Assignment Sorrento Siren

by Unknown Author

  He walked from the bridge to the quay and Si Hanson showed up as promised, in nine minutes. He drove a French Floride, a small, bright convertible that stuck out like a sore thumb. Si pulled up to the curb and leaned over to open the door.

  “Hop in, Sam. Welcome to ‘Smithville.’ ” It was the name usually given to neutral Switzerland. “Good to see you.”

  “The same, Silas.” When the chunky FBI man started his car and turned purposefully back to the Old Quarter, Durell said, “Where are we heading?”

  “Was there any answer at Ellen’s?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll stop there first.”

  “I’d like to fan Talbott’s apartment as soon as possible,” Durell suggested.

  “I’ve already done that. I’ll open the book on this thing, as long as we’re working together on it.” Hanson grinned. He had short-cropped white hair and a ruddy face that gave him a youthful look, a snapping vitality expressed in the crisp way he moved and talked. Durell was glad that Hanson was the FBI representative here. There were times when inter-departmental rivalries hampered a proper accommodation between K Section and the Bureau. But when the two outfits clicked, efficiency was stepped up tremendously. There wouldn’t be any trouble with Silas, he thought.

  Hanson said, “At first it looked like a straight criminal complaint, Sam, involving an American abroad, and this dropped it in my lap. Talbott is our man. I know Pacek is in town. . .

  “I’ve already had a cozy chat with him.”

  “Have you? Well. I don’t think Pacek has our boy, but he probably wishes he did. Talbott did this little item all on his own, the sour son of a bitch.”

  “Have you got a run-down on him?”

  “Sure.” Hanson took pride in a photographic memory that permitted him to recite verbatim almost anything he’d ever read. “John Leverett Talbott, age 32, six-four and two-twenty, all beef, bone, muscles and brains. No pushover, Sam. Born in Sangerville, a crossroads burg in Mississippi; wrong side of the crossroads, however. His father, John, Sr., a tenant farmer fighting cotton shares. Mother a millinery clerk in the town, ran away a year after Jack was born. Jack did well in the local schools, though. Tried to marry the mill-owner’s daughter, got slapped down in soap-opera style, and went off to some jerkwater engineering college in Oklahoma. I’ve sent some cables Stateside to check on the frustrated love affair. Might have made him class-conscious in the wrong way, though you might not blame him.”

  “We’U see,” Durell said.

  “He played football, too. Big hero. But he never got over his across-the-tracks status. Bronze Star in Korea, a real killer with a rod. Didn’t make officer rank, and I haven’t found out why, yet. Pentagon hasn’t replied to that. But it makes a good picture of a man tempted to go wrong.”

  “How did he get to Southeast Asia?”

  “Took his discharge in Tokyo after Korea, did some black-market profiteering, drifted down to Taiwan and got kicked out of there on some importing scandal. Tried Hong Kong next, and the British ushered him aboard a ship that got him to Laos for a short time, working as a mercenary for one of the local princes.”

  “For the Pathet Lao?”

  “No, he was still with us, then. This was in ’59. There’s a rumor he picked up a native wife, an Annamese girl, but she’s disappeared. George Hagen is working that end, out there—he’s chief of the Bureau’s Southeast Asia department. Anyway, our boy turned up in Pnompenh as a buddy of Prince Tuvanaphan—probably met him at a cocktail party where the guests weren’t as carefully chosen as back home in Sangerville. Jack had heard about the abandoned tin mines —the French made a stab at working ’em back in ’34, but gave it up. Jack is a great organizer. He did exploratory work, got the mines opened again, and netted a fine source of revenue for our little prince. We thought Jack would sew up the deal for Noramco Tin after that; Tuvanaphan trusted him, liked having the big fellow around.”

  Hanson sighed and took one hand from the steering wheel to scrub his brush of white hair. Then he reached into an inside pocket of his sport coat and flicked a photograph into Durell’s lap. “There’s a picture of our boy. Seen him before?”

  “No. I’d remember, if I had.”

  It was a face not easily forgotten, Durell thought. Talbott was huge, standing beside Ellen Armbridge in one of Geneva’s parks. He had tight curly blond hair, pale brows and a nose that had been broken several times. He was smiling, but even in the prosaic snapshot, you could see that his eyes were cold and remote. The face was tanned; the jaws showed muscular knots just under the earlobes, which were small and pressed close to the side of the man’s round skull. He had his arm around Ellen in a casually possessive way, and Ellen was laughing. Durell frowned a little.

  “Who took this shot?”

  “I did,” Silas said. “We’d had lunch together, and I thought - it might be an item for the file. I didn’t really expect trouble with him then, though . . . By the way, Sam, have you got a place to sleep?”

  “I left my bag at the airport.”

  “You can bunk with me, if you like.”

  “If we get a chance.”

  Durell returned the snapshot. He had absorbed it thoroughly, noting every point of identification; and he knew he would recognize Jack Talbott anywhere, any time, if he ran into the man. He said, “About Jack’s ambitions—were there any recent money troubles, such as in Tokyo or Taiwan?”

  “None that I know of. I talked a bit with Jack these past two weeks while he handled the tin negotiations. We used to have an occasional drink together. For his size, he’s like a big cat. Hard as nails, very conscious of his physique, and really tough, but a quick and eager mind. Conscious of his background, too, and determined to make a pile of hay some fine day. Rather juvenile ambition of going home to Mississippi and driving around in a big-finned car to lord it over the local socials who rejected him when he was a kid.”

  “But no specific money deals he mentioned?”

  “He talked always in generalities, Sam, and that’s where the bitterness came out.”

  “What about women?” Durell asked. “You suggest he stole the Dwan Scrolls only for money, but Talbott seems too smart to ruin everything for himself just for that. If all he wanted was money he could have just sold out to the other side. There has to be a reason why he took these particular works of art and not something simpler—more easily negotiable. Someone had to shove him off-balance enough to send him into this and Talbott wouldn’t have been shoved too readily by another man—but a woman . . .”

  “There was Ellen.” Hanson’s voice changed. “She knew what she was doing when she fell for him, and I think this whole thing has socked her for a ten-count. Jack could bowl ’em all over with his smile and physique. He had other dates when he went down to Rome, though—Countess Apollio, for one. I don’t know if he was two-timing Ellen with her, or not.” “Do you think Ellen has been in touch with Talbott since last night?” Durell asked.

  “Why not ask her?”

  “I have. Now I’m asking you.”

  “Look, she’s one of your people, not mine. I like Ellen. She’s a fine person. If it hadn’t been for Jack, I’d have made a play for her myself. You don’t find women like her every day of the year.” A touch of anger sharpened Si’s voice. “Don’t you trust your own personnel?” “I don’t trust anybody, Silas. I can’t afford it. Do you think Jack Talbott is still in Geneva?”

  “I’ve got some men checking the airlines and bus and railroad terminals. His car is still garaged, so he didn’t drive out over the Alps to Italy or France. I’ve had to be gentle with this, Sam. We don’t want the Swiss cops to get into it.” “You sound sore about something,” Durell said.

  “No, it’s nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, this deal started out as a straight criminal case under my jurisdiction and I don’t mind telling you I ache to get my hands on that bastard.”

  “Because of Ellen?”

  “I gues
s she comes into it, yes.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, there’s you,” Hanson said.

  “It’s not just a criminal case now, Si. Are you sore because I’ve been put in charge?”

  “Forget it. We’ll work together all right.”

  “About Ellen . . .” Durell began.

  “You don’t have to worry about her. She knows it was a mistake to get involved with a knothead like Talbott, and it’s water under the bridge. If she says she hasn’t heard from Jack since yesterday, it’s the truth. Oh, I know it ties together —Ellen’s cover as an art dealer would make it easy for him to dispose of the scrolls. Do you really believe she’s in it, Sam?” “I don’t want to believe it. But if Jack was such a lady-killer, there could be another woman involved—such as this Countess Francesca di Apollio.”

  “The trouble with you fellows,” Si complained, “is you’ve got an inborn question mark about everybody and everything. You take nothing for granted. I don’t know how you live with yourself. I tell you, Ellen is clean. She may feel broken up about Jack, and all that. . .”

  “So you think Talbott knows Ellen’s real job, Si?”

  “I doubt it. Ellen is pretty careful.”

  “That’s not good enough. It could mean trouble, if Jack and Pacek get together. I don’t think they’re together yet, though. But it’s in the cards that Pacek will break his back to take Talbott under his wing, just to delay and embarrass us. Do you figure it that way?”

  “Sure,” Silas Hanson said. He frowned slightly. “But I’m wondering about another woman triggering Jack Talbott into this. It could be. Not Ellen, I’m sure, but I hear this

  Francesca Apollio is a pretty hot number. Jack ran down to Rome occasionally and I put a routine dragline on him. He saw Francesca Apollio occasionally.” Silas grinned, but he looked less cherubic when he talked about Talbott. “I also fanned Jack’s apartment today. He took some clothes and his bank account is cleaned out, which indicates his boyhood trauma about money; even with half a million in old Chinese paintings, he couldn’t abandon a couple of thousand bucks. I checked the bank. He took the money himself, and he was alone. None of Pacek’s goons were holding a rod in his back. The concierge at his flat says he left about eleven p.m. last night with just one suitcase; he called a cab and vanished without a word to the concierge about when he’d be back.

  So you can forget about Pacek starting this.”

  “All right,” Durell said. “We’ll see Ellen and then start tracking him. Ellen gave me an address she found in his apartment—the Villa del Sol, belonging to Count Apollio. The count—or his wife—keeps coming into this.”

  “I know the villa,” Hanson returned. “It’s about twenty kilometers up the lake.”

  “Have you checked it out?”

  “Not yet. I didn’t think . . .”

  “We’ll look into it after I talk to Ellen again.”

  Most of the tall, stone houses were dark, when Durell returned to the Rue Saint-Pierre. The university students had left the cafe and there were no more sounds of singing from the corner. Ellen’s windows were also dark, and Durell frowned slightly because he had not expected her to turn in until he checked back with her. He wondered why she hadn’t answered the phone, and a sense of caution made him ask Hanson to drive past the art shop without stopping, in order to park around the corner.

  “What is it?” Silas asked.

  “I’m not sure. It looks dirty to me.”

  “The dead phone? No lights?”

  “I think we’d better be careful.”

  “Hell, Jack wouldn’t dare come here. And Pacek wouldn’t move that fast. And why against Ellen?”

  “You never know.”

  They got out of the Floride and walked back along the brick pavement under the dark shadows of the trees. The old houses slept while their neat doors gleamed with dark fresh paint, highlighted with brass knockers. Out of habit, the two men walked in silence and looked in each of the alcoved front doorways as well as below the grillwork fencing that led to an occasional basement door. The street was empty. Durell paused a short distance from the art shop window.

  “There’s a light in the back,” he said.

  A dim radiance seeped down from the stairs behind the shop, touching a few paintings on exhibit on studio easels. Brass and copper gleamed quietly on the shelves inside. Durell looked up and down the narrow, cobblestone street, aware of a cool breeze rustling the brown tree leaves. He still felt uneasy. There were several other shops on the ground floors of the houses nearby, one an antique place, the window cluttered with Swiss bric-a-brac, another a bookstore exhibiting European paperbacks aimed at the university trade. To the left, the little street lifted in a series of stone steps under archways and a Gothic public clock that abruptly bonged the hour of eleven. The deep notes reverberated in the silence.

  He drew a deep breath. “Si, take two minutes, then pick your way in through the front shop door. Do it fast and make it quiet. I don’t think anybody’s waiting for you, but watch it, anyway. Don’t go upstairs. Go to the back of the shop and wait for me there. I’ll come in the back way, as I did before.”

  Silas shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  Something in his tone halted Durell. “Si?”

  Hanson turned and saw Durell standing in the shadows of the tree growing in its square of earth in the sidewalk. The light from the distant street lamp made Durell’s tall figure blend with the darkness, his dark suit invisible, but a stray highlight touched his hard jaw and reached up to the flat planes of his ruthless head and the thick black hair, streaked with gray at the temples. Another gleam of light touched his white shirt collar. His face and head seemed disembodied for a moment, his shadowed eyes implacable with the look of a hunter. A flicker of irrational fear crossed Silas Hanson’s gaze.

  “Hanson, let’s get it straight now,” Durell said. “In this business, your life could depend on me in the next five minutes. Or it could be the other way around.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Hanson said uneasily.

  “So you either obey orders, or get out.”

  “Get out?”

  “Right now.”

  “Listen, Sam . . .”

  “I’d rather do this alone than have you begrudge an order I give you.”

  Hanson blew air out of his surprised mouth. Then he smiled suddenly and looked boyish again. “Right you are, Cajun. I understand now why they talk about you the way they do. I feel better. I’ll be glad to go along with you. You’re the boss.”

  His tone was different this time.

  A few moments later Durell let himself into Ellen’s house through the back alley door he had entered before. There was a small difference. The back door, opening into a small storage room behind the shop, stood two inches ajar in the night. He was careful going in, using all the rules to guard against surprise. But nothing happened. No one waited for him in the darkness beyond. He walked through the storeroom, using the faint radiance that seeped down the stairway, and saw Hanson standing in the rear of the shop itself. As Hanson looked up the pale gray-painted stairway, Durell took the gun from his pocket, nodded and went up first.

  The door to Ellen’s apartment was at the landing on top of the first flight of stairs. It was closed. The steps continued on up to the third and fourth floors, and Hanson glanced up there, where blackness brooded. Durell shook his head; his sense of alarm had sharpened abruptly.

  He framed his orders almost soundlessly. “Watch the steps going up. I’ll crack the inside.”

  Hanson nodded.

  The door wasn’t locked. Durell exerted pressure on the knob with his fingertips, dropped his left shoulder a little, and suddenly opened the door and went in fast, stepping close to the swinging panel. He could not be taken by surprise this way, and no one waiting just on the other side of the door could reach him.

  But the precautions were unnecessary.

  The living room he had visited only an hour ago was e
mpty—and yet not empty. It was the same, and yet not the same. Something had come and gone here, leaving a sense of its presence. He stood very still. Light jumped ahead of him from the antique brass and parchment lamp that hung from its chain on the landing where Hanson watched. The light showed an upset Queen Anne chair, the rumpled Sarouk carpet, one Venetian blind torn from the back window and lying in a heap of spilled slats on the floor. Durell exhaled softly.

  “Ellen?” he called.

  He felt an aching need for some response, whether from friend or foe. The apartment which had been so serene only a short time ago told its own story in the overturned furniture, the crumpled rug, the smashed alabaster vase. Someone had shoved Ellen’s small, brass-handled mahogany desk with enough violence to crack the plaster in the wall. He saw blood, dark and glistening, on the white doorjamb to the bedroom. It looked as if someone, staggering, had clutched it for support. He sniffed the air. He could not smell anything. Another door led from the living room to the small kitchen in the back and the bath, done in white and gold. Beyond that was Ellen’s bedroom.

  There was a sound from the doorway and he turned his head. Si Hanson looked very pale standing there.

  “Is it Ellen?”

  “I don’t know,” Durell said. “I think we’re alone.”

  “Do you want me to look upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or maybe I’d better wait. . .”

  “Go ahead, Silas.”

  When Hanson went up the outer stairs, Durell moved down the short hall between the bathroom and kitchen to the bedroom door. It was slightly ajar. More blood had stained the white rug here. Hanson hadn’t seen it. There was a dark smear on the flowered wallpaper, as if a body had been hurled against the wall and had slumped, sweaty and bloody, to the floor. One of Ellen’s Parisian shoes lay on its side just within the doorway. On the bedroom threshold was her pale brown skirt, a torn and bloody feminine blouse, a small blue-steel .28 Colt with an ivory handle.