by Nick Carter
A small crowd pressed around the table, shaking hands, paying their respects, introducing the old man to this one or that one. The attention all centered on Franzini; his niece sat lovely and demure, a set smile on her face, rarely saying a word. But as I edged closer, I saw there were dozens of small white envelopes interspersed among the roses. As I watched, a couple more were tossed onto the table.
I was puzzling over that phenomenon when Louie spotted me on the edge of the crowd. He immediately jumped to his feet and came over.
"Hiya, Nick! How are you? Good to see ya!"
"Hi, Louie." He took my elbow and ushered me into the barroom. "Let's have a drink. I get claustrophobic sitting there with all those people closing in around me."
I ordered a brandy and soda. Louie drank the same thing he'd had in Beirut, red wine.
We leaned against the back wall to keep from being trampled on. "Some party, huh?" he grinned. "I'll bet we've got a hundred fifty people here, and at least a hundred of them are already drunk."
He was right about that. I neatly sidestepped a tall, tuxedo-clad figure as he staggered past us, glass in hand, one lock of hair down over his forehead. "Mariateresa," he was calling rather plaintively. "Has anyone seen Mariateresa?"
Louie laughed and shook his head. "In a couple of hours, it really ought to be great."
"It sure looks different than I remember it" I looked around the once-familiar room now reverberating with sound. When I had known it years before, it had been a place for a quiet beer and an even quieter chess game.
"I didn't know this was one of your places," I said.
Louie laughed, naturally. "It isn't. We own some seventeen restaurants on the lower west side and another dozen or so, say, are 'affiliates, but Tony's isn't one of them."
"Then why hold Philomina's party here instead of one of your own?"
He clapped me on the shoulder and laughed again. "It's easy, Nick. See all these guys here? Now, some of them are all right, good solid businessmen, friends of the family, that sort of thing."
I nodded and he went on. "On the other hand, there are also a lot of guys here you might call — uh — hoods. Understand?"
I nodded again. I couldn't deny him that. Dozens of rough looking types were talking, drinking, singing, shouting, or just standing morosely in corners. They looked like they had been recruited from Central Casting for a latter-day Al Capone movie. And from the bulging jackets I had observed, there were more guns in the place than the Russians had been able to muster against the British at Balaklava.
"What's that got to do with holding a party here instead of one of your own places?"
"Simple. We don't want to give one of our own places a bad name. If the cops wanted to, you know, they could raid this place tonight and pick up a lot of what they call 'undesirable characters. They wouldn't be guilty of anything, of course, and they'd eventually have to let them go. It would just be harassment, but it would make nice headlines in the papers. It would be bad for business."
A tipsy little redhead with freckles across the bridge of her nose had been working her way across the crowded room with two black-browed bullies in tow. She came to a stop in front of Louie, threw one arm around his neck, and gave him a big kiss.
"Hi, Louie, you cute li'l ol' thing. Who's your handsome friend here?" She was cute, even if she was one of those fashionable girls who have the body of a fourteen-year-old boy — and she had an exciting awareness of her own sexuality. She was looking at me hungrily. Her two companions glowered, but I returned her look. Her eyes were saying she didn't care what the rest of the world thought and mine were saying, okay, if that's what you want.
Louie made the introductions. Her name was Rusty Pollard and she was a lay teacher at St. Teresa's. One of the gorillas with her was named Jack Baity, the other, Rocco something-or-other. Baity made some crude remarks about lay teachers, but Rusty and I were having too good a time discovering each other.
She was an outrageous flirt.
"What's a big hunk of guy like you doing here with all these little squat Italians?" she asked, one hand cocked on a slim, outthrust hip, her head thrown back.
I looked at her in mock dismay. "Little squat Italians? Keep that up and you'll end up in tomorrow's pizza pie."
She dismissed the possibility with an airy wave of her hand. "Ah, they're harmless."
I looked Rusty over carefully. "What's a nice girl like you doing here with all these little squat Italians?"
Rusty laughed. "You'd better not let Mr. Franzini hear you refer to Philomina as a little squat Italian or you'll end up on someone's pizza pie."
I shrugged, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. "You didn't answer my question."
She gestured at the table where Franzini sat with his niece. "Maybe one of these days I can collect some of those little white envelopes myself."
I saw that now they were stacked neatly in front of Philomina instead of being scattered around the sheaves of roses. "What the hell are they?" I asked. "Cards?"
"Your name is Nick Canzoneri and you don't know what those are?" she asked.
"Of course," I hedged, "but you tell me Miss non-little-squat-Italian Pollard. I just want to see if you know."
She laughed. "The games people play. Every one of those little envelopes contains a check from one of Mr. Franzini's associates. Even the little guys have dug up what they could. It's all for Philomina's birthday. She's probably got seven or eight thousand dollars there."
"And you'd like the same thing?"
"Maybe one of these days one of these squat little Italians is going to offer me something besides a weekend in Atlantic City, and when he does I'm going to grab him. And when I do, I'm eventually going to end up sitting at a table full of roses going through a lot of little white envelopes."
"About that weekend in Atlantic…" I started to say, but across the room, Popeye Franzini was glowering at me and waving an imperious arm in a gesture that brooked no hesitation.
I half bowed toward Rusty. "Sorry, honey. Caesar beckons. Maybe I'll catch up with you later."
Her lips puckered in a pout. "Rat!" But her eyes were still challenging.
I pushed across the crowded floor and paid my respects to Franzini and Philomina.
The flush of wine was on his face and his speech was thick. "Hav'n' a good time?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good, good." He put one arm around Philomina's shoulders. "I wan' you to take my lit girl home." He squeezed her shoulders and she seemed to shrink just a bit, her eyes downcast, not looking at either one of us. "She don't feel s'good, but th' party's jus' startin'. So you take her home, huh?"
He turned to Philomina. "Right, honey?"
She looked up at me. "I'd appreciate it, Mr. Canzoneri."
I bowed. "Of course."
"Thank you." She rose demurely. "Thank you, Uncle Joe. It's been just wonderful, but I do feel dizzy." She leaned over and kissed the old toad on the cheek. I felt like gagging.
"Right! Right!" he roared. He pinned me with bleary eyes. "Take good care my li'l girl."
I nodded. "Yes, sir." Philomina and I maneuvered through the crowd toward the door. She murmured a few good nights here and there, but no one seemed to pay her much attention, even though it was ostensibly her party.
We finally squeezed through and got out the door on Bedford Street. The fresh air tasted good. Philomina and I each took a deep breath, then smiled at each other. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder evening dress of pure white except for a bright slash of flame red running diagonally across the front. Her gloves and stole matched the red slash. Striking.
I remained respectful. "Would you like to stop for coffee, first, Miss Franzini, or would you rather go directly home?"
"Home, please." Miss Franzini was being icy again. I shrugged and we set off. At Seventh Avenue and Barrow Street I was able to hail a cab.
It was only ten minutes to Philomina's apartment house — London Terrace — and we rode in regal sile
nce to the awning marking the entrance.
I paid the cab and got out, then helped Philomina out. She pulled her arm away. "This will do," she said coldly. "Thank you very much."
I grabbed her elbow a little roughly, pivoted her and directed her toward the door. "I'm sorry, Miss Franzini. When Popeye Franzini tells me to take you home, I take you all the way home."
She could understand that, I guess, but felt she didn't have to reply. We went up the elevator in cold silence, while the elevator man tried to pretend to himself that we weren't there.
We got off on the seventeenth floor and I followed her down to her door, 17-E.
She took her key from her purse and looked at me coldly. "Good night, Mr. Canzoneri."
I smiled gently, and firmly took the key out of her hand. "Sorry, Miss Franzini. Not yet. I want to use your telephone."
"You can use the one in the bar down the street."
I smiled again as I put the key in the lock and opened the door. "I'd rather use yours." There wasn't much she could do about it. I was just about twice her size.
Philomina flicked on a light in the small foyer, then led the way into a neatly furnished living room and turned on one of the two floor lamps flanking a comfortable looking sofa. I perched on one end of the couch, picked up the phone and dialed a number.
Philomina gave me a dirty look, crossed her arms and leaned against the opposite wall. She wasn't even going to take that stole off until I got out of there.
It was after midnight, but I let the phone ring. The telephone at AXE's central information section is manned twenty-four hours a day. Finally, a girl's voice answered. "Six-nine-oh-oh."
"Thank you," I said. "Would you charge this call to my credit card number, please? H-281-766-5502." The last four numbers were the key of course, my serial number as AXE's No. 1 agent.
"Yes sir," said the voice on the other end.
"I need a red file check," I said. Philomina could hear everything I was saying, of course, but she couldn't possibly make much sense out of it. A red file check was a checkout on the highly secret list of confidential FBI agents. The white file was for CIA, blue for the National Security Agency, but I was playing a hunch it was red I wanted.
"Yes, sir," the girl on the telephone said.
"New York," I said. "Philomina Franzini. F-r-a-n-z-i-n-i." I looked over at her and gave a slight smile. She was standing with arms akimbo, balled fists pressed against her hips, her eyes snapping.
"Just a moment, sir."
It was more than a moment, but I waited patiently, Philomina watching.
The voice came back on. "Philomina Franzini, sir? F-r-a-n-z-i-n-i?"
"Yes."
"That is affirmative, sir. Red File. Status C-Seven. Four years. Class Twelve. The Franzini Olive Oil Company. Do you understand Status and Class, sir?"
She would have explained them, but I knew, all right. Philomina had been an FBI agent for four years. Status C-7 meant she was one of those thousands of FBI informers who are volunteers, and never are in contact with any other agents except the single man in charge of them. Class 12 meant she was never to be asked for action, nor was she to have access to any classified information about the Bureau.
Jack Gourlay once told me there were thousands of Status C-7 agents — informers would be a better word — working for legitimate companies around New York City, filing regular monthly reports on the business operation. Ninety-five percent, he said, never turned up anything of value, but the other five percent made all the drudgery of sifting through reports worthwhile.
I put the phone down and turned to Philomina.
"Well, what do you know," I said. "Aren't you the nice little girl, though?"
"What do you mean?"
"Spying on your own uncle. Now, that just isn't right, Philomina."
She turned white. One hand flew to her mouth and she nibbled at the back of a knuckle. "What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. Spying on your uncle for the FBI."
"That's crazy! I don't know what you're talking about!"
She looked terrified, and I couldn't blame her. As far as she knew, I was just another hood about to hook up with the Franzini family. What I was saying could destroy her. There was no point in tormenting her. I started to tell her, then stopped.
She had made one slight movement, as if holding back a sob, her hands fumbling beneath the flame red stole. Then suddenly there was a small, ugly gun in her hand, a Saturday Night Special. It was pointed directly at me. The muzzle looked enormous.
I threw up my hands in a hurry. "Hey, wait a minute! Wait a minute!"
The look of frightened panic that had made me feel sorry for her a moment before was now gone. There was a cold, almost vicious look to her black eyes and that soft, sensuous mouth was drawn into a taut line.
She gestured with the ugly little gun. "Sit down!"
"Now, wait…"
"I said, sit down."
I turned to sit on the sofa, bending slightly as most people when they start to sit on something as deeply settling as a couch. Then, with one swinging movement I grabbed the tight blue pillow decorating the back of the couch and slung it at her as I dove headlong over the end of the couch.
The Saturday Night Special roared in my ear and a bullet slammed into the wall just above my head.
On the floor now, I rolled into a fast crouch and sprung at where she must be standing, my head thrust forward like a battering ram, slamming into her stomach.
But she sidestepped neatly. I had a momentary glimpse of the gun, flashing up, and then down. Something crashed against the back of my ear and my head exploded in a great flash of red pain and black nothingness.
When I came to, I was flat on my back on the living room floor. Philomina Franzini sat astride my body. I was groggily aware that her skirt was pulled up high over her hips, but only groggily. I was much more acutely aware of the fact that the muzzle of the gun was jammed into my mouth. The cold metal was hard and tasteless against my teeth.
I blinked my eyes to clear the film from them.
Despite her unladylike position, Philomina's voice was coldly efficient.
"All right. Talk. T want to know who you called and why. Then I'm turning you over to the FBI. Understand? And if I have to, I'll kill you."
I looked up at her bleakly.
"Talk!" she gritted. She moved the gun back just enough so it wasn't gagging me, but the muzzle of it still brushed against my lips. Philomina seemed to prefer point-blank range.
"Talk!" she demanded.
I didn't have much choice. As Class 12, she wasn't supposed to get any classified information. And I was certainly classified. On the other hand, she had that damned pistol jammed in my face and to go through the charade of having her turn me into the FBI seemed sort of silly.
I began talking.
It's hard to be earnest when you're flat on your back with a well-packed and vibrant girl sitting on your chest and a gun barrel nudging your lips. But 1 tried. I tried very hard.
"Okay, honey. You win, but take it easy."
She glared at me.
I tried again. "Look, we're on the same side of this thing. Honest! Who do you think I just called? I was just calling the FBI to check on you."
"What made you do that?"
"Something you said. The way you hate everything here and still stick around. There had to be a reason."
She shook her head, lips pursed. "Why would you call the FBI, instead of Uncle Joe?"
"Like I said, we're on the same side of this thing."
The Saturday Night Special didn't waver, but her thinking must have. "What's the FBI number?" she snapped.
That was easy. "Two-two-two, six-six-five-four."
"What did they tell you?"
I told her, Class and Status, all that stuff. And I kept talking, fast. I couldn't give her classified details, but I told her about Ron Brandenburg and Madeleine Leston in the FBI office, to show her my familiarity with it. I didn't tell her
I was with AXE, or what my mission was, but I told her enough that she began to get the idea. Gradually, the muzzle of the gun began to retreat from my face.
As I finished, she gave a wrenching sob and laid the gun on the floor alongside my head. Covering her eyes with both hands, she began to cry.
"Easy, honey. Easy." I reached up to grasp her shoulders and pulled her down over me, so that I could hook my hand behind her head. She was unresisting and I rolled her over, off ray chest, so that we were side by side on the floor, her head resting on my arm, my other arm around her.
"Easy, Philomina, take it easy." She was still crying, unrestrainedly now. I could fee! her round breasts against my chest. Cupping my fingers under her chin, I raised her face away from my shoulder. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
There is only one way for a man to stop a woman from crying. I kissed her gently, reassuringly, holding her to me, kissing her again.
Gradually, the crying subsided and her body became more compliant, relaxed. The unfeeling lips softened, then gradually, bit by bit, opened slightly, then more. Her tongue stroked mine, then her arms tightened around my neck.
I held her close, feeling the roundness of her breasts pressing against me. Gently, I kissed the wet eyelashes as I pulled away just enough to talk.
"Easy, honey, easy. Just take it easy," I murmured.
A shudder ran through her body, and she pulled my mouth back to hers, and now her tongue was a darting, live organ, probing deeply, her lips flattened against mine.
My right hand, pressing her to me, discovered the zipper on the back of her off-the-shoulder dress, and I gently tugged away at it, feeling the dress come apart under my fingers until they reached the small of her back, touched the delicate elastic of her panties.