Hammerlocke

by Jack Barnao

  "And of course, being a superior, blue-eyed sonofa-WASP-bitch, you believed him," she accused.

  "I took note of it," I told her. "What the hell do I know? It seems nobody has said one word of truth to me since I got to Florence."

  Not strictly true. Kate Ridley was straight but I didn't want to remind this woman of her.

  She turned suddenly and picked up her glass and thrust it at me. I filled it and made like I was topping up my own. "Yes, I did those things," she said softly. "I did that and I slept with that greasy bastard for three months. You want to know why?"

  A cue for the well-timed protest. Look shocked, Locke, look shocked, it could pay off with some real information. "No, you don't have to explain anything to me, Carla. I'm truly sorry for your loss."

  "You may be, but Scavuzzo isn't. Not yet. He was behind my father's death. Him and my late husband. And I'm going to get even with him."

  An imaginary light bulb flicked on over my head, filling my brain with blinding light. She was on my side! That was why I hadn't been backshot. She wanted me whole so I could help her get revenge on Scavuzzo. I tried an obvious suggestion. "The way to get him would be to take the Ridley boy away from him and deprive him of the money."

  She nodded, then sat down and sipped her liquor as if we were little girls playing tea parties. She lowered the glass and smoothed her skirt. "Agreed. But it has to be timed right. We have to wait until the money is paid, then get the kid and the cash."

  "I like the way your mind works," I said, trying a hearty, army officer chuckle.

  She looked up and smiled at me, sweetly as any of the Madonnas in the Galleria Uffizi. "Yes," she agreed again. "And then you kill him."

  She meant it, I knew.

  "That's liable to get me into even worse trouble than I'm in now," I said quietly. "At least if I'm arrested I'll be out before I'm old and gray. Scavuzzo's boys won't let me cop a plea. They'll kill me in return."

  "Not if you're clever." She reached out and pushed her drink onto the edge of the table. "I think you can handle it, make it look as if somebody else did it, or like an accident. From what I've heard of the SAS they know as many rough tricks as the Cosa Nostra."

  She was looking at me calmly now. She had laid down her hand, five aces. It was up to me to beat it or pay up.

  I sipped my drink. It was a mistake. With grappa like that you have to short-circuit your tastebuds, whack it straight into your stomach and you manage fine, otherwise, you're aware of what you're doing to yourself. I frowned and said, "If we're going to do all these clever things, we're going to need a plan. The first thing I suggest is that we start trusting one another. I'll lighten up on you and you treat me like an ally not an enemy. Deal?"

  "Deal," she said but she didn't smile or hold out her hand.

  "How are we going to find out where Herbie is?"

  "We can find out. All it takes is a little squeezing on that guy in the kitchen. He knows something. Either he was part of the second gang or else he recognized somebody. I can tell." Her voice was low and rough. It would have sounded sexy except for the subject.

  "A number of guys have worn out their shoes trying to get him to talk. How do you think you can do better?" I asked.

  "Their brains were in their feet," she said. She stood up. "Come on, let's get started."

  She led the way and we went back into the kitchen where Mazzerini was sitting up on the sofa nursing a shot glass like the ones we'd been using. He looked up out of his lopsided face and tried to smile ingratiatingly.

  Carla walked up to him and backhanded him across his biggest bruise, hard enough to send him sprawling. The old woman said something but Carla gave her a short burst of Italian and she backed away, nodding in agreement. Carla watched until the woman was out of the kitchen, then she turned back to Mazzerini.

  "You think you're tough, don't you?" she hissed.

  I wouldn't have thought I was, not with her staring me down. He was even quicker to agree with her.

  "No, signora. I am not tough. I couldn't tell those men anything because I didn't know anything. It is the truth."

  "Yeah, and I'm the Mona Lisa," Carla said. She turned to me. "Get me a knife, Locke, there has to be one somewhere around."

  It was my chance to enter the masquerade. I took out my claspknife, clicked it open and handed it to her by the blade.

  "Thank you," she said primly. I could see Mazzerini watching the knife. That was a mistake. You watch the eyes, not the weapon. The eyes drive the attack.

  Then Carla crouched and caught hold of his pants by the crotch. She dug the blade into the fabric and pulled upwards quickly. I keep the blade sharp enough to shave with. It peeled the fabric apart like a split paper bag. He was wearing red shorts and he slammed both hands down over them. She stabbed him lightly in the back of both hands and he took them away, babbling, but before she could reach for his crotch again he talked.

  "Signora, no. I will tell you everything."

  She raised the knife blade and held it under his nostril. He pulled his head back as far as it would go but she moved with him. One false move and he knew what would happen.

  "Names," she said.

  "Vasoni," he said, and then burst into a torrent of Italian. I watched her as she listened, the knife still poised to slit his nose. She had to be the toughest woman since Ma Barker, no denying it. Once or twice she prompted him with short hissing sentences, then she straightened up. Mazzerini made an effort to sink to his knees in front of her but she kicked him casually and turned away, handing me back my knife.

  "We move in the morning," she said.

  Chapter 15

  "Where to?" I pressed the lock on my knife and flipped the blade shut. Carla held one finger up to silence me and went through the door the old woman had taken. She closed it behind her and I heard the rattle of Italian conversation. I turned back to Mazzerini and asked him instead. "Where's the kid?"

  "He is at the house of a man who works for Signor Vasoni." The backs of his hands were bleeding, welling up slow globules of dark blood that he sucked away. "She is a devil, signor. She said she would cut me."

  "She'd have done it," I assured him. "It's a good thing I'm around or she would have killed you after you told her what she wanted to know." Standard interrogation tactics, courtesy of the SAS or any other agency. Get the prisoner to fear one of you, love the other. I didn't know how much good he could do me but it never hurts to go by the book.

  The door opened and Carla came back, with her arm around the old woman. She introduced me. "John Locke" was all I could make out. Then the old woman said something and I took her hand and made a little bow. She beamed and said something else and Carla laughed.

  "Maria's father worked for my grandfather," Carla explained and I smiled again at the old lady. "I've explained what happened and she's on our side. She's got a place we can lock him up until we go. I think he'd be better if you tied him up, but that's up to you, why not look at the place first?"

  I followed the old woman out to another room on the ground floor, her wine cellar. It had a thick door with a big bolt on the outside. I wondered whether she used to lock her husband in when he climbed too deeply into the homemade grappa but in any case it would have held a bull. And when I looked inside I saw it had no windows.

  "Bene," I told her and was rewarded with a quick spatter of talk. I went back to the kitchen and got Mazzerini to stand up straight. He held his side and moaned but I figured he was well enough to spend the night in the cellar. Too well, maybe, perhaps well enough to jiggle the bolt loose some way. "Is there any cord around? It doesn't have to be heavy—bootlaces, something like that."

  Carla spoke to the old woman and she went off and came back with a roll of coarse string, the kind you would use to tie up a parcel. I thanked her and cut off a yard. Then I turned Mazzerini around and tied his thumbs together behind him. I didn't crank up the pressure. I just wanted him hampered in case he started feeling better through the night. Then I took h
im out to the wine cellar and locked him away. I did him the favor of filling a jar that stood there with red wine from a barrel and putting it where he could get his mouth on it and tilt it towards him if he needed some refreshment.

  The women were still standing in the kitchen when I came back up. "Right, do we move now, or rest or what?" I asked.

  "We rest," Carla said. "Maria's son is away. She has a spare bed."

  "Fine. I'll crash on the couch," I said and moved towards the other room.

  Carla laughed. "She thinks you're my husband, you dumb bastard."

  That startled me but I covered it. "Dandy. I'll do my best to live up to my obligations," I said.

  Carla laughed and kissed the old woman and then took my hand. When in Tuscany do as the Tuscans do, Locke. I didn't go as far as kissing the old lady, not being sure what the custom might be, but I beamed at her and followed her up the stairs.

  The son's room was strictly utilitarian. It held a truckle bed that wouldn't have been out of place in a barracks, a wardrobe, and a crucifix. When we got there the old lady made a quick pronouncement, Carla responded and then turned to me. "Maria insists we have her bed, this one is too small."

  "You're the boss," I said politely. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe she planned to use my knife on me instead of Mazzerini. God alone knew how her medieval mind was working.

  The old woman's room was equally simple but it had a bed big enough to bring forth a dozen children on, and procreate any more you fancied. Carla nodded and laughed with the old woman. I did my best to look modest. Beautiful women do not usually arrange things so cozily for me. I wondered whether the grappa was behind all of this license. And if so, where could I get a hogshead of it?

  There was a bathroom down the hall and after some florid goodnights which left Carla and the old lady giggling like schoolgirls we all got comfortable and I was alone with my brand new wife.

  "What's she going to say when she finds out you're lying?" I asked as I hung my shirt over the back of a chair.

  "I'll worry about that," Carla said. "You worry about earning your keep."

  "That's not going to be a problem," I assured her as she unbuttoned her blouse and slipped her skirt off. She was enough of a courtesan to leave her lingerie until the last, watching the effect she was having on me. "Has anybody taken the trouble to tell you how truly spectacular you are?" I asked.

  "Words are cheap," she said and got under the sheet and single thin quilt.

  I put my gun under my pillow and climbed in beside her. She laughed. "You won't need a gun. I'm doing this to you, not the other way around."

  "That's to discourage voyeurs," I told her. "I'm a blue-eyed WASP prude at heart."

  We lay facing one another, my arm under her neck, my other hand stroking her. She was smoother than satin, a fine, taut body that thrilled me to touch. I kissed her gently and she responded, just as gently. Then I kissed her throat and she sighed and I craned down and gently rolled her nipple between my lips. And then she took over.

  She was like a woman just out of prison, dominating me, demanding. If we had been dancing instead of making love, I'd have been the one going backwards.

  At last she was sated and drowsy. I lay beside her, one hand cupped around her breast, listening to her breathing.

  "Why me?" I asked her, softly.

  "You're here," she said.

  "Not the most flattering speech I've heard in my lifetime, but what the hell."

  She gave a little bounce that turned her body towards me. "Does it bother your male ego? Is that it? Did you ever wonder how a woman feels when some man picks her up and passes time with her?"

  "Well, no, but you've gone a long way to evening up the score," I told her.

  "Good," she said firmly. "Now let me get some sleep."

  "Look, I know you like to love 'em and leave 'em, but I need to know what's happening tomorrow," I whispered. "A plan will work much better if we're both in on it."

  Now she uttered a shorter, more grumpy sound. "Won't it wait?"

  "If we have to move in the morning I need to know what's happening. Are we leaving at four a.m.? Or are we going back to town after breakfast?"

  "Sleep," she said firmly but I sat up. This was not a time to be dominated.

  "It's more important than that. Whoever these people are who snatched the kid, they've had the boy since noon, that's about twelve hours. They've probably already made their ransom demands and they're waiting for the money to arrive. The best time to catch them off balance is over the next four hours, before dawn. They'll be tired and low. After that it's anybody's game. And they have us outnumbered."

  Now she sat up, whispering in an angry hiss. "I told you I knew what was happening. You have to trust me."

  "I've trusted people all my service life, starting from the tests I took when I joined the SAS. One of the things they do is run you to the top of a cliff and tell you to jump. You don't know what's below, you don't know if they're even aware you're on a cliff. But if you hesitate, you're out. They send you back to your unit."

  "Exactly," she nodded. "That's what I'm talking about. I'll take care of the safety net, you just jump when I tell you to."

  "No," I said. "I'm just as anxious as you are to sort this out. You can have the money. You can have Scavuzzo as well. But I'm a soldier not a gangster. I need a plan of action."

  She reached up and pulled the light cord that dangled from the ceiling. The light from the colored chandelier washed down over her face, making dark hollows under her eyes, accentuating the angry downturn of her mouth. "Look," she said. "I've told you what's going to happen. You're working for me, remember."

  I laughed. I wasn't amused but it was time to burst her bubble. I didn't mind playing dollies with her, all that had been enjoyable, but when she wanted to put my neck at risk, I had to take charge.

  "You're the amateur, Carla, not me. You've got an address and you think you've got it all solved. There's more to it than that. You need a floor plan. You need a guess at least as to how many men are inside, how they're armed, where they're holding the kid. You need a diversion. You need professional planning otherwise you'll be dead and I'll be dead and Scavuzzo will have the kid, the money, and the last laugh."

  It was a long speech but it registered. She was bright, and her folks had come from this part of Italy, the birthplace of Machiavelli. She knew about cunning.

  Her shoulders slumped. "Can't we do all this in the morning?"

  "We should have done it first, then taken our R and R," I told her. "We have only two guns, mine and that .32 of yours and I'm low on ammunition. If you've got contacts to get some more arms, I need them. Or else, how about a better idea?"

  "Like what?" She reached for her cigarettes which she had set aside on the night table. She lit up and waved the match out, a big angry gesture.

  "Like getting the police to help us spring the kid." She took the cigarette out of her mouth and opened it to start yelling at me but I held up one finger. "It's not so dumb. I know Capelli. We can set you up as the go-between with the cash. You drop out of sight with the suitcase and Scavuzzo comes after you. That's when I move in and set him up."

  I was making this up as I went along. Capelli would get me off the arrest hook if I came back to him with the news of this man Vasoni's involvement. If his department worked like any I'd ever been involved with, he would know how to handle storming the house. And if the Ridleys had kidnap insurance the money was meaningless, just a counter to play with. If the counter rolled off the table and was lost, Capelli wouldn't be too worried. Oh, he'd go through the usual business of treating the loss as a theft, but he'd be a hero for solving Firenze's first kidnapping and he wouldn't worry about the cash.

  "You put a hell of a lot of trust in Capelli," Carla said at last. Her skin was damp with perspiration and she shivered and pulled the covers up around her. "Nothing has changed since you killed Giacomo. You're still a marked man."

  "What's changed is
that we've got the information he needs. That buys us a legal place at the table. We can sit in on the game again and get the kid back. He'll let you handle the cash, he can even suggest it. He can use you in place of the boy's mother."

  She reached out and stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray, an angry little hammering motion. I waited and slowly she began to talk. "When my father, and then my husband, were killed, they put the Chicago police and the FBI on the case. They went underground, they got close to the people who did it, but they never made an arrest."

  "That was the States. The laws over there are all in the criminal's favor. They don't judge the criminals. They judge the police on how they got their evidence. Italy's different. It's nominally a socialist state but they've never forgotten how well Mussolini made the railroads run."

  She lay back, pulling the covers around her. "So you think we should run right into Capelli's office and start all over again?"

  "No." My head was working well. The liquor I'd drunk and the lovemaking were all burned away, I was back on patrol in the dark in the Falklands, moving in on the Argies' artillery, ready to spike their guns. "No, we go back into Florence and I call him and ask for help. I get him to provide me with men to tackle Vasoni. We'll rendezvous somewhere neutral and proceed from there. At the same time, if he's already had a ransom demand, I offer you as the go-between."

  Her eyes glittered in the overhead light. "You think he's going to go for that?"

  "All he wants is to get the kid back and look good in the newspapers. If we can help him, he'll use us and pay his debts later. For me that means a quick pardon for the business at the warehouse, for you it means five million bucks and Scavuzzo's head on a platter."

  She lay and looked at me, frowning slightly against the light. "You're making sense," she said at last. "When do you think we should move?"

  I lay down again and slipped under the covers against the warm satin of her skin. "If you really want the money, we should wait a few hours. Ridley senior will be here by morning. He won't have the money with him but his people in Canada will have arranged it. That means he should be free to get hold if it by, say noon. If the kidnappers know he's got ransom insurance, they won't move too soon. They'll get in touch but they won't make their demands until about midday. They'll probably want to work in darkness, that means they'll ask for a delivery after nightfall."