Stiletto (8 page)

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Cesare, there’s a call for you,” she called into the bedroom.

He came into the room in his swimming shorts, the deep tan he had already acquired in the few days they had been here contrasting with the white trunks. He took the telephone from her hand. “Cardinali speaking,” he said into it.

The operator’s voice crackled through the receiver. “All right,” Cesare said. “Put her on.” He looked across at Barbara. “It’s Miss Martin, my secretary.”

Barbara nodded and went outside on the balcony again. She could hear faint snatches of his conversation. It had something to do with a car that was in Palm Beach. After a few minutes he put down the telephone. He didn’t come out. When she turned around, he was seated at the desk making a few notes on a scratch pad. She went back inside.

He looked up at her and smiled. “Forgive me,” he said. “Business.”

She looked down at him and nodded slowly. This was the last day of the week they had planned together. “I wish the week were only beginning,” she said.

“So do I,” he answered.

“I hate to think that tomorrow we’ll be back in New York and it will be cold and bleak and we won’t be warm like this until summer. I wish we could stay here forever.”

He smiled. “That is always the trouble. Holidays must have an end.”

“Must ours?” she asked, not speaking of the holiday at all.

He knew what she meant. “It must,” he said quietly. “I have my business to go back to. You have your work.”

A kind of sadness was in her. She knew now that the only one she had been fooling when she agreed to start this week was herself. What had happened between them was no more than a holiday for him. “Does anybody really know you, Cesare?”

A look of surprise leaped into his eyes. “That’s a funny question,” he answered.

Suddenly she wanted to touch him, to make him feel her reality. She turned away so that her hands would not reach for him. “No, it’s not,” she said. “Most people think you’re a playboy. I know you’re not.”

Cesare walked around the desk to her. “I have been very fortunate. It is good for my business to do what I like to do.”

She looked up into his eyes. “Is that the reason for the girls like me? To build your reputation along with the fast cars? Because it’s good for your business?”

He took her hand. “There are no girls like you.”

“No?” she said, getting angry with herself for not being able to stop. “What about that Baroness? De Bronczki or something? A month ago the papers were full of how you were chasing her all over Europe.”

“Ileana?” He chuckled. “I’ve known her since she was a child. Our families were old friends. Besides she doesn’t matter now. She’s in California with a rich Texan. She has a taste for rich Texans.”

Her eyes fell. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up. “I have an idea,” he said. “There is a car my office wants me to look at in Palm Beach. Instead of flying back to New York tonight, let’s pick up the car and drive back. I am bored with planes anyway and that way we can stretch our holiday.”

She began to smile. Maybe she had been wrong about him. Maybe it was not just a holiday. “That will be wonderful!”

He looked down at his wristwatch. “It’s almost three o’clock,” he said. “We have time for one more swim. We can have dinner in Palm Beach and be in Jacksonville before morning.”

***

Vanicola came out of the cabana bathroom. He had on his swimming trunks, of a bright Hawaiian pattern. He stood in the shadows of the cabana and looked down at the F.B.I. men. “Okay if I get my ration of sunshine now?”

The agents exchanged glances and Stanley turned and checked the men at the exits. They caught his look and nodded. He got to his feet. “I guess it’s okay,” he said grudgingly.

The other two agents got to their feet. Vanicola started down toward the pool, picking his way carefully around the sunbathers stretched out on the lounge chairs. They stood around him as he took a plastic float from the rack and slid it into the water. He walked down the steps into the pool and clumsily stretched on the float.

Stanley was studying the people around them. The youngest agent looked at him. “See anything, chief?”

Stanley shook his head. “No. I guess it’s safe enough. They aren’t wearing enough clothes around here to conceal any weapons.”

The young man grinned, his eyes going over some of the girls lounging at poolside. “Some of those babes aren’t wearing enough to conceal their weapons either.”

Stanley didn’t smile. Nothing was funny to him right now.

Vanicola spoke to them from the pool where he was stretched on his back on the raft. “I told you guys there was nothing to worry about.” He grinned. “This is the third day we been out and nothing’s happened yet. Let me know when ten minutes are up and I’ll turn over. I don’t want to get fried.”

“Okay,” Stanley answered. He sat down on a chair near poolside. He would be glad when this job was over.

Vanicola floated away. As the agents idly watched the swimmers, their tension gradually began to ease off.

***

Cesare saw them from across the pool. He glanced at Barbara. She was lying on her stomach, her back to the sun, her eyes closed. He could feel his heart begin to pound. He looked across the pool again.

Vanicola was floating out toward the center of the clover-leaf where a group of youngsters were frolicking. Their voices came back to Cesare. Unconsciously his hand dropped to his waist. He could feel the stiletto in the concealed sheath beneath his trunks. He took his hand away quickly.

One of the bodyguards was getting up now. He called something to Vanicola. Vanicola sat up clumsily and almost fell into the water, then he turned around and stretched out face down on the float. The bodyguard sat down again.

Cesare glanced at Barbara. She was still lying quietly. He rose swiftly, took a deep breath and dove into the water. He went down deep, his eyes straining as he swam out to the center of the pool.

Barbara sat up when she heard the splash of his dive. “Cesare,” she called.

But he was already gone, bubbles trailing in his wake. She blinked her eyes and smiled. In some ways he was like a small boy. For three days now he had been practicing swimming underwater across the pool and back. She glanced up at the clock on the cabana wall. It was twenty minutes to four. She began to gather up her things. It was getting late and they would have to leave soon.

She had just finished retouching her lipstick when his head came up over the edge of the pool near her. His mouth was open in a strange grin as he gulped air into his lungs. He stared at her as if she were far away.

“Did you make it this time?” she asked, smiling.

“I made it,” he answered as he pulled himself out of the pool.

Her voice was shocked. “Cesare!”

A flash of fear leaped into his eyes. His hand felt for the stiletto. It was there, back in the sheath. He looked at her, then followed her gaze back down to himself. He caught the robe she flung at him and wrapped it around himself. She was laughing now as he walked toward her. “Cesare, you are like a little boy. The minute you get excited, it shows,” she teased.

He grinned at her without embarrassment. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Didn’t I tell you that we Sicilians are very basic people?” He laughed.

She picked up her beach bag and, still laughing, they walked back into the hotel.

***

The telephone in the cabana began to ring. Stanley got to his feet. “Keep an eye on him while I get the phone,” he said to the other agents.

They nodded and he walked back into the cabana. The youngest agent looked around and then spoke to the other man. “I’d like to come back here sometime when I’m not working.”

The other man grinned. “You couldn’t afford it. Everything comes high in this place.”

Stanley came back. For the first time in several days, he was smiling. “Come on,” he said to them. “Let’s get him out of there. We’re going to New York tonight.”

The other men got to their feet and they all turned toward the pool. Stanley’s voice carried over to the raft. “Okay, Sam. Come on in. Your ten minutes are up.”

But more than ten minutes were up for Sam. Sam Vanicola was lying there dead on the slowly sinking raft, his face pressed close to the Plexiglas shield, looking into the water. And even the last memory was gone from his mind now. The sight of Cesare’s grinning face coming up at him from the bottom of the pool just before his heart exploded in a pain he never knew he could feel.

The Sunshine State Parkway runs north from Miami to Fort Pierce, past the swamps and marshes and citrus groves that dot the Florida Atlantic Coast. And many times at night in the early winter the fog rolls in from the suddenly cooling seas and, mixed with the smoke from the smudge pots, forms a shroudlike mist that clings to the roadway like a down quilt on a feather bed.

The powerful engine in the Ghia convertible throbbed as Barbara reached over and turned on the radio. The music filled the car and she peered over the wheel, the powerful headlights biting through the first mist. “The fog’s coming in,” she said.

Cesare nodded. “Want me to put the top up?” he asked.

“Let it go for a while,” she answered. “I’m comfortable.”

They drove along in silence for a few minutes then the announcer’s voice broke into the music. “And now, the eleven o’clock news from Miami.”

Cesare looked at her. She was driving with a fierce concentration on the road before her. The newscaster came on.

“With the murder of Sam Vanicola in the swimming pool of the St. Tropez Hotel here in Miami Beach this afternoon, the government announced tonight in New York the complete collapse of its case against the four alleged leaders of the Syndicate. It was disclosed also that the murder weapon used in each case was a stiletto. The stiletto is a weapon of vengeance that originated in Italy about the time of the Borgias. It was a great favorite of assassins of that period due to the fact that its peculiar shape caused internal hemorrhaging while the surface wound itself closed after the weapon was withdrawn from the victim. The police and the F.B.I. attach a great deal of significance to this fact and are pressing every means at their disposal to discover clues that would lead them to the identity of the killer or killers. Meanwhile in Washington—”

Cesare reached over and turned off the radio. “News is so dull these days,” he said with a short laugh. “Murder and crime all the time. Can’t they find anything else to talk about?”

Barbara didn’t answer. Her eyes seemed fastened to the road.

He laughed again. “Wake up, sleepy one. You’re driving.”

“I’m awake,” she said.

“That’s good to know.” He smiled. “I feel better.”

Her voice was thoughtful. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” he asked.

“About the man that died in the pool. I wonder which one he was. If I saw him or he saw me.”

“That’s a strange thought,” he said. “Why do you think it?”

Her eyes still were on the road. “Maybe if we had spoken to each other I might have warned him. I don’t know.”

He laughed shortly. “What would you have warned him about? You did not know what was to happen.”

She glanced at him. Her eyes were deep and troubled. “I could have told him about the Angel of Death. And how it followed us from New York to Las Vegas and then to Miami.” She shivered slightly. “Do you think he is still following us, Cesare?”

“Now you are being silly,” he said. “You better pull over here and let me drive. You’re letting all this nonsense upset you.”

Silently she put on the right turn indicator and began to slow up. She pulled the car off on a shoulder of the road and came to a stop. She turned to look at him.

“It is just as well,” he said. “I know the road up ahead. There is a very narrow bridge and the fog is beginning to thicken.”

“I’m not arguing,” she said. “You drive. But be careful.”

“I’ll be careful.” He laughed and pulled her to him. He kissed her.

Her lips were cold and they clung to his mouth. “I don’t care if you are the Angel of Death,” she whispered. “Being with you has made me happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”

He couldn’t suppress the question that rose to his lips. “What would you do if I were?”

She looked up at him questioningly. “Now
you’re
being silly,” she said.

Something inside was driving him on. Maybe if she knew, if she could understand, it wouldn’t all seem so empty. Why did he have to be the only one that felt as he did? “I could have been the killer,” he said slowly. “After all we were each place where a murder happened.”

She stared up at him, then she began to smile. “So were hundreds of others. Sometimes, Cesare, I think that you’re as crazy as I am.”

He laughed and got out of the car. He walked around to her side of the car and looked down at her. She had taken out her lipstick and was beginning to apply it.

“Be a dear, will you, and give me some light?” she said without looking up. “I’m afraid I’ll make a mess of this.”

He flicked on his lighter and looked down at her. He could feel his lips tightening across his teeth.

She looked up at him. “What are you staring at?” she asked curiously.

“You,” he answered tightly. “You’re very beautiful.”

She smiled. “That deserves another kiss before I put the lipstick on.”

He bent over the side of the car and kissed her. Her lips were warmer now, they moved against his. “Cesare,” she whispered. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to love you so very much that it doesn’t really matter any more whether you killed those men or not.”

He straightened up and she turned to begin to apply the lipstick again. He looked down. There was the white flesh of her neck, just below where the short curls turned into ringlets. He raised his right hand, palm out and flat. There was nothing else he could do. Already she had put too many facts together. Death led to death and murder was like concentric ripples in a pool that spread out and out until they reached farther and farther away from the victim and the violator. He brought his hand down sharply in a vicious judo chop.