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“No, no, no!” Canidy quickly said, holding his hands palm out and shaking his head.
Antonio stopped his verbal salvo and stared intently at Canidy.
Now what the hell do I do?
What would— Oh yeah!
Canidy then held out his right hand toward Antonio, then repeatedly rubbed the tip of his thumb across the tips of all his fingers. Then he again made a circle with the index finger and thumb, then poked his left index finger in and out of it.
Antonio looked at Canidy’s hands, then met his eyes.
Canidy saw that there now was a conspiratorial gleam to Antonio’s eyes—It’s damn near a leer—as he chuckled a knowing Heh-heh.
“Sí!” Antonio finally said slowly, smiling broadly.
He started to stand. The process of getting to his feet took a moment, and when he was finally up, he was not steady.
Canidy feared that the movement was going to trigger another episode of flatulence. It did not come to pass.
* * *
Antonio Buda led Dick Canidy—unsteadily at first, with only two comparatively brief episodes of flatulence—almost twenty blocks to Palermo’s four corners city center. There they turned down an alley, and finally took some stone steps that led below street level.
We’re entering a whorehouse through a secret entrance?
No, it looks like a service entrance.
There was a heavy steel door that had at eye level a smaller door behind metal bars. With his sausage-shaped knuckles, Tweedle Dee rapped out a series of three knocks three times. There was no answer, and after a minute, he sighed, then repeated the code, this time knocking harder and louder.
There was no answer still, and Antonio looked at Canidy and shrugged. They waited another minute, then an impatient Canidy hammered the code out with his fist.
The smaller door suddenly flung open, and the left side of what looked like a young woman’s smooth-skinned face immediately filled it. Her big brown eye curiously darted between Canidy and Buda—then the face and eye were yanked out of the way.
That was a really good-looking woman, Canidy thought.
A pockmarked acne-skinned face with a hard-looking dark eye immediately replaced the first. The eye also darted between them, this one looking less with curiosity than it did with great suspicion.
Judging by how the face was turned to look up and out, Canidy guessed it was that of a boy.
He must be standing on his tiptoes.
And his haircut is about as bad as the Budas’ bowl cuts.
The boy’s face then quickly pulled back, and the small door slammed shut. There then came the sound of locks being turned, and the door was opened slightly. A small male arm then appeared in the opening, impatiently waving them to come in. Tweedle Dee had to push open the door more in order to fit though the gap. When Canidy had followed, the door was slammed shut and it was immediately locked by the boy. The woman was nowhere to be seen.
Canidy was surprised to see that the boy had a stub of a cigarette now dangling from his lips—and then realized that the boy wasn’t a boy.
It’s a
fucking midget!
The adult male stood four-foot-four. He wore the pants and vest of a dark gray woolen suit, and a wrinkled white open-collared cotton shirt, its sleeves rolled up past his elbows.
And he’s armed!
Canidy could see that inside the man’s waistband, somewhat hidden by the vest and his suspenders, he carried a small-frame semiautomatic pistol. It was familiar to Canidy. The black Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, chambered in .380 ACP, was standard issue as general officers’ pistols—and for officers in the OSS.
Should I be suspicious of where the hell Shorty got that Colt?
