Frank wasn't liking the atmosphere in his club one little bit. It wasn't that the place was rowdy, at all. If anything, the number of people in the place was a bit light for a Saturday night. It was quiet, too. The usual pick-up band—some combination of French André, Martino, Andreas and Fabrizzio plus whoever wanted to join them—weren't in and no one seemed to be ready to take up the slack. And the people who were in were largely sitting quietly and talking well below the usual drunken Italian volume.
"Anyone saying what's up?" he asked Benito when he came back to the bar. "Seems quiet tonight."
Benito shrugged. "Looks like we only got the real regulars, Frank. I'll ask Piero, he usually knows what's going down."
Frank looked over, and indeed Piero was there. Usually he had a girl with him—and usually a different one each week and one or two of them obviously hookers, but Frank figured that wasn't any of his business. "I'll go over and have a chat, actually," he said. "Mind the bar for me."
Piero nodded as Frank dragged up a stool. "You've heard, then?" the lefferto said.
"Heard what? I was kind of wondering what was up, like, where is everybody?"
Piero heaved a deep sigh, and shrugged. "You haven't seen the handbills, then?"
"Well, I've seen a couple—" Frank began, and then stopped. "There's another one out today?"
"Yesterday, actually. I figured it was false, since you denied the earlier one and it just plain doesn't sound like you."
"Don't leave a guy in suspense, Piero, what does it say?" Frank had a sinking feeling in his guts. He'd thought that whoever was printing the things was trying to get him in trouble with the Inquisition, and he'd been going in and making a nuisance of himself denouncing whoever it was to the Inquisition himself.
Sharon and Ruy Sanchez were certain it was the Spanish but Frank didn't know enough to be sure. So he'd been going back and writing letters demanding to know if they'd caught the guy, which he'd thought was a nice touch, to the point where the junior priest who met him whenever he went over there looked visibly alarmed whenever Frank showed up. Frank liked that. Turnabout was fair play, after all.
"I can do better," Piero said."I kept mine." He dug inside his jacket somewhere and brought out a rumpled and stained piece of cheap rag paper.
Frank looked at it. It was badly printed, and the type looked it had slipped a bit, blurring the letters. He read it closely. It started with the usual stuff ripped off from old broadsides by Massimo—who would probably be pleased to hear that he'd made at least that much impact. Then it went on to—Frank groaned. "We'd never say any of this stuff, Piero."
"That's what I thought," Piero agreed. "I mean, you don't want to end up in jail, right? I figure you don't want to die either. I mean, we're allowed to make nasty cracks about the city, but you're still a foreigner. As for the suggestion we all hold our women in common, well, you could maybe say I don't get too attached to any particular one, but I—Frank?" Piero looked concerned.
"Sorry, I was just reading some more of this. It makes it look like I wanted to insult everyone I know around here. About the only thing I left out, according to this, is that I think everyone in Rome is fucking his own sister and killed his mother."
Piero chuckled. "Well, if you read it one way, it's like you asked everyone to whore his sister out."
"It ain't funny, Piero. We got to do something about this, man."
Piero cleared his throat. "Well, actually, you've got to do something about it. Only reason I'm here is, ah, I'm avoiding someone." He flashed a grin. "I kind of made a start on the whole holding women in common thing last week, and I figured no one was going to come looking here. Maybe things'll blow over, though."
"I don't see how they will. Whoever's printing these things still has a printing press and no one seems to know who it is. Benito's been asking the street kids, but you know how they are if you ask them questions."
"I was thinking more about the husband I pissed off, but you have a point. Anyway, I heard where the one thing the Committee of Correspondence always has is a printing press. So why don't you just get your own word out there?"
"We don't have our press yet. We've only been here a couple of months, and it takes time to get the things shipped from where they're made in Germany."
"All right, why not use a press in Rome?" Piero's tone was of a man explaining things to an idiot.
"I would, but all the legal ones get watched by the Inquisition. All of the ones we spoke to flat told us they wouldn't do any propaganda. They only print stuff for us if it doesn't mention the Committee and isn't political in any way. Kind of narrow-minded of them, and we sneak some stuff in anyway, changing-attitudes kind of stuff that doesn't look like politics unless you know what you're looking for, but—" Frank realized he was babbling. "Look, it's just impossible right now."
Piero shrugged. "I figure it's not so bad, though. Get around and tell people it wasn't you. Get the word spread. Maybe bribe one of those street kids to rat out the guy who gives them the handbills. How much damage can they do before you start answering them?"
"Plenty," Frank said. "And I don't like the idea that someone's going to see this as a good tactic; it could get used against the Committee elsewhere. Oh, not back in the USE, I figure. They do nasty things to people who pull shit like this back there."
Frank was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass and a bellow of alarm and rage. He spun around and leapt to his feet. "What the—?"
It looked like someone had thrown a brick through the window. Frank saw it bounce and tumble to a halt on the floor. He found himself, absurdly, staring hard to see if it had a message tied to it. There didn't need to be. Another window went, and this time it didn't just nearly hit someone, and the roar was of alarm, rage, and pain. Frank winced. The guy it had hit was a big, usually amiable guy name of Giulio, a teamster from just outside Rome who had moved to the city a few years before. He was a real nice guy with hardly a bad word for anyone, right down to the bottom of his third glass of wine, at which point he started getting rattier and rattier until he was a first-class mean drunk. And he'd had a few tonight.
Frank figured he had a few seconds before Giulio ran out of swearwords and did something everyone'd regret, and still less before the place went into a complete uproar. "Benito!" he yelled. "Get the guys down here, I'll get the shutters."
He grabbed the shutters for the nearest window and got them closed just as a brick hurtled through the glass—he sure as hell wasn't going to lean out and close the outer shutters—and banged into the wood, slapping it painfully against his hands. Whoever had thrown that had meant it. From the brief glance he'd gotten out in to the street, there wasn't a crowd there, but there was a sizeable gang of what looked like drunks.
"Frank!" Giovanna shouted. She wasn't a shrinking violet, either. Frank could hear her over even the sudden uproar the place was in. She'd obviously passed Benito on the stairs, and seemed to be in that state of general anger she sometimes got in where it could strike to earth anywhere, like lightning. One time it had been Frank in the way, but more usually it was her brothers. Tonight it looked like being Frank's turn, although he didn't have time. He dashed to the next window, and swerved as another brick came through. This time he didn't get a whack on the hands as he shut the thing up, and he got to the third one and shut it without any trouble. A couple of the regulars had gotten the idea and the other windows were shuttered before Frank could make another move. Everyone else was either on their feet and shouting or crouching under a table and shouting. Dino and Fabrizzio and Benito were back in the room and shouting, and Giovanna and Giulio were squared off and shouting at each other. That was kind of funny, if everything else weren't so freaking serious, Frank thought. Giovanna, five-five in her working shoes, and Giulio, six-three and the best part of two hundred and fifty pounds. Not big muscles, but the kind of fat you get on guys who load carts and wrestle with balky mules for a living. Giovanna was actually doing her best to get in the guy's face, which given that she had to crane her neck took some doing. And Giulio had that ability to bellow back at a woman that comes with a guy who knows he's not going to haul off and belt a girl no matter what.
Frank could only catch bits. It sounded like he was going to have to calm things down. "Dino, Fabrizzio, hold the door closed!" he bellowed. Once he was certain they were heading that way he ducked through the now-milling crowd to get Giulio and Giovanna apart.
When he got there she was yelling that he was a big dumb ox who should've ducked, and he was letting her know that if she ran a decent house this sort of thing wouldn't happen. Better, Frank figured, than Giulio running outside to take 'em all on, but still not helping any.
"Sorry to interrupt this conversation!" he yelled over the noise. The pair of them weren't even a half of one per cent of the racket in the room, and conversation was putting it a bit too gently for the business of the pair of them yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. Neither of them was listening to the other or, for that matter, Frank.
There was a hammering at the door. Dino and Fabrizzio were holding it shut, and were getting the bolts in. Frank began to wish he'd gotten around to fixing those old and balky fasteners a bit sooner, but it'd been easier to persist with a few seconds swearing and jiggling every morning and night.
There was a bright side, though. Everyone shut up.
At the same time. In a room full of Romans, that was a miracle in itself.
Bang, bang, bang. There was shouting in the street outside, but no way to tell about what.
Frank figured he had to take charge somehow. "Giulio, come with me."
He had no idea whether or not the big guy was any use in a fight, and had no idea how to tell. Once upon a time, he'd thought big and strong was the way to tell, but then the one guy he knew who was good in a fight—he'd gotten the story from Billy Trumble—was a short, wiry Catalan who was older than Frank's dad. Still, having a big guy standing behind him would help.
And now he had backup. He hoped that would keep there from being any trouble. "Open the door, guys."
Dino and Fabrizzio looked at each other and looked at Frank. Frank saw that both of them had brought the cudgels that were kept behind the bar. Maybe that'd help, too, although the two Venetian boys weren't anyone's idea of hulking goons. Scrawny little guys from the wrong side of the tracks, those two. Not that they didn't know a thing about street-fighting, being from Murano, where it was the local sport. And Frank had seen them pile into a gang of muggers with a will, that first night he'd visited them at home. It's just that you wouldn't know it to look at them, and that meant someone might try something, not knowing that the pair of them were pretty handy with those clubs.
They shot the bolts and opened the big double door wide in front of Frank. He stepped out, not letting himself have any time to chicken out. The street was dark, apart from where light spilled out from the couple of other buildings that were occupied around here. Frank's first guess had been off. There were maybe a dozen guys out there. All of them at least half drunk, if not more. A couple had been standing right by the door, and having it open in front of them had clearly come as a surprise. Well, Frank thought, don't waste it.
"What are you doing, you sons of whores?" he roared, stepping right up to the nearest drunk. The guy looked like he'd been stunned. Certainly not about to call Frank's bluff.
Some of the others weren't so taken aback. "Whoremonger!" "Pimp!" and "Pervert!" were the few cries Frank could pick out. His grasp of Roman idiom wasn't good enough for more than the basics of the local swearing.
"Yeah, says who?" Giulio shouted. Bellowed, rather.
"Yeah, show yourself!" Frank shouted.
He really wasn't happy about this. The whole stand-up-to-a-bully thing just wasn't his scene. Back down and take elaborate comedy revenge later, that was his style, but it just wasn't going to work here and now. Time to find out if confrontation worked.
A moment's tense silence . . . Not right away, it doesn't, Frank thought to himself. Aloud, "Come on! You got a problem with me, step right the fuck up." He pointed at the ground in front of him. He wasn't sure why, he just thought he'd seen it on TV one time.
More silence, a couple more shouts from the back of the crowd, calling him a pimp and a few other things. He looked around. Most of them had drifted closer, and enough windows were opening that Frank was starting to see faces instead of just pale, unshaven blobs. He didn't recognize any of them, and a dark suspicion began to form.
Behind him, he heard Dino say, "You want we should break some heads, Frank?"
"Yeah, say the word," Giulio added.
"I shall probably regret this," came Piero's voice, and the sound of something steely slipping out of a scabbard, "but I do not feel that I can let this pass without intervening."
Something about that last bugged Frank a little, but he wasn't going to worry about it now. "No, guys," he said, doing his best to imitate his father-in-law doing the mafia-don act he put on for Murano's low-life. He held up a hand. "I see how this is. You guys," he said, waving a hand at the gang in the street, "I see how it is. You got your money, you did what you came for, go collect your pay. It's over. And next time, you take the money, you come here and have a quiet drink, and go back and just say you did it, okay?"
There was a pause. "What about all that stuff you wrote?" came a voice from the back.
There was always one, Frank figured. "I never wrote it," he said. "And I wouldn't. Only guy gets to fuck my wife is me, you hear?" he shouted, grinning. "If you saw her, you'd understand why I feel real strongly about that."
That got a few grins. Hey, it's working. He decided he'd strike while the iron was hot. "I figure you all got someone you feel that way about too, and I ain't going to mess with that."
"But you wrote—" said the heckler, and Frank noted that he was staying in back.
"I—WROTE—NO—SUCH—THING!" he roared at the top of his lungs. "The bastards are trying to get you angry at your best hope of getting what's coming you, is all. They've seen what the Committee's done in Germany and they don't want it happening here! You think some stinking Spanish nobleman wants to see you doing well? When he's getting fat off your hard work?"
There was a round of muttered "no's," although Frank would have guessed that most of these guys hadn't done a day's work in their lives.
"Right!" he pressed on. "So maybe they want to tell you a few lies and get you mad at us over bullshit! That's what it is. Nothing but fucking bullshit. Now, you guys going to go home, or come in for a drink, or what?"
In the end, most of them drifted off. A couple of them came in for a couple of drinks, but seemed kind of embarrassed, and the regulars didn't exactly make them feel welcome. Frank wished he could fix that. If he could just get a few of these fellows on his side he'd have someone who could tell him what the hell was going on with all this rent-a-mob stuff. It wasn't like it was even doing much harm, apart from the odd rock getting thrown and Frank having a hell of a repair bill. As it was, all he could get out of them was that some guy had offered them a bit of money and a skinful of drink to turn out and throw rocks at Frank's Place, and some guy had passed around the handbills and gotten quite irate about the whole sharing-of-women thing. And that was it, apparently. Two of them had "worked" for these guys before, and they were usually in one of the taverns on the Via Ripetto picking up warm bodies for this kind of thing. There were some guys all but making a living at it.
Still, it was more than he'd got up to now, through Benito asking street kids. And he wondered if they'd be dumb enough to let, say, Dino or Fabrizzio join one of their hired crowds. That would get them a lot more information, assuming he could drill the Marcoli boys with the absolute necessity of keeping their yaps shut and not arguing with whatever bullshit they were asked to shout or hand around.
He decided he'd sleep on it.