The Big Stiffs Read online

  "Time," I said. "You sure you aren't reading between the lines, my Captain? There is nothing here to suggest anything but a lonely, romantic, over-aged American trying to find a little excitement in your fair Roma---"

  "No," he said, firmly, without raising his voice. "Read on, Signor. When you are done---I see you have two more entries---is that not so?---and then I will show you what your writing tells me in my professional capacity. Capisce, Signor?"

  There was no need to answer him. He had all the ideas and all the high cards. I read on, anxious to be done with his game. Whatever it was, whatever he felt sure it might be.

  24 Monday July (Lunedi)

  Monday morning in Rome. Cars, bikes, dust, noise. Bedlam. Fiats all over town. Back to the Spanish Steps again. Revisited the Keats-Shelley Room. Vera Cacciatore was in this time. Back from her Venetian holiday. Incredibly-young looking for a woman who has minded the store for more than thirty years. As custodian and scholar. Her name means 'hunter'. We talked about New York and the Government and the War. Signed the Guest Book and left. Went back to the Fontana di Trevi. A bosomy Italian girl was imitating Anita Ekberg dancing half-naked in the water. She scrammed before two carabinieri could arrest her. Gaping tourists enjoyed the show. Dined in the Federalino (built in 1835) which is only yards from the fountain's edge. Poker-faced waiters, suspicious middle-aged matron-tourists had a spirited argument. A fist fight broke out in the piazza itself. After dinner, I walked past the Vittorio Emmanuello, toward the Colosseum. Still Shea Stadium, Swiss cheese style, but a great spot after dark. The cats were out in hordes, being fed by the tourist kids and their families. The moon tonight was bigger than Texas. No mail or messages from home, yet.

  25 Tuesday July (Martedi)

  Last hours in the Villa Del Parco. Had to knock off the day so did it in grand style. Off to St. Pietro's in Vincoli to see the Moses of Michelangelo. Truly unique. Another impossible-to-describe masterpiece. Then on to St. Mary's in Cosmedia where that odd wall panel, Bocca della Verite (The Mouth of Truth) is. Aped Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. You stick your arm in the mouth of the horned demon face and you don't get your arm back if you tell a lie. Have to put some notes here---sensa burro means without butter---camera is room; sensa unico is one way; aranciata is orangeade; vietato means prohibited; dove il cabinetto? is where's the john?. More later---

  The next page, somehow now damningly blank, stopped me.

  I shut the book, only aware of two things. The Captain's fixed, waiting smile and the low hum of slowly-rotating fan blades above our heads, trying to cool the tiny, crowded room. There was no point in reading on. There was no more to read. I had stopped making entries on 25 July Tuesday (Martedi).

  Dear Diary, Roma style, was ended.

  A bewildered stare was all I had for the weary police official waiting patiently for my response. On the other side of the desk.

  "So," I said, "what?"

  "So," he countered, shaking his head sadly. "You see nothing then? You continue to show great innocence, eh? Very well, dear Signor Noon. I, Captain Michele Santini, will educate you somewhat. We are not so provincial here in Roma, as you might think. We know things. We keep up with the news. Allora, we know something of you. Who you are and what you are in that great big United Stated of yours. The detective privato---involved all too often in murder cases, world affairs and many times you have put your big foot in those matter which are usually the business of secret agents and---shall we say, espionage, Signor!"

  "Lay off the plurals, Captain." I got some wind back into my sails, still not knowing what he was leading up to in his slow Continental way. "Speak for yourself, Giovanni."

  "Michele," he corrected me, proudly, missing the gag completely. His dark eyes contracted and the smile vanished. The bandit moustache straightened out, fiercely. And somehow the whole routine was startlingly familiar, now. Déjà vu in spades. There was a Captain Mike back in New York Homicide who this Captain Michele did not have to take a back seat to. They were both chips off the old police block. Grim, remorseless, one-track minded. This was literally the same man, Italian Style. Coppers under the skin.

  "All right, Captain Michele. You tell me what you think you have on me and then maybe I can laugh in your face."

  "I do not think you will laugh at all, Signor. Perhaps, you will be crying, eh? All the way to our strongest prison." He picked up the brown diary, balancing it on the big flat palm of his left hand. His patient frown was not unkind, somehow. It was as if he could not believe what he had found in the entries. "Very well. To the specifics. You have been in Rome exactly eight days. Nine, to be precise, if we count today. And we cannot fail to do that, can we? According to your own hand, you were supposed to leave yesterday. You did not. The first cause for suspicion. We know much of your activities now. Thanks to your diary-habit and the necessary investigation following your arrest. You arrived here in Rome on the Rapido from Rapallo. We know you stayed at the Excelsior on the Mediterranean for a lonely period of three days. That, it seems, came directly following a one week visit to Paris;. You had arrived there by jet place. Orly Airport from New York in your America. You seem to have very little luggage, Signor, for a man on European holiday of such long duration. One suitcase, a black attaché bag. And an assortment of rather interesting weapons for a peaceful tourist, I should think."

  "I'm not a clotheshorse," I interrupted quickly. "I didn't intend to swim on the Riviera or take in any night life. So I didn't need a tuxedo. I always travel light. And that's no crime. Unless you belong to the Beautiful People. And I certainly don't. As for the weapons---" I shrugged. "It's a cruel, unfriendly world, isn't it?"

  He pounced on that, eagerly, still holding the diary.

  "Si, Signor. The weapons, by all means. I wish to know why a man visits La Bella Roma with a virtual arsenal of death at his very fingertips!"

  "Take it easy, Captain. I'm duly licensed and authorized. For that Colt right there and every little toy in my suitcase. I'll admit plastic explosives and cigarette lighter pistols and my gas pellets are a bit much but--I need them in my line of work."

  "But how did you get them through customs, my friend?"

  "I can't tell you that. Let's say I have influence."

  "Let's say you must tell me. For what you carry about your person so recklessly has everything to do with the charges we intend to hold you for. Think about that and think well before you answer, Signor. No amount of political secrecy or diplomatic intervention from your Embassy can gloss over the possession of such toys, as you say. The diary alone will damn you!"

  He slammed it down on the desk again. This time it didn't sound like an axe falling. More like a ton of TNT. And the habitual weariness had faded from him. He was worked up, now. Passionate and unforgiving. And I still didn't understand him. Or what he had on me.

  "Then you stop stalling too, Captain. What do you find in my diary that makes such fascinating reading?"

  Controlling himself and nodding, eyes glinting at me, he played drumming rhythms with his hands and hit me with his news of the day. The week. And the year. It wasn't at all what I expected.

  "Signor Noon," Captain Michele Santini said very evenly, very coldly and unargumentatively, as though it was the Gospel according to Pope John, "during the time you have spent in this city, you have visited many places. The Colosseum, The Piazza Navone, St. Pietro's, St. Mary's in Cosmedia, Vincoli, the Villa Borghese---a great many of our traditional and most loved 'tourist' attractions. I will not name all the places you have been. Those I speak of are sufficient. Allora---what will you say, Signor, when I tell you that explosive contraptions---lethal devices---were found at each of every one of the sites you visited---all within hours of your visits? You must be a very poor saboteur, my friend, to have your handiwork so easily discovered. But---even that---which is monstrous and for which I myself would have you stoned to death in front of the Vittorio Emmanuello at high noon---is not all. The lady you speak of so endearingly on
the evening of July the twenty third, this Signorina Deveau---in your own words---a sharp gal, with quiet good looks?---well, Signor Noon. She was found before dawn in the very waters of the Fontana Di Trevi by the maintenance people who clean the place after the coarse tourists have departed." He stared across the desk at me with all the contempt there is in the world. "She was drowned. Very violently. Very brutally. And there is evidences of an ugly sexual assault. Must I say more?"

  "No," I said. "Not just this second. That's quite enough for openers. Let me think, will you---"

  "Think hard, Signor. I intend to prosecute you to the limit of my powers. With, I should add, the greatest of pleasure."

  I couldn't blame him at all. Not hardly.

  By his standards, the man sitting on the other side of his Police Captain's desk in the tiny sweat-box of an office, was a pretty sturdy combination of Hitler, Jack the Ripper and that awful species known as Tourist, American. Despicable people.

  None of whom he could afford to like very much, warm-hearted, country-proud, woman-loving Italian that he was.

  It was a muggy Wednesday in Italy. Molto humido, again.

  Mercoledi in Roma.

  I can't remember a Wednesday so dark as to have hindered the coming Thursday. All my Thursday s. And then some.

  You see, the worst part of it all was that Captain Michele Santini was close enough to the truth. Half a truth can be just as damaging as none, sometimes. I was a spy, without portfolio, for the President of the United States, and I was in Italy to do a job for him. Another job which I had considered a piece of cake and no trouble at all. Or rather, less trouble than usual. It says here.

  But I hadn't planted bombs and explosive devices all over Rome.

  I do believe in Urban Renewal but not that kind.

  Yet, I had left Joy Deveau at the Fontana Di Trevi on the sultry night of July the twenty third. Left her drinking the coke.

  But I hadn't left her dead.

  Never dead.

  I don't murder sharp gals with quiet, good looks.

  I don't murder anybody, unless put upon.

  Unless they try to out-draw me.

  But that was beside the point, now.

  Captain Michele Santini had me by the short hairs.

  And my hair is short enough, as it is.

  "Well, Signor? Have you thought? Have you thought hard? This, as you can readily see, is no small matter. Since the Pieta was almost demolished by that lunatic last year, we have come to appreciate, here in Rome, exactly what we can no longer afford to lose. As for the young lady---we do not like murders, Signor. Especially when the victim is a beautiful Signorina who obviously had so much to live for."

  "I get the message, Captain Santini." Not it was I who was very weary. And feeling trapped and hemmed in with his cramped office and far-reaching love for mankind. And womankind. And Rome. "I do, indeed."

  "So. And what is your answer? Or rather, you defense against all these charges?"

  "I didn't do it. Any of it. How's that for openers?"

  "Not good enough, I am afraid. However, I am a just man, Signor. If you care to reconsider your answer---"

  "You'll throw the book at me. Is that it?"

  "Si, Signor." His bleak smile was slightly malicious. "And in this case, the book is your oh so convenient diary. Don't you agree? Never has a defendant, in my experience, been so cooperative in that way. To record all the dates, all the places---and even his victim."

  "You're a meanie, Santini, but I read you loud and clear. And now it is you who compel me to make like the average tourist."

  "Como?" His frown was beautiful to behold. "What do you mean?"

  I put my teeth together and leaned back in my chair.

  "Call the United States Embassy. Before you bury me altogether."

  The good Captain leaned forward in his own chair, pyramiding his fingers, shrugging his shoulders, blinking his eyes.

  "You insist?"

  "I insist."

  "Then you leave me no alternative, Signor."

  "Now, what do you mean?"

  "There will be no call permitted to your Embassy, you will be held incommunicado and no one, Signor Noon, will be allowed to contact you until you are seen by our people from the Military. Unless, of course, you make a full confession here and now and spare all of us this useless procrastination of yours."

  "See beautiful Rome," I said bitterly, unable to completely believe what he had said, "and lose all your rights."

  "Bombers and murderers are animals to us, Signor," Captain Michele Santini rapped in a low snarl. "Until you can convince me otherwise, you will be treated as such."

  He proved to be as good as his word.

  They treated me like a dog.

  It was Mondo Cane from that moment on.

  "Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues

  We write in Water…."

  ---William Shakespeare

  THREE CORPSES IN THE FOUNTAIN

  They weren't playing games with me, either. Neither checkers, dominoes or Bluffing Poker. I'd lost the trick to Santini.

  The good Captain Michele Santini, and whoever might be backing up his official play as to what to do with the detectivo privato from the great United States across the waters. Santini rang a bell, summoned two of his uniformed strong-arms and I was thrown into the Roma lock-up without any further to do or to don't. They escorted me from the tiny office, down three flights of winding, wooden stairs, into a stone dungeon of a cell, windowless, that called down echoes of the old Bastille in Paris during the Revolution. I went quietly, without kicking up a storm or screaming about my rights, because there was far too much to think out. And puzzle over. And get my second wind about. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  And there was nothing to be gained from resistance.

  The ball game had already begun, and though I knew whose side I was on, I wasn't that sure exactly of the batting order. The President had called the strategy but not even he could have prepared for my possible arrest as a man who planted explosive devices all over the tourist attractions of Rome and as the murderer of a harmless, vacationing teenage girl drowned in the Fontana Di Trevi. The Chief could not have bargained for that.

  Santini's watchdogs must have counted me an extraordinarily dangerous prisoner. Losing the Colt, attaché case and luggage was one thing but the routine that followed was right out of Murderer's Row in Ossining. They took my shoes, they took my tie, they took the wide leather belt from my waist, confiscated my wrist watch and cocktail ring. And that wasn't all. Whatever the ground rules were of Captain Santini's detaining and confining procedure, they lifted my silver cigarette lighter, personal keys and loose change---literally anything that could be described as a weapon or tool with which to do myself in. I stood still for all of it because the two, burly, six-foot carabinieri seemed to be just spoiling for me to put up some kind of fight so they could have an excuse to slap me around. I could read between the lines of their sullen, swarthy Romany faces. As a despoiler of their beloved Roma and a butcher of lovely young Signorina, I deserved nothing but the worst at their avenging hands.

  They even stripped me of the P.O.W.-M.I.A. silver plated bracelet which I'd been wearing as my own sort of private protest against the Vietnam War. MAJ. NORLAN DAUGHTREY 8-2-65 didn't cut any ice with the two young cops. They practically sneered when they read the inscription. It was obviously too late for peace of any kind.

  Peace at any price.

  And then they left me, slamming the dungeon door shut, sliding the iron bolt on the outside home into its groove with a thunder like the end of the world. They padlocked the barrier, too, rattling a lot of keys and things. There was a grilled Judas Window in the face of the door, convenient for pushing through trays of food and containers of liquid. It all could have been very laughable, the entire routine, if it wasn't so ominously for real. There wasn't a chair, bed or carpet in the stone room. Just the four cinder-block formation walls, flagstone floor and ceiling and t
he whole affair was no more than ten feet square. There was no graffiti on the walls, though anything by Edmond Dantes wouldn't have surprised me at all. It was as if the little cubicle was spotlessly clean, just to accommodate me. Whatever air there was trickled in from the outer passageway. Warm, heavy and close. The atmosphere reeked of stale dust, ancient times and the cabinetto. I wouldn't have to ask where that was. It couldn't have been more than two yards from my front door.

  All in all, my present location in Rome was not exactly a garden spot or even a room at the local Y. To say the very least.

  I sat down on the stone floor, put my back to the wall and began to think. I thought for a very long time. Kilroy was not here.

  There was a lot to ponder over.

  Regardless of the serious charges, why would a Captain Michele Santini treat a rather celebrated American detective, as if he was less than human? And more than monstrous?

  I didn't know.

  To get at the possible answers, or maybe just to keep the panic button out of reach, I mentally tried a Questions and Answers game with myself. The sort of give-and-take I hadn't treated Captain Santini to.

  Because I couldn't. Without losing the whole ball of wax.

  But alone in that tough little cell, with no Police Steno to put my answers down and into the record, to hang me with, it was an easy thing to do. No sweat at all. Mental therapy, really.

  And it kept me from losing my nerve.

  Kept me from thinking about the fix I was in.

  Signor, why have you come to Roma at this time?

  I came because it is my job, Captain Santini.

  Your job, Signor? Please explain.

  I'm on special duty at all times with the President of my country. What you might call his very own special investigator. So special that nobody else but him knows that my job exists. Or that I work in that capacity. You might say, I'm an invisible man.

  Ah, I see. A secret agent, eh?

  Something like that.