“The first of every month.”
“Well, the first isn’t far off, so they’ll be facing a financial crisis almost as soon as we will. They’ll be ready to talk business.”
“But if you’re not going to use that membership list to bargain with, what can you possibly offer them?”
“What do you think?” I said, as we turned on to the causeway to the mainland. “Your remains.”
PART FIVE
The Wheel
1
Money was the problem.
On our third day in Rome, at ten in the evening in a rosticceria in the Piazza Sonnino in Trastevere, we spent the last of it. The groceries I carried out to the car—cheese, cold macaroni, a couple of tissue-paper-thin slices of ham, a loaf of bread, and a jar of sulphurous Chianti drawn from the barrel of local vintage behind the counter—left me with two coins in my pocket, which together amounted to less than an American cent.
And prospects were dim. Anne’s wedding ring was already in the pawnshop, replaced on her finger by an imitation-gold hunk of junk picked up in Standa, the Roman five-and-dime. Also in the pawnshop was my wristwatch and the set of tools I had found in the trunk of the car.
On the bright side, we had enough food on hand for a dinner and a breakfast, almost a full tank of gas, and no hotel bills to worry about. Whether we had the money for it or not, taking a room in even the most rundown pensione was too dangerous to risk, since it meant we would be asked for identification papers or passports.
So the car was our dining room and bedroom; and the al bergo diurno—that complex of lavatories, baths, and beautification facilities in the bowels of the Termini, the main railroad station—provided the rest of our conveniences. As it was, the coins we had left couldn’t even buy us admission to those conveniences any longer. And by noon the next day we would be out of food as well as money. The one cold fact that stared me in the face was that somehow or other we had to dig up a few hundred lire just to survive another day.
But dig it up how?
Anne de Villemont, whose fortune, by any estimate, amounted to about six billion lire, pulled our dinner out of the paper bags I handed her.
“Ham?” she said. “Isn’t it expensive?”
“I thought you’d like to try some high living for a change. Don’t let it bother you. We’re all out of money anyhow.”
“Completely out?”
“We couldn’t even buy a newspaper with what we’ve got left. I’ve been wondering what to do about it, outside of slugging some prosperous-looking tourist and Lifting his wallet. If that damn cook would only show up—”
Because that was what we were waiting for. Sooner or later, we hoped, the cook of the Montecastellani household, the household of Madame Cesira’s devoted relatives, would show up and all unwittingly lead us to the family she served.
We had no choice in this; it was the only course we could take. From the time on Torcello when I had forced from Signora Braggi the admission that Paul and his grandmother were being removed to Rome, I was sure the Casa Montecastellani which Madame Cesira had once so vividly described to me would be their sanctuary in the city. Anne had agreed with me. According to her, the Montecastellani clan was divided against itself into neo-fascist and royalist factions, but all were united in fanatic support of the OEI, and their ancestral home on Via della Pilotta was a hotbed of its activities. And most important, Madame Cesira always stayed with her family when in Rome. On this basis I set my trap. All it needed, when we arrived on the outskirts of the city early in the morning, was a phone call to spring it.
That was when we hit bottom, when I called the Montecastellani number, only to discover the line was dead. With all communications to the enemy cut off, we had come close to the end of bur string. The end itself was the sight of the barred gate of the Montecastellani quarters on Via della Pilotta, as much a fortress as the mansion on the rue de Courcelles, the huge padlock on the gate and the sealed shutters at every window proclaiming that the house was deserted.
But move we must, even if it was like moles blindly struggling through a labyrinth. So I left Anne in the parked car near the house and set out in desperation to explore the shops in the surrounding alleyways. Grocers, fruiterers, fishmongers—one and all shook their heads in response to my questions. Yes, they knew the family Montecastellani but only from a distance. No, they wouldn’t know where the family had gone. These bigshots, you understand, thought nothing of packing their whole ménage into a plane and flying halfway around the world at a moment’s notice. I was already aware of that possibility, and having it openly stated this way didn’t make me feel any better.
It was in a butcher shop off the Via dei Lucchesi that I unexpectedly struck gold. I asked my question, braced for the usual depressing answer, but at the guarded look that came into the butcher’s eyes when I mentioned the name Montecastellani, I felt my heart leap. I repeated the question, trying to conceal my excitement.
The butcher, a grizzled, unshaven specimen, took his time answering. “Sure, I sell them their meat,” he said at last. “They want the best, they know where to get it. But what’s that got to do with you?”
I gave him a large mysterious wink and tapped the side of my nose with my forefinger to indicate that our discussion was confidential. When I motioned toward the back of the shop he led me there, not altogether willingly.
“Well?” he said.
“You don’t have to sound like I’m the tax collector,” I said. “I happen to be in the same general line as you. I sell to the Montecastellanis too, but luxury stuff and fine wines. You know, the real imported goods.”
“Imported from France,” said the butcher with a great air of shrewdness. “You’re French, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“The way you talk.” He was full of self-satisfaction now, his guard coming down. “I know a Frenchie when I hear him.”
“I can see that,” I said admiringly. “Anyhow, this is one Frenchie in trouble. Who did the buying from you for the Montecastellanis? The cook?”
“Naturally. I’ve been dealing with that bitch Rosanna for twenty years.”
“And how much of a kickback does she ask for?”
“Five percent. I’d let her rot in hell before I paid her more than that.”
“Well, she used to get five from me, but all of a sudden she said it had to be ten. You can’t blame me for turning her down, can you?”
“Blame you? I wouldn’t blame you for slitting her throat when it comes to that kind of thievery.”
“Sure. The trouble is,” I said woefully, “she took her trade to somebody else, and now my boss says get it back or get the hell out. So here I am, ready to talk business with her, and I don’t know where she or the family went to.”
“Sfortunato.” The butcher clicked his tongue sympathetically. “I don’t know where myself. All I know is they pulled out a couple of weeks ago and took a villa somewhere around town.”
“Has Rosanna been back here to do any shopping for the family since they moved?” I asked.
“Once, a few days ago.”
“And she didn’t leave any address?”
“No, all she said was it was a pain in the ass being sent all the way across the city for the kind of meat I sell. The miserable old hen. She knows she won’t get a better cut of beef anywhere.”
“So she’ll be back, I suppose.”
“Oh, she’ll be back all right. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, but sooner or later she’ll be back. For all her big mouth the trip doesn’t really bother her, the way she comes rolling up in a limousine with a chauffeur to do her fetching and carrying.”
“From Parioli, you think?”
“No, from the other direction, from the south side.” He was growing impatient now; there were customers at the marble counter fronting the alley. “Look, friend, we’re in the same way of business so I’d like to help you, but the truth is I don’t know where you can find her. When she�
�s in again I’ll tell her you were around. You give me your card—”
“I’d rather you didn’t tell her anything. If she knows I’m hunting for her she can afford to be stubborn as a mule. I’ll get in touch with her some other way. Anyhow, thanks for your trouble.”
I went back to the car, and Anne said fearfully, “Good or bad?”
“Both. They’re still somewhere around Rome but I don’t know where. Do they own a villa anywhere south of the city?”
“No.”
“Then they rented or borrowed one. And the only lead we have to it is the family cook.”
“Rosanna? You met her? How did you even know her?”
“I didn’t meet her. But she buys from the butcher down that alley. What we’ll do is lay low in the car on the Piazza della Pilotta there, and when she shows up we’ll tail her back to the villa. Once we get the address we can get the phone number and then make our move.”
“When is she supposed to show up?”
“The butcher says it might be tomorrow, or it might be next week. And I can tell you it might be never, if the villa is just that gang’s first stop on their way out of the country.”
“If they believe we’re dead, they won’t have any reason to leave the country.”
“I know. That’s what we’re gambling on. Matter of fact, I have a hunch that now with the rue de Courcelles and the Château Laennac and even that sanitarium at Issy marked too hot for comfort, this villa here is intended to be the center of OEI activity for the time being. And with your funds cut off from it, the leadership from all around the Continent will be filtering down here to solve the problem. And there’s the problem of Henri’s death, too. As Leschenhaut’s second-in-command, he’ll be hard to replace.”
What I didn’t express aloud was my thought that if Louis’ murderer was among the OEI leadership filtering down to the villa, Paul’s life hung by a very thin thread.
After that, Anne and I kept butchers’ hours in the Piazza della Pilotta, from seven in the morning until noon, and then from three in the afternoon until eight in the evening, the parked car heating up steadily during the daytime in the sweltering Roman summer until by late afternoon it was like an oven.
During the noontime break when the city settled down to its siesta, we drove to the albergo diurno in the Termini to refresh ourselves, and then to the slums of Trastevere across the river where we could buy food cheap and where there was small chance of anyone recognizing us. And after a bad experience our first night when a zealous policeman approached our parked car in the Piazza Mattrai in Trastevere to see if anything sinful was going on in it, we would drive out of town when darkness fell and find some isolated spot along a side road in which to get a few hours of broken sleep.
Meanwhile, although I doled out each coin like a miser, our money steadily drained away until, with the outlay for our meager dinner the third night, it was all gone. That night, to conserve precious gasoline, we stayed in the city, changing our parking spot now and then to keep policemen on the beat from taking an undue interest in us. We got no real rest this way, only fitful catnaps when it was impossible to keep the eyes open any longer.
What sustained me through this was Anne’s nearness, her body against mine, her head trustingly on my shoulder as she dozed, the way she uncomplainingly bore the misery of the slowly passing hours. That was the way she had borne everything throughout our nerve-racking vigil of the past few days, faithfully following instructions to the letter, never asking the one question which must have tormented her as much as it did me—the question of what lay beyond for us if our vigil wasn’t rewarded very soon.
At the same time, my admiration for her and the sensual pleasure of having her close couldn’t rid me of the bitter realization of what she had done to my Me. Worst of all was the nagging memory of the foolish little affair she had offered me as bait back in that house on the rue de Courcelles. A school-boy’s sickly romantic idea of an affair. At least, when I had finally asked her the question directly during the nightmarish train ride from Dijon to Milan, she had been honest about it. She had never intended me to be her lover. Cat’s-paw, protector, agent of deliverance, yes, but not her lover. I was, after all, hired help, and that sort of thing was for Jeanne-Marie, not the convent-bred Madame Anne de Villemont of Louisburg Square and the Plaine Monceau.
Meanwhile, I was in possession of her, could take what satisfaction there was in drawing her close to me when she stirred uneasily in her sleep, loving and hating her as I did it. And despising myself for showing polite self-control under conditions where I had every right to be ruthlessly demanding.
This welter of emotions in me the night we ran out of money didn’t make it any easier to concentrate on the real problem of the moment—how to lay hands on the few hundred lire needed for our survival—so it was almost dawn when the solution finally struck me. A little later and it would have been too late to put the solution to work that day. I promptly got the car moving, and as we turned into the Corso and headed northward Anne woke and looked around wonderingly.
I couldn’t blame her. In the first gray light of morning, the Corso, usually jammed with traffic from curb to curb, was totally deserted. There wasn’t a car on the avenue, not a single pedestrian in sight. We might have been the only people alive in the whole city.
“I’ve never seen it this way before,” Anne said. ‘1 didn’t know it could be like this.”
“It won’t be for long. We’ll have to work fast.”
“Doing what?”
“Get those paper bags off the floor in back of the car and I’ll show you. See if you can waterproof them with the waxed paper from around the meat and cheese.”
“What are they supposed to hold?”
“Money.”
We swung into the Via della Muratte and pulled up in the emptiness of the tiny piazza at the end of it, the incongruously cramped little square fronting the immensity of the Trevi fountain. There was no water jetting over the marble figures and carved rocks of the fountain now, overflowing its basins. The fountain was off, and the pool surrounding it was like a sheet of glass. Even in the dim light one could see the glimmer of the coins under the surface.
“That money?” said Anne. “But it’s supposed to go to charity.”
“The hell it is, not that I could think of a better charity than us right now. It goes to the guys who clean the fountain, and they’re good for thirty, forty thousand lire every time they do it during the tourist season. I met one of them once when I had a bout here. He owns a couple of fighters, which he couldn’t afford to do if these pickings went to charity. Now let’s get our shoes off and start wading before the place comes alive.”
She was knee-deep in the water before I was, gasping as the chill of it struck her, and then, stripping to the waist and rolling up my pants, I joined her. We were clumsy at our treasure hunting at the start, but grew steadily more adept at it. By the time the sun rose, brilliantly lighting the cornices of the buildings around the piazza, the bags we were filling were growing heavy with silver and copper coinage of every size.
I saw the man in uniform when it was already too late to escape his notice. He appeared from around the Trevi palace on foot, wheeling his bicycle beside him, and all I had time to do before his eyes swiveled in our direction was whisper to Anne, “Police! Keep that bag out of sight and play along with me,” and with my own bag of coins clutched against my thigh in one hand, I threw an arm around her shoulders and fastened my lips to hers in a fervent kiss.
She was quick-witted enough not to put up any resistance. Then, as the man walked toward us, I realized she was more than yielding to the kiss, she was sharing it with a fierce, shuddering excitement, her lips hard against mine, her hand going around my back, the fingers digging into my naked flesh, her body locked so tight against me that we would have made a convincing tableau of unrepressed passion for the most cynical onlooker. It was as if the danger moving toward us, this threat to all our hopes, had set her o
n fire.
“Ei, Marcello, Sophia,” the man said with heavy irony, “a che ora comincia l’intervallo?”
“What?” I smiled broadly at him. “Americano,” I said, giving it the full midwestern twang. “Non capisco. No understand.”
“Naturalmente, un’americano. Uno pazzo.” He jerked his thumb at our parked car. “Andiamo, Signor Pazzo. Andiamo.”
The trick was to get to the car without those bags of coin being detected, and Anne helped me in that by giving the man a fine display of leg and thigh as she stepped over the low retaining wall of the fountain. Still, he must have scented something suspicious about us as we awkwardly sidled past him to the car.
He eyed us up and down, then planted his bicycle on its stand and walked around to confront me. I passed Anne my bag of coin behind my back.
“Uno momento,” the policeman said coldly.
Now that I could, I held my empty hands wide in what I hoped he would interpret as helpless admiration at the scene around us.
“Beautiful! Bella!” I said, indicating the silent fountain. “It does something to you. Amore. You understand?” and it must have been my tone of inane rapture which convinced the man that I was, after all, only the harmless American lunatic I seemed to be.
“Amore, merda,” he snarled, and again gave me that gesture of dismissal with the thumb. I didn’t make any long farewell of it. Barefoot and shirtless, I had the car away from there before he even got the bicycle off its stand.
There was plenty of time to return to the stakeout in the Piazza della Pilotta. What I wanted to do now was count our take and see how much of a haul we had made. I drove to the Borghese Gardens and parked in an untraveled lane, the rising sun filtering through the trees around us and flecking the ground with drops of gold. Still shaken by our close call, I took the jar of wine from in back of the car and helped myself to a long drink. When I offered the jar to Anne she shook her head.
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