Chapter 16

 

I locked him in again and went back to the kitchen. Carla was there, drinking coffee and laughing with the old woman. I smiled at her and said, "Well, I hope you can stop yourself crying, because I can stop you laughing."

"What's happened?" she asked, still smiling as brilliantly as an also-ran on Academy Award night.

"The other guys got to our prisoner before we did. He told them everything yesterday. We're too late."

She didn't stop smiling. She was cleverer than that. "Look happy," she instructed me. "The old lady has radar, she can sense what's going on."

I beamed and held out the coffee cup I'd brought back with me. The old lady poured for me and I said "Grazie mille," and she commented to Carla who laughed.

"She says you must have been studying Italian in bed."

I stretched my weary grin a little wider. "Very smart. Now we have two choices. Either we go and storm this place, on the off chance the kid is still there, or we send you back into the lion's den to see where Scavuzzo's people have taken him. You decide."

The old lady turned to the cupboard and got out bread rolls. There was no butter but we beamed some more and ate, Carla dipping hers in her coffee. God. What a woman. She would be equally at home in the finest house in the country but she was acting exactly right for this place and time.

When I could see she didn't intend to answer I said, "I think it's too late to run to Capelli and tell him we know where the kid is. The other guys probably collected him last night while we were making music. The only card we have left to play is to send you back to your buddies to see what you can find out."

"Really. And how do I account for the time I've been missing?"

"Good question. You can tell them I grabbed you and held you hostage. You got away while I was asleep."

"Any Italian will think we slept together," she said.

"Tell them it was my idea, you had no choice. They want to murder me anyway by now, that just gives them another reason." Easy, Locke, I thought, there's no need to be this helpful. You don't really need a posse of angry Mafia guys carrying out a vendetta even to save the fair lady's name.

She dunked her roll again and said, "I told you yesterday, I know what I'm doing. Just because you're in the dark doesn't mean you have to panic. Just trust me."

"Do you know how they say 'screw you' in Hollywood?" I asked her.

She shook her head impatiently. "What game are you playing?"

"The way they say 'screw you' is 'trust me,'" I persisted. "So don't expect me to roll over and put all four paws in the air when you make the same comment."

She sipped the last of her coffee, ignoring my high humor. "You're too late, suggesting I go back to those guys. They won't trust me again. They're never going to tell me where the boy has been taken. And even if they did, I wouldn't be able to get back to you with the information."

She was making sense. And the more I thought about it, the less hope I had. Capelli was already one step ahead of me. The unwounded man I'd left at the warehouse had probably told him everything. That left me with no bargaining power. And I'd killed a man, and he knew that too. I was still behind the eight ball. I accepted another roll and sat and thought.

Carla broke the silence. "What we're going to do is go to this place where Mazzerini says the boy was taken. If he's still there, I should be able to find out. If not, I might pick up some indication of what happened."

"That's going to be dangerous," I cautioned. "If the people at the factory are criminals, they'll recognize you. You're moving in very prominent circles. I'll bet every two-bit hood in Italy knows your pedigree."

"That won't matter," she said matter-of-factly. "You'll be coming with me."

"Chances are I'm already on the 'most-wanted list.' Every cop in Florence is going to be looking for me."

"You flatter yourself," she said. "No Italian man will give you a second glance if I'm with you."

She had a point there. As long as her face hadn't been circulated on the same wanted poster we were probably safe together. "Okay, let's go. But what about Mazzerini? We can't take him with us, can we leave him here?"

Carla turned to the old woman and spoke quickly. The old woman answered and Carla smiled. "Her son will be back tomorrow. He'll let him out then. She won't be in any danger."

I stood up. "Come on then, time's a-wasting."

The old woman had a truck. It wasn't much but I brushed the chicken feathers off the seat and Carla got in and we headed back to Florence. I watched for landmarks and signs, ready to tell Capelli exactly where the farm was when it came time to level with him. I didn't think it would make trouble for the old woman. She hadn't done anything wrong, just given hospitality to a friend, but I was going to need some evidence of the story I would have to tell the police.

It was a typically beautiful Tuscan morning. People were working in the fields, bending over their vegetables under that blue, blue sky. When we stopped for a main road I could hear a man singing not far away, a big, round, untrained voice singing the famous tenor part of the duet from The Pearl Fishers. In the States he would have been listening to a ghetto blaster. I glanced at Carla. "Some time when all this is over, I'd like to spend a month at a place around here, getting back to basics."

She laughed. "Don't write me a part in your daydream. I hate any place that's not paved over."

"Pity," I said, "We could have got to know one another a lot better under this kind of sky."

"Sunlight is death on your skin," she said and lit a cigarette, which is just as bad for your hide if you believe the surgeon-general.

Florence isn't like a North American city, not in any way, but most of all in its lack of a commercial strip on the road leading in. There are no motels or chicken joints or burger stands, one minute you're driving in the country, the next you're there, the way you might have been if you came here on horseback five hundred years ago, looking to beg Lorenzo to lighten up on the taxes because there was a murrain on your cattle.

We passed the same roadblock on the way into town. A couple of bored policemen were going through the motions, waving every car through without a search. I figured they would pull out before the day was through. They were convinced Herbie was still in town. The fact that they were right didn't make their actions any more creditable, not to me. I've worked a lot of roadblocks in Ulster. You don't quit because you don't succeed within twenty-four hours.

In town the streets were jammed but I had found the secret of driving in Italy on my first trip. You drive con brio. If you want to make a U-turn against six lanes of traffic, go for it. The right of way belongs to the boldest driver. People may swear and wave out of their windows at you but they let you through and admire you for trying.

It took forty minutes for me to find the street Mazzerini had told me about. It looked promising, as if he could have been telling the truth. The buildings were big and unpretentious and could well have been the Florentine version of factories.

"Park there," Carla told me suddenly. She was pointing at a corner where some tiny Fiat was pulling out. It didn't leave much room for the truck, or any for pedestrians who might want to cross but she got out with her head high, ignoring the anger on the faces of people who had to walk over our bumper to get past.

"Come," she said and led me back down the street to a big plain building.

"Is this the place? I can't see any sign."

"It's the place," she said firmly. Then she stopped and stared straight into my face. "Remember what I told you last night. I know where the cliffs are. If I say jump, just jump. Don't think. Don't question anything I do or we're both dead."

I threw up my hands, not even answering, and she walked away to the building. She didn't pause in front but swept right in, up the three worn marble steps to the door. I took the time to glance around and notice that there was a garage door in the front, big enough to allow a vehicle to enter. Herb Ridley could have been driven inside without getting out of the kidnap car.

We found ourselves in the kind of sweatshop you see in movies about making it on the Lower East Side in 1910. There was a desk with a plain girl answering two phones that never stopped ringing, and behind her a clutter of sewing machines with women working nonstop, heads down over pieces of leather.

A balding young guy with a mustache big enough to have sapped all the strength from his scalp was darting about with a clipboard, bellowing instructions to a slow-moving workman who was loading a trolley at the women's worktables. Carla bore down on him and when he saw her he stopped and did a wonderful Latin double-take. How could anything this radiant be happening to him on a Tuesday morning?

I hung back. The way she was acting, it looked as if she knew what was happening. I assumed she had some way of checking out the factory and seeing if there was any sign of either Herb Ridley or of anyone she knew. And whatever she was saying it was working. She picked up a purse from a pile of work, flipped it open, pointed to a seam and tossed the purse aside, talking nonstop.

The bald guy tried to cut in but she overrode him, galloping into another speech without drawing a breath. She moved off down the aisle between the sewing machines, picking up work indiscriminately and rejecting it. He trotted after her, clipboard waving, saying what must have been the Italian for "But lady, listen up." I followed them both at a distance that looked respectful but was really just careful, my right hand in my jacket pocket, nursing the neat little automatic I'd taken off Carla. I worked as if I was on a Belfast street patrol, stopping from time to time to check behind and around me for men bearing me ill will. I couldn't see any.

When she got to the far end of the room, Carla stopped and listened to the young man for about thirty seconds, then gave him a smile he would remember all his life. She looked over his head, something she could do without craning up, and beckoned to me. She spoke Italian and I made out "Avanti" but the wave of her hand was clear enough anyway, I came up to her. Again she spoke in Italian, telling me something. I made a bored little nod and she waved the bald guy ahead. He opened the door onto a corridor that led to an office. He ushered us ahead, into it.

It wasn't much. The furniture had been there since Mussolini marched on Abyssinia and it was dusty and cluttered with boxes almost to the ceiling. In fact its only remarkable feature was a man, standing up and reaching for a gun that lay on the desk in front of him.

The fact that his piece was on the desk told me he wasn't a cop. That meant he was another hood, possibly one of Carla's good buddies, possibly not. Either way I had to act tough. I stepped into him, past the desk, catching my pocket on the corner and ripping it slightly, but I didn't stop to examine it. I slammed the heel of my hand under his chin, knocking him cold. As he slithered down I turned and sunk my fist into the bald guy's gut. He folded, gasping, and I knelt by him and put pressure on his carotid arteries with my thumbs. It took only a few seconds and he was out cold.

The whole thing had taken less than half a minute but in that time, Carla had gone. I wondered if she was searching for Herbie, or if she'd disappeared but I didn't waste any time over it. I frisked the guy with the gun and found a ring of keys. I also picked up his gun. It was a Browning 125 automatic, an adequate piece but its chief charm was the fact it used the same 9mm ammunition as my Walther. Corn in Egypt! I slipped out the magazine and put it into my pocket.

Then I went out, locking the office on the two sleeping beauties and pressed on down the corridor, opening all the doors. All of the locked places were storerooms, filled with cartons of what I assumed to be their purses. No Herbie. It took me about three minutes. Then I came back to the office. Skintop was waking up but when he saw me come in he immediately pretended to be asleep again.

I stood for a few seconds, topping up the magazine of my Walther with the bullets from the other guy's gun. Then I took a chance on using the telephone. I was lucky, you didn't have to dial 9 to get out, and I called the Rega and got through to the room.

Kate Ridley answered, her voice strained. She spoke Italian and I cut in immediately.

"Hi, Kate, John Locke. Is the tenente there?"

She was flustered. "John, where are you, what's happening?" but then there was a rustling on the line and Capelli took over.

"Where are you?" he demanded.

"Right now I'm at the Fabbrica Belladonna. It's a leather factory." I gave him the street and number. "There's some hood here who was expecting me to arrive. He had a gun."

"What have you found out about the boy?" His voice was all business but I could imagine his helpers dispersing right now to send cars over here and collect the guy—and me, if I stuck around.

"It's been set up by the father," I said. "He took out five million dollars' worth of insurance on the boy before we came here. The gangs here knew all about it. Apparently Ridley senior plans to split the ransom money with them."

I realized that my call was being taped but I didn't know who was listening on extra lines attached to the phone. It seemed that Ridley was. I heard a roar at the other end, then a scuffle and then Ridley was bellowing at me. "You lying bastard. I'll sue you for every penny you've got."

"Cut the crap," I told him. "Cooperate with the police and they'll go easy on you."

He began to shout again and then there was another scuffle. I guess a couple of Capelli's men were wrestling the phone away from him. They won. The next voice I heard was Capelli's.

"Where did you hear this?"

"From Carla. She's known about it all along. That's why she approached me on Sunday. Also there's another guy, Mazzerini, he was the driver of the kidnap car. He was in that warehouse we sent the ambulance to last night. Right now he's locked up in a wine cellar in a farm north of the city. I think he told everything he knew to the men you found at the warehouse but if you want to talk to him, you go east from Pedanto a kilometer and a half, turn north and look for a farm with a wall around the yard. There's an old lady there. You'll also find Carla's car in the barn."

"Wait where you are, we must talk." Capelli had a dead man to account for and he wanted me in his office making a statement. I didn't think that would make any contribution to finding Herbie so I refused.

"No dice, tenente. I'm going to find where the boy is, I think I know where to look. If I get close I'll call you for reinforcements. In the meantime, stay on top of Ridley, he's behind all of this."

I hung up, wondering if Herbie had ever been here. Mazzerini had sent me here knowing his buddies would catch me. The only thing I couldn't work out was why Carla had run off. Was there some new fifth or sixth dimension to this crazy kidnapping? Time would tell but I would find out sooner if I was on the outside, reading newspapers, than if I was down in one of the maggiore's cells waiting for Ottawa to get off its bureaucratic backside and send me a lawyer.

None of the women in the plant even looked up at me as I walked out. They were all too busy churning out piecework on behalf of Belladonna. As I passed one of the tables I noticed a rack of needles and thread standing on it, where some finisher was making minor repairs and adjustments to finished coats. I smiled politely at the woman working there and picked up a biggish needle and a spool of thread. My pants were fixable if I could get a few moments of privacy.

I didn't see Carla anywhere and the girl at the front was still taking telephone calls so I nodded to her and walked by, ambling easily, trying not to look as if the police would be pouring in here within another minute, asking if she'd seen the turista. I couldn't wait around for that. I had business to attend to.