The Black Stiletto: Stars & Stripes

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The Black Stiletto Series

The Black Stiletto

The Black Stiletto: Black & White

Novels

Evil Hours

Face Blind

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (as David Michaels)

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda (as David Michaels)

Sweetie's Diamonds

A Hard Day's Death

Metal Gear Solid (based on the videogame)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (based on the videogame)

Dark Side of the Morgue

Hunt Through Napoleon's Web (as Gabriel Hunt)

Homefront: The Voice of Freedom (cowritten with John Milius)

Torment

Artifact of Evil

Hitman: Damnation

James Bond Novels

Zero Minus Ten

Tomorrow Never Dies (based on the screenplay)

The Facts of Death

High Time to Kill

The World Is Not Enough (based on the screenplay)

Doubleshot

Never Dream of Dying

The Man with the Red Tattoo

Die Another Day (based on the screenplay)

The Union Trilogy (anthology)

Choice of Weapons (anthology)

Nonfiction

The James Bond Bedside Companion

Jethro Tull: Pocket Essential

Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads: Ian Fleming's
From Russia, with Love

(contributing essayist)

Tied In: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Writing (contributor)

The Third Diary—1960

A Novel

Raymond Benson

Copyright © 2013 by Raymond Benson

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-60809-072-3

Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing,
Longboat Key, Florida
www.oceanviewpub.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for their help: Judith May Holstun, James McMahon, Stephen Plotkin and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Michael Romei and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Joyce Savocchio, Pat and Bob, and everyone at Oceanview Publishing, Peter Miller, and my family, Randi and Max.

While every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of 1960s New York City, the Second Avenue Gym, Shapes, and the East Side Diner are fictitious. John F. Kennedy's campaign appearances cited within are exact. The Kennedy Girls volunteers were a grassroots movement encouraged and supported by the Kennedy Campaign for President in 1960. Details in dress and duties differed state by state. While most of what appears here regarding the Kennedy Girls is correct, some liberties have been taken.

I was so scared I could've peed my pants.

It was the middle of the night. The brownstones and tall apartment buildings appeared ominously abandoned. The sidewalk was dark and unnaturally deserted. None of the streetlamps worked. More peculiar was the absence of traffic. There were always automobiles on New York streets and avenues, even at such a late hour. I don't know how I knew it was Manhattan. I didn't know the city well. I'd been there a couple of times and found the place unpleasant. I just knew that's where I was, but everything was very, very different.

I walked at a fast pace. Headed uptown, I thought. North. Along Third Avenue. Or was it Second? I didn't know. None of the street signs made any sense. They were supposed to be numbered as I moved across intersections, but I couldn't read them. It was as if they were written in a foreign language.

It was also quiet and cold. The silence was unnerving. Usually the city was a machine of constant noise, even during that time of night when most souls were safely tucked in bed and dreaming of more pleasant activities. The chill made me shiver, and I could swear I felt icy breath on the back of my neck. When I turned, there was nothing there, of course.

Still. I felt her. She was near.

A maddening urge grew stronger. I wanted to shout out her real name to the nothingness around me. I couldn't keep it in. That jewel
of knowledge was a burden that materialized itself as a heavy, bulbous mass inside my chest. It was a cancer that would surely kill me if I didn't let it out soon. And yet, I couldn't. When I tried to say her name aloud, nothing happened. My throat closed and choked and sounded like nails on a blackboard.

I kept the pace up the ghostly avenue. The buildings blocked what illumination the starry sky might provide. Every now and then I thought I saw gray shapes moving in the blackness, but I knew my eyes were just playing tricks on me. Or were they? I didn't know for certain and this alarmed me even more.

She was coming after me. She was going to catch me.

I couldn't let that happen. That blade of hers was sharp and deadly. A quick slash across the neck and I'd be done for. Or perhaps she'd just perform one of her fancy
karate
kicks and snap my sternum in two. It would puncture my lungs and I'd die of asphyxiation. Or she could hang me from a lamppost with that rope she carried, coiled on her belt.

Most of all, I was afraid of her eyes.

I imagined what would happen when I came face-to-face with her. It was always the same. The holes in the black mask would reveal glowing hot embers. She'd stare right through me and I'd feel it. The panic would set in, and once that happened, it was all over. I'd lose control. I'd scream. I'd run. I'd turn blindly into shadowy streets that turned out to be dead ends.

Then, when I was trapped, she would pounce.

And that's exactly what happened as I hung a left and tried to cross the avenue to the other side. The eyes abruptly materialized in the shadows as I moved forward. They stayed with me, hovering along at my side as I trotted. I felt the anxiety bubbling and my heart pounding in my chest.

No!

I impulsively made a sharp right turn into a darkened street and bolted. Did I scream? I may have. I wasn't sure. Of course, my legs were lead weights. I couldn't run fast. It was painful to put one foot
in front of the other. It was torture. Everything slowed to a standstill. The blackness constricted around me, creating a tunnel of sightlessness through which I groped. And then, as I feared, I came to the brick wall.

Dead end. Last stop. The finish.

Knowing full well what would have to come next, I trembled and whimpered like a coward. The despair was excruciating. Nevertheless, I had no choice but to turn around and face her. It was the only way I could exit the nightmare.

And what happened if it didn't work? What if it was real this time? What if she was really going to
get
me? What if she took off the mask and revealed the terrifying face beneath? Would I survive the shock? Would my poor heart cease to pump life through my veins?

“Martin.”

The voice was indeed hers. Always the same.

She wanted me to turn around, and I had to obey. I had no choice.

“I'll tell them all who you are!” I cried. “Everyone will know!”

But once again, I couldn't speak the name. The effort produced such an agony. The mass in my chest was unbearable. I had to surrender. I had to succumb.

Slowly, I pivoted on my heels. My bladder felt as if it would burst as I struggled to control my fear.

There. I faced the piercing red eyes.

And the Black Stiletto leaped forward out of the void.

I awoke with a start. As I did a couple of mornings ago. And a couple of days before that.

It was such an unpleasant sensation. The jerk of my body, the vocalization of a stifled scream against my pillow, and the sudden rush of adrenaline—it never failed to ruin my day.

The panic attacks and nightmares began shortly after my forty-ninth birthday in October. I'd just come back from New York. I
should have felt great because it turned out to be a successful trip. I saw with my own eyes that Gina was going to be okay. The physical assault and near rape she suffered in Riverside Park were the main reasons for the journey. Luckily the crime was interrupted by a couple of passersby. It wasn't a great way to start out her freshman year at Juilliard, but I was happy it wasn't worse. Still, it tore my heart out to see her broken jaw. She had to have it wired shut for six weeks or so. My poor little girl.

Second, I successfully stopped Johnny Munroe's blackmail attempt. That was a
tremendous
weight off my shoulders. I hope I've heard the last of him, but you never know. After that experience, I fear other people out there might know the big secret. Will I always have to look out for guys like Munroe?

After completing the business in New York, I felt marginally better as I returned to the miserable life of a lonely unemployed accountant who takes care of a mother with Alzheimer's. The once vibrant, now shell of a woman I'd known all my life. My mom is a stranger living in a nursing home, and she has ceased to know who I am.

I believe in midlife crises. I experienced a minor one around the time of the divorce from Carol, which was—gosh—eight years ago? I was in my early forties then. I've heard that guys who have midlife crises are usually around forty, give or take. I went through a tough time at first, but it wasn't terrible. What I'm experiencing
now
is much worse. In a year I'll be fifty. It's not a milestone I'm looking forward to, and
that
exacerbates the anxiety. So, I'm convinced that what happened over Carol was just a trailer for coming attractions; I'm currently having my
real
midlife crisis.

The strain of dealing with my mom and everything that entails has taken its toll. The panic attacks and nightmares erupt out of nowhere. My bodily reaction is always the same: my heart pumps hard and beats against my chest as if I'd just run a fifty-yard dash; I sweat and feel clammy; an intense feeling of dread washes over me; and I want to cry. The first time it happened I thought I was having
a heart attack. I almost called for an ambulance, but maybe ten minutes after it began, the torture ceased. I was all right, but the short ordeal left me weak. I learned later that a panic attack produced a sudden release of adrenaline. Once you've gone through that fight-or-flight sensation, your energy is depleted and you feel rotten.

That was happening a
lot
, and the really stupid part about it all is that I know what's bothering me.

I need to tell someone my mother's secret. The truth is burning a hole in my soul.

There's no question I could cash in on it. What the media wouldn't pay for that news! The True Identity of the Black Stiletto! The legendary crimefighter's life story as told by none other than her very own son!

But that would be a betrayal. Wouldn't it? Even though my mother granted me the rights to her life story, a tale that she painstakingly put down in a series of diaries and ephemera left to me, I knew I couldn't reveal it just yet. Not while she's still alive. And, according to Maggie, the end could be as much as two, five, or ten years away—or as little as months or weeks. Alzheimer's is a cruel, unpredictable disease.

So far my mother is stable. She had a little fainting scare a couple of months ago but she came out all right. She maintained a pleasant, contented demeanor. That was good, but it was also sad. Her memories were like select, individual sand pebbles on a vast beach. Most of what's there she can't access. As I said before, she rarely knows who I am, only that I'm family. She loves me.