Free Stiletto by Harold Robbins Page A

a chair near poolside. He would be glad when this job was over.
    Vanicola floated away. As the agents idly watched the swimmers, their tension gradually began to ease off.
    ***
    Cesare saw them from across the pool. He glanced at Barbara. She was lying on her stomach, her back to the sun, her eyes closed. He could feel his heart begin to pound. He looked across the pool again.
    Vanicola was floating out toward the center of the clover-leaf where a group of youngsters were frolicking. Their voices came back to Cesare. Unconsciously his hand dropped to his waist. He could feel the stiletto in the concealed sheath beneath his trunks. He took his hand away quickly.
    One of the bodyguards was getting up now. He called something to Vanicola. Vanicola sat up clumsily and almost fell into the water, then he turned around and stretched out face down on the float. The bodyguard sat down again.
    Cesare glanced at Barbara. She was still lying quietly. He rose swiftly, took a deep breath and dove into the water. He went down deep, his eyes straining as he swam out to the center of the pool.
    Barbara sat up when she heard the splash of his dive. “Cesare,” she called.
    But he was already gone, bubbles trailing in his wake. She blinked her eyes and smiled. In some ways he was like a small boy. For three days now he had been practicing swimming underwater across the pool and back. She glanced up at the clock on the cabana wall. It was twenty minutes to four. She began to gather up her things. It was getting late and they would have to leave soon.
    She had just finished retouching her lipstick when his head came up over the edge of the pool near her. His mouth was open in a strange grin as he gulped air into his lungs. He stared at her as if she were far away.
    “Did you make it this time?” she asked, smiling.
    “I made it,” he answered as he pulled himself out of the pool.
    Her voice was shocked. “Cesare!”
    A flash of fear leaped into his eyes. His hand felt for the stiletto. It was there, back in the sheath. He looked at her, then followed her gaze back down to himself. He caught the robe she flung at him and wrapped it around himself. She was laughing now as he walked toward her. “Cesare, you are like a little boy. The minute you get excited, it shows,” she teased.
    He grinned at her without embarrassment. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Didn’t I tell you that we Sicilians are very basic people?” He laughed.
    She picked up her beach bag and, still laughing, they walked back into the hotel.
    ***
    The telephone in the cabana began to ring. Stanley got to his feet. “Keep an eye on him while I get the phone,” he said to the other agents.
    They nodded and he walked back into the cabana. The youngest agent looked around and then spoke to the other man. “I’d like to come back here sometime when I’m not working.”
    The other man grinned. “You couldn’t afford it. Everything comes high in this place.”
    Stanley came back. For the first time in several days, he was smiling. “Come on,” he said to them. “Let’s get him out of there. We’re going to New York tonight.”
    The other men got to their feet and they all turned toward the pool. Stanley’s voice carried over to the raft. “Okay, Sam. Come on in. Your ten minutes are up.”
    But more than ten minutes were up for Sam. Sam Vanicola was lying there dead on the slowly sinking raft, his face pressed close to the Plexiglas shield, looking into the water. And even the last memory was gone from his mind now. The sight of Cesare’s grinning face coming up at him from the bottom of the pool just before his heart exploded in a pain he never knew he could feel.

9
    The Sunshine State Parkway runs north from Miami to Fort Pierce, past the swamps and marshes and citrus groves that dot the Florida Atlantic Coast. And many times at night in the early winter the fog rolls in from the suddenly cooling seas and, mixed with the smoke from the smudge