'Now how in the world did you know that, dutto?'
Mi confondo, mi vergogno He should never have had that second litre of wine, but the guy was so persuasive, he didn't want to hurt his feelings.
In fact, face it, he should never have had the first litre. Not the one before the second, but the very first of the series, dating back… well, that's a little tough… a heck of a long way, anyways… maybe even to sometime back in the Plasticine Age when giant monsters such as Bronta (large, warm, vegetarian, kind, sweet, loving, maternal) and Tranno (small but vicious, cold, flesh-tearing, sarcastic, totally evil step-father from hell) roamed the house…
Whoa! Let's have a statute of limitations here. Nothing that happened before the ship docked counts, right?
Check. It's since then that things have gone down the tubes at such an alarming rate. Particularly after he got his hands on the actual dosh, the fat pack of banknotes, crinkly, sweated, smelly, tough, ageless, totally corrupt and corrupting. He hadn't foreseen that at all. In his mind, the whole transaction was as abstract and unreal as those in the merchandise itself, where you could kill and die many times, rack up lives and points, find the hidden stash of treasure, then switch off the game and get on with your real life…
Right from the start, this deal had felt like a game, something you made up as you went along. If Pete hadn't starting bitching at Christmas about getting canned, or if Larry's uncle hadn't been on an extended visit because of some tax problem or something he was having back in the old country… Above all, if the ship hadn't been posted to the Mediterranean because of the Bosnia crisis… But one thing had led to another, from Pete sneaking a prototype of the new game out of the factory just days before he had to clear his desk, to the Pagan — as zio Orlando was known — setting up a surprisingly sweet deal over the phone.
That just left the question of delivery. The original idea had been for Pete to hop on a plane and drop it off in person, but that had to be ditched when the company found out about the missing game and, by a process of elimination, tied it to one of the most recent and bitter casualties of corporate down-sizing, Peter Viviani. The software developers might all be American, but the executives and the funding was Japanese, and those guys didn't fuck around. The original game of which this was an enhanced sequel — same characters, more levels, upgraded graphics, plus a bunch of other cool stuff — had sold something in the region of two million copies world-wide at around thirty bucks a pop. This one was expected to do even better.
You didn't need a maths degree to figure out why the samurai didn't want anyone cutting themselves a slice of that market by pirating a virtually identical product at half the price three months before the official release date.
So it was too risky for Pete himself, or any other member of the extended Viviani clan, to act as personal courier. The company knew that there was no risk of the game being duplicated in the States. To cash in, they had to get the stolen prototype out of the country, and as soon as possible, to maximize profits before the game became legally available. But wherever any member of the extended Viviani clan went, the local customs would have been alerted — and, if necessary, heavily bribed. As Zi'Orlando put it, they wouldn't be able to smuggle in a gnat's turd, never mind a chunk of pilfered intellectual property the size of a brick. The same went for anyone from Naples he might have sent over to pick it up.
So when John Viviani got his sailing orders, it seemed a heaven-sent solution. As one of hundreds of crew members aboard the aircraft carrier, he could easily slip ashore, rendezvous with the purchaser's representative and make the delivery in person. It was a clean deal, cash for merchandise, with no risk and no loose ends. Above all, it kept the whole transaction in the family. What could go wrong?
Sure enough, the hand-over had proceeded without incident. The only problem was that the courier had been late arriving at the little bar where they were to meet, and to wile away the time John had ordered a couple — OK, maybe more like half a dozen — garishly coloured liqueurs from the extensive selection displayed on glass shelves behind the bar. This was the first time he had ever set foot in the city from which his paternal grandfather's family had emigrated at the turn of the century, and he was naturally excited. Every sound and smell and flavour, each overheard snatch of raucous dialect, seemed at once colourfully exotic and insidiously familiar.
The instructions he had received from Zi'Orlando were simple and precise. When he took possession of the money, he was to return immediately to the ship and stash it away in his locker. He was not to go ashore again, and under no circumstances to leave the port area. The city, he had been warned, was a den of thieves, con men and worse who would gobble up a young innocent such as himself and spit out the remains.
But by the time the courier finally showed, got up in a fake Navy uniform like some outsized organ-grinder's monkey, these orders had come to seem remote and ridiculous. He wasn't a child, after all! To make matters worse, there was the cash itself, fat bundles of it, packed with power and possibility. US currency had always seemed solid, staid and stuffy. It was what you got for doing dead-end jobs and spent on rent and food and dental work. This Italian stuff was quite different. It looked sleazy and enticing, racy and unreal, like the token fortunes made and lost with fabulous ease in a board game.
Once the game stopped, it was worthless, but until then there were no limits to what you could do.
So instead of going back to his ship, John had a couple more drinks and then headed off the other way, out of the port and into the pulsating streets of the city beyond. He was rather vague about what had happened after that. In fact he wasn't even sure exactly how much time had passed. He remembered waking up in a hotel bedroom, very much the worse for wear, and realising that he had failed to show up for muster and would therefore have been posted AWOL. This thought had plunged him into a state of panic which had required the best part of a bottle of Scotch to assuage. The great thing about Italian bars was that they would serve you hard liquor at any time of the day or night — even, as in this case, seven in the morning.
After that things went kind of hazy again. At some point he had decided that enough was enough and headed down to the port to rejoin his ship, only to discover that it had already sailed. This discovery had plunged him into a state of panic which had required the best part of another bottle of Scotch to assuage. The lousy thing about Italian bars was that they would serve you hard liquor at any time of the day or night — even, as in this case, three in the morning. After that, one thing had led to another, and by now he had nothing left to lose, except of course the remaining wad of the fascinating currency which he had been handed, however many days ago it was, in trust for the Viviani clan back Stateside.
The bundle of notes seemed quite a bit thinner than it had originally been, but at least he had something to show for it. This fabulous coat, for example. Whatever exception the family might take to other aspects of his spree something he was almost as worried about as the problems arising from his failure to report for duty, all present and correct, sir! — they'd have to admit that he knew a bargain when he saw one. A genuine Versace, pure mohair, the latest autumn line, and all for a mere 300,000 lire! In dollars that's just… say 2,000 lire to the dollar, so you divide by… knock off the zeroes and then it's…
But the zeroes refused to stay knocked off. They not only came back, but brought their friends with them, a mob of plump little manikins running around in threes, arms linked, singing that number the old man who'd sold him the coat had taught him, some marching song. He hadn't understood the words, of course, but it had a great tune. A great tune, great wine, great company, a great deal on the coat… But now it was definitely time to get back to his hotel and sort things out.
Speaking of which, where the hell were they? He'd told the woman driving the cab to take him to that place on the seafront, the best hotel in town, what's its name, the one where Clinton stayed when he was here for that conference.
It cost the earth, probably, but what the hell? It would be comfortable, familiar and safe, all sensations he was rapidly losing contact with amid the splendours and miseries of the last however-many-it-was hours on the town… '1 megliol' he had told the cabby impatiently.
'Take me to the best place!' She'd know which the best was. Cabbies always knew that. But wherever the best was to be found, it didn't seem likely to be anywhere near where they were now, and had been f or… however long they had been there, going round and round what looked like the same broad, empty streets, lit with a cold, menacing glare, and quite deserted.
It was only now that he realized what should have been obvious long before, even to someone as innocent and let's face it — frankly dumb as John Viviani now realized he had been. Clearly he was being set up to be robbed, maybe even murdered! The tough-looking broad up front was keeping him on ice until the heavies arrived. She'd looked at him in a kind of weird way when she picked him up, almost like she recognized him, then made some sort of call on her mobile phone right away. The drunk back there at the fast food place must have set the whole thing
