In the sanctum, behind a pontifical Florentine table that had descended authentically from a Medici, sat its pontiff. Nino Importuna was a squat man whose broad and fleshy body had been built by the genes of peasants and a childhood of pasta-corporally a very ordinary-looking southern Italian type. But his massive head was far from ordinary. The nose jutted from his face like a bowsprit. The small mouth seemed womanishly soft, but this was a deception of nature: when he smiled and exhibited his very large white teeth, which was seldom, the softness turned into something terrifying. There was an olive-oil patina to the darkness of his barbered cheeks and jowls that toned well with the dull gloss of his black-dyed hair. But it was the eyes underneath the strong, still naturally black brows that gave his face its commanding character. The color of stale, muddy espresso, they were bitter and without warmth or love, almost without humanity… the eyes of an enemy.

These eyes were fixed on the tall man. Their owner’s hands were pressed together in the Diirer attitude, at his chin; lids half shut. But the industrial genius of the Importuna empire was not praying; and to the visitor the eyes were not half shut but half open-not drooping from fatigue but on the slitted qui vive.

It was bad, all right.

“Entrate pure.” There was as usual nothing to be interpreted from the heavy Italian-American voice. Or perhaps it had been just a few decibels more resonant? lie waved toward a chair.

The tall man came obediently in and sat down. The chair was dumpy, like Importuna, with protuberant carving in bumps and lumps that made sitting almost intentionally uncomfortable. Yes, very bad… Nino called this room, with semantic fidelity, his den. A den it was, windowless and dim, and foul with the stench of his crooked-stogy smoke, his flO-an-ounce after-shave, and whatever it was he rubbed into his coarse gray hair to blacken it; the only smell missing was of stale blood, from old kills.