"Talk!" she demanded.
I didn't have much choice. As Class 12, she wasn't supposed to get any classified information. And I was certainly classified. On the other hand, she had that damned pistol jammed in my face and to go through the charade of having her turn me into the FBI seemed sort of silly.
I began talking.
It's hard to be earnest when you're flat on your back with a well-packed and vibrant girl sitting on your chest and a gun barrel nudging your lips. But 1 tried. I tried very hard.
"Okay, honey. You win, but take it easy."
She glared at me.
I tried again. "Look, we're on the same side of this thing. Honest! Who do you think I just called? I was just calling the FBI to check on you."
"What made you do that?"
"Something you said. The way you hate everything here and still stick around. There had to be a reason."
She shook her head, lips pursed. "Why would you call the FBI, instead of Uncle Joe?"
"Like I said, we're on the same side of this thing."
The Saturday Night Special didn't waver, but her thinking must have. "What's the FBI number?" she snapped.
That was easy. "Two-two-two, six-six-five-four."
"What did they tell you?"
I told her, Class and Status, all that stuff. And I kept talking, fast. I couldn't give her classified details, but I told her about Ron Brandenburg and Madeleine Leston in the FBI office, to show her my familiarity with it. I didn't tell her I was with AXE, or what my mission was, but I told her enough that she began to get the idea. Gradually, the muzzle of the gun began to retreat from my face.
As I finished, she gave a wrenching sob and laid the gun on the floor alongside my head. Covering her eyes with both hands, she began to cry.
"Easy, honey. Easy." I reached up to grasp her shoulders and pulled her down over me, so that I could hook my hand behind her head. She was unresisting and I rolled her over, off ray chest, so that we were side by side on the floor, her head resting on my arm, my other arm around her.
"Easy, Philomina, take it easy." She was still crying, unrestrainedly now. I could fee! her round breasts against my chest. Cupping my fingers under her chin, I raised her face away from my shoulder. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
There is only one way for a man to stop a woman from crying. I kissed her gently, reassuringly, holding her to me, kissing her again.
Gradually, the crying subsided and her body became more compliant, relaxed. The unfeeling lips softened, then gradually, bit by bit, opened slightly, then more. Her tongue stroked mine, then her arms tightened around my neck.
I held her close, feeling the roundness of her breasts pressing against me. Gently, I kissed the wet eyelashes as I pulled away just enough to talk.
"Easy, honey, easy. Just take it easy," I murmured.
A shudder ran through her body, and she pulled my mouth back to hers, and now her tongue was a darting, live organ, probing deeply, her lips flattened against mine.
My right hand, pressing her to me, discovered the zipper on the back of her off-the-shoulder dress, and I gently tugged away at it, feeling the dress come apart under my fingers until they reached the small of her back, touched the delicate elastic of her panties.
I slid my hand under the panties and gently across her buttocks, so that the back of my hand pulled downward on them. Her hips lifted ever so slightly so that they were clear of the floor, and in a moment I had the panties off and discarded. With a single twist of the fingers, I unhooked her bra, and as I moved away so that I would have room to take it off, I could feel Philomina's fingers fumbling at my trousers.
In a moment, Philomina and T were both naked, and her face was buried in my shoulder. I carried her into the bedroom. For a luxurious minute, I contented myself with the feel of her bare breasts against my chest, then pulled her tightly to me, throbbing with desire.
Then Philomina began to move, slowly, gently at first, touching me, stroking me, her mouth wet and hot on mine. My muscles tensed, crying out for her, shuddering with anticipation.
She was moving faster now, intensity replacing subtlety, flame burning the smoke away. With one great convulsive movement, I went over on top of her, pressing her down on the bed, driving in, ramming through, smashing down on her, consuming and being consumed.
She squirmed upward, writhing in ecstasy, her hands clutching my buttocks and pressing me into her. "Oh, my God!" she cried. "Oh, Jesus!" Her legs wrapped tightly around my waist as she heaved upward against my weight and I half-rose to my knees to accommodate her, sliding deeper, more exquisitely, then pumping wildly, frantically, and finally exploding in a great torrent of exultation.
Chapter 11
Later, still lying on the floor, she clung to me tightly. "Don't leave me, Nick. Please don't leave me. I'm so alone, and so scared."
She had been lonely and scared for a long time. She told me about it as we sat at the window table, watching a streaky dawn break in the east, and sipping at mugs of black coffee.
For years, growing up in the Franzini household on Sullivan Street as a little girl, she had had no concept that Popeye Franzini was anything except her kind and loving "Uncle Joe." From the time she was nine years old, he would take great delight in letting her push him in his wheelchair down to Washington Square Park on Sundays, where he used to like to feed the squirrels.
I sipped at my mug of coffee, and was reminded of one of life's more curious puzzles. Why is it that every woman who is extraordinary in bed is unable to brew a decent cup of coffee? A friend of mine used to say you could tell an overly sexy woman by the prominence of the veins on the back of her hand. But my experience has been that you can tell them by the lousy quality of their coffee.
Philomina's coffee tasted like chicory. I stood up and stepped over to her side of the table. I leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. My hand slipped inside the blue robe she was now wearing and gently fondled her bare breast.
She leaned back in the chair for a moment, her eyes closed, long lashes soft against her cheek. "Mmmmmmm!" Then she pushed me away gently. "Go sit down and finish your coffee."
I shrugged. "If you'd rather."
She giggled. "Not really, but let's finish our coffee, anyway."
I gave her a mock look of male chauvinism rejected and sat down again. The coffee still tasted like chicory.
"When did you find out?" I asked.
"You mean about Uncle Joe?"
I nodded.
She cocked her head, thinking. "I guess I was about thirteen or so. There was a big story about Uncle Joe in
The New York Times Magazine.
We didn't read the
Times.
Nobody on Sullivan Street did. We all read the
Daily News,
but someone tore it out and sent it to me in the mail." She smiled. "At first, I just couldn't believe it. It said Uncle Joe was a Mafia boss, a gangster.
"I was terribly upset for a long time, even though I didn't really understand it all." She paused, her mouth tighter. "I know who sent it to me, too. At least I think I do."
I snorted. People don't usually carry teenage grudges into adulthood. "Who?" I asked.
She made a face. "Rusty Pollard."
"That thin red-headed girl in the green dress at the party?"
"That's the one." She sighed and let the tone of her voice ease off a bit. "Rusty and I went all the way through school together. We always hated each other. Still do, I guess. Though we're a little more grown up about it now."
"How come you always hated each other?"
Philomina shrugged. "Rich Italian, poor Irish, living next door to each other. What do you expect?"
"What happened after you read the story?" I asked.
"At first I didn't believe it, but in a way I had to. I mean, after all, it
was
in the
Times.
And I hated it! I just hated it! I used to love my Uncle Joe, and I used to feel so sorry for him in his wheelchair and everything, and then all of a sudden I couldn't stand him to touch me, or to be with me."
I was puzzled. "But you continued living with him."
She made a face. "I stayed with him because I had to. What's a thirteen-year-old girl going to do? Run away? And whenever I was the least bit disobedient, he'd beat me." Unconsciously, she rubbed her cheek, a long-forgotten bruise scarring her memory. "You learn in a hurry that way."
"Is that what made you go to the FBI?"
She poured herself another cup of the bitter coffee. "Of course not," she said after she had thought about it a moment.
"I hated the whole awful thing about killing and stealing and cheating, but I learned to live with it. I had to. I just decided that when I was eighteen, I would run away, join the Peace Corps, do something."
"Do most of the women in the — uh — family feel that way?"
"No. Most of them never think about it. They don't allow themselves to think about it. They were taught not to when they were little girls. It's the old Sicilian way: What the men do is no business of the women."
"But you were different?"
She nodded grimly. "I became fascinated by it. I found it repulsive, but I couldn't stay away from it. I read everything I could find in the library about the Mafia, the organization, the whole thing.
"That's why I stayed, and why I went to the FBI. Family ties. My father. Uncle Joe killed my father! Did you know that? He actually killed his own brother! My father."
"Do you know that for sure?"
She shook her head. "Not really, but once I read about the things that happened when I was three — I guess I was in high school at that time — I just knew it was true. It's something Uncle Joe would do, I just know it. And looking back, I'm sure my mother thought so, too. She only moved in with Uncle Joe because he forced her."
I stood up again and moved so that I could pull her head against my stomach. "You're quite a girl," I said softly. "Let's go back to bed."
She looked up and smiled, her eyes glistening. "Okay," she whispered. Then she managed a giggle. "I have to be in the office in a few hours."
"I won't waste any time," I promised.
Not taking her eyes from me, she stood up and loosened her belt so that the blue bathrobe fell open. I pressed her to me, my hands inside the open robe and against her body, stroking it slowly, exploring it. I lifted one breast and kissed the tightened nipple, then the other.
She groaned and rammed both hands down the front of my pants, grasping at me frantically but gently. I jerked in ecstasy, and in moments we were on the floor, writhing with passion.
Her lovemaking was as good as her coffee was bad.
After Philomina went to work that morning, I lazed around for a few hours, showered, dressed, then walked the two blocks down Twenty-third Street to the Chelsea. There was a note in my mail slot:
Call Mr. Franzini.
There was also a wary look in the room clerk's eye. There aren't that many Franzinis around New York these days.
I thanked the clerk and went up to my room, looked the number up in the book and dialed.
Philomina answered. "Franzini Olive Oil."
"Hi."
"Oh, Nick," she breathed into the phone.
"What's up, honey?"
"Oh… oh, Mr. Canzoneri." Her voice was suddenly briskly efficient. Someone must have come into the office. "Yes," she went on. "Mr. Franzini would like to see you at two o'clock this afternoon."
"Well," I said, "at least it will give me a chance to see you."
"Yes, sir," she said briskly.
"You know I'm crazy about you,"
"Yes, sir."
"Will you have dinner with me tonight?"
"Yes, sir."
"…and then I'll take you home to bed."
"Yes, sir."
"…and make love to you."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." She hung up.
I grinned all the way down on the elevator. I smiled at the room clerk, which seemed to make him nervous. He had «made» me as an Organization hood and he wasn't a bit comfortable with the idea.
I went around the corner to the Angry Squire for brunch after picking up a copy of the
News
at the newsstand on the corner of Seventh Avenue.
HINT NEW GANG WAR IN MAFIA MYSTERY
The mysterious disappearance of Larry Spelman, reputed lieutenant to Mafia chief Joseph «Popeye» Franzini, may be the opening round of a new gang war here, according to Police Captain Hobby Miller.
Miller, in charge of the Department's Special Section for Organized Crime, said in an interview today that Spelman, Franzini's constant companion and bodyguard, had been missing from his usual haunts since the beginning of the week.
Captain Miller, according to the story, said rumors were rife in the underworld that Spelman had either been murdered, and his body disposed of, or had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom by the family headed by Gaetano Ruggiero.
Jack Gourlay had done a beautiful job.
I finished my brunch leisurely, basking in warm memories of Philomina and the thought that things were really going pretty well, as improbable as it had seemed when I first started.
I arrived at the Franzini Olive Oil Company offices promptly at two o'clock. Manitti and Locallo were there ahead of me, uncomfortable on the modern chairs. I smiled at Philomina when she ushered us into Popeye's office. She blushed, but avoided my eyes.
Today, Popeye looked a little older and a little fatter. The party the night before showed. Or perhaps it was the effect of Gourlay's story. A copy of the
News
lay on Franzini's desk. Leaning against the wall on the far side of the room, Louie looked nervous as the three of us arranged ourselves in front of his uncle's desk.