Sleuths (20 page)

Carmody's reaction was instantaneous: he whirled to his left, down and around into a shooter's crouch. The blond man stood in the doorway, the mate to Nicole's Luger in his hand, blood streaming down from a cut on his forehead. He fired once, wildly, just before Carmody shot him in the upper body. This time, when he fell back onto the porch, he stayed down and didn't move.

Carmody straightened slowly, letting breath out between his teeth, and looked over at Nicole. She was crouched against the wall, hating him with her eyes. He put her gun into one jacket pocket, went onto the porch and picked up the blond man's weapon and put that into the other jacket pocket.

The fat man came out from behind the daybed as Carmody walked back inside. His moonface was slick with sweat. He said, "He's dead? You killed him?"

"No. He'll live if he gets medical attention."

That disappointed the fat man. With good reason, Carmody thought. There were marks on his face, arms, neck: beaten on and burned with cigarettes, among other indignities. Carmody watched him turn blazing eyes on the woman, call her a vicious name in French, take a step toward her with his hands clenched. He stopped him halfway by catching hold of his shoulder.

"She's not worth the trouble. Leave her alone."

The fat man took a shuddering breath, relaxed a little. His pained eyes focused on Carmody without recognition. "Who are you?"

"Carmody."

"
Mon Dieu!
But how ?"

"We'll get to that. You're Tobiere, right? The real Paul Tobiere?"

Convulsive nod. "They were going to kill me. Nicole and
that
. . .
that
fils de putain."

"I figured as much. Who is he–the blond?"

"His name is Chagal," Tobiere said. "One of Nicole's filthy lovers."

Carmody said, "They were trying to pass him off as you, to take advantage of your arrangement with me." He didn't add that they must have known of his particular code of ethics, that he couldn't be bought off and that any kind of double-dealing was anathema to him. One hint that the real Tobiere had been robbed and murdered and he'd have called off the deal immediately.

"I was a fool to trust her," Tobiere said. "But I believed she cared for me; I believed -"

"Gochon! Je t'emmerge,
a
pied
, a
cheval et en voiture!"

Carmody said, "Shut up, Nicole." His tone said he didn't want any arguments. She didn't give him any.

"How did you know to come here?" the fat man asked.

Carmody told him how he'd followed Nicole and Chagal from the Casbah.

"But what made you suspect Chagal was not me?"

"Several things. She seemed to be running the show, not him; that didn't jibe with what Achmed told me. Neither did the way he acted. Achmed said you were frightened and anxious after what happened to you en route from the Sudan. Chagal wasn't either one. Then there was the fact that you lived in the Sudan for years, came here through the Libyan Desert. No man can spend time in that kind of desert country without picking up a black tan like you have, or at least some sun color. Chagal is pale–no tan, no burn. He's been nowhere near Sudan or the Libyan Desert. Not long out of France, probably."

Tobiere nodded. "I owe you my life,
m'sieu."

"I'll settle for ten percent of those gems," Carmody said. "Where are they? You didn't tell Nicole and Chagal or you'd be dead already."

"No, but I. . . I think I would have." He shuddered. "The things they did to me. . . the things they threatened to do. . ."

"Never mind that. The gems, Tobiere. Are they here?"

"Nearby. Shall I get them?"

"We'll both go get them. If they're as advertised, you'll be on a boat for France by midnight."

"Nicole? You will kill her before we leave here?"

"I'm not an assassin," Carmody said.

"But they were going to kill me. . ."

"They've got each other, her and Chagal, and they've got Algiers. That's worse than being dead. That's a living hell."

He took Tobiere's arm and prodded him out into the breathless North African twilight.

C
armody spent the morning at Bacino di Borechi, checking out the boat and captain Della Robbia had hired for the run south to Sardinia. The boat was forty-two feet and twenty years old—the
Piraeus,
flying a Greek flag. She was scabrous and salt-scarred, her fittings flecked with rust, but she seemed seaworthy and she had an immaculate power-plant: a twin-screw GMC diesel, well-tuned and shiny clean.

The captain looked all right too. He was an Australian named Vickers, who had been in Venice for a couple of years and who had handled some other smuggling jobs for Della Robbia, one involving a boatload of illegal aliens from Albania. Della Robbia said he was the best man available and he probably was. Sardinia would be a piece of cake compared to getting into Albanian waters and then out again safely with forty-three passengers.

From the
bacino
Carmody took a water taxi to St. Mark's Square. Della Robbia hadn't shown up yet at the open-air cafe on the Piazzeta. Carmody took a table, ordered a cup of cappuccino. It was a warm, windy September day, and the square was jammed with tourists, vendors, freelance artists, the ever-present pigeons. On the wide fronting basin, into which emptied Venice's two major canals, the Grand and the Giudecca, gondolas and water taxis, passenger ferries and small commercial craft maneuvered in bright confusion. The sun turned the placid water a glinting silver, gave it a mercurial aspect.

Cities were just cities to Carmody—places to be and to work in and to leave again but Venice intruded on his consciousness more than most. For one thing, you didn't have to worry about traffic problems because it had no automobiles. It was built on a hundred little islands interconnected by a hundred and fifty bridges, and you got from place to place on foot through narrow, winding interior streets or by water taxi and ferry. The pocked, sagging look of most of the ancient buildings was due to the fact that the city was sinking at the rate of five inches per century; the look and smell of the four hundred canals was the result of pollution. It was a seedy, charming, ugly, beautiful, dangerous, amiable city—one Carmody understood, and felt at ease in, and worked well in.

He had been sitting there for fifteen minutes when Della Robbia came hurrying between the two red granite obelisks that marked the beginning of the Piazzeta. Dark, craggy-featured, in his middle thirties, wearing a light gray suit and a pair of fat sunglasses, Della Robbia looked exactly like what he was: a minor Italian gangster. That worked in his favor more often than not. Because he looked like a thug, a lot of people figured he wasn't one.

When Della Robbia sat down Carmody said, "You make the arrangements for the launch?"

"Just as you instructed, Signor Carmody."

"What did you tell the driver?"

"Only that he is to pick up a passenger, transport him to an address he will be given, pick up additional passengers, and then proceed to a boat in the Lagoon."

"Does he speak English?"

"Enough to understand simple directions."

"You're sure he can be trusted?"

"
Assolutamente
,
Signor
."

"He'll be ready to go tonight?"

"Any time you wish."

"The way it looks now," Carmody said, "we can do it tonight. I went to see Vickers and his boat this morning. I'm satisfied."

"I was certain you would be."

Carmody lit one of his thin, black cigars. "I'll call you later and let you know what time the launch driver is to pick me up. Where do I meet him?"

"The Rio de Fontego, at the foot of Via Giordano," Della Robbia said. "A quiet place without much water traffic, so you can be sure you are not followed."

"How far is the Rio de Fontego from my hotel?"

"Ten minutes by water taxi."

"All right, good."

"There are other arrangements to be made?"

"No. I'll handle the rest of it. But stay where I can reach you the rest of the day."

Della Robbia said,
"
Va bene
,"
and got to his feet. "A safe journey, Signor Carmody." He lifted his hand in a salute and moved off across the Piazzeta, disappeared into the crowd of tourists and pigeons in front of the Ducal Palace.

Carmody finished his cigar, walked away from St. Marks along the Grand Canal quay. He found a stop for water taxis, rode in one to the Rio de Fontego. It turned out to be near the arched Rialto Bridge, in the approximate center of the city. Via Giordano was a quiet street lined with old houses and a few small shops that would be shuttered after dark. From the seawall at the foot of the street he could see for some distance both ways along the canal and back along Via Giordano. Della Robbia had chosen well. Carmody hadn't expected otherwise, but he hadn't had any prior dealings with the Italian and he was a careful man besides.

He got back into the water taxi and went to keep his appointment with Renzo Lucarelli.

Lucarelli was forty-two years old, thick-necked and wolf-eyed. Until recently he'd sported a luxuriant black military mustache that made him look more like an Italian Army colonel than a criminal on the run. Carmody had had him shave it off for his new identity and passport photo. Lucarelli missed the mustache; he kept fingering his upper lip self-consciously, as if he felt conspicuous without it.

He peered at the map spread open on the table, laid a thick forefinger on an X marked on the Venice Lagoon. "This boat, this
Piraeus
,
will
meet the launch here?" he asked.

Carmody said, "That's right."

"But we can be seen from the Quartiere."

"Who's going to see us?"

"Gambresca has many eyes. So does the
carabinieri
—
"

"Gambresca can't have any idea when or how you're leaving Venice; neither can the government. And there's nothing along the Quartiere except warehouses and anchored freighters. Even if we're seen, nobody's going to question the transfer. Launches take passengers out to private vessels all the time. I know, I checked it."

"But a little farther out on the Lagoon . . ."

"Listen," Carmody said, "we want to stay in the shipping roads. Any farther out and we're inviting the attention you're so worried about. Besides, the quicker we get onto the
Piraeus
and out of the Lagoon, the better."

Lucarelli stroked his barren upper lip. "You are certain of this man Vickers?"

"Della Robbia vouches for him. And I'll be along to see that he's no problem."

"I do not like putting my life in the hands of men I have never met."

"Yes? You've only known me four days."

"I have known of your great reputation for many years," Lucarelli said, and fingered his naked lip again. "The
Piraeus
is old and rusty, you said. Suppose something happens to her engines before we reach Sardinia? She might even sink in a sudden squall—"

"For Christ's sake, Lucarelli, I told you the boat was all right. Don't you think I know what I'm doing? How do you figure I got that reputation of mine? Now stop fussing like an old woman and quit asking questions I've already answered."

Lucarelli gestured apologetically. "It is only that I am nervous, Signor Carmody. I meant no offense." He lifted the glass at his elbow, drank off the last of the red wine it contained. Then he glanced over to where his woman sat paging through a magazine. "Rita, another glass of wine."

She stood immediately, came to the table. She was tall and plump and huge-breasted, with thick black hair pulled back tight from her forehead and fastened with a jeweled barrette; Carmody thought she'd have made a fine Rueben's nude. He preferred slender, less top-heavy women himself.

Her expression was neutral but her eyes betrayed her unease. She was not bearing up under the waiting any better than Lucarelli.

Lucarelli gave her his glass, then said to Carmody, "You will have some wine now, Signor Carmody?"

"No. And you'd better go easy on that stuff yourself. If we go tonight I don't want you drunk or anywhere near it."

"Then it
will
be tonight?"

"Everything's set for it. I don't see any reason for holding off another day."

"Good. Ah, good."

Rita poured Lucarelli's glass full of Chianti, brought it back to him, went over and sat down again with her magazine. She hadn't said a word since Carmody's arrival twenty minutes ago.

The room they were in was the main parlor of a crumbling building perched on the edge of Rio San Spirito, in a northeastern sector not far from Laguna Morta and the island that served as the city cemetery. A poor neighborhood; and a poor house that had water-stained wallpaper, rococo lighting fixtures tarnished by age, and a lingering odor of damp decay mixed with the fish-and-garbage reek of the canal outside. It was a long way from the walled palace-house Lucarelli claimed to have occupied on Lido Island before the fat little world he'd created for himself had collapsed.