Rozano Nicoli had sent a torpedo to pick us up.
He lumbered toward us as we stepped from the elevator, huge shoulders as wide as a doorway. He wore a white tropical suit that tightened around his muscles. His arms swung almost to his knees, knuckles bruised and misshapen from hitting too many people, face welted and blotched and angled wrong from taking too many of the same kind of punches.
He had been a ring specialist a long time ago. You could tell by the curled meat that used to be his ears and the crooked z-shape of his nose. His eyes were almost hidden behind the two golf-ball puffs of flesh. And the scars were many. Fat scars above both eyebrows, a nasty one where the cheekbone had cut through the skin; the face looked without form, mushy and lumpy.
And there was another lump I noticed. A bulge under the left armpit of the tropical suit.
“Mr. Acasano?” he said in a low nasal hiss.
I nodded.
His stupid eyes swept from me to Tanya. “Who’s da broad?”
“My woman.”
“Uh... oh.” He blinked a lot, and had a faraway look as if he were daydreaming. “You’re suppose ta come with me.”
I took Tanya’s elbow and followed the moving house across the gingerbread lobby. When we got to the front door, he stopped and turned to us.
“I’m Quick Willie,” he said. “I know you’re Thomas Acasano, but I don’t know da broad’s name.”
“Do you have to know?” I asked.
He blinked on that for a few seconds. “Yeah. On accounta I gotta introduce her.”
“To who?”
“Da guy in da car.” He turned his back and stepped out onto the sidewalk. We followed.
A 300-series black Mercedes was waiting at the curb. As we walked up to it I saw an Oriental sitting in the front passenger seat. He watched us come with no expression on his face.
Quick Willie stopped us with a hand on my arm. “I gotta search you,” he said.
I lifted my arms and let him pat my chest. He reached inside the light sport coat and pulled out Wilhelmina. Then he patted my sides and legs. Very few searchers ever discovered Pierre or Hugo.
Then he turned toward Tanya, and for the first time since we met him, his small dull eyes brightened. “I gotta search her too.”
“I don’t think so,” I said softly.
Quick Willie’s small eyes bored a hole right through my head. Even the Oriental leaned over enough to watch. There was silence.
A blood-red Fiat came roaring by with no muffler. Another followed. Then three Lambrettas passed, their engines making the constant ring-a-ding-ding sound of the two-stroke. Narrow streets snaked off in every direction. The bright sun sent wispy heatripples up from the streets and sidewalks. Three blocks behind us was the harbor, but even here the smells of the sea came drifting by.
“I gotta search her,” Quick Willie said. “I got orders.”
The Oriental was watching me closely. He was immaculately dressed in a tailored sharkskin suit, light tan in color. The shirt was white, the tie striped brown and yellow. There was a curious kind of amused look on his face. His eyes were slanted, of course, and there were high cheekbones and a smoothness to the face. He gave off an air of assurance, as though there were few problems he could not handle, and handle well. He looked like the type of man who took charge, and earned a kind of fearful respect from others. There was that too, a ruthlessness. Sitting there with that amused look, he reminded me of a rattlesnake sunning himself. I had no doubt who the man was.
“You can’t search her, Willie,” I said.
Maybe I was blowing the whole thing. By refusing to allow Tanya to be searched maybe I was creating unnecessary trouble. I guess Nicoli had a right to let his torpedo clear all weapons before we got to the villa. But it was Tanya who got me off the hook.
She touched my arm lightly. “It will be all right, darling,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
“I don’t want that creep’s hands on you.”
“They won’t be on me for long.” She took two steps forward until she was almost bumping Willie. Raising her arms slightly she looked up into Willie’s mangled face. “O.K., big boy, frisk me,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
He did. He patted everywhere, and although the search was quick, and revealed nothing, Quick Willie obviously relished it.
“Okay,” he said at last. He opened the back door of the Mercedes for us. “You still didn’t tell me da broad’s name.”
I smiled at him. “That’s right, Willie. I sure didn’t.”
We got in the back seat, and flinched when Willie slammed the door. When he got behind the wheel, the Oriental turned around in his seat to face us. His arm rested on the back of the seat. He was wearing a gold watch and a very large ruby ring on his little finger. He gave us a grin that revealed perfect teeth, sparkling white.
Then he extended his right hand back toward me. “Mr. Acasano, my name is Tai Sheng. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
I took the hand. The grip was strong. “And I you, Mr. Sheng. This is Sandee Catron.”
“Yes, I gathered that. A pleasure, Miss Catron.”
We were all very good friends now. Quick Willie got the Mercedes purring, and we moved smoothly into the Fiat and Lambretta traffic.
Sheng had nodded toward Sandee, a gesture she returned, and as we rolled, he smiled broadly at me.
“May I call you Thomas?” he asked presently.
“Of course, please do.”
The smile broadened. “You brought the list, of course.”
“Of course.”
He held out his hand. “Rozano sent me to pick it up.”
I smiled back at him, then leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “Mr. Sheng, I am no fool,” I said, keeping my voice even but firm. “I don’t know what your relationship is with Rozano but he and I go back more than ten years. We know each other well. His instructions were explicit; I was to deliver the list to him personally. You offend me by asking for the list. In doing so, you are calling me stupid and, Mr. Sheng, I am not stupid.”
In a voice as smooth as pouring olive oil, he said, “I assure you, sir, I did not intend to imply that you were... stupid. I was merely...”
“I am well aware of your intentions, Mr. Sheng. You wish to make yourself look large in Rozano’s eyes so you will receive special favors. Well, let me tell you, Rozano and I go way back. We are very close. You and I may be competing for his right hand, but sir, when it comes to his friendship you are out in the cold.”
He thought that over for a few seconds. “I was hoping, somehow, that we could be friends.”
I could feel the anger boiling inside me. I knew what this man was, and what he wanted. “For a long time, Sheng, you have been trying to discredit me in Rozano’s eyes. And now you insult my intelligence by asking for the list. You and I cannot be friends. We are competing with each other, and only one of us will win.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Just what are we competing for?”
“Territory. The organization in the States is in chaos. We need a leader, and that leader will be Rozano. We are competing for a seat by his side, for a large slice of the pie.”
His voice lowered to become intimate. “I am not competing with you, Thomas. I have other plans...”
“I don’t believe you.” With that I leaned back against the seat. “Rut all this is academic,” I said. “Rozano is going to be upset with you because you subjected my woman and me to a search.”
“We were ordered to.”
“We’ll see. I am turning the list over to Rozano, and no one else.”
He pursed his lips and stared at me. I think at that moment, if the circumstances had been right, he would have gladly killed me. Then he turned around with his back to us and stared through the windshield.
Quick Willie had driven the Mercedes away from the buildings of Palermo. Now we passed sun-bleached shacks with dark children playing in dirt yards. Some of the shacks had faded wooden picket fences around them. The children were dressed in ragged clothes as dirty as themselves. Now and then I saw a woman old before her years, sweeping the earthen floor of a shack, pausing to swipe a forearm across a sweat-beaded forehead.