Free Assignment - Palermo by Edward S. Aarons

brightened. “Unless, perhaps, you are—what do you call it?—a talent scout?”
    Durell took the cue. “I understand a rival firm has been considering Gabriella for a cinema role.”
    The man’s mouth opened. “I hear nothing of this, signore. It is impossible.” He shook his round head. “In any case Gabriella would never leave the family. Never!”
    “No one else has inquired about her?”
    There was a second’s pause that told Durell what he wanted to know. “No one like you, signore.”
    “But someone has been here?”
    “An old friend, only.” The man scowled. “A troublemaker who disturbs our angel’s heart and drives her to the wind and the sea.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “She is not here now. She is out there somewhere.” He waved a thick arm at the blue Mediterranean. “She loves the sailboats and goes alone when she can. She will return only in time for performance tonight.” “You have no idea which way—?”
    “None. And I think you lie and are bad man, not a talent scout. You are one of them who brings trouble to us. Perhaps police. I do not know. Today one cannot tell blacks from whites.”
    Durell caught at a splinter of the man’s thought. “One of whom? Who do you mean?”
    The man assured himself they were out of earshot of the laborers working around the tents. “Signore, I beg of you. If you are one of the Fratelli, leave us alone. We are not involved in your affairs. We interfere with nothing.” Fear glinted in his dark eyes. “We ask only to live in peace, eh? We wish to know nothing. Has not Gabriella made this clear? Vecchio Zio has given her a promise of protection—”
    “What has she done?”
    “Nothing!” The man almost shouted the word. “Is it her fault to be born a princess of the dark, this lovely angel who seeks only sunlight and the wind?” “Who else has been here?” Durell asked again.
    “The Devil himself.” The man crossed himself and turned away. “Now I have my work to do.”

    It could be Karl Kronin, Durell thought, as he surveyed the organized confusion around the circus tents. It all looked innocent. A fisherman’s diesel engine knocked at the wind. Traffic droned on the Lower Corniche road. Early tourists in bikinis walked by. All at once he smelled and tasted the danger here and he stared closely at the poster of Gabriella Vanini, with her slim, lovely figure and her dark flying hair. How close was she to O’Malley? Was it significant that she had gone sailing today? She had been disturbed. By O’Malley? Had she gone to find him?
    He scanned the blue sea under the tumbling white clouds. Several sails bent out there under the loom of the mountainous coast. They must be early-bird yachtsmen trying their wings on this windy spring day. The needle in the haystack again. He felt frustrated. He had to reach O’Malley and the girl could take him to O’Malley. But Karl Kronin was somewhere nearby. He could feel it in his bones. And where Kronin walked, death walked on his heels.
    He went out on the stone quai, where charter boats were moored. Ten minutes later he was aboard a sleek motor cruiser, passing the mole. The captain was a slim teen-ager from Provence in a singlet, duck pants, and sneakers. The varnished plaque over the sky deck announced his name as Jean Dufours.
    “Mademoiselle took the Manta ,” he told Durell in English. “A real chick, eh, monsieur? You like my English? It is good, non ? I learn from American college girls.”
    “It’s good. Can you spot the Manta , Jean?”
    “When I see it, dad. She went toward Juan-les-Pins. I watch her trying to—how you say it?—cool it. She burns a blue flame.”
    Durell smiled and began to feel his years. “A bonus for you if we find her in the next half hour.”
    “You wantto catch her bad?” The boy grinned, showing white teeth. “Another is anxious to catch her, a gentleman your age, and three, maybe four men—damned Germans I think. They took Papa Simone’s