Dan Marlowe: The Fatal Frails

“I'll buy that,” Johnny agreed. He scowled at the desk light. “Does a man order a sandwich an' a pot of coffee before he falls on his sword?” He looked in at the slender girl beneath the headphone. “He get any phone calls after he came in tonight?”

“Not a one, Johnny.”

“Well, he thought he had a reason, guaranteed. The hell with it. Look, tell Paul I'm gonna be out a while, will you? I'm-” He paused suddenly. Into his mind, unbidden, leaped the memory of the worn-looking man at the registration desk separating one envelope from the stack of mail and stuffing it into his topcoat pocket. Could it have been something in that letter that had so suddenly pushed the importer over the dam?

Sally was watching his face. “What is it, Johnny?”

“Just my big nose itchin', I guess.” He slapped both palms down on the little wooden gate that separated them, with a report that made Sally jump. “New record on the turntable, ma. Come on upstairs in the mornin', huh?”

She tried to ignore the added color in her cheeks. “You overwhelm a girl with the delicacy of your invitations, sir. The apartment's not good enough for you? I don't like skulking around upstairs. And I've got clothes drying, and ironing to do-”

“If you're lookin' for a sales' talk, ma, I got no time. Hell with the ironin'-you come on up. Consolidated Friction, Inc. is about to declare a stock dividend. I wouldn't want you to miss it.”

“If I miss it, can they declare it?” she inquired pertly.

“It'd be a problem,” he admitted. “You be there.” He turned to leave. “Tell Paul.”

“About Consolidated Friction?”

“Not unless I'm there to watch you tell him.” Sally made a face at him and waved him away. In the foyer he was glad to see the rain had stopped. On the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched involuntarily against the damp bite of the night air. Damn chilly for late June. Probably noticed it more after the warmer weather they'd been having, he decided. At his arm wave a cab rolled down from the corner.

On the short ride he speculated again upon the reason for the importer's sudden suicide. He shrugged it aside. Who could figure why people did the things they did?

He paid off the cabbie in front of the familiar weather-beaten old red brick building. Two black Cadillacs stood at the curb, each appearing half a block long. Johnny trotted up worn white steps and, inside, turned left on oil-darkened wooden floors.

The desk man nodded before Johnny could speak. “He's waitin'. Second-”

“-door on the left,” Johnny finished for him. In the hall he noticed two calm-faced black robes seated on a bench. Two more were strolling the upper corridor. Somebody must have caught the black pill, Johnny thought uneasily. He knocked twice on the second door on the left, and entered. In the concentrated glare of the goose-necked lamp on the cluttered desk he watched Lieutenant Joseph Dameron's solid bulk rise from the depths of his swivel chair. The expression in the frosty gray eyes and on the apple-cheeked blunt features beneath the steel-gray hair was noncommittal. “H'ya, Joe,” Johnny said. “What the hell's the-”

The lieutenant flung out* an arm in the manner of a magician calling attention to the rabbit emerging from a hat. “His Eminence,” he announced warningly. “Cardinal Lucian Alerini.”

Johnny's eyes switched left to the beamingly florid moon face of a massive, bald-headed man in flowing dark robes. “Kiki!” Johnny exclaimed, and was enveloped with a rush in a rib-crunching bear hug. Instinctively Johnny's hands came up.

“Easy!” Lieutenant Dameron rapped at him apprehensively.

Unheeding, Johnny punched joyfully at a forearm that felt like a fireplace log. “Kiki! What're you doin' here?”

“Business!” a big voice boomed in Johnny's ear. The hard arms rocked him from side to side before releasing him, and then the cardinal stepped back to look at him more closely. “Not one iota have you changed, Johnny. Which cannot be said for the rest of us,” he mourned, running a hand over his bald pate, down the left side of which ran a livid scar. The dark eyes were merry. “You remembered, eh?”

“Remember? I hope to tell you I remember.” Johnny leveled a finger at the huge figure, six-four and well over two hundred fifty pounds. “Like the night at Reggio Calabria? When the lousy st-”

“Language, language!” Lieutenant Dameron intervened hastily. “Watch it, will you? His Eminence doesn't-”

“Eminence?” Johnny interrupted. “You're a cardinal now, Kiki?” His eye caught the flash of the ring, and he grinned. “So the only rope-climbin' bishop in captivity's a cardinal? Gettin' down to the bottom of the barrel, aren't they?”

The big churchman's resonant roar of laughter rattled the windows. “Exactly what I said!”

“Will you kindly show a little respect?” the lieutenant asked Johnny in anguish. “His Eminence-”

“His Eminence knew us when, Joe,” Johnny interrupted again with a grin. “You under the delusion he didn't know where you got the information that time at Foggia when you an' the little widow-” “Will you shut up?”

“It makes a man feel young again to look at you, Johnny.” The cardinal's rumble cut in smoothly behind Dameron's rasp. The big man sounded wistful. His English was flawless, but formal. “How many days and miles removed from our last meeting on the cliffs, my friend? Yet a look in the mirror mornings keeps the memory green.” Once more he lightly touched the savage-looking scar on his head.

Lieutenant Dameron cleared his throat heavily. “His Eminence wants to talk to you,” he said sourly to Johnny. “Seriously.” The lieutenant didn't look too happy about it, Johnny thought.

“I asked Joseph to call you,” the cardinal affirmed. “I have a favor to ask.”

Johnny nodded. “A l'instant.”

The beaming smile flashed again. “Merci. It's good to know the attitude's as little changed as the man.” The moon features turned serious. “I know I give you no news when I say that, in the bad days we remember, there was much looting of property, including the church's. Some has been recovered, but a great deal has not. Some stolen articles had commercial value, almost all had museum value, but to the church there were other values than the lira that could be realized from their disposal.” “You mean they had a history,” Johnny said.

“A very long history, in some cases. But to the mutton: I recently learned the name of a man of conspicuous talent in the management of such disappearances in those days. I'm assured that this man personally supervised the removal of one item in my charge for the recovery of which I would gladly receive the duplicate of this.” His hand went again to the scar. “The man is in this city.”

“He is? Joe's gonna snatch him for you?”

“I'm here primarily on ecclesiastical matters,” the cardinal said obliquely. “The other is a private project, and not simple. The stolen item has the status of an objet d'art. Even when found after all this time there's the question of proof of original ownership, of jurisdictional latitude and longitude, of the statute of limitations, of the availability of witnesses, of many, many other things. You follow?”

“I follow,” Johnny replied grimly. He glared at the man behind the desk, and Lieutenant Dameron turned a dull red. “You came to Joe, an' he fluffed you off.”

“Now listen, Johnny-”

“You haven't heard the special point of the story.” The cardinal overrode the lieutenant's abortive protest in the bland manner of the born diplomat. “I said the man is in the city.” He paused for emphasis. “The man is at your hotel, Johnny.”

“At the Duarte?” Johnny rubbed his hands together briskly. “Well, what are we waitin' for? Tell me his name an' I'll run back over there an' shake the fillin's outta his back teeth.”