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.