The Big Stiffs Page 3

  And again I ask--what are you doing in Roma?

  You won't believe it, Captain---

  Try me. I have heard stranger things than you might think.

  Okay. How's this? He sent me here to pick up some special documents for him from our Embassy. Something he couldn't trust to the ordinary diplomatic courier. Or to any of the mailing and delivery agencies. And before you ask, no, I don't know what the documents are. Or what they could be. In effect, I'm only an errand boy this trip.

  Then why does the errand boy come by such a circuitous route? Paris and then to Rapallo before coming directly here?

  Window-dressing, strictly. To make it appear as if I was on vacation, living it up. Seeing the Continent. Fun in the Sun. Etcetera.

  But why the arsenal then? The guns, the explosives---surely, these documents cannot be so important as all that---

  You say. In our kind of work, be prepared is the motto. Boy scout or not. You'd be surprised the opposition you can run into.

  Then why did you dawdle while you were here? Making the grand tour of the sights and the exhibits. Or was that more of your window-dressing, as you say, Signor?

  You catch on quick, Captain. Exactly that. The documents weren't to be ready for my pick-up until yesterday. I was just about to go to the Embassy when your men showed up and changed my plans.

  Ah. So you say, Signor. And who were you to see at the Embassy? Who was the one who would hand over these documents to you? Surely, not your esteemed Ambassador---?

  I can't tell you that, Captain. No way.

  And I can't believe you, Signor Noon. No way, as you say. Yet even if I did--why does a grown man keep a diary? Like some schoolboy? Why is it such a coincidence that you have this arsenal on your person and nearly every place you visited---we find a bomb planted? Tell me that.

  It's the way I am. I'm a Romantic, Captain Santini. Rome captivates me. I flip for the big statues, the paintings. Everything. I---

  You will forgive me, Signor, but I no longer believe anything you say. More than that, the murder of the Signorina takes away any sympathy I might have had for you. Even the idiot who tried to destroy the Pieta harmed no one but himself. Allora, we will check your story about these documents at the Embassy---

  That will get you nothing. I told you. It's all hush-hush. No one will own up to knowing me or my mission. They can't afford to.

  Don't tell me what my job is, Signor. We will see.

  All right. Go ahead. Do your own thing. But would you mind telling me what made you pick me up in the first place?

  Of course. The waiter at the restaurant in the piazza where the Pantheon stands recalls you talking to the girl at the fountain while you were drinking your colas…

  I didn't hear him say that, naturally, because Captain Santini had never told me how he'd glommed onto me. It was easy enough to imagine the rest of his questions and answers. There was no doubt where he stood in the matter of Ed Noon vs. Roma. Tourists would always come out second in his book. Especially ones who kept diaries to record their foul deeds. And if I had confessed to him the true nature of my presence in Rome, the liaison man between the White House and the U.S. Embassy on the Via Veneto, he would have scoffed all night.

  Which left me exactly nowhere.

  Or rather squatting on my rusty dusty in Santini's jailhouse, wondering what to do next. Wondering who was trying to blow up Rome, who killed Joy Deveau and what precisely was the reality of the all-important documents I was to pick up from a man called Flood who was connected in some way with the staff of the Embassy. The Chief had never told me. Not really. He never spells it all out.

  All of which left me in great shape.

  I didn't even know what time it was now, thanks to Santini's little helpers. And if he was lining me up for a Military Tribunal of some kind, I was in hotter water than there is in a cheap boiler.

  There was no way I could contact the Chief and radio an SOS.

  That was strictly against the rules of the game. No May Days.

  I was on my own. Because it had to be that way.

  I'd have to bail the ship out, all alone.

  With or without paddles, oars and .45.

  When I caught myself staring at the flagstone ceiling, silently clocking the slow scuttle of a huge black water bug jogging over to the next wall and thinking the insect was making better time than I was, I stopped playing mental quiz games with the absent Captain Michele Santini. The demoralizing effects of imprisonment, any kind, of my duration, had slyly gulled me into an inactive state. I recognized the familiar symptoms. I was feeling sorry for myself. Wishing could not get me out of Santini's durance vile. Only constructive thinking would. Nothing else works. Stone walls do not a prison make or iron bars a cage, maybe---but unless I got cracking, Santini's cell would ruin me.

  I stood up, took a military position and went into about twenty knee bends, like training for the Olympics. Then I dropped down, extended my legs, put my heel together and did twenty push-ups. To top off all that stimulating put-the-blood-back-into-your-veins exertion, I tried some Karate moves, adding the vocal grunts and plosives to give it some genuine juice. Maybe it all didn't make too much sense, but after ten minutes of intensive gymnastics, I was ready to go about five rounds with Santini's burly six-footers.

  It cleared my head, too.

  Driving out the cobwebs, the confusion, the mild fear.

  And I knew that Santini didn't have a damn thing on me. No proof, no clues, no evidence. Except possibly the small annoyance that I carried a working arsenal with me in my travels.

  There was nothing to link me with the planted explosive devices. Rome had millions of tourists every year.

  With or without bombs. PI cards and attaché cases.

  And there wasn't a scrap of anything to connect me with Joy Deveau, a teenage wanderer I'd only met once and hardly knew.

  Nor could Santini ever possibly tie me into the U.S. Embassy and my secret mission for the President of the United States.

  But---he must have had something to move in on me so fast and so sure of himself. So sure of his case. So unafraid of consequences.

  About that, you can never know.

  Not until they tell you.

  I had to wonder when Captain Michele Santini would.

  In the meantime, I wasn't enjoying his hospitality at all.

  As hot as the day had been, the cell got colder as time crept on. The squared stone room grew tomb-like. There was no sound of life, the bells of the city couldn't be heard and no one came to gloat or feed me. I could feel my unshaved face growing hair.

  But the worst thing going was I didn't even have a cigarette to comfort myself with. They had taken those from me, too.

  I tried not to chew my nails as I waited.

  It wasn't easy not to.

  For a Nicotine Nick like me, it was the toughest torture of all.

  No smokes.

  I lost all track of time.

  When the dungeon door rattled and the iron bolt growled in its groove, I snapped erect as if suddenly, ice water had been sloshed all over me. The effect was that startling. What little light that was left in the windowless room, fed in from the illuminated passageway, had become no more than dim slivers of pale amber cast-offs from a bulb of some kind. I blinked like a stupid owl. For two reasons. To adjust to the change in lighting and because I had been dozing off, sitting with my back to the rear wall, head resting in the cradle of my arms and knees. Boredom and the long wait had taken their toll.

  The cell was damper and chillier now but that was small potatoes compared to the ominous and deathly silent group crowding into the room. I sprang erect, frightened fame surrounded by hunters. I backed up to the wall, in boxing position, fighting to see what was going on. My flashing view of the new world thrust upon me was about three uniforms, helmeted heads, dark shadows stretching higher than my own six feet. My brain churned and my heart flip-flopped. Like I had told Captain Santini, I knew very little about foreign poli
ce procedure. My terrified imagination put truncheons and axes in the hands of the three shadows converging on me. And worse.

  I'd been in stationhouses before. Lots of times. But this nightmare was something novel, even for me. Right out of Nazi Germany and 1984. And the Dark Ages. I nearly lost my head.

  But the dungeon door did not slam shut and a broad swath of full yellow illumination flooded the stone room. The uniformed trio fanned out, as if stepping back, and one of the shadows suddenly laughed in a very harsh, yet musically Italian voice.

  "Madonna---the face you put on, Signor! Did you think we had come to work you over, eh? Your Americano third degree?"

  "Brutta faccia." Hissed a shadow close by. "How a face can look so ugly when the man is frightened!"

  "Basta, basta!" The third gentle soul in uniform snapped out peevish words. "Enough of this. Give him back his belongings and get him out of here. Bad enough we have to do Santini's dirty work for him. Let us not prolong the situation, my friends."

  I could only stare at them, without being able to see their faces very clearly, for their backs were still to the hallway light. Brain, heart and mind slowed down to a slow-motion, floating sensation. Almost a stop-freeze action sequence. Or just a silent movie.

  "What the hell is this?"

  There was no way of recognizing the hoarse, cracked whisper as my own. And everything was going much too fast, now.

  For they were giving me back my tie and belt. The watch, the shoes, the cigarette lighter and pack of Camels, the cocktail ring, the P.O.W.-MIA silver plated bracelet, the keys and loose change. Everything I had walked in with, including my freedom. The brown diary was handed over, too. Fumbling dumbly, I dropped it, still blinking foolishly like that dull old owl rousted from his sleep in the barn. I had to be dreaming in the middle of the Roma night.

  Something was way off base. Out of kilter. Out of sync.

  Something was.

  Patiently, slightly more cordially and perhaps even a trifle generously, one of the three shadows, explained what had happened.

  "---we ask your pardon, Signor. A regrettable mistake. Our good Capitano begs you to understand and to forgive. You see, there have been two other ladies found in the water since your arrest. The coroner is most certain about the times of death. Therefore, it could not possibly have been yourself who committed these terrible calamities. As for the business of explosive devices, the Vatican has relayed to us the confidential information that they are satisfied with your identity---it seems you are highly regarded by Papa Paul himself! Therefore, it also follows you would not be the sort of fellow to bomb our beloved attractions. In a word, Dio!---the Pope is recommendation enough for an army, let alone one Americano. Further, the Vatican Security boys tell us they are well on the trail of those who may be responsible for these things. A terrorist group from the North country who call themselves The Arcangeli---but come, Signor. Finish your dressing and we will see to your comforts. Dinner, a bottle of vino, eh?, and perhaps even a bella ragazza to make up for this terrible inconvenience to yourself. We do humbly beg your pardon---prego."

  "Prego," I echoes dully. Trying to dress, trying to think.

  There was a definite stink of something in the cold little cell.

  And it didn't come from the cabinetto nearby, wherever it was.

  Not even the tremendous relief of No Third Degree or Worse, could quite dissolve the conclusion that all was not too right with the world. Especially the Rome universe.

  Three women were dead. Murdered, to hear the carabinieri tell it.

  There were bombs popping up like daisies all over the historic landscape. The Eternal City was practically mined. Another Normandy.

  And I still hadn't picked up the package from the Embassy.

  And Santini had hauled me into the net only to turn me loose.

  Somehow, it was all jumbled and tricky like Chinese boxes.

  Like a kaleidoscope off-center.

  Out of focus. Distorted. A mass of odds and evens.

  I dressed quietly, ignoring the three helmeted shadows standing by, ready to wait on me hand and foot. Courteously, penitently, but still richly amused by the spectacle of the terror I had shown. It may have been their own private sport with the average tourist who committed a felony or a misdemeanor. I couldn't be sure.

  Sort of a Roman one-upmanship.

  All I was sure of was that I despised them from helmet to booted heel. I can't stand terrorists of any kind. Never mind The Arcangeli.

  They must have sensed my lack of love, my three shadows.

  They didn't return my .45 and shoulder harness and ammo clip. Not until we were upstairs on the floor outside of Santini's office and it seemed I might have cooled down some. I kept a tight smile on my face, indicating no hard feelings, but inside I was Vesuvius. The label---cop---Italian style---had taken on a new, very personal meaning. I felt like a bewildered, angry young man on the campus of Kent University. Wanting to smash and break official faces.

  "Come," one of the shadows chuckled jovially. "Show there are no bad feelings, eh? Have a glass of Chianti with us---"

  "Thanks, no. Mustn't drink. Doctor's orders."

  "Then let us take you to meet Silvana," begged a second shadow. "Big breasts, like mezza-melone! We make use of her from time to time in our work. You will devour her. She is a feast of a woman! Bellissimia. You like them dark, yes?"

  "She can't be the Silvana I have in mind. But don't worry about me. I've got distribution of my own. Diners Club card and everything."

  "You are a strange turista indeed, Signor Noon." The third shadow speaking was the one who had been Santini's apologizer. "Most men come to Rome only for the drinking and our women---"

  "I'm queer for museums. And statues." I stared at the three of them very hard. They were no longer shadows, of course. The light in the long hall was really very good. They were all tall, wide-shouldered and young. Bronzed, white-toothed and silkily masculine. So many Vittorio Gassmans. Dames would drool over them, more or less. "What about my luggage?" I was holding the brown diary like a Bible, now.

  "It has all been returned to the hotel. Ciento dieci Via Nomentana. All in order. Captain Santini was most explicit. You have your precious arsenal intact, Signor. There will be no further trouble. I, Hugo, promise you that. It is the least we can do, eh?"

  "Fair enough, Hugo. And these are---?" I gestured to his two compatriots. They beamed at me but they were still smirking. Slyly.

  "Alfredo and Gino," Hugo purred. "My comrades-in-arms."

  "Hugo, Alfredo and Gino," I repeated, tasting the names. "I'll remember that. Never know when I might need a policeman again. By the way---what is the Italian word for pig?"

  "Porco," Hugo answered readily enough but there was a guarded, quizzical expression in his eyes. "And why do you ask, Signor?"

  "Just wanted to keep all the labels in place." I moved away from them, heading toward the front door of the stationhouse and the lovely outside air. "Well, I won't say goodbye, gentleman. We will meet again. I'm sure of it. Arriverderci."

  They watched me go, alternately shaking their heads, amused to a man and completely missing the flat, atonal pronunciation I gave to the word of farewell. I had delivered it with all the twangy resonance of a first-week Italian Language scholar. Or a Midwestern tourist.

  I took my leave of Santini's carabinieri. Hugo, Alfredo and Gino. Three little pigs in fancy uniforms and phony simpatico.

  They didn't give a damn what happened to me.

  I walked out into the dark Roma night, looking for bigger and more important game.

  The wolf.

  The Big Bad Wolf. Who is international and speaks all languages.

  A He-Wolf or a She-Wolf. Perhaps, even both.

  The one who possibly had engineered a false arrest and a time-consuming detention while He or She finagled around at the United States Embassy trying to foul up the assignment which had brought me to Europe. A top secret Presidential mission.

 
There seemed to be no other logical explanation for Captain Michele Santini's incredible performance of his official duty.

  Maybe there was a girl-murderer who left corpses in the water fountains of Rome, maybe there was a mad bomber, maybe there was an Arcangeli terrorist group but it made no sense at all that I should be arrested in the first place and then treated like a desperate character in an Iron Curtain country, in the second.

  And then, even more unbelievably, let go so easily.

  My copper's nostrils were curling mightily. The vibes were all wrong. Especially for an operative in my particular line of work.

  Rome glowed, showing a million fireflies of illumination, as I hit the street. Descending the low stone staircase to the sidewalk.

  The Eternal City lay under a blanket of heat and humidity.

  Waiting like a streetwalker greeting her next customer.

  Gaudily, hotly, damply---the compleat whore. Wanton and wide open.

  With a lot of surprises and shocks between her fleshy and vulgar thighs. From the heights of the Palantine to the depths of the Fontana Di Trevi. From the top of the Spanish Steps to Bernini's tub.

  Death also waited in Rome that night.

  Like a whore, Death also services everyone.

  Who can make the price.

  None of us are ever out of pocket when it comes to that.

  We're all rich enough to die.

  And nobody can live forever.

  Not lately.

  Not any place in the world.

  "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

  --Anonymous

  THE SEVEN KILLS OF ROME

  Nobody was waiting up for me at the Villa Del Parco. Nobody was hanging around the oblong, faintly motel-model lobby which overlooked a sloping driveway, bordered with grass, feeding down to the main thoroughfare. The Via Nomentana was a comparatively isolated stretch of asphalt, free of casual strollers and heavy traffic. At nine in the evening, it was practically Horace Harding Boulevard on Long Island. The Rome face was masked. Whatever guests the hotel owned, were either all in bed or out somewhere doing the La Dolce Vita routine. I couldn't have cared less. There was too much to do before midnight.