Stiletto by Harold Robbins Page A

patterns on the buildings. Three days had passed since Vanicola had died and they were exactly nowhere. He looked down the desk at the men seated opposite. There was Captain Strang of the New York Police, Jordan in from Las Vegas and Stanley up from Miami.
    He spread his hands on the desk in a gesture of defeat. “That’s the story. I’m not blaming any one of you, the responsibility was mine and I accept it. Tomorrow morning I’m due in Washington to see the chief. Senator Bratton is on the Bureau’s back and the chief wants a personal report.”
    “What are you going to tell him, George?” Stanley asked.
    “What can I tell him?” Baker answered rhetorically. “I don’t know any more than he does.” He picked up an envelope from the desk. “My resignation’s in here. I’m turning it in tomorrow.”
    “Wait a minute,” Jordan said. “The chief hasn’t asked for your scalp.”
    Baker smiled wryly. “Come on, Ted, don’t be naïve. You know the chief as well as I do. He doesn’t like failure.”
    As they fell silent Baker absently pressed the button on the slide projector on his desk. It jumped to life and threw a picture on the wall. It was a scene of the crowd inside the corridor of the courthouse.
    “What’ve you got there?” Jordan asked.
    Baker pressed the button idly. “Pictures of the corridor taken by newspaper photographers as Dinky Adams was going into the courtroom.” He pressed another button and the scene changed. “I’ve looked at them a thousand times. You’d think with all the pictures they took, we’d find something. Not one of them took the picture at the time we needed it.”
    He hit the button and the scene changed again. “I forgot you fellows didn’t see it yet.”
    He stared for a moment then pressed the button again.
    “Wait a minute,” Stanley said, an excitement rising in his voice. “Can you go back to the picture you had on before this one?”
    Baker hit the button. Stanley got up and walked over to the wall and looked closely at the picture. He put a finger out and pointed to a man. “Have you got a doohickey on that machine that will enlarge the picture of this guy in the green alpine hat?”
    Baker laughed disgustedly. Another blank. “That hat isn’t green. It’s the wall paint.”
    Captain Strang interrupted. “It was green, George. I remember noticing it in the crowd.”
    Swiftly Baker fiddled with the lens. Now there was only one man’s face on the screen. There was only a side angle of the face but there was no mistaking the hat.
    “I’ve seen that hat before,” Stanley said.
    “There are lots of hats like that,” Baker said.
    “But not faces like that,” Jordan said suddenly. “I know that one.”
    They turned to him. “That’s Count Cardinali,” he said. “The racing-car driver. He was at the table next to us in Vegas. He was there with the girl who models for all those ‘Smoke and Flame’ cosmetic ads, Barbara Lang.”
    Stanley jumped to his feet, almost sputtering. “They were at the St. Tropez too. That’s where I saw the hat. I was in the lobby when they checked in and he was wearing it!”
    Baker stared at them. Maybe it wasn’t over yet. He picked up the telephone and spoke into it. “I want a complete I.D. file on Count Cardinali. The works, from the day he was born until yesterday!”
    He put down the telephone, still looking at them. “Do you have any idea where he may be right now?”
    “I do,” Captain Strang answered. He took a newspaper out of his pocket and opened it on the desk. He pointed to the top corner of the page.
    Baker looked down at it. There was a picture of Cardinali over the story. The headline read,
Famous Sportsman Out of Hospital Tomorrow
. There was a brief story beneath about the accident on the Sunshine State Parkway in which the girl was killed.
    Baker lifted his eyes from the paper and whistled. “If this guy is the Stiletto,” he said in a sober voice, “he’s goin’ to be a tough one to