Free Pronto by Elmore Leonard Page B

Olympics. I'll tell you something if you don't know it. Everyone smokes in Barcelona."
    "I quit last year," Harry said.
    She inhaled and blew a stream of smoke at him as she said, "So, you saw me on the funivia. All the years I come here, when my husband was alive and now, I never visit the Santuario di Montallegro. So I went there today." She stubbed out the cigarette and sat back against her fur jacket.
    "The Sanctuary of the Holy Virgin of Montallegro," Harry said. He paused and said, "At first, when I came back here to visit, I thought I wanted to live in Sant'Ambrogio. You know where it is?"
    "Of course. Not far from here."
    "Where the poet Ezra Pound lived."
    Maura nodded. "Yes, I heard of him."
    "During the war, in 1944, the Germans made him move out of his apartment, number twelve Via Marsala. There's a plaque on this side of the building." Harry pointed. "Down there, near the bandstand. He was living there with his wife."
    "Yes?"
    "The Germans were fortifying against the American Army coming up the coast from Rome. And they made Ezra and his wife move in with Ezra's mistress, Olga Rudge, in Sant'Ambrogio."
    "You serious?"
    "She had a house there. Olga did."
    "His wife and his mistress under the same roof?"
    Harry was nodding, yes, that's how it was.
    "It could never be," Maura said.
    "I don't imagine it was easy."
    "The wife," Maura said, "did she kill the mistress or her husband? Or both?"
    "They made do."
    "I don't believe it."
    "The house in Sant'Ambrogio also has a plaque on it that says Ezra Pound lived there. Last year when I was looking for a place the house was being renovated, fixed up, painted. ... It was raining the day I saw it."
    "You wanted to live in this house?"
    "I thought it might be possible. The first time I saw the house was in sixty-seven, but I wasn't looking to buy it then. Ezra Pound was living here again and I came to see him."
    "He was someone you admired?"
    That was a good question. Harry said, "I did meet him the first time I was here, during the war. It was in 1945. I was between here and Pisa, back and forth, and I got to meet him."
    "Ezra Pound," Maura said. "I know the name, but I don't think I read any of his poetry."
    "At the time I met him," Harry said, "they had him in a cage. They called it the gorilla cage. He was being held on a charge of treason. For making radio broadcasts in Rome during the war."
    "Yes? What did they do with him?"
    "He was brought home.... It's a long story. But, I met him. I talked to him. I saw him here again in sixty-seven. Then last year when I looked at the house in the rain... It was in August and it rained most of the time I was here. The next day I went up to Montallegro for the first time and decided to look for a house around there instead."
    Harry paused. The woman was waiting for him to continue and he didn't know what to say, how much he wanted to tell her.
    "So you bought a villa?"
    "I leased it for two years."
    "You rather live where the Virgin Mary appeared to a man four hundred years ago than where this poet lived with his wife and his mistress and somehow wasn't killed. I don't blame you."
    Harry saw he was going to let her go, not waste any more effort on her. She was too big for him. Joyce was as tall as Maura but slim, without those tremendous thighs. Still, he asked Maura if she would like to see his villa, not sure why he did. She seemed to think about it, as though she might accept his invitation, then shook her head and said, "Not today." So after that he stopped trying to make conversation and pretty soon the woman from Genova picked up her fur jacket and left the cafe.
    Harry wondered about her, a disagreeable woman. He could imagine her husband in the industrial film business having an affair with an attractive dark-haired actress who demonstrates electronic devices and Maura finds out about them. Catches them on a dark set or in the editing room. If the husband hadn't died of a heart attack Maura might have killed him.
    Maybe she