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."