Some guys aren’t made for lying. Some are. Luca was in between. He put a good face on things, and I’m sure he could lie to a crook or a killer if it meant getting a confession. But something was eating at him, and I knew he wanted to tell all.
“Yes, you are right,” he said finally. He took a drag on his cigarette, leaned back and blew smoke at the ceiling. “Capitano Trevisi had business dealings with Inzerillo.”
“What kind of dealings?” Kaz asked. Luca only shook his head. It was the same the world over. No cop wants to give up another cop, no matter how dirty. The blue wall of silence.
“That’s why he was so glad to offer your services, so you could keep an eye on things?” I said, not asking him a direct question about corruption.
“Yes. He was worried about Inzerillo. He thought there was trouble brewing, even before you came to Caserta.”
“Why?”
The truth came easier now. The dam had been broken, and it spilled out. “There was trouble, first with Lieutenant Landry. He threatened to bring in the military police if Inzerillo didn’t let one of the girls go.”
“I thought Inzerillo didn’t run the girls himself.”
“He didn’t. It was what Ileana told him.”
“Ileana? The prostitute Landry fell for?”
“Yes. She told him she needed money to buy her freedom from Inzerillo, that he would not let her go free. Trevisi said it was all a lie, to extort money from the lieutenant who loved her.”
“So you lied to us when you said it would be impossible to find her,” I said.
“She is gone, that much is true. She fled when she became frightened.”
“Frightened by what?”
“One of the soldiers. He threatened to kill her.”
“That couldn’t have been Landry,” I said.
“No, he saw himself as her defender, and she as his Dulcinea.” I must have looked puzzled, since he explained. “From Don Quixote.”
“A simple peasant girl who becomes Don Quixote’s idealized woman,” Kaz added.
“Oh yeah,” I said. I knew that was an old book, but not much more. “So who threatened her?”
“I only know it was a sergente. The same one who gave Inzerillo the beating.”
“Was it Sergeant Stumpf?” He came down with venereal disease after partaking of the pleasures at Bar Raffaele. That might be a motive for attacking Inzerillo and the girl.
“I do not know. I would tell you if I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before? Why keep this a secret? You knew we were investigating a murder.”
“The murder is another matter entirely. I can only say that this sergente asked for Ileana, even knowing Landry was smitten with her. Perhaps there was some problem between them, but I can only guess at that.”
“Why did the sergeant threaten her?”
“Because she laughed at him,” Luca said, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. “At his failure in lovemaking. He struck her violently and promised to kill her if she breathed a word. Inzerillo heard her screams and tried to intervene, and was beaten for it. I believe the sergeant came back again to hurt him some more.”
“And then a third visit, to kill him.”
“If it was the same man. All I know is what I heard from Inzerillo himself. A sergeant, and the second time he came with another man, but he would not say who.”
“Inzerillo told you it was a sergeant?”
“Yes, but he would say no more. He and Capitano Trevisi both wanted it kept quiet so there would be no trouble with the military police.”
“Do you know where the girl is now?”
“No, truly I do not. Trevisi had her taken away to a farm where she could heal. Not that he is kind, but so she can return to work as soon as possible. In another location, of course.” Luca ground out his cigarette and stared at the ashes. Finally he looked at us. “I am sorry for lying to you.”
“What does Trevisi have on you?” I asked. “Was it something that happened on Rab? What did you do there?”
“I did nothing,” Luca said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Luca had clammed up tight after that. He’d looked past us, out to sea where the sun was setting and casting a red glow across the horizon. I wondered if he was thinking of the view from the island of Rab, and if he preferred looking out over water to what he’d seen on solid ground.
I’d gotten Kaz on a PT boat shuttling brass between Naples and Anzio, leaving it up to him and his Webley revolver to talk to Trevisi and find Ileana. We needed to know who had beaten her and Inzerillo. That had to be our killer, fixing up loose ends. Maybe Landry was the real target after all, but if so, I couldn’t figure out all the red heart stuff. It seemed overly complicated. I was stumped, and our only hope seemed to be that the killer would slip up and leave a clue or two next time. Not the best investigative technique, I’ll admit.
Ileana was the key to finding out everything. If she hadn’t run off, if she’d talk, and if she wasn’t under lock and key in some Naples whorehouse, we had a chance of catching this murderer before he struck again.
But I had another reason for sending Kaz back to Naples. I didn’t want him talking me out of heading back to the front in the morning. Someone had to watch over Danny. I might find a clue, but probably not. What I was more likely to find was a lot of lead in the air and bodies on the ground. But I might be able to make sure one of them wasn’t Danny’s.
Which is why the next morning I was on the road before dawn, driving without lights to Le Ferriere. Grenades in my pockets, extra clips in my ammo belt, Thompson on the seat. The road was packed with vehicles-trucks and ambulances, jeeps crammed with GIs, towed artillery, all strung out on the narrow straight road. If the Luftwaffe paid us a visit after the sun came up, it’d be a shooting gallery. Some of the traffic peeled off onto side roads, but most flowed to the front. Artillery thundered up ahead; outgoing stuff, thank God.
I was half a mile out of Le Ferriere when I noticed that the GIs marching on foot were making better time than I was. And that it was getting light. I didn’t want to be a stationary target, so I pulled off the main road, crossing a short bridge over the wide drainage ditch that ran alongside the roadway, and drove down a dirt road until I found a dry spot to pull over. The road was packed with men and vehicles, but out here everything was still. The fields were empty, stubble showing where plants had last been harvested. A few hundred yards away was one of the stone farmhouses that dotted the fields around here, built according to Mussolini’s plan. A woman came out of the house and began to hang laundry. White sheets fluttered in the early morning breeze, and the image of domesticity held me for a moment, before I turned to join the column of heavily armed soldiers heading into Le Ferriere.
“Here you go, fellas,” a sergeant shouted from the back of an open truck as he tossed out small bundles to each man passing by. “Stick ’em in your pack, they don’t weigh much.”
“What are these?” I asked as I caught a tightly bound pack of folded white cotton material.
“Mattress cover,” he shouted back, not missing a beat as he tossed them to the oncoming men.
“They got mattresses up front?” a skinny kid asked as he stuck the bundle into his pack. Laugher rippled around him, and a corporal by his side shook his head wearily. There were no mattresses waiting in Le Ferriere or beyond, I knew. The Graves Registration Units used them as shrouds for the dead. Usually they carried them to collection points where bodies were left, but they must have been expecting heavy casualties. Some officer who thought less about morale than efficiency probably figured this would save time. A couple of guys tossed the covers by the side of the road, but most kept them, either not knowing what they were for, not caring, or figuring they might get lucky and find some hay to stuff inside. Hell, maybe even a mattress.
As I approached the entrance to the stone wall that encircled the village, a sudden sound pierced my ears, rising above the clatter, clank, and chatter of GIs, the revving of engines, and the crunch of tires on graveclass="underline" the shriek of artillery shells. Not the thunderous, sharp sound of our own fire, but the piercing screech of artillery rounds falling toward us. Toward me.