North from Rome (18 page)

The awful thing was that if I had told Bill all this, he would have listened. He would have worried over it. He would have given up playwriting and concentrated on short stories or editing news reports. But he is a good playwright—most promising, said even the bitterest of critics. So that is that. What woman is going to spend the rest of her days remembering she has killed off a promising playwright?

And now?—Bill will recover: he was on the way to recovery until I brought him here tonight. My fault again, my fault. And yet he did help me; he will never know how much it helped me to hear his easy voice and his silly jokes and even his biting remarks. He made me normal again, able to face the journey home. And he will go home, too, and he will write more plays

(if I keep away from him), and the only difference in them will be that they’ll be less amused by life and more acid about women. The critics would like that. But every time I go to see one of his plays, I’ll be hearing what he things about me, she thought unhappily.

And Luigi—what about him? But this will get no clothes packed, she decided abruptly. She crossed swiftly over the threshold into her room. She was folding her favourite evening dress and looking round for some tissue paper when the doorbell rang.

Could this be Bill, back again? What had he forgotten? Or perhaps—perhaps he had decided that he owed her a little explanation, a sort of half-apology for his attack on Luigi.

“Who is it?” she called through the door, her hand on the key. She was half-smiling, remembering Bill’s sense of humour, wondering what excuse he had concocted to disguise the apology.

A young voice, a boy’s voice, replied, “The raincoat of Signore Lammiter. Here it is.”

“But
he
isn’t here.”

“He will come to collect it later.”

She was a little taken aback. She would have understood an apology, even offered sideways. But this bare excuse for Bill’s return later was something that angered her. “Leave it there, outside,” she said sharply. How silly could Bill get?

There was a brief pause. Then the boy said,
“Si, si, signora.
As you say.” He must have dropped the coat on the mat, for she heard his footsteps retreating. And then the elevator door closed, and the usual rattle began as the boy descended. There was only silence outside.

She let her hand drop away from the key. I suppose I am to telephone the airport for him, too, she told herself, and reserve that seat for him. Oh, really, Bill Lammiter!

Then she knew she was unjust. Bill wasn’t really like that. He had left for some appointment, hadn’t he? Perhaps he hadn’t enough time to go back to the hotel: perhaps he had telephoned the hotel and got a bellboy to bring the coat round. And he’d collect it here, coming to say goodbye
(and
to offer that explanation and half-apology, she was sure of that) on his way to the airport tonight. After what had happened, he would not wait until tomorrow to catch a plane home, not unless she was going to suggest it. And she wasn’t. She wasn’t going to run into any more dead-end streets. But she kept thinking of the raincoat lying abandoned.

I’m the one who is being silly, she thought now. She unlocked the door, swung it open, her eyes on the mat outside. There was no coat. Only Luigi.

“Oh no!” she said, and tried to close the door. He grasped its handle, holding it ajar.

“I must see you, Eleanor—I must—” His voice was as distraught as his face. “Please, Eleanor. Please—” As she hesitated, he stepped inside, closing the door behind him, locking it.

Bill Lammiter slackened his pace as he reached the Via Vittorio Veneto. Now it was a curving river of brilliant lights, surging with pleasure traffic, pouring its people in a continuous current of smooth bare heads along the crowded sidewalks. Up the hill to his left, the outdoor tables on both sides of the street had multiplied and still were not enough. The chatter of voices sounded like the constant rush of a waterfall. And above all the noise and the glitter was a Roman night sky, an ink-blue silence scattered with diamonds.

He crossed the street with difficulty, for the Vespas were out in full force. The cooler air, which had blown in on the city with sunset, was almost too fresh for the sun-tanned shoulders. But for the men—and most were properly dressed in jackets— the fallen temperature was perfect. One of the joys of Rome was the pleasure of the late evening stroll. He turned to his right, following the Embassy’s garden wall. Here, without
benefit of cafés and crowded tables, the. sidewalk was quiet and normally lit. Most people he met were on their way up the street, preparing to plunge into the endless parade. No one paid him the least attention.

Bunny Camden was standing talking to another man just outside the Embassy gates—just a couple of Americans in slim-shouldered light jackets and dark flannels of narrow cut, collars buttoned down, tie ends free, well-polished brown leather shoes, heads hatless, hair crisply cut, well-shaven faces, and a look of having stepped straight out of a shower not so very long ago.

We’re developing a new type, Lammiter thought in amusement as he walked on. Gone are the Scott Fitzgeralds and the Babbits of the twenties; gone the horn-rimmed glasses and the conscious tweeds of the thirties; gone, too, the Hollywood shoulders and Florida shirt tails of the post-war forties. The relics of these eras look odd, now, like Aunt Lavinia’s marcel wave or Cousin Kitty’s pompadour.

Behind him, he heard Bunny’s voice saying, “Well—good to have seen you. We must get together soon.” That was also the new formula of goodbye—willing but not too definite, leaving a pleasant escape route for all concerned—and then Bunny’s brisk heel-to-toe stride was echoing behind Lammiter.

At this point in the street, the Via Vittorio Veneto branched off on its biggest curve to the foot of the hill. It was noisy, down there. So Lammiter kept straight on as he was going, following the street that was closer to the Embassy grounds, dimly lit and quiet. He didn’t want to have to shout to make himself heard when Camden caught up with him.

“And how’s the euphoria?” Camden asked, falling into step. He was shorter than Lammiter, but solidly built with plenty
of hard muscle and no spare fat. He had a remarkably open, ingenuous face—he looked younger than his thirty years. His neatly brushed hair was dark; his brown eyes were cheerful; his wide mouth relaxed easily into a broad smile, showing strong even teeth, very white against his deeply tanned skin. Only the decided jut of his jaw line and the marked eyebrows gave any clue to the real Camden.

“Oh!” It wasn’t a beginning Lammiter had expected; but it was a cue to take things easy. “I tripped over it. By the way, was that another college professor you were talking to, back there?”

“A textile manufacturer. We did our basic training together. Why?”

“Just trying to sort out types. They’re all mixed up these days.”

“Very difficult for writers. How’s your new play coming along?”

“It isn’t,” he said curtly.

“Sorry.” Camden glanced curiously at him, and retreated tactfully from the danger area. “Thought you writers always had something in the works. Or perhaps you’ve been too occupied? I gather you’re
very
occupied.” The smile in Camden’s voice disappeared. The introduction was over, the mood of friendly helpfulness established. He became impersonal and businesslike. “By the way, where is your eleven o’clock appointment?”

“At the Piazza Navona.”

“Then we’ll walk in this direction, and circle around. All right?”

They were reaching a district of luxury offices. At night, this small quarter closed down early. It was almost too empty.

“You don’t think we are being followed, do you?”

“I watched you coming out of Ludovisi into the Vittorio Veneto. No one crossed the street after you. No one followed you down the street on its other side.”

“I’m getting the jumps, I guess. I had a feeling in the Via Ludovisi that someone was standing under one of the trees, back in the shadow, just across the road from me. I stopped and lit a cigarette. Then a girl moved out of a dark patch into the light, and pretended she wasn’t waiting, jiggled her white handbag, gave me the profile. They’re so damned pathetic, they embarrass me. So I walked on and pretended I hadn’t seen her—one snub less for her to count. Now I wish I had gone over and searched along that row of trees.”

“And what good would it have done you? If you saw a man in the shadows, how do you know he wasn’t keeping an eye on one of those girls? And what could you have done, even if he had been waiting for you? Catch him by the lapels, and say, ‘Hey, you, tough guy, want me to bash your face in?’ I doubt it. I very much doubt it. It’s only in the movies that people behave like that.” He touched Lammiter’s arm and guided him across the street. They entered a narrower one, running obliquely away from the quiet offices. “This all right?” he asked, as he noticed Lammiter’s quick glance back over his shoulder. On either side, closing them in, were silent and darkened houses.

“Sure. Just so long as we don’t get a car aimed at our spines.”

Camden looked at him sharply. “Say—you’ve been mixing with some peculiar people.”

“It all began last—”

Camden said quickly, “Before you start telling me anything, you ought to know that I’m just a very minor attaché—no
more, no less. I’m not an undercover type, or one of those cloak-and-dagger characters.”

“Since when?”

“Since a way back. I got out of the business before I got into it. I’m a bright boy, don’t you know?”

“What did you do in Washington?”

“Bill, all I did was to sit at a desk and evaluate. That’s the solid, unpainted truth. I sat at a desk until everything except my brain—and maybe that, too—was going flabby. I screamed, ‘Let me out, let me out of here!’ And I got this job eventually. Liaison mostly—NATO—Naples. At least I get some fresh air and suntan.” He looked at Lammiter. “God-damn it, you tell people the truth and they won’t believe you!” He was exasperated enough to be believed. “I’ll listen to your story, Bill. But, frankly, that’s perhaps all I can do.”

“You can always evaluate,” Lammiter said with a grin. “And your liaison work nowadays may come in useful, too.” Camden might know someone who would be interested in Brewster’s story. “I’m only following the best advice my father ever gave me. When a picture fell off the wall or a drain clogged up, he’d yell ‘Get an expert, get an expert!’ And whatever you say, Bunny, you’re the expert. I’m just a man who was curious.”

“And now I’m curious,” Camden admitted. “Go ahead.”

“Where was I, anyway?” He was flustered by Camden’s casual approach.

“Expecting a car to aim straight for our spines,” Camden said cheerfully, but he looked as if he were prepared to listen.

So Lammiter began. He began with Tony Brewster. That wasn’t the way he had intended to start his story. But sometimes an apt cue is a better starting place that the first fact of a
chronological account. And there was no doubt that the very mention of Tony Brewster’s name startled Bunny Camden into complete seriousness. He listened to Lammiter’s story with full attention, and—what was just as important—real interest. It was obvious that Lammiter was telling him something that was much more than he had expected.

They walked at an even pace, two men out for an evening stroll like so many others through the quieter streets of Rome, seemingly following no pattern of direction. By the time Lammiter had told of Rosana and her connection with the Pirotta narcotics ring; of the men around her—Bevilacqua the policeman, Joe the Sicilian, Salvatore the guide; of the princess and of Bertrand Whitelaw; of Eleanor Halley and her photographs, they, had swung in a large arc of criss-crossed streets to the Piazza dell Esedra. It was half-past ten. They could have walked the direct distance from Vittorio Veneto to the Esedra in an easy ten minutes.

For a few moments, Camden stood looking at the vast circle of the Piazza. Traffic swirled around the enormous central fountain, brilliantly illuminated to turn the high jets of water into golden plumes. Beyond them, on the other side of the Esedra, was the giant stretch of ruined walls and arches of the Baths of Diocletian, the enormous broken piles of bricks watching, from their withdrawn shadows, the bright lights of the modern arcades that curved round the other half of the Piazza.

“I like this fountain,” Camden said, as if they had been discussing only the beauties of Rome. “Hear it? Falling water lighted. Helps one to think, just looking at it, listening. Let’s have coffee, and a seat.”

“This isn’t the Piazza Navona,” Lammiter reminded him in a low voice.

“Plenty of taxis here,” Camden said. “One will get you there in five minutes at this time of night.” He led the way into the arcades and found a table that sheltered beside one of the giant pillars spaced around the half-circle of buildings to support the high curves of their arches, two stories high. Above these arches, each with its central ball of light, rose three more stories of large windows. So wide was the circle of the Piazza that the buildings didn’t seem the giants that they were. Only the people, so miniature, and the cars swirling round the fountain’s pool like little water boatmen, put the scene into human proportion. The Italians, like the Romans, built for the gods.

Camden had chosen a table not too near the band that played in front of one of the cafés. For there, most people had gathered, either to sit at the crowded tables, or to stand, hundreds deep, as near the music as possible. Lammiter put away his mild protests, and settled comfortably to listen. It was his favourite aria from
Tosca,
and to judge by the silence of the crowd, oblivious to the steady hum of traffic, one of their favourites, too. Art is long, life is short. The buildings of stone looked down and approved.

Camden had ordered coffee in crushed ice for them both. He drank slowly, watched the play of the fountains. Then, quietly, he said, loud enough for Lammiter, not loud enough for the nearest strangers to hear, “I had known, of course, about the narcotics trouble. Recently, I met one of our people from the Narcotics Bureau in Washington: he’s only one of several top men who’ve come over here. That’s how serious it is. And Interpol also has men on the job. And there was a man I met,
just last month, from one of the United Nations committees. The Italians are worried, too. So are the French. It isn’t any secret in official circles. It’s one of the under-surface battles that Russia has been waging since the end of the war.”