Louise's Gamble (24 page)

But if Alessa had been murdered, I was nowhere close to finding out who’d killed her and why. Sebastian, Orazio, and Lucia’s alibis leaked like sieves, but their motives were shaky. And as for opportunity, the woman lived in a vast hotel! Wasn’t it more likely that an unknown person, who’d simply walked into the Mayflower and up to her apartment, had killed her? Someone who knew about our operation? And wasn’t it likely that that person had made off with the information she’d brought back with her? How could I find out though? I didn’t even know her brother’s name to warn him! Turi was short for Salvatore, but what was his surname? How many Salvatores worked on the New York docks? It was impossible!

If someone had murdered Alessa, he or she would get away scot-free.

I felt a headache coming on, and I wished I could run out of the front door of the hotel, climb into a pumpkin coach, go home, and go back to work on Monday and file index cards with no memory of Alessa or my pathetic foray into espionage.

‘My dear,’ Orazio said, setting down our coffees and a piece of coconut pie, ‘are those tears?’

‘A few,’ I said. ‘I’m not preoccupied with Alessa’s death, Orazio, I just can’t help thinking of her.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I understand. Tell me, when we are done here, shall we go up to the apartment and catch our breaths? Get away from the crowd and the noise? After a rest we can return to the dancing if we like.’

‘Yes, let’s,’ I said. Now was my chance to search Alessa’s room.

THIRTY-THREE

O
razio turned his key in the lock and opened the apartment door. ‘I don’t know if anyone else is home,’ he said, ushering me inside. ‘Lina?’ he called out. ‘Sebastian?’

There was no answer.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Orazio said. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’ He vanished into the kitchenette.

I sank on to the sofa gratefully. All that dancing, plus dealing with my fears of getting caught, had worn me out. According to the ormolu clock on the mantle, it was past eleven. It felt like two in the morning to me.

Orazio carried a tray into the living room and set it down on the cocktail table. A wonderful coffee odor arose from an odd contraption on the tray, a sort of jar with what looked like a piston fitted into it.

Orazio saw my puzzlement. ‘It’s a French press,’ he said. ‘Makes the best coffee in the world. And uses less coffee than one of your percolators.’

He poured coffee into the simple cups that were part of the standard equipment in a Mayflower kitchenette.

‘Lucia finds it so difficult to adapt to such primitive housekeeping,’ Orazio said. ‘I think that’s why she goes out to tea with her friends so much, so she can eat off china and silver.’

‘What happened to the Onetos’ property?’ I asked.

‘The houses, the vineyards and orchards, the sulfur mines, they all still belong to Sebastian,’ he said. ‘He’ll repossess them after the war. Now, of course, he has no income from them; they’ve been appropriated by the Nazis. The estate’s capital, which supports them now, was deposited in Switzerland by Sebastian’s father. As to the houses themselves, I expect they have been looted.’

‘That’s too bad,’ I said.

Orazio shrugged. ‘Lives are more important than possessions. The Sicilian people are desperate.’

‘When the Allies occupy the island, life will be better.’

‘I hope so.’

I kicked off my shoes, curled my feet up under me on the sofa, and sipped my coffee. To my relief Orazio showed no signs of seducing me. There were women spies working for OSS who were willing to sleep with men to get information, but I wasn’t one of them!

Which made me wonder about Myrna. What was she doing with Colonel Melinsky? The coincidence concerned me. Myrna worked for OSS, or she wouldn’t have been at ‘The Farm’ with me. It was possible that they’d simply met at work. Melinsky could afford tickets to the ball, and Myrna was a gorgeous woman. Why shouldn’t he ask her out? I couldn’t imagine any other reason they would be at the ball.

I lingered over my coffee as long as I could. Orazio finished his.

‘Do you mind?’ he asked as he took a cigarette out of a silver box on the cocktail table and held it up.

‘Not at all,’ I said.

‘Would you care for one?’

‘No, thanks. Smoking makes my throat sore.’

Orazio lit his cigarette. I decided I had until he finished smoking it to figure out how to search Alessa’s room. How to get back into the bedroom area of the apartment? It seemed too obvious to ask to use the bathroom.

‘Would you like to powder your nose before we go back downstairs?’ Orazio asked, crushing the butt of his cigarette out in an ashtray.

‘Yes, thank you, I would,’ I said. I couldn’t believe my luck. Almost made me believe in Providence.

‘If you go through that door,’ he began, gesturing towards the door to the bedroom hallway.

‘I know the way,’ I said. ‘I used Lucia’s bathroom at the memorial service.’

Once in the hallway I closed the door and made sure it latched. I was still in my stocking feet to keep from making noise. I opened the door to Lucia’s bathroom and closed it. I didn’t know what Orazio could hear in the living room, but I wanted to make it sound like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. On the way back from Alessa’s room I’d slip in the bathroom and flush the toilet.

Alessa’s and Sebastian’s door was open. Inside, the room looked much like it had when I’d seen it on the afternoon of Alessa’s memorial reception. It was clear that Sebastian slept alone now. The table next to his side of the bed held a carafe and water tumbler, reading glasses, an open book, and a wadded up handkerchief. Alessa’s side table held only a lamp.

It looked as though Sebastian had begun to clean out her things but he hadn’t gotten very far. Poor man. I don’t suppose his mother was much help to him. It wouldn’t be easy for Lina, either.

Alessa’s closet door was open, revealing her clothes. I noticed a Saks garment bag hanging inside. Her ball gown for tonight. I felt tears begin to form and ruthlessly suppressed them. Alessa was dead. I doubted I would ever know how or why.

My job now was to try to find the letter I hoped she had brought back from New York.

Her knitting bag still sat on the floor under the desk.

It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Quickly and quietly I pulled the bag out from under the desk and riffled through it. I found a skein of wool, several pairs of knitting needles, and an almost completed pair of fingerless gloves.

In a side pocket where Alessa kept her patterns I discovered a small, stiff rectangle. I felt almost light-headed as I pulled an envelope identical to the two previous ones Alessa had given me from her bag.

This was it. I’d found it. Alessa’s death hadn’t been in vain!

For second I was overwhelmed. Then I realized I had to get back to the living room and Orazio before he became suspicious.

I stuffed the envelope into the bodice of my dress and got to my feet, turning to the door.

Orazio stood there, leaning against the door jamb, with a revolver in his hand.

THIRTY-FOUR

I
stared at Orazio’s revolver.

‘Like it?’ he said. ‘It’s an old Beretta. Custom made, leather grip, engraved. Sebastian’s, of course.’

I pulled myself together and concocted a lie as quickly as I could. ‘What on earth are you doing with that?’ I asked. ‘I know I’m snooping, but a gun is hardly necessary. I surrender, OK?

‘I knew you’d lead me to it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t dare search myself, and I had no idea where to look. Her knitting bag – I should have realized!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘I apologize for coming in here – it’s inexcusable, I know – but I saw the open door, and I wanted something to remember Alessa by. It’s a knitting pattern she wrote out.’

‘Don’t insult me,’ Orazio said. ‘That’s a letter from Alessa’s bastard brother. Her bastard
Mafioso capodecina
brother. With information for the OSS. I want it. Give it to me.’

So Turi was Alessa’s asset!

‘No,’ I said, stupidly determined. ‘It’s none of your business.’

Orazio pointed the gun directly at me.

‘You can’t shoot me; someone will hear the gunshot,’ I said. ‘How would you explain?’

Orazio laughed. ‘All the apartments nearby are empty. The rich people who live in them are downstairs at the ball. And the hotel is solidly built, a shining example of capitalism.’

‘Orazio,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what concern this is of yours, but I promise you that this letter contains information that’s critical to the war effort.’

‘I have my sources, too. I’m a member of the Italian Communist Party. We have spies of our own on the New York City docks. We know the Mafia is working for the United States government.’

‘You followed Alessa to her last meeting with Turi!’

‘No. How stupid would that be? She might have recognized me. It was one of our agents.’

‘The Mafia is keeping the New York docks safe from Nazi espionage. How can you object to that?’

‘The Mafia does nothing without compensation! Luciano and his fellow criminals will expect a reward after the war. What do you think it could be? Could it be Sicily?’

‘That’s not important now. We have to win first.’

‘It’s important to me! The only good thing Mussolini did was expel the Mafia! If those hoodlums return to Sicily after the war, the Sicilian people will be back under the thumbs of criminals – when they’re not working themselves to death for people like Sebastian in his olive groves and his sulfur mines! The only chance we have to be free is if the Mafia stays out of Sicily forever!’

Orazio was so angry he trembled.

‘And for someone like me . . .’ he said. ‘I’ll have to work for someone like Sebastian for the rest of my life. I despise him! He’s useless for anything but reading poetry. But rich nonetheless! And his mother, my God, what a harpy. She bribed me with a diamond bracelet to tell me the contents of Sebastian’s will!

Orazio drew back his fist and slammed it into a wall mirror next to the door. It splintered into tiny pieces, showering his shoulders with shards of glass. I found myself crouched behind Alessa’s armoire.

Orazio was angry enough to commit murder, I could see that. And he’d had the opportunity to doctor Alessa’s tonic, while Alessa was at the coffee shop eating her sandwich. He must have killed her to keep her from giving me the name of the Mafia sleeper she’d brought back from New York.

I kept my mouth shut. Orazio must not know I suspected him or I’d never leave this apartment alive. I didn’t see that I had any choice but to give Orazio what he wanted. But still I hesitated.

‘Give it to me, and I’ll let you go,’ he said. ‘I swear. You’ll tell your masters that your operation failed. That will be the end of it.’ Some of the anger faded from his face. He lowered the gun slightly.

I tried to reason with him. ‘This one bit of information won’t seal Sicily’s fate,’ I said. ‘But it will protect countless convoys and lives. You want the Allies to invade Sicily to free it, don’t you?’

Anger built up in him again. I could see his shoulders shake.

‘Give it to me,’ he said, ‘or I will shoot you. I will.’

I believed him. I drew the envelope from my bodice and handed it over to him.

‘At last!’ He tucked it into his pocket. ‘Now,’ he said, waving the pistol, ‘let’s go.’

‘Go where?’

‘You didn’t believe me when I said I’d let you go, did you? Stupid woman.’ He grabbed me with his left hand, pulled me to him, so that his face was close to mine, the gun at my head. ‘We’re going to the sub-basement,’ he said. ‘No one will be there to help you.’

I admit it, I was terrified. Orazio was taller, heavier, and stronger than me. And he had a gun.

Size and strength have nothing to do with defending yourself.
Everything Sergeant Smith had taught me at ‘The Farm’ returned to me in one instinctive fluid movement. I rammed Orazio in the face with the flat of my left hand, digging my fingers deep into his eyes. I could feel the jelly of his eyeballs under my nails.

Orazio screamed in agony. He flung his right hand, holding the gun, wide. When he fell to the floor I crouched over him and kneed him as hard as I could in the scrotum. He screamed again and doubled over into a fetal position, clutching his groin. Blood trickled from one eye.

I dropped to the floor next to him and dug into his jacket pocket and found Alessa’s letter. I clutched it with bloody fingers and headed for the bedroom door.

But I was an amateur still, and I forgot to pick up the gun! Orazio pulled himself to a sitting position, grabbed the gun, and fired at my back. A bullet splintered the door jamb next to my head as I almost fell into the hall.

The next bullet will kill me, I thought. It’s all over. I turned to face Orazio.

I heard the gunshot and saw the gun barrel flash, but in that split second Enzo came out of nowhere and dived between Orazio and me. His squat body jerked from the impact of the bullet, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.

I had enough time in the few seconds before Orazio realized Enzo wasn’t me to dig into my handbag, flick open my knife, and rush at Orazio. Orazio didn’t expect me to attack him, and by sheer luck I reached him and stabbed him in the ribs while he wiped blood from his eyes. Orazio crashed to the floor again, moaning.

I crushed his right hand with the heel of my shoe and ripped the gun from his hand. He screamed again. I stuffed Alessa’s letter back into my dress bodice and drew my bloody knife out of Orazio’s ribs. Withdrawing the knife made a grating sound that sent a shiver down my spine.

I didn’t care how empty this hotel floor was; someone must have heard all this commotion. I had to get out of that apartment.

Enzo lay bleeding in the hallway, a hand clutched to his shoulder. I didn’t stop to ask him how or why he’d known to come to my rescue.

I grabbed him by his good arm, ducked under it, and dragged him to his feet and into the bathroom. I folded a bright white towel over his wound, bound it with one of Lucia’s nylons hanging over a towel bar, and forced him to his feet.

‘We have to get out of here.’