“Did I pass?” I asked.
“I think, but it was really very short to tell.”
She moved toward me tentatively and I retreated another step. Accepting defeat, she clasped her hands in front of her and again eyed me critically.
“I have three children,” she said. “You like children, do you not?”
I decided that interesting as the conversation was, it was time to clarify things.
“Just who do you think I am?” I asked.
She looked surprised. “You are in answer to the ad, are you not? My matrimonial ad.”
Regretfully I shook my head. “I’m just here for the weekly tribute. The ten percent.”
“Tribute? Ten percent?” She looked puzzled. “You are not in answer to the ad?”
“The Mafia tribute.”
Her face had begun to develop an angry look, but the word “Mafia” changed her expression to startlement. “Mafia? I know nothing of the Mafia.”
That was all I wanted to know. Tipping my hat, I walked out while she looked after me with an expression on her face which indicated she thought I was crazy.
Mrs. Nina Cellini’s reaction was typical to what I encountered all along Rome Alley. Her reaction to the Mafia, I mean, for I didn’t run into any more people who mistook my identity. I hit fifteen places of business, in each announced I had come for the tribute, and in every one get nothing but uncomprehending looks. When I dropped the word “Mafia,” the reaction was either startlement or guarded truculence, but nowhere did it seem to inspire fear.
It seemed that no one at all along Rome Alley was afraid of the Mafia.
Near the end of Rome Alley I came to a drug store and decided I might as well use it for my next move. When I asked the druggist if I could use his phone, he waved me to a lone booth at the back.
Turning to the yellow section of the phone book, I went down the restaurant list and picked out several first-class restaurants located outside of the Italian section, but which were run by people of Italian descent. In order I began to call them.
I hit the jackpot on the first try. Mr. Anthony Marizelli, proprietor of Marizelli’s Restaurant over on the West Side, grew panic-stricken when I inquired about the tribute.
“It was paid!” he said. “The man picked it up yesterday. You cannot blame me if it was not turned in by your man. I swear on my mother’s name it was paid!”
“Relax,” I said. “I guess there’s just been a mistake. See you next week.” And I hung up.
Two more phone calls, with similar panic-stricken reactions from both restaurateurs, gave me the picture. The extortionists were carefully avoiding Rome Alley and hitting only Italians who owned big establishments and could pay off in a large way.
The first thing I noticed when I came out of the phone booth was the odd expression on the face of the druggist. He seemed so pointedly preoccupied with inspecting a shelf of toiletry supplies, I got the impression he was watching me out of the corner of his eye.
Sensing the strain in him, I swept my eye around the store. Two men had come in while I was in the phone booth. One sat at the soda counter puffing on a cigarette, but with no drink before him. The other idly glanced over the magazine rack. Neither paid any attention either to me or to each other.
Both were dark, muscular men of middle age and looked like they might be day laborers. After examining their cheap but serviceable suits and heavy work shoes, I decided they were just that, and I was letting the Mafia’s reputation touch my imagination.
Neither so much as glanced after me when I walked out.
My walk along Rome Alley had left me four blocks from my Plymouth. During the walk back to it I glanced over my shoulder several times, but saw no sign of the two men.
However, I did experience a momentary feeling that I was being followed just before I reached the drive leading into El Patio’s ground. In the rear-view mirror I glimpsed an ancient Dodge touring car about two cars back, and realized I had spotted it in the mirror twice before. When it drove on by as I turned into the drive, I decided it was my imagination again.
It was just six o’clock when I turned my Plymouth over to a parking lot attendant.
Inside I told the head waiter not to disturb Fausta, and had him get me a table near the door leading back to Fausta’s office. By a quarter of seven I had finished dinner, paid my check so that I wouldn’t have that delay if I had to leave suddenly, and I spent the next fifteen minutes smoking a cigar and sipping a second cup of coffee.
At exactly seven the two men came into the dining room from the archway into the cocktail lounge. As Fausta had said, there was nothing particularly distinctive about either, unless you want to count a complete lack of facial expression. They were both dark, smooth-skinned men of average height and build, and both were dressed in expensively-tailored suits.
The older man, whom I judged to be about thirty, stopped in the archway and looked over the crowd with incurious eyes while the younger one made his way across the dining room. He passed within three feet of me and disappeared through the door into the back hall. In exactly three minutes by my watch he was back.
I was right behind the men when they went through El Patio’s front door and handed their car claim check to the doorman. I gave him mine also. While we waited for our cars to come around, I paid no attention to them and they afforded me the same treatment.
My 1950 Plymouth arrived right behind their brand new Buick. Until the Buick passed between the stone pillars marking the entrance to El Patio’s drive, I stayed within feet of its rear bumper. Then, making a mental note of the license number, I let the interval lengthen until I barely had it in sight.
Apparently the extortionists were so confident they had their victims completely cowed, they had no fear of being tailed. Not once glancing back, they crossed town at a moderate speed and parked in front of a rooming house on North Eighth Street. I pulled over to the curb a half block back, waited until they had entered the house and then sauntered past it.
The number, I noted, was 819 North Eighth. Pausing to touch flame to a fresh cigar, I glanced at the Buick out of the corner of my eye. The windows were rolled up. Quickly glancing at the house and seeing no evidence that I was observed, I checked the car doors and discovered they were locked. That probably meant they were through with the car for the night, I guessed, which in turn meant the rooming house was not just another shake-down call, but was home.
As that was all the information I wanted at the moment, I started back toward my Plymouth. But I only made it half way.
From a tree on one side of the walk and from a doorway on the other two shapes drifted toward me in the gathering dusk. I was just raising my cigar to my lips, and by the time I had dropped it and started to reach for my armpit, it was too late. A gun barrel pressed into my right kidney.
“Straight ahead, mister,” a soft voice said in my ear.
We took their car instead of my Plymouth, and it was the same ancient Dodge touring car I had spotted behind me just as I reached El Patio. When I discovered my captors were the same two men I had seen in the drug store, my ego took a drop. I like to think I am a hard person to tail, but apparently these two had been behind me ever since I left Rome Alley.
Relieving me of my P-38, they blindfolded me.
The ride was merely a long series of meaningless twists and turns to me. When we finally stopped, I had not the faintest idea where we were. They led me from the car, I heard a door open, and we went down some stairs into what, from the noticeably cooler temperature, I guessed to be a cellar.
Someone removed my wallet from my hip pocket. Apparently its contents were examined, for I heard a mumbled discussion among several men in which my name was mentioned twice. Then the wallet was returned to my pocket, I was pushed into a hard wooden chair and the blindfold was removed.