Assignment - Palermo Read online

  “We need information, and fast,” Durell told him.

  O’Malley’s grin was strained. “If I’d listened to your Grandpa Jonathan when we were kids, I’d never have gone in for a life of crime, fun, and games.”

  “Was Dugalef a Brother?” Durell asked flatly.

  “One of the new ones. A grease man. I told you how everything was changed when I got back from Vietnam. New faces, new orders. Gabriella, I know how you feel about Vecchio Zio—he’s like a wizard godfather to you. Okay. But just the same, he’s the Eldest Brother, so the changes must have come on his orders, right?”

  “It cannot be so,” Gabriella protested.

  “Look, I don’t excuse myself or the Fratelli. We skate on thin ice all the time. But I’ve never been on ice. With me, gambling is a way of life. I couldn’t stop any more than I could quit breathing. So the Fratelli financed me for a chip of the action. Like a bank, you know? We got along fine until the Army shipped me home after I was zapped in the jungle and I found out what the new bosses were doing. It was nothing you could prove. Just pieces here and there. Like traces of the Congs in the jungle. A smell in the air. Cops like Rand wouldn’t cry if they found me in the gutter, but just the same—” O’Malley paused, uncomfortable. “I couldn’t let these new people go on and cream our country. That’s all there is to it. Maybe I was a damned fool; I owed nothing to anybody—”

  “The whore with a heart of gold,” Durell said. O’Malley smiled crookedly. “Is patriotism a dirty word these days, Cajun?”

  “You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”

  “I’m only ashamed of getting me and Gabriella in this rat’s corner right now. Listen, I’ve got a bit more than I gave you about the odd jobs that Kronin planned to do—surveying defense plants, reservoirs, power stations. I’ll give it to you now. It’s not enough, but it’s all I got.”

  “And then what?” Durell asked.

  O’Malley put an arm around Gabriella. “I got her into this; I’ve got to get her out. Kronin wants her now. We both led Kronin here, to her. I can’t let him touch her, you understand?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  O’Malley looked at Gabriella. She sat on a bunk with her hands folded in her lap. Her olive face told Durell nothing; her eyes watched O’Malley.

  “It’s up to her,” O’Malley said.

  “Why?”

  “Because of Zio. The old uncle, her fairy godfather, like. He’s king. His word is law to the Fratelli. So he’s got to know what’s been happening.”

  “Don’t you believe he knows already?”

  Gabriella shook her head and looked down at her folded hands. “He would not allow anyone to try to kill me. Unless—something has happened to him.” “Could he be dead?”

  ‘I think not. I—I would somehow know it.” She paused. “Vecchio Zio cannot be aware of what is happening.”

  Durell looked at O’Malley. “If there’s no word in the Fratelli of changes in command, then we have to assume that some other group has managed to run things in the name of Vecchio Zio. He may be willingly helping them, of course—”

  “No,” Gabriella said firmly. “Not in this.”

  “Then Kronin may have him a prisoner and may be issuing orders in his name?”

  “How can that be?” O’Malley asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll go and find out.”

  “Where?”

  “To Sicily. Gabriella will show us the way. She’s probably the only person who knows where to find him.” Gabriella put a startled hand to her mouth. He added, “That’s why you’re so important. That’s why Kronin wants to kill you. Maybe the old man doesn’t know what’s really happening. You’ll have to tell him.” She was appalled. “In Sicily?”

  “Yes.”

  O’Malley spoke quietly. “When do we go?”

  “We’ll start tonight,” Durell said.

  Arnie Thompson flew down from his Resident’s office in Geneva Central that afternoon. Durell gave him the balance of O’Malley’s notes, but the bald, craggy man looked with disfavor at O’Malley, who played solitaire with tireless fingers in the crowded trailer. Bruno was cooking again. Joey Milan was outside on watch in the campsite.

  Gabriella wanted to return to the circus to say goodbye to her relatives, and Durell flatly refused. She was tearful. “But they cannot perform without me! They will be like lost children!”

  “You have a greater responsibility just now. I know you don’t like it, but we have to go ahead.”

  Durell asked Thompson for transportation on K Section funds. Thompson made no comment on the scrawled notes O’Malley had produced.

  “You’ll need more men, but I haven’t any to spare for this assignment. The FBI—”

  “I don’t need any men. I’ve got them.”

  “These three?”

  “These three sinners,” said Durell. “A gambler, an ex-wrestler and collector for the mob, and a perjured jockey. And Gabriella, who has no faults at all. I think they’ll do all right.”

  “Amateurs, against Kronin’s people?”

  “They have special talents.”

  Thompson shrugged. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

  They flew from Nice to Rome that night, and checked in at the Vittoria, after a long taxi ride from the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. The hotel was around the comer from the Via Veneto. The Borghese Gardens were beaded with brilliant traffic lights pouring through the Pincio Gate in the old Roman wall. As far as Durell knew, no one had followed them from the airport.

  He unpacked and ordered bourbon for himself and Cora Stravei for Gabriplla from the bar downstairs and then telephoned to Rome Central, which was located over a bookstore on the busy Corso. Deirdre Padgett was stationed in Rome. The thought of seeing Deirdre cheered him. But the field chief laconically told him that Deirdre was in Munich. She was not expected back for several days.

  As he hung up, the connecting door opened, and Gabriella entered his room. She wore a pink robe and had taken down her long, lustrous hair, and her face was scrubbed clean of all cosmetics. She looked vulnerable, like a child just after her evening bath. Her eyes were sympathetic.

  “Is this—this Deirdre your girl?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I could tell by your voice. And I see you are disappointed. You had hoped to see her here?”

  “You shouldn’t eavesdrop . . . But she might have been able to help us.”

  Gabriella sighed and looked out over the Borghese Gardens from Durell’s balcony. The night was balmy. Despite the late hour—it would soon be dawn—the roar of traffic from the Via Veneto had not abated.

  “I wish I knew the true meaning of love,” she said. “I do not know what it is. I do not think I can tell if I am in love or not.”

  “With O’Malley?”

  “He—he is different, for me. Yet he is not a good man. Long ago I promised myself I would never marry. But many young girls tell themselves so, wishing independence, and change quickly when they mature. Sometimes I feel most confused. So I hid myself, as always, with the Vanini family.”

  “Your name is Vanini, but you speak of them as if they were not really related to you.”

  “Well, they never have told me who or what I truly am. The only thing I know is that Zio is my great-great uncle.”

  “With luck, we’ll see him soon—with your help.” “But I cannot really help you.” She regarded him with great dark eyes. “I have been trying to remember the exact way. We were in Palermo, but I was so young! It was after the war—I do not remember it, of course— but everything was in ruins. No food, few cars. But one was procured for me, a great black machine with vases of flowers inside. We drove for a long time. It was summer, very dusty, very dry. I always remember summers in Sicily.”

  “Can’t you remember the way you went?”

  She smiled ruefully. “I was such a little girl. I slept for a long time on the way.”

  Durell felt dismay. “Gabriella, do you mean y
ou can’t recall how to find Vecchio Zio’s headquarters?”

  “I am trying!” she said tightly. “But it does not come to me.”

  “But everyone thinks you can. O’Malley and the people who came after you on the Riviera.”

  “That is what is so terrible about it. They want something I cannot give.”

  He wondered if she were lying. Maybe so, through fear, but he didn’t think this would be her motive. She was a girl who’d do what she thought right, whatever her terrors.

  Taxi horns blared in the narrow street below his window. Someone knocked, and he called to the boy to come in. But it was O’Malley with his bourbon and Stravei. O’Malley grinned and waved the bottles, then stood still as he saw Gabriella’s slender figure at the balcony window.

  “I intercepted the kid with the bottles, Sam. But I didn’t know you were entertaining my girl.”

  Gabriella said, “I am not your girl, O’Malley.”

  “You will be, honey, unless the Cajun cuts my time. That wouldn’t be very good.”

  “You’re jumpy,” Durell said. “We were just discussing how to find this place she was taken to as a child.” “What’s the problem?”

  “I cannot remember the road,” Gabriella said thinly. “And you are—presumptuous, O’Malley. Just because you and I went to dinner a few times—”

  “You never forgot those evenings, sweetheart, and you never will.” O’Malley ripped the cap off the bourbon with an angry gesture. “Cajun, don’t cut in on me.”

  Durell ignored him. “Gabriella, why did you come with us, unless you knew something that could help?”

  “It is not something. It is someone. The Contessa Serafina Cimadori. A very great and powerful lady. She is most unusual, very high in the Fratelli della Notte. She is the one who escorted me to Vecchio Zio.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “I do not know. But I know where to find her. I remember that place clearly enough.” She smiled dimly. “I remember ,it because of her son, a little boy, all pimples, not much older than I. He was cruel and very superior and nasty to me. Adolfo Cimadori, that was his name.” She smiled again secretively. “It will be interesting to see what sort of a man Adolfo grew into.”

  “And where do we find Contessa Cimadori?”

  “In Naples,” she said. “It is, after all, on our way to Sicily.”

  They slept until early afternoon, then took the rapido down the coast to Naples. The day was warm. Now and then from the clean train windows they glimpsed the blue Mediterranean. O’Malley had lapsed into a sullen silence. Bruno grumbled about the need to shop for special groceries he wanted to try in his cooking. Joey Milan’s wizened face was, as always, remote and suspicious.

  Durell had reserved seats, and no one seemed interested in them. Yet he had the feeling that ever since Nice they had not gone unobserved. Someone was watching them. Kronin wanted to stop Gabriella from reaching Vecchio Zio, and anything Kronin wanted to prevent was a sure sign that they should proceed on the same course.

  They arrived in Naples a little after three, checked their luggage in the big, noisy terminal, shook off the shoals of self-appointed guides, pimps, peddlers, and urchins, and took a taxi to the Via Partenope on the bay front. The traffic had thickened incredibly since his last visit here. It took almost an hour, by way of narrow streets, to pass the Hotel Vesuvio and the Express office and reach the Parco Vittorio Emanuel. Gabriella explained that the contessa lived in an old palazzo on the Riviera di Chiaia, near the Piazza Vittoria.

  “Pretty,” O’Malley grunted, craning to stare at Vesuvius, crowned with smog beyond the blue bay.

  “Look again,” Durell said grimly. “We’re being followed. The second cab behind us.”

  They passed Theresa Barra’s, where he had once bought himself a dozen Italian silk neckties and a dozen pairs of gloves for Deirdre. The second taxi had now moved up directly behind them on the wide boulevard. He could not see the passengers. It could be a coincidence. The sun on the bay made little impression on the brooding mass of the Castel d’Ovo, with its yacht basin and tourist cafes under bright awnings.

  “Stop at the next corner,” he told the driver.

  “But we are not there yet,” Gabriella protested.

  “We walk the rest of the way.”

  He stood on the pavement and watched the other cab glide by. Two men sat in the back, talking with Neapolitan animation. Neither looked his way. The taxi continued on up the waterfront boulevard and passed out of sight.

  Durell ordered Bruno and Milan to stay on the narrow street that opened into the Piazza Vittoria. Number 22 was a faded palazzo with trompe-l’oeil painting on the ochre-plastered facade. There were heavy double doors with polished brass handles and peeling brown paint on the panels. The windows were shuttered against the spring sunlight. An air of decay shrouded the place, and the coat-of-arms with complex quarterings over the doorway had been chipped by bullets during the Nazi occupation. It looked as if it might fall on the heads of passersby at any moment.

  “What do you want me to do?” O’Malley asked.

  “Find the back way and get inside. Take your time. I’ll meet you in there.”

  “I don’t like it. Don’t you trust Gabriella?”

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Man, like you’ve changed since we were kids.” “We’re not kids any more,” Durell said. “And we’re not playing cops and robbers. Just do as I say.”

  O’Malley relaxed with a visible effort, then patted Gabriella’s shoulder and went to seek an alley in the rear. The girl watched him go and said, “He is so strange. I do not understand him.”

  “He loves you, but there’s a flaw in the picture.”

  “And what is that?”

  “He doesn’t admit knowing the word ‘love.’ ”

  “I do not understand you, either.”

  “You don’t have to,” Durell said.

  He considered the big knocker on the door, then tried the bronze handles. The door was not locked, which surprised him and then worried him. You lock your doors in Naples or lose your shirt.

  He went in first. And again was surprised. The facade of the palazzo was grimy and decayed, but the tiny court within was a rich, carefully polished jewel, beautiful with bright sunlight and shadow. There was a fountain of green-veined marble, gay flower beds, a waterfall of wisteria from a balcony ahead. Wrought-iron chairs were disposed around a blue umbrella in a square iron table. A shell path made further arabesques on the ground, and a palm tree leaned gracefully from one side of the court.

  “Do you remember this, Gabriella?”

  “Yes, it comes back to me. Nothing is changed.” “Fine. Stay close beside me.”

  “Can there be danger here?” she asked. “Anywhere.”

  The interior windows over the court were hidden by drawn draperies. A scent of flowers filled the air. No one was in sight. An open door beckoned ahead. Inside, the hallway was furnished with cool but dusty antiques and a silk rug. He saw himself in a Venetian mirror at the foot of a delicate, curving staircase—

  “S-sst!” someone said.

  Durell turned, a hand on the gun in his pocket, Gabriella made a small sound of surprise.

  “Adolfo! Adolfo, is it you?”

  The man came forward as gracefully as a dark flower blown by the wind. His smiled showed capped teeth.

  “It is Gabriella? Cara Gabriella!” He wore a fawn-colored coat with a mauve scarf at his throat, gray Daks and pointed, gleaming Italian shoes. “Gabriella, my childhood darling, I would know you anywhere! How often have I sighed in my dreams for you!” His snicker made the remark obscene.

  Gabriella halted. Her manner cooled. “You have not changed much, Adolfo.”

  “Ah, but I am a grown man now.”

  “Still devoted to the contessa?”

  “Mamina is a remarkable woman.”

  “True. We have come to see her.”

  “I know, I know. We have been waiting.5’
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  Adolfo Cimadori slid dark, liquid eyes toward Durell’s tall form. His brows looked plucked, and his black hair was brushed sleekly to his long, aristocratic head. “We have been waiting for Signor Durell, too. Come this way, carissima.”

  “One moment,” Durell said.

  Adolfo smiled. “You are surprised? But in this modem world should one more miracle startle you? You see how well I speak English, si? One day I shall go to New York. To open a branch office, so to speak.” “Who told you we were coming?” Durell asked. “Does it matter? We know. Eyes and ears are everywhere. The miracle of today. But I cannot linger. It devastates me. I will wait here for when the contessa refuses you. Then I may be able to help. Gabriella, I would like to help. For old time’s sake, as you might say.”

  Gabriella was bewildered. “But the contessa cannot even know what we wish to ask of her.”

  “She knows. She thinks of you as a naughty little girl.” Adolfo Cimadori rolled his eyes. “But I think of you as—ah, you have changed, become so beautiful!” “Snake!” she snapped. “You are still the same little snake you were long ago.”

  “You will change your mind. But hurry! The contessa does not like to be kept waiting. You remember her room? She changes nothing. Go. You will see me again before you leave.”

  Gabriella was pale as they mounted the stairs. Looking back, Durell saw that Adolfo had silently vanished. Kronin was brilliant at his work. He had guessed why Durell had taken Gabriella with him and just as easily guessed their destination. So there could be no element of surprise now, he thought grimly. Everything was uphill, as usual. Every move they made was known, countered, and sidetracked.

  “He had loathsome pimples,” Gabriella murmured. “They are gone now, but it is as if I can still see them.”

  “What is he after?”

  She shrugged. “He was a vicious, greedy boy. The man will be no better.”

  The gilt doors at the end of the upper hall were open. Durell felt as if it might be an execution chamber. But there was no one in the room except Contessa Serafina Cimadori.

  And where her son, Adolfo, had seemed the very incarnation of degenerate evil, she was outwardly the precise opposite. He knew at once she had been a great lady, born to aristocracy, intelligent and gracious. An ornate tea service waited for them on a polished table, together with bottles of whiskey, Scotch, Campari, gin, and vermouth. Carved, gilded cupids smiled at them from every comer of the big room.