“I think we’ve talked enough.”
“But you will not kill me now. You think you will take me to your Naples Control of K Section, yes? I am worth more alive than dead. You have had time to control anger and think about this. What I know would close many of your files back in Washington. So listen to my offer. Everything I do must end in profit. It is my first rule in life. Your death now will gain nothing for me. You are only a nuisance, an emotional indulgence, you and your pitiful little band of hoodlums. You are fond of Gabriella, but have you considered what tragedy you bring her to? Or have you considered that she might betray you?”
“Get to the point.”
“I do so. I ask you to give up this foolish venture. O’Malley lied to you. He is a petty thief, and the Brothers must punish him, that is all. Zio cannot permit his breach of discipline. And since Gabriella associates with you, Zio condemns her, too.” Karl Kronin hitched up his trouser leg an inch more. “So, yes, I get to the point. You will leave Naples tonight. You will fly back to the States. I give you back your life this way. And you will consider the problem entirely resolved.” Durell shook his head. “I think not.”
Then the telephone rang.
The sound was discreet in the perfumed apartment. The instrument was at Kronin’s elbow, and he looked at Durell as if for permission to answer it; but he did not wait for Durell’s nod before he picked it up. His bald head shone glossily as he inclined his head to speak into the phone.
“Pronto . . . Si, si .. . Sono qui . . .” He listened and looked at Durell’s tall, dark figure. His smile moved like a wound across his harsh face. He nodded again. “Buono .. . Buono . .. Ciao.”
He hung up and crossed his leg, careless of the gleaming metal that shone under his carefully creased trousers. “You lose, Cajun. Throw, game, and pot. Everything. You’re carnazza successe—dead meat, as we say. That was a call from my men. O’Malley has come over to our side. We promised him amnesty for the little Gabriella, whom he loves so much. Such a weakness, love! O’Malley would do anything for our promise not to harm the girl. So now we have him and Gabriella.”
“You’re lying.”
Kronin was not disturbed. “I never lie. You have nothing, I say. Like Dugalef, whom you killed, you no longer have even your life.”
It was almost true.
It happened so fast that afterward Durell was unsure of what he’d seen. But he remembered thinking of Colonel Mignon’s advice: The man who wants to kill you had best do it himself. He heard a click, and something moved in the shiny aluminum leg Kronin displayed. The sound, a brief phut!, came after he felt a stunning blow in his shoulder that knocked him back toward the balcony. Too late, he thought. There wasn’t anything in his dossier about gimmicks in his trick leg.
He fired once, and again, but he was off-balance and not sure of his aim. Kronin moved with astonishing speed out of his armchair. At the same time, Durell glimpsed movement from the balcony, where a shadow abruptly blotted out the sunlight from the court beyond. He felt despair and a rage of defeat, and then something hit him and wiped out all the light completely.
16
HE SAID, “Ouch!” and he said, “Take it easy,” and then he said, “I’m sorry about that.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“It was stupid.”
“You couldn’t know. Nobody knew.”
“Turn off the light, will you?” he asked.
“The doc will be through in a minute.”
“Is it bad?”
“You’re lucky.”
He could see nothing beyond the glare of the surgical light above his face. He hurt all over. He knew this couldn’t be true and he concentrated on the pain and found that there was none in his left shoulder, only a feeling of something probing in there, and he guessed that was where the bullet went and where the surgeon was working.
“Kronin had a gun mechanism built into his metal leg,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“How did you know?”
“You’ve been cursing it ever since we reached you in Adolfo’s place, fifteen seconds after we heard the shot.” “Well, hell, where were you before that?”
“Listening. We had the place bugged in cooperation with the Naples carabinieri.”
“Are you a cop?”
“Cajun, don’t you know who you’re talking to?” “No,” he said.
“All right. In a minute. Doc, how is it?”
Another voice said, “Sono finito.”
“Will I live?” Durell asked.
“Unfortunately.”
“That’s how I feel about it,” Durell said.
“Here, swallow these pills.”
“What are they?”
“Juice pellets. You’ll be on your feet in half an hour. Riding high, wide, and handsome.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather die.” He swallowed the pills the hand gave him.
Onan McElroy was an elf in a green Borsalino, a silk suit, pointed Italian shoes, and an exclusive silk cravat from Theresa Barra’s. He had big pink ears and a saddle nose and blue eyes as old and wise as a leprechaun’s. His hair was the color. of dirty sand. His brogue was atrocious, his Italian perfect, and he was the Naples resident for K Section. He smoked a crooked Italian cigar and fondled a bottle of Stravei, then poured it into a glass of red Campari and added a dollop of Beefeater gin.
“How,” he said, and sighed with sybaritic luxury. “No bourbon?”
“At your elbow. Does the arm work?”
Durell tried it. “A little.”
“It was a small slug, after all. It takes more than that to kill you.”
“It knocked me down.”
“Sorry, that was me coming in the window.”
“What about Kronin?”
“Old Karl got clean away.”
“How come?”
Onan McElroy said, “I told you, we all make mistakes. This was a day for it. Who killed precious Adolfo?”
“Kronin’s people, I think.”
“The cops want to know.”
“Tell them anything,” Durell said.
“Not good enough.” McElroy pulled at one of his big pink ears. They sat in McElroy’s small living room, where the doctor had patched Durell’s wound. There was a view of the bay and the Amalfi peninsula creaming into the blue Mediterranean haze. Onan’s cover for his job was as the owner of a fleet of Naples’ notorious taxicabs. He was an Italian citizen, a bachelor of thirty-two, and in his spare time was an authority on the excavations at Herculaneum and an associate of the Naples National Museum. The books in his apartment proved it. When Durell looked at his watch and saw that it was just four o’clock, he was surprised. A lot had happened in a short time. Onan went on talking.
“The locals and Rome Interpol pegged Adolfo as their pigeon last month after the big hoo-hah about heroin refining here by the Fratelli della Notte. When were things different in Naples? But a few kids were caught when one died of an overdose, and the newspapers complained. Adolfo refined heroin as a sideline. I must say, I don’t think the Fratelli worked that street so much. But trying to clean them out is like trying to clean up the Augean Stables, old Cajun.” McElroy paused. “Adolfo was a weak flower, and the carabinieri had high hopes for him. Sooner or later they figured to nail him to the wall, screw him, and make him vomit all he knew, including dope on his precious aristocratic mother in her precious aristocratic palazzo on the Riviera de Chiaia.”
“And now he’s dead,” Durell said.
“Now he’s dead,” Onan echoed, and downed his Stravei-Campari-gin mixture. “It needs some soda.” “Do the cops want me?”
“If they catch you, yes.”
“Then I’d better move on.” Durell stood up with care. “I’m worried. Kronin thought he had me in a box. He said O’Malley and the girl defected. I’d better go see.”
“And if they have?”
“Then I’m up the creek.”
“Do you want a lead, old Cajun?” McElro
y grinned. “I’ve got a bypass out of that creek, but I don’t know where it will take you. Ever hear of the Baron Uccelatti?” “It’s a familiar name. I’m worried about O’Malley and Gabriella.”
“Well, they went thataway, partner.”
“To Uccelatti? How do you know?”
“Private plane taxied right up the Castel dell’ Ovo off the Partanope, near the rattrap apartment you took. Relax. You can’t catch them this minute.”
“Did they go willingly?”
“Who knows? They went. Laughing and smiling and the girl holding O’Malley’s arm. One of my cabbies saw the whole thing. No visible guns in their backs.”
“And the other two? Bruno and Joey?”
“Vanished. Lots of ratholes for rats in Naples, Cajun. Have some more bourbon. I’m not offering you my Stravei. It’s hard to get. They don’t export it to the States yet, either.”
“What about Baron Uccelatti?”
“His plane. One of the richest men in Italy. Private yacht anchored at Palermo in Sicily right now. By air it’s a short hop. They’ll be landing in twenty minutes.” McElroy consulted his Omega. His complicated model looked like an instrument off the panel of a seven-o-seven. “Yup, twenty minutes. But I don’t advise you to follow.”
“Why not? It’s my job.”
“They went willingly, Cajun. And you don’t tangle with the barone. Next to Old Uncle he’s top man in the hierarchy of the Fratelli della Notte.”
“All the more reason,” Durell said.
“You’re out of your mind. You’ll have to live on the pills, or your shoulder will cramp you more than a bit.” “I’ll go now,” Durell said. He stood up.
“Take your tux,” McElroy advised. “Or I’ll get one for you. Baron Uccelatti is a very high-living personality. Very formal. Like he’s got a swarm of bikini girls all around him on that floating palace of a yacht. You’d look like a bum among them.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Durell said.
McElroy sighed and pulled again at his big ears. Durell wondered why they weren’t longer.
“That’s what I figured,” McElroy said. He tossed Durell an Alitalia ticket envelope. “Your plane leaves in forty minutes for Palermo. I’ll give you a supply of juice pills. Happy hunting.”
17
HE BORROWED a book from Onan and read it on the plane to Palermo. The book dealt with castles and archeological sites on Sicily, and Durell searched it carefully for places that began with “San Gi—.” He hoped Adolfo Cimadori’s last words meant something. He hoped that Adolfo, out of his petty soul, had tried to spite his murderers by telling him where to find Vecchio Zio.
He found names such as San Giorgio and San Giuliano and San Gilo and San Giovanni and checked them against the sites marked on the folded map in the back of the book. They all seemed a long way from Palermo. And Palermo was where Gabriella began her trip fifteen years ago to visit Zio. It hadn’t taken her too long, although she had slept in the car part of the way. Still, fifteen years ago Sicily had scarcely recovered from Operation Husky, and the roads were notoriously bad after the invasion chewed on them. She couldn’t have gone more than twenty or thirty miles. But in which direction? He couldn’t guess. He gave it up and took another of Onan’s pills. His shoulder ached for a time and then the pain went away.
Long ago he had been intrigued by Sicily’s eternal fascination, but he wished his return were under better auspices. The air at Boccadifalco Airport was immediately languorous, almost subversive with its soft appeal. It was dusk when he arrived, and the lights of Palermo around the Conca d’Oro were beads of pearls strung on the throat of the bay. Looming and brooding to the north like some ancient deity was the bulk of Monte Pellegrino, dominating this city of Carthaginians,
Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Norman conquerors, and that fantastic Swabian, Frederick II.
There was the usual crush and confusion at the airport, but he had no difficulty finding a taxi.
The taxi found him.
The man jumped out, saluted dramatically, and said, “At your service, signor. I am here through the compliments of Signor McElroy.”
He was short and dark and looked like an Arab except for his blue Norman eyes. He was chewing a mandarin orange, and the taxi was redolent with the scent of citrus with a solid base of garlic.
“Why don’t you announce it with a trumpet?” Durell objected. “Do you work for McElroy?”
“Si, signor. A great honor. This is his taxi. A branch of his business at Napoli. And my name, signor, is Michelangelo Cefalu.”
“All right, Mike. I suppose you have a hotel all picked out for me?”
“Certainly. The Villa del Golfo, at Acquasanta. Very fine, very expensive. You are rich Americano, no?” “No,” Durell said. He was aware of Thompson’s currency in his money belt. It would eventually present bookkeeping problems for K Section’s accountants. “The room is reserved?”
“All is in order. Please to get in.”
The trip was short, fast, and wild. An A.Li.S. helicopter beat the languid air overhead as they left the airport. He ate an orange out of a paper bag he found on the back seat of the taxi—after peeling it carefully.
The Villa del Golfo sprawled in its own park near the Piazza Acquasanta, a vast pile of architecture stamped with Palermo’s unique history. The rooms held mosaic relics from surrounding ruins, and the windows were carved with Moorish filigrees. In the garden there were palm trees, oranges, and almond trees in flower, like a galaxy of earth-bound stars twinkling in the night. Durell was expected, although the hotel was filled with visitors to the local dog show and the restaurant jammed with tourists and proud Palmeritans.
His window faced the darkly glittering sea that had carried the galleys of Rome and Phoenicia and the ships of Aragon. There were tennis courts, and the parking lot was filled with a remuda of Mercedes, Ferarris and several Fleetwood Cadillacs. The orchestra in the dining room played “Gondolf, Gondola,” and sounded lonesome for Venice. Durell fanned the room for listening devices, then showered and ordered dinner sent up, a meal that included the Sicilian pasta con sarde, with a bottle of Faro wine. He began to feel lonely, too. The wine smelled of orange blossoms and bergamot. He took his glass out to the balcony and surveyed the beach and the waterfront.
There was a yacht basin not far off, and it was easy to spot Baron Uccelatti’s Vesper. She was an auxiliary schooner of 110 feet, snow-white and floodlit, moored in wealthy exclusiveness some distance from the smaller boats that crowded the basin. The teak decks seemed aswarm with people, but it was too far off to make them out. Some were diving and swimming in the warm waters of the bay, tended by two small power boats that belonged to the Vesper. Most of the swimmers were girls, and most of what he could see of the girls was a lot of tanned and glorious skin.
He wondered how to manage a meeting with Baron Uccelatti. The informality aboard seemed promising, but it might also be an invitation to play Daniel in the lion’s den. His shoulder began to ache again. The waterproof bandage was itchy. He flexed his left arm tentatively and tried to lift it with speed and accuracy, as if using a gun. The pain stabbed him, and he gave it up. He would have to fly on one wing. He owed something for this to Karl Kronin.
Then someone tapped discreetly on his door.
Presumably no one knew he was here but Onan McElroy. He asked who it was and heard the thick voice of Michelangelo Cefalu and opened it, using standard DUA procedure (Dangerous, Unknown Approach). It was just as well. The taxi driver was not alone. A tall man in a dinner jacket—he remembered McElroy’s suggestion for his wardrobe—stood behind the Sicilian in a way that meant that Mike had a gun pointed at his back.
“I’m sorry, Signor Durell—”
“No matter. Who is your friend?”
“No friend, signor—”
The man in the dinner jacket spoke precise English. “I am sorry, too, sir, but it is necessary. We would not want you to refuse the baron’s invitation.”
“No, I w
ouldn’t want to do that. What am I invited to?”
“He requests the pleasure of your company, sir,” said the tall man. “Please do not disappoint him. He knows of you, you see. He looks forward to your visit to the Vesper.”
Cefalu made pathetic, apologetic noises. So much for Onan McElroy’s help.
“It’s fine, Mike,” Durell said. “You can go.”
The formally dressed man nodded. When Cefalu scuttled away down the hotel corridor, Durell could not see a gun in the newcomer’s hand. But it didn’t necessarily mean there hadn’t been one before. The man smiled pleasantly.
“I am authorized to tell you, sir, that you are given safe conduct and will be escorted back to the hotel before midnight.”
“How much is the safe conduct worth?”
The other stiffened. “As much as Baron Uccelatti makes of it. He is a man of honor, if that relieves your fear.”
“It would take more than that to relieve me,” Durell said. “But nothing ventured, nothing gained, to coin a phrase. Lead on, my good man.”
The man flushed, nodded, and waited for Durell to get his coat.
It was not a long walk to the yacht basin. The sea breeze was like a powder puff, and the scent of lemons made a counterpoint to the fading music from the Villa del Golfo. After a hundred yards they turned down a darker side street and came to an elaborate iron gate, which his escort opened with a touch of a finger on a small lion’s head, and then they crossed a private garden lumpily shadowed with oleanders and palm trees. The lawn was like a Sarouk carpet. Ancient Roman statues loomed like shrouded ghosts in the gloom. Their feet made gritty noises as they walked along a shell path to the opposite gate.
Beyond the gate there was a glisten of water, a gleam of polished teak and brass, the lift and fall of a boat tender at a private dock. But they never reached it.
Assignment - Palermo Page 11