Stiletto

by Harold Robbins

  She stared at him for a moment and all the dreams she had had about the two of them came tumbling down. Deep inside him, he was just like all the others. She turned on her heels and walked away from him.

  The next Saturday she drew a hundred dollars from her savings account and drove up to Center City. There was a doctor there in Mex town who had taken care of some of the girls at school.

  Silently she waited until all the other patients had gone, then she walked into the office. He was a fat little man with a shining bald head. He looked tired.

  “Take off your dress and come over here,” he said.

  She hung her dress on the wall hook and turned toward him.

  “All your clothes,” he said.

  She took off her brassiere and panties and walked over to him. He got up from behind his desk and came around it toward her. He felt her breasts and her stomach and listened to her heart. He came up to about her shoulders. He led her over to a long narrow table. “Put your hands on the edge and bend way over,” he said, putting a rubber finger on his right hand. “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and let it slip past her open mouth while he did something inside her. Then he was finished and she straightened up and turned around.

  He looked up into her face. “About six weeks I figure,” he said.

  She nodded. “That’s about right.”

  He went back to his desk and sat down. “It’ll be a hundred dollars,” he said.

  Silently she went over to her purse and took out the money. She counted it out on the desk before him.

  “When do you want it done?” he asked.

  “Right now,” she said.

  “You can’t stay here,” he said. “You got anyone with you?”

  She shook her head. “I got my car outside.” The doctor looked at her skeptically. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll get home all right.”

  He picked up the hundred dollars and put it in his desk. He walked over to the sterilizer and took out a hypodermic. He fitted it into a small bottle and approached her as he drew the liquid up into the syringe.

  “What’s that?” she asked, for the first time feeling a little fear.

  “Penicillin.” He smiled. “Thank God for it. It kills every bug there is except the one you got inside you.”

  He was deft and quick and competent. It was over in twenty minutes. He helped her down from the table and helped her dress. He gave her some pills in a small envelope that had no markings on it.

  “The big ones are penicillin,” he said. “Take one of them every four hours for the next two days. The small ones are pain killers. Take one of them every two hours after you get home. Get right into bed and stay there for at least two days. Don’t worry if you bleed a lot, that’s normal. If you feel you’re losing too much blood after the first day, don’t be a fool, call your doctor. If your mother asks any questions tell her you got a heavy curse. Remember all that?”

  She nodded her head.

  “All right, then,” he said gently. “You can go. Get right home and into bed. In an hour you’ll be in so much pain, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  He went back to his desk and sat down as she went to the door. She turned and looked back at him. “Thank you, doctor,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “It’s all right,” he said. “But get smart now. I don’t want to see you back here again.”

  She made the forty miles to her home in less than a half hour. She was beginning to feel lightheaded and weak when she stopped the car in front of her house. She went right upstairs to her room, grateful that the house was empty. She gulped one of each of the pills quickly and crept under the sheets, beginning to shiver with the pain.

  About a week later, she was pulling her car out of the parking lot behind the supermarket when Johnny came over and put his hands on the door.

  “I been thinkin’, Luke,” he said with that masculine sureness that was so irritating. “We kin get married.”

  “Drop dead, you chicken shit!” she said coldly and shot the car out of the lot, almost taking his arm off.

  After that it was the car. By the time she entered college she had already achieved a certain amount of fame locally. Every week she entered the stock-car races at the Cow Pasture Track. She began to win with a regularity that made her a favorite with the townsfolk. They began to speak with pride of the little girl who drove even the professional drivers off the track.

  It was during her first summer vacation that she got married. He was a racing-car driver of course. He was six-feet-three, with curly black hair and laughing brown eyes and the best driver at the meet. He came from West Texas and spoke with a drawl.

  “I reckon you ’n’ me ought to hook up, little one,” he said, looking down at her. “Between the two of us we’re the best on the road.”

  “What’s the catch?” she asked. “The car weighted down with dope?”

  He smiled again. “All you have to do is drive the car. For that you will get paid.” He took out a thin Italian cigar and lit it. “You don’t have to know anything more than that.”

  She stared at him. It was either take his offer or wire her parents for the money. It wasn’t that they would refuse her but if she took their money she would have to return home. She would never get the chance to get another car then, she would never have enough money. She would be stuck there.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  “Good.” He smiled. “There will be a money order at the desk when you come downstairs in the morning.” He gave her a few more instructions and then left before she had a chance to ask him his name.

  It wasn’t until she was aboard the plane the next day that it came to her. She had seen him in Rome at a restaurant. Someone had pointed him out.

  “That’s Emilio Matteo,” he had said. “One of the three most important men in the Mafia today. The U.S. kicked him out but it hasn’t seemed to stop him very much. He gets around all right.”

  Six times more during the next year she saw him. Each time it was to perform some errand for him. She had to be a fool not to know that she had become a messenger for the Mafia. And she was not a fool.

  But each time there was another thousand dollars in the bank. There was eight thousand there now. Five more and she could get that Ferrari.

  By this time she and Matteo were practically old friends. And she had read enough in the newspapers to know she was leading a man to his death. Not that it made any great difference to her. She had seen too many men die in the races. In tortured turning, twisting, burning wrecks. Everybody had to die sometime. That was the chance you took when you got behind the wheel.

  At least that was the way she had felt before she met him. Before she felt the fever burning in her loins, the weakness in her legs. Before she felt the fire leap between them at his touch.

  19

  Cesare had just finished dressing when she came into his room. He looked up in surprise. “Ileana! What are you doing up at six o’clock in the morning?”

  She finished tying the robe around her. “I couldn’t let you go without wishing you good luck in the race.”

  He flashed a quick smile at her and bent to snap his boots. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.” He straightened up and came over and kissed her cheek, then started for the door.

  At the door he turned and looked back at her. “See you at dinner tonight,” he said automatically.

  “Dinner, tonight?” Her voice was puzzled. “I thought the race was going to take two or three days.”

  An annoyed look came to his face. “That’s right, I forgot,” he said quickly, realizing his inadvertent slip. He forced a smile to his lips. “It is becoming a habit to see you every evening.”

  A vague sense of warning began ticking in her mind. Cesare wasn’t the kind of man who made mistakes like that. “Good or bad habit?” she asked.

  He grinned. “You tell me when I get back,” he said, closing
the door behind him.

  She stood there for a moment, then turned back to the bedroom. His valise lay open on the bed. Idly she went over and began to close it. A flap fell forward from the top of the case. She bent to straighten it before she closed the lid.

  It was a peculiar triangle-shaped flap that took up a small diagonal corner of the valise. Inside it was a thin stitched sheath that was fastened to the flap. It had recently held a knife. She could tell that from the stretched appearance.

  A picture of the stiletto that Cesare held in his hand the night he found her in his apartment flashed through her mind. Why would he need a knife like that in an automobile race?

  The vague sense of warning that had troubled her when he had said he would see her at dinner came back. Maybe it was the truth even if he said it was a mistake afterward. Maybe those men were right in what they had said, even though she did not believe them at the time.

  A feeling of panic began to rise inside her. Suddenly she knew why he had taken the knife. He was coming back tonight to kill her.

  ***

  Luke looked across the car at Cesare. He was driving easily, his eyes hidden beneath the large black goggles, a faint smile on his lips. She leaned forward to check the dash.

  The tach needle stood at 26,000 r.p.m., it checked out with the speedometer. The temperature gauge was normal, the oil pressure gauge was even, the generator and the battery were at normal discharge. She straightened up. They could go a million miles in this car if they wanted to.

  They turned the corner and came upon two other contestants. Cesare looked at her. “Can we have a little fun before we quit?” he shouted over the motor.

  She glanced at the mileage indicator. They were about sixty miles from the starting point. She nodded.

  Cesare grinned and hit the accelerator. He cut in behind the two cars. They were blocking his way through. He inched up until he was practically riding their rear bumpers.

  She looked at him. His lips were drawn back across his teeth in a savage grin. Beneath the goggles his eyes seemed to shine with an unholy joy. The cars in front of him began to go into a curve.

  He laughed aloud and picked up more speed. She looked down at the speedometer. They were doing one hundred and twenty now and the needle was climbing. She felt the drag on her body as the big Ferrari tore into the curve. She looked ahead nervously. If the cars in front didn’t split now, they would all be dead. Before the thought had gone from her mind, the Ferrari had crept between the two cars. They had split.

  Deliberately, Cesare sawed the Ferrari back and forth across the road. She could see the other drivers cursing and fighting to stay on the road. Then they came into the straightaway and now the Ferrari was a few feet ahead of them. Cesare laughed aloud again and opened the car up. The speedometer jumped to one-fifty and the Ferrari left the two cars behind them.

  She looked back at them and laughed. Now she knew what Esteban had meant back in the garage. Here was a race that Cardinali knew he wasn’t even going to finish and still he drove the same way he always did. But he could drive. Esteban was right. If he really wanted to he could be the best in the business.

  She felt his hand come down on her own and she turned around. Unconsciously, she had moved closer to him in the excitement. He lifted her hand from the seat and moved it on to his thigh. She looked up at him. He turned his head and met her gaze, a mocking smile on his lips.

  She could feel the heat coming up from his leg into her hand and running into her body. For a moment she was wild at what he could do to her, how he could make her feel. She dug her fingers into the muscles of his thigh, feeling her nails go through his clothing into his flesh. She wanted him to feel pain, to hurt and push her hand away.

  He only laughed aloud at her. She felt a pulse begin to throb in the palm of her hand. Angrily she raked her nails back along his leg and took away her hand. She moved away from him. She closed her eyes at the sudden pain that came up inside her when she lost contact with his warmth. She shook her head to clear it. What was the matter with her anyway? There was no percentage in it. Did she always have to try to be a loser?

  ***

  She looked down at the mileage indicator. They were a hundred miles from the starting point. She tapped him on the shoulder. “Begin slowing down. We better let those cars behind us go by.”

  Cesare nodded. The big Ferrari began to lose speed. They were down to sixty miles per hour and it felt as if they were standing still. Within a few minutes the two cars they had passed went by with much hooting of their horns.

  He shook his head. “The party’s over,” he said.

  “It never really began,” she replied, her eye on the mileage indicator.

  The one-fifteen was creeping up on the dial. He seemed to be paying no attention to it. She looked at him. Sixty miles an hour was still too fast to be going if even a small bomb was going to blow up your generator but if he thought she was going to chicken, he was crazy.

  The one-fifteen locked in the dial. He laughed and hit the accelerator. The big car began to leap forward. At the same moment, there was a faint explosion under the hood. The car shuddered and the motor stopped. They began to weave crazily on the road.

  She could see the muscles on his forearms ridge as he fought to hold the wheel steady while he pumped the brake a little at a time to bring the speed down. At last they were rolling slowly. She let her breath out slowly. “Now that you’ve had your fun, Mr. Cardinali,” she said sarcastically, “I guess it’s safe to pull off the road now.”

  “Okay,” he said. He turned the wheel toward the shoulder of the road. He smiled at her.

  “Look out!” she yelled, seeing it first. “A ditch!”

  Cesare spun the wheel sharply but it was too late. The two wheels on the right side of the car caught the ditch. Slowly the heavy car settled in the sandy earth and rolled over on its top.

  Cesare slid out from under the car. He got to his feet and pulled off his helmet. Faint wisps of smoke began to come up from the engine. He turned back to the car. “Luke! Are you all right?”

  Her voice came faintly from beneath the other side of the car. “I’m okay.”

  He ran around the car and knelt beside it. He peered under the car. She had her hands on the back of the seat and was squirming around, trying to get out.

  “What are you waiting for?” he yelled. “Come on out. There are fifty gallons of gasoline back in the tank!”

  She stopped squirming and stared at him balefully. “What the hell do you think I’m trying to do? A snake dance?” she snapped, beginning to wriggle again. Suddenly she began to laugh. “My coveralls are caught on something.”

  He threw himself to the ground beneath her. “Why didn’t you say so?” he grinned. He put his hands under the coveralls and ripped them open. Then she felt his arms under her shoulders. “Kick your shoes off,” he commanded.

  Automatically she did as he told her. She felt herself slide forward, out of the coveralls onto the ground beside him. She was still laughing.

  He looked at her, a faint smile beginning to twitch the corners of his mouth. “Well, you said it was safe.”

  “Show-off!” she retorted.

  “Who is showing off now?” he asked, his eyes glancing down at her.

  The laughter faded from her lips. She was suddenly aware of her near nudity. The thin brassiere and panties didn’t serve to cover very much. “I’ll get my coveralls,” she said, turning to reach for them.

  His hand fell on her shoulder, pinning her to the ground. She lay there motionless feeling the warmth in his hand, staring up at him. She felt his other hand move and free one breast from her brassiere. She looked down at herself then back up at him, oddly aroused at the sight of her white flesh against his darkly tanned hand.

  “Stop it,” she said in a low voice, the fever beginning to work inside her. This time she wasn’t going to be easy.

  His eyes were glowing. She felt as if she were under a microscope, as if he could rea
d every hidden thought, knew every emotion inside her. “You don’t want me to stop,” he said.

  She felt his strong fingers suddenly crush her breast and the pain tore her from her lethargy. “I’ll make you stop!” she screamed, thrusting her hands inside his open shirt, her body writhing wildly. “I’ll tear your flesh into ribbons!”

  But when her fingers felt the soft cool touch of his skin, the fever rose and took possession of her body and the strength drained from her limbs. She thrust her hands deeper into his shirt and closed her eyes. His arm held her away.

  She opened her eyes, feeling the tears come to them. It was no use. She couldn’t change, she would never change. “Let me touch you, let me worship you,” she begged.

  And when, after a while, he took her, she knew she had been right from the moment she first saw him. Never had there been a man like him before that could fit and fill every hidden corner of her mind and body.

  She closed her eyes and began to run softly through the forest toward the mountain. She knew the animal was there somewhere, his black and yellow stripes, stalking her in the brush. She was scrambling frantically up the mountain now, her heart pounding, her breath like a rasping fire inside her lungs. Then she was on the peak with the whole world spinning round below her, this time when the animal sprang she was ready for him. Locked in an embrace of death, they tumbled together, over and over down the face of the mountain.

  She moaned softly. “Tiger, tiger tiger!”

  ***

  Cesare kicked open the door of the shack. “There is no one here,” he said.

  She walked into the shack and he followed her. “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” she said succinctly.

  There were a few battered chairs and a table in the shack. He pulled one of the chairs toward her. She sat down. He lit two cigarettes and held one toward her. She took it without speaking.

  “You are very silent,” he said.

  She blew the smoke from her lungs, its acrid taste somehow cleansing. “What is there to say?” she asked. “You made your point.”