“Do you know what you’re saying?” he demanded. “What the devil…?”
“Listen: I’ve got a date and I’m in a hurry,” I broke in. “I have indisputable proof that your daughter was a drug addict and a blackmailer. She went round with degenerates and criminals and was Menotti’s mistress. It’s common talk that it was she who put the finger on him, and she was probably murdered because she was fool enough to try to blackmail his killer.”
“My God! You’ll be sorry for this,” Chalmers bellowed. “You must be drunk or insane to talk this way to me. How dare you tell such lies! My daughter was a good, decent girl…”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” I broke in impatiently. “But wait until you see the evidence. I have a list of names of fifteen men with whom she was intimate and whom she blackmailed because she had to have money to buy drugs. This isn’t something I’ve dreamed up. Carlotti knows. There’s a private dick who has been shadowing her ever since she arrived in Rome, and he has pages of evidence with dates and details that you can’t shout off.”
There was a sudden silence at the other end of the line and, for a moment, I thought we had been cut off but, listening carefully, I could hear his heavy breathing.
“I’d better come out,” he said at last, and in a much milder tone. “I’m sorry I bawled at you, Dawson. I should have known you wouldn’t say anything against my daughter without proof. This is a shock to me. Perhaps it’s not so bad as it sounds.”
“This isn’t the time to kid yourself,” I said. “This is a mess and we’ve got to face it.”
“I’m tied up until Thursday,” he said, all the iron out of his voice by now. “I’ll be in Naples on Friday. Will you meet me?”
“If I can I will, but things are happening so fast, I can’t look that far ahead.”
“Can’t you talk to Carlotti? Can’t we get an adjournment at the inquest? I’ve got to have time to study this thing.”
“It’s a murder case,” I said. “There’s nothing either of us can do.”
“Well, try. I’m relying on you, Dawson.”
I grinned mirthlessly at the opposite wall. I wondered how much longer he would rely on me. I wondered what he would say and do if I told him I was one of the fifteen men who had fooled around with his precious daughter.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, “but I don’t think he’ll listen.”
“Who killed her, Dawson?”
“A guy called Carlo Manchini. I can’t prove it yet, but I’m going to have a try. It’s my bet he killed Menotti and your daughter sold Menotti to him.”
“This is fantastic.” He really sounded as if he had taken a knock. “Anything I can do at this end?”
“Well, if you can get the boys to dig into Menotti’s background,” I said, “they might turn up something useful. See if they can get anything on Manchini and Setti. I want a hookup between those two. See if they can get any dope on what Helen was up to and if she did go to Menotti’s apartment.”
“I can’t do that!” His voice rose to a shout. “I don’t want anyone to know about this thing! This has got to be hushed up, Dawson!”
I laughed.
“You have as much hope of hushing this up as you’ve got in keeping an H-bomb explosion quiet,” I said, and dropped the receiver back on its cradle.
I waited for a brief moment, then put a call through to police headquarters. I asked if Lieutenant Carlotti was on duty. The desk sergeant said he thought he was in his office. He told me to hold on. After about a minute wait, Carlotti came on the line.
“Yes, Signor Dawson?” He sounded smooth and unexcited. “Is there anything I can do for
you?”
“I’m just checking on the inquest. It’s at eleven-thirty. That right?” I said.
“That is right. I am flying down to-night. Do you wish to come with me?”
“Not to-night. I’ll catch the early morning plane. How’s the investigation going?”
“Satisfactory.”
“No arrest yet?”
“Not yet, but these things take time.”
“Yeah.” I wondered if I should tell him that Chalmers was yelling for an adjournment, but I decided it wouldn’t do any good. “How about la Signorina Chalmers’s apartment? Are you through there yet?”
“Yes. I was going to tell you. The key is with the porter. I took the police guard off this morning.”
“Okay, then I’ll get busy and have the place cleared. Did you notice the telephone number scribbled on the wall in her lounge?”
“Oh, yes,” Cariotti said. He didn’t sound very interested. “We checked it. It is the number of la Signorina Setti, a friend of la Signorina Chalmers.”
“Did you know that Myra Setti is the daughter of Frank Setti, whom you boys are supposed to be looking for?”
There was a pause, then he said coldly, “I was aware of that.”
“I just thought it might have slipped your mind,” I said, and hung up.
III
Carlo was waiting for me in the Pasquale Club. He was drinking wine and smoking a cheroot. He waved to me as I crossed the empty lounge to join him.
“What’s biting you?” he said. “Have a drink?”
I shook my head.
“You said if I played with you, you’d play with me,” I said. “Okay, here’s your chance.”
He tilted back his chair, blew smoke towards the ceiling and listened with haLF-closed eyes as I explained about Sarti.
“Old man Chalmers told me to put a private eye to work, digging into his daughter’s background,” I said. “I didn’t imagine Sarti would dig so deep. He’s dug me up.”
Carlo looked at me, his face expressionless.
“So what?”
“So he’s blackmailing me for ten million lire. If I don’t pay, he’s handing the information he’s collected over to the police.”
“How bad is the information?” Carlo asked, tilting his chair further back and scratching his jaw with a dirty finger-nail.
“As bad as it can be. If the police get this information from him, I’m cooked. I haven’t ten million lire – nothing like it. If you want me to do this run to Nice for you, you’ve got to do something fast.”
“Such as what?”
“That’s up to you. I don’t suppose you want to spring ten million lire, do you?”
He threw back his head and sounded off with his raucous laugh.
“You kidding?” He let his chair come to earth with a crash that shook the room, stood up and hunched his shoulders. “Come on, pally. Let’s go and see this bum. I’ll fix him.”
“He’s probably out.” I wasn’t anxious to get mixed up in this. “Why don’t you call around at his office to- morrow? I’d come with you, but I have to be in Naples to-morrow to attend the inquest.”
He put his enormous hand on my arm. His fingers dug into my muscles.
“He’ll be in. This is feeding time. Come on, pally. This is your mess. You and me will fix him together.”
He led me out of the bar, across the sidewalk to where the Renault was parked. We got in, and he sent the car shooting away from the kerb.
“The office will be shut,” I said, flinching as Carlo narrowly missed a man and woman who were crossing the street.
Carlo leaned out of the car window to curse them, then pulled in his head and gave me his wide, animal
