Stiletto (3 page)

In his mind’s eye he could see the I.D. file on each defendant. George “Big Dutch” Wehrman, age 57, 21 arrests, no convictions, present occupation union official; Allie “The Fixer” Fargo, age 56, 1 arrest, 1 conviction, 1 suspended sentence, present occupation contractor; Nicholas “Dandy Nick” Pappas, age 54, 32 arrests, 9 for murder, 2 convictions, 20 days in jail, present occupation none, known gambler; Emilio “The Judge” Matteo, age 61, 11 arrests, 1 conviction, 5 years in jail, deported, present occupation retired.

The thought of the last man brought a bitter smile to his lips. Retired, the report had said. Retired from what? From murder, from narcotics, from participation in almost any form of illegal activity conceived by the mind of man? Not the Judge, not Don Emilio as he was sometimes called by his associates.

Deportation to Italy along with Luciano and Adonis after the war had resulted only in giving him a license to steal. No matter what aid Matteo had given the government in planning the invasion of Italy during the war, they should not have agreed to let him out of jail. Once they had a man like that locked up, the only sensible thing to do was to throw away the key.

Baker remembered the countless times he had gone flying around the country on the tip that Matteo had come back; but he was never there. Still there were all the signs that he had been there. The narcotics and the dead. Mute evidence. But this time it was different. This time they had evidence that would talk, if only to save their own lives. And because of that evidence, Matteo had been brought back from Italy.

It had taken a long time but now they had them. Three witnesses, whose testimony corroborated each other. The testimony that almost certainly meant death for the defendants. There was only one problem remaining now. That was to bring each man to the witness chair in the courtroom—alive.

Restlessly Baker got out of the chair and walked over to the window and stared out at the darkened city. Knowing Matteo as he did, he was certain that somewhere out there, somewhere in the city, an assassin or assassins were waiting.

The big questions were how, what, when, where and who?

***

The maitre d’ with the mustache bowed obsequiously before her. “Miss Lang,” he murmured, “Count Cardinali is already here. If you will follow me, please.”

He turned and she followed him with her slow, graceful, model’s walk, her long red tresses shimmering against her shoulders. She walked slowly, savoring the turning heads, the appreciative looks following her. She heard one of the dowagers whispering.

“That’s the ‘Smoke and Flame’ girl, Barbara Lang. You know, my dear. From the cosmetic ads.”

The captain led her down along the zebra-striped banquette to where Cesare sat at a table. Cesare rose as he saw her. He smiled and kissed her hand as the captain held the table away. She sat down and let her coat slip back on the banquette.

“Champagne?” Cesare asked.

She nodded as she looked around the restaurant. The soft lights, the elaborately jeweled women and the men with the round, well-fed, yet hungry faces. This was the heights. This was El Morocco. And she was here with a real Count. Not with a phony, half-slobbering promoter who sat with one hand holding in his fat little gut and the other hand under the table trying to creep up inside her dress.

She turned to look at him as she lifted the glass to her lips. Cesare, Count Cardinali, who could trace his family back six hundred years to the time of the Borgias, who drove racing cars all over the world, who had his name in the society columns every day.

“Will you be ready in the morning?” he asked, smiling.

She returned his smile. “I’m very efficient,” she said. “My bags are already packed.”

“Good,” he nodded, lifting his glass. “To you.”

“To our holiday.” She smiled. She sipped her champagne reflectively. It hadn’t always been like this. It wasn’t too long ago that the only “sparkling” drink she had tasted was beer. It seemed only the day before yesterday that the model school she had attended while working as a clerk in the store back home in Buffalo had called her. There was a chance for her to get some work and experience doing some publicity on a motion picture that was having its première locally.

***

She had taken the afternoon off and gone up to the hotel for an interview. Nervously she stood in the corridor outside the largest suite in the hotel and heard the raucous shouts of laughter coming from inside the suite. Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she pressed the buzzer. The door opened and a tall young man stood there.

She took a deep breath and the words tumbled out. “I’m Barbara Lang,” she said. “The agency sent me over. They said you needed a girl for publicity work.”

The young man stood there for a moment and looked at her. Then he smiled. It was a pleasant smile and gave his rather pale face a nice, gentle look. He stepped back and opened the door wide. “I’m Jed Goliath,” he said. “I handle the publicity. Come on in, I’ll introduce you around.”

She had entered the room, hoping her nervousness wouldn’t show. She felt the moisture breaking out on her upper lip the way it always did and silently she cursed to herself. There were three other men in the living room of the suite and a table set up in the corner held the makings of a cocktail lounge.

Goliath led her over to the man seated on a chair near the open window. Despite his smile, his face had a tortured, worried look. This was Mendel Bayliss, the writer-producer of the picture, and the worried look came from having his own money in the picture. “Hi,” he said. “It’s hot. Have a drink?”

The second man was one she recognized right away. He was the second banana on a weekly television show. The pratfall kid they called him. He had just stopped by to visit the producer for whom he had worked in an unsuccessful show some years before.

The third man was Johnny Gleason. He was the local manager of the motion-picture company. He was tall, red-faced and very drunk. He stood up and bowed when they were introduced and almost fell over the coffee table in front of him.

Jed smiled at Barbara encouragingly as he pushed the manager safely back on the couch. “We’ve been drinking since eight o’clock this morning,” he explained.

She managed a smile as if to imply that things like this happened every day in her life. “The agency said there was some publicity work to do on a movie,” she said, trying to get some note of business back into the meeting.

“That’s right,” Jed answered. “We need a Never-Never girl.”

“A what?” she gasped.

“A Never-Never girl,” he explained. “That’s the name of our picture. ‘Never, Never.’”

“You’re tall,” Bayliss said.

“Five-nine,” she answered.

“Take off your shoes,” he answered, standing up.

She took off her shoes and stood there holding them in her hand while he walked over and stood next to her.

“I’m five-eleven,” he said proudly. “We can’t have a girl taller than me in all the newspaper pictures. You’ll have to wear low heels.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He walked back to his chair and sat down, his eyes going over her figure appraisingly. “Bring a bathing suit with you?” he asked.

She nodded. It was standard equipment in the model’s hatbox she carried with her everywhere she went.

“Put it on,” he said curtly. “Let’s see what you got.”

The pratfall kid picked it right up. He weaved his way over to her and peered up into her face. He leered happily. “We won’t mind if you show us without the bathing suit either, baby,” he whispered loudly.

She could feel her face flushing and she looked helplessly at Jed. He smiled again reassuringly and led her to a bedroom. “You can change in here,” he said, closing the door behind her.

She changed swiftly, pausing only for a moment to check herself in the bathroom mirror. For once she was grateful for the golden tan that clung to her since the summer. She took a Kleenex and patted the moisture from her upper lip and went back into the living room.

All eyes turned to her as she opened the door. For a moment she felt self-conscious, then with her model’s walk she glided to the center of the room and slowly turned around.

“She’s got a good clean figure,” the producer said.

“Not enough tits for me,” the pratfall kid chortled. “I’m a T-man, myself.”

The producer was still watching her. “What d’yuh expect from a high-fashion model? The clothes fall better on them without ’em. She’s got more than most.” He looked up at her face. “Thirty-five?” he asked.

She nodded.

The producer got to his feet, smiling. “I got the best eye in Hollywood,” he said. “Haven’t guessed wrong in twenty years.” He turned to Jed. “She’ll do.”

The pratfall kid came over and leered up at her breasts. “Thanks for the mammaries,” he sang in an off-key voice.

Bayliss laughed. “Cut the clownin’,” he said. “Come on, it’s time we got something to eat.” He started for the door.

The pratfall kid and the film manager staggered after him to the door. At the door Bayliss turned back and spoke to Jed. “Tell her what she’s gotta do and have her at the press conference at five o’clock.”

The door closed behind them and she and Jed looked at each other. He smiled. “Maybe you’d like to sit down for a moment and catch your breath?”

Her legs felt suddenly weak. She smiled gratefully and sank into the chair the producer had vacated. It was still warm from his body.

Jed filled a glass with ice cubes and poured a bottle of Coke into it. He took it over and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said, taking it from him and sipping it.

“They’re crazy,” he said, still smiling, looking down at her white bathing suit and her long tan legs.

“Are they always like that?” she asked.

Jed was still smiling but she thought she detected a faint note of bitterness in his voice. “Always,” he answered. “They’re big men. They’re always proving something.”

For the next week she was the best-known girl in Buffalo. Not a day passed that her picture wasn’t in the papers. Twice that week she was in the Niagara Falls paper. She was on every local radio and television show and met every important newspaperman and person in the area.

Jed was always near. Unobtrusively he set up pictures for her and the producer, together and alone. Somewhere in the picture was always a plug for the movie. That first night she didn’t get home until three o’clock in the morning. The next night she didn’t get home at all. She spent the night in Jed’s room.

It was a giddy, supercharged week and when it was over, everything seemed flat and meaningless. Of all the people she had met that week, no one seemed to remember her, not even the matrons who attended the weekly fashion show at the department store where she worked.

She remembered what Jed had said to her the last night. “You got too much for this hick town, Barbara. You come down to New York. That’s the place for a girl like you.”

He had given her his card and the card of a photographer he knew. Six months later she went to New York. The manager of Jed’s building said that he had moved to California but the photographer was still there. The funny thing about it all was that Jed had been right. New York
was
the place for her. Within two weeks she had an assignment for a
Vogue
cover. Within a year she was one of the most sought-after high-fashion models in New York. Her fee was sixty dollars an hour and she earned almost twenty thousand a year.

She worked very hard and went out very little. The camera was too harsh and revealing when she did not get enough rest. On the weekends she flew home to Buffalo and lounged around the front yard of the new house she had bought for her mother.

Then one afternoon she had been modeling some new suits in front of the Plaza Hotel. One of the props they were using was a bright red, Alfa-Romeo sports car. As she posed opening the door of the car, the agency executive came up to her. With him was a tall, lean, foreign-looking man. The man had a handsome, savage look about him and when he smiled his teeth were strong and white.

“Barbara,” the agency executive said, “I’d like you to meet Count Cardinali. He was kind enough to loan us this car for these shots.”

Barbara looked up at him. She knew the name. Count Cardinali. It was one of those names you read in the papers. Almost a legend. Like De Portago and Pignatari, somehow you never expected them to be quite real.

Cesare took her hand and kissed it. “So pleased to meet you.” He smiled.

She smiled and nodded and he went away and she went back to work. That evening she was lounging in her slacks, watching television, when the phone rang. She picked it up. “Hello,” she said.

“Barbara?” Somehow his accent was slightly stronger when it came through the telephone. “This is Cesare Cardinali. How would you like to have some supper with me tonight?”

“I—I don’t know,” she answered, unexpectedly flustered. “I was just lounging around.”

His voice was very sure. “That’s all right. I won’t pick you up until eleven o’clock. We’ll go to El Morocco.”

He put down the phone before she could answer and she went into the bathroom and began drawing a tub of water. It wasn’t until she was in the steaming tub that she realized she was really going to see him that night.

Later, when they were seated in the restaurant, he lifted his glass of champagne toward her. “Barbara,” he said in a serious voice. “There is a great deal of talk around town that you are planning to become a promiscuous woman. I like that. And I would like it even more if you would allow me to be of some help in that matter.”

“What?” she gasped, looking at him startled.

But he was smiling and she knew that he was mocking her. She began to smile and picked up her glass. He had a lot to learn about American girls.

***

Now Cesare’s voice brought her back from her reverie. “I’ll pick you up about nine-thirty,” he was saying. “That will give me time to go down to the courthouse and get my papers before we drive to the airport.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be ready.”

Cesare pulled the red Alfa-Romeo into a parking place outside the building reserved for official cars only. He grinned at Barbara. “You don’t mind waiting a few minutes while I run inside and pick up the papers, do you?”