Mario Puzo - The Fourth K

Then came Romeo's voice on the tape saying what delighted Sebbediccio.

"My father never gave me anything in life, and by his suicide he stole my option. And death was my only escape."

Sebbediccio listened to the rest of the tape in which Romeo let his mother persuade him to see a priest, and then when the TV cameras and reporters were let into the room Sebbediccio turned it off. He had seen the rest on TV. But he had what he wanted.

When Sebbediccio paid his next visit to Romeo, he was so delighted that when the jailer unlocked the cell he entered doing a little dance step and greeted Romeo with great joviality.

"Giangi," he said, "you are becoming even more famous. It is rumored that when we have a new Pope he may ask mercy for you. Show your gratitude, give me some of the information I need."

Romeo said, "What an ape you are."

Sebbediccio bowed and said, "That's your last word, then?"

It was perfect. He had a recording that said Romeo was thinking of killing himself.

A week later the news was released to the world that the murderer of the Pope, Armando "Romeo" Giangi, had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.

In New York, Annee had mounted the mission. She was very conscious of the fact that she was the first woman chief of a First Hundred operational strike. She was determined she would not fail.

The two safe houses, apartments on New York's East Side, had been stocked with food, weapons and other necessary material. The assault teams would arrive a week before the strike date, and she would order them to stay in their apartments until the final day. The escape routes had been set up for any survivors, through Mexico and Canada. She planned to remain in America for a few months, in still another safe house.

Despite her duties Annee had a lot of time to kill and spent it roaming through the city. She was appalled by the slums, especially Harlem; she thought she had never seen a city so dirty, so ill kept, with whole districts looking as if they had been hit by artillery fire. She was disgusted by the mass of homeless, the snarling rudeness of the service people, the cold hostility of the public servants. She had never been to a place so mean-spirited.

The ever– present danger was another matter. The city was a war zone, more perilous than Sicily, for in Sicily violence had strict laws of self-interest, logically conceived, whereas in New York the violence sprang from the malodorous sickness of some animal herd.

There had come one particularly eventful day that made Annee resolve that she would stay in her apartment as much as possible. She went to a late-afternoon American film, a film that irritated her with its moronic machismo. The muscular hero she would have loved to encounter, just to show him how easy it would be to shoot his balls off.

After the film she had strolled along Lexington Avenue to make calls in public phone booths required by her mission. She went into a famous restaurant to give herself a small treat and was affronted by the rudeness of the staff and enraged by the pale imitation of Roman cuisine offered to her. How dare they. In France the owner of the restaurant would be lynched. In Italy the Mafia would bum the restaurant down as a public service.

So, in truth, it came as a tonic when the city of New York tried to make her submit to the final indignities it visited on thousands of its inhabitants and visitors.

During her late evening stroll, the exercise necessary to enable her to sleep, she suffered two separate attempts to rape or rob her.

The first attack, at the beginning of twilight, truly astonished her. It happened right on Fifth Avenue as she was looking at the display in Tiffany's store window. A man and a woman, very young, not more than twenty, pressed her on either side. The young man had the lynxlike face of the hopeless drug addict. He was extremely ugly, and Annee, who admired physical beauty, immediately disliked him. The young girl was pretty but had the petulance of the spoiled American teenager Annee had observed on the streets. She was dressed in the harlot's mode made fashionable by the latest screen idols. Both were white.

The young man pressed hard against her and Annee felt hard metal through the thin jacket she was wearing. She was not alarmed.

"I've got a gun," the young man whispered. "Give my girl your bag. Nice and friendly. No fuss and you won't get hurt."

"Do you vote?" Annee asked.

The young man, distracted, said, "What?" His girlfriend stretched out her hand for the bag. Annee took the girl's hand, then swung her around as a shield, at the same time using her other hand to hit the girl full in the face with her ringed other hand. An incredible amount of blood splashed Tiffany's elegantly dressed window, causing passersby to stop in amazement.

Annee said coolly to the young man, "You've got a gun, shoot." By this time he had swung his body around away from where he held the gun in his pocket.

The fool had seen that move in gangster movies. He didn't know it was a completely useless stance unless the victim froze. But to be on the safe side she grabbed the man's other arm and pulled it out of its socket. As the young man screamed in agony his hand came out of the pocket and a screwdriver clanged against the pavement. Of course, Annee thought, stupid adolescent cunning. She walked away from them.

At this point it would have been prudent to return to her apartment, but out of some territorial imperative she continued her stroll. But then, right on Central Park South, lined with its expensive luxury hotels, guarded by its uniformed doormen, and limousines parked along the street with burly chauffeurs, she was surrounded by four black youths.

They were handsome high-spirited fellows that she liked on sight. They were very much like the youthful rascals in Rome who felt it their duty to accost women in the streets. One of the youths said to her playfully, "Hey, baby, take a walk in the park with us. You'll have a good time."

They barred her path, she could not move forward. She was amused by them, she did not doubt she would have a good time. It was not they who angered her, it was the doormen and the chauffeurs who deliberately ignored her plight.

"Go away," she said, "or I'll scream and those doormen will call the police." She knew she could not scream, could not afford to do so because of her mission.

One of the youths, grinning, said, "Go ahead and scream, lady." But she could see them poised on their toes ready to flee.

When she did not scream, another of the youths understood immediately that she would not. "Hey, she won't scream," he said. "You hear her accent? I bet she has some drugs. Hey, lady, give us some."

They all laughed with delight. One of them said, "Or else we'll call the police." And they laughed again.

Before leaving Italy, Annee had been briefed on the dangers of New York.

But she was a highly trained operational agent and had absolute confidence in that training. So she had refused to carry a gun, fearing that it might compromise the mission. However she wore a specially designed zircon ring that could do a great deal of damage. And in her handbag was a pair of scissors more lethal than a Venetian dagger. So she did not feel herself in any danger. She only worried about the police becoming involved and being questioned by them. She was sure that she could escape without any fuss.

But she had not taken into account her nervousness and natural ferocity.

One of the youths reached out a hand to touch her hair and Annee hissed, "Get out of my way, you black bastard, or I'll kill you."

All four went quiet, their good humor gone. She saw the hurt brooding look come into their eyes and she felt a pang of guilt. She realized that she had made a mistake. She had called them black bastards out of no racial prejudice. It was merely a form of Sicilian invective, where when you quarreled with a hunchback you called him a hunchback bastard, if you quarreled with a cripple you called him a cripple bastard. But how could these young men know this? She almost apologized. But it was too late.