The Mark of Cosa Nostra

Seven

My ears started popping as the feeder flight from Rome dropped toward the airport in Palermo, Sicily. Below stretched a patchwork of vineyards looking like a quilted blanket stretching toward the buildings of Palermo.

Tanya, sitting next to me, squeezed my hand. We both knew this was it. We had convinced Mike, in early morning light, when he was drunk, but this was the supreme test. There would definitely not be any more Nick and Tanya. One slip here and we would be agents nine and ten added to the list.

The instructions in the telegram had been direct and to the point. I was to book myself on the first available flight from Kennedy International direct to Rome. From there I would catch a feeder flight to Palermo. A hotel limousine would be waiting to take me straight to the Corini Hotel, where I would check in, then wait to be contacted.

No one in Palermo had seen Acasano in ten years. That fact was working for me. Sandee’s being with me was no problem either. She was my woman. From my research I had learned that these men often took their women with them on business trips.

The DC-10 eased down over the strip, leveled off, then there was a jerk as the wheels touched and screeched. Tanya and I unfastened our safety belts.

She was wearing a light business suit, which would have been too flashy for Tanya but which seemed right for Sandee. The blouse under the short jacket had the top three buttons unfastened revealing a nice amount of cleavage. Her skirt was one size too small, and short enough to please every male pair of eyes on the plane. She had a look of youthful petulance on her face. Ripe, full lips overpainted and frosty; far too much blue eye make-up; gum-popping jaws working to excess; the illusion was that of cheapness, and ignorance of style.

An overdeveloped Lolita, a very young BB, Tanya had the talent to look both.

She leaned against my shoulder, squeezing my hand.

The plane taxied to the terminal, and we waited while the steps were hand-pushed to the door. Looking out the window, I noticed several taxis waiting, as well as four Fiat microbuses with the names of hotels painted on the sides.

My eyes swept from the vehicles to the faces of the waiting crowd. Each face was studied carefully. No reason for it, I suppose. But in my years working as an agent for AXE I had made many enemies. It had become my habit to check individual faces in any crowd. You never knew where an assassin’s bullet might come from. But this crowd was only anxious to greet those stepping from the plane.

With my hand on Tanya’s elbow, I moved slowly down the aisle. The pretty, smiling stewardess hoped we enjoyed our flight, and that we’d have a good time in Palermo. Tanya and I stepped out into bright sunlight and warmth. At the bottom of the steps taxi and bus drivers hawked for our patronage.

Plane passengers moved across the open space from the plane to the wire fence, ignoring the cries of the drivers. There were embraces and kisses as relatives and loved ones were greeted.

One of the microbuses had had “Corini Hotel” painted on its side. Still holding Tanya’s elbow, I shouldered through the dark-faced hustlers to the bus. Several of the men followed, each one telling me they had the best taxi in all of Sicily. But when we reached the bus, all the men walked back except one.

He stepped up to us, never letting his dark eyes leave the exact spot where Tanya’s nipples would be. “You wish transportation to the Corini Hotel, signor?”

“Si,” I said curtly. “If you think you can tear your eyes away from my woman long enough to put them on the road.”

He nodded with embarrassment and looked away. “You have baggage checks, signor?”

I handed them to him and watched him trot off toward the terminal. We had already cleared customs when we landed in Rome.

“I think he’s cute,” Tanya said, watching him.

“I’m sure you do. And I’m sure he thinks you’re more than just cute.”

He returned ten minutes later with our luggage, and we all climbed in the Fiat bus. Our driver was as wild and horn-honking as the rest. Tanya and I didn’t have much opportunity to see any sights; it took all we had just to hang on. Only in one other place besides Rome have I seen wilder maniacs on the road: Mexico City.

At last we screeched to a sudden halt in front of an ancient, gingerbread-lined, decaying structure which called itself, according to the lighted sign over the entrance, the Corini Hotel. Our boy brought our bags inside and dropped them not too gently in front of the desk.

“You have reservations in adjoining rooms for Thomas Acasano and Sandee Catron?” I asked the desk clerk.

He checked the book through bifocals. “Ah, si.” Then he pounded his hand on a bell, setting up one hell of a racket. In Italian he told the bellboy to run our bags up to rooms four nineteen and twenty.

As I turned away from the desk I felt someone tapping my shoulder. I turned to see an Oriental taking three steps back and holding a camera. His head ducked behind the camera and immediately I was blinded by a bright, popping flashbulb. Too late I brought my hand up to my face.

As the man turned to leave, I stepped up to him and grabbed his arm. “I’d like to buy that picture, friend.”

“No speak American. No understand!” He tried to pull away.

“Let me see your camera.” I grabbed for it.

He stumbled away from me. “No!” he shrieked. “No speak American. No understand.”

I wanted to know how the hell he knew I was American. And why he wanted my picture. There were several people in the lobby of the hotel. Each and every one of them were watching the scene with interest. I didn’t need all this attention. Tanya stood by the desk, but instead of watching me, she was watching the faces in the crowd.

“You let me go!” the man shouted. For someone who didn’t understand American he was muddling through in fine fashion.

“I want to see your camera, that’s all.” There was a smile on my face but I was straining to keep it there. The crowd began moving toward us. It hadn’t become hostile yet. There were maybe twelve men in it.

The man jerked his arm free. “I go. You leave alone.”

I started toward him, but he turned and ran across the lobby and out the front door. The crowd stood looking at me with a mild kind of curiosity. I turned my back on them, took Tanya’s arm, and headed for the open-cage elevator.

“What did you make of it, N-Tom?” Tanya asked as we rode up toward the floor where our rooms were.

“I wish I knew. Somebody wants my picture. And now it looks like they have it.” I shrugged. “Maybe Nicoli wants to make sure the man checking in the hotel is really Thomas Acasano.”

Our bus driver had followed, helping the bellboy with the luggage. I tipped them both well when we were in my room, and locked the door behind them.

The room had a high ceiling and four windows looking out onto the azure-blue harbor. There was a brass-framed bed with a canopy, one chest of drawers, two overstuffed chairs and a writing table with four straight-back chairs. There was a musty, hot smell, so I opened the window. Then I was able to catch a scent of the sea. Fishing boats looked white against the deep blue of the harbor. Beyond the anchored and docked boats I could see the top of a lighthouse. Jetties lined the canals going in and out of the harbor.

The streets below were narrow, zigzagging through canyons of pressed-together buildings looking like stacked egg-cartons.

A man on a Lambretta passed below, a pencil-thin tail of smoke flowing out behind him. He had a yellow sweater, but he wasn’t wearing it; it was on his back like a cape, with the sleeves tied around his neck. I watched him move swiftly along the cobbled streets, the sun glimmering off his bright red scooter. Along both sides of the street were Fiats, the six hundreds, mostly scarlet.

The door connecting my room with Tanya’s opened and she came through minus the suit jacket. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said with a large smile.

She crossed to the window where I was standing and looked out. Her hand reached for mine and gathered it to her breast. Then she looked up at me.

“Make love to me.”

I reached for her and pulled her close to me. She came eagerly, willingly. It was she who pulled us toward the bed, and she who fumbled with me to get my clothes off. She wore nothing under the skirt or blouse. And it didn’t take long for us to be stretched on our sides, naked, holding each other.

I kissed her upturned nose, then each eye, then her mouth. There was warmth to her body, and smoothness. I explored every inch of her, first with my hands, then with my mouth.

I could feel her lips on me, exploring hesitant. Each time she tried something she paused as though unsure.

“It’s all right,” I whispered. “There aren’t any rules. Everything is good. Let yourself go. Do whatever you have heard or dreamed or thought and never had a chance to try.”

She was making groaning sounds. I moved back up to her throat then raised myself to look at her in the sunlight.

She was thin-boned and fragile to hold. Her breasts were mounds of softness with hardened nipples pointing straight up. She curved down then to a flat stomach and a very narrow waist. I knew I could get both hands around that waist and touch thumb and middle finger. Then there was the round flare of hips, and the buttocks that entertained so many male pairs of eyes with their movement. The legs were well shaped and joined at the small pelt of chestnut velvet. It was a pleasure-giving body filled with eagerness and youth.

Her eyes had been searching my face while I looked her over. “Take it,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Take it and enjoy it.”

I did. I moved my mouth down to hers and let my tongue begin to match my body movements. In one motion I was over her, and then I entered her. The groaning eased to a sigh with barely a sound escaping her throat.

As I moved against her I let my tongue move as far as possible along her tongue. Then I moved away and pulled my tongue back. It was actually two acts of love, two penetrations. And she showed me how she enjoyed it with the movements of her body.

It happened suddenly for her, and her body exploded with the happening. She clawed at me and writhed under me and made crying, whimpering sounds.

There was no way I could hold back. I was a balloon filled with water and rolling across a long flat desert. A large spike was ahead sticking out of a weatherbeaten board. I felt myself pulling and clutching and bouncing until at last I struck the spike, and all the liquid water rushed out of me.

It happened again the same way.

And then we lay on our backs, naked, while the sun warmed us as it washed over the bed. With eyes half closed I watched the breeze stir the lace curtain, bringing with it the smells of the sea, and of fresh grapes, and of fish, and of wine.

I moved enough to get my cigarettes and light one. Tanya snuggled close to me, searching for, then finding, the hollow of my shoulder for her head.

“It’s good,” I said. “And so are you.”

That made her snuggle closer still. After a while she said, “You’re thinking about the assignment, aren’t you?”

“Too many unanswered questions,” I said. “Why all the Orientals? There were the two in the apartment, then that one downstairs in the lobby. What was he doing taking my picture? Who was he taking it for? And why?”

Tanya moved away from my shoulder to a sitting position. She turned to look at me seriously. “Do you have any idea how they will contact us?”

I shook my head. “But I think we’d better be on our toes from now on. No slip-ups, nothing that even comes close. I have a feeling about this assignment, one that I don’t like.”

She kissed the tip of my nose. “Feed me, my beautiful man. Your woman is hungry. I’ll go get dressed.”

As she pushed off the edge of the bed, we heard a loud ring. The phone was on the night stand next to the bed. Tanya paused.

With my cigarette still dangling from the corner of my mouth I picked up the receiver. “Yeah, Acasano here.”

“Signor Acasano,” the desk clerk said. “I have been told that a car is here waiting for you. A man is in the lobby. Can I tell him when you will be down.”

“Who sent the car?” I asked.

His hand went over the mouthpiece. When he came back on his voice had jumped about ten points in respect. “The car comes from Mr. Rozano Nicoli, signor.”

“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

“Grazie.” He hung up.

I looked up at Tanya. “This is it, Sandee, baby.”

She crossed her fingers at me, then stooped to pick up her blouse and skirt. She skipped into her own room.

I mashed out the cigarette and rolled off the bed. As I dressed I checked my small, personal arsenal. I was going to wear an open-collared sport shirt with slacks and a light jacket. Before putting on my shorts, I checked Pierre and placed the tiny gas bomb between my legs. Then I put on my pants and shoes, picked up Hugo’s sheath and connecting straps, and fastened the thin stiletto to my left arm. Next, I put on my shirt and buttoned it. The shirt was ivy, button-down collar, gray in color and long-sleeved. When it was on, I pushed my arm through the shoulder holster housing Wilhelmina. The stripped-down Luger would rest just under my left armpit. Shrugging into the lightweight sport coat, I was ready.

Tanya met me in the hall. We walked in silence to the open-cage elevator. Tanya’s lovely face was impassive as we rode down. I was searching the lobby looking for the man who had been sent to collect us.

We had reached the lobby. I pulled up the lever and slid the iron-barred doors of the elevator apart. Tanya moved two steps into the lobby. I was one step behind her and had just come up to her back when I saw him.

A boyhood of gangster films leads you to get a certain image of what a hood is supposed to look like. Most of the time that image is wrong. Today’s hood looks like today’s success. They remind you of attorneys, doctors, or bankers. But a thug is a thug is a thug. Time and methods change, but the organization never outgrew its need for torpedos or, as they were sometimes called, button-and-muscle men. They did the odd jobs. They were the ones who wired concrete blocks to ankles, the faces at the end of a submachine gun sticking out of a passing car, the ones who told you Mike or Tony or Al wanted to see you. The errand boys.

Rozano Nicoli had sent a torpedo to pick us up.

He lumbered toward us as we stepped from the elevator, huge shoulders as wide as a doorway. He wore a white tropical suit that tightened around his muscles. His arms swung almost to his knees, knuckles bruised and misshapen from hitting too many people, face welted and blotched and angled wrong from taking too many of the same kind of punches.

He had been a ring specialist a long time ago. You could tell by the curled meat that used to be his ears and the crooked z-shape of his nose. His eyes were almost hidden behind the two golf-ball puffs of flesh. And the scars were many. Fat scars above both eyebrows, a nasty one where the cheekbone had cut through the skin; the face looked without form, mushy and lumpy.

And there was another lump I noticed. A bulge under the left armpit of the tropical suit.

“Mr. Acasano?” he said in a low nasal hiss.

I nodded.

His stupid eyes swept from me to Tanya. “Who’s da broad?”

“My woman.”

“Uh... oh.” He blinked a lot, and had a faraway look as if he were daydreaming. “You’re suppose ta come with me.”

I took Tanya’s elbow and followed the moving house across the gingerbread lobby. When we got to the front door, he stopped and turned to us.

“I’m Quick Willie,” he said. “I know you’re Thomas Acasano, but I don’t know da broad’s name.”

“Do you have to know?” I asked.

He blinked on that for a few seconds. “Yeah. On accounta I gotta introduce her.”

“To who?”

“Da guy in da car.” He turned his back and stepped out onto the sidewalk. We followed.

A 300-series black Mercedes was waiting at the curb. As we walked up to it I saw an Oriental sitting in the front passenger seat. He watched us come with no expression on his face.

Quick Willie stopped us with a hand on my arm. “I gotta search you,” he said.

I lifted my arms and let him pat my chest. He reached inside the light sport coat and pulled out Wilhelmina. Then he patted my sides and legs. Very few searchers ever discovered Pierre or Hugo.

Then he turned toward Tanya, and for the first time since we met him, his small dull eyes brightened. “I gotta search her too.”

“I don’t think so,” I said softly.

Quick Willie’s small eyes bored a hole right through my head. Even the Oriental leaned over enough to watch. There was silence.

A blood-red Fiat came roaring by with no muffler. Another followed. Then three Lambrettas passed, their engines making the constant ring-a-ding-ding sound of the two-stroke. Narrow streets snaked off in every direction. The bright sun sent wispy heatripples up from the streets and sidewalks. Three blocks behind us was the harbor, but even here the smells of the sea came drifting by.

“I gotta search her,” Quick Willie said. “I got orders.”

The Oriental was watching me closely. He was immaculately dressed in a tailored sharkskin suit, light tan in color. The shirt was white, the tie striped brown and yellow. There was a curious kind of amused look on his face. His eyes were slanted, of course, and there were high cheekbones and a smoothness to the face. He gave off an air of assurance, as though there were few problems he could not handle, and handle well. He looked like the type of man who took charge, and earned a kind of fearful respect from others. There was that too, a ruthlessness. Sitting there with that amused look, he reminded me of a rattlesnake sunning himself. I had no doubt who the man was.

“You can’t search her, Willie,” I said.

Maybe I was blowing the whole thing. By refusing to allow Tanya to be searched maybe I was creating unnecessary trouble. I guess Nicoli had a right to let his torpedo clear all weapons before we got to the villa. But it was Tanya who got me off the hook.

She touched my arm lightly. “It will be all right, darling,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

“I don’t want that creep’s hands on you.”

“They won’t be on me for long.” She took two steps forward until she was almost bumping Willie. Raising her arms slightly she looked up into Willie’s mangled face. “O.K., big boy, frisk me,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

He did. He patted everywhere, and although the search was quick, and revealed nothing, Quick Willie obviously relished it.

“Okay,” he said at last. He opened the back door of the Mercedes for us. “You still didn’t tell me da broad’s name.”

I smiled at him. “That’s right, Willie. I sure didn’t.”

We got in the back seat, and flinched when Willie slammed the door. When he got behind the wheel, the Oriental turned around in his seat to face us. His arm rested on the back of the seat. He was wearing a gold watch and a very large ruby ring on his little finger. He gave us a grin that revealed perfect teeth, sparkling white.

Then he extended his right hand back toward me. “Mr. Acasano, my name is Tai Sheng. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

I took the hand. The grip was strong. “And I you, Mr. Sheng. This is Sandee Catron.”

“Yes, I gathered that. A pleasure, Miss Catron.”

We were all very good friends now. Quick Willie got the Mercedes purring, and we moved smoothly into the Fiat and Lambretta traffic.

Sheng had nodded toward Sandee, a gesture she returned, and as we rolled, he smiled broadly at me.

“May I call you Thomas?” he asked presently.

“Of course, please do.”

The smile broadened. “You brought the list, of course.”

“Of course.”

He held out his hand. “Rozano sent me to pick it up.”

I smiled back at him, then leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “Mr. Sheng, I am no fool,” I said, keeping my voice even but firm. “I don’t know what your relationship is with Rozano but he and I go back more than ten years. We know each other well. His instructions were explicit; I was to deliver the list to him personally. You offend me by asking for the list. In doing so, you are calling me stupid and, Mr. Sheng, I am not stupid.”

In a voice as smooth as pouring olive oil, he said, “I assure you, sir, I did not intend to imply that you were... stupid. I was merely...”

“I am well aware of your intentions, Mr. Sheng. You wish to make yourself look large in Rozano’s eyes so you will receive special favors. Well, let me tell you, Rozano and I go way back. We are very close. You and I may be competing for his right hand, but sir, when it comes to his friendship you are out in the cold.”

He thought that over for a few seconds. “I was hoping, somehow, that we could be friends.”

I could feel the anger boiling inside me. I knew what this man was, and what he wanted. “For a long time, Sheng, you have been trying to discredit me in Rozano’s eyes. And now you insult my intelligence by asking for the list. You and I cannot be friends. We are competing with each other, and only one of us will win.”

He arched his eyebrows. “Just what are we competing for?”

“Territory. The organization in the States is in chaos. We need a leader, and that leader will be Rozano. We are competing for a seat by his side, for a large slice of the pie.”

His voice lowered to become intimate. “I am not competing with you, Thomas. I have other plans...”

“I don’t believe you.” With that I leaned back against the seat. “Rut all this is academic,” I said. “Rozano is going to be upset with you because you subjected my woman and me to a search.”

“We were ordered to.”

“We’ll see. I am turning the list over to Rozano, and no one else.”

He pursed his lips and stared at me. I think at that moment, if the circumstances had been right, he would have gladly killed me. Then he turned around with his back to us and stared through the windshield.

Quick Willie had driven the Mercedes away from the buildings of Palermo. Now we passed sun-bleached shacks with dark children playing in dirt yards. Some of the shacks had faded wooden picket fences around them. The children were dressed in ragged clothes as dirty as themselves. Now and then I saw a woman old before her years, sweeping the earthen floor of a shack, pausing to swipe a forearm across a sweat-beaded forehead.

I felt a whoosh of cool air as Quick Willie turned on the air conditioner in the Mercedes.

And everywhere there were the vineyards. The land was flat and the neat rows of vines seemed to stretch over every hill.

Tanya’s hand slid across the seat, groping for mine. I took it and found her palm warm and wet. We had crossed over. Up until this moment we could have boarded a plane and flown back to the States. If something had come up unexpectedly, Hawk could have contacted us and either postponed or canceled the assignment. It would have been over for us. But now we had passed the point of no return. Roth AXE and Hawk were out of it. Whether we survived or not depended entirely on our own ability.

The road climbed in lazy S-curves which stiffened to become switchbacks. Quick Willie drove slowly and expertly. I wondered how many times he had carted button men to their hits. Our ears started popping as we went up toward a cloudless sky.

Toward the top of the high hill we came to the first armed guard. He stood beside an iron-barred gate. Going off in both directions was a high concrete fence.

Besides a sidearm, the man had a sub-machine gun slung over his shoulder. When the Mercedes came around the last corner and cruised slowly toward the gate, he bent enough to see all of us and at the same time brought the sub-machine gun at the ready.

Quick Willie honked the horn and started to slow down. The guard hustled and pushed the gate open. He smiled and waved as we drove into the villa. I noticed he was wearing a brown jumpsuit.

Once through the gate we were flanked by rich green lawns with olive trees dotted here and there, and beyond were more vineyards. The mansion was straight ahead.

From what I could see, it looked like the top of a hill had been shaved flat. The villa sprawled over almost a quarter of a mile square. As we drove around in a large semicircle on the butter-smooth asphalt driveway we passed a landing field with an executive Lear jet tied down. There were many buildings surrounding the mansion. As we circled behind the mansion we passed three tennis courts, a nine-hole golf-course and a huge swimming pool which was dotted with six lovelies in skimpy bikinis. And then we went around the main mansion to the front.

Every window was covered with wire mesh. Each entrance had bars above it, probably ready to seal all openings at the touch of a button. There were seven white pillars in front of a long brick porch. The driveway circled around and passed in front of the mansion. Quick Willie braked to a halt in front of one pillar. There were four brick steps leading from the driveway to the porch.

The mansion itself was no less impressive. It stood three stories high, built of red brick with a tile roof. The windows were gabled and shuttered, and each one somehow caught sight of the deep blue Mediterranean.

Willie was quick getting out and hustling around the front of the Mercedes. He opened Tai Sheng’s door first, then ours.

Sheng started up the steps extending his arm toward the massive front door. “This way, please, Mr. Acasano.” There was no warmth in the oily smoothness of his voice, the words were sharp and cut off at the ends.

I took Tanya’s elbow and followed him. The mansion looked familiar somehow, as though I had seen it op one like it somewhere before. No, that wasn’t it; I had seen others like it just out of New Orleans. Old plantation mansions of the Deep South. It must have cost Nicoli a fortune to have all those bricks and pillars hauled over here.

Sheng rang the chimed doorbell and almost immediately it was opened by a huge Negro.

“Michaels,” Sheng said. “Is Mr. Nicoli available?”

The Negro wore a yellow turtleneck and gray slacks. His head was shaved bald. “He is in conference with his wife, sir.”

We entered on marble floors, polished to a luster more brilliant than my shoes. A large chandelier hung about twelve feet above us. This seemed to be some kind of foyer. Through an arched doorway I could see the marble floor lead into what looked like a study. Opposite was a flight of carpeted stairs.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Sheng said. He started for the stairs. Tanya and I followed, while Quick Willie brought up the rear.

“I would like to see Rozano as soon as possible,” I said as we climbed.

“But of course,” Sheng answered. There was no feeling in his words.

When we reached the landing, he led the way to the right. There was a carpeted hallway with doors staggered on each side. What I couldn’t get over was the overwhelming massiveness of the place. The ceilings all seemed to be at least twelve feet high, and the doors looked as thick as safes. There was an endless number of rooms.

We continued to walk. Then, for no apparent reason, Sheng stopped in front of one door. He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and clicked the door open.

“Your room, Mr. Acasano,” he said flatly.

“What about my woman?”

He stood looking sleepy-eyed at my chest. I hadn’t realized how really small he was. The top of his head came to about two inches below my chin.

“We have another room for her.”

“I don’t like that,” I said angrily. “I don’t like it one damned bit.”

Only then did his slanted eyes raise to my face. “Mr. Acasano,” he said in a weary voice. “I am merely carrying out Rozano’s wishes. You will please wait inside.”

His arm was motioning toward the room. I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “An order like that I would have to hear from Rozano personally.”

He smiled, showing me those perfect teeth. “An order?” he said, with raised eyebrows. “It is not an order, Thomas. Rozano only wishes for you to rest from your trip, and to think of your reunion with him. There is a time for the women, is there not? And a time for quiet contemplation.”

“I’ll tell you what you can do with your contemplation.”

“Please.” He held up his hand. “She will be in a room similar to yours. She will be quite comfortable.”

Tanya put her hand on my arm. “It will be all right, darling.” Then she gave Sheng a sidelong glance. “I’m sure Mr. Sheng is a man of his word. If he says I’ll be comfortable, then that’s what I’ll be right?”

I sighed. “O.K. Come here and give me a kiss, baby.” She did and we made it good for the gallery, then I patted her on the rear. “Behave yourself.”

“Always, darling.”

Everyone was smiling. I stepped into the room. The door was slammed shut behind me. And it was locked.