Roman Candle, page 3
part #24 of Cherry Delight Series
I was getting full by the time they brought on the veal cutlet alla Bolognese, served with baked green lasagna. The aroma from this platter was so delectable, I just had to try some. I ate and ate, and washed it all down with a variety of wines.
Afterward, for dessert, Guido had ordered profiterole. With it, we were served espresso coffee.
It took us about three hours to wade through all this. Naturally, we talked. Guido told me how he had studied to be an engineer, but that jobs for engineers—especially when he had not been at or near the top of his class—were very hard to come by. He had always been athletic, so he had tried out for the Olympic team in boxing but did not make it. When the opportunity came, he decided to throw in his lot with N.Y.M.P.H.O..
“And do you like it?” I asked.
“Very much. It is outdoors work I do, for the most part. And of course, when I get the opportunity of squiring about a very beautiful girl such as yourself, it is extra icing on the cake. I would not like a desk job. It would be too confining.”
We did not drive around Rome, but went at once, after leaving the Piazza Navona, to one of the night spots for which Rome is reasonably famous. There was a postage-stamp-sized dance floor, very dim lights, and rather mild drinks. Again, Guido was recognized and treated like royalty.
We danced, pressed body to body. There was no way it could have been any different since there was no room for a space between us. As a matter of fact, as I managed a glance about us, I saw that this dancing was a little more than sexual foreplay.
Hands caressed female buttocks; female breasts were crushed against male chests; legs were entwined as though searching for a wrestling hold.
Guido and I joined in the spirit of the thing. I felt my breasts get hard as they rubbed against him while his hands slid up and down my back before reaching down to grip my buttocks. He stroked them gently, almost lazily. Our legs moved as much as they could, in a sort of caressing motion.
He grew excited, naturally. I’d have been a bit indignant if he hadn’t. He was all man, too, judging by what I could feel pressing against my thigh. I did a little pressing back.
“You are ravishing,” he whispered. “You are the most exciting woman I have ever known.”
“Bet you tell that to all your girls.”
“No, no,” he murmured excitedly. “You are very different from them. Unique.”
“Mmmm. Not so unique.”
I had my head against his chest, his hands were sending thrills up and down my spine, and my breasts were like rocks with the nipples up and pointing. I would have liked to have sunk down on a couch and let this big blond man do his thing.
The press of bodies about us kept us from doing any such thing, even assuming a couch was handy. I began to understand the popularity of a place like Jackie O. You could even have a few orgasms while the band played, if you really went all out.
When the music stopped, I saw eyes all around me that were dreamy with romance, bright with lust. The men all sort of hobbled back to their tables and the girls walked with their thighs rubbing together. Guido and I were no exceptions.
We drank wine and held hands until the next number.
Once I said, “I suppose I really ought to be thinking about the Godmother.”
Guido murmured, “Please. Not now. There is plenty of time for that in the morning. Besides, you must relax first, in order to be at your best, physically and mentally. This is a wonderful form of relaxation.”
“Indeed it is,” I admitted, “but I’m not sure how relaxing it is. Seems sort of exciting to me.”
“Ah, you feel it too? It is electric, this atmosphere.”
We danced some more. Or, to put it more accurately, we teased each other on the dance floor. I didn’t need too much stimulation, neither did Guido Spalleto.
As one of his fingers ran up and down the crack between my buttocks very tenderly, I murmured, “I think we ought to go back to the hotel, Guido. My bed is very restful. We could see how restful it is with two people in it.”
He was all attention. He murmured, “I will get your cloak and pay the bill. Then we will be off.”
His arm went around me as we went out into the Roman night. We paused a moment to kiss, with our mouths open and our tongues working, a few feet from the Iso Grifo.
And the world collapsed around us.
Chapter THREE
They came from all directions.
They hit us with the force of a pile driver, knocking us apart and leeching onto each one of us. I heard Guido yell as he lost his balance and went down on the sidewalk, flailing out with both arms.
I blame it all on the fact that I was just about out on my feet with the need for a little loving. Otherwise, I’d have had my wits about me and put up more of a fight.
As it was, once the going got rough, some of my wits returned to me. I lashed out with feet and hands, I felt flesh give and heard squeals of pain and fury. These were girls I was battling—the Godmother’s girls—and I began to add a little more zonk to every blow.
Guido was fighting, too. I heard the thud and bump of vicious struggle off to one side of me, the low pantings and short, rasped breathing of those who fought desperately. I caught a wrist and bowed, sending a female flying over my head to slam into another girl, both of them toppling to the pavement. I used another judo hold, and then resorted to karate stuff when I got the room. There wasn’t room for any of the fancier judo holds—the press of bodies against me hampered my movements in that direction.
Hands caught my red hair, fingers tangled in it. A fist took me across the jaw. I saw stars.
I was just about out on my feet, but I fought on, sobbing in fury, in vexation, Guido and I had been getting along so nicely! And now this had to happen.
My legs got leaden; my arms grew tired.
And always, the bodies came against me, hitting, driving hands and fists into my flesh, draining me of my strength. It was too unequal a contest. There must have been twenty girls, at least, against me.
I wondered where in hell the polizza were hiding.
Maybe they were in on it, too. Maybe all Rome was against me. The hell with Rome, then. I fought on, using up the rest of my energy, until I realized that hands were gripping my arms and even my legs, that they were lifting me up off the ground and carrying me, still struggling, toward a big black care that loomed up blackly in the night.
I was shoved into the car. Bodies piled in after me and sat on me. I felt crushed under their weight.
I let myself go limp.
The car motor had been running all this time. At least, I didn’t hear it start. The car just pulled away from the curb and headed off down the street. I tried to get my wind back, breathing as best I could with all that weight on top of me.
Finally I muttered, “Crissakes, get the hell off me.”
“What else can I do?”
They shifted their butts and legs and I felt as though someone had lifted a couple of tons off my back. I got to my knees, shook my head, and stared around me.
There were five girls and me in the back seat of the big car. The girls looked as if they’d been put through one of those old-fashioned clothes wringers. I saw black eyes and bloody noses and torn clothes.
One of the girls muttered. “The Godmother was right. You can fight like hell.”
I glowered at her. “If I hadn’t been so busy when you jumped me, I’d have shown you how good I can fight.”
To my surprise she grinned at me, nodding her head. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. You shouldn’t have been able to fight at all.”
I propped my backside on the floor and my spine against the rear of the front seat. “Okay, okay. I’m your prisoner. Where are you taking me?”
The talkative girl looked surprised. “To the Godmother, of course. She’s become very interested in you.”
I thought about that as the care moved through the Italian night. What did the Godmother want with me? The obvious answer was that she wanted revenge for my having kept those two million bucks and for having beaten up on her girls. But that seemed a little silly. Why go to all this trouble for that? She could have had me shot without any fuss and feathers. No, no. There was something more than just a personal vendetta against me.
But what was it?
I couldn’t figure it out, though I tried damn hard. Of course, I was one up on the Godmother already, though she didn’t know it. In a sense, she was doing my job for me. My job was to find out more about her and her girl gang. She was making it easier by sending for me.
A little trill of worry ran down my spine. From what I’d heard about the Godmother, she didn’t make it easier for her opposition. She was probably a caggy dame, with brains a yard wide. I would have to be very careful with her.
The car drove on.
We left Rome and eased along the highway. I let my eyes scan the places past which we moved, trying to decide where it was I was being taken. Since it was night, landmarks weren’t so easy to remember.
Then the car moved off the main drag and onto a side road. We went for about three or four miles. The driver swung in past a big iron gateway. I saw an iron grille fence, a stretch of lawn bathed in moonlight, and then a huge villa came into view. I could hear the pound of waves against a rocky shore.
The driver braked. I heard the crunch of tires on gravel, and a girl asked, “You going to behave yourself or do we have to grab hold of you?”
What was the sense of fighting anymore? I was here in the spider’s web. I could try and find out what the spider might have in mind. I could always fight when I learned what it was she intended doing with me.
“I’ll be good,” I promised.
The girls got out first and stood around in a semi-circle in case I should try and make a break for it. Me, I eased my bod from the car and looked around me.
I was in Heaven. Seemed so, at any rate. Overhead the stars were out in a sky like black velvet. All around me was a great lawn, interspersed here and there with trees and clumps of foliage. But it was when I turned my eyes to the villa itself that I felt the nearest to Paradise.
Lights were on in the rooms. The place looked like a great Christmas tree, with its blue and red colors, with the great columns and decorated eaves above the vast, windowed walls that seemed to go on forever. Later I was to learn it was built of reddish stone and white marble, with wings and terraces extending far to left and right. At the moment, however, it was the wide, fan-shaped marble steps that caught my eye, for it was toward them I was being led.
We went into a foyer that was like something out of a palace of the Caesars. There were columns here, in a circle, and a vast marble staircase straight ahead. The girls turned me before we came to the stairs, however, and brought me between a couple of the columns toward an open doorway.
We stepped into a library. Books lined the walls on shelves that seemed newly painted. A thick rug was on the floor, obviously a damned expensive oriental. Leather armchairs and a couch, and then a desk drew my stare.
A woman was seated behind the desk. I blinked at sight of her. She was a blonde, gorgeous in an ice-blue evening gown that left her creamy shoulders and most of her breasts bare. Her eyes were gray, blued and languorous. She did not seem like a very dangerous person. At first I assumed she was a movie star; she looked like one.
Her very red mouth was curved into a smile.
“Buona sera,” she murmured in a soft voice. “I am sorry to have disturbed your evening, but it was imperative that you and I should have a little talk.”
I felt like a frump in front of her. My evening gown was ripped, ruined. My red hair was down on one side, and I was positive I showed the marks of the struggle I’d gone through so recently.
“I suppose you’re the Godmother?”
She smiled and waved a hand. “It will do as well as any other name. But please! Per favore. Sit down, do.”
She looked past me at the girls. “Eleanora, please arrange to have espresso served, with some cookies.” She turned her gray eyes on me and I saw friendliness and warmth inside them.
“I was most desirous of making your acquaintance,” she went on after a moment. “I was quite intrigued when I heard how you defeated the girls I sent to take the two million dollars from you. It was quite a feat. I do not know anyone else who could have done it.”
I shrugged. “It was part of my job. I’ve been well trained.”
“So have my girls. Yet you disposed of them as though they weren’t there.” She tapped a long red fingernail against her teeth, eyeing me up and down. “It is what I would like to speak to you about, your disposing of my helpers.”
“What’s to talk about?”
She laughed softly. “Plenty, perhaps.”
A maid entered then, wheeling a tray table on which were placed little plates of goodies and a sterling silver espresso pot, with magnificent cups and saucers in bone china.
The Godmother did the serving, handing me a cup and saucer, indicating the plates of cookies and sweets with a casual wave of her hand.
“Please, help yourself. We do not stand on ceremony, here.”
I was too full of food to want cookies, but the espresso was delicious. I sipped and sipped, then lit a cigarette and blew smoke. The big talk was coming, now. The other stuff was only in the nature of a starting point.
The Godmother asked, “Are you completely happy in your present job?”
I smiled. “Completely.”
She asked, “You get enough money for your services?”
“More than enough.”
“Two thousand dollars a week?”
I blinked. I was paid very well for what I did for N.Y.M.P.H.O., but it wasn’t any two thousand per week. I sat back more comfortably in the leather easy chair and smiled at this blonde woman.
“Not that much, no.”
“You are worth more.”
I shrugged. I was highly paid by my organization, I wasn’t complaining. But I could see the pitch that was coming my way. The Godmother had decided she couldn’t beat me, so she was getting ready to join me. Or rather, to have me join her.
The Godmother poured more espresso. She lingered over the task, not glancing my way, just letting me think about two thousand dollars a week. It was powerful bait to most people. What she didn’t know, was that I hated the Mafia like poison.
It was my turn to ask, “How much more?”
Her kissable red lips curved into a smile. “You are worth two thousand dollars a week. To me, at least.”
These weren’t the usual Mafia tactics that were being used on me. No brutality, no pressure, no arm-twisting. No gun poked at your temple or boots kicking the guts out of you, no blackjack crushing in the skull. I was intrigued by it, and I wondered what male Mafia bigwig had thought of this ploy with the Godmother.
I held out my cup for more coffee. “Are you asking me to change jobs? To go to work for you?”
She gave me a big smile. “I consider myself as head of a business organization. Do not business organizations in your country steal people from each other, with nice fat raises in salary?”
“They do indeed.”
She gave me a shrug and a spreading of her carefully manicured hands. “So then, this is a matter of business between us.”
“What else?”
She laughed softly. “Good. Then let me explain. My organization is a highly profitable one. We engage in illegal activities, of course. How could we make the money we do, otherwise? We rob, we steal. We put pressure on legitimate business people, or as you Americans phrase it, we ‘lean on them’.
“My girls are good fighters. They need to be, for some of our activities.” Her smile widened. “They may not be as good a fighter as you. Usually they are glamorous, but again, they may not be as glamorous as you.”
I laughed, indicating my tattered state with a hand. “I’m not too glamorous at the moment.”
Her golden eyebrows arched. “But you have been in a struggle. This moment doesn’t count. I can see from merely looking at you, that you have an inordinate amount of sex appeal. That’s important to me, too.”
I finished the espresso, put the cup down and leaned forward. “Let me get this straight. Are you offering me a salary of two thousand American dollars a week to go to work for you?”
“That is correct.”
I sat back and stared at her. This was a Heaven-sent opportunity. I almost couldn’t believe it. My job new was to smash the Godmother and her organization and she herself was offering me a golden opportunity to do it.
I said slowly, “For a hundred thousand bucks a year, I don’t see how I can refuse.”
To my surprise, suspicion leaped into her eyes. Had I overplayed my hand? Was this just the playing of a cat with a mouse? Behind me, there were still a number of her girls. They could pounce on me and we could have on hell of a fight before they overcame me. I braced myself for trouble.
Then the suspicion faded out. She smiled, saying, “You’re smart. I like that in a prospect. There’s one or two things yet to do, however.”
“Oh? What are they?”
She said sweetly, “I must see you fight myself. So far I have listened to second-hand versions of your fighting abilities. I want to see them for myself.”
I shrugged. “That seems fair enough.”
“And then there will be a test of your loyalty to your new organization. An initiation, you might say.”
“What will that be?”
“You will have to kill Giuseppe Aldoverdo.”
Chapter FOUR
I sat there, stunned.
Oh, I tried not to show it. I didn’t move a muscle of my face. But I was doing some hard thinking. I knew damn well I was not able to murder Giuseppe Aldoverdo. On the other hand, if I didn’t murder him, I would get murdered myself.
“Kill the boss-man of Rome N.Y.M.P.H.O.,” I murmured conversationally, watching those keen gray eyes that studied my face so intently. “It should be easy enough to do, always providing that I don’t get killed myself.”
