Stiletto (2 page)

Slowly a redness crept up from her throat and bosom into her face and her eyes fell. He could see the sudden thrusting of her nipples against the thin peasant blouse and the swell of her breasts over the top of it.

He turned away from her and began to walk into the woods. From the generations of knowledge deep inside him came the command that had no doubt about its ability to possess.

“Come!”

Obediently, almost as if she were an automaton, the girl followed him. Deep into the woods where the trees were so thick one could hardly see the sky above. She sank to the ground beside him and never said a word while his fingers stripped the clothing from her body.

He knelt there for a moment, studying the strong muscular lines of her body, the full plum-tipped breasts, the flat muscular belly that rose and fell, her heavy strong legs. He felt a torrent rise inside him and he threw himself across her.

It was the first time for him but not for her. Twice he screamed in an agony as she locked him tightly to her then, spent, he rolled away and lay breathing heavily on the moist ground beside her.

She turned toward him silently, her fingers and mouth exploring, probing. At first he pushed her away, then his hands touched her breasts and froze there. Involuntarily he squeezed and she cried out in pain.

For the first time now he looked into her face. Her eyes were wide and moisture was full in them. He squeezed again. Again she cried out. But this time her eyes were closed. There were tears in their corners but her mouth was open in a gasping ecstasy as if she sought to gulp strength from the air.

A sense of power he had never known before came up in him. Cruelly now, he tightened his fingers. This time her scream of pain sent the birds shrilling from the perches in the trees. Her eyes flew open and she stared at him, then worshipfully she bent her head to his suddenly reawakened body.

It was dark when he began to walk away from her. He felt strong and complete and the grass was like carpet beneath his feet. He was almost at the edge of the small clearing when her voice stopped him.

“Signor!”

He turned around. She was on her feet now and her nude body gleamed in the dark as if it sprang from the very earth itself. Her eyes were luminous pools in her face. She half smiled to herself, a pride and satisfaction deep within her. The others would be jealous when she told them of this. This was no laborer, no itinerant crop worker. This was the blood, the true blood, the future Count Cardinali.

“
Grazia!
” she said sincerely.

He nodded curtly and plunged into the woods and was gone from her sight before she could bend to pick up her clothing.

It was six weeks later at the fencing school down in the village that Cesare next heard of her. The Maestro had long since given up teaching Cesare who was far superior to his ageing skills and only attended classes to keep in practice. The door had opened and a young soldier entered.

He came into the small gymnasium and looked around, his modern Il Duce’s guard uniform oddly out of place in this ancient atmosphere of swords. His voice was tense. “Which one of you is known by the name of Cesare Cardinali?”

There was a sudden silence in the room. The two young men who were fencing put down their foils and turned to the newcomer. Cesare came slowly from the wall where he had been practicing with the weights.

He stopped in front of the soldier. “I am,” he said.

The soldier stared at him. “I am the affianced of my cousin, Rosa,” he said tightly.

Cesare looked at him. He knew no one by that name. “And who is she?” he asked politely.

“Rosa Gandolfo!” The name tore angrily from the soldier’s lips. “And I am called from my post in Rome to marry her because you have made her with child!”

Cesare stared at him for a moment as the understanding came to him. Then he relaxed slightly. “Is that all?” he asked, a strange feeling of pride beginning to come up inside him. “I will speak to my father, the Count, about some money for you.”

He turned and started to walk away. The soldier spun him around again. “Money?” he shouted. “Is that all you think I want? Money? No!”

Cesare looked at him coldly. “As you wish. Then I will not speak with my father.”

The soldier’s hand slashed across his face. “I demand satisfaction!”

The handprint stood out clearly on Cesare’s suddenly white face. He stared at the soldier without fear. “The Cardinalis find no honor in fighting with a commoner.”

The soldier spat forth the words venomously: “The Cardinalis are cowards, pimps and despoilers of women! And you, the bastard son, are more like them than they are themselves! Il Duce was right when he said that the aristocrats of Italy are sick and decadent and that they must give way to the strength of the paisanos!”

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.

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.