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

I watched the traffic swirling around the Forum. There were a few dark clouds creeping up behind the stark outline of the Colosseum: a sure sign that it was going to be a wet night I saw Carlotti get into the police car and drive away.

I remained motionless, my mind crawling with alarm. I might have known Carlotti wouldn’t have missed the significance of the missing films. This was something I couldn’t keep from

Chalmers.

I had a sudden feeling of urgency. I had to find this mysterious X before Carlotti found me. I didn’t underrate him. Already he was getting too close to me for comfort.

The telephone snapped me out of my mood. I picked up the receiver. It was Gina.

“You said you would call me yesterday,” she said. “I’ve been waiting. What is happening, Ed?”

I did some quick thinking. I couldn’t confide my troubles to her now Carlotti had told me this was a murder case. She might get hooked in as an accessory if she knew I was Douglas Sherrard.

“I’m right up to my ears at me moment,” I said. “I’m on my way out. Give me a couple of days, and you’ll hear from me.”

“But, Ed… what was it you were going to tell me? Can’t we meet to-night?”

“I’m sorry, Gina, but not to-night. I can’t stop now. I’ll call you in a couple of days. So long for now,” and I hung up.

I waited a moment, then put a call through to New York. The operator said there was a twohour delay.

There was nothing for me to do but to sit down and mull over the information I had got from Matthews and to consider the threat that was beginning to develop from Carlotti. After a while I got tired of frightening myself and turned on the radio. Maria Meneghini Callas was giving a recital of Puccini’s songs. Her dark, exciting voice carried me out of my troubles for the next hour. She was in the middle of Sola perdma, A bbandonata, and maki ng my hair stand on end, when the telephone bell rang and I had to cut her short.

Chalmers came on the line after only a two-minute delay. “What have you got?”

Even at that distance I could hear the iron in his voice.

“I’ve just had Carlotti here,” I said. “He’s now decided it looks like murder, and he’ll tell the coroner so.”

There was a pause, then Chalmers said, “How did he got on to it.”

I told him about the camera and the missing films. I told him how I had taken the camera, had found the scrap of film in it and how the camera had been stolen before I could hand it back to the police.

The news seemed to stun him, for he was hesitant when he began to talk again.

“What are you going to do, Dawson?”

“I’m trying to get a list of Helen’s men friends,” I said, and told him I had got an inquiry agency on the job. “Carlotti’s working on the same angle. He seems to think your daughter had a number of men friends.”

“If he tries to stir up a scandal about the girl, I’ll break him!” Chalmers snarled. “Keep in touch with me. I want to know what you’re doing… understand?”

I said I understood.

“And talk to this coroner fella. He promised me he’d fix this pregnancy business. I don’t want that to come out. Get tough with him, Dawson. Throw a scare into him!”

“If this turns out to be a murder case, Mr. Chalmers,” I said, “there’s nothing we can do about the verdict.”

“Don’t tell me what we can’t do!” he bawled. “Talk to this punk. Call me back to-morrow at this time.”

I said I would, and hung up.

I put a call through to coroner Maletti. When he came on the line I told him I had been talking to Chalmers, who was anxious to be assured that the arrangements he had made would stand. Maletti was full of oil and soft soap. Unless further evidence came to light, he said, il Signor Chalmers need not disturb himself about the verdict.

“You’ll be the one who’s disturbed if the verdict’s the wrong one,” I said, and slammed down the receiver.

By now it was dark and rain showed on the windows.

It was time, I decided as I went into my bedroom to get my raincoat, to pay a visit to the villa Palestra.

I left my car in the parking lot at the Stadium and walked up viale Paolo Veronese until I came to double wrought-iroN gates, set in an eight-foot high stone wall that surrounded the acre or so of garden in which the villa Palestra stood.

By now it was raining hard, and the long street was deserted. I pushed open one of the gates, moved into a dark driveway, screened by cypress trees and flowering shrubs.

Moving silently, I walked up the drive, hunching my shoulders against the rain. Fifty yards of driveway brought me to a bend, and around the bend I caught sight of the villa, a small, twostorey affair with a Florentine overhanging roof, white stucca walls and big windows.

There was a light on in one of the tower rooms, but the rest of the villa was in darkness.

The neatly kept lawns that surrounded the villa offered no cover. I moved around its edge, keeping close to the shrubs until I was facing the window of the lighted room. The curtains hadn’t been drawn, and I could look into the room, which was only about thirty yards from where I stood.

The furnishing was modern: the room was large. I could see a girl standing by a table, occupied in looking through a black evening bag.

I assumed she was Myra Seta and looked closely at her. She was quite something to see. Around twenty-five or six, tallish with chestnut-coloured hair that reached to her shoulders, she was in a white evening dress that fitted her like a second skin, and then flared out just below her hips into a waterfall of tulle and glittering sequins.

After she had rearranged her bag, she picked up a mink stole and slung it carelessly over her shoulders. Then, pausing to light a cigarette, she crossed the room, flicked off the lights and left me looking, at an expanse of black glass that reflected the swiftly moving rainclouds and pointed cypress trees.

I waited.

After a minute or so, I saw the front door open and she came out, sheltering under a large umbrella.

She ran down the path to the garage. A light sprang up at she pushed open the double doors. I could see a white and bottle-green Cadillac in the garage, about the size of a trolley car. She got into the car, leaving the umbrella against the wall. I heard the engine start up, and she drove out, passing within tea yards of where I was crouching. The headlights of the car made a white glare of rain, grass and shrubs.

I remained where I was, listening. I heard the car stop at the end of the drive, there was a long pause while she opened the gates, then the sound of the car door slamming, and the sound of the engine accelerating told me she had gone.

I remained where I was, looking towards the dark villa. I stayed motionless for several minutes. No light showed. I decided it was safe to explore. Turning up my collar against the rain, I walked around the villa. There were no lights to be seen in any of the rooms. I found a window unlatched on the ground floor. I eased it open, took out the flashlight I had brought with me and inspected a small, luxury kitchen beyond. I slid over the double sink and dropped noiselessly on to the riled floor. Closing the window, I made my way silently out of the kitchen, along a passage and into the hall.

A curved stairway on my left led to the upper rooms. I went up the stairs to a landing and inspected the four doors that faced me.

Turning the handle of the door that lay to the far right, I pushed the door open and looked in. This was obviously Myra’s room. There was a divan bed with a blood-red cover. The walls were of quilted grey satin. The furniture was silver. The carpet blood red. It was quite a room.