Carmody's Run

by Bill Pronzini

  “Yes.”

  “What’d he say to you?”

  “That this was the squero of a friend. That I should wait here. He gave me a key.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For him to come. He said he would help me leave Venezia.”

  Carmody nodded. He was thinking that Della Robbia must have been in a hell of a sweat when he got home from San Spirito and one of the men he thought he’d killed called him on the phone—the one man he should have made sure died first. If he could have found out where Carmody was, he’d have gone there to finish the job. But Carmody hadn’t told him and Della Robbia had been afraid to force the issue. So he’d sweated some more and waited for the next call. Then Rita had showed up and he’d thought of this squero—the perfect set-up for another ambush. Except that this time he’d been the one who got caught in it.

  One question remained: How had Della Robbia found out where Lucarelli’s hideout was? Piombo wouldn’t have told him. The launch hadn’t been followed tonight; Carmody had made sure of that. And he hadn’t been followed on any of the previous trips he’d made to Rio San Spirito.

  Only one possible answer—one that Carmody should have thought of at the Rio di Fontego tonight. By overlooking the possibility, he had gotten Lucarelli killed and almost lost his own life. Unforgiveable. He would never forget this mistake, and he would never make another like it again.

  The answer, the oversight, was that the launch had been equipped with a shortwave radio. Della Robbia must have bribed the driver to open the microphone just before he picked Carmody up, so that when Carmody told him where they were going, Della Robbia had heard the address on a radio on his own boat tuned to the same band. Easy enough then to take a different and quicker route to San Spirito, hide and wait.

  Carmody prodded Rita onto her feet, led her through the building and outside. The area was still deserted. It would take a while to find transportation at this hour, but that was a minor inconvenience.

  Rita said, “Where are we going, Signor Carmody?”

  “Della Robbia’s house. Odds are that’s where the money is.”

  “You will keep it all for yourself? The money?”

  “No. It’s yours, you’ve earned the right to it. All I want is the fee Lucarelli and I agreed on.”

  “You... you mean this?”

  “I mean it,” Carmody said. “This too: If you still want to go to Sardinia, I’ll take you there. I don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”

  “Yes, I want to go. Oh yes.”

  “It might take another day or two to rearrange things but I’ll find a safe place for you to wait. It won’t be too bad.”

  She looked at him with her large dark eyes. “No,” she said, “I do not think it will be bad at all.”

  A RUN IN DIAMONDS

  SATURDAY MORNING–CARMODY

  Carmody sat waiting on the patio of Pepé’s Spanish Bar, drinking an iced San Miguel and watching the water skiers out on the Mediterranean. It was a half hour before noon on a Saturday in July—very hot on the patio, as it always was on the island of Majorca in the summer. Sweat glistened on his leathery face, on his chest under his unbuttoned silk shirt.

  He drank the last of his beer, motioned down toward the air-conditioned interior of Pepé’s until he caught the eye of the day bartender, Antonio. Then he let his gaze wander over the solidly packed beach that stretched from Palma Nova to Magalluf. Bright-colored sun chairs made of plastic weave with little square hoods were arranged in uneven rows that followed the playa’s curve; in them and around them were the flocks of tourists from Britain and northern Europe—the wealthy and pseudo-wealthy who would be staying in the modern stone-and-glass high-rise hotels for their two or three weeks; the secretaries and the career women and the sun-and-fun types who would be sharing rooms in the smaller hotels set far back from the beach, or maybe shacking up with one of the local studs because it was even cheaper that way; the honeymooners and social climbers and grocery-money savers; the old and the young, the beautiful and the desperate, the shrewd and the stupid.

  Seagulls, Carmody thought, as he always did when he was aware of them. Fluttering and pecking and nodding, some in the water and some out of it, some looking for scavengings and some for nothing at all—making meaningless cawing sounds in the broiling sun.

  Antonio brought his second beer, went away again. Carmody sat sipping it, waiting and watching the tourists. Inevitably one of the women—golden-haired, very tall—reminded him of Chana and he stopped watching her and the rest of them and looked out over the Mediterranean again.

  Six years now since she’d left him, five years since she’d divorced him. Her fault, he’d thought at first, but it wasn’t. Neither of them was to blame. He couldn’t change, not even for her; she couldn’t accept the life he had made for himself, couldn’t adapt to it, not even for him. She’d feared constantly for his safety. And she had an ingrained moral streak that wouldn’t allow her to feel comfortable or secure with his profession, even though she’d known what he was and what he did when she married him. It was a marriage that was doomed from the beginning, that he should never have permitted to happen.

  But he still loved her, still wanted her; he knew that he always would. No other woman had ever meant anything to him, before or since. He’d had his share of sexual partners over the past six years, but he couldn’t remember what any of them looked like or what their names had been. Not even the last one two weeks ago. Not even her nationality or where he had picked her up.

  He didn’t know where Chana was now, or if she was remarried. Sometimes he hoped she was but mostly he hoped she wasn’t; he wanted her to be happy, to have the family she’d always wanted, but the thought of her in bed with another man ripped at him like claws He’d made no effort to find out where she’d gone after she left Majorca, or what she’d gone to, he never would. He was afraid of what he might do if he knew—not to Chana, not to any man she might be with, but to himself.

  The second bottle of San Miguel was empty when the woman finally showed up. Carmody saw her coming up the stairs from the promenade, knew immediately she was his prospective client. Tall and lithe, this one, with dark hair and high cheekbones and yellow brown eyes that reminded him of a cat’s. Wearing a white dress with a hem that ended an inch below the apex of legs almost as long as Chana’s. He judged her to be in her early twenties.

  She saw him, and her cat’s eyes stayed on him as she approached his table, measuring him warily like an alley female approaching an unfamiliar tom. She was nervous, very nervous; it was in the stiff way she held herself, the little nibbles her teeth kept making at her lower lip. And in her voice when she said, “Are you Carmody?”

  American, he thought. Midwest somewhere. He said, “Yes.”

  “I’m Gillian Waltham.”

  “You’re also twenty minutes late!.”

  “I couldn’t help it. The traffic from Palma…”

  “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “Well, I’m Sorry.”

  “Sorry buys you nothing in this world.”

  “What?”

  “Let it go,” Carmody said. “Sit down.”

  She sat and crossed her good legs, giving him a look at her silk encased crotch before tugging the hem of the dress down. It might have been accidental, and then again it might not have been. She didn’t say anything. Just sat there, nibble, nibble, nibble, looking indecisive.

  Carmody said, “So you want to go to Amsterdam?”

  “Yes. Just for a day... two at the most.”

  “And you don’t want to go alone. Then what?”

  “After Amsterdam, you mean?”

  “After Amsterdam.”

  “I want to disappear,” she said. Her gaze moved restlessly around the patio. “Without any traces.”

  “Yes?” Carmody said.

  “It doesn’t matter where.”

  “You just want to disappear?”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
/>
  He ran one of his big, knotty hands through his hair.

  His flat eyes studied her. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who would want to disappear—but then, not too many people looked like what they were or what went on inside them. Faces and bodies were like mummer’s masks: they hid men and women from each other.

  He said, “How did you get my name?”

  “From a friend in the south of France.”

  “Which friend would that be?”

  “Virgil Franklin.”

  “I don’t know anybody named Virgil Franklin.”

  “Well, Alvarez knows him,” the woman said. “They worked together once or twice. In Lisbon.”

  Alvarez was Carmody’s Barcelona contact. He’d spent some time in Lisbon in the fifties, smuggling contraband in and out of Tangier and Casablanca, selling minor secrets to whichever side had the most cash. Carmody didn’t particularly like him—he was a pimp now, among other things, and Carmody had never had any use for pimps—but so far Alvarez had never sent him a bad apple or screwed up a deal. Results were what mattered, not personal feelings.

  Carmody said, “So you’ve been living in the south of France?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Cannes.”

  “Is that where you got the stones?”

  “The what?”

  “The diamonds.”

  She had her purse open and was poking around inside. Sunlight glinted off a dangly silver bracelet on her left wrist. She came out with a package of French cigarettes, lit one with a silver lighter. She exhaled the word “Yes” along with a plume of smoke.

  “How hot are they?”

  “Hot?”

  “When were they stolen?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “By you?”

  “Yes.”

  “From?”

  “A man named Jacques Amateaux.”

  “Who would he be?”

  “A retired industrialist. From Paris. He has a large collection of diamonds and other precious gems.”

  “Does he know the diamonds you took are gone?”

  “I suppose he does by now.”

  “Does he know you’re the thief?”

  “He will when he finds me gone.”

  “How influential is he?”

  “Very,” Gillian said. “He’s also ruthless.”

  “So you think he’ll do more than just go to the police.”

  “He won’t go to the police at all.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “He just won’t.”

  “Thief himself, is that it? Big-time?”

  “I... don’t know for sure. But, yes, I think so.”

  “How many diamonds?”

  “Five.”

  “Worth how much?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m going to get a lot less than their actual value …”

  “Don’t play games with me,” Carmody said. “I need to know what we’re dealing with here.”

  Now she was nibbling on the filter of her cigarette.

  “They’re worth about a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars on the open market”

  Carmody wasn’t impressed. At five times that amount he wouldn’t have been impressed. He said, “How much are you getting?”

  “A hundred thousand.”

  “That’s not bad Who’s your buyer in Amsterdam?”

  “A man named Zaanhof.”

  “I don’t know him Does he do anything else besides fence?”

  “Fence?”

  “Buy and sell stolen goods,” Carmody said impatiently.

  She was either naive as hell or pretending to be. “Professional or amateur?”

  “Professional. He specializes in diamonds.”

  “How did you get his name?”

  “From Virgil Franklin.”

  “Virgil must be a wealth of information. How do you know him?”

  “I used to see him When I made up my mind to take the diamonds I asked him some discreet questions. I knew he’d been involved with… “ She let the sentence trail off.

  “Does this Zaanhof have your hundred thousand in hand or is he raising it?”

  “He’s raising it.” Gillian said “That’s why we might be in Amsterdam two days. But there won’t be any problem.”

  “You’re certain of that are you?”

  “Zaanhof assured me there won’t be.”

  “When people assure you of something” Carmody said, “that’s the time to start worrying. Do you have them with you?”

  “The diamonds?”

  “What else are we talking about here?”

  She sighed out more smoke, crushed the butt of her cigarette in the table ashtray. Without looking at him she said, “They’re sewn into the bra I’m wearing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you want to see them?” Still not looking at him, but with a hint of defiance in her voice.

  “Not right now. Later, when you change bras.”

  That brought her eyes back to his. Most of her nervousness was gone now. She looked vulnerable and a little frightened. Maybe she was, and maybe that too was part of a mummer’s mask. She said, “Then you’ll help me?”

  “For ten percent of your hundred thousand,” Carmody said. “Plus the price of my plane fare both ways and any other expenses.”

  “Is that all?” She was trying to be sarcastic.

  “That’s all.”

  “Very well, then.”

  “Alvarez said you can give me five thousand now?”

  “I have it with me, yes.”

  “Hand it over.”

  She produced an envelope from her purse. Carmody put in his lap, opened it, riffled through the hundred-dollar bills it contained. “All right. When do you want to leave?”

  “As soon as we can. This afternoon, if that’s possible.”

  “It’s possible,” he told her.

  SATURDAY NIGHT–CARMODY

  Carmody said, “We’d like a double room, with bath, on the canal side.”

  Gillian looked sharply at him but said nothing. Purse-lipped, she studied some of the marble statuary adorning the ornate lobby.

  The concierge said, “Yes, sir. Will the sixth floor be acceptable?”

  “That’s fine.” Carmody gave him a twenty-gulden note. “We don’t want to be disturbed at any time, by anyone, for any reason.”

  “As you wish, Mr. Carmody.”

  They were in the Beatrix Hotel, near the Rembrandtplein in downtown Amsterdam. It was an old hotel, fashioned of reddish-brown brick and stuffed with relics of another age: seven floors of Flemish haute grandeur. Carmody had stayed there before. He liked the Beatrix because the staff was discreet, not because of the luxurious trappings.

  In the elevator Gillian stood apart from him, kept her eyes to the front. Her lips remained pursed. Christ, Carmody thought, she’s miffed about the double room. Why? If the story she’d told him was true, she had to have been sleeping with this Amateaux, the retired industrialist—and probably, though maybe not at the same time, with Alvarez’s friend, Virgil Franklin. So why the virginal act with him, unless her story wasn’t true? He didn’t care if it was or wasn’t, as long as it didn’t have any effect on the job she’d hired him to do. The other possibility was that there was something about him that turned her off. It wouldn’t have been the first time. He didn’t care if that was the case either. He’d never forced himself on a woman in his life and he wasn’t about to start with Gillian Waltham. Small talk, the chase, bored him; either a woman wanted you or she didn’t. And if she didn’t, you were a damned fool if you didn’t leave her alone.

  Their room was big, antique-ridden, with a set of double windows at one end that looked down on the tree-lined Amstel Canal. As soon as the bellboy left with another of Carmody’s twenty-gulden notes, Gillian set her handbag down on one of her suitcases and turned to face Carmody. Her cat’s eyes were angry now.

  She said, “What’s the idea of asking for
a double room?”

  “What do you suppose the idea is?”

  “I’m not cheap, Carmody. I’m not some bimbo.”

  “No?”

  “No!”

  “No screwing then,” Carmody said expressionlessly. “That’s too bad. You look like you’d be a pretty good lay.”

  She flushed. “You have a filthy mouth.”

  Carmody sat on the nearest bed. “Listen,” he said, “I took a double because you’re paying me to watch over you. I can do that a hell of a lot better from in here than I can from next door or down the hall. If you don’t want to sleep with me, fine. I don’t want to sleep with you either. Are you reassured now?”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. He watched her anger cool, watched her turn and walk to the windows and stand there for a time looking out. Pretty soon she turned and asked him, “What time is it?” in a petulant little voice.

  “After eleven.”

  “Well, I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She took her overnight bag into the bathroom and shut the door, hard. Carmody heard the click of the lock. He lit one of his thin black cigars, blew smoke at the chandelier. From inside the bathroom there was the sound of the shower being turned on. When he heard that he got up and went to her other suitcase and searched it.

  She was traveling pretty light for a woman–but then, she was supposedly on the run. There was a dress, some underthings, hose, a pants suit, two skirts, two blouses, a pair of slacks, a pair of Spanish rope-soled alpargatas, a container of Regular Tampax, a box of tissues, a paperback edition of a bestseller about sex in Hollywood, and half a carton of French cigarettes. That was all.

  Carmody picked up her handbag, looked inside. No particular order to the contents; the usual jumble. He took the purse to the bed, emptied it upside down, sifted the items around on the quilt. Rattail comb, mirror compact, pair of dark-lensed sunglasses, packet of purse-sized tissues, open package of the same cigarettes that were in the suitcase, her silver lighter, a pen, a plastic bottle of prescription tablets that had been filled at a farmacia in Malagaand looked as though they might be tranquilizers, a packet of Spanish aspirin, an address book, three Spanish five peseta coins, a tourist map of Majorca, a drink menu card with Bar Emperador, Calle Cristobal Ortiz 29, Malaga, España embossed on it, and a brown leather wallet.