Stiletto

by Harold Robbins

  He smiled down at her. “That is what we Italians call it. The little death.”

  “Why?” she asked. “When everything inside you is bursting open and being born why should you say it is like dying?”

  The smile faded from his lips. “Is it not? Is not each birth the beginning of death? Do you not feel the pain of it?”

  She shook her head. “No. Only the lifting joy of it.” She looked up into his eyes. “Maybe that’s the difference between us. Maybe that’s why I feel even when you’re closest to me that there’s a part of you that’s far away in a world I know nothing about.”

  “That’s silly,” he said.

  “No, it’s not,” she said quickly. “Like the way you looked when they carried that man past us. One moment it was like I could feel you inside me, right in that room with all those people. The next moment they came by and you were gone. He was dead, wasn’t he?”

  He stared down at her. “What makes you say that?”

  “He was dead,” she whispered. “I could tell from the expression on your face. You knew. Nobody else knew. But you knew.”

  “That’s a foolish thing to say,” he said lightly. “How would I know?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it was the same expression you had on your face when you came out of the building the day we started on our trip. Then when we opened the newspapers on the plane we read about that man being killed in the court around the corner from where we were.”

  She placed her head against his chest and did not see the slowly tightening expression of his face. “I don’t have to read tomorrow’s papers to know that the man downstairs was killed. I can feel it. I wonder what it will be like in Miami.”

  He wondered if she could feel his heart beginning to thump through his naked flesh. He forced his voice to be light. “Like it always is. Sunny and warm.”

  She looked up into his eyes. “That’s not what I meant, darling. I mean will someone die there too?”

  The veil was gone from his eyes and she was looking deep into them. “People die everywhere, every day,” he said.

  She felt almost hypnotized. “You’re not the Angel of Death, are you, darling?”

  He laughed suddenly and the veil was back. “Now that is a crazy thing to say.”

  “It’s not really,” she spoke slowly. “I read in a story once about a girl who fell in love with the Angel of Death.”

  His hand caught the back of her head and held her close to his chest. “What happened to her?” he asked.

  He could feel her lips move against his breast. “She died. When he knew that she knew who he was, he had to take her with him.”

  She looked up at him suddenly. “Will you take me with you, Cesare?”

  His hand tightened in the long hair that hung down her shoulders, pulling her head back so that her face turned up toward him. “I will take you with me,” he said, placing his mouth brutally on her lips.

  He could hear her gasp of pain as his free hand took her breast. She turned her face from him and cried aloud, “Cesare! You’re hurting me!”

  He ground her face to his naked chest and moved her head slowly in a widening circle, never stopping the pressure of his hand on her breast. He heard her moan softly and a torrent began to rise inside him. The circle became wider, she was moaning steadily now as she sank slowly to her knees.

  She cried aloud at his growing strength. “Cesare! Stop, please stop! The pain, I can’t stand the pain!”

  He was smiling now. There was power inside him. And life. And death. His voice seemed to come from some distant place outside him. “It is time you learned, my dear, how exquisite the pleasure of pain can be.”

  “Don’t, Cesare, don’t!” Her body began to shiver in a wild convulsion. “I can’t stand the pain! I am dying!”

  He looked down at her and let go suddenly. She almost fell, then her hands caught his hips and she clung to him, sobbing, “Cesare, I love you! I love you!”

  8

  Miami Beach is a sun town built on a sterile strip of sand along the Florida coast. Each year by an artificial insemination of capital it gives birth to a new hotel. The St. Tropez is this year’s new hotel.

  Not far from the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc, the St. Tropez rises eleven stories into the ocean sky in an architectural style vaguely reminiscent of a Picasso impression of the palace at Monte Carlo. The Floridians, who judge beauty by the amount of rental per room in season, call it the most beautiful hotel ever built. The rental per room is eighty dollars a day.

  It has a ten-foot-wide beach fronting on the ocean on which no one is ever seen except the tourists in off season. It also has a cloverleaf pool that has been proclaimed as the largest pool ever built. It is completely surrounded by four tiers of cabanas, stepped back so they resemble bleachers in a ball park and do not obstruct the sun. Each cabana is complete with private bath and telephone, card table, chairs and small refrigerator.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon each cabana has a gin game going full blast, the players generally sitting in their shorts and swim suits, shielded from the sun they waste at the going rate per diem. Around the pool on long wooden lounge chairs are the sun worshipers, their bodies glistening with oil and lotions, trying to make the most of their already overburdened pocketbooks.

  Sam Vanicola was standing at the window of the suite in the St. Tropez, looking down at the pool. He was a big man. Even when he was a punk kid running errands for Lepke in Brooklyn, he was big. He weighed over two hundred pounds then, now he weighed two-forty on his five-eleven frame.

  He gave a snort of disgust and came back into the room where three men were playing cards. He looked down at them. “This is a lot of crap!” he announced.

  Special Agent Stanley looked up at him. “We got our orders, Sam,” he said genially.

  “Orders, borders!” Vanicola snorted. “Look, it didn’t mean nuttin’ when they kept Abe Reles locked up in his hotel room in the Half Moon in Brooklyn. They got to him anyway.”

  Stanley smiled again. “How do you know, Sam? He went out the window and they said it was suicide.”

  “That’s a horse laugh!” Vanicola replied. “I knew him. That boy was pushed. He’d never jump.”

  “Besides,” Stanley persisted. “That was twenty years ago. Things are different now.”

  Vanicola laughed. “They sure are,” he said derisively. “Dinky Adams gets his on his way into court, Jake the Twister in a room with a thousand people—and you tell me things are different.”

  Stanley fell silent. He exchanged glances with the other agents. They didn’t speak.

  Vanicola took a cigar out of his pocket, walked across the room and sat down on the couch. He bit the end off the cigar and spat it out on the rug. He lit it and leaned back, looking at them. His voice was less harsh now. “Now look, you guys. I’m a taxpayer too. The guvviment is spending two C’s a day of my good money to keep me in a joint like this. What for they spending the dough if nobody gets any benefit out of it?”

  Stanley got up from his chair. “You’d rather sit in the pokey?” he asked.

  Vanicola stared up at him. “Don’t make me laugh, Stanley. You do and I clam up. You ain’t got no more chances left after me.”

  “What’s the matter with you anyway, Sam?” Stanley cried out in sheer frustration. “What’ve you got against staying alive?”

  Vanicola’s eyes were suddenly serious. “The way I look at it I was dead the day you picked me up. If I didn’t talk you had me on a murder rap; if I did, it would only be a question of time before the boys got to me. Now I’m runnin’ out of time real fast. So why don’t you call up your boss and tell him all I wanna do is spend an hour or two down at that pool every afternoon? I’ll go along with everything else you say.”

  Stanley walked over to the window and looked down at the pool. There was the usual number of people down there. Vanicola’s voice came from the couch.

  “Nobody can get to me down there. You can cover eve
ry entrance. There are only two.”

  Stanley turned and went into the next room and closed the door behind him. Vanicola looked over at the two agents seated at the card table. They began to play gin again. He sat there silently, puffing at his cigar.

  A few minutes later Stanley came out. He crossed the room and stood in front of Vanicola. “Okay, Sam, you get what you want. But, remember, if you see anything we don’t, recognize anyone, you let us know right away. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Vanicola got out of the chair and walked over to the window. He looked down at the pool. “Sure, sure,” he agreed quickly. “I ain’t that much in a hurry to croak.”

  Stanley walked back to the card table and sat down. Vanicola turned and looked after him. He smiled but there was no humor in his eyes. “At least I’ll be sure of one thing,” Vanicola said.

  One of the agents looked up at him. “What’s that, Sam?”

  “Getting a pretty good tan,” he answered. “Ain’t nobody who’ll come to see me when they lay me out won’t be able to tell where I spent the winter.”

  ***

  Barbara was standing on the balcony looking out at the ocean when she heard the telephone ringing in the room. She walked inside and picked it up.

  “New York calling Count Cardinali,” the operator said.

  She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Cesare, there’s a call for you,” she called into the bedroom.

  He came into the room in his swimming shorts, the deep tan he had already acquired in the few days they had been here contrasting with the white trunks. He took the telephone from her hand. “Cardinali speaking,” he said into it.

  The operator’s voice crackled through the receiver. “All right,” Cesare said. “Put her on.” He looked across at Barbara. “It’s Miss Martin, my secretary.”

  Barbara nodded and went outside on the balcony again. She could hear faint snatches of his conversation. It had something to do with a car that was in Palm Beach. After a few minutes he put down the telephone. He didn’t come out. When she turned around, he was seated at the desk making a few notes on a scratch pad. She went back inside.

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Forgive me,” he said. “Business.”

  She looked down at him and nodded slowly. This was the last day of the week they had planned together. “I wish the week were only beginning,” she said.

  “So do I,” he answered.

  “I hate to think that tomorrow we’ll be back in New York and it will be cold and bleak and we won’t be warm like this until summer. I wish we could stay here forever.”

  He smiled. “That is always the trouble. Holidays must have an end.”

  “Must ours?” she asked, not speaking of the holiday at all.

  He knew what she meant. “It must,” he said quietly. “I have my business to go back to. You have your work.”

  A kind of sadness was in her. She knew now that the only one she had been fooling when she agreed to start this week was herself. What had happened between them was no more than a holiday for him. “Does anybody really know you, Cesare?”

  A look of surprise leaped into his eyes. “That’s a funny question,” he answered.

  Suddenly she wanted to touch him, to make him feel her reality. She turned away so that her hands would not reach for him. “No, it’s not,” she said. “Most people think you’re a playboy. I know you’re not.”

  Cesare walked around the desk to her. “I have been very fortunate. It is good for my business to do what I like to do.”

  She looked up into his eyes. “Is that the reason for the girls like me? To build your reputation along with the fast cars? Because it’s good for your business?”

  He took her hand. “There are no girls like you.”

  “No?” she said, getting angry with herself for not being able to stop. “What about that Baroness? De Bronczki or something? A month ago the papers were full of how you were chasing her all over Europe.”

  “Ileana?” He chuckled. “I’ve known her since she was a child. Our families were old friends. Besides she doesn’t matter now. She’s in California with a rich Texan. She has a taste for rich Texans.”

  Her eyes fell. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up. “I have an idea,” he said. “There is a car my office wants me to look at in Palm Beach. Instead of flying back to New York tonight, let’s pick up the car and drive back. I am bored with planes anyway and that way we can stretch our holiday.”

  She began to smile. Maybe she had been wrong about him. Maybe it was not just a holiday. “That will be wonderful!”

  He looked down at his wristwatch. “It’s almost three o’clock,” he said. “We have time for one more swim. We can have dinner in Palm Beach and be in Jacksonville before morning.”

  ***

  Vanicola came out of the cabana bathroom. He had on his swimming trunks, of a bright Hawaiian pattern. He stood in the shadows of the cabana and looked down at the F.B.I. men. “Okay if I get my ration of sunshine now?”

  The agents exchanged glances and Stanley turned and checked the men at the exits. They caught his look and nodded. He got to his feet. “I guess it’s okay,” he said grudgingly.

  The other two agents got to their feet. Vanicola started down toward the pool, picking his way carefully around the sunbathers stretched out on the lounge chairs. They stood around him as he took a plastic float from the rack and slid it into the water. He walked down the steps into the pool and clumsily stretched on the float.

  Stanley was studying the people around them. The youngest agent looked at him. “See anything, chief?”

  Stanley shook his head. “No. I guess it’s safe enough. They aren’t wearing enough clothes around here to conceal any weapons.”

  The young man grinned, his eyes going over some of the girls lounging at poolside. “Some of those babes aren’t wearing enough to conceal their weapons either.”

  Stanley didn’t smile. Nothing was funny to him right now.

  Vanicola spoke to them from the pool where he was stretched on his back on the raft. “I told you guys there was nothing to worry about.” He grinned. “This is the third day we been out and nothing’s happened yet. Let me know when ten minutes are up and I’ll turn over. I don’t want to get fried.”

  “Okay,” Stanley answered. He sat down on a chair near poolside. He would be glad when this job was over.

  Vanicola floated away. As the agents idly watched the swimmers, their tension gradually began to ease off.

  ***

  Cesare saw them from across the pool. He glanced at Barbara. She was lying on her stomach, her back to the sun, her eyes closed. He could feel his heart begin to pound. He looked across the pool again.

  Vanicola was floating out toward the center of the clover-leaf where a group of youngsters were frolicking. Their voices came back to Cesare. Unconsciously his hand dropped to his waist. He could feel the stiletto in the concealed sheath beneath his trunks. He took his hand away quickly.

  One of the bodyguards was getting up now. He called something to Vanicola. Vanicola sat up clumsily and almost fell into the water, then he turned around and stretched out face down on the float. The bodyguard sat down again.

  Cesare glanced at Barbara. She was still lying quietly. He rose swiftly, took a deep breath and dove into the water. He went down deep, his eyes straining as he swam out to the center of the pool.

  Barbara sat up when she heard the splash of his dive. “Cesare,” she called.

  But he was already gone, bubbles trailing in his wake. She blinked her eyes and smiled. In some ways he was like a small boy. For three days now he had been practicing swimming underwater across the pool and back. She glanced up at the clock on the cabana wall. It was twenty minutes to four. She began to gather up her things. It was getting late and they would have to leave soon.

  She had just finished retouching her lipstick when his head came up over the edge
of the pool near her. His mouth was open in a strange grin as he gulped air into his lungs. He stared at her as if she were far away.

  “Did you make it this time?” she asked, smiling.

  “I made it,” he answered as he pulled himself out of the pool.

  Her voice was shocked. “Cesare!”

  A flash of fear leaped into his eyes. His hand felt for the stiletto. It was there, back in the sheath. He looked at her, then followed her gaze back down to himself. He caught the robe she flung at him and wrapped it around himself. She was laughing now as he walked toward her. “Cesare, you are like a little boy. The minute you get excited, it shows,” she teased.

  He grinned at her without embarrassment. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Didn’t I tell you that we Sicilians are very basic people?” He laughed.

  She picked up her beach bag and, still laughing, they walked back into the hotel.

  ***

  The telephone in the cabana began to ring. Stanley got to his feet. “Keep an eye on him while I get the phone,” he said to the other agents.

  They nodded and he walked back into the cabana. The youngest agent looked around and then spoke to the other man. “I’d like to come back here sometime when I’m not working.”

  The other man grinned. “You couldn’t afford it. Everything comes high in this place.”

  Stanley came back. For the first time in several days, he was smiling. “Come on,” he said to them. “Let’s get him out of there. We’re going to New York tonight.”

  The other men got to their feet and they all turned toward the pool. Stanley’s voice carried over to the raft. “Okay, Sam. Come on in. Your ten minutes are up.”

  But more than ten minutes were up for Sam. Sam Vanicola was lying there dead on the slowly sinking raft, his face pressed close to the Plexiglas shield, looking into the water. And even the last memory was gone from his mind now. The sight of Cesare’s grinning face coming up at him from the bottom of the pool just before his heart exploded in a pain he never knew he could feel.