Carmody's Run

by Bill Pronzini

  Carmody finished his cigar, walked away from St. Marks along the Grand Canal quay. He found a stop for water taxis, rode in one to the Rio de Fontego. It turned out to be near the arched Rialto Bridge, in the approximate center of the city. Via Giordano was a quiet street lined with old houses and a few small shops that would be shuttered after dark. From the seawall at the foot of the street he could see for some distance both ways along the canal and back along Via Giordano. Della Robbia had chosen well. Carmody hadn’t expected otherwise, but he hadn’t had any prior dealings with the Italian and he was a careful man besides.

  He got back into the water taxi and went to keep his appointment with Renzo Lucarelli.

  Lucarelli was forty-two years old, thick-necked and wolf-eyed. Until recently he’d sported a luxuriant black military mustache that made him look more like an Italian Army colonel than a criminal on the run. Carmody had had him shave it off for his new identity and passport photo. Lucarelli missed the mustache; he kept fingering his upper lip self-consciously, as if he felt conspicuous without it.

  He peered at the map spread open on the table, laid a thick forefinger on an X marked on the Venice Lagoon. “This boat, this Piraeus, will meet the launch here?” he asked.

  Carmody said, “That’s right.”

  “But we can be seen from the Quartiere.”

  “Who’s going to see us?”

  “Gambresca has many eyes. So does the carabinieri—”

  “Gambresca can’t have any idea when or how you’re leaving Venice; neither can the government. And there’s nothing along the Quartiere except warehouses and anchored freighters. Even if we’re seen, nobody’s going to question the transfer. Launches take passengers out to private vessels all the time. I know, I checked it.”

  “But a little farther out on the Lagoon...”

  “Listen,” Carmody said, “we want to stay in the shipping roads. Any farther out and we’re inviting the attention you’re so worried about. Besides, the quicker we get onto the Piraeus and out of the Lagoon, the better.”

  Lucarelli stroked his barren upper lip. “You are certain of this man Vickers?”

  “Della Robbia vouches for him. And I’ll be along to see that he’s no problem.”

  “I do not like putting my life in the hands of men I have never met.”

  “Yes? You’ve only known me four days.”

  “I have known of your great reputation for many years,” Lucarelli said, and fingered his naked lip again. “The Piraeus is old and rusty, you said. Suppose something happens to her engines before we reach Sardinia? She might even sink in a sudden squall—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lucarelli, I told you the boat was all right. Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? How do you figure I got that reputation of mine? Now stop fussing like an old woman and quit asking questions I’ve already answered.”

  Lucarelli gestured apologetically. “It is only that I am nervous, Signor Carmody. I meant no offense.” He lifted the glass at his elbow, drank off the last of the red wine it contained. Then he glanced over to where his woman sat paging through a magazine. “Rita, another glass of wine.”

  She stood immediately, came to the table. She was tall and plump and huge-breasted, with thick black hair pulled back tight from her forehead and fastened with a jeweled barrette; Carmody thought she’d have made a fine Rueben’s nude. He preferred slender, less top-heavy women himself.

  Her expression was neutral but her eyes betrayed her unease. She was not bearing up under the waiting any better than Lucarelli.

  Lucarelli gave her his glass, then said to Carmody, “You will have some wine now, Signor Carmody?”

  “No. And you’d better go easy on that stuff yourself. If we go tonight I don’t want you drunk or anywhere near it.”

  “Then it will be tonight?”

  “Everything’s set for it. I don’t see any reason for holding off another day.”

  “Good. Ah, good.”

  Rita poured Lucarelli’s glass full of Chianti, brought it back to him, went over and sat down again with her magazine. She hadn’t said a word since Carmody’s arrival twenty minutes ago.

  The room they were in was the main parlor of a crumbling building perched on the edge of Rio San Spirito, in a northeastern sector not far from Laguna Morta and the island that served as the city cemetery. A poor neighborhood; and a poor house that had water-stained wallpaper, rococo lighting fixtures tarnished by age, and a lingering odor of damp decay mixed with the fish-and-garbage reek of the canal outside. It was a long way from the walled palace-house Lucarelli claimed to have occupied on Lido Island before the fat little world he’d created for himself had collapsed.

  Lucarelli was, or had been, a smuggler and black-marketeer who dealt in the lucrative commodity of cigarettes. The Italian government owned a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of all tobacco products, and imposed a high duty on the import of American and English brands. Since most Italians preferred the imported to the raw homemade variety, and the demand grew greater every year, tons of contraband cigarettes were smuggled annually into the country. Lucarelli’s operation, independent of syndicate ties, had been one of the largest in the northern provinces. He’d had cigarettes coming into Venice across the gulf from Trieste and down from Switzerland, and a fleet of trucks and men to distribute them throughout Italy.

  But then the Guardia de Finanza, the agents of the ministry that ran the monopoly for the government, had made a series of raids that left Lucarelli’s operation hurting and vulnerable. And one of the other cigarette smugglers in the city, a long-time rival of Lucarelli’s named Gambresca, had seen his chance and ordered two unsuccessful attempts on Lucarelli’s life with the Guardia de Finanza and the local carabinieri preparing to make an arrest on one side, and Gambresca and his group devouring what was left of Lucarelli’s empire on the other, Lucarelli had been forced to abandon his palace-house and most of his possessions and to go into hiding. The woman, Rita, his mistress of several years, was the only person he’d taken with him.

  If he hadn’t waited so long he would have been able to get out of Italy on his own; he’d amassed a fortune in smuggling profits, most of which he’d brought with him in cash. But with the heat on from both sides, he’d been afraid to trust former friends and allies and afraid to chance any known escape routes. So, out of desperation, he’d gotten word to Guiseppe Piombo, Carmody’s Italian contact in Rome. It was costing him $25,000 for Carmody’s services, and it was cheap at the price. Lucarelli knew it too. If Carmody had been a gouger, he could have asked and gotten twice as much.

  It was Piombo who had brought in Gino Della Robbia. Carmody needed a man in Venice who knew the city, knew people both reliable and close-mouthed, and Piombo said Della Robbia was that man. The recommendation was good enough for Carmody, but he still hadn’t entrusted Della Robbia with Lucarelli’s name, the location of the San Spirito house, or any except essential details. No one other than Piombo had that information. The fewer people who knew, the less chance there was of something screwing up.

  Della Robbia had proved capable, and now all the details were set. They would take Vickers’ boat straight down the Adriatic and into the Mediterranean, then swing around Sicily and go up to the southern coast of Sardinia to the port of Cagliari. Lucarelli wanted to live in an Italian speaking area, and the rich man’s playground of Sardinia was a good place to get lost if you had enough money, a new name, and a new background that would stand up to any but the sharpest scrutiny. Carmody had made arrangements for a villa outside Cagliari and a set of forged papers that included a marriage license and new passports. After they reached Sicily, what happened to Lucarelli and his mistress was up to them.

  Lucarelli drank from his fresh glass of wine, worked his upper lip over, looked at the map again. “What time do we leave tonight?” he asked.

  “I’ll meet the launch at ten,” Carmody told him. “It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to get here, so we’ll figure on ten-thirty as th
e pick-up time. Another half-hour to get to the Piraeus. We’ll be on our way out of the Lagoon not much after eleven.”

  “We wear dark clothing?”

  “That’s right. But keep it simple—and not all black. We don’t want to look like a commando team.”

  “Just as you say, signor.”

  Carmody got to his feet, refolded the map, put it away inside his jacket. “If anything comes up that you should know about, I’ll notify you. Otherwise be ready at ten thirty.”

  Lucarelli nodded.

  From the chair across the room, Rita spoke for the first time. “I cannot stay in this house another night. This waiting... it makes me crazy.”

  “Tonight, dulce mia,”Lucarelli said to her. “The plans will not change. Tonight we leave, Saturday we are on Sardinia. Yes, Signor Carmody?”

  “That’s how it shapes up,” Carmody said. “Just hang loose. And remember what I said about the wine. If you’re even half-drunk when I get here, we don’t go.”

  In his room at the Saviola, a renovated sixteenth-century palace that was one of the more comfortable hotels along the Grand Canal, Carmody called Della Robbia. “It’s tonight,” he said. “Get in touch with Vickers, tell him to be three hundred yards off the Quartieri Vergini, opposite the clock tower, at least twenty minutes before eleven.”

  “Si,Signor Carmody.”

  “And tell your launch driver to pick me up at ten sharp, just where you told him. Make sure he understands ten sharp.”

  “It will be done.”

  “Call me if there are any problems.”

  “There will be no problems.”

  “I hope not. As soon as I’m paid in full, I’ll wire your money to you care of Piombo.”

  “Bene,” Della Robbia said.

  Carmody lay back on the bed with one of his cigars and waited for it to be time to move out.

  In the shadows at the foot of Via Giordano, Carmody stood looking for the launch. The night was dark, moonless, hushed except for the faint pulsing sounds of water traffic on the Grand Canal. An occasional black gondola glided past on the Rio di Fontego a few feet away, but the area was as deserted as he’d estimated it would be. It was just ten o’clock.

  He wore dark trousers, a dark shirt, his Beretta in its half-holster under his jacket. His bag rested at his feet; he had checked out of the Saviola two hours ago. Supper had killed an hour and a quarter, and he’d spent the rest of the time in a water taxi and on foot from the Rialto Bridge.

  He looked at his watch again—10:01—and when he lowered his arm he heard the muffled throb of a boat engine. Seconds later the launch, small and radio-equipped like the water taxis, came along the rio and drifted over to the seawall. The man behind the wheel starboard called softly, “Signor?”

  Carmody looked back along Via Giordano, saw nothing to worry him, and came out of the shadows. He descended the three steps cut into the seawall, boarded the launch, stowed his bag under the front seat. The driver—bearded, wearing a beret and a black turtleneck—kept his eyes on the canal, waiting for instructions.

  Carmody said, “Rio San Spirito. Number fifty-two. Can you find it?”

  “San Spirito? Yes, I know it.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  The darkness was thick in the narrow canals through which they maneuvered; half the time the red-and-green running lights on the launch were the only illumination. Most of the ancient, decaying buildings along the rio were dark. Even the occupied ones had shutters drawn across their oblong windows that allowed little light to escape. Carmody watched astern, but the only other crafts were an occasional taxi or a wraithlike gondola gliding into or out of one of the maze of waterways. The silence, broken only by the throb of the launch’s inboard, was as heavy as the odor of garbage and salt water.

  It was not quite ten-thirty when the driver brought them into the black mouth of another canal and said, “San Spirito, Signor.”

  Carmody looked for familiar landmarks, found one. “Fifty-two is the first building on the near side of that bridge ahead.”

  The driver cut power, eased the launch in close to the unbroken line of brick-and-cement walls on the right. When they neared the small arched bridge Carmody pointed out the landing platform beyond number fifty-two. The launch drifted up to it. Carmody waited until the driver held steady, then jumped onto the platform.

  “Wait here,” he said to the driver. “And keep the engine running.”

  The canal door to Lucarelli’s building was at the near end of the seawall, set into the right-angled corner between the rio and a high garden wall made of brick. Carmody went there, used a corroded brass knocker.

  “Carmody. Open up.”

  There was the sound of a bolt being shot, then a key turning in the old-fashioned latch. The door edged inward. Carmody went inside, and Lucarelli was standing three feet away with a pistol in his hand. The muzzle dipped when Carmody stopped and stared at him. He said nervously, “All is well, Signor Carmody?”

  Carmody took a close look at him. Lucarelli’s breath smelled of wine but he was sober enough. Barely.

  He said, “Put that gun away,” and moved down the hallway into the room where they had talked that afternoon. Three large leather suitcases sat on the floor next to the table. Carmody thought that the biggest of them would contain Lucarelli’s run-out money, from which he’d be paid when they reached Sardinia.

  The woman, Rita, stood next to the suitcases. She said, “We are leaving now?” in her thickly accented English. She was even twitchier than she had been earlier; she couldn’t seem to keep her hands still.

  “We’re leaving,” Carmody told her.

  Lucarelli came into the room plucking at his bare upper lip. The pistol was tucked away in his clothing. He and Rita gathered up the suitcases so Carmody could keep his hands free. He went ahead of them to the door, looked out. The launch sat silently against the platform, the driver waiting at the wheel; as much of San Spirito as he could see was deserted. Carmody stepped out, motioned to Lucarelli and the woman. While the suitcases were being handed into the launch, he stood apart and shifted his gaze back and forth along the canal.

  The woman said suddenly in Italian, “My cosmetic case. I left it inside.” Her voice seemed high and shrill in the stillness. She moved away, back toward the still-open door to the building.

  “Wait, Rita...” Lucarelli began, but she had her back to him, almost to the door now.

  And in that moment Carmody sensed, rather than saw, the first movement in the shadows beyond the bridge.

  The muscles in his neck and shoulders went tight. He swept his jacket back, slid the Beretta out of its holster. The shadows seemed to separate, like an amoeba reproducing, and a formless shape slipped away from the seawall, coming under the bridge. There was the faint pulsation of a boat engine.

  Carmody shouted, “Lucarelli! Get down!”

  He dropped to one knee, sighted at the moving shape of the boat as it drew nearer, fired twice. One of the bullets broke glass somewhere on the boat; the other missed wide, hit the cement wall across the canal. Then a man-shape reared up at the wheel, and the night erupted in bright chattering flashes. Bullets sprayed the platform, the launch.

  None of them hit Carmody because he was already in the canal.

  The water was chill, as black and thick as ink; he could taste the pollution of it, the foulness of oil and garbage. He kicked straight down, at an angle across the narrow width of the rio. The Beretta was still in his hand; he shoved it inside the waistband of his trousers before struggling out of his jacket. Swimming blind, groping ahead of him for the wall on the far side, the pressure mounting in his lungs... and then his fingers came in contact with the rough surface. He crawled upward along it and poked his head out of the water, dragging air through his mouth, looking back.

  The ambush boat had drawn alongside the launch. The dark form of the shooter was hurriedly transferring Lucarelli’s suitcases into his own craft, his other hand still clutching a bulky machin
e pistol. A long way off, somebody was yelling. There was intermittent light along the canal now, but not enough for Carmody to tell if the boat held just the one man or if there was a back-up as well.

  The shooter pulled the last suitcase aboard. Turning, he saw Carmody along the far wall. Carmody dove deep as the machine pistol came up and began to chatter again; none of the slugs touched him. Near the bottom he kicked back across the canal to the other side.

  Above him, he heard the boat’s engine grow loud; the water churned. The shooter wasn’t wasting any more time.

  He didn’t want to be seen and he didn’t want to risk running into a police boat. By the time Carmody crawled up along the seawall and surfaced again, the ambush boat was a dark blob just swinging out of San Spirito into another canal.

  There were more lights showing in nearby buildings, people with their heads stuck out between partially opened shutters. Carmody swam to the launch, caught the port gunwale, hauled himself up and inside.

  Lucarelli hadn’t reacted quickly enough; he lay dead in the stern, stitched across the abdomen with enough bullets to nearly cut him in two. The driver had been shot twice in the throat. The launch’s deck was slick with blood.

  Stop worrying, Lucarelli, I’ll get you safely to Sardinia. I’ve never lost a client yet. Leave everything to me.

  Impotent rage made Carmody’s head ache malignantly. He looked under the front seat, saw that his own suitcase was still there. He pushed it onto the platform, climbed up after it, ran with it to the door of number fifty-two. Inside, he went through the three downstairs rooms and two upstairs, checked inside the bathroom and the closets.

  The house was empty.

  The woman, Rita, was gone.

  Carmody went out a side door into a garden grown wild with wisteria and oleander. The windows of an adjacent building looked down into it, and a fat man in an undershirt stood framed in one, shouting querulously. Three big chestnut trees grew in the garden’s center; Carmody stayed in their shadow until he found a gate opening onto one of the narrow interior streets.