In the House of Secret Enemies Read online

  “That’s why I want you to find him,” Barrett said, producing a thick file folder and placing it on my desk. “I know you can’t force him to come back, but at least you can warn him that they’re on to him. That’s all I want you to do—tell him what I’ve told you. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars, plus expenses.”

  “You want to pay me five thousand dollars for finding a man and delivering a message?”

  Barrett shrugged. “I have the money, and I feel a responsibility toward my brother. If you decide to take the job, I think this dossier may help. It has samples of his paintings, as well as descriptions of his habits, life-style, and so on.”

  Something smelled bad, but I’m as corruptible as the next man. Probably more so. Still, I seemed determined to scare Barrett off. “You’re very thorough, Mr. Barrett. But, why me?”

  “Because you have a reputation for being able to establish a rapport with young people. If I sent some tough guy over there, Tommy wouldn’t listen. I’m betting that if he’ll listen to anyone, it’ll be you.”

  I flushed at the mention of tough guy; Barrett might have been talking about Garth, all six feet two inches of him.

  “I’ll take the job, Mr. Barrett,” I said. “But you’ll be charged the normal rates. I get one hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. If I can’t find your brother in fifty days, he’s not to be found.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Frederickson,” Barrett said. There was just a hint of laughter in the man’s voice, and I couldn’t tell whether it came from a sense of relief or something else. “There’s a round-trip airline ticket inside that folder, along with a check for one thousand dollars. I trust that’s a sufficient retainer.”

  “It is,” I said, trying as best I could to keep my own feelings of elation out of my voice. It had been some time since I’d seen that much money all in one place.

  “Dr. Frederickson—” Barrett studied the backs of his own hands. “Since time is so very important in this matter, I had hoped that you—well, I’d hoped that you could get on it right away.”

  “I’ll be on the first plane,” I said, reaching for the telephone. I allowed myself a smile. “One advantage of being my size is that it doesn’t take you long to pack.”

  I landed in Rome, checked in at a hotel near the Vatican, and immediately began making the rounds of the art galleries. An artist, especially a young one, would probably be in either Florence or Venice; a drug user and pusher in Rome. Besides, if Tommy Barrett was as good as his brother said he was, and if he was making it, the chances were that some of his work would be surfacing in the Rome galleries.

  I was checking the stuff in the galleries against the art samples in the dossier Barrett had given me. I was looking for work with Tommy Barrett’s style or signature, preferably both. If I got no lead on him in Rome, then I could try Florence, Venice, or maybe Verona. Then there were the jails to be checked out; after that the cemeteries.

  I made no effort to shake the man who was following me, mainly because I was curious as to his reasons. He looked young, big, and strong, a professional on his way up. He was good, but not that good.

  I decided to lead him around a bit. Following the example of my feet, my mind began to wander.

  I was still wondering who Barrett’s sources were, and how he had found out about me. I certainly didn’t have that many references, not the kind Barrett would know. My light had been hidden under a test tube for most of my short career.

  I’d always been interested in criminology, and nature had partially compensated for her small joke by endowing me with a rather impressive I.Q. that put me in the so-called genius category. All of which doesn’t make it any easier to reach the groceries on the top shelf of Life’s supermarket.

  Of course, there isn’t a police force in the world that would hire me on a regular basis and, even if there was, I wouldn’t want it. Garth was a public servant because he wanted to be; me, because I had to be. And there was the difference.

  It had often occurred to me that I was merely trying to overcompensate for the fact that my brother had been born normal and I had not. But I knew it was more than that. Part of it boiled down to the fact that I had the same needs and shared the same hungers as all men, a yearning for self-respect, for simple human dignity.

  All of which tends, at times, to make me a little paranoid. But it wasn’t paranoia that had put the man on my tail, and paranoia didn’t explain why Barrett had been willing to pay five thousand dollars for the somewhat ephemeral quality of rapport.

  On the other hand, I didn’t anticipate that much difficulty in tracking down Tommy Barrett. Dead, alive, or imprisoned, I was fairly confident I’d be able to catch up with him. His dossier revealed him to be an artistic, highly sensitive individual, intelligent but lacking the guile necessary to elude the police or me for very long.

  Also, Tommy Barrett’s life-style and mode of dress limited him in the places he could safely go without immediately attracting attention. Add to that the fact that I speak passable Italian. I figured my chances of finding an expatriate American in Italy were pretty good.

  I scored on my fifth stop—Tommy Barrett’s work, style and signature, was propped up in the window. The young girl in the store was cooperative; the artist lived in Venice. Fifteen minutes later I was on my way to the train station.

  I decided it was time to get rid of my tail and, at the same time, try to get some line on who he was and why he was still following me.

  A few years before, I’d almost been killed by a pervert who had a thing for dwarfs. After that, I’d taken steps to make sure it never happened again. I knew every nerve and pressure point in the human body.

  The years in the circus had toughened my own muscles, and I had kept them that way. Knowledge of anatomy was my ultimate weapon, and karate had provided me with a delivery system.

  I went down a quiet side street, ducked into an alley and immediately flattened myself against the side of the building.

  My friend arrived a few moments later. It’s doubtful he knew what hit him. I shifted my weight forward, thrusting the stiffened fingers of my right hand deep into the man’s solar plexus, just beneath the rib cage. He bounced once on his face, then lay still.

  I worked quickly, dumping the contents of his pockets out onto the ground. I found a small, blurred tattoo on the inside, fleshy part of his thumb that I recognized as a Sicilian clan marking. Minor Mafia. His clothes were dusty, as though he had recently walked through a field of grain. There was a small spiral notebook. I slipped it into my pocket and walked hurriedly from the alley.

  I got off the train in Mestra, a small town a few kilometers from Venice where I had found comfortable lodgings on previous trips to Italy, and which was relatively free from the summer tourist crush.

  It was too late to go into Venice that day so I checked into a hotel, rested awhile, then went out for some pasta. Later, I settled down in my room with a brandy to go over the small notebook I had taken from the man I’d decked in the alley.

  It didn’t take me long to decide there wasn’t much in the book that would be of use to me. Most of the pages were filled with crude obscene drawings. There were the names of women, each name accompanied by a sort of sexual rating that I suspected was more wishful thinking than the result of actual research. On the last page was the neatly lettered notation, “823drop10.” I put the notebook on my bed stand and went to sleep.

  I got up the next morning and took a cab to the outskirts of Venice, then got on a water bus. If Tommy Barrett was in Venice, I had a pretty good idea of where I’d find him, this time of day, in the middle of the tourist season.

  I got off at St. Mark’s Square, then pushed my way through the crowds to the central pallazza itself. I took the elevator to the top of the clock tower and got off on the observation deck. I glanced once more at the dossier photos, then took the binoculars I’d brought with me out of their case.

  I didn’t need them; even without the glasses I could see Tommy Barrett
standing in front of St. Mark’s Basilica, directly beneath its famed four horses. Elizabeth Hotaling was with him, shilling his sketches to the shifting knots of people that would gather around him for a few minutes watching him work, then drift on to one of the many other artists at work in the pallazza.

  Easy cases make me nervous. I descended and attached myself to a group of Barrett’s current admirers. Gradually, I worked my way to the front, where I had a clear view of the artist and his girl friend. Elizabeth Hotaling caught my eye and smiled. I smiled back.

  The girl in front of me matched the photograph in the dossier, but that was all. The rest of Barrett’s description just didn’t fit. True, there was a toughness about her, in the way she moved and handled herself. But I was positive that once she’d been tougher, and that most of that quality had been burned out of her; what remained now was only an aura, a lingering memory, like the smell of ozone in the air after a thunderstorm.

  She was beautiful, but she had more than that: a confidence, a sense of presence that could only have come from a variety of experiences she certainly hadn’t gotten in the middle of St. Mark’s Square.

  Tommy Barrett, from what I could tell by simply looking at him, wasn’t in the same league. Not as far as experience was concerned. They contrasted, yet somehow they matched perfectly. I guessed they were happy together.

  Of one thing I was certain: Neither one of them used drugs, at least not on a regular basis, and even then not the hard stuff. I can spot most serious heads a block away, if not by needle tracks then by the pupils of the eyes, the pallor of the skin, nervous mannerisms, or any one of a hundred other traits that are apparent to the trained observer.

  Whatever the couple’s problems, drugs wasn’t one of them. And, if Tommy Barrett was a notorious pusher, what was he doing in the middle of St. Mark’s Square peddling charcoal sketches to tourists?

  And what was I doing in Italy?

  There was no doubt but that the elder Barrett had lied. But why? It seemed I had inherited a puzzle along with my retainer, and the shape of that puzzle was constantly changing. I decided to try some new pieces.

  I stepped forward and touched Elizabeth Hotaling gently on the arm, then leaned toward Tommy Barrett.

  “Excuse me,” I said quietly. “I’m Robert Frederickson. I wonder if I could talk to you privately? I won’t take much of your time.”

  “I don’t bargain on the price of the sketches, mister,” Barrett said without looking up. His tone was not hostile, simply businesslike.

  “The sketches are two dollars apiece, Mr. Frederickson,” the girl said. “That really isn’t very much, and it’s the best work you’ll find around here. If you’re interested in oils, we’d love to have you visit our apartment. I make excellent cappuccino.”

  “I’m sure you do, Miss Hotaling, and I’d like to see Mr. Barrett’s work, but first I’d like to talk to you.”

  I waited for the reaction that came; the man and woman exchanged quick glances. I followed up my lead. “You’re Elizabeth Hotaling and you’re Tommy Barrett,” I said, indicating the two of them. “I’m here to deliver a message from Tommy’s brother.”

  Barrett suddenly paused in the middle of a stroke, then carefully placed the piece of charcoal he’d been working with into the chalk tray of his easel. He slowly turned on his stool, away from the crowd. I walked around to the front of him, the girl trailing a few steps behind.

  “Who are you?” Barrett said softly, his eyes searching my face.

  “I gave you my name. I’m a private detective from New York. As I said, your brother sent me here to deliver a message.”

  “Mister, I don’t have a brother.”

  I can’t say I was surprised. That was the way the case had been going. Now the trick was to discover who the man in my office had been, and what game he was playing. I decided to go slow with Barrett and the girl; reactions were proving more reliable than words.

  “I’m sure you must know this man,” I said carefully, watching Barrett. “He’s big, over six feet. Snappy dresser. He talks good, but you can tell—”

  The description was meager but it had an immediate effect on the young painter and his girl friend. Elizabeth Hotaling let out a strangled sob and struck at my back with her fists. The blows didn’t hurt but they did distract me long enough to enable Tommy Barrett to bounce one of his wooden easel frames off the side of my head, knocking me to my knees. Barrett grabbed the girl’s hand, dragging her after him into the crowd.

  The blow had dazed me. Still, I would have been up and after them if it had not been for the man kneeling over me, his knee digging into the muscles of my arm.

  Even in this rather untenable situation, pain shrieking through every nerve end in my body, I couldn’t help but admire his technique; it was beautiful. To the crowd it must have seemed as though he was trying to help me; only I could see the ugly black sapper he pulled from beneath his sport coat, or the short, hard stroke that slammed into the base of my skull.

  The smell of rotting fish finally woke me up. I was dangling over the edge of a walkway between two buildings, my face about four inches above the surface of a particularly foul-smelling, stagnant stretch of backwater from one of the canals.

  I had no idea how the man had gotten me here. Probably, he’d simply picked me up and carried me off. After all, in this day and age, who asks questions just because you’re carrying around a dwarf?

  One thing was certain: The man knew his trade, and if he’d wanted me dead I’d be at the bottom of the canal instead of just smelling it.

  There had been no need to find Tommy Barrett because Tommy Barrett hadn’t been hiding. Anyone could have done what I had done so far, but I had been chosen to do it, which meant that I was, if not the star of the opera, at least first tenor. Why?

  I was sure I’d never seen the man in my office in my life and I hadn’t been busy enough to make that kind of enemy. I tried to make some connection with my work at the university but couldn’t. I doubted any parent would go to these lengths because I’d failed a student.

  I was hurting. I managed to drag myself out through the labyrinth of alleys to the main square, then got on a water bus. It was late. There wasn’t a cab in sight back at the main terminal, and the buses had stopped running. Despite my disheveled appearance, I managed to hitch a ride back to Mestra.

  It was time to call Garth. As much as I hated to admit it, Big Brother’s help was needed. Actually, what I needed was information, and that information, if it existed, would most likely be found on a police blotter. But it could wait. Figuring the time differential, Garth would be just getting out of bed, and there wasn’t much he could do for me there. Besides, I needed sleep myself if I hoped to make any sense over the phone.

  I stumbled into my room and immediately knew something was wrong; the empty space on the night stand where I had placed the notebook caught and held my attention like a gun bore aimed at my belly.

  Grimacing against the pain in my head, I made a quick check of the room. It didn’t take me long to discover that the lock on my suitcase had been sprung. Nothing was missing. My clothes were a bit rumpled, but it almost seemed as if the searcher had made a conscious effort to leave everything as he had found it, despite the fact that I would certainly know he had been there because of the missing notebook. That produced a discordant note inside my head, but things up there were already so out of tune that I didn’t give it much thought; I hurt too much.

  I went into the bathroom and filled the sink with cold water, then plunged my head in and gingerly scrubbed at the caked blood where the blackjack had bounced off. I blew bubbles beneath the water to take my mind off the pain. I owed somebody, I thought; I certainly did owe somebody.

  The two policemen were waiting for me when I came out.

  They looked like Abbott and Costello. Both men had their guns drawn and pointed at me. Costello was down on one knee, his arm extended straight out in front of him as though he was preparing to defend against
the Charge of the Light Brigade. I almost laughed; instead, I muttered a long string of carefully selected obscenities.

  Neither man said anything. Abbott jiggled his gun and Costello rose and went to my suitcase. The fat man groped around inside the lining for a few moments, then smiled. Mad genius that I am, it suddenly occurred to me whoever had taken the notebook wasn’t entirely dishonest.

  Like a pack rat, the man had felt compelled to leave something behind to soothe my ruffled feelings. Like the plastic bag filled with heroin that Costello was now holding in his hand.

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said. The words blurred on my tongue. “Do you think I’d be stupid enough to leave a bag of heroin laying around in an empty suitcase? Look at the lock; it’s been jimmied.”

  “The condition of your luggage is no concern of ours, signor,” Abbott said evenly. His tone belied his comical appearance. He was a serious man, and he hated me. It was obvious that somewhere along the line he’d picked up more than a passing interest in people he suspected of pushing drugs.

  “My name is Frederickson; Dr. Robert Frederickson. I’m a private detective. I didn’t put those drugs there. I’ve never seen that plastic bag before in my life.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time to work these details out, signor. In the meantime, you should know that the boy you sold drugs to this afternoon is dead.”

  “What boy?” I whispered.

  “The artist. We found his body in an alley. He had died from an overdose of the heroin you sold him. Fortunately, we have many informants. It was not difficult to find a man of your—”

  He hesitated, embarrassed. I rushed to fill in the silence. “What about the girl that was with him?”

  “Venice has many alleys, signor.”

  Little tumblers were clicking in my brain, tapping out a combination that spelled a prison cell. Or death. I was glad I hadn’t eaten. As it was, I was fighting off a bad case of the dry heaves. I was sure that whoever was framing me wouldn’t stop here, and I wasn’t anxious to wait around to see what other surprises were in store for me.