The Big Stiffs Read online

  Everything that followed her materialization happened with such meteoric speed that the flashing image of a tall woman with very long dark hair, dressed in a flowing trenchcoat tightly belted about the middle, evaporated with the deafening explosions of bursting orange and blue flame erupting within the close confines of the very summit of the Spanish Steps and the base of the historic old church.

  There was nothing but Death, after that.

  And not a single chance for me to get in a shot to stop the slaughter or alter the outcome. I could have been a marble Moses.

  The woman in the trenchcoat had a machine gun of some kind.

  She opened up with the staggering speed of the fastest typewriter in the universe. An expert of terrible ability.

  And far more deadly than her efficiency, the tiny clamoring mob of ice cream truck patrons, all lost their heads in one startling, ill-timed choice of movement. In a rush, a concert of flight. In the wrong direction. Toward the bursting orange and blue explosions.

  Instead of taking cover behind the ice cream truck or running back toward the stairs, only paces away, they all scattered and milled about, disorganized and terrified. Literally rushing into the withering, chattering salvo of automatic fire lighting up the dark night.

  Flood got it first.

  Nobody should ever have to die that way.

  There could have been something comical about the way his tall, gangling body was suddenly checked in mid-air, then hammered and rocked, as if he was trying a frenzied new dance, but there was nothing funny in watching him hit the hard pavement. A hail of lead had cross-stitched his exposed back, slamming him mercilessly into a blinding oblivion. The black attaché case flew from his swinging arm, sailing out of sight. The bald, hatless skull seemed to wash over with torrents of crimson as leaping gouts of blood geysered from his mouth. I jockeyed crazily for position, hoping to snap off a quick shot to kill the woman but I was later than the end of the Vietnam War. The six screaming, panicked citizens of Roma had fatally road-blocked me, running, scrambling, racing pell-mell into the sound and sight of the machine gun. Putting their innocent flesh between myself and the woman in the darkness of the street scene.

  The six natives went down like the rice is reaped.

  Bleeding, dying. With bubbling, moaning, screeching whimpers and protests of agony. Broken and destroyed beyond repair by a lethal onslaught of machine gun bullets. I'll never get the awful blasting of that murderous chopper out of my brain. Not ever. And there wasn't a single damn thing I could do to halt the carnage. The woman might have been a ruthless Nazi exterminating a sextet of helpless Jews.

  They dropped before me. So many lifeless people. Like rag doll as which had never had the gift of life. Toppling all in a row.

  It couldn't have taken more than ten seconds by the clock in the church tower, for all of it to happen. To come to pass.

  No longer than that to slaughter seven human beings.

  Seven statistics.

  One maybe-spy and six innocent bystanders.

  But in that frozen, unreal segment of Time, the world rotated madly on its invisible axis and I lost what little was left of the mind you are supposed to bring into espionage work.

  I blew my cool. And my head went with it. Along with Reason.

  I vaulted over the dead and the dying, cursing, shouting, gun up and firing. Punching maddened shots into the darkness beyond the street lamp. .45 caliber ammo roared and whined, smacking stone, ricocheting savagely into the night. I never heard the pattering feet that had to be running away. I never caught sight of the woman at all. She was gone, blended with all that darkness, disappearing as magically as she had come. Like the girl-monster-ghoul that she had to be.

  All about me, blasted bodies lay, crumpled, contorted, bloody. The shattered corpse of Flood, thoroughly butchered on the very stone threshold of the Trinita dei Monti was a sight to take to the grave. And all the dead were strangers. Except Mr. Flood, in some nebulous, intangible way. We had been partners, if only for brief minutes, in a secret project that might mean a great deal to our country.

  Right or wrong. If Stephen Decatur knew what he toasted.

  And now, I was the only one still on my feet in a field of Death. The only survivor at ten fifty-one, Trinita dei Monti time.

  Shock made me incapable of moving. Going after the killer.

  I had no memory of cutting loose with the full clip of the .45. My hand was still nervelessly glued to the hot butt. Shaking.

  There was no sign of the black leather attaché case which Mr. Flood had brought with him. And it could have contained nothing.

  Not that I looked for it.

  Beyond a dazed glance at the sidewalk before the church.

  The big rounded pizza moon was still lighting up the ceiling of Roma sky. Clusters of stars had come out. Twinkling brilliantly.

  And behind me, I could hear a crying voice, a man's, murmuring over and over in a dazed voice, "Jesu Cristo….Jesu Cristo…" The owner of the ice cream truck had tagged the slaughter for all time. I couldn't have agreed with him more. God was nowhere in sight.

  Now, came the shouting, the hoarse cries of fear, anger and astonishment and somewhere a dog was barking insanely. The night had reaffirmed its status again, with a tumultuous concert of human din and activity. The kind of night music that always attends the stench and spectacle of calamity and catastrophe. And Fear.

  Flood was dead. The Spanish Steps cried out in horror.

  The attaché case was gone.

  Six people had died needlessly.

  If you didn't count Mr. Flood.

  I had walked into the heart of another nightmare.

  There didn't seem to be anything I could do about walking out of it. I was smack in the middle. Involved and caught. Hung up.

  And now I was worse off than I had been when Captain Michele Santini had had me under lock and key. Whatever his motives were.

  The Roman Holiday had turned into a blood bath.

  There was no way at all for me to throw in the towel.

  No way.

  I was left holding the bag, too.

  An attaché case filled with folded newspapers.

  I felt like ten kinds of an idiot. Imbecile, as they say in Roma. Molto stupido and plain damn worthless.

  Ed Noon.

  Have Gun Will Travel.

  Italy was kicking hell out of my reputation.

  What was left of it in the Roman moonlight atop the Spanish Steps near the front doors of the Trinita dei Monti.

  There was only one thing that was for sure. Damn sure.

  I wasn't going to hang around waiting for Captain Michele Santini. And his carabinieri sweethearts.

  Hugo, Alfredo and Gino. The three fuzzy little pigs.

  Or anybody else wearing a policeman's uniform.

  I took off.

  Like a big-assed bird. I would have flown if I could.

  Down that darkened side street, running like hell.

  Toward the Via Veneto.

  The way Flood had come, before he died. And the woman who killed.

  I left the tumult and the shouting, and the horror, behind me.

  Where it belonged.

  "…..vesta la guibba!….."

  Caruso singing Pagliacci

  VIOLENTLY ON THE VIA VENETO

  The insane gunfight at the atop of the Piazza di Spagna, no more than a half hour old and only blocks away, hadn't seemed to reach the Via Veneto. Those last two blocks of sidewalk, ending where the Borghese Gardens spreads out into a yawning expanse of green Central Park proportions, were doing business as usual. All the cane chairs and gaudy umbrellas, lined up in orderly rows on both sides of the famous avenue, under which sat the jaded natives and tourists, might have been frozen into a still life that would never change. The Café de Paris was humming, Doney's across the street was alive and well and doing a land office trade. The fleet of dark Fiats ready on a moving line just around the corner, was in constant motion. The sharpshooters, t
he taxicab drivers of Rome, were enjoying a brisk evening. The full moon, the balmy late night air, the shank of the day, had all combined to make it a typical Via Veneto scene.

  The murderous shoot-out, slaughtering seven people, might have been only the sound of firecrackers going off, back there about ten forty five. It was a mad, mad, mad, mad world. I found an empty table under one of the big umbrellas in front of the Café de Paris, nailed a waiter in dress clothes with black tie and ordered American coffee and a dry Martini. The waiter resembled a dyspeptic Gregory Peck whose reptilian gaze swept over me without comment of any kind. I didn't bother wondering what he could make of a rather breathless Americano, carrying a black leather attaché case long after office hours, who also looked as if he had just come off a mad dash to the border. I needed that java and firewater real bad. My table was squeezed between two others, both of which held reasonable facsimiles of the local night life. Fellini could have cast them. The table on my left was queened over by a sleek, aging, still-attractive brunette in expensive culottes and blooming picture hat, studiously turning the pages of Paris Match, as if she was considering posing for the cover or buying a thousand shares of its stock. On my right sat a young Romeo with the requisite white teeth, shining black kinky curls and full Mod suit with thick canary yellow tie, who was wrapped in sexy conclave with a nymphet model whose spilling corn-blonde hair and ample dimensions, freely showing in a tight, crimson miniskirt, would have shocked anybody's Aunt Fanny. Their voices were low, unhurried and reeking with boudoir overtures. The sleek creation reading Paris Match couldn't have cared less. Neither could I. The tables all down the line were overflowing with people of all nations. There were saris, turbans, Rotary pins, uniforms, beards, spectacles, evening clothes, furs, glittering jewelry---a dozen accents---the works.

  Si, oui, da, ja and you said it, old man.

  When the coffee and Martini came, I ordered them all over again, the waiter raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and I dutifully began to nibble on the gin special. I had to think. And think fast.

  The black leather attaché case, filled with newspapers, lay in plain sight atop the round table. I stared at it, wanting it to help me think. Objects, the cause of it all, can help sometimes.

  Diagonally from Café de Paris, across the street and barely a block away, the darkened mass of the United States Embassy building loomed in the night, just at the crest of the hill before the setting dropped down toward the base of the curving thoroughfare where another fountain by Bernini ruled the roost. The Fountain of the Triton. Rome and its water fountains. You could go off your rocker trying to count them. Regardless of what all the tourist guides said, you could never hear them either. The roar and zoom of the Fiat and the motorcycle had reduced Roma to the familiar status of Mad Manhattan. Noisy and nuts.

  Even now, as the coffee and gin warmed the coldness of my brain and muscles, motorcycles and car engine thunder filled the night. Civilization on wheels will ruin the world yet. Give it time.

  The gin hit me faster than I ever thought it could.

  It couldn't have been the coffee. Not hardly.

  Suddenly, the leather attaché case before me seemed to move a little. Then stop. Then move again. I shook my head, batting my eyes. There was a curious, slow-motion quality to both those movements. I stared down at the Martini. I had barely reached the bottom of the drink. The coffee I hadn't touched at all. And now a thinly humming and droning sound was filling my ears. The voices all around me, the accents, the low murmur from the romantic kid trying to make the nymphet model, sounded ridiculously loud. Amplified, the way you hike the volume on a Hi-Fi set. The flesh of my face had become oddly warmer, too. The fingers I stretched out to pick up the glass of gin were so very suddenly clumsy and disorganized what a thrill of alarm shot all through me like a bolt of lightning. An electric shock. I started to get up, to push back from the table. I tried to look around me, to see what had happened. What might be happening. It was like old times, all right, but each time is still a slam into the solar plexus. An abrupt jolt to the mind. An explosion of all logic and nerve-ends. The manhunt and the chase has its price. The Mickey Finn is one of them. Poison is, too. And that's the one thought that paralyzes the reflexes, all the motor muscles, as you try to pull yourself back from the rim of the opened grave. The pounding in my ears was now the rushing, roaring, fiercely blasting sound of an express train thundering into a station platform deep below the sidewalks and streets of a city.

  The Via Veneto swirled and danced all around me. Frightened, enlarged faces, magnified expressions, bobbed and jumped eerily. The sleek brunette reading Paris Match had dropped the magazine, hands flying to her breasts, her eyes round, incredulous pools of surprise and fear. The hot kids alongside me had shouted something, the ample nymphet was gaping at me, mouth dropped open, showing she still had some baby teeth. Her swoon-bait boyfriend was on his feet, reaching for me, brown and strong-looking hands clawing out as if he thought I was going to fall. I pushed out at him, too, feeling like a bag of broken glass about to scatter all over the sidewalk in front of the Café de Paris.

  I did.

  But I never saw myself go down.

  All at once, like a light switch being thrown, I didn't see or hear another single thing. The world had turned itself off.

  I didn't even hear the sleek brunette or the nymphet model scream in chorus. Or the whole sidewalk go up in thunder. And din.

  Roma, the Via Veneto and the night, all snuffed out like a cheap candle. A Roman candle, skyrocketing all the way. And exploding.

  The black leather attaché case had stopped moving, too.

  That's the rest of the price you have to pay for undercover work. Your eyes play tricks on you.

  I'd been had by experts.

  "'……patients receiving Valium should be cautioned against engaging in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness such as operating machinery or driving a motor vehicle.' That is on the brochure that comes with Valium, Mr. Noon. Therefore I would suggest having someone drive you and take you home when you come for your appointment. If you have any questions, please call…"

  There was a man in the nightmare. A bland-faced man in a white coat who said he was a doctor. I didn't know any doctors but I did tell him I'd never taken a tranquilizer in my life. Much less Valium which I wouldn't know from Bayer aspirin. Or a jujube.

  Then the man disappeared and another man took his place. A bold-eyed, uniformed, tanned man with bandit moustaches sitting behind a tiny desk in an office somewhere high above the street.

  "….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…she was drowned…very violently. Very brutally. And there are evidences of a sexual assault. Must I say more?"

  Captain Michele Santini had come back to haunt me. Accent and all. I told him I didn't kill Joy Deveau. I wouldn't kill any sharp girl, with quiet, good looks. Santini kept shaking his head sadly, his enormous moustaches bristling. Three shadows loomed behind him and the desk. Hugo, Alfredo and Gino, armed with foot-long clubs.

  I groaned and they all vanished in a swirl of dreamer's fog.

  I saw Joy Deveau. Exactly the way she had looked that dark night with the mammoth Pantheon rising behind her slender silhouette like some fantasy out of the past. Joy had really enjoyed the cokes I'd bought her, downing them like they might have been champagne. I saw her jeans, green jersey, love beads and long unkempt blonde hair and the rimless glasses perched on her retrousse nose. A little Gloria Steinem roaring all over Europe on her own. But with infinitely more courage and common sense. She knew an awful lot about the Pantheon, too. Not the sort of thing you find only in guide books.

  "…it's easily the most perfect of all classical monuments in Rome, Ed. Agrippa, if she was anything, was a great lover of beauty in architecture. Think of it. Whole centuries before Women's Lib…"

  Why would anyone want to rape and kill such a g
irl?

  I tried to see the faces of the two other women who had been found drowned and violated in the fountains of Rome.

  I couldn't. Corpses in the water are glazed over. Bloated.

  I'd never met them, either.

  I'd never even seen their pictures in the papers.

  Another groan and another parting of the mists and vapors. Joy Deveau faded back into the dark beyond of yesterday. And memory.

  Flood's voice came muffling out of the vast darkness. High and angry with me. Almost shaking with rage. "….you're not funny! Really, Mr. Noon. This is a very serious piece of government business all around. If you would only realize…"

  His voice wound down, like a dying record on a player.

  And then I saw him.

  Mr. Flood. Of the United States Embassy.

  In the nightmare, he was running, of course. Running as he had in real life. Raglan sleeve, four-button coat flying, attaché case bouncing, bald head shining. I saw the half-lit façade of the Trinita dei Monti. I saw the ice cream truck, the customers, the big pizza moon, the set-piece of the Spanish Steps atop the Piazza di Spagna. I heard guitar music, too, and the air was filled with the lusty shouts of natives and the sleepy Roma currents of life. And then I saw the girl. The phantom woman with the long dark hair, the tightly-belted floppy trenchcoat. The faceless female. And I also saw the machine gun. In the nightmare, it was a huge Thompson submachine gun, but that might not be true, of course. I hadn't seen the gun at all. I'd only heard it. Chattering insanely.

  I heard it now, too. Under what was now only a paper pizza.

  Stuttering like a typewriter, bursting like depth charges, sounding off like a field gun. Destroying everything in a red ghoulish haze of Death. The seven figures jerked and tumbled, staggered and fell. And the nightmare went around and around and I went with it.

  Up, up,up. Until I thought my head would explode.

  It didn't. Because it had nowhere else to go.

  The nightmare lurched to a full stop. On a dime or a lira.