This was all going a little too swiftly for me. I was trying to figure where we had slipped up. There must have been a large confused frown on my face.
“Tommy, have you ever heard of a Government organization called AXE?”
Somewhere inside my head a part of me snapped to attention. It would have been easy for me to panic. Instead this part of me stepped back two paces and looked at the whole thing objectively through my eyes.
Tanya was being tortured. Not because of what she knew about me. After all, Rozano had been sympathetic toward me. He had said that I too had been fooled. So, it wasn’t me they had found out about, it was Tanya. And Nicoli wanted to know if I had ever heard of AXE.
I shrugged, then said cautiously, “Maybe I could have read about it in the paper or seen something on television.”
Nicoli seemed pleased that I didn’t know much about the organization. He leaned toward me with his eyes shining behind the bifocals. “Tommy, my good friend, it’s like the FBI or the CIA. This AXE is a Government agency out to crush us.”
“That’s impossible.”
“To you and me, good friend, it sounds indeed impossible. This thing of ours, this Cosa Nostra, is much too big and powerful to crush. But still the Government keeps on trying, huh?”
“So what has this got to do with my woman?”
The gold fillings were sparkling. “Your woman is not the Sandee Catron she pretends to be. She is, in fact, an undercover agent for AXE sent here to Palermo to assassinate me!”
My mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe it,” I said in a whispered rush.
“So far Sheng hasn’t been able to get her real identity, but he has ways. It will just take time.”
I rubbed the back of my hand across my lips, then adjusted my trouser crease. He was watching me closely and I knew it. To show anything other than shock would have told him something. I made sure my hand was shaking when I lit one of my cigarettes.
“Rozano,” I said calmly. “I am not a man to jump to conclusions. I have known Sandee for a time, perhaps not as long as I have known you, but long enough. To hear something like this about her is a deep shock. As much as I admire you, my friend, I cannot take this without some kind of proof.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Logical, Tommy, That is why I have always admired you. Logical Of course you must have proof, and I will give it to you After all what are friends for, huh? I will open your eyes to this thing.”
“Perhaps there is the possibility you may be wrong.”
“No,” he said shaking his head. His hand was still on my shoulder. “Sheng has proved himself a good ally. His men are everywhere.”
“Sheng is a man to be watched,” I said without feeling. “He will go far.”
Nicoli nodded. “Sometimes I think perhaps he steps too far. But he is useful, very useful. Listen carefully, Tommy. About a week ago there was a Chinese cook in one of the large Lake Tahoe restaurant-casinos. This man reported seeing Sandee Catron come out of a mountain cabin. He also saw three men. Since the cook was a good man working for Sheng, he decided to do a little checking. By asking around he learned that the men were newcomers. He already knew that Sandee Catron was your woman, so he checked with Chinese Communist American Headquarters in San Francisco’s Chinatown. To his surprise he learned that Sandee was supposed to be in her New York apartment with you. If that was true, then who was the exact duplicate there at Lake Tahoe?”
I smoked and listened. The picture was becoming very clear to me.
Patting my shoulder to emphasize each sentence, Nicoli went on. “This cook had given a description to his headquarters of the three men in the cabin. Word came from San Francisco that one of the men was on file in Peking as an agent from a Government organization called AXE. Since one man was an AXE agent, logically, so were the other two. Why did they have a girl who resembled Sandee Catron? When Sheng told this to me, I thought these AXE agents had planted an impostor in New York and had kidnapped the real Sandee Catron. And I thought the reason for it was so the undercover agent could get the list from you, or get the information out of you somehow. These broads can be very persuasive, huh, Tommy?”
“Very. So, at first you thought she was after me. What made you change your mind?”
He shrugged. “The girl came to Palermo with you. That meant she served another purpose. And then it was so obvious I cursed myself for being stupid She was sent to assassinate me so I wouldn’t take over in the States.”
I leaned to my left and mashed the cigarette out in the ash tray. The act bought me a little time to figure how I was going to react to all this.
“So?” Nicoli said. “What does my old pal, Tommy Acasano, think of all this?”
I looked at him with pursed lips and a frown. “How did this cook, this stranger I have never met, know that Sandee Catron was my woman?”
A flush came to his face. He blinked at me, took off his rimless glasses, and started wiping them with a spotless handkerchief. Then he cleared his throat and fixed me with a steady stare.
“Tommy, you and I have been friends for more than a decade. We have seen many changes in this thing of ours. We have seen the young punks rise and the old masters go down in defeat. Change is constant, even in a business as stable as ours. You and I have not seen each other in ten years. It could be someone else from another family has won your loyalty.”
“Rozano!”
He held his hands up, shaking his head. “No, it is true. Such a thing could happen.”
“Not to us.”
His hand went back to my shoulder. He was smiling now. “I know that now. But how was I to know, with you all the way across the ocean, huh?” He shrugged. “I am one step from the top. I cannot afford to trust anyone. Every man on my team has been screened and continuously checked for months. Even you, my friend.”
“I see.” He watched me lean back and cross my legs.
“Forgive me,” he said in a voice that sounded almost whining. “But I felt such measures were necessary.”
“That I can understand.”
“Of course all the information was filtered back to me in strict confidence. I knew all about you and the Catron broad, about the accident that broke both the boyfriend’s legs, the apartment you got for her, how you spent most of your time there, everything. It is all on file in San Francisco.” He looked at me sympathetically. “You have been played for a sucker, Tommy.”
I leaned forward, slapping my fist into my open palm, “That bitch! That double-crossing little tease! Sure. Pretending headaches all the time, or giving some excuse not to go to bed with me. I should have been suspicious then.”
Nicoli smiled as though he had just been convinced of something. “Tommy, I am touched. You don’t know how good it makes me feel to hear you say that. If you had been sleeping with the girl, there would be no way she could fool you. You would have to know she was different, that she was not Sandee Catron, and that would mean you were in the assassination plot with her.”
“Impossible.”
“Yes. Impossible. I know that now. But to prove your loyalty to me, my friend, may I have the list?”
“Certainly.” I unfastened my belt and pulled it out enough to reveal the secret zipper on the inside. He watched me closely as I pulled out the rolled piece of paper and without hesitation handed it over to him. “I will do more than this,” I said. “The girl made a fool of me. She has to pay for that. No man would respect me knowing I had been duped by a broad. She has to be hit and hit hard. And, Rozano, I feel that I am the only one entitled to do it.”
Nicoli carefully unrolled the piece of paper. Holding it under his nose, he looked at it through the bottom half of his bifocals.