She began to feel dizzy. Unconsciously she shook her head. She glanced up at the sun. It was still hot. Too hot. She had better go inside and sit down. She would feel better in the shade.
She looked around. She had walked almost back to the garage. That was good. She would go there and check the car again. There was something cold and masculine about a racing car that always made her feel better.
The garage felt cool after the heat outside. Most of the men had gone, it was near dinner time. She walked down the ramp.
Esteban came out of his little office and called after her. “Hola, Señorita Nichols!”
She turned toward him, smiling. “Hello, Señor Esteban.”
He hurried up to her. “You have seen the Count?” he asked. “He is satisfied?”
She nodded. “I owe you many thanks, Señor Esteban.”
“No hay de que,” he said. “I am glad to be of service to both of you.” He looked up at her shrewdly. “An interesting man, this Count Cardinali, no?”
“Si,” she answered. “Very interesting. But tell me this, is he good?”
He looked at her. “He could be the best. But there is something missing.”
They started to walk down the ramp. “Missing? I don’t understand.” She asked, “What is missing?”
“Fear,” he answered. “A racer is like a matador. Neither are any good until they have tasted fear. Once they have done that, they develop their skill. They don’t do foolish unnecessary things. They just drive to win.”
They came to a stop in front of the long white Ferrari. “He doesn’t care about winning?” she asked, walking over to the car and resting her hand on it.
“A beautiful automobile,” he said.
She looked down at it. Unconsciously she rubbed her hand across the fender. “The best in the garage,” she said.
He smiled shrewdly. “I think maybe this time I will bet my ten pesos on the Count.” He started back up the ramp. “Good luck, señorita.”
She watched him until he disappeared around the turn. Then she opened the door and sat down in the car. The harsh mixed odor of oil and gasoline and the rubbed leather of the seat came up to her. She slid over behind the wheel and put her hands upon it. This was strength. Pure male strength.
She remembered sitting in her father’s lap while he drove their car in to town to do their marketing. How big she had felt and how she had waved for everyone to see she was driving. Even Mr. Saunders, the fat policeman who directed traffic on Main Street, came over to see if she had a license. She was only six years old then.
She knew how to drive before she was ten years old. Papa used to let her run the car on the back road behind the house. Mother used to shake her head.
“Half the time she doesn’t act like a girl at all,” her mother used to say. “Always hanging around the garage, fooling with cars and hearing all kinds of talk from the roughneck boys that hang around there too.”
“Aw, let her go, Ma,” her father used to say tolerantly. “Time enough for her to grow up and learn to cook and sew. That ain’t so important nowadays anyhow with everything coming in cans and frozen packages and dresses all ready-made.” He was secretly pleased. He always wanted a son.
It was better when she was sixteen and got her license to drive. Somehow the boys didn’t bother her so much then. She didn’t feel the need to tear them down so much. Maybe it was because she took it out on them on the road and in the drag races they used to hold out on the Ocean Drive.
She knew what they thought the first time she came up to them in her own hot rod. Here comes “Easy,” looking to get laid. She knew the stories that went around the school about her. That whenever a boy showed up in the locker room with scratches on his back, the other boys would laugh and begin to pitch nickels at him. It didn’t stop them from clustering around her car when she drove up though.
Johnny Jordan, the leader of the boys, had swaggered up to the car. He leaned over the door, a cigarette drooping from his lips. “Where’ja get the jalopy?” he asked.
“At Stan’s,” she said, mentioning the name of the garage where all the boys picked up their second-hand cars.
He looked it up and down critically. “I never seen it there,” he said.
“I did a little work on it myself,” she lied. It wasn’t a little work. She had taken the car apart and rebuilt it by hand. It was a beat-up Pontiac convertible that had been in a wreck when she got it. She had taken out the motor and replaced it with a Cadillac engine, put in a new differential, repacked the bearings, widened the brake bands, cut down the body and fitted an old Cord frame over it, then poured lead into the doors to give it weight, and painted it shining silver and black. It had taken her six months.
“Does it go?” Johnny asked her.
“It goes,” she said.
“Move over,” he said, starting to get in.
She sat firmly behind the wheel. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Nobody gets to drive this until I take a few.”
He stared at her. “Who yuh gonna get to drag yuh? Ain’t nobody here gonna race a girl.”
She smiled. “Chicken?” she asked.
His face flushed. “Ain’t that,” he said. “Who ever heard of a girl ridin’ drag? It just ain’t done.”
“Okay,” she said. She started the motor again. “I’ll tell ’em back in town that you’re all afraid.” She started to back down the road from them.
Johnny started after her. “Hey, wait a minute. You got no right to say that.”
She stopped the car and smiled at him. “Oh, no? Then prove it.”
“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But don’t blame me if you get hurt.”
He pulled his car up beside her. “Drag up the road one mile,” he shouted over the noise of the engines. “Then you hold up there an’ I’ll come back and we’ll go ‘chicken.’”
She nodded and watched the starter. The boy dropped his hand. She released the clutch and the car jumped forward. She double-clutched into high and looked over at Johnny. His car was even with her. She laughed excitedly and swung toward him. They were no more than a few inches apart now.
He hit the accelerator trying to inch in front of her. She laughed again and opened up the throttle. He didn’t gain an inch. She moved the car in closer toward him. There was the sound of metal on metal and he moved away to give her room. He was riding half on the shoulder of the road now. She stepped on the accelerator and went away from him as if he were standing still.
She had the car already turned around as he swung past her and went back down the road. He glared balefully at her as he went by.
She watched for the starter’s signal again. When it came, she was ready and the car leaped down the road. Then they were coming at each other in the dead center of the pavement. She smiled and put her foot all the way down on the floor. The wheel was steady in her hands.
When she looked up, his car was almost upon her. Her smile became frozen on her face. She wouldn’t turn the wheel. She wouldn’t.
At the last possible moment she saw him turn his wheel. There was a flash of his white face, cursing as he passed. She watched his car in the mirror as she slowed down. It was swerving wildly but he brought it under control and came to a stop. She turned around and drove back to him.
He was out of his car and the boys were around him. They were staring at his left rear fender. It was half torn off. She didn’t even know that she had hit the rear of his car as they passed.
He looked up at her. “You’re crazy!” he said.
She smiled and slid over on the seat. “Want to drive?” she asked. “It can do a hundred and twenty on the stretch.”
He walked around the car and got in beside her. He put the car into gear and they moved off. In a moment he had the car up to ninety miles per hour. He was her first steady.
It had been different with him. Not like the others. She felt easier, more sure of herself. They didn’t have to go at it like cats and dogs. He respected her. He knew she was
his equal. All the same it didn’t keep him from making her pregnant.
She was in her last year in high school. She waited one week and then went to him. “We’re gonna have to get married,” she said.
“Why?” he asked her.
“Why do you think, stupid?” she snapped.
He stared at her then he cursed. “God damn!” he said. “It’s those lousy cheap rubbers I bought at the drive-in!”
“It wasn’t the rubbers that did it,” she said. She began to get angry. “It was that goddamn thing of yours. You never stopped poking it at me.”
“You seemed to like it good enough,” he said. “You never said no!” He glared at her. “Besides how do I know it’s even mine? I heard enough stories about you!”
She stared at him for a moment and all the dreams she had had about the two of them came tumbling down. Deep inside him, he was just like all the others. She turned on her heels and walked away from him.
The next Saturday she drew a hundred dollars from her savings account and drove up to Center City. There was a doctor there in Mex town who had taken care of some of the girls at school.
Silently she waited until all the other patients had gone, then she walked into the office. He was a fat little man with a shining bald head. He looked tired.
“Take off your dress and come over here,” he said.
She hung her dress on the wall hook and turned toward him.
“All your clothes,” he said.
She took off her brassiere and panties and walked over to him. He got up from behind his desk and came around it toward her. He felt her breasts and her stomach and listened to her heart. He came up to about her shoulders. He led her over to a long narrow table. “Put your hands on the edge and bend way over,” he said, putting a rubber finger on his right hand. “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” he said.
She took a deep breath and let it slip past her open mouth while he did something inside her. Then he was finished and she straightened up and turned around.
He looked up into her face. “About six weeks I figure,” he said.
She nodded. “That’s about right.”
He went back to his desk and sat down. “It’ll be a hundred dollars,” he said.
Silently she went over to her purse and took out the money. She counted it out on the desk before him.
“When do you want it done?” he asked.
“Right now,” she said.
“You can’t stay here,” he said. “You got anyone with you?”
She shook her head. “I got my car outside.” The doctor looked at her skeptically. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll get home all right.”
He picked up the hundred dollars and put it in his desk. He walked over to the sterilizer and took out a hypodermic. He fitted it into a small bottle and approached her as he drew the liquid up into the syringe.
“What’s that?” she asked, for the first time feeling a little fear.
“Penicillin.” He smiled. “Thank God for it. It kills every bug there is except the one you got inside you.”
He was deft and quick and competent. It was over in twenty minutes. He helped her down from the table and helped her dress. He gave her some pills in a small envelope that had no markings on it.
“The big ones are penicillin,” he said. “Take one of them every four hours for the next two days. The small ones are pain killers. Take one of them every two hours after you get home. Get right into bed and stay there for at least two days. Don’t worry if you bleed a lot, that’s normal. If you feel you’re losing too much blood after the first day, don’t be a fool, call your doctor. If your mother asks any questions tell her you got a heavy curse. Remember all that?”
She nodded her head.
“All right, then,” he said gently. “You can go. Get right home and into bed. In an hour you’ll be in so much pain, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
He went back to his desk and sat down as she went to the door. She turned and looked back at him. “Thank you, doctor,” she said.
He looked up at her. “It’s all right,” he said. “But get smart now. I don’t want to see you back here again.”
She made the forty miles to her home in less than a half hour. She was beginning to feel lightheaded and weak when she stopped the car in front of her house. She went right upstairs to her room, grateful that the house was empty. She gulped one of each of the pills quickly and crept under the sheets, beginning to shiver with the pain.
About a week later, she was pulling her car out of the parking lot behind the supermarket when Johnny came over and put his hands on the door.
“I been thinkin’, Luke,” he said with that masculine sureness that was so irritating. “We kin get married.”
“Drop dead, you chicken shit!” she said coldly and shot the car out of the lot, almost taking his arm off.
After that it was the car. By the time she entered college she had already achieved a certain amount of fame locally. Every week she entered the stock-car races at the Cow Pasture Track. She began to win with a regularity that made her a favorite with the townsfolk. They began to speak with pride of the little girl who drove even the professional drivers off the track.
It was during her first summer vacation that she got married. He was a racing-car driver of course. He was six-feet-three, with curly black hair and laughing brown eyes and the best driver at the meet. He came from West Texas and spoke with a drawl.
“I reckon you ’n’ me ought to hook up, little one,” he said, looking down at her. “Between the two of us we’re the best on the road.”
“What’s the catch?” she asked. “The car weighted down with dope?”
He smiled again. “All you have to do is drive the car. For that you will get paid.” He took out a thin Italian cigar and lit it. “You don’t have to know anything more than that.”
She stared at him. It was either take his offer or wire her parents for the money. It wasn’t that they would refuse her but if she took their money she would have to return home. She would never get the chance to get another car then, she would never have enough money. She would be stuck there.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“Good.” He smiled. “There will be a money order at the desk when you come downstairs in the morning.” He gave her a few more instructions and then left before she had a chance to ask him his name.
It wasn’t until she was aboard the plane the next day that it came to her. She had seen him in Rome at a restaurant. Someone had pointed him out.
“That’s Emilio Matteo,” he had said. “One of the three most important men in the Mafia today. The U.S. kicked him out but it hasn’t seemed to stop him very much. He gets around all right.”
Six times more during the next year she saw him. Each time it was to perform some errand for him. She had to be a fool not to know that she had become a messenger for the Mafia. And she was not a fool.
But each time there was another thousand dollars in the bank. There was eight thousand there now. Five more and she could get that Ferrari.
By this time she and Matteo were practically old friends. And she had read enough in the newspapers to know she was leading a man to his death. Not that it made any great difference to her. She had seen too many men die in the races. In tortured turning, twisting, burning wrecks. Everybody had to die sometime. That was the chance you took when you got behind the wheel.
At least that was the way she had felt before she met him. Before she felt the fever burning in her loins, the weakness in her legs. Before she felt the fire leap between them at his touch.
19
Cesare had just finished dressing when she came into his room. He looked up in surprise. “Ileana! What are you doing up at six o’clock in the morning?”
She finished tying the robe around her. “I couldn’t let you go without wishing you good luck in the race.”
He flashed a quick smile at her and bent to snap his boots. “That
’s very kind of you. Thank you.” He straightened up and came over and kissed her cheek, then started for the door.
At the door he turned and looked back at her. “See you at dinner tonight,” he said automatically.
“Dinner, tonight?” Her voice was puzzled. “I thought the race was going to take two or three days.”
An annoyed look came to his face. “That’s right, I forgot,” he said quickly, realizing his inadvertent slip. He forced a smile to his lips. “It is becoming a habit to see you every evening.”
A vague sense of warning began ticking in her mind. Cesare wasn’t the kind of man who made mistakes like that. “Good or bad habit?” she asked.
He grinned. “You tell me when I get back,” he said, closing the door behind him.
She stood there for a moment, then turned back to the bedroom. His valise lay open on the bed. Idly she went over and began to close it. A flap fell forward from the top of the case. She bent to straighten it before she closed the lid.
It was a peculiar triangle-shaped flap that took up a small diagonal corner of the valise. Inside it was a thin stitched sheath that was fastened to the flap. It had recently held a knife. She could tell that from the stretched appearance.
A picture of the stiletto that Cesare held in his hand the night he found her in his apartment flashed through her mind. Why would he need a knife like that in an automobile race?
The vague sense of warning that had troubled her when he had said he would see her at dinner came back. Maybe it was the truth even if he said it was a mistake afterward. Maybe those men were right in what they had said, even though she did not believe them at the time.
A feeling of panic began to rise inside her. Suddenly she knew why he had taken the knife. He was coming back tonight to kill her.
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 61
