Reardon frowned. “Now, see here, Don. We don’t have a thing on this man, other than the weapons charge and the assault thing. We don’t have a thing to connect him with—”
Dondero held up a hand, cutting off the flow of words.
“You look, Jim. I’m quite sure they read him all his rights, probably in two languages, when they booked him, and you know I’d never do anything that wasn’t in the book. But what you don’t know is that us Italians, see, we get pretty emotional at times, and when I hug him he’s liable to start crying for joy—”
He paused as the guard came up leading the prisoner. Lazaretti was a small man with fine delicate features, dressed in a wrinkled suit of Italian silk, with smooth Italian handmade shoes, and with an expensive silk white-on-white shirt that may have been clean at one time, but which showed the effects of being worn for more than four days in a row, even though it was evident an attempt had been made by the prisoner to maintain it as much as possible. Dondero knew the man had been given his choice of clean prison clothes, so he scarcely felt much pity for him. The necktie had been removed, of course, together with the belt and shoelaces, and the absence of the tie made the neck appear even more scrawny. Lazaretti’s hair was long, dark, and wavy, and had been cut in the latest style; the days in prison had allowed the edges to become shaggy, but otherwise it was neat. Dondero would have bet a week’s pay that when Lazaretti had been searched, they had found in addition to the shiv and the gun, a comb probably treasured more by the prisoner than the weapons. Still, despite the lack of size, there was a look of cold determination on the frozen features.
Dondero’s expression remained fixed, but inwardly he was smiling. He knew the type all too well; the small tough guy. They were the kind he liked.
“In here,” he said to the prisoner in Italian, and waited with exaggerated politeness until Lazaretti had preceded him into the small confinement cell. Reardon crowded in and closed the door behind them. It was instantly pitch dark. The lieutenant opened the door, switched on the light from outside, and then closed the door after him once again. The fact that now there was light, coming from a small bulb set in the ceiling, made the tiny cell bearable, but just. Reardon leaned back against the door, watching.
“Real cozy,” Dondero said in English, and then switched to fluent Italian. Reardon’s eyebrows raised in surprise. He didn’t understand a word, but the speed and effortlessness of the demonstration impressed him. “All right, friend,” Dondero said. “Let’s start at the beginning. What brings you to the United States?”
There was silence. The prisoner stared at the wall, only inches from his face, quite as if he had not heard the question. Dondero suddenly raised his hand and slapped the frozen face open-handedly. The long hair flew; the small head bounced against the wall. The little man turned to stare at Dondero with a dazed expression slowly hardening to hate, and then brought up a small hand to rub the side of his head.
Reardon straightened up instantly, reaching out a hand. “Hey, Don!”
“Man’s deaf,” Dondero said lightly. “You’d be surprised how sometimes something like that clears the ears.”
Reardon’s jaw tightened. “Look, Don, I don’t want to pull rank, but—”
Dondero dropped the light tone, glaring at the lieutenant savagely.
“You don’t want to pull rank, then don’t! If you’ve suddenly gotten a weak stomach, why don’t you wait for me downstairs? This character has a connection with the goon who’s holding Pop Holland, and he’s going to tell me what it is, and in great detail, before he walks out of here. If he walks out of here!” he added grimly.
“But not that way!”
“Then what way? You wanted me to question him, didn’t you? What did you want me to ask him? How you get from Market Street to the Colosseum? His momma’s recipe for pizza? Good Christ! There’s only one way a character like this is going to answer questions, and that’s if he knows he’ll be picking his teeth off the floor if he doesn’t!” He saw the hard look on Reardon’s face and added more quietly, but just as insistently, “Jim, Jim! Listen to what I’m saying! This man has some connection with the guy who’s holding Pop. I’m going to get it out of him. Because if you make me leave him alone, I’ll just wait until Judge Melchor lets him go in a couple of days and then I’ll be a lot rougher with him than I can be here. Here, I’ll try not to mark him; outside I’ll rip both his arms off and beat him black and blue with the bloody stumps if I have to!” He shrugged. “So take your choice.”
He waited a moment. Reardon was silent. Dondero nodded and returned to the prisoner, changing back to Italian.
“A little disagreement between me and my friend. You lost. Now, let’s start all over. What brings you to the United States? And silence is not considered an answer.”
The small man looked from face to face, apparently read his fate in the expressionless look on the face of the lieutenant and the triumphant glitter in the other detective’s face. Then he said, sullenly, “To visit my cousin.”
Dondero indicated no particular triumph in having broken the ice, but continued evenly. “Oh? And just where does your cousin live?”
“In New York. In Brooklyn.”
“I’ve got news for you, friend,” Dondero said. “You missed Brooklyn by three thousand miles. What I meant to say was, what brings you to California? Specifically, what brings you to San Francisco?”
There was silence. The little man jammed his jaw tight, and then shut his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut as Dondero raised his hand. Reardon bit his lip as Dondero’s hand came down, changing direction, and chopped viciously at the small man’s stomach.
“No marks, like I said,” he said in Italian, probably thinking he was addressing Reardon, or maybe just talking to himself, or even possibly to advise the little man what to expect in the future. He shook the little man until the eyes opened, and then shook him a few more times for luck; the long hair flew. “You must like getting shoved around,” Dondero said evenly. “Well, you got the right guy, because I’m willing to work out on you all day long. You’ll wish you were home. Now, what brings you to San Francisco?”
The little man massaged his stomach. His face was gray with pain. He stared at Dondero’s pleasant look of comradeship a moment and then shivered involuntarily. That look of false friendship was one he had seen before; it was a look he had employed himself in the past when he had the upper hand and was prepared to use his advantage. It was not a good look to see on the face of a tough opponent.
“I — to see it. They all said San Francisco was worth seeing. They said it was beautiful...”
“They did, huh? Who are all these boosters?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, who told you about San Francisco?”
“People in Italy,” Lazaretti said vaguely. He saw the hardness that twitched Dondero’s jaw and added hastily, “And my cousin in New York. He said so, too.”
“Yes,” Dondero said, relaxing, “it is, indeed, a beautiful city. Now, how did you manage to enjoy this beautiful city of ours, when hardly anyone you run into on the street happens to speak Italian?”
“Pardon?”
“I said, who was your interpreter?” There was silence. Dondero reached out and took the small man by the arm, slowly tightening his grip on the thin biceps. “Am I speaking too fast for you? Did you understand the question?”
Lazaretti swallowed and said, still in Italian, “I had no interpreter. I... I... you see, I have a little English...”
“You have? Great!” Dondero accommodatingly switched to English. “Then tell me in English, which portion or neighborhood of our delightful metropolis did you particularly relish?”