Assignment - Palermo (11 page)

“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.

“Gabriella, my dear, dear child.”

“Contessa Serafina . . .”

“You are more beautiful than it was reported. How many tears I have shed, thinking of your wasted* life!” “It has not been wasted, my contessa.”

“You could have lived with me and had everything. Everything! But you chose to stay with that foolish, pitiful little circus, the Vanini family—”

“It was my choice.”

“Yes. And Zio ordered it so.” The woman turned her proud head toward Durell. “And this is your new friend? It is Mr. Durell who persuaded you to come here on such a foolish mission! Is he your lover?”

Gabriella was shocked. “No, Contessa.”

“He is a dangerous man. Perhaps a cruel one. You conceal your surprise very well, Mr. Durell.”

“Nothing surprises me now, Contessa,” he said politely. He kept Gabriella and himself out of the line of fire from the open doors to this lovely room. “Nothing except possibly women.”

“You lie gracefully. You know women better than most. Am I beautiful, Signor Durell?”

“Yes,” he said truthfully.

He knew she was old enough to be Gabriella’s mother. But now and then he’d met women who seemed immortal in their feminine beauty. There was pride in her fine, tilted head, the careful blonde hair done in a regal coronet, the slim, tanned arms, the good legs. She was that famous combination of ancient Norman blood and local noble stock, reflected in her dark eyes, which contrasted with her hair. Her mouth was full and sensuous. She wore a Pucci frock that accented a figure still firmly curved.

She smiled as he appraised her, and her eyes were as bold and objective as his own. “You will have bourbon, I think, Signor Durell. And you, Gabriella? Stravei?”

“Nothing, thank you,” the girl whispered.

“Then come and kiss me, my dear.”

Gabriella obeyed dutifully, with just a twinge of reluctance.

“You have indeed grown beautiful, poor girl,” Contessa Serafina murmured. “Zio would be delighted to see you.”

“Then you will take us to see him?”

The contessa looked at Durell. “Why have you brought this child to me? Why do you wish to see Zio?” “It’s urgent enough,” Durell said.

“But I cannot give permission so casually. No one sees Zio. He is most—secluded. You understand, it is astonishing—no, dismaying—that you even know of his existence. It cannot be permitted, such knowledge.” 

“We must see him,” Durell insisted.

“And you use Gabriella for your ends? We know all about you, Signor Durell. And while our main opponents”—she smiled—“are the police, we are surprised that a man in your position, with your duties, shows interest in us.”

“The interest was forced upon me.”

“By petty thieves!” For the first time there was a touch of steel behind the beautiful, throaty voice. “By traitors who betray their vows, by scum, the sweepings of the gutter.”

Gabriella broke in. “But O’Malley is not—”

“Ah, poor Gabriella.”

“Please stop calling me that,” she said.

“But you are a child, you have been protected all your life, and you do not know what these men have persuaded you to do. And you, Mr. Durell, at such risk to this girl and yourself, have not answered me as to why you seek Zio.”

“We just want to talk to him.”

“Of what?”

“Of certain changes in the Fratelli della Notte.”

“You should not even mention the name. Not here or anywhere. It is foolhardy.”

Gabriella spoke in a burst of passion. “But Vecchio Zio would never harm me!”

“Of course not, you lovely child.”

“Then you must take me to see him, Contessa. Or at least you must tell me the way.”

“It is impossible.”

“I remember the place!”

“You cannot, or you would not ask my help.”

Gabriella clenched her small fists. “But Zio said that if I ever needed him, no matter when or where, I was to come to him, from anywhere in the world, at any time.”

“You sound desperate about this. But is it not merely to help this man, this Durell, who you must know is an American intelligence agent.”

“No.”

“Durell could bring much trouble to Zio.”

“He would not.”

“You are naive. And have you considered, dear child,” the contessa said gently, “that Zio may no longer wish to see you?”

“But he promised!” Gabriella cried.

“He made a fond and sentimental speech to a lovely child. But you are a woman now and you may put him in danger. So I must tell you that Vecchio Zio forbids you to come. More than that, he has ordered us to prevent it by
any
means. By any means, do you understand?” Contessa Serafina Cimadori smiled sadly. “Such a blow to you. I can see it. But you must go home, my dear. At once. Otherwise ... we must kill you.”

SOMEWHERE in the exquisite palazzo a canary began to trill mindlessly up and down the scale. The warm Neapolitan sunlight shafted through the tall windows and touched the woman’s blonde, elegant head, the rich Aubusson rug, the paintings in ornate frames on the wall. Durell could hear the fountain tinkling in the courtyard garden below the windows.

He watched Gabriella go pale and touch her heart as if she had been struck in the breast. She looked like someone who had just been stripped naked in a cold and bitter world, left vulnerable and alone to face an awful disillusionment. How many years had she lived, he wondered, with the warm security of knowing that someone incredibly powerful in secret ways watched over her like some ancient wizard, aware of all she did, guarding and comforting her? To Gabriella, Vecchio Zio must have seemed all-powerful, remote, but still intensely personal, always involved with her welfare.

With just a few words Contessa Serafina had stripped her of the foundations of her world, which seemed so sure ever since that fairy-tale day when she was taken as a child to this mysterious source of power, wisdom, and strength. With those words the contessa had also stripped herself of her facade of patrician elegance. Cruelty grated in her voice, and a savage triumph, and her beautiful face hardened into an adamantine mask.

She was an enemy, Durell thought, who would not be easy to cope with. He broke the deathly silence.

“I don’t believe you, Contessa.”

She smiled graciously. “And just what don’t you believe, Signor Durell?”

“Zio would not refuse to see Gabriella. We want to hear it directly from him.”

“Impossible.”

“We intend to see him. We ask your help again.” Her laugh was scornful. “You ask my suicide. I am not really so important. There are others who have much greater influence—”

“Such as Karl Kronin?” he asked easily.

Her eyes were a blank dark blue, like closed convolvulus flowers. “I do not know the name.” She stood up with splendid grace, hands clasped before her. “Mr. Durell, you are in a world you cannot comprehend, one that has existed for many centuries. What do you know about the Fratelli? We rob, yes. We commit crimes, yes. But we also do much, much good. We exist because we are a historical necessity. Oppression called us into being, and we survive one way or another until history calls us again. During the Nazi occupation of Italy we formed an underground and fought as a resistance movement for patriotism. We hated Mussolini, we hated the Nazis. Many of the Brothers died for Sicily. And when your Allied troops invaded the island, who greeted them and acted as eyes and ears against the Tiger tanks? Who directed your Naval fire on enemy divisions that might have bathed your landing beaches in blood? The Fratelli della Notte was there, Mr. Durell. When the people of Naples rose up against the Nazis who shot and killed us, we fought with what we had— the knife, poison, gun, the dynamite.”

The woman paused, panting with her emotion. Her great eyes were alight with passion. “So now we exist in crime. We must exist somehow. We are not related to the Honored Society, what you call the Mafia. What we did is not recorded. We asked for no thanks. But we go on. We still keep people alive with food and money and all sorts of help—”

Durell deliberately looked about the exquisite room. “Yes. And you have done well by it.”

She dismissed the palazzo with a wave of her hand.

“It does not belong to me. It is all for Vecchio Zio.”

“Has he ever come here?”

“Of course not.”

“Has he ever left Sicily?”

“There is no need,” she snapped, and then she bit her lip. “Ah, you are a clever man, infuriating me.”

“So he’s still alive and still in Sicily.”

“You will never, never find him,” she said.

“We’ll see.” He held out a hand for Gabriella, who had stood like stone ever since the contessa pronounced what might be her death sentence. “Come along. There’s nothing for us here.”

No one interfered as they went down the curving steps. The doors to the courtyard were still open, bright with sunshine and flowers. An orange butterfly floated from the wisteria to the fountain and back again.

Then Adolfo Cimadori appeared from a doorway at their back, swaying like a tall dark blossom in the wind.

“S-sst!” He winked, exaggeratedly conspiratorial. Durell halted. Gabriella would have gone on, her head high, but Durell checked her.

“What is it, Adolfo?” she asked.

“I promised help. I knew you would need it. Caris-sima, you look as if you have seen a ghost.” Adolfo giggled. “We must speak softly. Mamina would be very angry if she knew I spoke to you. She thinks I have gone out.”

“Well?” Durell asked.

“You want help, do you not? The contessa turned you down, as I knew she would. Why should she disobey orders? She loves her luxury. She is clever but not more clever than I. Me, I am a greedy man.” Durell waited. Adolfo elaborately fitted a cigarette into a black holder and lit it with a gold lighter. He did not inhale. He puffed and blew the smoke awkwardly.

“I need money,” he said.

“How much?”

“We can discuss it at my apartment. It is a very private place, one I keep for myself, for my true life.

Do you think I enjoy being a little boy at the beck and call of my mother? I have gone into—ah—business for myself. In a small way.”

“You don’t pay tribute to the Fratelli?”

Adolfo smiled and waved his cigarette like a baton. “All Americans are so blunt. But this is a very dangerous matter. I take a great risk simply speaking to you. But I can direct you to Zio.”

Gabriella spoke at last. “He would not allow a man like you in his sight,” she said flatly.

Adolfo flushed, and cold hatred flashed in his eyes. Then he shrugged. “Gabriella, you have always disliked me. A pity, since we could have been such good friends. Perhaps I will not help you, after all. Why should I? It is too great a risk. No, no, I have changed my mind. Ciao.”

Durell crossed the terazzo floor and caught the man’s blue scarf in his fist. “You said you were greedy, Adolfo. How greedy?”

Adolfo licked his lips. “Blunt, yes. Crude, yes. But rich. Like all Americans. I want a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Impossible.”

“Fifty, then.”

“It depends on how valid your information proves.” 

“Twenty-five now, the balance when you return.” Adolfo frowned. “No, that will not do. You may not return. So you must put the money in a bank for me, to be paid after a specific date.”

“No. When we return. You could lie to us. You could walk us into a trap.”

Adolfo smiled. “That is a chance you take. You are a gambler, no? And only I can help you. But not here, please. Mama will be down shortly to take the sun in the garden. At my apartment in two hours, yes?” 

“Where?”

“Via Mirabella, forty-five, on Vomero Hill. You know it?”

“I know it.”

“In two hours, then.” Adolfo adjusted his rumpled scarf. “I will be waiting with all the information you

need. Bring the money—as much money as you can. I need it, frankly. My tastes are most expensive.” Durell looked at him with open contempt. “It’s a deal,” he said quietly.

O’Malley came quickly toward him down the street, from the Riviera di Chiaia. His blond hair looked white in the hot Neapolitan sunlight. Traffic came and went with wild abandon. At the far corner, a narrow intersection, Joey Milan stood uncertainly near a wall.

Something had happened.

O’Malley was sweating when he joined them. “There was no way in through the back, Cajun. Glad you got out without trouble.” He looked at Gabriella. “What’s the matter?”

“We were turned down,” Durell said shortly. “But it’s not over yet. What’s biting you?”

“Like that dumb Bruno, you know what he did?” O’Malley jammed angry hands in his pockets. “That stupid clod. He let them take him.”

“Where?”

“He saw this
salumeria
, and you know how he is about food. He went to buy stuff for his goddam cooking. Wanted to make vermicelli a la putana. Says it’s a speciality of Naples.” He grinned. “A quick meal, originated while the ladies of pleasure waited for another trick. Anyway, Bruno went into this deli and didn’t come out. Joey Milan thinks they took him.”