Carmody's Run

by Bill Pronzini

  He moved ahead, shone his flash along the muddied depressions at the base of the wall. The light picked up something. He walked closer, bent at the waist.

  The something was a human foot encased in a heavy black shoe.

  Carmody went to the workbench, took up the hand trowel he’d seen there, carried it to where the foot poked up out of the mud. He knelt on a bundle of newspapers and began digging. It didn’t take him long to uncover the corpse. The flesh had started to decompose, but the size and the clothing and what was left of the features told him it had once been a heavyset, middle-aged man.

  The odor was bad now; it made his stomach queasy again, renewed the throbbing in his head. Quickly he searched the body, came up with a sodden, decaying wallet. Most of the papers inside were unreadable, but some of the cards were protected by celluloid wrappers. He could see that one was an identification card, another a union card; and he knew enough German to translate the information contained on them.

  The dead man’s name had been Karl Heinz. His occupation: electrician. And his business address was listed as 22 Kurzgasse, the building next door to this house.

  Carmody stood up. Things were beginning to make some sense now. But not enough, not yet, to lead him to Varndal.

  He climbed the cellar steps, left the house by the rear door. Several stunted fir trees grew in the back yard, their crowns partially obscured by a gathering winter mist. Beyond the farthest of them, a mesh fence topped with barbed wire separated Varndal’s property from the cluttered rear grounds of Karl Heinz’s electrical shop. Despite the barbed wire, the fence looked scalable.

  It was. Carmody used his gloved hands to bunch and depress the strands of wire so he could get his legs over, then dropped down on the far side. As soon as his feet touched the asphalt, he was moving through the misty dark to the rear door.

  The lock here was just as flimsy as the one on Varndal’s front entrance. He picked it quickly, drifted inside. He put the pencil flash on long enough to determine that this was the workshop and that two closed doors led off of it. The one in the facing wall would open on the customer entrance, he thought; the one in the right-hand wall probably led to an office of some kind.

  It was the office he wanted, so he crossed to that door and tried the knob. It turned under his fingers. The room beyond was small, too neat, as if it had been straightened recently—probably by relatives of Karl Heinz in the days since the electrician’s disappearance. Three sets of file cabinets huddled opposite a functional metal desk. Apparently Heinz had done a brisk business.

  Carmody put the light on the cabinets. The files were arranged according to date rather than in alphabetical order, which made the hunting easier. He found the most recent file, dated the previous month, and went through the papers methodically. There was nothing for him among them.

  On the desk were two wire baskets filled with papers. He looked through one, found nothing, and started on the second. A three-page invoice, with a typed letter signed by someone named Gunter Amerling stapled to it, caught his attention. The first paragraph of the letter, under a printed letterhead, said in German that Amerling was enclosing a check in payment of the invoice.

  Carmody deciphered the rest of the letter, glanced through the invoice. This was what he’d been looking for—the key to Varndal’s scheme and Varndal’s whereabouts. The letter and check must have come in after Heinz’s murder; Varndal hadn’t known about them or he’d have destroyed them as he had the other records dealing with the Amerling job.

  Carmody looked at his watch Halfpast twelve. If he was right about Varndal using the transmitter tonight, there might still be enough time to get to him before he was finished. Varndal wouldn’t risk doing the job too early. He went out the front way. In the Mercedes again, he checked the city map. The address on Amerling’s letterhead was a short, twisty road on the outskirts of the city, to the northwest He judged it to be about a thirty minute drive from Kurzgasse.

  As he drove, his foot heavy on the accelerator, he thought the whole thing through The job Karl Heinz had done for Gunter Amerling was the installation of a new, “burglar proof” safe–the type that had no combination dial, that was in fact a plain steel box without any external locking device. It operated by means of a crystal controlled radio transmitter of ultra high frequency which activated a locking device built into the door. If somebody tried to open it with a variable frequency transmitter, or tried to blow it or torch it open, alarms would be set off inside the house and at the local police station. It was all very modern and theoretically foolproof–except that it didn’t take into account the unforeseen factor.

  Anton Varndal was that unforeseen factor.

  Living next door to Heinz’s electrical shop, perhaps a drinking companion or casual friend of Heinz’s, Varndal had somehow found out about the Amerling job, and with that knowledge he’d devised his scheme to steal whatever it was that Amerling kept inside the safe. The plan was simple. Acquire a small, portable transmitter of the same frequency and strength as the unit which operated Amerling’s safe, one that put out a signal with a variation of no more than a plus or minus .03 so as not to set off the alarms. Then keep tabs on Amerling’s movements, and on a night when he would be away from home, break into his house and loot the safe.

  Varndal must have approached Heinz with his plan—probably offered him a fee or a split to manufacture the second transmitter. But Heinz had balked, threatened to go to the police or to Gunter Amerling. So Varndal had killed him to keep him quiet. Burying the body in his own cellar served two purposes: he didn’t have to risk moving it far, and it wasn’t likely to be found anytime soon. Who would suspect Heinz’s next-door neighbor of murdering him?

  Then Varndal had found out from Dietrich about Anya Berg and from her about Josef Bruckner and Carmody.

  He must have had to scratch to come up with the two thousand-dollar down payment and he’d been unable to scratch up the eight-thousand-dollar balance. That and the big score at Amerling’s had made him desperate enough to risk clubbing Carmody at the Görtnerstrasse house tonight. And that had been his first big mistake.

  His second was leaving Carmody alive.

  His second had signed his own death warrant.

  The area in which Gunter Amerling lived was in the foothills of the Eastern Alps, just below the Weinerwald. High walled estates had been built at staggered intervals along the narrow, twisting lane. Higher up, over the crests of the hills, the thick stands of pine that formed the Vienna Woods were hidden behind a floating wall of mist. At this level, birch and beech trees, branches winter-stripped, rose in ghostly clusters.

  Carmody found the number he wanted on one of two stone pillars that supported an iron-filigree gate. Through the gate he could just make out the estate road before it vanished among more trees, the house was invisible from here. He drove past the gate several hundred yards, left the car in close to the stone wall that enclosed the Amerling estate. The wall was high and smooth-sided, but by standing on the roof of the Mercedes he was able to hoist himself atop it. He dropped down on the other side, stood for a moment to reconnoiter. Nightlights glowed faintly through the mist, at an angle to his left. He moved that way, through more of the ghost-white birch.

  When he came out of the trees he could see the house a hundred yards away—imposing, gabled, made of or faced with stone. It was shrouded in mist, dark except for the nightlights that illuminated the front drive and part of the estate road. Off to the left of the road, set back into the trees, was what looked to be a caretaker’s cottage. A light burned in the cottage’s front window, dimly. Everything seemed quiet, normal.

  Keeping to heavy shadows, Carmody went toward the house at an angle until he reached the side wall. He moved along there to the rear. The windows on both levels were shuttered on that side, the shutters securely locked.

  He crossed through a side garden, onto a stone-floored patio. A set of French doors opening off the patio were locked. Carmody drifted around to the far s
ide of the house, found a high, short wing—the servants’ or kitchen entrance. All dark over there too. Either there weren’t any live-in servants or they were already in bed asleep.

  Carmody eased beyond the wing, along the side wall toward the front. He was halfway there when something short and worm-thin skittered toward him across the ground, undulating in the chill wind. He bent, caught it, held it up to his eyes. A length of black wire, a foot long, cut out of an electrical line. Varndal’s work, he thought. It figured that there would be some kind of standard alarm system on the doors and windows, and that Varndal knew the location of the wiring from Heinz’s records —knew the right place to make a cut to disable the system.

  Been here and gone? Or still here?

  Carmody’s lips were slash-thin, drawn in hard against his teeth. He started forward again. The shutters on the window ahead of him slapped softly against the stone siding of the house: they had been opened and refastened from within, but not securely. He edged up to the window. Through the gap in the shutters he saw darkness-and then a flicker of light. The light went out, flickered again: flashlight beam.

  Question answered: Varndal was still here.

  Carmody backed away to the wire, crouched in the shadows with the Beretta tight gripped in his fingers. The wind blew icy fog against his cheeks, swirled leaves and twigs around his feet He barely noticed. His eyes were intent on the window.

  It was ten minutes before the shutters spread wide and the dark, cloth-capped figure emerged from inside. In one hand was an obviously heavy satchel, in the other, a blob that would be the portable radio transmitter. Varndal set both of these on the ground, reached up to close the shutters again. Then he looked both ways along the house, picked up the satchel and transmitter, started into the woods that grew close on this side.

  Carmody followed, moving laterally in the shadows at first to get himself behind Varndal; then he matched the Austrian’s pace, close enough to keep him in sight through the trees and mist. Varndal went at a labored trot, slowed by the combined weight of the satchel and the transmitter. He didn’t look back. He didn’t think there was any reason to look back.

  The stone wall materialized ahead. Varndal struggled on at a faster pace. He was panting audibly when he reached the base of the wall. He put the satchel and transmitter down again, leaned against the stones to catch his breath. Carmody kept moving, the wind and the carpeting of leaves underfoot masking his approach.

  Varndal didn’t hear him until Carmody was less than ten yards away. He spun from the wall, crouching, his hand tugging at something in his belt. The something jerked free, raised in Varndal’s grasp, and Carmody shot him twice with the Beretta. Varndal yelled, gasped, sagged to his knees. The gun he’d drawn came loose and made a dull, plopping sound in the leaves. Carmody ran up to him, ready to fire again, but there was no fight left in the Austrian. He stared at Carmody, his eyes shiny with pain and recognition, with disbelief. His lips worked, tried to form words. Then he flopped forward, his cap falling off. He didn’t move, would never move again.

  Carmody put the Beretta away, caught up the heavy satchel and the transmitter, walked along the wall to the gate. He didn’t hurry because there was no longer any need to hurry. If the caretaker had heard the shots and came to investigate, it would take him quite a while to locate Varndal’s body in the dark and then to sound an alarm.

  At the gate, Carmody shoved the satchel and transmitter through the iron bars. Climbing the gate was no easy task—the bars were spike-pointed at the top—but there were no cars on the road and he took his time. He got over without doing himself any damage.

  The satchel and transmitter went into the Mercedes’ trunk. He started the engine, made a U-turn, drove back past the gate without lights and without seeing anybody on the grounds inside. Ten minutes later he was on a main Vienna artery, on his way to Grinzing and Josef Bruckner’s apartment.

  Bruckner said, “Gold coins! So that is what Varndal stole from Amerling’s safe.”

  Carmody nodded. Commemorative European gold coins, to be exact—over a hundred of them. That was why the satchel had been so heavy, Amerling was a coin collector, one of the breed that specialized in the rare and fancy gold variety.

  “What a fine price these will bring on the black market!” Bruckner said. “Perhaps as much as three hundred thousand dollars, nein?”

  “Nein,”Carmody said. “They won’t bring a cent because they’re not going out on the market.”

  “But... I do not understand–”

  “The coins go back to Amerling in the morning, in a package you’re going to make up and mail. There were thirty thousand schillings in the safe, too, that Varndal took with him. It doesn’t amount to the eight thousand dollars he owed me for the transmitter but it’s close enough. That’s all I want out of the deal.”

  Bruckner looked stricken “I still do not understand, Herr Carmody. Three hundred thousand American dollars…”

  “Wouldn’t make any difference if the value was one million or ten million,” Carmody said “I’m not a thief. I play games with the law, I break the law for money, but I’m not a common thief.”

  He left the coins with Bruckner and drove to his hotel on Manahilferstrasse. Bruckner would do as he’d been told, he had no desire to wind up like Anton Varndal. And it would be the last thing he’d ever do for Carmody. In the morning, after Carmody salved his aching head with some sleep, he would arrange to delay his departure from Vienna by twenty-four hours. Then he would make some phone calls, get some names, conduct an interview or two, and pick somebody who wasn’t a fool to be his new Austrian contact.

  One mistake was all you got when you worked for Carmody.

  One mistake in his business was one too many.

  BLOOD MONEY

  Carmody spent the morning at Bacino di Borechi, checking out the boat that Captain Della Robbia had hired for the run south to Sardinia. The boat was forty-two feet and twenty years old—the Piraeus–flying a Greek flag. She was scabrous and salt-scarred, her fittings flecked with rust, but she seemed seaworthy and she had an immaculate power-plant: a twin-screw GMC diesel, well-tuned and shiny clean.

  The captain looked all right too. He was an Australian named Vickers, who had been in Venice for a couple of years and who had handled some other smuggling jobs for Della Robbia, one involving a boatload of illegal aliens from Albania. Della Robbia said he was the best man available and he probably was. Sardinia would be a piece of cake compared to getting into Albanian waters and then out again safely with forty-three passengers.

  From the bacino Carmody took a water taxi to St. Mark’s Square. Della Robbia hadn’t shown up yet at the open-air café on the Piazzeta. Carmody took a table, ordered a cup of cappuccino. It was a warm, windy September day, and the square was jammed with tourists, vendors, freelance artists, the ever-present pigeons. On the wide fronting basin, into which emptied Venice’s two major canals, the Grand and the Giudecca, gondolas and water taxis, passenger ferries and small commercial craft maneuvered in bright confusion. The sun turned the placid water a glinting silver, gave it a mercurial aspect.

  Cities were just cities to Carmody—places to be and to work in and to leave again but Venice intruded on his consciousness more than most. For one thing, you didn’t have to worry about traffic problems because it had no automobiles. It was built on a hundred little islands interconnected by a hundred and fifty bridges, and you got from place to place on foot through narrow, winding interior streets or by water taxi and ferry. The pocked, sagging look of most of the ancient buildings was due to the fact that the city was sinking at the rate of five inches per century; the look and smell of the four hundred canals was the result of pollution. It was a seedy, charming, ugly, beautiful, dangerous, amiable city—one Carmody understood, and felt at ease in, and worked well in.

  He had been sitting there for fifteen minutes when Della Robbia came hurrying between the two red granite obelisks that marked the beginning of the Piazzeta. Dark, craggy
-featured, in his middle thirties, wearing a light gray suit and a pair of fat sunglasses, Della Robbia looked exactly like what he was: a minor Italian gangster. That worked in his favor more often than not. Because he looked like a thug, a lot of people figured he wasn’t one.

  When Della Robbia sat down Carmody said, “You make the arrangements for the launch?”

  “Just as you instructed, Signor Carmody.”

  “What did you tell the driver?”

  “Only that he is to pick up a passenger, transport him to an address he will be given, pick up additional passengers, and then proceed to a boat in the Lagoon.”

  “Does he speak English?”

  “Enough to understand simple directions.”

  “You’re sure he can be trusted?”

  “Assolutamente, Signor.”

  “He’ll be ready to go tonight?”

  “Any time you wish.”

  “The way it looks now,” Carmody said, “we can do it tonight. I went to see Vickers and his boat this morning. I’m satisfied.”

  “I was certain you would be.”

  Carmody lit one of his thin, black cigars. “I’ll call you later and let you know what time the launch driver is to pick me up. Where do I meet him?”

  “The Rio de Fontego, at the foot of Via Giordano,” Della Robbia said. “A quiet place without much water traffic, so you can be sure you are not followed.”

  “How far is the Rio de Fontego from my hotel?”

  “Ten minutes by water taxi.”

  “All right, good.”

  “There are other arrangements to be made?”

  “No. I’ll handle the rest of it. But stay where I can reach you the rest of the day.”

  Della Robbia said, “Va bene,”and got to his feet. “A safe journey, Signor Carmody.” He lifted his hand in a salute and moved off across the Piazzeta, disappeared into the crowd of tourists and pigeons in front of the Ducal Palace.