Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 19

  Lily came down to the edge of the water, carrying the bag.

  “Just a minute,” he said smoothly.

  She stood still, while he climbed aboard and settled in the starboard seat. He put his feet on the pedals and took a tentative turn backwards, making sure that his weight hadn’t taken the shallow draft down to the sand again.

  “I hate to do this, Lily,” he said, “but I’m not taking you any farther. If you get chilly, pile some sand on yourself—it’ll keep you warm. There’ll be plenty of boats around in the morning that you can hail. I wouldn’t try to scramble out over the rocks tonight—you don’t have the right shoes for it, and in the dark you’d be likely to break a leg.”

  “You’re crazy,” she gasped.

  “That has been suggested before,” he admitted. “And some people have thought I’d fall for the goofiest stories. But your yarn about how you got to Cefalù and just happened to be loafing around the station was stretching the long arm of coincidence right out of its socket, even for me. I only went along with the gag because I didn’t have any choice. But I still say thanks, because it helped me out of a tough spot.”

  If he needed any confirmation of his analysis, he had it in the name she called him, which cannot be quoted here, in deference to the more elderly readers of these chronicles.

  “You’re a naughty girl, Lily,” he said reproachfully. “You didn’t see anything wrong with trying to finger me for the Mafia, and you’d have been just as ready to do it in Catania, and turn your back while they mowed me down. If you want to play Mata Hari, you should be a good sport about losing your bait.”

  Sometime about sunset he had taken off her glasses, and verified that she actually had eyes—smoky gray ones, which by then were deliriously sleepy. Now he could no longer distinguish them in the gloom; which made liars of a whole school of authors, who he was certain would have described them as spattering sparks and flame.

  She kept coming forward, regardless now of splashing into the sea over her ankles and then to the depth of her streamlined calves, and he prudently back-pedalled enough to keep the moscone always retreating beyond her reach.

  “It’s an awful long swim back,” he cautioned her, “unless you’re in the Channel-crossing class. And nasty things come out in these waters at night, like slimy eels with sharp teeth. It’s not worth it, honestly. I’m sure Al will understand.”

  She stopped with the water up to her knees, screaming abuse with an imaginative fluency that was in startling contrast to her usual inarticulateness, while he backed up with increasing acceleration until he had put enough distance between them to be able to come forward again in a long turn past the cove and outwards.

  “Don’t spoil the memory, Lily,” he pleaded as he went by. “I said thank you, didn’t I?”

  It was a wasted effort. Her invective followed him as far as her voice would carry, and made him wonder how a nice girl could have picked up that vocabulary.

  He kept pointing towards the Pole Star until the shrieks faded astern, and then made a slow turn to the left.

  Westwards. Towards Palermo. Not Catania.

  It was an especially snide trick to add to the wrongs he had done Lily, after she had given so much to the Mafia cause, but he couldn’t afford to be sentimental. Whenever she was rescued or made her own way to a telephone, she would swear that the Saint was making for Catania. And that could make all the difference to his first hours in Palermo.

  His legs pumped steadily, at a rate which he could keep up for hours and yet which pushed the moscone along at its maximum hull speed, beyond which any extra effort would have achieved nothing but churning water. Nevertheless this terminal velocity was not inconsiderable, so far as he could judge from his impression of the inky water slipping past, for a vessel that wasn’t designed for racing and relied only on muscular propulsion.

  The slight evening breeze had dropped and the sea was practically dead calm. It was easy to navigate basically by keeping Polaris over his right shoulder. The twinkling illumination of small settlements on the coast, and occasional flashes of headlights on the highway, located the shore line, and he kept far enough from it to feel secure from accidental discovery by any headlights that might be turned capriciously out to sea.

  Eventually, of course, when he figured that he had put enough miles behind him, he had to edge shorewards again. He had heard one train rumbling along the coastal track, and thought he had identified its cyclopean headlamp flashing between cuttings and embankments; he had to hope that the next one would not pass too soon, or be too far behind. He would be afraid to risk another bus, because the driver by that time might have heard of the adventure of another bus driver and be abnormally observant of all passengers, but a long wait at a train stop also had its hazards.

  He made his final approach along a fair stretch of dark coast preceding the lights of another town, nursing the little waterbug in until the dim starlight found him a sheltered beach to run up on. He hauled the boat well up above the tide line, where it would be safe until the indignant owner could locate it, and stumbled over some rocks and through a stony patch of some unrecognizable cultivation to a road which led into the hardly less murky outskirts of the community.

  The sign on the railroad station, which he located simply by turning inland until the tracks stopped him, and then following them, read “CAMPOFELICE DI ROCCELLA,” and the waiting room was deserted. Simon strolled in, studied the timetable on the wall, and purchased a ticket to Palermo. The next train was due in only ten minutes, and precisely on schedule it pulled in, hissed its brakes, discharged a handful of passengers, and clankingly pulled out again—a performance for which a certain Benito Mussolini once claimed all the credit.

  There were only a few drowsy contadini and a couple of chattering families of sun-drenched sightseers aboard, and none of them paid any attention to the Saint during the hour’s ride into Palermo.

  Disembarking there was a fairly tense moment. He was not seriously expecting a mafiosa delegation of welcome, but the penalties of excessive optimism could be too drastic to be taken lightly. He stayed close to the tourist families, using the same technique that he had tried with the students at Cefalù, and hoping that anyone who had only a description to go by would dismiss him as one of their party. But his far-ranging gaze picked out no greeters or loiterers with the malevolent aspect of Destamio’s goondoliers. The hue and cry was still far behind, apparently—and hopefully pointing in other directions.

  Outside the station, he let himself be guided by the brighter lights and the busier flow of people, in order to melt as far as possible into the anonymous multitude, until the current drifted him by the kind of nook that he wanted to be washed into.

  This was a small but cheerfully sparkling trattoria which provided him with a half-litre of wine and the small change for a phone call. He rang the number that Marco Ponti had given him, and knew that the cards were still running for him when the detective’s own crisp voice answered the buzz, even though it sounded tense and edgy.

  “Pronto! Con chi parlo?”

  “An old friend,” said the Saint, in Italian, “who has some interesting news about some older friends of yours.”

  The phone booth is a refinement which has made little progress in Sicily, and he was well aware of the automatic neighborly interest of the padrone and any unoccupied customer within earshot. Even to have spoken a word of English would have aroused a curiosity which could ultimately have been fatal.

  “Saint!” the earpiece rasped loudly. “What happened to you? Where are you! I was afraid you were dead. An impossibly large Bugatti was reported abandoned in the country, and was towed in here to the police garage. By a lucky accident I took the job of tracing the owner—who told me that you had hired it, and…Wait, what did you say about friends of ours? Do you mean—”

  “I do. The ones we are both so fond of. But tell me first, where is the car now?”

  “The owner came to the questura with an extra set of
keys and wanted to take it away with him, but I did not want to release it until I found out what had happened to you, in case it should be examined again for clues, so I had it impounded.”

  “Good! I was going to tell you to grab a taxi and join me, but the Bugatti might be more useful. I have a lot of news about our friends which would take too long to give you over the phone. So why not un-impound the Bug and drive it here? I am in a restaurant named Da Gemma, somewhere near the station—you probably know it. The food smells are making my mouth water, so I shall order something while I wait. But hurry, because I think we have a busy night coming up.”

  The only answer was an energized click at the other end of the line, and the Saint grinned and returned to his table and an assay of the menu for some sustaining snack. Enough time and exercise had intervened since his picnic with Lily to create a fresh appetite, and fortunately, late as it was getting by northern standards, it was not at all an exceptional hour for supper in the meridional tradition.

  He was chasing the last juicy morsels of a tasty lepre in salmi around his plate with a crust of bread when he heard the reverberant gurgle of an unmistakable exhaust outside, and Ponti burst through the pendant strips of plastic that curtained the door. Simon waved him to the place on the other side of the table, where a clean glass and a fresh carafe of wine had already been set up.

  “I did not come here to get drunk with you,” the detective said, pouring himself a glass and draining half of it. “Be quick and tell me what has happened.”

  “Among other things, I have been conked on the head, kidnaped, shot at, and chased all over by an assortment of bandits who must have a real grudge against your Chamber of Commerce. But I suppose it would bore you to hear all my private misadventures. The part that I know will interest you involves the location of a castello where you can find, if you move quickly enough, a beautiful sampling of the directors of that Company in full session, along with the chairman of the board himself, whose name seems to be Pasquale.”

  Although they were talking in low voices that could hardly have carried to the nearest occupied table, it still seemed circumspect to make certain references only obliquely.

  “I know all about that meeting,” Ponti said. “Everything, that is, except the location. Where is it?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to give you the address, but I could take you there.” Simon refilled their glasses. “But you surprise me—you seem to know a lot more about this organization than you did the last time we talked.”

  “I should claim to have done some extraordinary secret research, but I am too modest. I owe it all to the sample of one of their products that was left in your car, the one that was designed to make the loud noise. You remember, there was a certain kind of signature on the plastic. I photographed it myself, and checked it against the identification files while the clerk was at lunch. The Fates smiled, for a change, and I discovered that the marks were made by a local dealer named Niccolo who has been accused of handling similar goods before, but of course was absolved for lack of evidence. I brought him in to the office myself and managed to question him privately.”

  “But I thought those people would never tell anything. The omerta, and all that. You yourself told me they would die before they talked.”

  “That is the rule. But it has been broken, usually by women. In 1955, one Francesca Serio denounced four of these salesmen for putting her son out of business—permanently. They were sent to prison for life. In 1962 another, Rose Riccobono, who lost her husband and three sons to a vendetta with the same Company, gave us a list of more than twenty-nine who were charged with controlling the business in her village. These women defied the penalty because of love, or grief. With Niccolo, I used another argument. An inspiration.”

  “Worse than death?”

  “For him. And more permanent that torture.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I put a white coat on the old man who sweeps the building—a very distinguished old fellow, but weak in the head—and laid out a row of butcher knives, and one of the masks that are kept for tear gas. I told Niccolo that we were going to anesthetize him, very humanely, but unless he talked”—Ponti leaned forward and dropped his voice even lower, almost to a sepulchral depth—“he would wake up and find he had been castrated.”

  Simon regarded him with unstinted admiration.

  “I felt there was a spark of genius in you, from our first meeting,” he said sincerely. “So Niccolo talked.”

  “It is apparently common gossip throughout the organization that Don Pasquale’s health will soon force him to retire. And when the chairman is on his way out, the other Directors gather to compete for the succession. In such a crisis, an organization becomes a little disorganized, and the opposition has a chance to compete against weakness. All I needed was to know the meeting place. If you know it, we can proceed. Shall we go?”

  The detective’s quietly controlled voice was a contrast to the creased urgency of his earnest old-young face. The Saint started to raise a quizzical eyebrow, and left it only half lifted.

  “Whatever you say, Marco,” he acquiesced, and looked around for a waiter and a bill.

  In a few minutes they were outside, where the gleaming masterpiece of Ettore waited at the curb, but as Simon instinctively aimed himself towards the driver’s seat, Ponti contrived to interpose himself quite inoffensively.

  “You will allow me? It will be easier, since I know the way.”

  “To where?”

  “What I learned from Niccolo was interesting enough for me to send a prepared message to Rome, which has resulted in a picked company of bersaglieri being flown into Sicily. I wanted to have some reliable help on hand whenever I completed the information I needed to use them. You are about to do that.”

  “Then I’m the one who knows the way.”

  “Not to where the troops are.”

  Simon nodded and went around the front of the car to crank it. It started as it had before, at the first turn of the handle, with an instancy which made electric starters seem like effete fripperies, and the Saint got in to the passenger seat.

  “Do you intend to leave the police out of this altogether?” he asked, as they thundered away.

  “I am the police,” Ponti said. “But I do not know which others I can trust. If I tried to work through them there would be delays, confusions, and slow mobilization. By the time we got to this castello it would be empty. I knew this before I ever came to Sicily, and arrangements were made in Rome to have these soldiers prepared for an ‘emergency maneuver’ whenever I might need them.”

  “And you know that they are reliable?”

  “Completely. Only their commander knows their mission here, but his men are absolutely loyal to him and would follow him into hell on skis if he ordered it. As far as we can tell they have not been penetrated by the Mafia, so they should look forward to the fun of roughing up these canaglie. Now tell me everything you have been doing.”

  4

  Ponti himself was no slow-poke at the wheel, it turned out, and he spurred the giant Bugatti along at a gait which would have had many passengers straining on imaginary brakes and muttering silent prayers, but the Saint was fatalistic or iron-nerved enough to tell his story without faltering or losing the thread of it. The only things that he left out were certain personal details which he did not think should concern Ponti or affect his official actions.

  “So,” he concluded, “they should still think they have me cordoned in at Cefalù, and even when they hear from Lily they should believe I’m making for Catania. Anyhow they ought not to have felt that they have to vacate their headquarters in a hurry. They think I’m on the run and busy trying to save my own skin. And Al would never expect me to be talking to you like this.”

  “I have tried not to allow that impression,” Ponti said, “by putting out an order that I want you for personal questioning about a political conspiracy. I did that partly to try to find some trace of you, of course, and
to make sure that if you were picked up you would not be beaten up by some stupid cop who would take you for a common criminal. I have found that when any political implications are mentioned, the police are inclined to proceed with caution.”

  “When I think of some of my celebrated rude remarks about policemen,” said the Saint, “your thoughtfulness brings a lump to my throat. And no one would dream you had an ulterior motive.”

  “I have only one motive—to show these fannulloni that they are not bigger than the law. And here we have the means to do it.”

  The treacherous mountain road over which they had last been bouncing ended at a gap in a wire fence guarded by a sentry with rifle and bayonet. As he barred the way, a young officer appeared out of the darkness and saluted when Ponti gave his name.

  “Il maggiore L’aspetta,” he said. “Leave your car over here.”

  There was no illumination other than the lamp over the gate and their own headlights, and when the latter were switched off they stumbled through rutted dirt until a vague hut shape loomed up before them. A door opened and a white wedge of light poured out; then they were inside the bare wooden building.

  “Ponti,” said an older officer in an unbuttoned field tunic, grasping the detective’s hand, “it is good to know we shall have some action. Everything is ready. When shall we move?”

  “At once. This is Signor Templar, who knows the location of our objective. Major Olivetti.”

  The commandant turned to Simon and acknowledged the introduction with a crunching grip. The top of his bald head hardly came to the Saint’s chin, but there was nothing small about him. He had a chest like a barrel and arms like tree-trunks. The right side of his face was a webwork of scars that stood out clearly on his swarthy skin, and a black patch covered that eye, which would have given him a highly sinister appearance but for the merry twinkle in the other.

  “Piacere! I have heard of you, Signor Templar, and I am glad to have you on our side. Over here I have maps of all Sicily, on the largest scale. Can you show me on them where we have to go?”