Cartelli’s eyes were small and crafty again now, and Simon knew that behind them a brain that was far from moronic was flogging itself to find a way out of its present corner, and would take advantage of all the time it could gain by letting someone else do the talking.
“That’s a good start,” Cartelli croaked. “What’s next?”
“Whether it was Dino’s own idea, because he’d already been tapping the till in a small way and an audit by the bank examiners was coming up, or whether he was recruited for the job from higher up, is something else I can’t tell you which doesn’t matter either. The milestone is that the bank was robbed, apparently by some characters who broke in while he was working late one night. He seems to have put up a heroic fight before he was killed by a shotgun blast in the face and hands which mutilated him beyond recognition or even routine identification. But have you read enough detective stories to guess what really happened?”
“Go on,” Cartelli said. “You’re the guy who was gonna dope it out.”
“For a first caper, it was quite a classic,” Simon went on imperturbably. “In fact, it was a variation on the gimmick in quite a few classic stories. Of course, the robbers were Dino’s pals and he let them in. He helped them to bust the safe and shovel out the loot, and then changed clothes with another bloke who’d been brought along to take the fall. He was the one who was killed with the shotgun — but who would ever doubt that it was the loyal Dino Cartelli? Dino got a nice big cut off the cake in return for disappearing, a lot of which I think is still in that valise; the Mafia got the rest, and everyone was happy except the insurance company that had to make good the loss. And maybe the man with no face. Who was he, Dino?”
“Nobody, nobody,” Cartelli said hoarsely. “A traitor to the Mafia, why not? A nobody. Don’t tell me you care about some sonovabitch like that!”
“Maybe not,” said the Saint. “If the Mafia confined themselves to knocking off their own erring brothers, I might even give them a donation. But then, many years after, in fact just the other day, something went wrong with the perfect crime that Dino thought had been buried and forgotten. A silly old English tourist named Euston, who once upon a time worked in the bank beside Dino, recognized him in a restaurant in Naples after all those years — partly from that scar on his cheek, which Euston happened to have given him in a youthful brawl. And this Euston was too stupid and stubborn to be convinced that he could be mistaken. So — perhaps without too much reluctance, after such a reminder of that bygone clout in the chops, Dino had him liquidated. That was when I got interested. And practically everything that’s happened since has stemmed from Dino’s efforts to buy me off or bump me off.”
“But my uncle?” Gina asked bewilderedly. “How does he fit in?”
“Your uncle is dead,” Simon said in a more sympathetic tone. “I went back to the mausoleum before I came here, and finished the search we started the other night. Alessandro Destamio did die in Rome of that illness in 1931, as you suspected, and Dino here stepped into his shoes. But the family still had enough sentiment to insist on putting Alessandro’s coffin in the ancestral vault. Why they let Dino take his name should only take a couple of guesses.”
He had spoken in Italian again, with the calculated intention of including the comprehension of Donna Maria, and now she responded as he had hoped.
“I will answer that, Gina,” she said, with some of the old iron and vinegar back in her voice. “Your uncle was a good man, but a foolish one with money, and he had wasted all that we had. He was dying when this Dino came to me and offered a way to keep our home and the family together. I accepted for all our sakes, with the understanding that he would never try to be with us himself. But first he broke that promise and now he will leave us destitute.”
“You should have taken over his loot while you had the chance, for insurance,” said the Saint, touching the lock on the valise.
The matriarch drew up her dumpy figure with pride.
“I am not a thief,” she said. “I would not touch stolen money.”
Simon shrugged his renewed bafflement at the vagaries of the human conscience.
“I wish I could see the difference between that and the money he used to send you from America.”
“What she forgets,” Cartelli said viciously, “is that Lo Zio himself was once a Mafia Don—”
“Sta zitto!” shrieked Donna Maria unavailingly.
“— and she had nothing against his support in those days. And after he had a stroke and was no more good for anything, Don Pasquale offered him this deal as a kind of pension, and he was glad to take it.”
“Enough, vigliacco! Lo Zio is sick, dying — you cannot speak of him like that—”
“I tell the truth,” Cartelli said harshly.
Then he spoke again in English: “Lookit, Saint, these people don’t mean nut’n to you. When I hadda give a contract for Euston — yeah, an’ for you too — it was self defense, nut’n else, self defense like you get off for in court. Nut’n personal. Okay, so now I’m licked. You tipped off the cops about me, an’ even the Mafia won’t back me no more after all this trouble I brought on them. But you an’ me can talk business.”
The Saint’s thumb moved against the catch on which it was resting, and the fastening snapped open. The valise had not been locked. He lifted the lid, and exposed its contents of neatly tied and packed bundles of paper currency in the formats and colors of various solvent nations.
“About this?” he asked.
“Yeah. I oughta have left it anyhow — I done without it all these years, an’ I got enough stashed in a Swiss bank to keep me from starving now, once I get outa Italy. You take it — give what you like to the old woman an’ Gina, an’ keep the rest. There’s plenty to make up for all the trouble you had.” Desperate earnestness rasped through the gravel in Cartelli’s voice. “No one ain’t never gonna hear about it from me, if you just gimme a chance an’ let me go.”
Simon Templar relaxed against the table, half hitching one leg on to it to make a seat, and played the fingers of his free hand meditatively over the bundles of cash in the open bag. For some seconds of agonizing suspense he seemed to be waiting and listening for some inner voice to advise him.
At last he looked up, with a smile.
“All right Dino,” he said. “If that’s how you want it, get going.”
Gina gave a little gasp.
Cartelli gave nothing, not even a grunt of thanks. Without a word he grabbed up his coat and huddled into it as he went out.
Simon followed him far enough to watch his flat footed march across the hallway, and to make sure that when the front door slammed it was with Cartelli on the outside and not turning to sneak back for a surprise counter-attack. He waited long enough to hear the little car outside start up and begin to move away.
He came back into the room again to see Donna Maria sitting in a chair with her face buried in her hands, and Gina staring at him in a kind of lost and lonely perplexity.
“You let him go,” she said accusingly. “For his stolen money.”
“Well, that was one good reason,” Simon said cheerfully.
“Do you think I would touch it?”
“You sound like Donna Maria. So don’t touch it. But I’m sure the bank, or their insurance company, would pay a very handsome reward for having it returned. Do you see anything immoral about that?”
“But after all he’s done — the murders—”
From outside, but not far away, they were suddenly aware of a confused sequence of roaring engines, squealing brakes, shouts, a crash, and then shots. Several shots. And then the disturbance was ended as abruptly as it had begun.