Stiletto Read online

  Cesare’s hand moved faster than light and, though the soldier weighed a good twenty pounds more than he, the soldier sprawled on the floor. Cesare looked down at him. A strange look began to come into his face, his eyes grew dark, so dark one could not see the blue of them. He looked up at the Maestro. It had been a long time since anyone had dared refer to his illegitimate birth.

  “Give him a sword,” he said quietly. “I will fight him.”

  “No, Signor Cesare, no!” The Maestro was frightened. “The Count, your father, will not—”

  Cesare interrupted him. His voice was quiet but there was no mistaking the authority in it. “Give him a sword. My father will not like this slur on our name to go unanswered!”

  The soldier was on his feet now. He smiled and looked at Cesare. “In the army of Italy we are trained in the tradition. A sword in the right hand, a stiletto in the left.”

  Cesare nodded. “So be it.”

  The soldier began to take off his jacket, his muscular arms and shoulders came into view. He stared confidently at Cesare. “Send for a priest, my young rapist,” he said, “for you are already a dead man.”

  Cesare did not answer, but deep in his eyes an unholy joy began to grow. He threw his shirt on the floor. “Ready?”

  The soldier nodded. The Maestro called position. Cesare’s white frame looked thin beside the heavy brown body of the soldier.

  “En garde!”

  The crossed swords gleamed over their heads. The Maestro struck them up. The soldier’s sword flashed down in a powerful thrust.

  Cesare parried and the sword slipped past his side. He laughed aloud. The soldier cursed and slashed heavily. Lightly Cesare slid the blow away from him and bent to the attack. Quickly he circled his foil, the swords locked and he tore the soldier’s sword from his grasp. It fell clattering to the floor.

  Cesare placed his sword’s point against the soldier’s breast. “Your honor, sir?”

  The soldier cursed and struck it away with his stiletto. He circled to one side trying to get to his sword but Cesare was in front of him.

  The soldier stared at him and cursed. Cesare laughed again. There was a joy in him now that none there had ever seen. Cesare threw his sword into the corner beside the other.

  Before its clatter ceased the soldier sprang at him, the stiletto flashing downward toward Cesare’s face. Cesare moved slightly and the stiletto slashed the empty air.

  Cesare was crouching, the stiletto held lightly, point out, in the palm of his hand. The soldier, too, was crouching now. Warily he reached out. Cesare easily parried.

  Cesare thrust forward; the soldier stepped back then, seeing an opening, sprang again. This time the two bodies locked in a grotesque embrace. Cesare seemed all but lost as the soldier’s arms wrapped themselves around him. They stood there for a moment, swaying back and forth as if in some obscene embrace, then slowly the soldier’s arms began to fall.

  His stiletto fell from his nerveless fingers and he sank to his knees on the floor, his hands clutching at Cesare’s hips. Cesare stepped back.

  It was then they could see the stiletto in Cesare’s hand.

  The soldier fell face down on the floor and the Maestro hurriedly rushed forward. “Call a doctor!” he said anxiously, kneeling beside the soldier.

  Cesare turned from picking up his shirt. “Don’t bother,” he said quietly, starting for the door. “He’s dead.”

  Unthinking, he dropped the stiletto in his jacket as he went out the door into the night.

  The girl was waiting for him on the hill where the road made its last turn toward the castle. He stopped when he saw her. They stared at each other silently. Then Cesare turned and walked off the road into the woods. Obediently the girl followed him.

  When they could no longer see the road, Cesare turned to her. Her eyes were wide and luminous as she stepped toward him. He ripped down her blouse and seized her naked breasts cruelly in his hands.

  “Ai-ee!” she screamed, half fainting.

  Then the pain tore through him, from his swollen testes to his vitals. Frantically he ripped his clothing from him, his seed already spilling wildly on the ground.

  The bright Sicilian moon was already high over their heads when he sat up in the darkness and reached for his clothing.

  “Signor,” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer. His hands found his trousers and he got up and stepped into them.

  “Signor, I have come to warn you. My cousin—”

  “I know,” he interrupted, looking down at her.

  Her voice was frightened. “But he said he was going to kill you.”

  He laughed almost silently. “I am here.”

  “But, signor, he may find you any moment. Even here. He is very jealous and very proud.”

  “Not any more,” Cesare said flatly. “He is dead.”

  “Dead?” The girl’s voice was almost a scream. She leaped to her feet. “You killed him?”

  Cesare was buttoning his shirt. “Si,” he said shortly.

  She came at him like a tigress, her hands scratching and striking at him. She was half crying, half screaming. “You fiend! Lie with me when his blood is still fresh on your hands? Lower than animals, you! Who am I to marry now? What am I going to do with this thing you put in my belly?”

  A sudden knowledge came to him as he gripped her hands and held them tight. “You wanted it there or it wouldn’t be there,” he said.

  She stared up into his eyes knowing now that he knew. She drew her head back and spat up into his face. “I don’t want it now!” she shouted. “It will be a monster, a bastard like its father!”

  He brought his knee up sharply into the softness of her belly. The pain choked in her throat and she fell, writhing and vomiting against the earth.

  He looked down at her, his hand involuntarily going into his jacket pocket and finding the stiletto still there. He took it out.

  She looked up at him, a fear beginning to grow in her eyes.

  His lips pulled back in a cold smile. “If you don’t want it then, cut it out of yourself with this.” He threw the stiletto to the ground beside her. “It will purify you. His blood is still on it.”

  He turned and walked away.

  In the morning they found the girl dead. She was lying there with the stiletto grasped in her two hands, her thighs already caked with the drying blood that had soaked into the earth beneath her.

  Two days later Cesare left for school in England. He was not to return to Italy until the war began almost five years later.

  In the meantime the Gandolfos built a new winery with the ten thousand lire Count Cardinali gave them.

  ***

  The taxi pulled to a stop before El Morocco and the giant doorman opened the door. He saw Cesare and smiled. “Ah, Count Cardinali,” he said warmly. “Good evening. I was beginning to think we weren’t going to see you tonight.”

  Cesare paid the driver and got out of the taxi, looking at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He smiled to himself. The thought of the woman waiting inside the restaurant for him was part of the excitement too. Her warm lovely body also held the reality of living.

  2

  Special Agent George Baker began to turn off the lights in his office. When he reached the door he hesitated a moment, then went back to his desk and picked up the telephone. It was a direct line to Captain Strang at Police Headquarters. “How does it look?” Baker asked.

  Strang’s heavy voice boomed through the wire. “Haven’t you gone home yet? It’s after eleven o’clock.”

  “I know,” Baker replied. “I had some things to clean up. I thought I’d check with you before I left.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” the policeman boomed confidently. “We got the place covered. The area around the courthouse is clear and I put men in every building and on every corner all around the place. They will stay there all night and through the morning until we get the witness into court. Believe me, nobody will get within ten feet
of him until he enters the courthouse.”

  “Good,” Baker said. “I’ll go right out to the airport in the morning and meet the plane. I’ll see you at the courthouse at eleven o’clock.”

  “Okay. Stop worrying now and get some sleep,” Strang said. “Everything’s under control here.”

  But when Baker got back to his hotel room, he couldn’t sleep. He sat up in bed and thought of calling his wife, then put the thought out of his mind. She would be too upset at the telephone call in the middle of the night. He got out of bed and sat in a chair.

  Idly he took his gun from the holster draped over the back of the chair and checked it. He spun the cylinder and thrust it back in the holster. I’m edgy, he thought. I’ve been on this thing too long.

  For the past six years there had been nothing else for him. Only this one case. “Break the back of the Mafia, the Society, the Syndicate, or whatever the name of the organization is that has a stranglehold on America’s underworld,” the chief had said to him.

  He was a young man then, at least it seemed so because he felt like an old man now. When he had started on this case, his son had been a junior in high school; this year the boy was graduating from college.

  Time went by; the years had passed frustratingly as every lead petered out. There was no way to get to the top, to the Dons. Sure, the small fry kept falling into their traps with almost statistical regularity; but the big ones always got away.

  Then the break had come. A man had talked about the murder of two federal narcotics agents aboard a small ship just coming into New York. Painstakingly the lead had been followed and now for the first time in the history of organized crime, four of its top leaders were on trial. For murder and conspiracy to murder.

  In his mind’s eye he could see the I.D. file on each defendant. George “Big Dutch” Wehrman, age 57, 21 arrests, no convictions, present occupation union official; Allie “The Fixer” Fargo, age 56, 1 arrest, 1 conviction, 1 suspended sentence, present occupation contractor; Nicholas “Dandy Nick” Pappas, age 54, 32 arrests, 9 for murder, 2 convictions, 20 days in jail, present occupation none, known gambler; Emilio “The Judge” Matteo, age 61, 11 arrests, 1 conviction, 5 years in jail, deported, present occupation retired.

  The thought of the last man brought a bitter smile to his lips. Retired, the report had said. Retired from what? From murder, from narcotics, from participation in almost any form of illegal activity conceived by the mind of man? Not the Judge, not Don Emilio as he was sometimes called by his associates.

  Deportation to Italy along with Luciano and Adonis after the war had resulted only in giving him a license to steal. No matter what aid Matteo had given the government in planning the invasion of Italy during the war, they should not have agreed to let him out of jail. Once they had a man like that locked up, the only sensible thing to do was to throw away the key.

  Baker remembered the countless times he had gone flying around the country on the tip that Matteo had come back; but he was never there. Still there were all the signs that he had been there. The narcotics and the dead. Mute evidence. But this time it was different. This time they had evidence that would talk, if only to save their own lives. And because of that evidence, Matteo had been brought back from Italy.

  It had taken a long time but now they had them. Three witnesses, whose testimony corroborated each other. The testimony that almost certainly meant death for the defendants. There was only one problem remaining now. That was to bring each man to the witness chair in the courtroom—alive.

  Restlessly Baker got out of the chair and walked over to the window and stared out at the darkened city. Knowing Matteo as he did, he was certain that somewhere out there, somewhere in the city, an assassin or assassins were waiting.

  The big questions were how, what, when, where and who?

  ***

  The maitre d’ with the mustache bowed obsequiously before her. “Miss Lang,” he murmured, “Count Cardinali is already here. If you will follow me, please.”

  He turned and she followed him with her slow, graceful, model’s walk, her long red tresses shimmering against her shoulders. She walked slowly, savoring the turning heads, the appreciative looks following her. She heard one of the dowagers whispering.

  “That’s the ‘Smoke and Flame’ girl, Barbara Lang. You know, my dear. From the cosmetic ads.”

  The captain led her down along the zebra-striped banquette to where Cesare sat at a table. Cesare rose as he saw her. He smiled and kissed her hand as the captain held the table away. She sat down and let her coat slip back on the banquette.

  “Champagne?” Cesare asked.

  She nodded as she looked around the restaurant. The soft lights, the elaborately jeweled women and the men with the round, well-fed, yet hungry faces. This was the heights. This was El Morocco. And she was here with a real Count. Not with a phony, half-slobbering promoter who sat with one hand holding in his fat little gut and the other hand under the table trying to creep up inside her dress.

  She turned to look at him as she lifted the glass to her lips. Cesare, Count Cardinali, who could trace his family back six hundred years to the time of the Borgias, who drove racing cars all over the world, who had his name in the society columns every day.

  “Will you be ready in the morning?” he asked, smiling.

  She returned his smile. “I’m very efficient,” she said. “My bags are already packed.”

  “Good,” he nodded, lifting his glass. “To you.”

  “To our holiday.” She smiled. She sipped her champagne reflectively. It hadn’t always been like this. It wasn’t too long ago that the only “sparkling” drink she had tasted was beer. It seemed only the day before yesterday that the model school she had attended while working as a clerk in the store back home in Buffalo had called her. There was a chance for her to get some work and experience doing some publicity on a motion picture that was having its première locally.

  ***

  She had taken the afternoon off and gone up to the hotel for an interview. Nervously she stood in the corridor outside the largest suite in the hotel and heard the raucous shouts of laughter coming from inside the suite. Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she pressed the buzzer. The door opened and a tall young man stood there.

  She took a deep breath and the words tumbled out. “I’m Barbara Lang,” she said. “The agency sent me over. They said you needed a girl for publicity work.”

  The young man stood there for a moment and looked at her. Then he smiled. It was a pleasant smile and gave his rather pale face a nice, gentle look. He stepped back and opened the door wide. “I’m Jed Goliath,” he said. “I handle the publicity. Come on in, I’ll introduce you around.”

  She had entered the room, hoping her nervousness wouldn’t show. She felt the moisture breaking out on her upper lip the way it always did and silently she cursed to herself. There were three other men in the living room of the suite and a table set up in the corner held the makings of a cocktail lounge.

  Goliath led her over to the man seated on a chair near the open window. Despite his smile, his face had a tortured, worried look. This was Mendel Bayliss, the writer-producer of the picture, and the worried look came from having his own money in the picture. “Hi,” he said. “It’s hot. Have a drink?”

  The second man was one she recognized right away. He was the second banana on a weekly television show. The pratfall kid they called him. He had just stopped by to visit the producer for whom he had worked in an unsuccessful show some years before.

  The third man was Johnny Gleason. He was the local manager of the motion-picture company. He was tall, red-faced and very drunk. He stood up and bowed when they were introduced and almost fell over the coffee table in front of him.

  Jed smiled at Barbara encouragingly as he pushed the manager safely back on the couch. “We’ve been drinking since eight o’clock this morning,” he explained.

  She managed a smile as if to imply that things like this happened every
day in her life. “The agency said there was some publicity work to do on a movie,” she said, trying to get some note of business back into the meeting.

  “That’s right,” Jed answered. “We need a Never-Never girl.”

  “A what?” she gasped.

  “A Never-Never girl,” he explained. “That’s the name of our picture. ‘Never, Never.’”

  “You’re tall,” Bayliss said.

  “Five-nine,” she answered.

  “Take off your shoes,” he answered, standing up.

  She took off her shoes and stood there holding them in her hand while he walked over and stood next to her.

  “I’m five-eleven,” he said proudly. “We can’t have a girl taller than me in all the newspaper pictures. You’ll have to wear low heels.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He walked back to his chair and sat down, his eyes going over her figure appraisingly. “Bring a bathing suit with you?” he asked.

  She nodded. It was standard equipment in the model’s hatbox she carried with her everywhere she went.

  “Put it on,” he said curtly. “Let’s see what you got.”

  The pratfall kid picked it right up. He weaved his way over to her and peered up into her face. He leered happily. “We won’t mind if you show us without the bathing suit either, baby,” he whispered loudly.

  She could feel her face flushing and she looked helplessly at Jed. He smiled again reassuringly and led her to a bedroom. “You can change in here,” he said, closing the door behind her.

  She changed swiftly, pausing only for a moment to check herself in the bathroom mirror. For once she was grateful for the golden tan that clung to her since the summer. She took a Kleenex and patted the moisture from her upper lip and went back into the living room.

  All eyes turned to her as she opened the door. For a moment she felt self-conscious, then with her model’s walk she glided to the center of the room and slowly turned around.

  “She’s got a good clean figure,” the producer said.

  “Not enough tits for me,” the pratfall kid chortled. “I’m a T-man, myself.”