You Find Him – I'll Fix Him Read online

  "A crazy way to behave in Rome," she said, leaning back and smiling up at me, "but not in Sorrento."

  ''Now, look ..." I began, but she held up her hand, stopping me.

  "I know how you feel about me. I'm not a child. I feel the same way about you," she said. "Come with me to Sorrento. Everything's arranged. I know how you feel about father and your job, but I promise you it will be perfectly safe. I've rented the villa in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sherrard. You'll be Mr. Sherrard, an American business man on vacation. No one knows us down there. Don't you want to spend a month with me – just the two of us?"

  "But we can't do it," I said, knowing there was no reason why we shouldn't do it, and wanting to. "We can't rush into it like this …"

  "Don't be so cautious, darling. We're not rushing into anything. I've planned it most carefully. I'll go down to the villa in my car. You'll come down the next day by train. It's a lovely place. It faces the sea on a high hill. There's no other villa for at least a quarter of a mile." She jumped to her feet and fetched a large-scale map that was lying on the table. "I'll show you exactly where it is. Look, it's marked on the map. It's called Bella Vista – isn't that cute? From the terrace you can see the bay and Capri. It has a garden: there are orange and lemon trees and vines. It's completely isolated. You'll love it."

  "I dare say I will, Helen," I said. "I admit I'd like to do it. I wouldn't be human if I didn't, but what's going to happen to us after the month's over?"

  She laughed.

  "If you mean you're scared I shall expect you to marry me, you needn't be. I'm not going to get married for years. This is something I want to get out of my system. I don't even know that I love you, Ed, but I do know I want to be alone with you for a month."

  "We can't do it, Helen. It's not right ..."

  She touched my face with her fingers.

  "Will you be a darling and go now?" She patted my face and then moved away from me. "I've only just got back from Naples, and I am very tired. There's nothing more to talk about. I promise you it will be safe. It now depends whether you want to spend a month with me or not. I promise you there'll be no strings to it. Think about it. Don't let's meet now until the 29th. I'll be at Sorrento station to meet the three-thirty train from Naples. If you're not on the train, I'll understand."

  She crossed to the lobby and opened the front door a few inches.

  I joined her.

  "Now, wait, Helen . . ."

  "Please, Ed. Don't let's say any more. You'll either be on the train or you won't. That's all there is to it." Her lips brushed mine. "Good night, darling."

  I looked at her and she looked at me.

  As I stepped out into the corridor, I knew I would be on that train.

  PART TWO

  I

  I had five days ahead of me before I left for Sorrento. During that time I had a lot to do, but I found concentration difficult.

  I was like a teenager looking forward to his first date. This irritated me. I had imagined I would be blasé enough to take the situation Helen had engineered in my stride, but I wasn't. The idea of spending a month alone with this exciting girl really got me going. In my saner moments – and they were few - I told myself I was crazy to go ahead with this, but I consoled myself with the knowledge of Helen's efficiency. She had said it would be safe and I believed her. I argued that I would be a fool if I didn't grab the chance of taking what she was offering me.

  Two days before I was due to leave, Jack Maxwell arrived in Rome to take over the office in my absence.

  I had worked alongside him in New York way back in 1949. He was a sound newspaper man, but he hadn't much talent for anything but news. I didn't care much for him. He was too goodlooking, too smooth, too well-dressed and too generally too.

  I had an idea that he didn't like me any more than I liked him, but this didn't stop me from giving him a big welcome. After we had spent a couple of hours in the office going over future work, I suggested we should have dinner together.

  "Fine," he said "Let's see what this ancient city has to offer. I warn you, Ed, I expect nothing but the best."

  I took him to Alfredo's which is one of the better eating places in Rome, and gave him porchetta, which is sucking pig, roasted on a spit, partially boned and stuffed with liver, sausage-meat and herbs: it makes quite a meal.

  After we had eaten and had got on to the third bottle of wine, he let his hair down and became friendly.

  "You're a lucky guy, Ed," he said, accepting the cigarette I offered him. "You may not know it, but you're the white-headed boy back home. Hammerstock thinks a lot of the stuff you've been turning in. I'll tell you something off the record: only not a word to anyone. Hammerstock is having you back in a couple of months' time. The idea is I'm to replace you here, and you're

  going to get the foreign desk."

  "I don't believe it," I said, staring at him. "You're kidding."

  "It's a fact. I wouldn't kid about a thing like that."

  I tried not to show my excitement, but I don't think I succeeded very well. To be given the foreign desk at headquarters was the top of my ambition. Not only did it mean a whale of a lot more money, but it was also the plum job of all the jobs on Western Telegram.

  "It'll be official in a couple of days," Maxwell told me. "The old man has already okayed it You're a lucky guy."

  I said I was.

  "Will you mind leaving Rome?"

  "I'll get used to it," I said and grinned. "A job like that is worth the move out of Rome."

  Maxwell shrugged.

  "I don't know. I wouldn't want it myself. It's too much like hard work and it would kill me to work so close to the old man." He sank lower in his chair. "That pig wasn't half bad. I think I'm going to take to Rome."

  "There's no city in the world to touch it."

  He fed a cigarette into his mouth, scratched a match alight and puffed smoke into my face.

  "By the way, how's rampaging Helen getting along?"

  The question startled me.

  "Who?"

  "Helen Chalmers. You're her nurse-maid or something, aren't you?"

  The red light went up. Maxwell had a nose for scandal. If he got the faintest suspicion that there was something between Helen and me, he would work at it until he had found out just what it was.

  "I was a nurse-maid to her for exactly one day," I said casually. "Since then I've scarcely seen her. The old man asked me to meet her at the airport and take her to her hotel. She's working at the university, I believe."

  His eyebrows jerked up.

  "She's-what?"

  "Working at the university," I repeated. "She's on some architecture course here."

  "Helen?" He leaned forward, stared at me, then burst out laughing. "That's the funniest thing I have ever heard. Helen on an architecture course!" He leaned back in his chair and roared. People turned around to stare at us. He certainly sounded as if he had heard the funniest joke of the century. I didn't find it all that funny. It was as much as I could do not to kick my chair away and plant my fist in his handsome face.

  When he got over laughing, he caught my eye. Maybe he saw I wasn't all that amused because he made an effort to control himself and he waved an apologetic hand.

  "Sorry, Ed." He took out his handkerchief and mopped his eyes. "If you knew Helen like I know Helen ..." He broke off to laugh again.

  "Look, it can't be all that funny," I said, a rasp in my voice.

  "What gives?"

  "It is funny. Don't tell me she has taken you in too? Up to now the only guy on the Telegram staff who isn't on to her is her old man. Don't tell me you haven't got her taped yet?"

  "I'm not fallowing this. What do you mean?"

  "Well, you certainly can't have seen much of her. I had an idea she might have gone for you: she seems to fall for big, husky he-men. Don't tell me she showed up in Rome in her flat heels, specs and scraped-back hair-do?"

  "I'm still not following you, Jack. What is all this?"
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  "All this?" He grinned. "It seems you're luckier than I thought possible, or unlucky, depending how you look at it. All the boys back home know about her. She's notorious. When we heard she was heading for Rome and the old man wanted you to keep an eye on her, we all thought, sooner or later, you'd be a dead duck. She'll make a play at anything in trousers. You

  mean to tell me she hasn't tried to make a pass at you?"

  I felt myself turn hot, then cold.

  "This is something new to me," I said, speaking casually.

  "Well, well. She's a menace to men. Okay, I admit she has everything. She has looks, comeon eyes and a shape that would bring a corpse alive, but the trouble she can get a guy into! If Chalmers wasn't the biggest power in newspapers, every paper in New York would be carrying headlines about her at least once a week. She only escapes publicity because no newspaper wants to get on the wrong side of the old man. She gets into pretty near every damn mess there is. It was only because she was involved in the Menotti slaying that she cleared out of New York and came here."

  I sat very still, staring at him. Menotti had been a notorious New York gangster, enormously wealthy, powerful and a onetime killer. He had been hooked up with the Union and vice rackets and had been a bad man to know.

  "What had she to do with Menotti ?" I asked.

  "Rumour had it she was his piece," Maxwell said. "She was always going around with him. A little bird told me it was in her apartment that be got knocked off."

  About two months ago Menotti had been brutally murdered in a three-room apartment which he had rented as a love nest. The woman he had been visiting had vanished, and the police hadn't been able to trace her. The killer also had disappeared. It was generally thought that Menotti had been slain on the orders of Frank Setti, a rival gangster, who had been deported as a drug trafficker and was now supposed to be living somewhere in Italy.

  "What little bird?" I asked.

  "It was Andrews who, as you know, has his ear right to the ground. He usually knows what he is talking about. Maybe he was wrong this time. All I do know is that she used to go around with Menotti. She left for Rome soon after Menotti was killed. The janitor of the apartment block in which Menotti was strangled gave Andrews a pretty good description of the woman in the case: the description fitted Helen Chalmers like a glove. Our people closed the janitor's mouth before the police got to him, so it never came out."

  "I see," I said.

  "Well, if you haven't anything juicy to tell me about her while she's in Rome, it looks as if

  she has had a scare and is at last behaving herself." He grinned. "Frankly, I'm disappointed. To tell the truth when I heard I was going to take your place, I thought I might have a try at her myself. She's really something. As you were told to look after her, I was hoping to hear by now that you and she were more than old friends."

  "Do you imagine I'd be such a pea brain as to fool around with Chalmers' daughter?" I asked heatedly.

  "Why not? She's worth fooling around with, and when she handles this kind of situation, she takes good care the old man will never find out. She's been fooling around with men since she was sixteen, and Chalmers has never found out. If you haven't seen her without her specs and that awful hair-do, you haven't seen anything. She's terrific, and, what's more, I hear she is very, very keen. If she ever makes a play at me I'm not going to stop her."

  Somehow I got him off the subject of Helen and back on to business. After another hour of his company, I took him back to his hotel. He said he would be in the office the following morning to tie up the loose ends and thanked me for entertaining him.

  "You really are a lucky guy, Ed," he said as we were parting. "The foreign desk is about the best job in the business. There're guys who would give their left arms to have it. Me – I wouldn't want it. It's too much like hard work, but for you ..." He broke off and grinned. "A guy who can let a babe like Helen slip through his fingers – well, for heaven's sake! What else could you do except hold down the foreign desk?"

  He thought it was a good joke and, slapping me on the back, he went off laughing towards the elevators.

  I didn't think the joke was so good. I got into my car and drove through the congested traffic until I reached my apartment. During the drive I did some thinking. The information I had from Maxwell about Helen shocked me. I didn't doubt that what he had told me was true. I knew Andrews was accurate in any story he had to tell. So she had been mixed up with Menotti. I suddenly began to wonder who she was mixed up with here. If she had acquired the taste for dangerous racketeers in New York, she might have continued to cultivate the taste here. Was that the explanation of her high style of living? Was some man financing her?

  By the time I had undressed and got into bed, I was asking myself if I were really going to get on that tram to Sorrento. Did I want to mix myself up with a girl of this type? If I were really going to get the foreign desk, and I was pretty sure Maxwell wouldn't have broken the news unless he was certain of his facts, I would be crazy to take the slightest risk of the job coming unstuck. As he had said, it was the plum job on the paper. I knew if Chalmers found out that his daughter and I had become lovers that would be that: I'd not only lose this job, but I'd be out of

  the game for good.

  "No," I said aloud as I turned off the light. "She can go to Sorrento by herself. I'm not going. She can find some other sucker. I'll go to Ischia."

  But two days later I was on the local train from Naples to Sorrento. I was still telling myself that I was a fool and crazy in the head, but no matter how much I talked to myself, telling myself not to go ahead with this, it made no difference. I was on my way. The train couldn't move fast enough for me!

  II

  Before I caught the train to Naples, I had looked in at the office around ten o'clock for a final check and to see if there were any personal letters for me.

  Maxwell was out, but I found Gina sorting through a stack of cables.

  "Anything for me?" I asked, sitting on the edge of her desk.

  "No personal letters. Mr. Maxwell can handle all this," she said, flicking the cables with a carefully manicured fingernail. "Shouldn't you be on your way? I thought you wanted to leave early."

  "I've lots of time."

  My train to Naples didn't leave until noon. I had told Gina I was going to Venice and I had had trouble in preventing her booking a seat for me on the Rome-Venice express.

  The telephone-bell rang at this moment and Gina picked up the receiver. I leaned forward and began to look idly at the cables.

  "Who is that speaking?" Gina said. "Mrs. – who? Will you hold on a moment? I'm not sure if he is in." She looked at me, frowning, and I could see a puzzled expression in her eyes. "A Mrs. Douglas Sherrard is asking for you."

  I was about to say I had never heard of her and didn't want to speak to her when the slightly familiar sounding name suddenly rang a clear alarm-bell in my mind. Mrs. Douglas Sherrard! That was the name Helen had said she used when renting the villa at Sorrento. Surely this couldn't be Helen on the line? Surely she couldn't be so reckless as to call me here?

  Trying not to show my consternation, I reached forward and took the receiver from Gina's hand. Half-turning my back so she couldn't watch my face, I said cautiously, "Hello? Who is that?"

  "Hello, Ed," It was Helen all right. "I know I shouldn't be calling you at the office, but I tried your apartment and there was no answer."

  I wanted to tell her she was crazy to call me here. I wanted to hang up, but I knew Gina would wonder what it was all about. "What is it?" I asked sharply.

  "Is there someone listening?"

  "Yes."

  To make things more complicated, the office door jerked open and Jack Maxwell breezed in.

  "Good grief! You still around?" he exclaimed when he saw me. "I thought you were on your way to Venice by now."

  I waved him to silence, said into the mouthpiece: "Is there something I can do?"

  "Yes, please. Would you m
ind bringing me down a Wratten number eight filter for my camera? I find I need it and I can't get it in Sorrento."

  "Sure," I said. "I'll do that."

  "Thanks, darling. I'm so impatient for you to get here. The scenery is too marvelous ...."

  I was afraid her low, clear voice might reach Maxwell's ear. He was obviously listening. I cut in on her.

  "I'll fix it. Good-bye for now," and I hung up.

  Maxwell stared inquisitively at me.

  "Do you always treat your lady callers like that?" he asked as he glanced through the cables on the desk. "That was a trifle abrupt, wasn't it?"

  I tried not to show how rattled I was, but I was aware that Gina was looking at me, puzzled, and as I moved away from the desk, Maxwell was also staring at me.