by Pierre Rey
Still trying to keep covered Rico swung to his left and got off a couple more shots. Then, to his amazement, he realized that he was letting the gun slip out of his hand, and his shoulder felt the impact of a sledgehammer blow. Someone grabbed his head from behind and violently banged it against the boiler.
Folco Mori bent over Rico Gatto's unconscious body and with a sharp twist pulled out his dagger, which had penetrated up to its hilt in the flesh of the shoulder muscle, piercing it clean through. He saw Bellinzona rush over to Italo Volpone, who was tottering toward them, his face haggard.
"Padrone, you're wounded..." said Pietro.
Italo shook his head and tried to motion him away. With horror, Pietro then noticed the small black hole in the boss's coat, right over his heart Bellinzona opened the coat expecting to see a horrible wound, but Volpone's shirt was intact. Not a drop of blood.
Before Italo thought of stopping him, Pietro slipped Ms hand into his boss's inside coat pocket and pulled out the deck of cards Volpone always carried with him. The top card was the ace of hearts, and the hole in it was right in the middle of the heart. The bottom card, which he didn't bother to look at, was intact
Pietro wanted to shout, to give thanks, to say a blessing, proclaim a miracle, but all he did utter was, "Goddamn...''
"Who is he?" Volpone asked Mori, making no com ment as he grabbed the deck of cards out of Bellinzona's hands and stuffed it back into his pocket. Although he had been shaken by the bullet Italo had not forgotten what had brought him into this engine room.
Mori handed him the passport Blood was gushing through the dark material of Rico's jacket
Italo looked at the name page: Enrico Gatto, Real Estate Agent, 256 Washington Avenue, Miami, Florida.
Rico opened his eyes. He saw three threatening figures bending over him, and he knew his time had come.
"Who sent you?" Volpone demanded. Rico Gatto put his hand over his wound but said nothing.
'Help me," Italo said.
In a second Rico was brought up on his feet Italo made a sign to Bellinzona to keep him from yelling.
While Pietro was holding Rico Gatto's mouth shut with his huge paws, Volpone used all his strength to shove him against the boiler plate from which the geyser of live steam was spurting so that Rico's body would come right into the stream of boiling steam. Gatto, his eyes bulging with pain, tensed all his muscles to try to get away from the jet that was searing his flesh through his clothes, so powerful that it all but overwhelmed the three men shouldering him like three football linemen.
"Who sent you?" Volpone repeated.
Rico's eyes rolled up into his head. "Gabelotti," he spat out in terror, knowing he had nothing more to loose.
Volpone grabbed his mouth with both his hands and spread his jaws as wide as possible. Shielding himself with Gatto's body, he shoved him up against the boiler again, face first and kept his face pressed against the metal, the deadly jet aimed right down his throat. Rico Gatto's skin turned purple, then livid, like cooked meat. He was long dead by the time Volpone, pulled off by Folco and Pietro, let the lifeless body drop and then jumped back to get out of the way of the steam.
"Your blade,’' barked Volpone.
Folco Mori gave him the dagger. Italo knelt over Gatto's body, but his position kept Folco and Bellinzona from seeing what he was doing. He kept his back to them one moment longer, wrapped something in his handkerchief; and then got up.
"Are we getting out of here?" Pietro asked’’
' "Just a "second,’’ Italo said. "Grab him'and follow me."
Bellinzona and Mori picked up the body. "You got his passport?" Volpone asked Folco. "Yes."
"Lemme have it," Volpone said.
They were in front of a circular lid about three yards in diameter, the top of which was at ground level. On the side of the cover was a butterfly that Volpone un screwed until a rectangular opening appeared.
"Drop him in mere!"
Bellinzona and Mori came forward, their faces singed by the intense heat coming up from the hole. Quickly they shoved Rico Gatto's corpse into it Volpone himself closed the trapdoor and screwed the butterfly back on.
Then he spoke the eulogy: "Just what he deserved. A garbage incinerator."
Steam was beginning to fill the engine room, but they managed to reach the concrete stairs that led out the rear exit without meeting anyone.
Later, when they were back at their own hotel, Vol pone handed some money to Bellinzona, who was get ting ready to put the car away.
"Go buy me a watch and bring it up to my room," he said.
"What kind of watch?"
"A watch - any kind. And some paper, too—wrap ping paper."
"Okay," Pietro answered, sufficiently familiar with the new padrone's ways to know that it was better not to ask questions.
Chimene Kloppe heaved a sigh. In order to keep her word to Renata, she was going to have to leave her own apartment for forty-eight hours. No one; not even she, was to know what was being done there to prepare for the celebration.
In less than an hour a squad of men would come in and wreak havoc with her well-ordered arrangement and move her Pissarros, Renoirs, and Manets around.
This wedding was going to be incongruous, shock ing’ yet, for fear of what her daughter might do by way of reprisal. Chimene had not dared object. Renata had her father's iron will: when she got an idea into her head, heaven help those who tried to stop her. To keep her mother in line, and to reassure her. Renata had whis pered sweetly, as ingratiatingly as she knew how, "Look, Mutterchen, I'm not asking for any queen's dowry! All I want is to be able to fix the place up to suit myself— that can be your wedding present to me.''
It was a treacherous request, and it might well cost them the respect of the city's leading citizens. Some people, who didn't appreciate "the idea of coming to a wedding at three o'clock in the morning, had already sent their excuses. Of course, there were others who had been delighted, viewing it as an amusing diversion.
In the meantime, for two days, Chimene was going to have to live like a displaced person in the stuffy little four-room flat they owned on the upper floor. She had al ways wanted to rent it out, but she had never quite dared, lest people think the Kloppes needed money.
She made a mental check to see that she had put all she would need into her overnight bag. Her maid had al ready moved three trunks "up there." Homer had made no comment, but on two or three occasions she could read in his eyes that he was being made to drink the hem lock.
The doorbell rang, and when she opened it, holding her overnight bag in her hand, two husky hulks were standing there.
'Is this Mr. Homer Kloppe's place?"
"Yes, it is."
The man must have taken her for a servant. Other wise, how could his tone of voice be explained?
"Well, you're right to be getting out Things are gon na be hoppin' in here."
Pietro Bellinzona, Folco Mori, and Orlando Baretto were curiously watching Babe Volpone tie the last golden string around his package. It was a small package, in
tan wrapping paper. Italo felt it and men pasted on the gummed address label.
"Folco," he said, "I want you to take this to the air port Put it on the next plane for New York. You make sure that they understand it is to be delivered only to the addressee. Got that?"
"Okay, but who do I give it to?" he asked. "I don't know no one here."
"Baretto?" Volpone queried Lando.
"Go to the freight office," Lando told Folco Mori. "Ask for Elizabeth. She'll know what to do."
"It's nothing to be concerned about" Italo said. "Just a souvenir. A watch. A little gift Thing is, I don't want him to have to pay no duty on it"
"Padrone" Bellinzona protested, "an eighty-dollar watch couldn't cost much duty."
"You, mind your own business!" Volpone said; then he said to Falco, "Come back here and see me when the package is sent off. I’ll have a couple of things for you to do."
Folco raised
an eyebrow and said, "Okay." Italo turned back to Bellinzona. r "Go down to the lobby," he said, "and get me two decks of cards. Fifty-two-card decks, right?’' "On my way."
Then Italo started giving instructions to Baretto. "Go to a real estate agency and rent an apartment or a house. Whatever looks best Pay 'em six months' rent in advance. Tell 'em it's for some diplomats or something, whatever you feel like, but I want to be sleeping there tonight get it? Hey, wait a minute. You got cash on you?"
"Some."
"Some ain't enough. Here, take this."
He stuffed a fat roll of bills into Lando's hand. "Don't have to bother counting. Ifs ten grand. Now, tell me about that broad of yours."
"She did everything you wanted, everything."
"Tell me."
"I just talked to her on the phone. She called him at his house." "When?"
"Just before he sat down to lunch.'‘
"What did she say she wanted?"
"To see him.""
"Does she usually call to ask to see him?" "No, Kloppe's the one who tells her when he wants her."
"Didn't he think it was strange that she called?" "No. Inez didn't think so. She found out his whole schedule for tomorrow." "Is she ready to go?" "Yes."
"She knows she's living on borrowed time?" "Yeah, she knows." "Okay, now beat ft."
Lando wasn't sure whether he should ask the ques tion that was on the tip of his tongue.
"What's on your mind now?" Volpone asked him.
"You did say pay six months’ rent, didn't you, padrone?"
"Yeah, so what? I just happen to like this town. Okay?"
"Okay, sure, boss."
Italo waited for him to close the door before taking his little roulette wheel out of a drawer. He decided he'd see whether he could hit the zero in six tries.
As far as he was concerned, he'd had it with this hotel. It'd be better to go someplace else. At worst he'd only be in Zurich three more days. Considering what he had in store for Homer itloppe. that should be more than time enough. But what did it matter if he wasted ten grand on a phonv rental? His hand grazed the pocket of his bath robe, and he felt the hard shape of the deck of cards that had saved his life. He stopped the roulette ball before it had a chance to land on a number. Superstitious, like all gamblers, he had a feeling he'd be tempting fate if he tested his luck again over something inconsequential.
While Italo dialed Angela's number in New York, Folco Mori, riding toward the airport in his Volkswagen, glanced at the package Volpone had given him.
The name Volpone had written on the label in big block letters came as a total surprise:
ettore gabelotti
There were some twenty people in the audience. In cluding two women. It was not a mass meeting, and it was customary during these meetings of the elders with the delegates from the synodal assemblies that anyone might interrupt the speaker to make a point about anything ques tionable. Once or twice Kloppe had been politely reminded that he had misspoken a date.
He had trouble maintaining the continuity of his talk. For the first time in his life, where Zwingli was concerned, his mind was wandering. Yet, the setting was perfect for meditation and concentration: a library in an old crypt alongside the west wing of the Grossmunster, the greatest Romanesque religious edifice in all of Switzerland.
This was where Zwingli had preached the Reforma tion. But today, his teachings were not taking precedence over the memory of Inez's sensuous voice. She had phoned Homer just as he was about to sit down to the last meal he would have at home before his daughter's wedding. For tunately, Homer had answered, just making it to the phone ahead of his wife, but then he had had to carry on the con versation under her scrutiny. Inez had never called him at home. Nor anywhere else. He was always the one who called her.
"I’d love to see you..."
"That’s simply out of the question.’’
"When, then?''
"Could I call you back," he asked, adding (for Chimene's benefit, although she couldn't see that his hand was over the mouthpiece), "at your office?"
"What're you doing this afternoon?"
"Unfortunately, I’m busy. I'm giving a talk at the Grossmunster at three."
"I miss you. How about tomorrow?"
(She had never told him she missed him!)
"I have such a heavy schedule..."
'Tell me about it, men I’ll know where you are when I’m thinking about you."
"I have appointments all morning, a meeting early in the afternoon, and then the dentist's at four."
"Later on, then?"
"Sorry, there's going to be a wedding in the family. So many things to be done..."
"But when, then? The day after tomorrow?"
"No, no, impossible. My daughter's getting married."
"That's too bad! You know what I'm doing as I listen to your voice?"
"No."
'I’m caressing myself. I'm lying on the bed, stark naked. My legs are spread wide apart."
His face turned scarlet Chimene, who hadn't taken her eyes off him, gestured to tell him that the fish quenelles were getting cold.
"Listen, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. I’m eating my lunch. Don't you eat lunch?"
"Not when I’m playing with my pussy, little white man. Well, tough luck. Ciao."
After she hung up, he pretended to sign off.
"Very well, then, if you want my dear fellow. Any time after the twenty-seventh. Yes, I'll be in at whatever time is best for you. Oh, not at all. Good-bye."
"Would you like me to warm them up for you?" his wife asked. "Your quenelles, I mean."
"No, no, thanks—they're quite warm enough as is" He concentrated on his plate.
"Who was it on the phone?"
"A customer."
"Don't you feel well?"
"Of course I do."
"But your face is crimson!"
"Really? Well, I did have a rather grueling morning at the office."
Three-quarters of an hour before, he had watched on his closed-circuit television while Volpone made his tri umphal entry into the Zurich Trade Bank. Owing to a bad connection in the dial of his set he had not been able to tune the camera to the ground-floor corridor near the ele vator entrance. That was where, according to what the guards later told him, Volpbne got his comeuppance. At any rate, he'd been able to see the crook stalk out of the bank, and that had been comforting.
"Although Calvin was able to reduce the sacraments to just two," a voice was saying, "baptism and confirma tion, and to- decree that the flock was to elect its own pastors; and although he rejected the penance and abol ished the bishoprics, we must not minimize the major part played in all this by Beze..."
"I beg your pardon?" asked an appalled Homer Kloppe.
Lost in his thoughts, he. had completely forgotten the holy place he was in, as well as the people who were there debating a question of theological doctrine at his own instigation. How long had he been absent like this?
"Beze," his interlocutor was repeating, as all eyes focused on Homer, "Theodore de Beze, or Theodoras Beza, if you prefer."
A strange thing happened in Homer's mind. The man had somehow been moved to use the French form of Beza's name: Beze. That sounded like baise—which, trans lated, meant "screw." All Homer could see was the shat tering image of Inez doing to herself what she had de scribed to him on the phone—her beautiful legs spread wide and invitingly. And for the second time that day, spoken now by a delegate from the synodal assembly, he heard the words, "Mr. Kloppe, don't you feel well?"
"Uh, no, not really..." he mumbled.
His audience had its back to the library door. Homer, facing them, saw the door slowly open to reveal Inez's un believable silhouette, looking even taller than usual in one of her favorite coats that came all the way down to her ankles. Staring at her as if paralyzed, he tried to wipe away the vision, thinking, This can only be a dream, it can't be real, I’ll wake up in a minute.
One by one, every head
twisted in the direction in which Kloppe's stare had become set Some cleared their throats, others moved nervously in their seats. All, with out exception, kept observing Kloppe in surprise and em barrassment, as if they expected him to indicate what they ought to do in so unprecedented a circumstance.