“This way,” Strang said. “We’ve got an elevator waiting.”
They followed the police captain into an empty elevator. The doors were promptly closed and the car started up. Intangibly the tension seemed to disappear. Baker looked at Strang. “Well, we made it,” he said, smiling.
The policeman nodded and smiled back at him. “The worst is over. All we got to get through upstairs is the reporters.”
Dinky looked at them. His face was white and still frightened. “I got time the rest of my life to congratulate you guys. If I live long enough.”
The smile disappeared from Baker’s face. The detectives looked at one another and then turned seriously toward the door as it began to open.
Cesare came out of the stairway on the third floor and turned and pushed his way quickly toward the elevators. He looked across the crowd to the courtroom doors. There were two policemen standing there. He pulled his right hand up into the sleeve of his lined car coat and felt the cold metal of the stiletto tingle against his fingers. A strange smile began to come to his lips.
He could feel his heart beginning to thump inside his chest. It was the way he felt when he took a car into a tight curve and didn’t know whether he had enough traction to make it. He took a deep breath and the smile became fixed on his face.
The elevator door opened and the crowd surged toward it. Cesare didn’t move. He knew they wouldn’t be on that car. His information was complete. It was just too bad that he hadn’t more time to prepare. He leaned back against the wall between the second and third elevators.
The next door opened and the detectives came out in a phalanx around the witness. Cesare stepped in quickly behind them and let the crowd push him along. There was no chance for him here, a detective was between him and the witness. The reporters were screaming unanswered questions. Flashbulbs were going off as the photographers jumped up and down trying to get a picture of the witness. He could only hope for a break. Once the man got into the courtroom it would be too late.
They were near the door now and the stiletto was cold in Cesare’s hand. He had stopped breathing a long time ago. His lungs were filled to bursting with oxygen that would never be needed. There was a heavy pressure in his ears and everyone seemed to be moving in a sort of slow motion.
The group stopped for a moment before the closed door. The detective behind the witness moved slightly. The air spilled from Cesare’s lungs in a gasp. The crowd pushed against his back, thrusting him forward. Now! Now was the time!
Cesare never even felt his hand move. It was almost as if it weren’t even a part of him. The stiletto slid into the witness’s heart as easily as a warm knife into butter. Cesare felt the blade snap back into his sleeve, pulled by the coiled wire attached to its hilt, as he opened his palm.
The witness stumbled slightly as the two policemen moved to open the door to the courtroom. Cesare began to walk toward the stairway. A flashbulb went off almost in his face, momentarily blinding him, but then his vision cleared and he kept on walking.
There was a hush in the courtroom. From outside in the corridor they could hear some noise growing. The sound of voices grew louder.
Matteo looked at the other defendants. Big Dutch was playing nervously with his tie clasp, Allie Fargo was tearing at his nails with his fingers, even Dandy Nick was doodling on the yellow pad before him. The noise grew louder.
Big Dutch leaned over toward him. “I wonder who they bringin’ in,” he said.
Dandy Nick grinned. It was an unhealthy grin of fear. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said.
Matteo shut them up with a gesture, his eyes watching the courtroom door. The others turned to look.
First a couple of detectives appeared in the doorway, then the witness. He stumbled for a moment and a cop put out a hand to steady him.
Big Dutch leaped to his feet with an angry roar. “It’s Dinky Adams, the son of a bitch!”
The judge’s gavel rapped on the desk. The witness took several more steps into the courtroom. His face seemed to be glazed with fear. He stumbled again. He looked down the courtroom toward the defendants’ table. He opened his mouth as if to speak but no sound came out. Only a tiny dribble of blood appeared in the corner of his lips. A tortured look came into his eyes and he stumbled again and began to fall. His hands clutched at Baker’s coat. But he couldn’t get a grip and slid down to the floor.
Pandemonium that the judge’s gavel could not control broke out in the courtroom.
“Lock the doors!” Strang shouted.
Big Dutch leaned over to say something to Matteo. “Shut up!” Matteo snapped, his dark eyes glittering in his impassive face.
The clerk looked up and smiled as Cesare appeared in the doorway. “I have the papers ready for you, Mr. Cardinali, if you’ll just sign here.”
Cesare took the pen from his fingers, scrawled his name on the papers and gave the pen back to the clerk. “Thank you,” he said, picked up the papers and walked out.
The tight feeling was still in his chest as he stepped out into the bright sunlight. He blinked his eyes. Barbara waved to him from the car. He smiled and waved back to her, the papers in his hand flashing whitely.
Barbara smiled up at him mischievously as he crossed the curb to the car. “Congratulations, Count Cardinali.”
He laughed as he walked around the car and got into it. “You haven’t read the papers, my dear. It is no longer Count Cardinali. It is just plain Mr. Cesare Cardinali.”
She laughed aloud as he started the motor. “Just plain Cesare. I like that. I think it has a nice homespun quality.”
Cesare looked at her as he moved the car out into traffic. “You know, I think you’re teasing me.”
“No, I’m not,” she said quickly. “I’m really very proud of you.”
The tension was gone from his stomach now as they turned the corner away from the building. “Light a cigarette for me, will you, darling?” he asked. There was a heat growing in his loins, he could feel a pulse beating in his thighs.
She placed the cigarette between his lips. “I wonder what my mother would think,” she said lightly. “Going off for a week with a man. Not married to him. Not even engaged.”
He saw her smile out of the corner of his eye. “What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Barbara was still smiling. “Of course, she might understand it if I were going with a Count. Europeans are different that way. But with just a plain mister—”
Cesare interrupted her. “You know what I think?”
She looked at him, her eyes wide. “No. What?”
The pain in his loins was growing unbearable. He reached for her hand and put it on the hard muscle of his thigh. The smile suddenly vanished from her face as she felt the tension in him. He turned his face toward her and for a moment she could see hundreds of years into his eyes. Then a veil dropped over them.
“I think your mother is a snob,” he said.
She laughed and they fell silent as he turned the car into the Midtown Tunnel and the parkways to the airport. He drove by reflex, automatically, as his mind went back to Sicily, to his home. He had been there just a few weeks ago. But already it seemed as if years had passed.
What was it that Don Emilio had once called his uncle? A shylock. He laughed to himself. He wondered what Don Emilio thought of him now.
The man who lay dead behind him represented merely the principal payment on his debt. The two to come would be the interest, accumulated interest for twelve years. Three lives for one. That should mean payment in any man’s book.
He remembered how it was the night Don Emilio had presented his note.
4
The courtyard of the Castle Cardinali had been empty as Cesare pulled the car to a stop in front of the house. He turned off the motor as the door opened and an old man peeked out. When he saw Cesare his face broke into a wide happy smile. He hurried creakingly down the steps.
“Don Cesare, Don Cesare!” he cried in an
ancient voice.
Cesare turned to him with a smile. “Gio!” he exclaimed.
The old man bobbed up and down before him. “You should have let us know you were coming, Don Cesare,” he said. “We would have had the house ready for you.”
Cesare smiled wryly. “It is an unexpected visit, Gio. I can only remain overnight. Tomorrow I must be on my way home.”
A frown crossed the old man’s face. “Home, Don Cesare? This is home.”
Cesare started up the steps toward the house. “Yes,” he said gently. “I keep forgetting. But now I live in America.”
Gio pulled the valise from the back seat of the car and hurried after Cesare. “What happened in the race, Don Cesare? Did you win?”
Cesare shook his head. “No, Gio. My generator burned out. I had to stop. That is how I had time to come here.”
He crossed the big chilly entrance hall and came to a stop under the portrait of his father. For a moment he stared up at the thin patrician face that looked down at him from the portrait. The war had broken him. Spiritually and physically. He had spoken out against the Germans and Il Duce ordered the lands confiscated. The old man had died soon after.
“I am sorry about your car, Don Cesare.” Gio’s voice came from behind him.
“The car, oh, yes.” Cesare turned from the portrait and walked to the library. He hadn’t been thinking about the car, not even about his father. He had just been realizing how changed it all was.
He had come back after the war and everything was gone. His uncle had come to own everything then. The bank, the lands. Everything except the castle and the title. His uncle had never forgiven his brother for legitimizing Cesare, thus depriving him of succession to the title.
No word was ever spoken aloud about it but everyone knew how the miserly little man who owned the exchange bank felt. Cesare remembered bitterly how he had gone to see his uncle.
“Signor Raimondi,” he had said arrogantly, “I have been told that my father had some monies deposited with you.”
Raimondi had peered at him shrewdly across the dirty black desk. “You have heard incorrectly, my nephew,” he had said in his thin reedy voice. “It is, in truth, the other way round. The late Count, my good brother, unfortunately died owing me vast sums. I have here in my desk mortgages on the castle and all its lands.”
It had been the truth. Everything was proper and in order. Leave it to Raimondi Cardinali to do that. For three years after the war Cesare had to live under the old man’s thumb. Dependent upon him for his very existence, he came to hate him. He even had to come to his office to get money for carfare to his beloved fencing matches.
It was one such afternoon that Cesare had first met Emilio Matteo. He had been in his uncle’s office in the bank when there was a great commotion outside. He turned and looked out the glass-framed door.
A handsomely dressed gray-haired man was walking toward it. There was much bowing and scraping as he walked along. “Who is that?” Cesare asked.
“Emilio Matteo,” Raimondi had answered, already getting to his feet in greeting.
Cesare raised an inquiring eyebrow. He had never heard of the man.
“Matteo,” his uncle explained impatiently. “One of the Dons of the Society. He has just come back from America.”
Cesare smiled. The Society, they called it. The Mafia. Grown men playing like boys, spilling their blood together, calling each other Uncle and Nephew and Cousin.
“Do not smile,” his uncle had snapped. “In America the Society is very important. Matteo is the richest man in all Sicily.”
The door opened and Matteo came in. “Buon giorno, Signor Cardinali,” he spoke with a heavy American accent.
“I am honored by your visit, Signor Matteo.” Raimondi bowed. “How can I serve you today?”
Matteo looked inquiringly at Cesare. Raimondi hastened forward. “Allow me to present my nephew, Count Cardinali.” He turned to Cesare. “Signor Matteo from America.”
Matteo looked at him with a calculating eye. “Major Cardinali?”
Cesare nodded. “That was during the war.”
“I have heard of you,” Matteo said.
It was Cesare’s turn to look at him. There were very few people that had heard of him during the war. Only those who had very special information. He wondered how much the man knew. “I am honored, sir,” he said.
Raimondi wanted to get down to business. Peremptorily he dismissed Cesare. “Come back tomorrow,” he said importantly, “and I will see if we can spare you the money to go to your petty fencing match.”
Cesare’s lips tightened, his blue eyes grew dark and cold. For a moment his body tensed. Someday the old man would go too far. Already he took upon himself too many liberties. He could feel Matteo’s eyes upon him as he went to the door.
He heard Raimondi’s voice as he closed it. “A fine boy but an expense. He is a relic of the past, trained for nothing, he can do no work…” The door closed, shutting off the patronizing voice.
Gio had started a fire in the library and Cesare stood in front of it, holding a glass of brandy in his hand.
“I will have dinner ready in half an hour,” the old man said.
Cesare nodded. He crossed the room to the desk and picked up the photograph of his mother that still stood on it. He remembered her eyes. They were blue like his own but soft and warm and kind. He remembered the day she came upon him in the garden. He was only eight years old then.
He had been absorbed watching the big green fly he had impaled on a pin in the wood struggling to get away.
“Cesare! What on earth are you doing?”
He turned and saw his mother standing there. He smiled happily and pointed. Her eyes followed his finger.
Her face had paled, then grew angry. “Cesare, stop that! Release him immediately. That’s cruel.”
Cesare pulled the pin from the wood but the fly still stuck to it. He looked up at his mother curiously, then down at the fly. Quickly he pulled the wings from it and dropped it on the floor and stepped on it.
His mother stared at him angrily. “Cesare, why did you do that?”
His face turned serious for a moment as he thought, then it wrinkled in a winning smile. “I like to kill,” he said.
His mother had stared at him for another moment, then turned and went back into the house. A year later she was dead of the fever and after that the Count took him to the castle to live and there was a succession of teachers and tutors but no one that dared speak to him with impunity.
He put the photograph down. He was getting restless. There were too many memories here. The castle reeked of the past. What he should do was sell it and become an American citizen. That was the only way to deal with the past. Cut it cleanly as if with a knife so that no trace of it remained anywhere inside you.
He thought of the message that summoned him here. The message that took him from the race, that kept him from meeting Ileana on the Riviera. He smiled to himself when he thought of Ileana. There was something about those Rumanian women, especially the demimondaines with the titles. By now she was probably on her way to California with that rich Texan.
Gio opened the library door. “Dinner is ready, Your Excellency,” he said.
5
The napery was white and soft; the candles, gold and glowing; the silver, polished and gleaming. Gio had done himself proud. There was cold sliced eel, flecked with sparkling ice and hot steaming scampi in the warmer on the sideboard.
Gio had changed to his purple and green butler’s uniform and stood proudly, holding the chair at the head of the long, white, empty table for Cesare.
Cesare sat down and reached for a napkin. “My compliments, Gio. You are indeed a genius.”
Gio bobbed proudly. “I try, Your Excellency.” He began to open a bottle of white Orvieto. “It is not like the old days, when the board was crowded for dinner every night. It has been a long time.”
Cesare tasted the wine and nodded. It had been a long tim
e. But the world had moved on. Time would not stand still, even for Gio. He looked down the table.
It had not been like this after the war. Then they were lucky if there was food on the table, much less cloth. He remembered the night that Matteo had come to see him. It had been the same day that he had met him in his uncle’s office. He had been seated at this same table then, eating cheese and bread and apple from the naked wooden board.
There had been the sound of a car outside and Gio had gone to the door. A moment later he was back. “Signor Matteo to see Your Excellency,” he had said.
Cesare told Gio to bring him in. Matteo had come into the room, his quick appraising eyes seeing everything at once. The naked board, the poor food, the steel cutlery. His face told Cesare nothing.
Cesare waved him to a seat and invited him to share the food. Matteo sat down and shook his head. He had already eaten. Cesare couldn’t care less. He was of the class to whom poverty wasn’t important. It was a point of annoyance, not of embarrassment. He was secure in his position.
The amenities over, Gio cleared the table and Cesare leaned back in his chair, his strong white teeth biting into the apple.
Matteo looked at him. He saw the lean rakish face, the dark, almost black, ice-blue eyes and strong jaw of the young man opposite him. He also saw the savage strength in the wrist and hands that held the apple. “Do you speak English, Major?” he asked in that language.
Cesare nodded. “I was educated in England before the war,” he answered in the same language.
“Good,” Matteo answered. “If you don’t mind we’ll speak in that language then. My Italian… well… I left here when I was a child of three.”
“I don’t mind,” Cesare answered.
“I suppose you are wondering why I am here?” Matteo had asked.
Cesare nodded silently.
Matteo waved his hand, indicating the castle. “My father used to tell me of the wonders of the Castolo Cardinali. How they used to look up from the village and see it all gay and sparkling with light.”
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 51
