I called softly, “It’s me, Sean – Stacey. I’m coming up.”
There was no reply, but the floodlights which dotted the garden were dowsed suddenly. I don’t know whose bright idea that was, but it suited me perfectly. I moved out at once through the welcome darkness, scrambled over the low wall of the ground floor terrace and went into the lounge through the open French window.
The hall was a place of shadows dimly lit by a single lamp, but I had to keep moving for speed in attack is the only hope of success against odds.
I went up the stairs like a wraith, close to the wall, moved along the corridor past my own room and went up to the second floor.
There was no sound. I paused in the shadows by the golden door and thought about it for a moment. The next door along the landing was faced with leather and opened to my touch. From the look of it, it had been Hoffer’s and the usual sliding glass doors opened to the terrace on the other side.
I went back into the corridor, flattened myself against the wall and said softly, “Rosa – are you there?”
Her voice was clear and sharp. “Run, Stacey! Run!” There was the sound of a blow and three bullets splintered the door.
I went through Hoffer’s room on tip-toe, moved along the terrace and peered in. Rosa was lying on the floor wearing a housecoat. Ciccio was over by the door with his back to me. He was bare-footed, wore pants and a singlet and held a gun in his right hand.
Rosa started to get up as Ciccio opened the door cautiously. I stepped into the room, shot him through the hand as he started to turn. He yelled, the gun jumping out on to the landing and disappearing over the edge.
Rosa had been weeping and her face was badly bruised, and her right shoulder – I noticed that as the housecoat slid down to her waist, exposing the upper part of her body, her naked breasts. She covered herself mechanically, an expression of wonder on her face.
“Stacey – Stacey, it is you. They said you were dead.”
She flung her arms about my neck and held on tight. I didn’t take my eyes off Ciccio for a moment.
“No, I’m not dead,” I said. “But Hoffer is – Mafia justice.”
“Thank God,” she said fiercely. “I wanted to warn you, Stacey, last night after I left your room. I wanted to go back. You were right – I was afraid. Afraid for many reasons, but Hoffer was suspicious. He beat me, then gave me to this – this animal.”
Ciccio stepped back and I took her forward through the shadows to where light filtered in from the landing. The bruises on her face were worse than I had realised and something moved like fire in my belly.
“He’s had his way with you?”
She didn’t attempt to pretend. Her head went back and there was still pride there. “He has my marks on him also.”
I turned and at the sight of my face Ciccio went back quickly, still clutching his bloody hand. “Please, signore.” He forced a fake man-to-man smile. “This woman is a whore from the back streets of Palermo. Everyone knows what she was before Signore Hoffer took her in.”
He smiled again eagerly, his back to the stairs, and rage boiled like lava inside me. “You find it funny? You like a joke? Then laugh this off.”
I kicked him in the crotch with all my strength. He screamed as he doubled over and my right knee lifted into his face sending him back down the stairs. He rolled over twice and crashed to the floor below. He lay there for a moment and then incredibly, got to his feet and lurched out of sight dangling what looked like a broken arm.
I turned to Rosa. “The day you start feeling shamed about your past just let me know. I’ll let you have a few choice items from my own that should make you feel about as soiled as a Vestal Virgin by comparison. I’m going to leave you now. Burke’s waiting for me upstairs in the roof garden.”
“No, Stacey, there are two of them. They will kill you.”
“I don’t think so. On the other hand anything’s possible in this life.” I took out my wallet and handed it to her. “If it goes wrong, whatever you find in there should help you along the way more than a little. Now get dressed and wait for me downstairs in one of the cars.”
I started to turn and she caught me, held me to her yet did not kiss me. She said nothing, but her face was eloquent enough. When I pulled gently away she did not try to stop me.
EIGHTEEN
THE DOOR AT the top of the stairs stood open, the garden was floodlit again, a place of wonder and delight, sweetly perfumed in the rain.
I paused to one side of the door and considered the situation for a while, then moved along the landing, tried another door and found myself in a study of sorts.
The room was in darkness, the inevitable glass doors that formed the other side standing open. Which way would he expect me to come, that was the thing. I stood there in the darkness, drained of all emotion, suddenly tired, caught by some strange fatalism that seemed to say it didn’t really matter – nothing mattered. We were on our predestined course, Burke and I. What would be, must be.
I went out through the glass doors in three quick strides and dropped into the green jungle of the garden.
His voice sounded clearly. “Over here, Stacey, I know you’re there.”
“You and me, Sean?” I called. “No one else?”
“As ever was, Stacey boy.” The more Irish he sounded the less I trusted him. “Piet isn’t here. He went up to the airstrip with our baggage. We’re getting out tonight.”
Which was a lie. Had to be because whatever else Hoffer had paid him, there was the bearer bond for fifty thousand dollars in that bank vault in Palermo and as today was Sunday he couldn’t possibly have collected it on his return. He wasn’t going to leave that.
But trapped by that strange fatalism, I decided to play his game and stepped out through the ferns into a narrow path between vines. He stood at the end on the terrace beyond a wrought iron table, his hands behind his back.
“What are you holding there, Sean?” I called.
“Nothing, Stacey, don’t you believe me?”
“After the mountain – after Cammarata?”
Both hands came into view empty. “I’m sorry about that, but I knew you’d never stand still for killing the girl.” He shook his head and there was a kind of admiration in his voice. “But you, Stacey – you. Christ, you are indestructible. I thought you in pieces.”
“You’re losing your touch, Sean – old age,” I said. “If you’re interested, you didn’t do much of a job on the girl either. She’s doing fine. Hoffer’s the one who’s in trouble. Explaining himself to the devil about now, I should think.”
That got through to him and the slight smile left his face. “You’re a bloody swine, Sean,” I said. “You always were only I never saw it before. Nothing on earth could excuse what you did up there on the mountain. You and Hoffer should get on fine when you next meet.”
“You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood, Stacey, after all we’ve been through together.”
He spread his arms wide. “That’s just the way I intend to do it,” I told him and Rosa screamed from the doorway behind me.
I swung, dropped on my face, pain tearing at my right shoulder as Piet Jaeger jumped from the vines no more than seven or eight feet away.
For some odd reason the weapon he clutched in both hands was a lupara which had presumably belonged to one of Hoffer’s men; just the thing for assassination at close-quarters.
I shot him three times, two bullets catching him in the heart, the third in the throat as he went down, dropping the lupara. I turned, the Smith and Wesson ready, and looked into the Browning, rigid in Burke’s hand.
“Stuck it in my belt at the rear,” he explained. “Who’s slipping now?”
“Aren’t you going to shed a tear for lover boy?” I asked.