Lucrezia stared at me. “Are you Shell Scott?” she asked.
“Am I who?”
“You never heard of him?”
“Don’t be ridic—listen, I mean, what the hell do you mean asking me am I … Of course I’m Shell Scott! Who else would be up here, bleeding from every pore, for a—for a girl!”
“It is you!”
“I’m glad we got that settled.” I paused, scowling. She probably couldn’t tell whether I was scowling or not. “Lucrezia,” I said, “it is I, truly I, under all this slop.” I paused again. “Somehow … I expected … well, Hello there! or something.”
I’ll say this for Lucrezia, once she was sure some dirty old man wasn’t trying to trick her, she didn’t let a little untidiness throw her offstride. She strode the rest of the way to me, threw her arms around my neck, and said, “Well, kiss me, you nut.”
It didn’t offend me. If I was a nut, and this was what nuts got, then the crazier I got the better I’d like it.
Well, there’s only so much you can say about kisses. And I’ll say it if I get half a chance. But I’d already had two kisses from Lucrezia, and about all there is to say is that this third one was twice as good as those two first ones put together. Or, imagine you put those two first ones together, and they mated. And had about a million babies. And then the babies grew up. Like that.
Oh, hell, it was just a kiss.
When it was over, Lucrezia dropped her arms to her sides, and I stepped back a little. I don’t usually do that, but I was trying to get my bearings. I looked around, but didn’t see them anyplace.
“What are you looking for?” Lucrezia asked.
“Ball-bearings,” I said. “Don’t know why, really, just a—a thought that occurred to me.”
She sighed. “That was quite a kiss.”
“You said a mouthful. Let’s do it again, huh?”
“Shell, how—how can you be so unconcerned? Aren’t some of those men still in the house? You didn’t—you didn’t kill them all, did you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I only killed a couple of them. And then I think one guy committed suicide. Just—don’t worry, there’s plenty of time.”
“Time for what? You don’t mean—you can’t mean—”
“Who says I can’t?”
“Shell, really!”
“Yeah, really.”
“I mean, we’ve really got to get out of here.”
“I suppose you’re right. There’s a couple of those guys might come to, and come up here, and come in and … yeah, we better get out of here.” I paused, thinking. “Hey, Lucrezia.”
“Yes?”
“None of those guys, they didn’t, well, didn’t—ah, rape you or anything, did they?”
“What do you mean, or anything?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Pinch you, maybe?”
“They didn’t do anything! They didn’t even rape me!”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
“Oh, Shell, you—you—”
“Can’t a guy be jealous?”
“Shell, I saw you. I saw you.”
“Saw me what?” I’d just been standing here, simply standing. Except for that kiss, of course. She sure said some funny things.
“I saw you.”
“There you go again.”
“In the courtyard. Down there.” She flang an arm out, in the general direction of the mayhem and havoc below. “I even saw you on the telephone pole—in the lightning. Only I didn’t know it was you, then.”
“Well … That’s all right. I wasn’t at my best on the telephone pole. It’s not my bag. To tell the truth, I wasn’t feeling well at all up there—”
“And then, when the lights came on, I saw you again.” She pointed. “See, I could look down right from there and see everything!”
This was the sort of turret room, wall curving out and around, so I guessed she would have had a pretty good view at that. There were bars over the window, but she could have seen me through the bars—and, I thought glumly, might again. Too bad Lucrezia’s first good look at me had been when I was running like a scalded orangutan away from all those apes. Maybe she wouldn’t mention it.
“I saw you running away from all those men,” she said, “and when you went right through the wall!”
“Well, I probably should explain about that, but …”
“And then shooting, and yelling and screeching—”
“I didn’t, either—”
“—and roaring and bellowing, and shooting, and fighting. I even saw that great huge man jump at the wall. He was the funniest thing!”
“How do you mean that? Funniest? Like funny, funnier—Who else was funny?”
“Oh, Shell, you were just magnificent! You were wonderful!”
“I was?”
“I never saw anything so thrilling and exciting in my life. There’s never been anything like it, even in the movies.”
“Well, I don’t know—”
“I was so proud of you. Of course, I thought you were going to get killed. But you didn’t.”
“No, that’s about the only thing I didn’t do.”
“But I was—and I am. So proud of you.”
“Ah … I’m sorry if I was a little snippy. Didn’t really mean it. It’s, uh … Well, it’s been a hard night.”
She smiled. Then she said, sweetly and softly, “I know. I know. But I’ll take care of you, my darling.”
And, somehow, I knew she would.
There was another special council meeting. Tony Brizante called it. I addressed it. The council members—the ten who were present, since naturally two couldn’t make it—knew merely by looking at me either every word I spoke was the truth or I was just naturally dirty.
I gave them a fast fill-in on the Cosa Nostra or Mafia, told them about DiGiorno-Lecci, hit a few bits of background and described a little, only a little, of what I’d been running up against since Friday afternoon.
Then I said, “So here’s a quick summing-up, gentlemen. Lecci, restless in retirement, got the itch to come a little way out of retirement, and being a creature of unalterable habit brought in some helpers, got a black finger—of a black hand—into many little pies here at Sunrise Villas. Not enough action for the big boys, the Dons, the Commission to worry about. Until: AGING. DiGiorno putting the squeeze on a small Arizona community—a little rakeoff here, some muscle there, skimming a few thousands from too-cheap paving or sewers or corrupt contracting or strikes, that was one thing. But ex-capo Pete Lecci with his hooks in Sunrise Villas when the millions—dozens and scores of millions if it was handled right and by the right men—were about to start pouring in, that was another thing entirely. That was the big pie, and the top dog couldn’t be The Letch himself, he was too old, too far behind the new times and new ways.
“So the Cosa Nostra Commission met and, with some wisdom, decided to take over. In a way, you should be flattered, gentlemen, because more than a year ago, when AGING legislation was barely out of the cradle, the Commissione, the twelve most powerful mafiosi bosses in this entire land, held a special meeting—much as you’re now meeting in special session yourselves—concerned solely with Sunrise Villas. They decided the first step should be to send in their own man not merely to guarantee effective control of your community but to make sure Letch made no serious mistakes in the little time left to him. And I do mean, even if Lecci might normally have lived to be a hundred and ninety-nine, the little time left to him. Because he had to go, and the members of his small organization, anybody ‘loyal’ to him, either had to switch over to the new bosses or else—well, or else.
“They sent in the best-qualified man they could find for the job, an unusually intelligent hood whom you knew as the Reverend Stanley Archibald, but whose monicker or hoodlum nickname was Holyjoe because he had read the entire Bible and could even quote parts of it. Besides, he looked right and sounded right and had once taken a prison course in psychology, and for three years on the legit h
ad sold vacuum cleaners.”
Well, I went on from there, and by the time I’d given them the whole thing, chapter and verse in clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades, they were charged up like cadmium-nickel batteries and went out into the town, among their fellow citizens, spreading the word; from door to door, on the phone, in one ear and out another mouth, it spread like the most-recently-invented Cambodian or Laotian flu, and in half an hour I was out there with them—and we were charging down the street.
Well, maybe not charging. Nearly all of my fellow chargers were past the half-century mark, some in the eighties and more, but most of them got along at a pretty good clip, and they were armed. Armed with bats and sticks and golf clubs, even canes and crutches. There were even a few handguns and rifles with a shotgun here and there. The first destination was the headquarters of the Sunrise Villas Security Guards.
From those of Lecci and Company still alive and conscious we’d learned that of the eighteen-man force five were Lecci’s men. Strike Weeton. That left four. So the Sunrise Villans marched. At first I was leading the parade. At first.
You’d be surprised how fast some of those old boys could go along. It came upon me, too, that I wasn’t the man I used to be. I wasn’t the man I used to be last night, much less two nights ago. I sat on the curb and watched them go. It was quite exciting.
I’d pooped out a block from the Guards’ headquarters. But I was able to see three uniformed men there, maybe tipped off or else attracted by the growling of the mob, and I guessed those three were three of the four because they all gave little jumps, then spun about and ran into the building.
Pursued. By the most motley crowd of vigilantes or avengers mine eyes had ever seen.
Well, it went on, and on. On most of the day. By mid-afternoon, if there was a crook left in town, he was seriously considering straightening out. A few were in the jug. Some had made it to the desert, and police helicopters were whirly-birding over the sands, spotting a fugitive now and then among the cacti.
I didn’t wait to watch it all. When I figured Tony would be home again, I headed for Mimosa Lane.
I sort of staggered into the living room when Tony opened the door for me. Mrs. Brizante and Lucrezia came in, then Mrs. Brizante went back into the kitchen where she began either dancing a wild flamenco or making more raviolis.
I declined Tony’s gracious, perhaps sacrificial, offer of a chair and did not sit down. I was afraid simply because of my standing here he might have to send his whole house to the cleaners.
After a litte talk I told him, “God knows what might have happened if you hadn’t followed the guy you thought was Yarrow Tuesday morning. In strange and unfathomable ways our days are fashioned, what?” I was, at that point, mentally so dull I actually liked the sound of those words. So dull, in fact, that I said them again, or at least started to. “In strange … and unfath—”
“I still don’t know exactly what the hell,” Tony interrupted. “You mean the man I talked to at the church wasn’t Yarrow?”
“No, that was Henry Yarrow. But it was not the man you saw Tuesday morning, and followed—that guy was David Stephens. They pulled a switch on you. Having you meet Yarrow at the church was to make sure you would accept Yarrow as the man you’d seen—in dawn light from a distance of forty feet or more—Tuesday morning.” I paused. “Tony, to put it bluntly, the whole point of that confrontation was to con you, stick you with the convincer, and it worked. But, my friend, be damned glad of it, because if you hadn’t accepted Yarrow as Stephens you simply wouldn’t have come home from the church.” After a moment I added, “Either.”
He was silent, frowning. I looked at Lucrezia. “By the way, Paul Anson gave me your message, about seeing Henry Yarrow but not at the house Tony had tailed him to. Or, rather, tailed Stephens to. Including your telling Paul you knew who the guy in the other house was—which, of course, is why those hoods grabbed you. I take it you didn’t actually mention Stephens’ name to Paul on the phone, but did say you knew who he was, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s when I decided to drive in and talk to you myself, Shell. After Dad showed me the house where he’d seen the man go Tuesday morning, I found out David Stephens was staying there, and I already knew he was Kerwin’s brother, so I was sure you’d want to know about that.”
“Found out he was Stephens? How?”
“Oh, that was easy. When Dad showed me the house where he thought Mr. Yarrow lived, I noticed a mailbox next door with the name ‘Murphy’ on it. When we got home I looked up Mr. Yarrow in the phone book, and his address was the same as where Dad and I had just seen him—same as the one in the Sunrise Villas News story about you, for that matter. So I looked up the only Murphy on Palma Drive and called that number. It was easy.”
“It was, huh?”
“Mrs. Murphy answered the phone and we had a nice little talk. I asked her who lived in the house next door, and she said it was empty for a couple of months but that David Stephens had been staying there for the last week or so.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Well, it’s no secret about Mr. Stephens being here at the Villas. He’s just doing his job—that’s what everybody thought, anyway. The only secret was that Dad followed him and saw him go into that house.”
“Yeah. You realize those bad men were listening to you talking to Mrs. Murphy, and telling Paul about all this snooping you were doing.”
“Well, I know that now, but I didn’t know it then. How could I? Nobody told me they were listening.” She paused. “And it wasn’t snooping. I was just trying to—help. Everyone else was being a detective, so I did it, too. There wasn’t anything very difficult about it. Actually, it was kind of fun.”
“Kind of … fun?”
I thought about Lucky frolicking around the tree outside the nice new church … Ace and The Nailer playing “Hit” in front of Henry Yarrow’s home … the fun and games on Willow Lane … Bludgett, Bludgett, and Bludgett … the gang crowding excitedly into my suite at lovely Mountain Shadows for that swinging party … running bareheaded through the rain … and the kicks at the old King place with all the kids from Cosa Nostra.…
“I suppose it is,” I said. “Kind of …”
I gazed, dully, at the wall. I don’t know how long I gazed. But somehow I got the impression Lucrezia had left the room. She hadn’t, of course, because if she had, then I couldn’t have put my foot in it, and naturally I put my foot in it. One simply should not become as tired as I had become. When one becomes that tired, one’s brain fails to function like a well-oiled machine.
“Well, Tony,” I said. “I’ve got to go. Have to see a gal, and then hit the sack.”
“Gal?”
“Yeah, though I could probably think of a better word if my brain were functioning like a well-oiled machine. This one is an incendiary babe who should not be allowed within six feet of anything inflammable. Looking into her eyes is like watching two little stag movies. And built? Gotta go. Gotta go see Mary—”
“Who?” said Lucrezia, putting a lot into the one word.
“Well,” I said, “where did you come from?”
“Who?” she said, putting even more into it.
“Ah, Mary—Mary Blessing. Mrs. Blessing. The widow. She’s an old gray-headed … Well, no—I’ll tell you about it some other time.”
I knew it was time to go. The shape I was in, if I didn’t leave right away I’d get in trouble.
So I walked to the door and out, passing close to Lucrezia on my way. And maybe I imagined it, but I thought I detected an odd expression in Lucrezia’s lovely eyes.…
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mrs. Blessing opened the door.
I couldn’t hear any music from behind her, and she wasn’t doing her little dance, or making the little fun movements. But anyone could tell they were still in her, just waiting to break out.
She gave me a strange look. Everybody had been doing that, but hers was a stranger strange than any of t
he rest. I’d known it would be. She invited me inside anyhow. I remained standing. She sat, in that way she had. I admired her thigh. Why not? It was an admirable thigh. And she was quite a girl.
But then I got down to business. Real business. My business. “Mrs. Blessing,” I said, “it took me longer than it should have—until almost precisely six minutes past eight P.M. last night, to be … precise—but I finally figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“You know. When Gilberto Reyes came by here with Tony Brizante early Tuesday morning. And looking from the car saw, so the carefully contrived story went, Joe Civano. And, in some excitement, cried, you should pardon the expression, ‘Jesus Christ. Mary, Mother of God! Stop the car,’ and so on. He said it in Spanish, since he often lapsed into Spanish when excited, but also—and this is important—the punctuation should be different. Like, ‘Jesús Cristo. María. Madre de Dios!”
“I don’t understand—”
“Sure you do. Should be a period after Maria. What a difference a dot makes, what? He wasn’t talking about the Virgin Mary, was he, Mary?”
“I won’t sit here—”
“Sure you will. Gilberto didn’t see Joe Civano, didn’t even think he saw Joe Civano. He saw you. He saw Maria Civano.” I smiled at Mrs. Blessing, born Maria Civano. “Right, Maria?”
She protested, and denied, and showed me lots of thigh, but somehow it had lost its enchantment.
“Let’s go way back,” I said. “Start with The Letch. He married and fathered Antonio, who got shot by a cop in an alley, and Angelica. Angelica married Massero Civano and they had four children, Pete Lecci’s four grandchildren: first, Giuseppe—or the late Joe Civano—born nearly forty-seven years ago; two years later Andrea came along; a bit more than three years after that, Felicca; and in another two years Maria Civano was born. Which means you’re over the hill, you’re forty-one years old, Maria.”
“I’m thirty-nine.…”
I smiled. “Of course. How could I have made a stupid mistake like that?”
She pulled her skirt down with a jerk. She’d known the jig was up long before her little goof. So had I, of course. But a guy has to keep in practice.
Kill Me Tomorrow Page 24
