They looked grateful.
“This chaplain had promised Frank he would deliver the letter himself. He kept his promise. He told me of Frank’s wish to have you all see it when we could get together.” Janet looked at her husband.
“Then that’s why you didn’t tell me before,” Jerry said, “why you didn’t tell me where you got the idea, why you only told me that the chaplain had told you of the child.”
“Yes,” Janet answered simply. “I wanted you both to hear it together.” She went to a small cabinet in the corner of the room and took the letter from it. She came back to the center of the room and began to read from it. She spoke quietly, plainly, with a tangible expression of feeling and warmth.
“The letter is dated December 5th, 1944.”
Dear Janet,
I am writing a letter I hope you will never get. It is strange to write something you know may never be delivered but it is stranger still to imagine it will be. If you get this letter I will be dead. It isn’t because I have any premonition of death that I take my pen in hand but it is just because, after all, there is the possibility that I may die rather suddenly.
It seems that many years have passed since we hit the beach on D-day, but it was just last July. Since that time a lot of things began to add up in my mind and make sense. Many things have happened and there is much I want you to know and much I have to ask of you.
A long time ago Marty once compared me to Hitler. I laughed then for I didn’t understand what he meant. Now I know. I learned it from living with Ruth and I learned from these last five months in Europe. I learned that you cannot live without regard for society and the so-called common man. For to live so, is to live without regard for yourself.
And I began to wonder, what it was that made me what I became. Then I realized for the first time it was from living alone. A man can live alone if he shares his rooms with twenty other humans and shares his heart with none. That was the way I had lived for the most of my life until I married Ruth.
As you know, Ruth died in childbirth. I don’t think you know that the child lived. We had a son.
I hadn’t thought about having children. I didn’t want any. But she said, “I want your son. I want him for many reasons. Because he will be you again. And I can keep you close to me, even when you’re far away. And I can give him, so giving you, all the love and care and dreams you never received.
“Give me your child, my darling, so that I can make you whole again, make you live again.” All this she told me.
And when our son was born and she knew she would not live to make him whole, she whispered to me, “Don’t let him down, Frankie. Give him his childhood and his dreams, let him taste the pleasures of his youth and grow into the man he could be. Give him all the things I wanted to give him.”
I promised her I would.
But first I had to come home from the Army. And then when I thought that there was a chance I might not come home, I worried about keeping my promise to her, and so I ask of you to help me keep it. Take our son into your heart and home and give him your name and all the things I know you can give.
I am a fairly wealthy man. He will never lack for money. But what he will lack are things that money can’t secure. These are the things that you can give him.
Don’t let him grow up as I did. Sheltered and clothed and fed and cared for, and yet poorer in human qualities than the poorest of men. A man needs more than food and clothes and money to make him human. He needs love and kindness and affection.
He needs people, a family, to give him an anchor, to give him roots in the earth, in society, to teach him the true values in the world. The values that I learned from Ruth.
I took my son to the Orphanage of St. Therese and gave him into the care of Brother Bernhard. I have had letters from the good Brother that tell me little Francis is very much like me. And I am proud. Not only because he is like me, but because in him I see his mother. She looks out of his eyes, which are blue like hers. He smiles with her smile, and yet he is like me.
As you can see I have learned a great deal from Ruth. I have learned to love and that love meant giving, not taking. And I have learned that you can’t give if you haven’t anything to give. You have much to give. I know that, for I can remember.
Read this to Jerry and Marty when they’re together, if you can. Tell them both that their friendship always was one of the brightest parts of my life. That nothing that happened has ever dimmed or caused me to lose my feeling for them. Tell them both, that I want them too, to take our son into their hearts and give him all the things I know they can give him.
Humbly I beg all of you to take my son into your home.
Help me keep my promise to Ruth.
With affection,
Frank
From eyes that were proud, Janet looked at them. A moment passed while they all were silent and looked at each other. Suddenly they smiled and magic came back into the room. It was filled with hidden charm and warmth.
Tears came into Janet’s eyes as she looked at Jerry and Marty. Unconsciously she held her hands toward them. There was no need for question.
They all knew the answer.
Harold Robbins, Unguarded
On the inspiration for Never Love a Stranger:
“[The book begins with] a poem from To the Unborn by Stella Benson. There were a lot of disappointments especially during the Depression—fuck it—in everyone’s life there are disappointments and lost hope…. No one escapes. That’s why you got to be grateful every day that you get to the next.”
On writing The Betsy and receiving gifts:
“When I wrote The Betsy, I spent a lot of time in Detroit with the Ford family. The old man running the place had supplied me with Fords, a Mustang, that station wagon we still have…. After he read the book and I was flying home from New York the day after it was published, he made a phone call to the office on Sunset and asked for all the cars to be returned. I guess he didn’t like the book.”
On the most boring things in the world:
“Home cooking, home fucking, and Dallas, Texas!”
On the inspiration for Stiletto:
“I began to develop an idea for a novel about the Mafia. In the back of my head I had already thought of an extraordinary character…. To the outside world he drove dangerous, high-speed automobiles and owned a foreign car dealership on Park Avenue…. The world also knew that he was one of the most romantic playboys in New York society… What the world did not know about him was that he was a deadly assassin who belonged to the Mafia.”
On the message of 79 Park Avenue:
“Street names change with the times, but there’s been prostitution since the world began. That was what 79 Park Avenue was about, and prostitution will always be there. I don’t know what cavemen called it; maybe they drew pictures. That’s called pornography now. People make their own choices every day about what they are willing to do. We don’t have the right to judge them or label them. At least walk in their shoes before you do. 79 Park Avenue did one thing for the public; it made people think about these girls being real, not just hustlers. The book was about walking in their shoes and understanding. Maybe it was a book about forgiveness. I never know; the reader is the only one who can decide.”
Paul Gitlin (Harold’s agent) on The Carpetbaggers after first reading the manuscript:
“Jesus Christ, you can’t talk about incest like this. The publishers will never accept it. This author, Robbins, he’s got a book that reads great, but it’s a ball breaker for publishing.”
From the judge who lifted the Philadelphia ban on Never Love a Stranger, on Harold’s books:
“I would rather my daughter learn about sex from the pages of a Harold Robbins novel than behind a barn door.”
On writing essentials:
“Power, sex, deceit, and wealth: the four ingredients to a successful story.”
On the drive to write:
“I don’t want to write and put it in
a closet because I’m not writing for myself. I’m writing to be heard. I’m writing because I’ve got something to say to people about the world I live in, the world I see, and I want them to know about it.”
II
Stiletto
Praise For Stiletto
The original Mafia novel, from America’s master storyteller…
“Harold Robbins is a master!”
—Playboy
“Robbins’ books are packed with action, sustained by a strong narrative drive and are given vitality by his own colorful life.”
—The Wall Street Journal
Robbins is one of the “world’s five bestselling authors… each week, an estimated 280,000 people… purchase a Harold Robbins book.”
—Saturday Review
“Robbins grabs the reader and doesn’t let go…”
—Publishers Weekly
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Many thanks to the man who wears the hat, Bradley Yonover.
This novel is only one of my loves, but the greatest love of my life is my beautiful wife, Jann.
Foreword
Harold Robbins’s Memories
I began working in a grocery store on 125th Street near the corner of Convent Avenue in Harlem when I was seventeen years old. My job was a combination of delivering orders, cleaning the floor with a rag mop, dusting the shelves that held the cans and packages, and refilling the stock on the shelves when empty.
Fortunately, it wasn’t a very busy job because there were three other clerks who worked at the grocery store and helped the customers with their purchases. I had enough time to hide out in the back room and read the magazines that the clerks always seemed to leave open on the cases in the storeroom. They were exciting reading. I would take them home with me to my room at Mrs. Green’s boarding house. In a short time I had my room covered, wall-to-wall, with these magazines. I remember their names: Amazing Stories, Ace Magazine, and Detective Stories.
As I grew older, I was surprised that everyone knew and loved these stories. By this time, I had been introduced by a friend who worked for the library to reading hardcover novels. It was in the thirties that I first read a novel by Donald Henderson Clark called Louis Beretti. I loved it and found a new world. It was the story of an Italian boy growing up on the Lower East Side of New York, smoking opium with his Chinese friends, and learning about love and sex with his girl on the rooftops of the tenements. He grew up and became a killer. As soon as I finished reading this novel, I went to the library to check out another book by the same author. This book was Millie, all about a Lower East Side girl who worked her way up in society and married a very rich Fifth Avenue man who was president of a Wall Street bank. The two books were fantastic, and I soon learned that they had been made into movies.
I never thought I would become an author, but early in the forties I got a job working in the warehouse of Universal Pictures. Again, there was always plenty to read, books as well as movie scripts. While I was working as a shipping clerk, I discovered a way to save the studio a lot of money. As a result, I was transferred to the budget and planning department. I got lucky again and was soon promoted to assistant to the vice president of production. After I had been in this job for several months, my boss ordered me to write a check for $300,000 as payment for a book he wanted to make into a movie. I had read this book. I told him it was lousy and that anyone, even I, could write a better book than this one. He laughed and bet me one hundred dollars that I could not write anything more than checks.
Two years later, to my surprise, my first novel was published. As part of the publicity for the book, Never Love a Stranger, I was invited on an important radio program called Books on Trial, hosted by one of New York’s most important critics, Sterling Lord. It was a half-hour program broadcast during evening prime time. As I sat in the witness chair, my knees were already shaking. The cast included myself, as the author on trial for Never Love a Stranger; the prosecuting attorney, who was supposed to destroy the book; and the defense attorney on the side of the book, who was a well-known newspaper columnist who would appraise the novel and me as the author. I was sweating near the end of the program because the prosecuting attorney said it was stupid to think that readers would believe there was a crime syndicate in existence. It was then I had the best idea of my life. I told him that he was stupid to believe that there was not such a thing as a crime syndicate. He evidently had not read the newspapers, about the Kefauver Commission in Congress. The Mafia was all over the newspapers and if they were not a syndicate, what were they?
It was then that I began to develop an idea for a novel about the Mafia. In the back of my head I already had thought of an extraordinary character, but it would be many years and four novels before I would write Stiletto.
In that time, I read and learned a great deal about the Mafia, such as how its members came from Sicily to America and found their way into many businesses, illegal and legal.
Count Cesare Cardinali was ordered to go to the United States by his Sicilian Mafia don. To the outside world he drove dangerous, high-speed automobiles and owned a foreign car dealership on Park Avenue in New York. The world also knew that he was one of the most romantic playboys in New York society, one the newspapers wrote about every day. What the world did not know about him was that he was a deadly assassin who belonged to the Mafia.
Stiletto is one of my favorite novels. I feel even today, after many great novels have been written about the Mafia, that Stiletto was one of the most important forerunners.
1
It was after ten o’clock and there were only three men at the bar and one man at a table in the rear when the hustler came in. A blast of the cold night air came in with her.
She climbed up on a stool and let her thin winter coat fall from her shoulders. “Gimme a beer,” she said.
Silently the bartender drew a glass of beer and placed it in front of her. He picked up the quarter and rang it up.
“Any action tonight, Jimmy?” she asked, her eyes searching the men at the bar for a response to her question.
The bartender shook his head. “Not tonight, Maria. It’s Sunday night and all the turistas are home in their beds.” He walked away and began to polish some glasses under the bar. He watched her sip at her beer. Maria. He called them all Maria. The little Puerto Rican girls with their bright shiny black eyes and their hard little breasts and buttocks. He wondered when she had had her last shot.
The hustler gave up on the men at the bar. She turned to look at the man seated at the table. She could only see his back but she could tell from the cut of his clothing that he wasn’t local. She looked questioningly at the bartender. He shrugged his shoulders and she slid off her stool and started back to the table.
The man was looking down at his whisky glass when she stopped beside him. “Lonesome, señor?” she asked.
She knew the moment he lifted his head to look at her what his answer would be. The dark ice-blue eyes and tanned face and hungry mouth. Men such as he never bought their pleasures, they took them.
“No, thank you,” Cesare said politely.
The hustler smiled vaguely, nodded her head and went back to the bar. She climbed up on the stool again and took out a
cigarette.
The stocky little bartender held a match for her. “Like I said,” he whispered, smiling, “it’s Sunday night.”
The girl dragged deep on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. “I know,” she said tonelessly, the first faint sign of worry appearing on her face. “But I gotta keep workin’. It’s an expensive habit.”
The telephone in the booth beside the bar began to ring and the bartender left her to answer it. He came out of the booth and walked over to Cesare’s table. “Para usted, señor.”
“Mil gracias,” Cesare answered, going to the telephone. “Hello,” he said as he closed the door of the booth.
The woman’s voice was almost a whisper. She spoke in Italian. “It will have to be in the morning,” she said, “before he appears in court.”
Cesare answered in the same language. “There is no other place?”
“No,” she said, her voice very clear in the receiver despite its softness. “We have not been able to learn where he is coming from. We only know that he will appear at court at eleven o’clock.”
“And the others?” Cesare asked. “Are they still in the same place?”
“Yes,” she answered. “In Las Vegas and Miami. Are your plans made?”
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 48