I GOT MADDER AND MADDER as Sonny made the run back to Tsatsos.
I go in there with proof of Marie’s murder, and I come out with magnanimous permission to help him in a non-criminal accident case.
Pekouris’s slipperiness made me want to bite something. What a poker player he would have made. He was a master at confusing an issue, and a past master at avoiding a straight statement.
It could all of it be due to his precious tourist season. There was no reason to think not. They all seemed to love that tourist season more than life itself.
But if he was involved in a big illegal money-making deal, if he was getting a piece of it, if he was protecting someone, he would have acted the same. I didn’t think it was funny any more.
I had felt a lot differently when it was just Girgis’s murder. Then it was just a game, and I enjoyed playing it with him. Now was different.
If he was right, and Chuck was the killer, he would have his damned machete. I would get it for him. But if I turned up something entirely different about Marie, I wasn’t going to back away from it for anybody. He could go ahead and throw me out of Greece. By then I would have the goods on the case and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
I sat on the coach-roof in the shade and sniffing the occasional mist of spray, tried to assess what I knew. I came out with just about zero. The beautiful summer weather over the sparkling sea was all gall and wormwood, to me.
When we tied up at the jetty, I bought another paper at the kiosk and walked up and took another table at a cafe. I had left my first paper in Pekouris’s office, from being so furious. I didn’t really want to read it, but it gave me a good excuse to be sitting there. I was looking for Pete Gruner.
What I found was blond Steve. He came walking up to the terrace from the other way, toward the Construction, and he was alone. Chuck wasn’t with him. He did not even have Diane with him.
He went on past and stopped by a display rack of yellow film at the corner of the little alley I knew. He seemed to be just loafing. He stood looking across the crowded tables out under the trees and over the harbor, with his vague stoned eyes.
I folded up my paper carefully and put it on the table with my Campari, to hold the table, and got up and walked over to him, before he could move away from the alley.
“I want to talk to you, bud,” I growled in my best private-eye voice.
People passing jostled us both.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Davies,” he said, and turned his slow sleepwalker’s look on me. It was just the response I needed. The one I was hoping for.
I took two steps into the alley and turned and reached back and grabbed him by his Mongol vest, and yanked him into the shaded alley with me. He came, as if launched from a slingshot. I could hear the sheepskin of his vest tearing. That cheap sewing. I got my other hand on him, too, and slammed him back against the building wall so hard his head bounced. I put my left forearm across his throat and pushed, hard. His face turned red. I turned my hip to him so he couldn’t knee me if it should occur to him.
He didn’t even try. I left him like that for a little bit.
Outside on the sidewalk a few inches away people gabbled and jostled each other, or talked merrily, or shopped at the display rack of yellow film. None of them noticed us. I hadn’t thought they would.
I didn’t even think any of them even noticed his sudden slingshot launching, and disappearance. If anybody looked in, they didn’t interrupt us.
Steve’s face was getting the slightest tinge of blue. I relaxed my forearm a little. He made a strangling noise and whooped for air.
“Now,” I said softly. “I don’t want any lip. I don’t want any back talk. I don’t want any philosophy.”
He opened his mouth. I pushed with my arm.
“No. Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. Just listen.”
As his face got redder I let up a little.
“I want to know where your buddy Four Eyes is. Your buddy Chuck. I want to know where he is right now, this minute. Not where he was half an hour ago. Not where he’ll be an hour from now.”
Steve tried to crane his neck.
“No. Not yet,” I said, and pushed with my arm. “Don’t be in a rush. When I let up on my arm, you tell me where your buddy is. Okay? Now.”
“I sent him over to St. Friday’s,” Steve croaked.
I pushed down on him by sheer reflex. “Don’t play games with me, son. I’m not here to fart around. Not today. Now where is he?” I let up a little.
Steve tried to swallow. It seemed to hurt him. I was glad. “It’s the truth,” he whispered. “I sent him to St. Friday’s. He’s been upset about Sweet Marie dying. I sent him over there for another three-day fast. He was beginning to get into fights.”
“How long ago did he leave for there?”
“Maybe an hour ago.”
“How’s he getting there?”
“He’s walking. Along the coast road. I made him walk.”
“If this is a con,” I said through clenched teeth, and grinned, “I am perfectly capable of putting you in the local hospital, if there is one. I’d be happy to take you right out of here with me, and take you to find him yourself.”
“It’s the truth,” he whispered. “Honest.”
I jammed my arm into him once more, viciously, and took a step back. I guessed I was feeling bloodthirsty, after all that had happened to me in the past few days. I caught his throat in the crotch of my left hand and balled my right fist.
“Get ready,” I said, and hit him in the belly with my right as hard as I could.
He doubled over, whooping silently. Muscle boy that he was, there wasn’t much of the fighter in him. I put my palm in his face and hooked my fingers under his chin and straightened him up. He was white.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “You’re not going to vomit, and you’re not going to fall down. You’re going to walk right out of here, just as if you were a big grown-up man. Because if you don’t I’ll kick your teeth in.”
He turned without a word and walked toward the merrily cackling sidewalk. I jabbed him in the kidney.
“Straighten it up.”
Outside on the walk he turned right and started blindly toward the newspaper kiosk. I guessed that was where he was heading before I grabbed him. I went back to my table and sat down and picked up my paper and unfolded it.
I was feeling pretty good. Better than I’d felt in days. My side was hurting but I didn’t care. I felt fine. But I had to make my plans. I looked around for Sonny.
Just as I did, I saw Pete Gruner come onto the terrace from the direction of the Construction. I folded my paper under my arm and left money on the table and went over to Gruner.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said. “I want to talk to you. It’s pretty important. But I haven’t got time now.”
“Well, I want to talk to you, too,” Gruner smiled. “That’s the second time. Great minds run in—”
“Never mind the gas,” I said. “I’ve got to go somewhere right away. Can you be at Dmitri’s taverna in two hours? Better make it two and a half. No, make it three. Three hours?”
Gruner looked at me quizzically. “I’ll be there.”
I nodded, and left him. Sonny was back at Georgina’s table, and I went over there. Young Stevie-boy was sitting there too, now. But Stevie-boy was looking glum and wasn’t saying much. I touched Sonny and motioned him to come away with me.
“I want to go somewhere,” I said, as we walked toward the kiosk and the cobbled walk down to the jetty.
I wasn’t much worried about Stevie-boy getting his speedboat and following us.