Free Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 by Unknown Page A

halted at the foot of the Rinascente steps. The automatic booth stood just as Mr. Paladrini had vacated it, with the curtain half torn off its rings. From the side protruded, limply, a long strip of glistening paper.
    Johnson extended a hand and removed it. “Mr. Paladrini,” he said, and passed the whole strip over to me.
    It held six pictures of Mr. Paladrini, working from the top of his head to his ear tip. The middle two showed the whole of his face very nicely. It was plain that, beyond any conceivable doubt, the seller of balloons and the teller of fairy tales was the same man.
    “As a tonal composition,” Johnson said, “it lacks confidence. But as a clue they don’t come any better. All you and I have to do now is find him.”

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Chapter 5
    « ^ »
    At that point, I revolted. “Oh no, we don’t,” I remember announcing.
    “‘The Struggling for Knowledge hath a Pleasure in it like that of Wrestling with a Fine Woman,’ ” said Johnson. “The late Marquess of Halifax. You can retire if you want to. The police are bound to have street traders’ records. I’m going to find out who Mr. Paladrini is.”
    “If you do, they’ll arrest him for jaywalking,” I said. We were on the surface again and making, it seemed, for the Hassler.
    “Not if I don’t tell them why I want him,” Johnson said. He remained unmoved by the idea that he would outrage the Trust, involve the Dome personnel in a court case and probably have us all extradited if he pursued his silly detective work. He fed me at the Hassler, and then mentioned that he had work to do at the villa, but would spare the time to drive me back to my digs in the Fiat. How Di ever got the idea he was a sexpot I cannot conceive.
    In my pocket were two tickets, bought before his desertion by Charles for a performance by Il Gruppo Teatro Libero. The theater they were appearing in is called Il Kilt, which was enough to account for Charles’s interest. As I have indicated, he has an overdeveloped sense of the ludicrous.
    Charles, I understood, was in Naples. Di, if I was not mistaken, would be at the Number One with one or more of the boys from the Fall Fair. Timothy had last been seen bending tenderly over the ketchup-covered form of Innes Wye and was possibly even now conveying him back to his bedroom, or even possibly Timothy’s bedroom in Sansavino. Jacko’s whereabouts I knew precisely. He was at the Dome, on duty until I took over at midnight.
    There seemed to be no one to take me to Il Kilt but Johnson, who said he had seen
Il Barone Rampante
and why not hire a bedroom instead and play contract.
    I said, “Bridge? Why bridge, for God’s sake? It needs four bods.”
    “So Di has noticed,” said Johnson. “Her erotic reputation rests solely on her habit of inviting three chaps to her bedroom and all stripping off for a rubber. I know. She asked me in once, but the lights failed.”
    “What a waste,” I said, playing for safety. It seemed unlikely that he was reading my mind, but I made a determined effort to clean up my thinking. I said, “Do you follow the form in the newspapers?”
    “That’s why I took up the game,” explained Johnson. Someone had brought the old Fiat to the front of the Hassler and he held the door for me. “I think Di is going through life hoping to meet those chaps North, South, East and West. You know.
East felt an itch to overruff Dummy
? I’ll take you to Il Kilt if the Pope isn’t there. You can go about too much together.”
    In fact, he never did take me to the Kilt, because as we drew up at the front door a man came through the crowd and stood a little way off, on the pavement, just looking.
    It was Charles, with the Maserati covered with dust parked beside him.
    “Goodbye, Ruth,” said Johnson. “How was Naples, Charles?”
    “Neapolitan,” said Charles. He was still looking at me. I got out, and Charles shut the door of the Fiat and added, “I saw your yacht there. Much admired by the neighborhood.