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build a case around.
    The legal duels that followed were expensive both for the Government and for Gopher, and as usual only the lawyers showed a profit. Uncle Sam was able to lay hands on less than a tenth of
the amounts claimed for liabilities and penalties, and could only retaliate by depriving Destamio of his newly acquired citizenship and
deporting him back to the land of his
birth. What Italy thought about this was not reported, and indeed the
Ital ians never seemed to have been asked if
they wanted him.
    “So
you know all about me, Saint,” Destamio said. “And I know a lot about you. What
I don’t know is why
you get so interested in me all at once. Why?”
    The
question was thrown in a conversational, almost offhand manner. But Simon knew that
this was the
bonger, the $64,000 question, the whole and sole reason why he had been brought there with such ambiguous
courtesy. Many things might hang
upon his reply, among them perhaps the further duration of his own life.
    Yet the Saint seemed even more casual and
indif ferent than his
host, and the hand holding his cigarette
was so steady that the smoke rose in an unwavering column through the still
air. He answered truthfully as well, having decided a little while ago that that would be the most un complicated and productive policy. Also he
wanted Destamio’s reaction when a certain name was men tioned again.
    “I’m still wondering,” he said,
“what happened to Dino
Cartelli.”

 
    II
    How Alessandro Destamio made a Bid,
    and Marco Ponti told Stories
     
     
    If
the Saint had expected some pyrotechnically dra matic response, he would have been
disappointed. Either the
name meant nothing to Destamio, or he had been waiting for the question and knew in ad vance how he would field it. The racketeer
only grunted and
shook his head.
    “Cartelli? Don’t know him. Why ask me?
What makes you so nosey about me, anyhow?
All the time I get reports how you’re asking
questions about me. A man in my
position don’t like that. Lotta
people would like to see me in trouble, and I gotta take precautions.”
    “Like having my clothes cut up?” Simon in quired icily.
    Destamio grunted again—a porcine reflex that seemed to be his opening gambit to all
conversation.
    “Maybe. Somg guys get too nosey, they get worse than that cut up. You
ain’t answered my question:
why should I know about this Cartelli?”
    “Because
that’s what a man called you at the Arcate the other night. He seemed certain that you were Dino Cartelli. I heard him.”
    Simon waited for the grunt, and it was more
ex plosive than ever.
    “Is that all you got on your mind? The
guy was nuts. The
world’s full of nuts.” Destamio snapped his fingers and squinted at the Saint.
“Say—now I recognize
you! You were the guy at the next table who gave Rocco the squeeze. I didn’t
recognize you till now. I
pulled out because I try to stay outa trouble
here. I got enough trouble.” He sat back and
chewed the black and dreadful stump of his cigar, staring at the Saint with
piggy eyes. “You swear that’s
all the interest you got in my affairs? Because some nut calls me by a wrong name?”
    “That’s all,” Simon told him
calmly. “Because this
nut, as you call him, was murdered that night. So he may have known something that would make a lot more trouble for you.”
    For a long silent moment Destamio rolled the cigar between his fingers,
glaring coldly at the Saint.
    “And you think I bumped him to shut him
up,” he said
finally. He flicked ashes over the balcony rail, towards the sea far below, and suddenly laughed. “Hell, is that all? You know,
Saint, I be lieve you.
Maybe I’m nuts, but I believe you. So you thought you had to do something to get justice for that poor dope! What’s your first name— Simon? Call me Al, Simon—all my friends call
me Al. And pour us another
drink.”
    He was relaxed now, almost genial in a crude way.
    “Then your name never was Dino Cartelli?” Simon