by Pierre Rey
' Really, only twenty three?’
"Yes, why? What's so funny about that?"
She was so sure she was going to spend the night with him that she had bought a toothbrush and hidden it in her purse. He was the one, and tonight was the night. This was what she had been waiting for all her life...
"You American?" she had asked.
"That’s what my passport says. But I'm Sicilian-Amer ican.''
"Anch’io son italiana,"
uLei, da dove’
"From Amalfi’. Did you really shake those two jerks?" "Yes. Whatm you have for dessert?" "Just coffee,"
Later, when they left the restaurant, he held the car door for her, then got in behind the wheel and lit a ciga rette.
"What would you like to do?"
"When?"
"Now."
Without hesitating, she had answered, "Whatever you want"
"Well," he had gone on, "something funny, exciting, offbeat, funky, or what?"
"Whatever you want"
"You got some time to spare?"
She had all the time in the world, whenever he wanted. So he had taken her to a place where she never would have imagined going: a gambling club in the West End.
"You're lucky," he told her. "A few years ago your mother wouldn't even have been allowed in here."
For two hours he had concentrated on the gambling tables, paying absolutely no attention to her, his eyes seeing only the cards. He seemed to be known in the club. The bets he made at every deal would have been enough to support Angela for a year. He kept calling, "Banco! . . . Banco!... Banco!."
"I won eleven thousand pounds," he told her when they left "You're my lucky charm. We go halves on it"
"But you're mad!"
"Not at all. It’s just money. Here, take it"
He tried to shove a huge bundle of currency into her purse. "Come on, don't make such a fuss over nothing. I take things a lot easier than you do. You want it or not?"
They were standing in front of the club, and she looked carefully at him to see whether he was making fun of her. He only seemed irritated by her refusal.
"You really not gonna take it?"
"No."
"It's your share. You really mean it?" "Yes."
"Well, then. Here goes. Hey, there!" _
A ragged panhandler came over to them when Italo called. Her heart sinking, Angela saw him give the money to the beggar. The tramp's jaw fell in amazement, and he backed away, his outstretched hat overflowing with the Queen's currency. When Angela got into the car, her legs were weak.
"When I say good-bye to something, I never take it back," Italo told her.
She was too shaken to answer. She was the kind who saved empty soda bottles in her room and took them back to the store to collect the deposits so she could buy ciga rettes. She hated him for what he had just done, and in the darkness she opened her bag and shoved the toothbrush farther down into it
"Are you angry?" he asked her.
"Yes," she replied. "You insulted that poor man's dig nity."
He laughed a cool, spontaneous laugh. "Maybe you'd better go ask him before you tell me something like that"
"Take me home now," she said.
"Okay. But I still want you to know you're entitled to half of what I got Don't you want it?’
"No," she hissed between clenched teeth.
"Suit yourself. Just wait a minute."
He split his bankroll in two, laid half of it on the car seat and got out with the other half in his hand. Almost ready to throw up, she saw him give the money to a flower seller who was just about to go into the club. Italo came back carrying one' red rose.
"You'll let me give you a flower, won’t you?"
She didn't answer.
"Half of it, then?" he asked sweetly. And he care fully tore the rose in two, keeping the petals for him self and handing her the corolla attached to the stem. She pretended not to see what he was doing. He laid it on her lap and drove off.
He resumed in a playful tone. ‘1 still have a bit of cash here that I won at the club. As you know, half of it belongs to you. Don't you want it?"
"You think that's funny?"
Again he split the bills into two parts and handed her one pile.
"Yes or no?"
She shrugged and turned away. He pressed a button, and the window on his side went down automatically. He held his hand out and the bills started floating into the wind.
"If I didn't think I was boring you, Angela," he said a few moments later, I’d remind you that I still owe you fifty percent of what I have. Don't you want it?"
Her body stiffened, and she looked straight ahead. The bills he had held out to her flew away the way the others had. When they arrived at her door, all he had left were two one-pound notes. He showed her one.
"This is your share. Want it?"
She tried to find the door handle. He set fire to the note with his lighter and used the flame to light his ciga rette.
She had not said a word since they got in the car, and she was troubled by conflicting emotions: anger, pride, humiliation, scorn, and the undeniable physical attrac tion that kept her heart pounding no matter how hard she tried to stifle her desire.
"Would you please help me?" she asked. "I'd like to get out."
"Just a minute, Angela. There's one left. Want your half?"
He cut the note in two.
"Just let me out of here," she raged;
He made two little balls of the last remaining pound out of the eleven thousand he had won, and he flipped them out the window.
"You're obviously not willing to share." He walked around the car and let her out. "Good night," she said. "Goodnight"
For a second, anything had still been possible. They were face to face, unable to stop looking into each other's eyes. She broke off first and turned on her heels. He did nothing to try to hold her back. Smartly, she went up the steps leading to the door of her lodging-house, then she slowed down, slowed still more, finally stopped, and grudg ingly turned around.
Italo Volpone was leaning against his car, complete ly motionless, his cigarette dangling from his lips, looking thoughtful and serious. When he saw her come back down he made no move.
‘What's the matter?" he asked. "Forget your keys?"
‘No."
"Can you do me a favor?" "That depends..."
'I don't have a dime left," he said, unable to keep from smiling. 'I might get picked up for vagrancy. Could you let me have some loose change?"
"I don't have any with me," she replied.
And then they were in each other's arms, neither of them conscious of having made the first move. They didn't kiss, but joined in a kind of formal way, in which each seemed to be evaluating the other's presence without a word being uttered. He patted her hair as he emitted a raucous little laugh.
"Since you wouldn't accept any of my money, what is it you want?"
‘You."
In Italo's suite at the Dorchester, Angela was afraid to tell him that this was the first time she had ever been naked in bed with a man. She didn't warn him. Her friends had told her nice men were put off if they found out that a girl was a virgin. So she had gritted her teeth when he came into her, and then she was carried off on a wave of mingled pain and pleasure so intense that she passed out
"I didn't want to tell you," she later admitted.
"But why? Why?"
"I was afraid you'd change your mind. Oh, Italo, I wanted you so much!"
The next day she had stayed away from her lectures.
In the afternoon she had not gone to the library. When evening came, she was still there, in his bed. From time to time, a floor waiter brought a tray of exquisite food and fine chilled wines as transparent as water. The following night they slept for two hours inside of each other. In the morning, they were still making love. At noon,, without
discussing it, they agreed hot to budge. On the afternoon of the third day, as Angela came out of the showe
r, she said,
‘I don't know whether ifs night or day. I don't even remember my name."
She collapsed lovingly on his chest. He put an arm around her shoulders and tenderly raised her chin.
"I can tell you your name," he said. "It's Angela— Angela Volpone."
Fifty-eight days later, in New York, they were mar ried. Genco had given her a priceless diamond bracelet for a wedding gift The wedding took place at the Pierre, and hundreds of people came by to wish them well. When Angela's eyes quizzed him as to who they all were, Italo answered with amused winks. And when they got to their sumptuous Park Avenue apartment Angela had not been able to keep from exclaiming, "Heavens, where do you get the money to afford a place like this?"
"Oh, Genco and I are into a lot of things. Like whole sale fruit and vegetables. We don't make out too bad."
Sometimes Italo and his friends had poker games at the apartment All the guests treated her with the most ob sequious respect and little by little, an idea crept into her head that for the longest time she dared not articulate. Then, one evening, unable to contain it any longer, she asked her husband, half jokingly, half seriously’ "Tell me, Italo, are you a racketeer?"
He looked shocked, collapsed on the couch, and pre tended to fire a six-shooter into the air.
"No, no, a thousand times no!" he kidded her. "The lady knows all! Yes, I confess, I confess! I'm a thug! I cut little boys up in slices and eat them raw with dill pickles and mustard! Please don't turn me in, lady, please, oh, please!"
But when Francesca Volpone collapsed with pain as she learned of the death of her husband, she had spoken the awful words, "I knew they'd kill him on me! And now they're going to kill Italo, too!'
Angela shivered. That shriek remained ringing in her ears, and she felt terribly lost in the big apartment The doorbell rang. She had sent her maid Fiorentina out to get the papers; Nervously she got up off the couch to answer the bejL'and at the same moment, the phone rang: Her heart jumped it would be Italo! She picked it up.:
"Angela!"
"Italo!"
Again the doorbell rang. She was irritated, and she said hurriedly into the phone, "Hold on, darling. Fiorentina's at the front door. I’ll be right back."
She put the receiver down, and as she rushed toward the door she had a vague feeling that she could hear her husband yelling something at her from across the ocean. She opened the door and, without looking at Fiorentina, turned to hurry back to the phone. Suddenly she felt her wrist gripped in a steel vise. Terrorized, she saw two men, both images of the men who came to play poker with Italo, except that she had never seen these two before.
"Mrs. Volpone? Sorry to trouble you, but you'll have to come with us. There's someone who has to see you."
Angela, trying to control her fear, wanted to pull her wrist away. No way.
When she opened her mouth to scream, one of the men quickly clamped his hand over her mouth, and she felt the muzzle of a revolver in her side.
"Don't give us no trouble, Mrs. Volpone. We don't wanna hurt you. You'll be back home soon enough."
She felt like she had a mouthful of rusty metal. Her eyes blurred, her legs gave way beneath her, and she fainted.
While one of the men held her up, the other went over and gingerly hung up the phone.
Homer Kloppe wished he could sink through the earth. Forgetting that he had taken his car to the Grossmunster, he started to walk, grazing the pavement with an unsteady
pace, not knowing where he was going, not daring to look anyone in the eye, trying in vain to obliterate the whole nightmarish scene from his mind. He needed to get hold
of himself, to be alone awhile, to try to understand what had moved Inez to exhibit herself before the meeting of the college of elders and the representatives of the synodal
assemblies. Valiantly Homer had carried on in a kind of fog, attempting to convey to his peers that the giant black woman—"an acquaintance of my daughter's"—was mad.
Mumbling excuses, he asked them to go on without him while he alerted the authorities.
He looked up and noticed that he had instinctively walked toward home. But he couldn't go there now. The invaders commissioned by his daughter must be ravaging the apartment in preparation for the wedding.
He forked to the right in the direction of the bank, feeling that all the passersby were staring at him as if they could see the guilt on his face. And he thought he saw looks of irreversible condemnation.
He went into the bank through the private entrance, but Marjorie knew the minute he was there.
‘All kinds of calls for you, sir,’' she said as she walked into his office.
He looked at her somberly. I’m not in."
"But, sir—"
"Not to anyone, nor for anything. Now, leave me alone.’'
She made a face that seemed to say, Nobody knows the burdens I bear, and replied, 'I’m sorry if I have to dis obey you, sir, but they're very insistent They say it's a question of life and death for you. On line three, a man— he said that Inez told him to call, and that you would know what it was about At any rate, now I've given you the message."
She slipped out, lips tight, scampering like a scared fowl. Did she know? he wondered.
Trembling a little, Homer pressed the button for line three.
"Yes?" he said, fingering the knot of his tie. 'What happened with Inez is only the first warning. A friendly one. It's just too bad these things have to happen to a man of your standing. Suppose the whole town were to hear about it?"
Homer tensed; he recognized the voice of Italo Vol pone. His first reaction was to cut him off, but he didn't He was too curious. And scared.
"Inez is a little nuts, you know," the voice went on. "She's the kind who'd go around bragging about what she did. Fortunately, I was able to talk her out of going and telling your wife about it"
"What is it you want?" Kloppe spat out in a metallic voice.
Volpone, soft-soaping until now, slipped into a threatening tone.
"You damm well know what I want. If it isn't settled first thing tomorrow morning, your troubles have only begun."
Kloppe took a breath, swallowed his saliva, and hissed back, "Go fuck yourself!"
It was the first time in his life he had ever allowed himself to use such vocabulary.
Gabelotti and the younger of the Volpone brothers had gone to the mattress, as the expression went. By locking up Moshe Yudelman and snatching Italo's wife, Ettore had burned his bridges behind him. The war would have brok en out sooner or later anyway. Genco's replacement would be a thorny problem for the other four big New York families.
According to Moshe, Italo had made himself the new capo of the Volpone clan. How could Babe Volpone ex pect to pull that off when his gambling history would auto matically turn all the members of the Commissione against him? That is, if he ever showed up again.
To Gabelotti, Italo's sudden disappearance from the hotel was a bad sign. Either he had realized that he could never get into that bank and was on his way home with his tail between his legs, or he already had the Syndi cate's two billion bucks; in which case it might be as hard to find him as it was to collect the dough.
What exasperated Ettore most was that it would take hours before he could know. With the difference in time, it would be the middle of the night in New York when the banks opened in Zurich. What would Kloppe answer when he stated the account number?
Trying to calm his nerves, Ettore opened the small refrigerator that was hidden behind a wall panel. He took out several bottles of beer, a loaf of bread, and some but ter. He buttered several slices of bread, wolfing each one down as it was finished. He was on his third bottle of brew. Waiting without knowing threw him into a state of deep depressive fury.
Things were beyond his influence or control. The preventive measures he had taken against Volpone would not mean: much if the little jerk had taken off with the money.
What did a consigliere or even a wife count- for pitted aga
inst two billion dollars?
A little earlier, Thomas Merta and Frankie Sabatini called to tell him that Angela Volpone had come along without making a fuss. He had warned the two men not to hurt her. As for Yudelman, Ettore had been magnani mous enough to tell Simeone Ferro to try to cheer him up by making small talk and giving him whatever he might ask for. Ettore respected the Volpone consigliere. Still, by making it clear that he was stringing along with Italo, Mo she had signed his own death warrant He had bet on the wrong horse.
To calm the intestinal cramps brought on by his worries, Gabelotti downed two more bottles of beer. But his stomach still kept giving him off-and-on twinges. He had a sour taste in his mouth, and several times he had to make an effort to keep from throwing up. To calm the twinges, he took an especially thickly buttered piece of bread.