"Ask your friend here," Carmody said. "Are you Tobiere?"
"I am."
Carmody prodded the woman ahead of him, inside. A weak ceiling light let him see old square-cut furnishings covered with hand woven blankets. A window was open but there was no breeze and the air in there was stifling.
He said, "Let's have a look at the gems."
"I don't have them here," Tobiere said.
"No? Where are they?"
"In a safe place. Outside the city."
"How soon can you get them?"
"Tonight."
"What's wrong with right now?"
"Tonight," Nicole said. "Late tonight."
Carmody turned to her. "Are you his partner?"
"Not exactly that, m'sieu . . ."
"Then let him talk for himself."
"She's going with us to France," Tobiere said.
"Oh, she is?"
"Yes. She won't be ready to leave until later."
"The arrangement was for you alone."
"I know, but my plans have changed. Nicole will go with me."
"She will if you pay me another ten thousand."
"Another ten thousand–!"
"Two people are twice as much trouble as one," Carmody said. "Plus I'll have to make arrangements for a second set of papers. I should charge you double, fifty thousand."
Tobiere started to argue, but Nicole put a hand on his arm to silence him. She said, "He will pay what you ask. Thirty-five thousand American dollars."
"Is that right, Tobiere?"
"Yes. As you wish."
"What time will you be ready?" Carmody asked Nicole.
"Midnight, perhaps a little sooner."
"All right. We don't leave from here, though. I'm not coming back here after dark. Pick another place."
"Your hotel?" Nicole said.
"Too public. This place where you dance–the Café Bulbul. How about there?"
"Yes, good. I live nearby."
"What's the address?"
"Rue de Marbruk. Number Eleven."
"I'll find it," Carmody said. He shifted his gaze back to Tobiere. "You'd better have the gems with you. We don't go anywhere until I get a look at them."
"I will have them," Tobiere promised.
Carmody went to the door. "You coming with me or staying here?" he asked the woman.
"I will stay."
"Suit yourself."
He left them, returned to the Rue Kaddour Bourkika. But instead of turning upward toward the plaza, he hurried down several more steps to the Street of the Slipper Makers. There were several open-air markets here, swarming with activity, and doorless shops of all types set into tiny niches no larger than coat closets; there was also a small open-front native bar, its tables occupied by Arabs drinking glasses of mint tea. Carmody took a chair at one of the tables, positioning himself so he could look up along Rue Kaddour Bourkika; he had a clear angled view of the entrance to the courtyard. He ordered a glass of mint tea, closed his ears to the din around him, and waited.
He didn't have to wait long.
Inside of ten minutes Tobiere and Nicole Moreau came out through the passage, began to climb upward. Carmody dropped a couple of dinars on the table and glided after them. When they reached the upper plaza they crossed to where a dark green Citröen was parked at some distance from Carmody's Fiat. Carmody stayed hidden inside the Street of Many Steps until Nicole, who was driving the Citröen, circled past him; then he ran for the Fiat. There was only one street out of the plaza, so he had no trouble locating them and then following at a measured distance.
No trouble keeping the Citröen in sight, either, as they descended toward the harbor. The heavy traffic made speed impossible. The way Nicole drove told him she had no idea they were being tailed.
They proceeded past the Place des Martyrs to the harbor, turned west, and followed the shoreline crescent out of the city. Traffic thinned considerably then, and Nicole began driving at a hurry-up pace. Carmody dropped farther back, adjusting his speed to match hers.
The Citröen stayed on the coastal road for some thirty-five kilometers, until the village of Bou-Ismail took shape in the distance. Then the woman swung right toward the Mediterranean on a badly paved secondary road that slanted in among fields of vegetables. Carmody slowed, made the turn, fell back even farther. After another three kilometers, the Citröen swung off again and disappeared. Narrow sandy lane, Carmody saw when he reached the place, leading to an ancient farmhouse set at the foot of high, reddish dunes; the sea shimmered in the hot glow of the setting sun just beyond. The Citröen was drawn up near the farmhouse porch, Nicole and the man just emerging from it.
Carmody continued past the intersection by a hundred yards, to where a line of scruffy palms blocked out his vision of the farmhouse. Then he parked, got out into the humid, early-evening stillness.
There were no other cars in sight, no signs of life. He trotted across the road, climbed a fence into one of the fields, made his way toward the farmhouse. The vegetables were laid out in squared patches, separated by woven straw fences that acted as windbreaks. By moving in a low crouch, he was able to make good time without worrying about being spotted.
When he could see the farmhouse through chinks in the woven straw he stopped and gave it a long scan. Nothing moved over there, at least nothing outside. He worked his way in a wide loop, coming in from the rear, until a small barnlike outbuilding again cut off his view of the house Then he ran across to a sagging wooden fence that enclosed the yard, climbed it, went to the wall of the barn and peered around the corner. Still no activity at the house.
He was sweating; he dried his face and cleared his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. He drew the Beretta, ran in a low weave to the house's side wall, flattened back against it. Again he waited, listening. Quiet, except for the murmur of the sea beyond.
Carmody eased ahead to a closed window of dirt-streaked glass. As he leaned up close to it he could hear voices, but what they were saying to each other was unclear. A drawn shade kept him from seeing inside.
He went to the front corner, looked around it at the porch. Empty, the house door shut. He leaned back against the wall, the Beretta held down along his right leg, trying to make up his mind whether or not to break in on them. He didn't like the idea of that because he didn't know what the situation was in there. But he didn't like the idea of waiting around out here, either.
As it turned out, he didn't have to make a decision either way. The door opened abruptly and the blond man stepped out onto the porch. Carmody tensed. From inside he heard Nicole's sultry voice call out in French, "Hurry, cherie. It's getting late."
"We have plenty of time," the blond man answered. He turned to shut the door.
Carmody stepped around the corner, caught the porch rail, vaulted it. He landed running. The blond man spun toward him, confused, his hand fumbling at the pocket of his jacket. Carmody hit him in the face with the Beretta, a blow that sent him reeling, then veered to his left, kicked the door wide open, and went in low and fast with his gaze and the Beretta sweeping the room.
Nicole cried out, "Zut alors merde!" and a heavy gun crashed. She wasn't much of a shot; the bullet came nowhere near Carmody. He might have had to shoot her if she'd kept on potting at him but she didn't; she tried to run away through a rear doorway. There was a straight-backed chair on his immediate left, and he caught it up and threw it at her in one motion. She shrieked as it smacked into her backside, knocked her sideways against the door jamb; she went down hard to her knees. She still had the gun in her hand, a big Luger, but only for another couple of seconds. He was on her by then and he yanked it out of her hand before she could bring it to bear.
The fat sun-darkened man who had been sitting in one of the other chairs, and who had thrown himself to the floor when the shooting started, now yelled at Carmody from behind an ancient daybed, "Look out! The front door!"
Carmody's reaction was instantaneous: he whirled to his left, down and ar
ound into a shooter's crouch. The blond man stood in the doorway, the mate to Nicole's Luger in his hand, blood streaming down from a cut on his forehead. He fired once, wildly, just before Carmody shot him in the upper body. This time, when he fell back onto the porch, he stayed down and didn't move.
Carmody straightened slowly, letting breath out between his teeth, and looked over at Nicole. She was crouched against the wall, hating him with her eyes. He put her gun into one jacket pocket, went onto the porch and picked up the blond man's weapon and put that into the other jacket pocket.
The fat man came out from behind the daybed as Carmody walked back inside. His moonface was slick with sweat. He said, "He's dead? You killed him?"
"No. He'll live if he gets medical attention."
That disappointed the fat man. With good reason, Carmody thought. There were marks on his face, arms, neck: beaten on and burned with cigarettes, among other indignities. Carmody watched him turn blazing eyes on the woman, call her a vicious name in French, take a step toward her with his hands clenched. He stopped him halfway by catching hold of his shoulder.
"She's not worth the trouble. Leave her alone."
The fat man took a shuddering breath, relaxed a little. His pained eyes focused on Carmody without recognition. "Who are you?"
"Carmody."
"Mon Dieu! But how ?"
"We'll get to that. You're Tobiere, right? The real Paul Tobiere?"
Convulsive nod. "They were going to kill me. Nicole and that . . . that fils de putain."
"I figured as much. Who is he–the blond?"
"His name is Chagal," Tobiere said. "One of Nicole's filthy lovers."
Carmody said, "They were trying to pass him off as you, to take advantage of your arrangement with me." He didn't add that they must have known of his particular code of ethics, that he couldn't be bought off and that any kind of double-dealing was anathema to him. One hint that the real Tobiere had been robbed and murdered and he'd have called off the deal immediately.
"I was a fool to trust her," Tobiere said. "But I believed she cared for me; I believed -"
"Gochon! Je t'emmerge, a pied, a cheval et en voiture!"
Carmody said, "Shut up, Nicole." His tone said he didn't want any arguments. She didn't give him any.
"How did you know to come here?" the fat man asked.
Carmody told him how he'd followed Nicole and Chagal from the Casbah.
"But what made you suspect Chagal was not me?"
"Several things. She seemed to be running the show, not him; that didn't jibe with what Achmed told me. Neither did the way he acted. Achmed said you were frightened and anxious after what happened to you en route from the Sudan. Chagal wasn't either one. Then there was the fact that you lived in the Sudan for years, came here through the Libyan Desert. No man can spend time in that kind of desert country without picking up a black tan like you have, or at least some sun color. Chagal is pale–no tan, no burn. He's been nowhere near Sudan or the Libyan Desert. Not long out of France, probably."
Tobiere nodded. "I owe you my life, m'sieu."
"I'll settle for ten percent of those gems," Carmody said. "Where are they? You didn't tell Nicole and Chagal or you'd be dead already."
"No, but I. . . I think I would have." He shuddered. "The things they did to me. . . the things they threatened to do. . ."
"Never mind that. The gems, Tobiere. Are they here?"
"Nearby. Shall I get them?"
"We'll both go get them. If they're as advertised, you'll be on a boat for France by midnight."
"Nicole? You will kill her before we leave here?"
"I'm not an assassin," Carmody said.
"But they were going to kill me. . ."
"They've got each other, her and Chagal, and they've got Algiers. That's worse than being dead. That's a living hell."
He took Tobiere's arm and prodded him out into the breathless North African twilight.
Blood Money
Carmody spent the morning at Bacino di Borechi, checking out the boat and captain Della Robbia had hired for the run south to Sardinia. The boat was forty-two feet and twenty years old—the Piraeus, flying a Greek flag. She was scabrous and salt-scarred, her fittings flecked with rust, but she seemed seaworthy and she had an immaculate power-plant: a twin-screw GMC diesel, well-tuned and shiny clean.
The captain looked all right too. He was an Australian named Vickers, who had been in Venice for a couple of years and who had handled some other smuggling jobs for Della Robbia, one involving a boatload of illegal aliens from Albania. Della Robbia said he was the best man available and he probably was. Sardinia would be a piece of cake compared to getting into Albanian waters and then out again safely with forty-three passengers.
From the bacino Carmody took a water taxi to St. Mark's Square. Della Robbia hadn't shown up yet at the open-air cafe on the Piazzeta. Carmody took a table, ordered a cup of cappuccino. It was a warm, windy September day, and the square was jammed with tourists, vendors, freelance artists, the ever-present pigeons. On the wide fronting basin, into which emptied Venice's two major canals, the Grand and the Giudecca, gondolas and water taxis, passenger ferries and small commercial craft maneuvered in bright confusion. The sun turned the placid water a glinting silver, gave it a mercurial aspect.
Cities were just cities to Carmody—places to be and to work in and to leave again but Venice intruded on his consciousness more than most. For one thing, you didn't have to worry about traffic problems because it had no automobiles. It was built on a hundred little islands interconnected by a hundred and fifty bridges, and you got from place to place on foot through narrow, winding interior streets or by water taxi and ferry. The pocked, sagging look of most of the ancient buildings was due to the fact that the city was sinking at the rate of five inches per century; the look and smell of the four hundred canals was the result of pollution. It was a seedy, charming, ugly, beautiful, dangerous, amiable city—one Carmody understood, and felt at ease in, and worked well in.
He had been sitting there for fifteen minutes when Della Robbia came hurrying between the two red granite obelisks that marked the beginning of the Piazzeta. Dark, craggy-featured, in his middle thirties, wearing a light gray suit and a pair of fat sunglasses, Della Robbia looked exactly like what he was: a minor Italian gangster. That worked in his favor more often than not. Because he looked like a thug, a lot of people figured he wasn't one.
When Della Robbia sat down Carmody said, "You make the arrangements for the launch?"
"Just as you instructed, Signor Carmody."
"What did you tell the driver?"
"Only that he is to pick up a passenger, transport him to an address he will be given, pick up additional passengers, and then proceed to a boat in the Lagoon."
"Does he speak English?"
"Enough to understand simple directions."
"You're sure he can be trusted?"
"Assolutamente, Signor."
"He'll be ready to go tonight?"
"Any time you wish."
"The way it looks now," Carmody said, "we can do it tonight. I went to see Vickers and his boat this morning. I'm satisfied."
"I was certain you would be."
Carmody lit one of his thin, black cigars. "I'll call you later and let you know what time the launch driver is to pick me up. Where do I meet him?"
"The Rio de Fontego, at the foot of Via Giordano," Della Robbia said. "A quiet place without much water traffic, so you can be sure you are not followed."
"How far is the Rio de Fontego from my hotel?"
"Ten minutes by water taxi."
"All right, good."
"There are other arrangements to be made?"
"No. I'll handle the rest of it. But stay where I can reach you the rest of the day."
Della Robbia said, "Va bene,"and got to his feet. "A safe journey, Signor Carmody." He lifted his hand in a salute and moved off across the Piazzeta, disappeared into the crowd of tourists and pigeons in front
of the Ducal Palace.
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."
Sleuths Page 14