"She said she was driving up at once," the woman replied. "She thought perhaps you were going to take her uncle away and she wanted to see him again."
Or, I thought quietly, she just wanted to be here while I was. I walked to the door. If I were wrong about the girl, I wanted to find out and give her a big, fat apology. If I was on the right track, she was in big trouble. I was still convinced that someone had gotten to him from the time I'd left them in Rome, somehow, somewhere. Who and how? Those were the two key questions. I was sure that if I got the answer to either of them I'd be able to answer the other. Right now it was question time for Amoretta. But the hallway was empty. I took a quick look outside but the streets of Rome were dark and still. I found Signora Caldone.
"Amoretta's gone," I told her. "Does she have anywhere else to go here in Rome? Any other friends, relatives?"
"No, no, we were the only ones," the woman said. "She has probably run into the streets. She is so upset. Please look for her."
I'd look for her all right, I said grimly under my breath and I raced outside, pausing for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dark. The Caldones lived just off a small piazza, and I quickly searched the circle of light under each of the street lamps dotting the edges of the square. I saw her unmistakable form as she paused under the lamp at the farthest corner of the square. I took off on the run as she moved on. She was nowhere in sight when I reached the spot, and the street leading away was a narrow, cobble-stoned one of darkened shops, bakeries, groceries, and fruitstands, with a profusion of doorways. I listened for the click of heels on the stones but there was none. She was hiding in one of the doorways. I started to move down slowly, when she stepped out and stood waiting. Even in the dark I could feel the burning hatred of her eyes.
"Why do you follow me?" she asked.
"You're going to answer a few questions," I told her, coming up to her. She took a step backward and half-turned to run. I was just going to grab her when I heard the faint scrape behind me. I whirled, but not fast enough. The blow, it felt like a billy, crashed down on the side of my temple. My head exploded in shooting lights and stars and sharp pain. I pitched forward and forced myself not to black out. I heard footsteps, a lot of them. I grabbed at a pair of legs in front of my face and yanked. The owner gave a yell in Italian and went down. I leaped forward onto him, my head still fogged, glimpsing a short, sweatered man when a sharp kick in the ribs sent me toppling from him to one side. I continued on in a hard roll, hitting hard against more legs, grabbing out at them and pulling. One figure came down over me and I got in a sharp left to his belly, hearing him grunt in pain. My head had cleared a little now, and I knew there were at least four or five of them. Pressing my heels down on the spaces between the cobblestones, I got a lift and catapulted myself forward, head-on, into someone's mid-section, carrying him backwards with me. Managing to avoid flailing arms and wild swings, I grabbed the one I had knocked backwards by the arm, lifting him in a judo move and sidearmed him through the window of a bakery. I heard his yell amid the sound of the shattering glass. Still fighting more out of training and instinct than clear-headedness, I swung at a face that appeared before me, heard the satisfying crunch of my knuckles into a cheekbone, and the face disappeared. But now it was my turn to be tackled. It was a good, hard one from behind and I went down. A hard object crashed down on my skull almost at the same instant a heavy-soled shoe got me in the temple. I heard Amoretta's voice before the lights went out, damn her black heart. She'd figured I'd go after her. She'd led me right into it. I tried to lift my head to shake it but it wouldn't respond. Another blow crashed down on me. This one didn't hurt as much. It just rang the curtain down.
I don't know how long it was before I woke up but from the condition of my head I guessed it was a good while. I moved my neck slowly in a circular motion and the fuzzy cobwebs started to tear loose in my head. A tight sharp pain in my wrists told me that my hands were tied behind my back. A terrible bouncing and jouncing wasn't helping the throb of my head any, but I managed to focus on the surroundings. I wasn't alone. Four other men sat inside what was obviously the interior of a closed panel truck. I was against the driver's partition, the others sat in pairs on each side of the truck. They were stocky, hard-faced, black-eyed men wearing work clothes and heavy, peasant's shoes, their hands heavy, gnarled, thick-fingered. I noted that three of them sported cut faces and bruised cheekbones. One of them called out to the driver in Italian.
"The Americano is awake," he said.
"Si, be careful," the voice came back. "Watch him"
Then I heard Amoretta's voice. "Take no chances " she said.
They could all relax. This wasn't the time or place to act up. Besides, I wanted to find out more about where I was being taken. From the steep incline of the truck, we were going up into the mountains. The men spoke to each other in short, curt asides but enough for me to pick up the dialect as Calabrese. It wasn't hard to figure the rest. Amoretta was taking me up into the hills of her home. If I'd been out as long as I thought, chances were we were almost there. How she and the peasants of Calabria fitted into this dirty business was something else again. It was sure as hell an unexpected turn. But then, this whole thing had been weird from the very start. The road was getting rougher and the truck bouncier. I tested my wrist bonds. They were well knotted. They had taken Wilhelmina from me, but I could feel Hugo in his sheath around my forearm. They'd been in too much of a hurry to get me off the street and into the truck, and they plainly weren't professionals. I knew that from the way they'd been falling all over each other to get at me in that narrow street. If that first blow hadn't taken the edge off my reflexes, they'd be still back there putting themselves together.
The truck slowed and my muscles tensed automatically. I counted two more curves before it stopped and the rear doors were opened. I was pulled out and exchanged glances with Amoretta, looking intense and throbbing in the blouse and the tight jeans.
"Nice friends you've got," I said casually.
"These are my brothers," she said, gesturing to three of the men. "And the other two are my cousins."
"A family enterprise," I commented.
"When I heard you were returning to make sure of your work, I brought them with me," she snapped. "Now we are going to find out what you did to Zio Enrico and why."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I said frowning. She slapped me across the face. Hard.
"Take him inside," she said. "Enough of his lies."
I was still frowning as I was hustled into a low-roofed, long house of stone and terra cotta. They took me into the kitchen, a large, spacious room, and threw me into a sturdy, straight-backed chair, keeping my hands tied behind my back. As double security, they tied my wrists to the back of the chair. Amoretta stood in front of me, supervising operations. When they finished, they formed a semicircle behind her. Her eyes, blazing in anger, bored into mine.
"When I think that…" she began, and quickly broke off, a fleeting flush of embarrassment crossing her face.
"Go on, Amoretta," I grinned. She slapped me again, harder.
"I'll kill you," she hissed. "You are a creature from hell. You're going to tell us what you did to Zio Enrico."
"I didn't do anything to him," I said, studying her eyes. She slapped me again.
"No more lies," she shouted. There was nothing but hate and anger in those eyes, I saw. This was no act, no attempt to trick me into anything.
"By God, you really mean it, don't you?" I asked, incredulously beginning to realize it.
"Yes, I mean it," she said. "I'll kill you myself if I must."