North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  But his nervousness increased.

  When Rosana came, she’d have to lead him round by the side street as Salvatore had done this afternoon, and they’d enter Brewster’s room from its back staircase. A pity he hadn’t his pocket flashlight with him, so that they wouldn’t trip over the cats. Women were always late; he would stop this worrying. She’d better come soon, though: he had spent a full ten minutes admiring Bernini’s work, and the typical tourist was not as sculpture conscious as all that. Was she over in that crowd? It was stirring now: people were moving around, talking. What had happened, anyway? Stop worrying. Thirty people or more lived in that house over there. The lights were on in Brewster’s window. The curtains were open, and he could see the pot of geraniums on its window sill. There he saw a man pause at the window for a moment, turning as if he were talking to someone behind him. The man’s black silhouette retreating back into the room. There was left only the square of yellow light, and the pot of geraniums, and the strangely curious crowd far below. He felt not worry now but actual fear: Rosana had been punctual enough at noon.

  He looked towards the church. Only a couple of middle-aged tourists sat on its steps and studied their tired feet. Was the church open? Was Rosana waiting inside? Perhaps she had seen the crowd and retreated, perhaps she had taken refuge inside. If so, she’d expect him to have enough sense to go in. Only, he thought as he came nearer the church doors, they look very, very closed. He turned, hesitated, and then started towards the crowd, wondering if this was the best thing to do, thankful that his Italian was good enough to find out what was wrong. Everyone in the Piazza seemed to know what was wrong, except the tourists. Rosana might be in the crowd; she had to be somewhere.

  Now people were drifting away from the crowd, singly or in small groups. They would drift and stop to argue, then drift again. Except one man who was cutting smartly across the centre of the Piazza. Two men broke from the crowd and followed him. It was such an open manoeuvre that Lammiter halted in amazement. The first man, walking briskly towards the church, seemed unaware of any trouble. But his ears must have been quick, for he heard the hurrying pace behind him and he glanced briefly over his shoulder. His short stride almost became a walking run. He had reached the place where Joe had let Lammiter out of the car this afternoon and driven away with all the luggage; he looked round again. This time there was no doubt that he was being hunted. He suddenly swerved, away from the church, and headed at an open run for the cobbled pavement of the narrow calle near him. The two following men were running, too, lightly, easily. They were quicker.

  Lammiter came to life, and set off after them. He had lost five seconds, there, staring in amazement at the man who had looked around. For it was Joe himself, Joe with his mop of black curling hair and his furrowed brow, looking more surprised than ever.

  The narrow street, eight feet wide, a paved dark lane between dark houses, bleakly and scantily lit, was empty except for the three men. The two pursuers had almost caught up with Joe. He turned quickly to face them, his back safely to a wall. He held a knife in his hand. Its blade snapped open. He half-crouched, waiting. His lips drawn back from his teeth, he made two sharp jabs at the air. The two men halted.

  One of them had something in his hand, ready to strike. He hesitated as he heard Lammiter’s running footsteps, jerking his head round for a split second. He said something. His companion was watching the waiting Sicilian, circling round as he, too, brought his gun out of his pocket. He, too, was going to use it to strike. They weren’t going to shoot. Why? Lammiter wondered.

  Then he understood. Noise. They didn’t want noise. So he stopped running, opened his mouth, and with all the breath left in his lungs, he let out a rebel yell. A flutter of pigeons came from the rooftops. Board shutters were flung open from a window above his head, unexpectedly revealing a lighted room, and a stream of angry words in a shrill soprano voice poured down on him before the shutters were banged together again. But, more surprising, an answering rebel yell came from the Piazza behind him. And then the clatter of racing feet and laughter, girls’ laughter echoing into the dark canyon of the little street.

  The two men looked at each other. The one who gave orders spoke again, as the clatter of feet behind Lammiter suddenly scraped to a halt and a young man’s voice called a warning. The girls’ laughter changed to an excited squeal. Lammiter was too busy keeping his eye on the gun now pointing at him to look round and welcome his unknown friends. Then another angry command was spoken, the gun was lowered, and the two men suddenly took to their heels. They disappeared round the curve of the street into the night.

  They didn’t want witnesses either, Lammiter thought. He walked towards Joe, whose knife had closed and vanished as quickly as it had snapped out. He glanced over his shoulder. The little group behind him—three girls and a thin young man—was clustered together as if they didn’t quite know what to do now. “Thanks a lot,” Lammiter called back at them. “Good night.”

  “I thought you were kidding,” the young man said awkwardly. “That yell—I just thought you were kidding. Was that for real—the gun, I mean?”

  “Why,” one of the girls said, “I’ve never seen anything like that in Rome! Why, you just can walk down any old street. I’ve never seen anything like that!”

  “Good night,” Lammiter said.

  “If I had known,” the young man said angrily, “I wouldn’t have brought the girls chasing in here—”

  “You would, too!” said another of the girls. “Did you ever see anything like that! In this setting—it’s medeeval, completely, utterly medeeval.”

  From above, the shutters banged open again. The four young faces turned upwards in amazement as the stream of eloquence now emptied over them.

  “Come,” Joe said, his hand grasping Lammiter’s wrist urgently.

  “I’m looking for Rosana—”

  “She had to go to the country.”

  “To the country? But—”

  “She’s all right. Come—” His impatience grew.

  “I’ve got to see Brewster...”

  “Later, later. Keep moving.” He turned abruptly away, dropping Lammiter’s wrist, and walked on. “Come on,” he said impatiently.

  Behind them, a girl’s clear voice said, “Isn’t she wonderful? Oh, how I wish I could speak Italian like that!”

  Then the young man’s voice called to Lammiter, “Everything okay?”

  Lammiter looked back. He waved reassuringly. Then he caught up with Joe’s short quick steps.

  Joe said nothing more. He was too busy being cautious. They were, after all, following the same route that the two men had taken. At the curve in the street, he paused, keeping close to a wall, studying what lay ahead. There were no recessed doorways. And, just as important, there were witnesses available here, too. Six, in fact. A couple of elderly Italians walking slowly with their dog; four middle-aged foreigners, two husbands, two wives, looking completely frustrated. “Well, ask someone, Geoffrey,” one of the women was saying impatiently. “We can’t wander on these streets forever. Why don’t you ask someone? There’s an American, isn’t it?” She quickened her pace towards Lammiter, “Can you tell us where is the Peeasa Navoena?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  “Thank you so much.” She looked back at the lagging Geoffrey. “See, darling, it was perfectly simple... All one needs to do is use the tongue in one’s head. Coming, Betty?” The women walked on, annoyance still quivering. The two men followed. They gave Lammiter a brief nod of thanks and a bitter look.

  Lammiter said, “I guess I deserved that. Why hadn’t I enough sense to say I was lost, too?”

  Joe glanced at him sharply. He said quietly, in control of himself once more, “I parked the car about two blocks away from here. We can talk when we reach it. Now, we use our eyes and our ears.” Then he fell silent. He looked like a man with several problems on his mind, all of them grim.

  The two blocks stretched nearer to eight before they reached t
he car, parked beside others in a small square. It was Lammiter’s guess that they had skirted round the Piazza Navona, almost to its other side. Or hadn’t they? He was certainly as lost as poor old Geoffrey had ever been. The feeling increased as he looked at the car’s licence plate. “Get in! Quick!” Joe ordered in a low voice.

  Lammiter hesitated. Then he got in.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. He was too tense. He tried to look less worried than he felt. It was not too easy. He kept his eyes ready for the slightest movement from Joe.

  “Away from here,” Joe answered curtly.

  He headed straight for the busiest street, the Corso, with its narrow sidewalks packed with strolling people, overfilled trolley-buses, cars, the eternal Vespas and Lambrettas. They twisted west. They crossed the Tiber briefly, and then came back again to the Via Flaminia. They drove north, then east, then south a little, climbing a hill. And at last, Joe drew up at the edge of a road where couples in parked cars were far from conspicuous. On one side of the road were gardens, on the other a walk with seats for the view, for here the ground fell away abruptly to a lower level of streets. Lammiter could see over the rooftops, far beneath, across the whole city with its domed churches and lighted monuments.

  “We’ll keep the windows closed, and we’ll talk,” Joe said, taking out a twisted pack of cigarettes and offering one to Lammiter, “and then we’ll know where we are going.”

  Lammiter said, “Keep it short.” He was thinking now of the telephone call he must make to Camden. Nothing was working out the way they had expected. “What’s gone wrong?”

  Joe was silent.

  “I saw a man at the window. Was it Salvatore?”

  “That was Bevilacqua. Sam was down in the Piazza, with the crowd. We were both worried about you. Couldn’t see you over by the church. Rosana told me to look for you there.”

  “I was staying well out of sight behind the fountain,” said Lammiter, lamely. It had seemed an intelligent move, at the time. Now it seemed frankly silly. “I arrived late.” He saw that Joe was watching him even more carefully than he had been watching Joe. And suddenly, too, he realised that Bevilacqua’s visit was not just a friendly call, that the crowd gathered in the street was not grouped round a traffic accident. “What has happened to Brewster?” he asked tensely.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” The shocked word was jolted out of him. For several moments, he could say nothing. “How?” he asked at last. “A fake suicide?”

  “Not this time. He was lying stretched out on his bed with the fiasco broken at its neck and dropped beside him. He had been struck a blow on the head.”

  “Was there no struggle? Didn’t he shout? Did no one hear anything?” He was frankly incredulous. “A man was murdered in a room with a window wide open on a piazza crowded with people...”

  “Men like Brewster don’t shout,” Joe said abruptly. “They are trained not to shout. And there was no struggle in the room. The bed—disarranged a little.” Joe was watching Lammiter very carefully now, but the American was too troubled to notice. “It had been smoothed down again, perhaps?”

  “I don’t get it.” Lammiter was following his own thoughts. “If there was no struggle, then he was asleep. If he was asleep, who let anyone get in? And one blow from a bottle—a fiasco padded with straw—that was enough to kill Brewster?” His face showed complete disbelief. “It must have been a hell of a blow.”

  Joe took a deep breath, almost of relief. “You talk like a policeman, my friend. All these questions...”

  Lammiter stared at him. Guilty men didn’t bring up the dangerous questions, guilty men didn’t search for answers. Was that what the Italian was thinking?

  Joe said very quietly, “You were right to have doubts. They smothered him first, with a nice soft pillow.”

  Lammiter rolled down the window, and threw away his half-finished cigarette. He took several deep breaths to steady his nerves. He felt sick, half-stifled. A crippled man lying helpless, perhaps asleep. He rolled the window up again, leaving a couple of inches open for fresh air.

  “I felt that way myself,” Joe agreed. “I can usually run faster than I did tonight.” His eyes, watching Lammiter carefully, had lost their grim look of suspicion.

  “But how—”

  “Let the police find the answers. That’s what they’re paid to do.”

  “And that’s another thing! How did the police get there, anyway? Who told them?”

  “There was an alarm clock that kept ringing. A neighbour went to complain. She found the door unlocked, and then Brewster. She started screaming. That brought a couple of policemen up from the Piazza.”

  “The door had been left unlocked—and we were to walk right in?” His voice was bitter. He was beginning to understand why the unnecessary blow from the bottle had ever been struck. Rosana had handled that bottle. And there were fingerprints on the glasses, too. Fingerprints everywhere, his own included. This was much better than any faked suicide. Rosana and he would have to be questioned, perhaps held by the police. Perhaps? Most certainly. And for how long—a day, two days, three? “They made sure we weren’t even going to reach Perugia,” he said with rising anger.

  That was a mistake. He knew it the moment it had slipped from his tongue. He remembered, too late, that Brewster had told neither Joe nor Salvatore nor Bevilacqua about Perugia, or Evans, or Pirotta’s main interests.

  Joe was watching him again. There was a new gleam of interest in his eyes.

  Lammiter said quickly, “How did you learn all this about Brewster, anyway?”

  “I reached Brewster’s door just before eleven o’clock. As you said, it was open, and I walked right in. I walked right into the police.”

  “And did you want to meet them?” Lammiter was sarcastic.

  “A Sicilian wants to meet—?” Joe laughed that off, briefly.

  “The crowd could have told you there were policemen up there. But you went on upstairs.” Lammiter paused. “And then the police let you go. How obliging of them, how very—”

  “And thanks for helping me, after that,” Joe said, branching off. “If you hadn’t, I’d probably be in the Tiber right now, or dumped from a fishing boat off Ostia tomorrow. You know— it’s a pity you don’t trust me more.”

  “I trust you enough to ask you to take me to a telephone. And quickly.” He touched Camden’s card in his pocket to reassure himself it was still there, and brought out his cigarettes. “Have one of mine?”

  “Thanks.” But Joe made no move to start the car. “Why did you come running after me tonight?”

  “I wanted to make sure I’d see my typewriter again.”

  “Save the jokes until I feel more like laughing.”

  “To tell you the honest truth,” Lammiter said, “I just didn’t think. I saw a couple of men on your heels, and I started running. It was just as simple as that.”

  “You just didn’t think.” Joe could be sarcastic, too.

  “Not at first. When I started thinking, I let out a yell.”

  “Who were those men?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nor I,” Joe said. He heaved one large and weary sigh. “It’s a pity you don’t trust me more,” he repeated very gently. “I’ve got some questions that keep bothering me.”

  “Look, Joe, drive me to a telephone. You’ll get your answers quickest that way.”

  “But I don’t drive so well with questions on my mind,” Joe said sadly. “Now why should those two men have been looking for me tonight? I’ve never seen them before in my life, and I thought I knew most of these boys. They aren’t connected with any narcotics ring. Nor is Perugia.”

  “Who would be interested in my answers as well as you? It couldn’t be Bevilacqua, could it?” And for the first time in this fencing match, Lammiter felt he had pierced through Joe’s guard.

  Joe started the car. “Don’t guess so much,” he said sharply. “That could lead you into trouble.”

 
“It already has.” It was midnight now. Lammiter would never make that plane, even if he wanted to. He wouldn’t make any plane tomorrow, or the next day either. He glanced at Joe, who was both silent and angry. “Don’t worry, Joe. My guess was all my own. I don’t think any of the men you are hunting would even notice.”

  “Notice what?” Joe tried to be casual. But no one likes hearing his own mistakes.

  “When we met, this afternoon, you were talking tough American. You were a man who had knocked around, done odd jobs, driven cars, become attached to the Di Feo family, then to the princess, part-time handyman, personal retainer, and probably black marketeer on the side. With a heart of gold, of course. But now you aren’t talking that kind of language. Because you aren’t thinking in that kind of language.”

  Joe glanced at him sharply.

  “I’d say you were now a detective, an agent of some kind, one of Bevilacqua’s bright boys, who’s got several problems to solve. Where did you go to college in America?”

  Suddenly, Joe laughed. It was a real laugh. “I like you,” he said, keeping his eyes determinedly on the traffic. “You’ve got a sense of humour. Me, Giuseppe Rocco, one of Bevilacqua’s bright boys...”

  “Yes, that’s what I’d say,” Lammiter went on quietly, “except for one thing.”

  Joe was guarded now. “What’s that?”

  “The licence plate on your car. Its last three numbers are the ones Rosana noticed last night when a car tried to pick her up. It’s the number Brewster noticed when a car tried to run him down. Who could have borrowed your car, Joe?”

  “Mannaggia!” Joe stared at him. For a moment, his face showed alarm; then it became blank again. “So,” he said at last, “the laugh is on me, eh?” He fell silent. But Lammiter noticed that the car’s speed had increased as much as the traffic would allow. Whatever Joe was, he certainly knew how to handle a car.

  15