by Pierre Rey
The doorbell rang: three long rings and two short, the usual family signal.
As Pietro Bellinzona came in, he smiled at Lando. "Where's the beauty now? I wouldn't mind another piece of her twat"
"In her bedroom. Chained down. Italo don't want nobody screwing around with her."
Pietro was surprised by Lando's tone.
"You sore at me 'cause I humped her?" he asked.
"No."
"It was on orders. And I didn't do her any damage, you know. Look, no offense or nothin'. I know she's your chick, but with the number of cocks she'd had in her, one more or less don't make much difference."
Lando shrugged. "Okay, forget ft. I think two of her cousins may be coming over to see her."
Bellinzona looked at him, incredulous. "Coming here? You must be nuts!"
"Volpone knows all about it" "And he said they could come here?" "Right If they show, you leave her loose, and keep an eye on ‘em."
"What kind of dinges are they?" "They're diplomats."
"Diplomats, my ass! Niggers is niggers. Just what did Italo say? What am I s'posed to do?"
Lando hesitated a second; then he regretfully re peated what he had been told.
"If anything looks off-color"—he laughed self-con sciously—"let 'em all have it."
"This goes down, and well have every cop in this fuckin' country on our tails! And the New York police are probably sore at us too by now. Those monkeys never should have been allowed to come here."
Lando turned on him, his face tense with anger. "Stop telling me what should or shouldn't be done. Nobody asked me for my opinion! She was the one who talked to them on the phone, not me!"
"Hey, hey," Pietro came back at him, "I think you got it bad there, pal—"
"Ciao!’ Lando cut him off, taking his jacket off the back of a chair.
"Bye-bye, baby doll," Pietro answered.
"Anybody calls, you let her talk. Just listen on the ex tension. That's what Italo ordered."
"And if she wants to take a leak, what? Let her piss on the floor?"
Lando gave him the key to the handcuffs. And just then there were great knocks on the door, loud and heavy, accompanied by the sound of laughter and greetings.
"Shit they're here!" Lando said, shoving his hand into his. pocket
Bellinzona did likewise, but before they could make another move, Inez shouted from her room in a tone of happy surprise, "Okay, boys, I'm coming!"
Bellinzona walked into the room and glared at her as he unlocked the handcuffs.
‘Tell 'em you're busy, you hear? I'm givin’ you five minutes to get 'em out of here! If you don't I’ll do it myself!"
In order to let her know he meant it, he showed her the Walther PP he had in his pocket.
In the living room, Bellinzona took up a position in an armchair near the door, his right hand in his pocket, a magazine in his lap.
Lando settled down on a couch. "Go on, let 'em in," he said.
With no haste Inez opened the safety latch on the door. All that could be seen was a doorful of lilacs. Fol lowed by two unbelievably big characters who had to stoop in order to get through without banging their heads. Non plussed, Bellinzona looked down at their feet to see wheth er they were on stilts, but the feet were their own, and they must have been size twenty or twenty-one. For the first time in his life, Bellinzona felt puny.
He and Lando stared at each other. The brothers dropped their bouquets, hugged Inez, and each in turn spun her around for a few dance steps, with bold happy laugh ter and hearty slaps on the shoulder.
"You dirty Africans!" Inez burst out laughingly, pre tending to punch them. "You'll squeeze me to death!"
Suddenly the two giants stopped cold, as if they had just noticed they were not alone with her. The one in the flannel slacks coughed.
"Sorry," said the other one.
Noting her brothers' embarrassment, Inez came to their assistance. Turning to Pietro and Lando, she called out in a sprightly voice, "Let me introduce my two cous ins. Kouakou and Rocky."
The brothers smiled broadly. Just as naturally as could be, they took a step toward Baretto and Bellinzona, their hands extended for a friendly shake. Volpone's men, in spite of their congenital mistrustfulness, allowed them selves the reflex of taking their right hands out of their pockets, letting go of their rods, and what happened next was so swift a cobra couldn't have seen it coming.
In perfect harmony Bellinzona and Baretto went flying through space in a lightning curve. Before they could land, one felt a karate chop on the back of the neck, the other a well-placed lack in the solar plexus. The apartment walls shook with their fall. Immediately Rocky and Kouakou were on top of them, and in another instant their weapons were in the giants' hands.
"He the one?" Rocky asked, pointing to Baretto.
"No," Inez said. "The big one."
"What about this one?" Rocky insisted.
She looked at Lando, who was out cold. "Oh, forget him, he's just a shrimp."
"Go pack and stay in your room. Well call you as soon as we're through," Kouakou told her.
Inez turned on her heels without looking back, and they heard her bedroom door slamming.
Bellinzona groaned,, shook himself, and opened an eye.
"Dirty niggers!"
Neither brother bothered to answer as they conferred in whispers for a moment, not even threatening the two floored Volpone punks with the guns they had taken. While Lando was coming to, Bellinzona saw one of them toss a coin in the air.
'Tails!" Kouakou said.
Rocky and he both bent down to check it.
"Shit you win," said Rocky.
Pietro sneered. "What you tossing for, boys? Your assholes?"
"No, yours," Kouakou replied calmly.
"Fuckin' spades," Bellinzona mumbled.
Kouakou looked at him with surprise. "Hey, Rocky, I think that fat slob is talking to you."
"Naw.not to me!"
"Goddamn black faggots!" Bellinzona spat out
Rocky and Kouakou broke into a great bright youth ful laugh. Pietro began to get to his feet The two giants let him. leering at him out of the corners of their eyes.
Kouakou tossed the gun down on a couch and came over to stand in front of Bellinzona.
"My sister informed me that you have been disre spectful to her," Kouakou said softly.
"That bitch your sister?" Pietro laughed. "Sure, I fucked her, and she stunk."
Pietro, on his guard and ready for a fight never saw what was coming; nor did he have time to raise his arms to parry. Three punches, coming from different angles, hit him in rapid succession in, the liver, on the jaw, and in the heart, as hard and precise as if they had come from a hydraulic press. Bellinzona gathered his bull neck into his shoulders and butted forward with the full weight of his pounds in a blind attack that had never given an antagonist the slightest chance. His skull was as hard as granite. At eighteen he had liked to show off by butting his way through plywood partitions. Now he charged.
Kouakou merely swiveled, and when Pietro grazed against him, he shoved his leg out. Bellinzona went sprawl ing with all his weight, and a low coffee table splintered as he crashed, against it. At the same moment, Lando savagely hurled himself at Kouakou, whose back was to him. In his hand he held the jagged neck of a glass lamp he had just smashed.
"Son of a bitch," Rocky muttered calmly.
Without getting out of the chair he was in, he ex tended his arm and grabbed Lando's wrist, wrenching the weapon from it in one twist, at the same time kicking him in the belly. Then he got up. Neither brother was out of breath. Their eyes merely shone with contempt Kouakou lifted Bellinzona in one hand, like a bundle of dirty laun dry, and then he opened the mobster's belt buckle and pulled his pants down. Bellinzona came to just as Koua kou tore off his underpants.
Pietro couldn't believe his eyes, and he tried to get free, but Kouakou swung him forward three times and smashed his head against the stone stand of an abstract sculpture.
Meanwhile, Lando, lying prone at Rooky's feet was shaken with spasms and vomiting bile.
Kouakou leaned over Bellinzona and whispered some thing into his ear. Pietro, who could only see him through a red haze, shook his head in protest. Rocky was now over in the corner, with his back to them, doing something strange, as if he were urinating and paying no attention to what went on behind him.
Kouakou placed his fingers around Bellinzona's head as if he were grasping a basketball.
"Now, listen to me," he said without raising his. voice. "We're gonna do to you what you did to our sister.
You won't be able to call us nigger faggots anymore, be cause you're gonna be cornholed good and proper.’’
Bellinzona, in despair, realized that he was unarmed and now had no more strength than a child. Once again he shook his head. His huge half-naked body was spread on the carpet his bulging buttocks and monstrous thighs reminiscent of the hindquarters of a pig in a butcher's display.
His eyes filled with tears. "Don't do that brother! Don't do it!" he begged.
Kouakou turned to Lando, who was green in the face and running with sweat
"Nothing's gonna happen to you. We just want you to watch your pal here get cornholed. You know why? 'Cause he’ll never forgive you for having seen it. He’ll be too scared you might go around blabbing about it" He looked at Lando for a second in silence and then added, "So he'll kill you."
"Don't do that!" Bellinzona groaned. "Kill me if you want—anything—but not that!"
"Shut up, pig. Rocky?"
"Ready," he answered.
All their heads turned toward him. He was facing them now, and what Bellinzona and Orlando saw was more than enough to strike terror into them. From Rooky's open fly there stood a penis such as they had never seen—inhuman in size, swollen, and strained erect with such power that it seemed nothing could ever make it come down again. Kouakou quickly knelt pressed down with all his weight on Befiinzona's shoulder blades, and stuck the muzzle of Pietro's own revolver into the back of his neck.
"Go on, shoot you bastard!" Bellinzona yelled.
Kouakou grabbed him by one ear and slammed his forehead on the floor. Lando, in a daze, tried to close his eyes, but they immediately penned open again. He saw Rocky stretch out on top of Bellinzona, who was sobbing like a kid as his nails tried to scratch into the floor.
"Not that! Not that!" he was howling.
"Shitty bastard!" Rocky muttered as he rode him.
For one moment his hips waved hesitantly as his muscular fingers dug into Pietro's soft white flesh the bet ter to spread it apart. Here in this soft, feminine room, in the center of Zurich, the savage rites of primitive tribes were suddenly reasserting their dominance.
There was nothing about either of the brothers that bespoke the nuclear physicist or the champion athlete. They were two wild-eyed animals, panting, rutting, and roaring, following the age-old law—an eye for an eye, a hole for a hole.
However desperately his victim tried to buck, Rocky succeeded in shoving his hips forward. And thrust home.
As Bellinzona roared with pain, there echoed a vic torious shout that seemed to come from the depths of the ages.
16
"What's wrong?’' Chimene Kloppe asked. "You're pale." She put her hand on her husband's shoulder. 'Is it on account of Renata?"
Homer patted her hand, but his eyes remained distant and absent
"Do you want some tea?" she inquired.
He shook his head no.
"Don't worry. I know ifs a hard thing for a father to go through. But it won't last all that long. Look at me a minute."
She took his chin in her fingers and lifted it "Smile . at me."
Mechanically Kloppe's lips opened to reveal his per fect teeth.
"I like it when you smile," his wife told him.
Four hours before, Homer had been lying limp in Dr. August Strolh's office. He was the only one who had been subjected to physical torture, yet it was he who had brought the dentist around, helped by Ingrid, who was still not very solid on her legs.
The professor had cried, tears mingled with protests. "They forced me to do it, Mr. Kloppe. I didn't want to. This is an abomination! . . . They held a razor to Ingrid's throat I'll never forgive myself for this. Never!"
As the dental couple succumbed to total nervous col lapse, the banker's courage rose. He had to grit his teeth and take hold. Even as he-formed the thought, he realized how absurd it was. He had no teeth left to grit. The nauseating taste of blood still filled his mouth, a clot still dangled from his upper gum. His fingers went to the soft lump and, as he pulled it off, the hemorrhaging resumed, strong as a geyser.
'Take care of me, you fool, instead of sniveling like that!" he stormed, shaking Strolh angrily, forcing him out of his dazed state.
"Yes, get into the chair. You're right. Take care of you, of course. I’ll do it Ingrid! Compresses—coagu lant..."
His professional reflexes were returning. He would repair the damage. He had genius enough to reconstitute exactly what they had forced, him to destroy.
"My daughter's getting married tonight’’ Kloppe re minded him. "and I want to be able to greet all the guests, you among them. With all my teeth showing."
Despite the awful-hissing of the sounds that came out of Kloppe's mouth. Ingrid and August had no trouble un derstanding him. They looked at each other. Could they possibly put temporary dentures in over those raw bleeding gums?
"Let's get on with it!" Kloppe encouraged them with a twist of the lips that was supposed to be a smile but served only the better to show the wounds that lined the inside of his mouth.
It took three hours. The professor outdid himself. For different reasons, none of the three made any com ment whatsoever about what had caused the attack. Kloppe. because he knew. Ingrid and August, because they didn't and were still in shock.
When the banker looked at himself in the mirror, he saw that he appeared almost normal again. His swollen jaws possessed a full double set of teeth, except that they were no longer his own.
'I’m going to press charges." Strolh said.
Homer looked at him. "Do so if you wish." he said. That's your right But for the time being at least. I for bid you to connect my name in any way with this affair."
"But why?Why?"
Kloppe merely took the pills, the disinfectant, and the healing powders Ingrid was holding out to him. He nodded and said, "I'll see you both tonight. My congratu lations. You did a thorough job."
Once again Dr. Strolh felt tears coming to his eyes. He timidly shook the banker's hand.
"Mr. Kloppe—" he started to say.
The banker cut him off. "Yes, I know, I understand, I’ll see you tonight"
Much too conscious of the struggle ahead of him, Kloppe lost none of his presence of mind despite all the analgesics and tranquilizers he had imbibed, and he headed straight for the bank to carry out what he had planned to leave until after Renata's wedding.:
He sent out a telex to Melvin Bost in Detroit in structing him to advise all owners of Beauty Ghost P9s about the risk of driving their cars in their present condi tion. This was no time to be concerned about financial stability. The main thing was, he had to be at peace with his conscience. Once and for all.
He also decided to make a clean breast of things, to confess his transgressions to Chimene without glossing over any of the facts, but when he got home he pushed this thought back. Did he have a right to make .her share his violent trials? Chimene lived on a pink cloud. Could she stand the strain of it?
"Chimene..."
‘Yes, Homer?"
Before her full-length mirror, she cooed over the Parma-violet gown she planned to wear that night.
"I have something to tell you," Homer began.
"Do you like this color?" she asked. "Oh, I beg your pardon. What was it you wanted to say?"
Kloppe gave up. His jaw hurt too much.
"Nothing," he said. ‘lt wasn't anything."
; Grouped around Ettore Gabelotti, with worried faces, were Carmine Crimello, Angelo Barba, Thomas Merta, Carlo Badaletto, Frankie Sabatini, and Simeone Ferro. That their capo had made no move after two of his punks had been knocked off right under his nose left them deeply concerned. The greatest strength of the Syndicate, every one knew, was that it never let an insult go without re taliating. Unless Don Ettore had a secret up his sleeve, he was either going soft or he was actually scared of the Volpones.