was on his way. She was wearing a dress the color they call eggshell. It looked as prim as a schoolmarm’s, in front, with a high neckline and half sleeves. But in back it swooped all the way to her waist.

  “You look like a harlequin sliced the wrong way,” I’d said.

  “A harlequin?”

  “Pretty school-marm in front and gorgeous femme fatale in back.”

  “Keep it up, mister. I like the music.”

  Then we’d done our sight-seeing. It was one of those days that make the tourists flock to Italy in summer: blue sky without a fleck of cloud in it, strong sun but a cooling breeze blowing in off the Tyrrhenian Sea, and here and there suddenly in stolen moments Rome looking as it must have looked two thousand years ago.

  Now, in the long shadows of late afternoon, we’d returned to Doney’s. We drank vermouth cassis. After that by-play about her freckles, we both fell silent.

  “What’s the matter?” Lois asked.

  “Nothing. Another drink?”

  “You look funny. Grooves between your eyes. Are you finished with the case for good?”

  “Junius Ryder called me off it.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Lois, if there was one damn thing I could do, I’d do it.”

  “Ouch. Now you’re mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you and I’m not mad at Rome and these vermouth cassis are great and I still like a green-eyed red-head with freckles.”

  “Then you’re mad at yourself. That’s worse.”

  “I’m just wondering, that’s all.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Why France? They must have had a reason for going there. If I knew the reason it might help me find them.”

  “All they wanted to do was get mar … Chet, do you see who I see?”

  I followed the direction of her eyes. Waddling past the dime-sized tables along the Veneto in our direction, his thinning gray hair tousled and his big brown eyes as sad as a hound dog’s, was Emil Hodza. The double-breasted suit was dark gray this time. Hodza grasped the back of an empty wicker chair for support, and kept coming. He had spotted us. I realized he was drunk. No coincidence about meeting him here; in the shank of the afternoon in Rome, if a man felt low he came to the Veneto to do his drinking. Sooner or later he’d get to Doney’s. Everyone did.