Milo March #6, page 1
A Lonely Walk
by
Kendell Foster Crossen
Writing as M.E. Chaber
With an Afterword by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
Steeger Books / 2020
Copyright Information
Published by Steeger Books
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©1984, 2020 by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
The unabridged novel has been lightly copyedited by Kendra Crossen Burroughs.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.
Publishing History
Magazine
As “The Bodies Beautiful of Rome,” Cavalier, July 1957 (vol. 5, no. 49), pp. 44–47, 59–77. Illustrated by Bob Schulze. A condensed version.
Hardcover
New York: Rinehart & Co., October 1956.
Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1956.
London: T. V. Boardman (American Bloodhound Mystery #177), 1957.
Paperback
New York: Ace Double #D-225, 1957. Cover by Rudy Nappi. (Back-to-back with Loser by a Head by Harry Giddings.)
New York: Paperback Library (63-1421), A Milo March Mystery, #12, September 1970. Cover by Robert McGinnis.
For Martha:
Omnia vincit Amor.
—Virgil
And for so many:
E lascia pur grattar dov’è la rogna.
—Dante
Author’s Note
This is a story of the Rome of today, or tomorrow, but in the same way, although offered as a tale of melodrama and suspense, it is a story about you and me. What happened to Anna Maria Pericoloso and Riccardo Balena and Milo March could happen to us. Because of this, there are many real things in this novel, many real people, and many real places—and I hope much reality. The rest, while no less real in one sense, is the result of the author’s imagination. Aside from those characters who appear under the names by which you know them from your daily newspaper, none of the characters is meant to portray any person living or dead.
M.E.C.
Before the Beginning …
The beach was quiet in the night. There were miles of white sand, turned silver by the moonlight. The waves of the ocean were gentle with the hour of sleep, washing softly over the sand. The country slept—except for those who were a part of the night—except for those who used the night as a blanket to cover deeds that were better left unspoken and undone.
The car huddled against the rim of the road. They carried their burden across the sand toward the ocean. Their feet sank into the sand, the grains spilling into their shoes so that they cursed softly to themselves. They did not worry about tracks, for there had been many feet at the beach that day, but they were not accustomed to sand in their shoes. It made them uncomfortable. They were men of the night—but of the closed night where the floors were hard and the walls solid.
A few feet from the water, they placed her on the sand. Her face was up, and as they drew away, the moonlight brushed its silver over her bare body—over the breasts, firmer now in death, over the gentle sloping belly and over the loins that would never again writhe in passion. No matter what was to come after, this was her first funeral, and the soft light from the moon did well by her.
They started to leave, and their feet kicked up little spurts of sand so that some of the golden grains spilled on her breasts. One of the men turned back to brush the sand away. He liked everything to be clean and orderly and systematic.
One
The man made one last dab with his brush at the sign on the door and quit. He gathered up his brushes and his paint, grunted at me, and left. I stood in the corridor for a minute, just admiring the sign: March’s Insurance Service Corp.
That’s me. The name’s Milo March. I’m an insurance investigator. Or insurance detective, if you like the word better. Which means that I get everything thrown at me that cops do—plus what the cops throw—without getting much of the credit. But the pay is better.
This was my first try on my own. I’d been working for an outfit in Denver, Colorado, for years. Finally, I’d gotten fed up with taking orders and making some other guy’s bank account fat. Most of the insurance companies knew me, and several of them said they’d throw me some work. I moved to New York and took a little office on Madison Avenue, deep in the heart of the Martini Belt. A private office and a reception room and enough furniture to get by, including an empty filing cabinet. The man had just finished painting the name on the door and I was open for business. As soon as I made a couple of cases, I’d hire a receptionist. Blond and well stacked. At least, the view would be good on dull days.
I went into the office and sat behind the desk, trying to feel like an executive. It didn’t work. I said to hell with it and opened the bottom drawer. There was a bottle of Canadian Club and some paper cups there for an emergency. Not feeling like an executive was an emergency. I poured myself a drink and sipped it, wondering how long I’d have to wait and if my bank account would hold out. I’d sent out cards with my address and phone number two days earlier.
The phone rang.
I snatched my hand back from the receiver and let it ring twice more before I picked it up.
“March’s Insurance Service Corporation,” I said, trying it on for size. It felt a little heavy.
“Milo?” a man asked.
“Yeah,” I said. That sounded more natural.
“Martin Raymond,” he said. “Congratulations, boy.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound polite. Martin Raymond was a big wheel at Intercontinental Insurance Company. I’d worked for them a number of times and I’d sent him notice of my new setup.
“I think I might have a job for you, if you can handle it,” he said.
“I guess I can,” I said casually. “There are a couple of things on the fire, but there’s always room for one more. What’s the case?”
“How about running over here, boy, and I’ll sketch it out for you.”
I had to resist the impulse to drop the phone and start running immediately.
“Okay,” I said. “I sent the girl out for something. As soon as she gets back, I’ll be right over.”
“Roger,” he said and hung up.
I had another nip of the Canadian Club for luck. Then I locked the office and left. Intercontinental was about ten blocks away. I decided to walk so I wouldn’t get there too quickly.
Intercontinental had been one of the first insurance companies to move uptown.
They owned their own building on upper Madison Avenue. They were one of the big companies, and I was feeling pretty good about the call. If Martin Raymond wanted to, he could throw me enough business to keep me going most of the time.
The reception room was big and glossy. A lot of policy payments had gone into furnishing it. There was a redhead at the reception desk who looked as if she’d been custom-built, like the furniture. I liked her lines better. I told her who I was, and a few minutes later I was on my way back to the inner sanctum.
Martin Raymond was pretty custom-built himself. He looked like a dozen other vice-presidents. His clothes came from Brooks Brothers. His accent came from Harvard. His hair was prematurely gray. You could tell by looking at him that, according to the fashion of the moment, he would always have a Bloody Mary, an extra dry martini, or something-on-the-rocks. Raymond might like some other drink, but he’d always order whatever the other vice-presidents were drinking, just as he’d always buy the right sort of tie.
“Glad to see you, Milo,” he said as I came in. He gave me a manly, executive-type handshake. “Getting settled down in the big city?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good boy. You know, I’m glad you decided to open up for yourself here. We used to send a lot of cases out to Denver just because we knew you’d be working on them.”
“Thanks,” I said. I suddenly realized that this was the second time I’d thanked him. I’d better watch that or he’d think there was something wrong with me.
“Your passport in order?”
“Yeah,” I said. I tried not to look too interested. If he was interested in my passport, it meant a trip abroad—and a fat fee.
“How about your vaccination?”
“I was in Germany only a few months ago,” I said, “so it’s still good. Is Intercontinental handing out all-expense tours these days?”
“We are this time,” he said. “Wrap this one up quickly and maybe we’ll do it more often.”
“What’s the pitch?” I asked. “I thought you usually had the European stuff handled over there.”
“We did,” he said, “but I can’t say we’ve ever been very happy about it. Our branch offices have always handled any investigations, but most of the time it’s only meant that we paid the full freight. I’ve been wanting to make some other arrangements, and then your card and this case came in at the same time. We’ll try it this once and see what happens.”
“Must be a big one.”
He shrugged. “Not so big. Life insurance. Twenty thousand dollars, with a double indemnity clause. Maybe you can save us the extra twenty thousand.”
“Twenty thousand here and twenty thousand there,” I said. “So somebody got knocked off and the local cops say it was an accident?”
“It’s trickier than that,” he said. “How’s your Italian?”
“L’uccello vede il calamaio del professore sulla tavola,” I said.
“What’s that mean?”
“The bird sees the professor’s inkwell on the table,” I said. “It’s the kind of thing they teach you, but I’m damned if I’ve ever found a good place to use it. Otherwise, I may be a little rusty, but it should come back to me. I was in Italy with the OSS some years back. What’s the case?”
“A girl named Anna Maria Pericoloso. In Rome. Twenty-five years old. Her family’s one of the group that’s been making money since the war. They insured her for twenty thousand about two years ago. Double indemnity clause. They put in a claim for the full forty thousand dollars a week ago.”
“How’d she die?”
“She was found early in the morning on the beach between Ostia and Torvaianica. In other words, about thirty miles south of Rome. She was lying there without any clothes on. She’d been dead for several hours.”
“Drowned?”
“Who the hell knows,” he said. For once he lost the Harvard accent. He sounded more like P.S. 41. “Luigi Manzo, our man in Rome, says he hasn’t been able to get any information out of the cops. The case was closed in three days. The police and the girl’s family say that she hadn’t been feeling too well and that she had some idea that bathing in sea water made her feel better. They guess—guess, mind you—that she went down there at night to bathe in the nude, had a cramp when she was wading out, and drowned. Then the guess goes that the waves washed her back up on the beach.”
“What bothers you about it?” I asked.
“Everything. For one thing, they never found her clothes. If she went swimming, then where are her clothes?”
“Hanging on a hickory limb,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Luigi Manzo says that all Rome is buzzing with rumors about the case. He says that it has all the earmarks of being another Wilma Montesi case—she was even found only ten miles from where the other girl’s body was found. Anyway, there’s talk about politics, and that somebody high in the government caused the police to close the case. There’s more talk about traffic in drugs and wild parties. The names of a couple of deported American gangsters have been dragged in. And there are others who think the family hired someone to kill her so they could collect the insurance. Oh, there are plenty of reasons for us to look into it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s not going to do you any good to prove murder unless you can prove somebody in the family did it.”
“Of course,” he said. “The results don’t hang on whether you save us the extra twenty or not. You know how it is, Milo. We have to be on top of the heap all the time. Let somebody get away with something, even if it doesn’t cost us any money, and soon everybody thinks he can get away with everything. We want you to go over there and shake it down for whatever is there. If it costs us forty, okay; if we save the twenty, double okay. But that’s the way it is.”
“Okay,” I said. “I just wanted it put on the line. I’ll take the job. One hundred a day and expenses.”
“Right,” he said.
“When do you want me to leave?” I asked.
He grinned at me. “Tomorrow. I have reservations for you on the Pan American leaving tomorrow.”
“Pretty sure of yourself,” I said.
He shrugged. “It figures, boy. You just opened. You can’t have that much business already. We’ve got plenty to offer; you’ll take it. It’s all in the book.”
“Someday,” I said sourly, “you’re going to run into something that isn’t in the book and then you’re going to have trouble. You’ll have to turn in your charcoal-gray suit and untwist the lemon peel in your martini.”
He laughed. “You’re sharp today, boy. On your way out, stop and see my secretary. She’ll give you your ticket and some expense money. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
That was pretty clear. I was back to being one of the hired help and he had other things to do. I stood up. “You want interim reports?” I asked.
He waved his hand. “At transatlantic phone rates?” he said. “I’ll take the final report. I know you’ll do right by us. On your way, boy. Give my love to those Italian film actresses.”
“Sure, I will,” I said. I went out and saw his secretary. She gave me a big fat envelope. I waited until I got out of the office to open it. Inside there was a round-trip ticket on Pan American and one thousand dollars in nice crisp bills. They were as lovely-looking as anything I’d seen in a long time.
I spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready to leave. I arranged for a phone answering service to take all my calls. I knew an investigator at one of the insurance companies who promised to try to handle any cases for me that might come in, just so I wouldn’t lose a client by not being there. Everything else I turned over to my attorney, Dick Jablow, to handle.
The next day at about noon I was on the Pan American Clipper, watching the Long Island shoreline drop away beneath me. It was a seventeen-hour flight. I ate and drank and slept and tried to pretend that I didn’t hear the roar of the motors. At eleven o’clock the following morning we landed in Rome. A coach took us into the air terminal at the railway station. From there I took a taxi to the Bernini Hotel on Piazzi Barberini. I had stayed there when I’d been in Rome before and liked it.
I checked in and went up to my room. I’d decided I was going to rest before I did anything—I’d never liked sleeping on planes. Everything in Rome would close up at one o’clock anyway, so it would be four or five before I could sit down with the Intercontinental man.
I had a bottle of Italian brandy sent up to the room. I had a couple of drinks out of it, then I took a shower. After that I had another drink and stretched out across the bed.
I was about two-thirds asleep when the phone rang. I came up out of it and grabbed the receiver.
“Pronto,” I said.
“Hello, Milo,” a voice said in English. There was something vaguely familiar about it.
That took the rest of the sleep out of my eyes. So far as I knew, Luigi Manzo was the only person in Rome who knew I was coming, and even he didn’t know what hotel I was going to stay at. Also, he had never met me and wasn’t apt to be calling me by my first name.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
He laughed. “Johnny Fornessi,” he said.
I guess he knew he didn’t need to ask if I remembered him. I knew him, all right. Johnny Fornessi was one of the American gangsters who had been deported to Italy. I’d brushed up against him a couple of times in the States and once in Italy after he’d been sent back. Nothing serious, but the brushes had been enough for us to know each other.
“How’d you know I was here and where I was staying?” I asked.
He laughed again, but there was no amusement or humor in it. There never was in Johnny Fornessi’s laughter. “You know how it is,” he said. “Word gets around. And whenever there’s any word, I usually hear it. This place is a real Hickville, but I’ve started getting a few lines out.”
“I’ll bet,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve started a Welcome Neighbor movement?”
“No.”
“Just wanted to hear the voice of an old pal?”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then I give up. I was never any good at guessing games. I always did better with spin the bottle—but then you’re the wrong type to play that with.”
“Don’t try to be funny,” he said. “I called you because I want to do you a favor.”
“Don’t point it at me,” I said. “Your favors are always loaded.”
“I figured you might misunderstand,” he said, “but I’ll take the chance. I ain’t got no interest in this myself, but I don’t like to see another American knocked off if it can be helped.”
“Or unless you can do the knocking off,” I said. “You interest me, Johnny. Who’s going to do all this to me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Honest, I don’t, Milo. All I heard was that you were coming over here to work on the death of the Pericoloso girl. The way I hear it, there are a lot of important people who want it left alone.”
