"Hit and run?" Remo said. "I never saw anybody hit by a car who looked like that."
"Yeah? What do you know about it? You seem to know a lot about a lot of things." Wyatt said.
"Yeah. You're big on interfering. First at Curpwells office. Now here. We're going to have to talk about that," Wyatt said menacingly.
"Well, I'll get out of your way then and let you do your job," Remo said. "By the way, sheriff, one thing?"
"What's that?"
"You know anyplace in town where I can get raw oysters? You know, all slippery and slimy on the half shell?"
Wyatt spun and began upchucking again.
"Guess not," Remo said to the deputy and walked away.
"Fagola," Wyatt hissed after Remo's car departed and then heaved some more. It was not the idea of raw oysters that had made him chuck and not even the sight of the two mutilated bodies. He had seen men die like that before. Weinstein and McAndrew.
What upset Sheriff Wade Wyatt's stomach was the phone call he had received. The young female voice had told him where to find the bodies and had done something else too. She had summoned him to a meeting that night. And that could mean only trouble.
CHAPTER NINETEN
"Remo. Remo. Remo."
Don Fiavorante Pubescio slammed the telephone receiver back onto its stand.
"Always Remo. Is my life to be destroyed by some department store owner?"
He looked down at Manny the Pick Musso, who sat sweating unhappily in a canvas sling chair next to Don Fiavorante's swimming pool.
"I am unhappy with you, Emanuel," Pubescio said. "Very unhappy."
Musso extended his hands to his sides, palms up, and shrugged. He tried a smile that was meant to be ingratiating but turned out to be sickly.
"That was Gromucci on the telephone. Gummo is dead. Albanese is dead. Palermo is dead. Killed by this Remo, whoever he is. And you!"
"I send you to find out something about earthquakes. You wind up killing a man. Then instead of doing the job right, you come back and let your men go talk to that professor. And now two of your men are missing. One of your men is dead. Another one has a broken arm. Why? Because of this Remo."
He leaned over, tall and tanned in a pale flowered bathing suit, shook a finger into Musso's sweating face.
"First I tell you what is wrong. I like people too much. I put my trust and my faith in fools. I trust Gummo to straighten out a little labour problem at a grape farm. It is too much for him. He is dead.
"I trust you to find out a little piece of information for me. Do you do it? No. It is too much for you, so you come back here with your tail between your legs.
"Why? Because of somebody named Remo."
Pubescio turned and walked toward the edge of the pool, then turned back to speak again.
"What should I do with you, Emanuel?"
Musso opened his mouth to speak, then closed it as Pubescio went on.
"Should I do what they did in the old days, to punish failure? I would have cause. No one could point a finger at me and say there is Don Fiavorante Pubescio, who treats his men unfairly and in anger. No one could say that, should I do what I have a right to do. But, no, I am too kind. I like you too much. So I will tell you something.
"This Remo is not just a department store owner. What he is, I do not know. But what he is not, I know. And what he is not is just a shopkeeper. Somehow, he is involved with the earthquake people. He knows about it and he can tell us what we want to know.
"But will he tell us if we walk up to him and say, 'Hey, Mister Remo, tell us about the earthquake people?' No, he will not tell us that way. He will tell us if he is forced to tell us. He will tell us only to stop the pain.
"Now, do I have a man who can inflict this kind of pain? Yesterday, I would have answered: 'Yes. I have Emanuel Musso. He is just the man for the job.' But today, I am no longer sure. Perhaps Emanuel Musso has grown soft. Perhaps he has become too old for his job. Perhaps I should seek a younger, stronger man."
Musso stood up from the sling chair. "Don Fiavorante, I am not too old or too soft and so I ask a favour. Send me after this Remo. We will make him talk, my friend and I," he said, patting his jacket pocket where his ice-pick was jammed into a cork.
"You ask to go? You ask to go after a man who has told you never to reappear or you will be carried out feet first?"
"I ask to go."
"Perhaps you are still the Emanuel Musso of the old days. Perhaps you are ready to gamble all on your skills. Because this is a second chance and there is no third chance." He looked searchingly into Musso's eyes to make sure that Musso had understood. Succeed this time or chips out of the game.
Musso understood. "I will not fail, Don Fiavorante. I will get the information you seek. And then I will repay this Remo for his insolence to you. I will teach him a very painful and enduring lesson. After all, he is only a man, isn't he?"
Don Fiavorante Pubescio did not answer. He flexed his legs, dove into his pool and began to swim its length underwater.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sheriff Wade Wyatt was going to have to deliver a message to Washington. An important message.
"Shoot," he said. "I don't know nobody in Washington."
"Then ask John Wayne for an introduction, pig. We don't care how you do it."
The girl who spoke to Wyatt across the living room of the small trailer wore blue jeans that stretched taut over the muscles of her buttocks and legs as she walked. She was naked from the waist up and the nipples of her enormous breasts played peekaboo through her long, swirling black hair.
Wyatt licked his lips.
"Sheriff, I do believe you're thinking impure thoughts," she said. She stepped closer to Wyatt who sat in a straight-backed wooden chair with no cushion. It was uncomfortable on his butt and he felt like a schoolboy at a desk, being scolded by his teacher.
She stopped in front of him and flung her hair back behind her with a toss of her head. The rising mounds of her breasts stared back at Wyatt's staring eyes.
"Like them, sheriff?" she taunted. "Like them?" she demanded.
"Yes," he sputtered.
"Well, don't touch, pig. Not if you want to stay healthy. Feinstein. McAndrew. The two Mafia goons. They liked them too. You want to wind up like that?"
"Nope," said Wyatt promptly and honestly.
"Okay. Then keep your fly zippered and your lip buttoned. I don't know what you're so upset about anyway. We're going to make you a rich man."