“Nothing.”
“Maybe. Or it may mean Judith has been a part of a ring kidnapping American sailors. Maybe she’s a terrorist. Toad could be her next victim. Maybe she just has a speech impediment. Or that pussy-hound Tarkington may have her flat on her back this very minute and be fucking her silly. Goddamn if I know.” He threw himself into a chair.
“So what do we do next?”
“I’m all out of ideas. What do you suggest?”
Callie stood and examined herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. She tucked in a stray lock of hair. “Well, let’s go have a drink someplace and contemplate where we’ll go for dinner.”
“Leave Toad to his horrible fate, huh?”
“You’ve done all you can. But at heart Judith is a very nice young woman and Toad is a nice young man. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
“Aaaahg! Women! Why don’t you panic like you’re supposed to?” She grinned at him. “How men ever managed to keep women from running the world, I’ll never know.” Jake grabbed the room key from the desk. “Com’on, I’m tired of sitting around the hotel.”
As he stabbed the button for the elevator, Jake muttered, “The whole afternoon down the tube. By God, I hope that horny bastard catches the clap.”
“Jacob Lee Grafton! You do not! Now calm down and stop that cussing!”
18
Toad Tarkington sat at the bar of the Vittorio and watched the desk in the lobby reflected in the mirror. He had sipped his way through two slow beers and now a third beer sat untouched on the table before him. He was hungry and tired and discouraged. Maybe she would never come. But why hadn’t she checked out of her room? Sooner or later she had to come to that desk and ask for messages or check out.
Behind him a crowd was gathering. It looked like a wedding reception. Men in formal dress and women in sharp fashions gathered around a table of hors d’oeuvres against the back wall. The bartender passed drinks across the counter to the lively crowd. The volume was rising. Toad didn’t understand a word of it. Couples entering the lounge kept obscuring his view, but he kept his eyes on the mirror anyway.
When he could stand it no longer, he used the house phone on the end of the bar and dialed her room. Perhaps she had come in the back way, avoiding the lobby. He let it ring ten times before he hung up and returned to the bar.
And then she was there, against the lobby counter, looking at the key boxes behind the desk and glancing at the clerk. Toad stood quickly, then eased back into his seat.
Let her read the letter first, he decided. He had spent two hours this afternoon writing and rewriting the two pages, two long hours devoted to the most important letter of his life. The letter said the things that he had never been able to say — had never before wanted to say — to any woman. She should read it first, he concluded, trying to quell his feeling of unease.
She spoke to the clerk and he handed her the envelope. She looked at both sides of the envelope carefully, glanced around the lobby — her gaze even passed over the people going into the bar — before she opened it with a thumbnail.
Her hair was piled carelessly on top of her head. Even at this distance Toad could see stray locks. She was wearing a nondescript dark jersey, a modest skirt, and flat shoes. A large purse hung on a strap over one shoulder.
He watched her face expectantly as she read. Her expression never changed. Her eyes swept the crowd again and returned to the letter. As she finished the first page her attention was back on the crowd. She scanned the second page. Now she was folding the pages and replacing them in the envelope, now looking at the envelope, now tapping it against her hand as she searched the faces of the wedding guests.
He stepped into the doorway and she saw him.
Toad started toward her only to hear the barman’s shout. He fumbled in his pocket and found some bills. He threw a wad on the bar and crossed the lobby toward her.
“Judith, I …”
“Hello, Robert.” Her features softened. “Ill keep this,” she said and tucked the envelope into her purse.
“Hey, uh …” He couldn’t think of anything to say and yet he knew he should be saying the most important things he had ever said. “Listen …”
But she was looking away, her eyes tense and expectant. Toad followed her gaze, A lean man with stringy blond hair and carrying a backpack was standing in the door that led to the rear courtyard and looking at her.
“I have to go, Robert. You are very, very kind.”
“At least give me your phone number, your address. I’ll …”
“Not now, Robert. Later.” She was moving toward the courtyard door and he was moving with her. She put a hand on his chest. “No, Robert. Please,” she said firmly. He stopped dead. She bussed his cheek and disappeared through the door.
He stood stock still, unsure of what had happened. She had read the letter. She knew he loved her. He looked around the lobby, at the starkly modern designer furniture, the second-floor balcony, the artsy chandeliers, the bright green drapes, the anonymous dressed-up people coming and going. Of course she didn’t love him, but she had to give it a chance. Then he knew. There was another man — a husband or a lover. Oh Christ, he had never even considered that possibility.
He turned and walked down the hall toward the rear courtyard, hurrying.
There was someone lying in the courtyard. Toad froze in the doorway.
Judith and the man with the backpack stood over the prone figure. And there was another man, one wearing a workman’s shirt and cap, with a tool case at his feet. He had something cradled in his hands. In the semidarkness it was hard to see. The workman used his foot to turn the body over.
“That isn’t him,” Judith said softly, her voice carrying very well within this enclosure.
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, who is it?” Her voice was tense.
“It’s Sakol,” the workman said in a flat, American Midwest voice. “We’ve been after him for a long time. I had to do it.”
“You fool,” she said fiercely. She took an object from her purse and spoke into it. “Everyone inside. Hit the door. Now.” She dashed toward the entrance to the other wing of rooms. As she went under the dim entryway bulb, Toad saw that she was carrying a pistol. The two men were right behind her. Now Toad could see what it was that the workman carried at high port — a submachine gun.
Toad crossed the courtyard and stared at the man lying on the stones. He was on his back now, eyes and mouth open, a wicked bruise on his cheekbone. Little circles of blood stained his shirt around five holes in his chest. The holes were neat and precise, stitched evenly from armpit to armpit.
God Damn! Holy Mother of Christ!
He heard muffled, stuttering coughs and the sounds of shattering glass and splintering wood.
A distant shout: “He’s on the roof.”
Pounding footsteps clattered on the stairway that Judith had gone up. She came flying out, followed by the man with the backpack. He had a submachine gun in his hands and the fat barrel pointed straight at Toad as he moved.
She ran toward the corridor to the lobby. “Get out of here,” she hissed at him and the man with her gestured unmistakably with his weapon.
Someone three or four stories up, inside the hotel, was shouting in Italian. Cursing, probably.
Toad looked again at the dead man at his feet. This was the first body he had ever seen that wasn’t in a casket. He found himself being drawn toward the lobby inexorably, almost against his will.
The lobby was full of people. A young woman in a white formal gown was wending her way toward the bar, acknowledging the applause and handshakes. Her new husband, wearing a tux, followed at her elbow, shaking hands with the men and bussing the women.