Stiletto (23 page)
Authors: Harold Robbins
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Organized Crime, #Thrillers
He heard her call through the door. “Be a dear, will you, and hand my makeup case in through the door to me? It will never do for you to see me without lipstick. It’s on the night table.”
He laughed to himself, thinking of all the times he had seen her without lipstick. But he might as well get used to her little vanities. It would be a part of their life together.
He walked over to the night table and picked up the small case by the handle. The snaps were open and the case opened outward, the lower half spilling its contents on the floor. Still smiling, he knelt to pick them up. He tumbled the lipsticks and the compacts back into the case and began to pick up the cards and letters still on the floor.
Idly he looked at them. What junk a woman carried. Credit cards and charge plates. The last letter caught his eye. It was marked
Official Business U.S. Government
. It was addressed to Ileana from the Department of Immigration. Automatically he began to read it.
“At the request of Mr. George Baker of the Federal Bureau of Investigation we herewith advise you that your request for a visa as a permanent resident alien has been approved. Please bring this letter and your passport to our nearest office so that proper entry may be made accordingly.”
Slowly Cesare got to his feet, the letter still in his hand, the makeup case forgotten on the floor. He had opened the bathroom door before he fully understood what the letter meant. She had been working for Baker all the time. There could be no other reason for him to help her.
She was standing before the mirror tying her robe around her. She looked up into it and saw him. She spun around swiftly at the expression on his face. “Cesare! What is wrong?” she cried. Then she saw the letter in his hand. Her eyes widened.
He stood there in the doorway, his eyes cold and dead. “Why, Ileana, why? You came to me as a friend for help and I helped you. Why?”
She stared up at him. “I had to, Cesare. They gave me no choice!”
“I don’t believe that, Ileana,” he said, walking toward her. “You still could have told me. We could have fought this together.”
She watched him raise his hand slowly. Oddly enough she wasn’t afraid now that it was happening. She wondered if the others had felt the same way. “Don’t do it, Cesare,” she said calmly. “You can’t get away with it now. They’ll know it was you.”
He stared down at her, his hand hesitating.
“Don’t, Cesare,” she said quickly, trying to take advantage of his hesitation. “You’re sick. Let me help you!”
“You’ve helped enough,” he said bitterly. “I was even fool enough to think of marrying you!”
She tried to dart past him to the door and never saw the blow that tumbled her unconscious to the floor.
He stood there looking down at her, breathing heavily. His mind raced. He dared not use the stiletto. There had to be a way to make it look like an accident.
As he did with Barbara. He opened the bathroom door and looked out into the bedroom. He saw the French doors leading to the terrace. The idea crystallized in his mind. A suicide was even better.
He picked her up swiftly and carried her to the terrace doors. He opened them and looked out. The night was silent and the snow had started to fall in big white flakes. He stepped out onto the terrace and carried her to the parapet. He placed her limp body on it for a moment and looked at her.
Her face was white and still and small. Somewhere in his mind he could hear the sound of her tinkling laughter. She would have made a lovely bride for him. He touched her lightly and she rolled over and was gone.
He did not stop to look down after her. He turned and hurried back into the room and out into the hall.
***
He came back into his living room and walked toward the couch. He stopped as Luke came to the bedroom door. “You still here?” he snapped.
She didn’t answer.
He turned from her and sank into the couch. “What are you waiting for?” he almost shouted. “Get out!”
He leaned forward and placed his head in his hands. He rubbed his neck wearily. Luke walked over to the liquor cabinet and poured a drink into his glass.
She came around in front of him and held it out. “Here,” she said.
He took it and swallowed the whisky in one gulp. He put the glass down on the table before him and looked up at her. “Now get your things and go,” he said harshly.
Silently she turned and went into the bedroom. He leaned his head back against the couch wearily. He was so tired. Tomorrow he would go away somewhere and do nothing but lie in the sun. He closed his eyes. It had been such a long time since he had been in the sun. He started to get to his feet. He might as well go to bed.
He brought his head forward but something had gone wrong. It was as if his feet had gone to sleep. He pushed himself from the couch but that didn’t help either, there was no strength in his arms.
Luke came out of the bedroom, carrying her valise. She walked by him without speaking.
He felt the perspiration break out on his forehead. “Luke! Help me,” he called. “I feel strange!”
She turned to look at him. “I can’t help you now, Cesare,” she said in a low voice.
He stared at her for a moment, then he looked at the empty liquor glass on the table before him. Suddenly comprehension came to him. “You bitch! You’ve poisoned me!” he shouted. “I should have killed you in the desert!”
“Maybe you should have,” she said unemotionally. “I told you I never wanted to be a loser again.” She turned to the door and opened it.
Baker and several men stood there. They pushed her back into the room with them. Baker looked down at him. He turned to Luke. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked.
A vague memory stirred through Cesare’s mind. He stared up at them, his face tightening.
“He’s dying,” Luke said.
“Lucrezia!” Cesare suddenly screamed.
Baker sprang into action. “Get a doctor up here!” he snapped to one of the men.
“It’s too late for that.” Luke began to laugh. “The only thing that will help him is a priest!”
“Get a doctor anyway,” Baker said quickly. “And get her out of here!”
Strang came into the room as Luke and the agent went out. “The Baroness will be okay,” he said. “She’ll have to stay in bed for a few days but there are no bones broken!”
Cesare looked up at them. “But Ileana is dead!”
Baker shook his head. “Her terrace was on a set-back. She only fell one flight. And that was broken by an awning.”
Cesare began to laugh.
Strang looked at Baker. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked.
“He’s dying,” Baker said. “He took poison!”
Cesare looked up at them. That was the biggest joke of all. The fools should know that the Borgias did not poison themselves. For a moment he almost told them what had really happened, then he kept it inside him. Let it be one more thing the stupid
carabinieri
would never find out. He laughed again.
Baker leaned over him. “Where are Matteo and Dandy Nick?” he asked.
Cesare looked up at him. He was smiling. “Dead. They are all dead.”
“Why did you do it, Cardinali? Why?” Baker asked quickly. “You never wanted what they did. You had everything going for you.”
Cesare tried to focus his eyes on Baker’s face. It was blurring in front of him. “My father used to say that too, Mr. Baker, but the only reason he took me into the house was to carry on the name. And I don’t know whether you would understand it either. There are only two things in life that mean anything. Birth and death. Everything else in between—living—is nothing. Empty.”
He paused to catch his breath. “It is only when you dip your hands into these that a man is really alive. That’s why you go inside a woman. To be born again. That’s why you stand there watching me die, sharing the excitement of my death. You feel more alive this moment than you ever felt before!” He leaned his head back against the couch, the perspiration running down his face in rivulets.
“The man’s mad!” Strang said hoarsely, his face white. “Stark, raving mad!”
Cesare raised his head to look at the policeman. It was taking all his strength just to see through the veil that was falling in front of him. In the distance he could hear the sound of an infant crying. Maybe the man was right. Maybe he was mad. What was a newborn baby doing, crying in a place like this? Suddenly the knowledge came to him. It was his child that was crying. That was what Luke had tried to tell him. She was carrying his child within her.
He called up all his strength to find his voice. He could feel his lips twist in an agony of effort. “Isn’t the… whole world… a little… mad?” he asked as the veil dropped down, taking them away from him.
Harold Robbins, Unguarded
On the inspiration for
Never Love a Stranger
:
“[The book begins with] a poem from
To the Unborn
by Stella Benson. There were a lot of disappointments especially during the Depression—fuck it—in everyone’s life there are disappointments and lost hope…. No one escapes. That’s why you got to be grateful every day that you get to the next.”
On writing
The Betsy
and receiving gifts:
“When I wrote
The Betsy
, I spent a lot of time in Detroit with the Ford family. The old man running the place had supplied me with Fords, a Mustang, that station wagon we still have…. After he read the book and I was flying home from New York the day after it was published, he made a phone call to the office on Sunset and asked for all the cars to be returned. I guess he didn’t like the book.”
On the most boring things in the world:
“Home cooking, home fucking, and Dallas, Texas!”
On the inspiration for
Stiletto
:
“I began to develop an idea for a novel about the Mafia. In the back of my head I had already thought of an extraordinary character…. To the outside world he drove dangerous, high-speed automobiles and owned a foreign car dealership on Park Avenue…. The world also knew that he was one of the most romantic playboys in New York society… What the world did not know about him was that he was a deadly assassin who belonged to the Mafia.”
On the message of
79 Park Avenue
:
“Street names change with the times, but there’s been prostitution since the world began. That was what
79 Park Avenue
was about, and prostitution will always be there. I don’t know what cavemen called it; maybe they drew pictures. That’s called pornography now. People make their own choices every day about what they are willing to do. We don’t have the right to judge them or label them. At least walk in their shoes before you do.
79 Park Avenue
did one thing for the public; it made people think about these girls being real, not just hustlers. The book was about walking in their shoes and understanding. Maybe it was a book about forgiveness. I never know; the reader is the only one who can decide.”
Paul Gitlin (Harold’s agent) on
The Carpetbaggers
after first reading the manuscript:
“Jesus Christ, you can’t talk about incest like this. The publishers will never accept it. This author, Robbins, he’s got a book that reads great, but it’s a ball breaker for publishing.”
From the judge who lifted the Philadelphia ban on
Never Love a Stranger
, on Harold’s books:
“I would rather my daughter learn about sex from the pages of a Harold Robbins novel than behind a barn door.”
On writing essentials:
“Power, sex, deceit, and wealth: the four ingredients to a successful story.”
On the drive to write:
“I don’t want to write and put it in a closet because I’m not writing for myself. I’m writing to be heard. I’m writing because I’ve got something to say to people about the world I live in, the world I see, and I want them to know about it.”
Harold Robbins titles from RosettaBooks
79 Park Avenue
Dreams Die First
Never Leave Me
Spellbinder
Stiletto
The Betsy
The Raiders
The Adventurers
Goodbye, Janette
Descent from Xanadu
Never Love A Stranger
Memories of Another Day
The Dream Merchants
Where Love Has Gone
The Lonely Lady
The Inheritors
The Looters
The Pirate