Cowards Die

A Tragicomedy in Several Fits

Judith Tarr

Marco just wants a piece of the action.

I know I’m top of the rock when Julia says she’ll go to the Birthday Gala with me. Lucio and Cesco and Tonio and Little Thanaric all get smiled out to the wrong side of the door, but when I show up I get smiled in. Not that that isn’t all I get, Julia being Julia and nose down in a book, but you spend a while around the capo’s palazzo, you learn to tell when the luck’s looking your way.

Lucio and Cesco take it like men, lay up for me when I’m coming back late from Vipsania’s, but I’m as sober as a pontifex and I’ve been waiting for something to cut loose. Lucio gets a gap in his grin, Cesco gets his arm in a sling, I get satisfaction. Tonio’s quieter; but that’s no trouble, I’ve been saving up for a new taster: the old one was getting worn out. As for Little Thanaric, he’s the kind to holler for tommy guns at sunup, but he gets called off on a rumble out Volaterrae way, so we make a deal to settle it when he comes back.

So here I am, dressed to the tens, zoot suit, reet pleat, bullet in my buttonhole, and here’s Julia, drop ’em dead at a thousand paces, with a handshake and a smile and a book under her arm. Her daddy being a traditionalist, her bodyguards carry the fasces and the axes, you know, rods to beat the marks with, axes to quiet them down, but they’ve got their nice long pieces too, looks like a new model, telescopic sights, I’d stop and ask but Luigi’s coming up with the knife. He’s a little bit too happy to do the ceremony; all he needs to do is touch the knife to my balls and give me the warning about getting too fresh with Julia, but he puts a jab in it that puts me damned near through Papa Julie’s nice painted ceiling. I’m all set to kill him, but Julia says, “Marco, please. Not on the new floor.”

So I’ll gut him later, me and maybe Little Thanaric if he’s game before we go at it with the tommy guns. Even Luigi’s not as big as Little Thanaric. Luigi doesn’t look too scared. He’ll learn.

It’s not so easy to put on a swagger when I’ve got to be bleeding through my best silk Arachnes, but Luigi’s sneering and Julia’s waiting for me to come over all polite and hand her into daddy’s Rolls Armani. So what’s a little blood for a lady like Julia? I hand her in, get in beside her, the engine purrs like Livia Augusta’s tiger, and off we go to the gala.

oOo

Julia’s daddy is a capo, a big capo, molto fortissimo, and we all know he’ll be capo di tutti capi when Don Mario kicks it down to Tartarus. But Don Mario’s still a bit short of kicking it, and Papa Julie’s not in any big hurry, so it’s all smiles and gladhands and eternal loyalties on Don Mario’s birthday. The old bastard’s looking healthier than Bootsy’s horse, sitting up there in his box with just half a dozen muscleboys to keep the rest of us honest. We pay our respects, Julia being a stickler and her daddy being worse, and the old man is halfway down her cleavage and Luigi doesn’t bat an eyelash. Me, I’d do something, but Julia shoves her book in my stomach, damn near knocks the wind out, and smiles at Don Mario and says, “Isn’t he cute, Grandpapa? I love it when he gets all red and angry and the curl falls over his forehead and he looks so protective.”

Don Mario laughs himself half into a fit. I’ll kill something, by hades I will.

“There,” says Julia, putting her hand on my arm. “There, Marco, I shouldn’t tease.” She smiles up at me, big brown eyes and soft yellow curls and never mind the rest because Luigi’s there with his knife and a grin, no mistaking what would make him the happiest man in Rome.

I put on a smile and say as sweet as I can, “No, no, it’s nothing. Look, here’s Donna Livia to pay her respects, we’d better make room, isn’t the show about to start?”

All right, so I’m talking too fast. It gets us out past Livia’s tiger, which yawns and says something rude, but before I can think about giving the muscle the slip, there’s one in front and one behind and we’re being herded into Papa Julie’s box. He’s not there yet. Business, I suppose. He’d better make it before the lights go down or Don Mario will have a little bone to pick with him. Not that that’s my worry, except for what could happen to Julia if Don Mario gets mad at her daddy.

I know better than to think we’ll get into too much trouble up here with the whole of Rome staring right at us and Luigi standing just in knifing range, but I’ve got a few plans for when the lights are out. I make conversation with people who keep blundering in. Julia gets her nose in her book. The theater fills up clear to the sky. The antiaircraft guns are hiding behind the floodlights, but I know where I’m looking. I notice they’re muzzle up. We haven’t had anybody try to kill the capo in months, but it never hurts to be ready. A strafing run on the theater while he’s at his birthday gala would be just the thing to spice up the show. They got Appy the Clod like that, a ways back, before everybody knew what an airplane can do.

I’m not expecting a bombing run tonight. It’s all quiet, the dons are in their boxes—all but Papa Julie—and the lights are going down. Julia closes her book. She catches my eye and smiles. I’m warm right down to Luigi’s stab wound, which I’ve sneaked a minute to check, and it's not bleeding after all. She doesn’t look worried about her daddy, but then Julia never looks worried about anything.

Julia watches the show. I watch her. I’ve got my plans, but it’s a long night in the theater, and Luigi can’t watch me every second of it.

The show is spectacular, but I’ve seen it all before. They’ve got an army of pygmies for the bloodsport finale, mounted on ostriches, against an army of giants on giraffes. The crowd loves it. I yawn. Julia wishes they could have a nautical spectacle the way they did last year, but a blonde in the next box over says, “Oh, no, that would be too dull. Boats are so slow.”

Julia likes the musical events better. They’re putting me to sleep, and she’s leaning on the edge of the box, beating time, and there’s no snuggling up to her without Luigi stepping in. He catches my eye once, when the soprano starts to sing, and smiles.

No use to tell him it’s the contralto who’s the castrato. Luigi’s not up on the finer distinctions.

It’s not going well, unless you count the way Julia turns and smiles at me. She’s swooning over the tenor, who’s got a face like a horse’s, all sinuses, no brains, so I’m supposed to swoon with her. I don’t do a very good imitation, but she’s too wrapped up in the music to notice.

I start noticing it myself, not that I give a blue goose for the tragicomedy, but I’m getting frustrated and Luigi won’t stop watching me. I know what the story’s about, it’s the same one every year. The Death of Julius Caesar, and they don’t mean Papa Julie, unless they’re getting symbolic for a change. This is the first Papa Julie, the great Papa Julie, the one who could have been Dictator of Rome if he’d gone on the way he started, but Lucky Corny Sulla took care of that.

This is the usual wheeze. Julie the C. and Lucky Corny don’t hit it off even when Julie’s just a kid, so Corny tries this and that, and when nothing works, he has the kid nabbed and ever so carefully crushes his voicebox. So? you might say, if you’re like Little Thanaric and don’t care a brass as for the classics. So back then everything ran on speeches. Oratory. People talked their way into power. And Julie, when Corny was done, could just about croak for his supper.

Being Julie, and being pretty sure Corny wasn’t done with him, he went and hid right under Corny’s nose, in the Subura in Rome. Where he could have died, him being a big man’s son and groomed for a big man himself, but he was Julie the C. He ended up running every racket in the Subura, and that meant running most of the rackets in the empire. Corny was dead before Julie really got going, and maybe Julie helped him along and maybe he didn’t. Big Pompey ran his course, Marco Antonio shacked up with his Egyptian piece, the Dirty Dozen Dictators carried on after Marco drowned in the Nile—or got eaten by a crocodile, depending on who’s telling it—and Julie the C. just went on and on.

So does the tragicomedy. Julie’s a basso, he’s not bad. The tenor’s being the Nephew and Heir, Julie the Craps Queen, but this is Art, so he’s calling himself Octavius. Takes about an hour to get him out of the gambling hall he’s running off Shitlake Alley, get him through the Subura (with an aria at every street corner), and get him into the catacomb where Julie the C.’s been trying to die in peace. The tenor’s not going to let him have that. I could tell them the Heir wasn’t even there, he was busted for running a loaded-dice scam and they had to spring him after the old man popped off, but Art isn’t interested in what really happened.

When it’s finally over and they come out to take their bows, Julia holds out a hand. One of the muscle puts a rose in it. She stands up and wouldn’t you know they’re playing the lights around and one catches her, and she glows like Venus in her bathtub. Everybody looks up, including the tenor. She bows, smiles her brightest smile, and tosses the rose down to the stage. The tenor catches it, he seems to think he’s the one they’re all howling and cheering at, and he kisses the rose and bows and scrapes and kisses the thing again. You’d think he’d know when enough is enough.

Julia takes my hand. She says something I don’t quite hear. She says it louder, not moving her lips: “Let’s go, Marco.”

“But,” I say, “they haven’t had the dancing yet.”

I like that, see. The women don’t wear much and the men are just furniture.

Julia’s grip gets tighter. It almost hurts. “Marco, I want to go.”

Well, if she puts it like that, I wouldn’t be polite to say no. I’m just about to say so when the shooting starts.

“Oh, dear,” says Julia. “Somebody jumped the gun.”

That’s so funny I have to laugh, which isn’t all that smart when you’re trying to get a woman down into cover and she’s not having any, and there’s a regular firestorm everywhere.

Well, not everywhere. Just the boxes. The crowd’s screaming, but it isn’t the we’re-being-shot-at scream, it’s the great-show-we-want-more howl. I can see them at it: Julia knocks me halfway over the edge of the box. She hauls me back, which says something for what she really thinks of me, and then the other muscle, the one who isn’t Luigi, what’s his name, Hiram, Habacuc, Hammurabi?, grabs me and throws me out the back and says, “It’s a putsch, putz.”

I know enough Judean to figure that out. The swear word isn’t enough to get my blood up, and anyway Julia’s still got a grip on me and we’re hustling through Hades. They call the back passages that, and it looks like it. The lights are down, emergency reds on, people screaming and running. Julia’s not moving all that fast. Just fast enough to get us out with breath left to run for it. The muscle’s in tight around us.

“Putsch?” I say to Hiram. Herschel. Whatever. “Who—”

Hammurabi looks disgusted. “She always picks ’em for looks,” he says to Luigi. Luigi is busy being point man. Habacuc decks a beefy type who just happens to be carrying a bicycle chain.

So I’m slow. I’m not stupid. “Papa Julie’s making his move,” I say.

Nobody gives me the laurel for genius. Julia pulls me around a corner, and there’s a door, and muscle in it. The whole lot of us tumble out into a car that’s not the Rolls, somebody’s been smart there, and the doors slam and the car takes off.

It’s smooth. It’s fast. It makes me so mad I dive for the door and start wrenching at the handle, with muscle on me like crocodiles on old Marco Antonio, and him being my main ancestor of record I say I’m entitled to it. I’m thinking I should have taken that nice little numbers racket in Alexandria that Uncle Marcello had all ready for me, instead of holding out for a gig in old Rome, except then I wouldn’t have met Julia. For all the good that’s doing me right now.

“I ought to be back there!” I yell. “I want my piece of the action.”

“Don’t worry,” says Julia. “You’ll get yours.”

I don’t even want to know what she means by that. Luigi lost his knife somewhere, or he’s decided he’s got other turbot to fry. Meanwhile every capo in Rome is getting shot to pieces, including Don Mario, who should have known better.

Well, maybe he did. A capo knows when to go, and how to go in style. I won’t be surprised to hear he went down face forward, giving the gladiator’s salute to Papa Julie.

oOo

Palazzo Cesare is quiet. The riot shields are up and the muscle’s deployed, minus me. Julia’s reading her book: I take a look. It’s Viddy the Nose.I should have known, his good old How to Win Girls and Influence Bosses, and look where that got him. He got too up close and friendly with another Julia, ended up Exhibit A in an iceberg off Cape Boreas.

“Well,” I say when the clepsydra in the atrium dribbles midnight, “I’d better be going. It’s getting late.”

Julia hardly looks up from her book. “You can’t do that. We’re sealed in.”

“I can get out,” I say.

“Don’t,” says Julia. She’s not even looking at me, but I stay where I am. I won’t say I’m nervous. I’m as bored as hades, is what I am. I think about knocking Julia over and giving her what she’s been begging for since the day I met her. It isn’t Luigi that stops me. It’s thinking that she stood up right before the shooting started, and if that wasn’t a signal then I’m Julie the C.

“You might have got killed,” I say.

She sighs. I’ve interrupted her once too often, but this time at least she looks at me. “I might have,” she says. She’s cool. She’s calm. She looks good enough to eat.

I’m not going to tell her that. So I say; “I’d hate it if you had.”

“Good,” she says.

“I want a piece of the action,” I say.

She puts her book down. I take a deep breath. I’m ready for anything, except for what she does. She decks me with a neat left jab. “That’s for being stupid. And this,” she says, bending over me and kissing my nose, “is for being adorable. Daddy says your family owns half the rackets in Alexandria. Why doesn’t it own all of them?”

“Because your daddy owns the other half,” I say. I’m proud of myself. It’s not easy to be cool when you’re flat on your back and Julia is sitting on your stomach discussing your prospects. And there’s Luigi. Jove knows where Luigi got to.

Julia smiles. “Then you do think a merger is just the thing for all of us.”

Actually I don’t. “I’m not out far your money,” I say.

“Of course you’re not. You’re out for my body.” She pats her assets fondly. “And I’m out for yours. Not that I have any illusions, you understand. In ten years you’ll be fat and bald and I’ll be just hitting my stride. We’ll agree to separate arrangements then, I’m sure. Meanwhile we’ll enjoy what we’ve got while we’ve got it.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not on the market.”

She narrows her big brown eyes. Amazing how small and mean they look all of a sudden. Just like her daddy’s. “A prior engagement?”

Now I know where Luigi is. He’s right behind her. He has his knife again, or one just like it. He’s smiling.

“You don’t know Cleo,” I say.

“I think I do,” says Julia. “Miss Respectability? Bluestocking of the Year?”

“She’s not that bad,” I say. “She and my pater have a racket going that would make even your daddy sit up and beg.”

“Oh,” says Julia. “That. My daddy says he’s going to have to marry her himself if she keeps up, or ice her himself, whichever comes first. Really, Marco, I can’t understand why you’re so dense. Daddy has the pontifex on call, and the contracts are all drawn up. Do you want to stand up for your wedding like the fine upstanding young man you are”—right, and so’s my little man, who doesn’t care about anything but the prime assets parked right in front of him—“or are you going to be difficult?”

“Difficult dead,” I ask, “or difficult in chains?”

“You’re no good to me dead,” says Julia.

I have to give it to her. She has all the angles covered. Including, eventually, mine. By that time Luigi isn’t there. I can’t see anybody else, either, but knowing the help I figure the walls have eyes. It never stopped me before. It might stop me now, but Julia’s got her own opinion about that.

Cowards die every time they turn around, old Julie the C. said, and the real guts just throws itself on its sword. Julie had a point, I always thought, but that was before I knew Julia. Swords aren’t what she has in mind.

“I picked you, you know,” she says in between rides around the course, “because you have such a sweet face. And wonderful connections in Alexandria. And you aren’t half as dumb as you look. I like that in a man.”

“Urg,” I say.

“You’re going to be capo di tutti capi when Daddy kicks it,” she goes on. “You’ve got a lot to learn, of course, but you’ll learn it. I’ll see to that.”

I don’t say anything.

Julia smiles. She melts me right into the rug. Egyptian. Antonio and Antonio, Shippers. Twenty thousand sesterces if it’s an as.

Old Julie the C. doesn’t have a line for people who die twice. Once for Hades, and the later the better. Once for Julia. What does that make me? Half a coward?

I ask Julia. She laughs. She doesn’t say what she thinks I am. Not till a lot later, and then I almost don’t catch it.

“It makes you a capo,” she says. “My capo. All mine.”

I’m top of the rock. Just so long as it’s not Tarpeia—the one they throw people off of. People who go too far. People who get in Papa Julie’s way. Or in Julia’s.

It’s better than swords, I suppose. Or crocodiles. I think about it while she nibbles my ear, and that’s not easy but I manage. After a while I shrug. I feel a grin break out. “Well,” I say. “All right. Why not?”

“There’s my Marco,” says Julia.

The End

Copyright © 1994 by Judith Tarr

First published: Alternate Outlaws, ed. Mike Resnick (Tor)