James Chase - You Find Him, I'll Fix Him

He thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see her with any man?”

He rubbed his jaw, looking steadily at me.

“I saw her with you.”

I sat very still.

“Did you? Where was that?”

“You were coming out of a movie together.”

“Chalmers wanted me to take her around,” I said. “I did take her out once or twice. Apart from me, is there anyone else you can remember?”

I knew he was too shrewd to be fooled by my attempt at casualness, but he was also too good a friend to embarrass me more than he had done already.

“I did see her with a big, dark fellow at Luigi’s once. I don’t know who he was.”

“How big?”

“He was impressively big: built like a prize-fighter.”

My mind jumped to the intruder I had seen in the villa. He too had been impressively big: he too had shoulders of a prizefighter.

“Can you give me a description of him?”

“I’m pretty sure he was an Italian. I should say he was around twenty-five or six; dark, blunt featured, good looking in an animal kind of way, if you know what I mean. He had a scar on his right cheek: a white, zigzag mark that could have been an old knife wound.”

“And you have no idea who he is?”

“None at all, but he’s easy to recognize if you ever see him.”

“Yes. No other ideas?”

He shrugged.

“This isn’t even an idea, Ed. This fellow was the only man, apart from you, I ever saw her with, but you can be sure, she was always going around with men. I wish I could be man helpful, but I can’t.”

I got to my feet

“You have been helpful,” I said. “Now look, relax, do nothing and say nothing. I’ll try to find this guy. He may be the one I’m looking for. Ill keep you informed. If Carlotti does happen to get on to you, you have a cast-iron alibi. Remember that and stop worrying.”

Frenzi smiled.

“Yes, you’re right. I rely on your judgment, Ed.”

I said it was the thing to do, shook hands with him and went down to where I parked the Lincoln.

As I drove back to my apartment, I felt I hadn’t wasted my time. It seemed to me I had now found the reason why Helen had died at the foot of the cliff. It wasn’t something I could explain to Chalmers, but at least, it gave me a clue: someone, as Frenzi had said, did not blackmail, easily and Helen had died.

My next obvious move was to find Carlo.

It took me until four o’clock the following afternoon before I could contact my ex-girl friend on the Rome exchange telephone.

She made the usual difficulties that a girl who has been dropped and now discovers you’re interested in her again will make, and I had to exercise a lot of patience and tact before I could get around to what I wanted to ask her.

When she understood I Wanted the name and address of a Rome telephone subscriber, she said promptly that it was strictly against regulations and by obliging me she could lose her job. After a lot of aimless talk which nearly drove me crazy, she finally suggested we might discuss the matter over a dinner.

I said I would meet her at Alfredo’s at eight o’clock and hung up. I knew there would be more to it than a dinner, so I bought a powder compact for seventeen thousand lire that looked showy enough to have cost three times that price as a make-weight if she raised further difficulties.

I hadn’t seen her for three years, and I didn’t recognize her when she entered Alfredo’s. I wondered how it had been possible for her ever to have won a prize in a beauty competition. Three years can make quite a dent in the shape and size of any Italian woman if she doesn’t watch her diet, and this girl, apparently, hadn’t watched anything since last I met her. She was really something to see.

After a lot of talk, hedging and wrangling, and not before I had slipped her the compact, she finally agreed to get me the name and address of the subscriber of the telephone number I had found scribbled on Helen’s lounge wall.

She promised to call me the following morning.

I had to wait until half-past eleven o’clock before the call came through. By then I was fit to strangle her.

There was a waspish note in her voice when she told me that the subscriber was a woman.

“Okay, so it’s a woman,” I said. “You don’t have to get worked up. It had to be either a man or a woman, hadn’t it? You wouldn’t expect it to be a dog, would you?”

“You don’t have to shout at me,” she said. “I have no business to give you this information.”

I counted up to five mentally before I could trust myself to speak, then I said, “Look, let’s have it. This is strictly business. How many times do I have to tell you?”

She said the subscriber lived at villa Palestra, viale Paolo Veronese, and her name was Myra Setti.

I wrote down the name and address.

“Thanks a lot,” I said, staring at the scribble on the pad. “Setti? S-e-t-t-i? Is that right?”

She said it was.

Then the nickle dropped.

Setti!

I remembered the New York police had believed that Frank Setti, Menotti’s gangster rival, had been responsible for Menotti’s death. Was Myra Setti connected in some way with him — his wife, his sister or even his daughter? Was there some hook up between this woman, Menotti’s murder, Frank Setti and Helen?

I became aware that my late girl-friend was talking. Her high-pitched voice slammed against my ear-drum, but I couldn’t be bothered to listen to what she was saying.

I dropped the receiver back on to its cradle, my heart bumping with excitement.

Setti!

This might be the clue I had been looking for. I remembered Maxwell had said that Helen was thought to be mixed up in the Menotti killing, and that was the reason why she had come to Rome.

If Setti had really engineered the killing…

I decided it might pay off to take a look at the villa Palestra.

The telephone bell rang. My late girl-friend was possibly wanting to know why I had hung up on her.

I settled further down in my chair and let the telephone bell ring.

I was pretty busy for the next two hours.

I knew by now Chalmers would be back in his New York office and would be waiting impatiently to hear from me. I would have to get some sort of report to him during the day.

I called the International Investigating Agency and told them to send their best operator around. I said the job was confidential and urgent. They said they would send their Signor Sarti. Then I put a call through to Jim Matthews of the Associated Press. Matthews had been in Rome for fifteen years. He knew everyone who was likely to make news and a few who wouldn’t.

I said I’d like to have a word with him when he was free.

“For you, Ed, I’m always free,” he said. “Suppose you buy me a large and expensive lunch and let us talk?”

I looked at my watch. The time was just after twelve.

“I’ll meet you at Harry’s bar at one-thirty,” I said.

“Fine. I’ll be seeing you.”

I then made a few notes on a pad and did a little thinking, trying to make up my mind how much to tell Chalmers. His wife’s warning bothered me. I could see if I gave him the whole story he wasn’t likely to react favourably to me, and yet, it wasn’t going to be easy to keep much back. I was still brooding on I what I was going to tell him when the front-door bell rang.

I opened the door to find a short, fat elderly Italian, dressed in a shabby grey suit, standing on my doormat. He introduced himself as Bruno Sarti from the agency.

At first glance Bruno Sarti wasn’t particularly impressive. He hadn’t shaved this morning; his linen was grubby and he had the beginning of a boil under his right eye. He also carried with him a devastating smell of garlic that poisoned the atmosphere in my room.