'No time now, just wrap it up tight.'
Harry finished cleaning the wound and squeezed some sulfadi-azine ointment over the burn, which was worse than the cut.
'What happened?' Kaz said, peering through his thick glasses at the wound.
'I was stopped at a roadblock when a couple of Me110s strafed us. The MPs hit the ditch, and I took off in one of their jeeps. A tracer round nicked me in the arm.'
'You're lucky to have an arm at all,' Harry said, pulling tightly on the bandage as if to emphasize his point.
'Ow! Listen, we've got to get to Vittoria fast.'
'We can't leave the payroll,' Kaz said.
'Yes, you can. It's under guard, and that's not what they're really after.'
'What?' Harry and Kaz said at the same time.
'There's a lot to explain, but that can wait until we're on the road. I-'
The crack of a rifle shot was followed by a buzzing sound past my ear and a shower of granite fragments from the wall behind me.
'Get down!' Harry yelled, pulling Kaz and me to the floor as a second shot shattered a large pot resting on the railing next to where I'd been sitting. Then more shots rang out amid a lot of screaming and hollering until someone yelled louder and more calmly than anyone else, 'Cease fire, cease fire!'
We scrambled down the stairs to the sidewalk. The guards were aiming their rifles up, swiveling left and right, searching for a target.
'Did anyone see anything?' Harry asked the sergeant who trotted over to him.
'Not a damn thing, sir,' the sergeant said. 'The two shots came from that building. Then the boys started firing at shadows. No one saw anything.' He was pointing at a two-story cinder-block store, with a picture of a fish on a wooden sign. The single window had been shot out.
'From the roof?' I asked.
'Think so. That window was intact before my guys shot back. I don't think it was open.'
In the distance, we could hear the sound of an engine start up and fade away.
'Probably the shooter,' I said. 'No way to catch him now.'
'Who do you think it was? Was he shooting at you?' Kaz asked.
'I'd say so. I felt the bullet pass by my head.'
'Mafia?' Harry asked.
'Maybe Vito didn't get the word that he was getting a pass on all this. Or maybe it was Legs. He never liked me much back in Boston.'
'But why-'
'Never mind,' I said. 'We gotta go-now!' I had caught sight of an ancient farm tractor chugging down the road, weighed down by two MPs and one pissed-off AMGOT major. With the MPs to back him up, he could take over command of the guard platoon and hog-tie the three of us. I ran and hoped Kaz and Harry followed.
I jumped into the nearest vehicle, a Dodge Command Car. It was bigger than a regular jeep and outfitted with a radio in the back. Kaz got in next to me and Harry leaped into the rear.
'Hey, that's ours!'
'Sorry, Sarge, we're commandeering it.'
'The hell you are, buddy. I don't know who you are and I'm not letting this vehicle go on your say-so. Or on orders from a couple of Brits. No disrespect intended, sirs.'
He nodded politely at Kaz and Harry while keeping his M1 leveled at me. I had no shirt other than my OD undershirt and so no HQ shoulder patch or lieutenant's bars to impress him with.
'You can believe him, Sergeant,' Harry said. 'Colonel Routh, division paymaster, will be here soon to collect the money. Turn it over to him and provide a guard detail.'
'Yes, sir,' he acknowledged politely, still keeping me covered. 'Now you get out of the vehicle.'
It was a damned odd situation.
'I'll return it in one piece,' I said, with all the sincerity I could muster as I jammed the gear in reverse and backed out. The tractor was halfway down the street.
'My captain will have my head if I lose that vehicle.' The M1 was aimed square at my head.
'It won't be lost. We're taking it to Vittoria. If you shoot, try not to hit either of these two, it's not their fault.' I hit the accelerator and worked the gears to get us up to top speed before anybody started firing. I glanced back to see the sergeant lower his rifle and curse. Elliott was waving his fists again.
'Why did you tell them where we are going?' Kaz asked.
'Because Elliott already knows. Everyone knows. Everyone except us.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We drove north, out of the deserted town and through mudflats bearing tufts of brown dry grasses that lay limp in the dead air. Away from the sea breeze, the land was scorched and arid. The only good thing was that there was no cover, no hiding place for a sniper to ambush us. I drove fast.
'What have you discovered, Billy?' Kaz asked, holding onto his cap in the hot wind.
'More like figured out, finally. I found the truck that Andrews was killed in. It was burned, but there were remnants in it of big rolls of paper. And I remembered something that Nick had said, about AMGOT setting up printing operations on the island.'
'Yes, to produce newspapers and more occupation currency,' Kaz said.
' Willie and Joe! ' Harry said from the backseat.
'Right. It makes sense to print stuff here instead of shipping it all from North Africa. But someone had the bright idea of adding to the printing runs on the sly, and getting rich without seeming to steal anything.'
'I still don't understand about the payroll. Why aren't you worried about that?' Harry asked.
'It came to me when I thought about what I'd told Don Calo. About how every German, Italian, American, and British soldier would turn this island upside down if it got out that someone had three million bucks' worth stashed away. I was saying it to persuade him that stealing the payroll was a lousy idea. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I understood that it really was a lousy idea. Let's say someone did pull off the heist. What would he do with it? Deposit it? No. Spend it? No. If you're a GI, you shouldn't have more than your pay and what you might win in a card game. Hide it? But for how long? Sooner or later scrip will be replaced by Italian currency and any GI with a huge bundle of it to exchange would be a suspect. There's no point in stealing that much money unless you can launder it. It wouldn't make sense.'
'Tell us something that does make sense,' Kaz said.
We all arched our necks at the sound of aircraft engines, but they were ours. Thunderbolts. I pulled onto a main road and had to slow down to keep pace with the big trucks lumbering along.
'Here's how I figure it. Someone who knows Vito Genovese also learned about the plans to print currency here.'
'Someone in AMGOT?' Harry asked.
'Right. My guess is Elliott. He arranges for his guy in the Signals Company to be their go-between. Once they land, Hutton can link up with the civilian phone network and call Vito or somebody who can get in touch with him.'
'Which would explain a criminal like Genovese offering the army his services right after the invasion,' Kaz said.
'Bingo. Now Hutton can communicate both ways. With Vito, through his linkup with the civilian phone network, and with AMGOT back in Algiers. He could get in touch with HQ by shortwave radio. Hell, maybe he could patch the calls together, I don't know.'
'I still don't get it about the payroll,' Harry said. He sounded like I used to in algebra class.
'OK. Our guy is planning this out. He's going to organize the printing of extra occupation scrip. Maybe by extra runs on an AMGOT press, maybe a secret print run with his own printing press and stolen plates, I don't know
