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Authors: Bill Pronzini

Tags: #Mystery & Crime

Sleuths (22 page)

BOOK: Sleuths
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The house was empty.

The woman, Rita, was gone.

 

C
armody went out a side door into a garden grown wild with wisteria and oleander. The windows of an adjacent building looked down into it, and a fat man in an undershirt stood framed in one, shouting querulously. Three big chestnut trees grew in the garden's center; Carmody stayed in their shadow until he found a gate opening onto one of the narrow interior streets.

As he came running through the gate, a tall youth materialized from the darkness in front of him, lured by the excitement. Carmody didn't want his face seen; he lowered his shoulder, sent the kid sprawling against the garden wall. He ran to the first corner, turned it into another street, ran another block, turned a second corner and came out in a
campiello
with a small stone statue in its center.

He ducked around the statue, went into an alley on the opposite side of the square. With his back against the alley wall, he watched the
campiello
to see if he had pursuit. No one came into it. He stayed where he was for a couple of minutes, catching his breath, shivering inside his wet clothing. Then he moved deeper into the blackness, set his bag down, worked the catches to open it.

Rita
, he was thinking,
it had to have been Rita
.

Besides Piombo and himself—and Piombo could be trusted—the woman and Lucarelli were the only ones who knew about the San Spirito house. And she'd gone back into the house, out of harm's way, just seconds before the shooting started. And the shooter? Lucarelli's rival, Gambresca, or somebody sent by him. She'd found some way to tip Gambresca. For money, or hatred, or revenge, or a combination of all three. Money was part of Gambresca's motive, for sure: the shooter had taken the time to fish the three suitcases out of the launch, so he had to have known what one of them contained.

But why had they done it that way? Why not just put a
knife
in Lucarelli at the house and walk out with the money? Or tip Gambresca days sooner? They'd been living on San Spirito for more than a week. Maybe she wasn't up to the job of cold-blooded murder herself, or maybe it had taken her all this time to work up the courage for a double-cross, or maybe Lucarelli had had the money hidden in a place only he knew about. Whatever the reason, it was incidental.

Rita and Gambresca—they were what mattered.

While all of this was going through his mind Carmody changed clothes in the darkness. The sodden things went into the suitcase, rolled into a towel. The Beretta went into the pocket of the Madras jacket he now wore.

He left the alley, hunted around until he found a tavern. Inside, locked in the toilet, he broke down the Beretta and cleaned and oiled it with materials from the false bottom of his bag. When he was satisfied that it was in working order he went out into the bar proper and drank two cognacs to get the taste of the canal water out of his mouth.

There was a telephone on the rear wall. Carmody called Della Robbia's number. As soon as he heard the Italian's voice he said, "Carmody. Bad trouble. The whole thing's blown."

Silence for a couple of seconds. Then Della Robbia said, "What happened,
signor
?"

"We were ambushed. The man I was taking out is dead. So's your launch driver. One man waiting for us in a boat with a machine pistol—maybe a backup. It was too dark to see much."

"
Gacchio
!"

"Yeah. A big pile of shit."

"You are all right, Signor Carmody?"

"No physical wounds," Carmody said bitterly. He was holding the phone receiver as if it were the shooter's neck. "Listen, I need you and your connections. The man I was taking out was Renzo Lucarelli. You know him?"

"Lucarelli? Yes . . . yes, of course."

"He had a woman, Rita, who was supposed to go with us. But she ducked off just before we got hit. I think she's a Judas."

"Why would she—?"

Carmody said, "I don't have all the answers yet—that's what I need you for. You know anything about this Rita?"

"Very little,
signor.
Almost nothing."

"How about a rival of Lucarelli's named Gambresca?"

"A bad one," Della Robbia said. "You believe Gambresca was involved in the shooting?"

"That's how it looks. You know where I can find him?"

"A moment, Signor Carmody, I must think. Yes. He owns a wholesale produce company on Campo Oroglia. It is said he lives above it."

"All right," Carmody said. "Find out what you can about the woman. She may be with Gambresca, she may not be. I want her, Della Robbia, and I want her before she can get out of Venice. Lucarelli is the first client I ever lost and I won't stand still for it."

"I will do what I can," Della Robbia said. "Where are you? Where can I—?"

"I'll be in touch," Carmody told him and rang off.

He tried to find out from the bartender how to get to the nearest canal that had water taxi service. The bartender didn't speak English. None of the drinkers spoke English. Carmody's Italian was weak; it took him five long, impatient minutes to get directions that made sense.

When he went out again into the night he was running.

 

T
here was nobody home at Gambresca's.

Carmody stepped out from under the doorway arch, looked up once more at the sign running across the top of the warehouse. It said
A. Gambresca
in broad black lettering, and below that:
Campo Oroglia 24.
His gaze moved higher, to the dark windows strung along the second floor front. No sign of life. He had been there for several minutes, ringing bells and making noise like a drunk, his fingers restless on the Beretta in his jacket pocket. There hadn't been any response.

Carmody looked at his watch. Almost one-thirty. He crossed the square to enter the same street by which he'd arrived, his steps echoing hollowly in the late-night stillness. The fury inside him boiled like water in a kettle.

What now? Another call to Della Robbia. And if Della Robbia hadn't found out anything? The waiting game, like it or not. He would pick a vantage point somewhere on Campo Oroglia, and he would sit there all night if necessary, until Gambresca showed up.

In the lobby of a small hotel nearby he gave a sleepy night clerk a thousand-lire note for the use of his telephone. Della Robbia answered immediately.

Carmody said, "Well?"

"I have learned something, but perhaps it means little or nothing."

"I'll decide that. What is it?"

"The woman has an uncle, a man named Salviati, who owns a
squero—
a boatyard for the repair and construction of gondolas. The uncle is said to have smuggled contraband and has two boats of high speed at his disposal. It is possible the woman has gone there."

Carmody gave it some thought. Yes, possible. Assuming it was the money that had driven her to sell out Lucarelli, she might have already got her payoff and then headed for her uncle's—a place to hide or a way to leave the city, either one. She'd need someone she could trust, and Gambresca might not be that someone. Another possibility was that she'd gone to the uncle straight from San Spirito, to wait for Gambresca or one of Gambresca's people to bring her blood money.

He asked, "Where is this place, this
squero?"

"On Rio degli Zecchini."

"So I can get there by water taxi."

"If you can find one at this hour."

"I can find one," Carmody said.

 

F
rom where he stood in the shadows across the Rio degli Zecchini, Carmody could see the vague shapes of gondolas, some whole and some skeletal, in the
squero's
low-fenced rear yard. Set back fifty feet from the canal was a two-story, wood-and-brick building that looked as if it had been built in the time of the Doges; it was completely dark. Most of the surrounding buildings were warehouses and the area was deserted. No light showed anywhere except for a pale streetlamp atop a canal bridge nearby.

Carmody put his suitcase into a wall niche, took out the Beretta, held it cupped low against his right leg as he walked to the bridge. On the opposite seawall he stood listening for a time. A ship's horn bayed mournfully on the Lagoon; the canal water, rumpled by the wind, lapped at the seawall. There were no sounds of any kind from the
squero.

The place's rear entrance was a wooden gate set into a three-sided frame of two-by-fours; the fourth side was the wall of the adjacent building. On the canal side, and on top, the beams sprouted tangles of barbed wire like a fungoid growth. Carmody had had experience with barbed wire before, but he still cut the palm of his left hand in two places when he swung around the frame. The sharp sting of the cuts heaped fuel on his rage.

Moving quickly, he made his way across the yard. The gondolas—long, slender, flat-bottomed, with tapered and upswept prow and stern—were laid out in rows, on davits, in stacks of two and three; they had a ghostly look in the darkness, like giant bones in a graveyard. They also camouflaged his run to the far corner of the building, in case anybody happened to be looking out.

Jalousied shutters were lowered across the double-doored entrance; there were no fronting windows. Carmody edged around the corner, along the side wall. An elongated window halfway down showed him nothing of the interior, just a solid screen of blackness.

Carmody paused, peering toward the back. A high wall marked the rear boundary of the
squero
but it was set several feet beyond the building, forming a narrow passageway. He went there and into the passage; picked his way through a carpeting of refuse, looking for another window. Midway along he found one with louvered shutters closed across it. He squinted upward through one of the canted louvers.

Light.

Movement.

Carmody bent lower so he could see more of the room inside. It was an office of sorts, with a cluttered desk on which a gooseneck lamp burned, two wooden chairs, a table piled with charts and pamphlets, a filing cabinet with a rusted fan on top.

And the woman, Rita.

She stood to one side of the desk, in profile, nervously watching the closed door opposite the window. Her arms were folded across her heavy breasts, as if she were cold; her face was drawn, bloodless. Between her lips was a filter-tipped cigarette that she smoked in short, deep drags.

Carmody glided back the way he'd come, stopped before the unshuttered window at the front part of the building. It was the kind that opened inward on a pair of hinges, with a simple slip catch locking it to the frame. He went to work with the broad flat blade of his Swiss Army knife. After two minutes he put the tips of his fingers against the dirty glass, cautiously pushed the window open.

The interior smelled of paint and linseed oil and dampness. Carmody climbed over the sill, stood motionless on a rough concrete floor. He could see where the door to the office was by a strip of light at its bottom. He could also make out a lathe, a drill press, a table saw, several wood forms, all massed up in the blackness—an obstacle course for him to get through without making any noise.

Slowly, feeling in front of him with his left hand, he moved toward the strip of light. He had to detour twice, the second time abruptly to keep from colliding with a sawhorse. When he reached the door he stopped to listen. She was quiet in there, and since she'd been watching the door minutes earlier, it figured that she was still watching it. He had no way of knowing whether or not she was armed. He hadn't seen a gun, but he'd only had a limited view of the office.

He wrapped his left hand around the knob, twisted it, then threw his left shoulder against the door. The latch was open; the door banged against the table inside, dislodging papers. The woman let out a shriek and stumbled away from the desk, one hand going to her mouth. Her eyes were like buttons about to pop from too much pressure.

Carmody got to her in three long strides, caught her dark hair in his free hand, spun her around and sat her down hard in one of the chairs. Then he knelt in front of her, his angry face less than six inches from hers, and laid the Beretta's muzzle against her cheek.

He could see that she wanted to scream again, but nothing came out when she opened her mouth. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets. Carmody slapped her twice, hard. The blows refocused her vision, brought her out of the faint before she had really gone into it.

She stared at him with a mixture of shock and terror. "Signor Carmody . . ."

"That's right—alive and well."

"But you . . . I believed . . ."

"I know what you believed," he said thinly. "But I was luckier than Lucarelli and the boat driver. Where's the money? And where's Gambresca?"

"Gambresca! That
stronzolo
,
he was the one . . ."

"You ought to know, you sold us out to him."

She blinked. "I do not understand."

"The hell you don't understand."

"I was so
afraid
,"
she whispered. She was trembling now. "I did not wish to die. This is why I run away. Please, I know nothing about Gambresca."

BOOK: Sleuths
6.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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