Hammerlocke

by Jack Barnao

  She turned to face me and I put one hand on her hip, my thumb in the delicious little hollow against her belly, massaging her with my fingers. She gave a little moan. "Ummm, that's nice."

  I stopped doing it and she opened her eyes again. "I know, business first. Okay, how would you handle it?"

  "Mid-morning we borrow the old lady's car, or truck, whatever, and drive back into town. The Polizia will be looking for that heap of yours, it's conspicuous."

  "Then what?" Her voice was soft, seductive.

  "Then we call the Rega and get some help organized through Capelli. We arrange for you to make the money drop before the police go in after the boy. That's to lull the kidnappers. And it means you're free to disappear with the cash. I go ahead with the troops and get the kid. Then Scavuzzo comes after you and we nail him."

  I was lying in my teeth. Killing Scavuzzo was not on my agenda. That was her battle, not mine.

  "Sounds good to me," she said drowsily. "Can we sleep now?"

  "Are you in that much of a rush?" I asked and then kissed her and reached up to tug the light cord.

  I was awake at daybreak, four hours later, and lay looking at Carla. That's always the moment of truth with a woman. You've seen her under artificial light, made up for the evening. You've loved her and grown through the experience. And then daylight comes poking its unromantic nose into the proceedings, letting you see the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. With Carla, the truth was still beautiful.

  After a while she woke and looked at me, her face as soft and trusting as a child's.

  "Good morning," I said and kissed her on the nose.

  "Good God," she said and shut her eyes again.

  I laughed. "That's not very flattering."

  With her eyes still shut she said, "What kind of time is this to wake up?"

  I checked my watch which I'd dropped on the night table. "Quarter to six. I'm usually up and running by this time of day."

  "This isn't day, it's the middle of the night," she said and rolled over.

  I patted her flank and got up, slipping into pants and shirt and heading for the bathroom. There was no shower but I sponge-bathed and looked in the cupboard for a razor. The only one there was a dull old cutthroat but there was a strop behind the door so I honed it a few times and scraped my face, managing to avoid cutting myself. Then I went back to the bedroom for the rest of my clothes, and my gun, and went downstairs.

  The old lady was in the kitchen, making coffee. We exchanged smiles and buon giornos and I took two cups of coffee and went out to the wine cellar. The door was still bolted and I opened it carefully and found Mazzerini asleep against the barrels. The wine jar was empty, still where I had left it. I woke him and cut the string from his thumbs. He sat up, rubbing his hands painfully.

  "I need to make water," he said and I led him upstairs to the john, standing over him so he couldn't make a break for it through the window. Then I took him back down to his cell and gave him his coffee. He thanked me and sipped it gratefully. His face was still swollen and he was stiff but he looked a little better.

  "Who are you working for, Vasoni, who?" I asked him.

  He flicked a worried glance at me, wondering if he was in for more interrogation. "I work for nobody. A man asked me to come and see you and the boy in the restaurant, I came. Then he asked me to drive the car to pick up the boy. I drove the car."

  "Then how come you weren't shot, like the others in that car?"

  He shrugged. "It is not always easy to know your friends. I did not trust the man who asked me to drive. So I made a call to Mr. Vasoni and his men were waiting. They let me go."

  "Let's hear it for Machiavelli," I said.

  He frowned and asked, "Che?"

  "Before your time," I told him. "He wrote the book on ruthless. Now tell me where this house is where they're holding the kid."

  "I am not sure," he said immediately, his eyes flicking to my face and away again, fearfully.

  "Signor Mazzerini. Do I have to remind you that the signora is upstairs. I have come to talk with you on my own because I know she is still angry. If she plans to turn you into an ox, she can still do it, if you do not please her. Tell me the address and you will not be hurt."

  He sighed and then gave me an address. The name meant nothing to me so I asked him, "What kind of house is this? Is it big? Is it on its own, or in a street with all the houses joined together?"

  "In a street," he said. I couldn't tell for sure but he looked too scared to be lying.

  "And what makes you sure that the boy is there? Did they tell you where he was going?" That didn't sound feasible to me. Hoods are more closemouthed than that.

  He shook his head. "They did not tell me but I heard one of them say, 'we can drive right into the garage at my place and take him out the back way.'"

  "Very convenient," I said, then flicked my coffee cup, slashing the dregs onto the earth floor. "And where in Florence is there a house in a street with a garage in it? I think you've seen too many American movies. You're lying, Mazzerini, and I'm losing my patience."

  He was over quota on pain. He flinched away and put his hands up in front of his lumpy face. "Signor, do not hit me, please."

  "You have ten seconds to tell the truth," I said and started counting backwards. I got as far as eight before he broke.

  "Is not a house." He was trembling. I said nothing, just looked at him and wrinkled my nose as if he were filth.

  "Is not a house," he said again. "Is a fabbrica." He stopped and waved his hands seeking the English word. "A fabbrica, where they make coats, purses, things out of leather."

  "A factory?" I still wasn't buying. Most of the production in Italy goes on in people's homes, under the counter where the taxman can't see. They don't have many factories for things that women can make on the kitchen table.

  "Sì." He nodded eagerly. "A factory."

  "Which one? And you'd better know the answer; my patience is running out."

  "Sì." He nodded and mugged at me, showing the gap where his front teeth had been in happier times. "Sì, is a fabbrica, Belladonna."

  I picked up the wine jar and filled it. He looked at it the way kids look at candy bars but I leaned back against the barrel and sipped. He tried to conceal his disappointment.

  "Tell me, how come you spill your guts to me without any pain, and yet those guys yesterday kicked you around and you didn't talk."

  He licked his lips. "Signor, some wine, per favore."

  I held out the jar and he grabbed it and glugged half of it down. A waste, it was good wine, a musty dry red.

  When he lowered the jar I took it out of his hand and said, "You told them everything you've told me, didn't you?"

  He sank to the floor and buried his bruised face in his hands.

  "Sì." He was almost sobbing. "I tell them everything and still they kick me."

  Chapter 16

  I locked him in again and went back to the kitchen. Carla was there, drinking coffee and laughing with the old woman. I smiled at her and said, "Well, I hope you can stop yourself crying, because I can stop you laughing."

  "What's happened?" she asked, still smiling as brilliantly as an also-ran on Academy Award night.

  "The other guys got to our prisoner before we did. He told them everything yesterday. We're too late."

  She didn't stop smiling. She was cleverer than that. "Look happy," she instructed me. "The old lady has radar, she can sense what's going on."

  I beamed and held out the coffee cup I'd brought back with me. The old lady poured for me and I said "Grazie mille," and she commented to Carla who laughed.

  "She says you must have been studying Italian in bed."

  I stretched my weary grin a little wider. "Very smart. Now we have two choices. Either we go and storm this place, on the off chance the kid is still there, or we send you back into the lion's den to see where Scavuzzo's people have taken him. You decide."

  The old lady turned to the cupboar
d and got out bread rolls. There was no butter but we beamed some more and ate, Carla dipping hers in her coffee. God. What a woman. She would be equally at home in the finest house in the country but she was acting exactly right for this place and time.

  When I could see she didn't intend to answer I said, "I think it's too late to run to Capelli and tell him we know where the kid is. The other guys probably collected him last night while we were making music. The only card we have left to play is to send you back to your buddies to see what you can find out."

  "Really. And how do I account for the time I've been missing?"

  "Good question. You can tell them I grabbed you and held you hostage. You got away while I was asleep."

  "Any Italian will think we slept together," she said.

  "Tell them it was my idea, you had no choice. They want to murder me anyway by now, that just gives them another reason." Easy, Locke, I thought, there's no need to be this helpful. You don't really need a posse of angry Mafia guys carrying out a vendetta even to save the fair lady's name.

  She dunked her roll again and said, "I told you yesterday, I know what I'm doing. Just because you're in the dark doesn't mean you have to panic. Just trust me."

  "Do you know how they say 'screw you' in Hollywood?" I asked her.

  She shook her head impatiently. "What game are you playing?"

  "The way they say 'screw you' is 'trust me,'" I persisted. "So don't expect me to roll over and put all four paws in the air when you make the same comment."

  She sipped the last of her coffee, ignoring my high humor. "You're too late, suggesting I go back to those guys. They won't trust me again. They're never going to tell me where the boy has been taken. And even if they did, I wouldn't be able to get back to you with the information."

  She was making sense. And the more I thought about it, the less hope I had. Capelli was already one step ahead of me. The unwounded man I'd left at the warehouse had probably told him everything. That left me with no bargaining power. And I'd killed a man, and he knew that too. I was still behind the eight ball. I accepted another roll and sat and thought.

  Carla broke the silence. "What we're going to do is go to this place where Mazzerini says the boy was taken. If he's still there, I should be able to find out. If not, I might pick up some indication of what happened."

  "That's going to be dangerous," I cautioned. "If the people at the factory are criminals, they'll recognize you. You're moving in very prominent circles. I'll bet every two-bit hood in Italy knows your pedigree."

  "That won't matter," she said matter-of-factly. "You'll be coming with me."

  "Chances are I'm already on the 'most-wanted list.' Every cop in Florence is going to be looking for me."

  "You flatter yourself," she said. "No Italian man will give you a second glance if I'm with you."

  She had a point there. As long as her face hadn't been circulated on the same wanted poster we were probably safe together. "Okay, let's go. But what about Mazzerini? We can't take him with us, can we leave him here?"

  Carla turned to the old woman and spoke quickly. The old woman answered and Carla smiled. "Her son will be back tomorrow. He'll let him out then. She won't be in any danger."

  I stood up. "Come on then, time's a-wasting."

  The old woman had a truck. It wasn't much but I brushed the chicken feathers off the seat and Carla got in and we headed back to Florence. I watched for landmarks and signs, ready to tell Capelli exactly where the farm was when it came time to level with him. I didn't think it would make trouble for the old woman. She hadn't done anything wrong, just given hospitality to a friend, but I was going to need some evidence of the story I would have to tell the police.

  It was a typically beautiful Tuscan morning. People were working in the fields, bending over their vegetables under that blue, blue sky. When we stopped for a main road I could hear a man singing not far away, a big, round, untrained voice singing the famous tenor part of the duet from The Pearl Fishers. In the States he would have been listening to a ghetto blaster. I glanced at Carla. "Some time when all this is over, I'd like to spend a month at a place around here, getting back to basics."

  She laughed. "Don't write me a part in your daydream. I hate any place that's not paved over."

  "Pity," I said, "We could have got to know one another a lot better under this kind of sky."

  "Sunlight is death on your skin," she said and lit a cigarette, which is just as bad for your hide if you believe the surgeon-general.

  Florence isn't like a North American city, not in any way, but most of all in its lack of a commercial strip on the road leading in. There are no motels or chicken joints or burger stands, one minute you're driving in the country, the next you're there, the way you might have been if you came here on horseback five hundred years ago, looking to beg Lorenzo to lighten up on the taxes because there was a murrain on your cattle.

  We passed the same roadblock on the way into town. A couple of bored policemen were going through the motions, waving every car through without a search. I figured they would pull out before the day was through. They were convinced Herbie was still in town. The fact that they were right didn't make their actions any more creditable, not to me. I've worked a lot of roadblocks in Ulster. You don't quit because you don't succeed within twenty-four hours.

  In town the streets were jammed but I had found the secret of driving in Italy on my first trip. You drive con brio. If you want to make a U-turn against six lanes of traffic, go for it. The right of way belongs to the boldest driver. People may swear and wave out of their windows at you but they let you through and admire you for trying.

  It took forty minutes for me to find the street Mazzerini had told me about. It looked promising, as if he could have been telling the truth. The buildings were big and unpretentious and could well have been the Florentine version of factories.

  "Park there," Carla told me suddenly. She was pointing at a corner where some tiny Fiat was pulling out. It didn't leave much room for the truck, or any for pedestrians who might want to cross but she got out with her head high, ignoring the anger on the faces of people who had to walk over our bumper to get past.

  "Come," she said and led me back down the street to a big plain building.

  "Is this the place? I can't see any sign."

  "It's the place," she said firmly. Then she stopped and stared straight into my face. "Remember what I told you last night. I know where the cliffs are. If I say jump, just jump. Don't think. Don't question anything I do or we're both dead."

  I threw up my hands, not even answering, and she walked away to the building. She didn't pause in front but swept right in, up the three worn marble steps to the door. I took the time to glance around and notice that there was a garage door in the front, big enough to allow a vehicle to enter. Herb Ridley could have been driven inside without getting out of the kidnap car.

  We found ourselves in the kind of sweatshop you see in movies about making it on the Lower East Side in 1910. There was a desk with a plain girl answering two phones that never stopped ringing, and behind her a clutter of sewing machines with women working nonstop, heads down over pieces of leather.

  A balding young guy with a mustache big enough to have sapped all the strength from his scalp was darting about with a clipboard, bellowing instructions to a slow-moving workman who was loading a trolley at the women's worktables. Carla bore down on him and when he saw her he stopped and did a wonderful Latin double-take. How could anything this radiant be happening to him on a Tuesday morning?

  I hung back. The way she was acting, it looked as if she knew what was happening. I assumed she had some way of checking out the factory and seeing if there was any sign of either Herb Ridley or of anyone she knew. And whatever she was saying it was working. She picked up a purse from a pile of work, flipped it open, pointed to a seam and tossed the purse aside, talking nonstop.

  The bald guy tried to cut in but she overrode him, galloping into another speech wi
thout drawing a breath. She moved off down the aisle between the sewing machines, picking up work indiscriminately and rejecting it. He trotted after her, clipboard waving, saying what must have been the Italian for "But lady, listen up." I followed them both at a distance that looked respectful but was really just careful, my right hand in my jacket pocket, nursing the neat little automatic I'd taken off Carla. I worked as if I was on a Belfast street patrol, stopping from time to time to check behind and around me for men bearing me ill will. I couldn't see any.

  When she got to the far end of the room, Carla stopped and listened to the young man for about thirty seconds, then gave him a smile he would remember all his life. She looked over his head, something she could do without craning up, and beckoned to me. She spoke Italian and I made out "Avanti" but the wave of her hand was clear enough anyway, I came up to her. Again she spoke in Italian, telling me something. I made a bored little nod and she waved the bald guy ahead. He opened the door onto a corridor that led to an office. He ushered us ahead, into it.

  It wasn't much. The furniture had been there since Mussolini marched on Abyssinia and it was dusty and cluttered with boxes almost to the ceiling. In fact its only remarkable feature was a man, standing up and reaching for a gun that lay on the desk in front of him.

  The fact that his piece was on the desk told me he wasn't a cop. That meant he was another hood, possibly one of Carla's good buddies, possibly not. Either way I had to act tough. I stepped into him, past the desk, catching my pocket on the corner and ripping it slightly, but I didn't stop to examine it. I slammed the heel of my hand under his chin, knocking him cold. As he slithered down I turned and sunk my fist into the bald guy's gut. He folded, gasping, and I knelt by him and put pressure on his carotid arteries with my thumbs. It took only a few seconds and he was out cold.