The Venetian Job (4 page)

After what seemed like hours, the tree had
moved enough for all the cars to drive around it. We all slapped
each other on the back, said Grazie, Arrivederci, Ciao lots of
times and got back in our cars just as Etna rumbled again.

We flopped back in our seats. My body ached
all over.

Dad laughed. "What a great story."

He was so predictable. The closer we came to
dying the happier Dad was, because he'd have a great story to tell
his golfing mates.

It was dark by the time we got back to the
hotel. For once we agreed about dinner. We didn't need it; we were
too tired to eat. Mom didn't even say, Having a shower isn't
optional. We all just wanted to sleep.

Two
Carabinieri
and their machine guns were still on
guard outside the hotel. They stood either side of the entrance
staring straight ahead like they were guarding Buckingham Palace. A
doorman opened the door for Charlie and me.

The moment I walked through the door I felt
a hand on my shoulder. A voice with an Italian accent said, "Please
come with me."

I looked up to see a
Carabiniere
.

"What for?" At first I thought there must be
a mistake.

"Yeah, what for?" Charlie wasn't so
polite.

"We'd like to ask you some questions
pertaining to the death of Franco Petruzzelli."

An electric shock zapped through me. Franco
had been murdered!

The
Carabiniere
waved us down a corridor and into an
office.

"Our parents should be with us," said
Charlie, who always knew his rights.

He laughed. "They are on their way."

We sat down in front of a desk. A
Carabiniere
was sitting at the desk
and talking on the phone. Of course, we couldn't understand a word
he was saying. He had thick black hair; it looked like a bad
wig.

Mom and Dad looked liked they'd suddenly
woken up. They sat real straight on the chairs against the
wall.

The guy behind the desk hung up the phone,
leaned over and shook our hands. Then he introduced himself to Mom
and Dad and thanked us for talking with him. As if we had a choice.
He said to Charlie and me, "Yesterday, you met with Mr. Petruzzelli
at the pool?"

"Yes," we both replied.

"And what did you talk about?"

I wanted to ask how he'd been murdered and
if he really was our great uncle, but I didn't. "He asked us where
we came from and if we liked football. He let us swim."

"Anything else?"

I was about to speak when I felt Charlie
kick me. "No."

"So, no money changed hands?"

"What?"

"Did he give you money?"

Suddenly I realized that being given money
by Mr. Mafia probably didn't look too good. I acted real offended.
"No!"

He stared at me real hard. The color of his
eyes was so dark; I couldn't tell where his pupils ended. "That's
not what it looked like on the security camera."

I froze. I'd just been caught lying to a
foreign military policeman who was in charge of men who carried
machine guns.

I know what you're thinking, Geez, Max, how
could you lie to a
Carabiniere
? I
imagined spending the rest of my life in a Sicilian jail. I turned
to Charlie for help. He was old and smart; he should be doing the
talking.

Charlie said, "Mr. Petruzzelli asked us to
send him Australian stamps when we got home. He insisted we take
twenty euros."

"Stamps?" The
Carabiniere
didn't look like he believed
Charlie.

"Yeah," replied Charlie. "The things you
stick on letters so they'll be delivered."

The
Carabiniere
looked up at the other officer, who was
standing at the door, and said something in Italian. The officer
left and soon came back with one of Franco's bodyguards. They
discussed something in Italian and then the bodyguard left.

The
Carabiniere
said to us, "Unbelievable. We thought
we knew everything about Franco Petruzzelli. We didn't know he was
an enthusiastic collector of stamps." He sighed and sat back in his
chair.

I turned to Mom and blurted out, "Are we
related to Franco?"

"What?" The
Carabiniere
leaned forward.

"Of course not." Mom didn't sound happy.
"Whatever gave you that idea?"

I said to her, "Why did you send us up to
meet him at the pool?"

"I suggested you go and have a swim." She
sounded offended. "How would I have known he was there?"

I slumped and looked down at my trainers.
"Oh." Even if we weren't related to him, it was still sad that he'd
been murdered. Every year before Christmas, I would've sent him
lots of stamps.

Charlie said to Mom, "We thought you might
be related to him and you set up an accidental meeting. We thought
it might be cool to be related to a mafia boss."

Mom and Dad couldn't help laughing and then
the
Carabinieri
guys laughed too.
Charlie and me looked at each other and started laughing too.

Dad would tell this Charlie and Max being
dumb story for the rest of his life. Then we went quiet as though
all at the same time we remembered Franco was dead.

The
Carabiniere
shook our hands. "That will be all," he
said. "You know airport closed, because Mount Etna a little upset
at the moment. Anyway, please don't leave Taormina. We might need
to speak to you again."

T
he next day, there were
fewer
Carabinieri
in the hotel and
no one would've ever guessed a mafia boss had been murdered on the
top floor two nights before. The sky was a perfect blue except for
where Mount Etna still spewed out black smoke. But now everyone was
carrying on like normal, as though it were usual to have a volcano
in the background rumbling and carrying on.

Apparently the eruption hadn't damaged too
much. Not yet, anyway. Not like last year. I reckoned the mountain
could have been mad because someone had killed Franco.

We had to go to another amphitheater. Every
town in Sicily must have had one. Why we had to check them all out,
I didn't know. They were all a bit the same, except with this one
you could see a smoking, snow-capped volcano through a Roman arch.
Even I took three photos of that.

There was a bunch of school kids wandering
round with daypacks. One boy yelled at us, "
Americano
?" The boy with him yelled, "No! English."
He pointed to my Manchester United shirt.

"Australian, actually." I replied in my posh
voice.

They laughed. "
Si
,
l'australiano
."
Then they began hopping about like kangaroos.

What was it with the kangaroos? Just then, I
noticed two guys wearing jeans and black shirts behind the school
kids. They didn't look like tourists; they looked out of place. Had
I seen them before?

Then Charlie challenged me to a race around
the amphitheater and I forgot about them. He was dying to beat me,
because I'd beaten him at every one so far. He might've been a
better runner, but I was way better at jumping from one pillar to
another. It was lucky for me the amphitheater had lots of gaps
between the pillars. I said we had to start right at the top, away
from the tourists. Charlie grumbled because he didn't like heights.
That was too bad for him. I wasn't complaining about his longer
legs.

We ran up to the top, near a bunch of
Germans who were getting a lecture on architectural features. Like
anyone cared. They seemed more interested in the view, because
there was a real good view of the sea and Mount Etna from up there.
Even before Charlie and me started to race, I knew I had it won.
There were so many gaps and so many jumps. "Ready, set, go!" I
shouted.

Charlie led for the first bit. That was
because we didn't have to jump. Then came a whole row of jumping
from one pillar to another. By the third pillar I'd overtaken him.
Charlie's problem was that he thought too much. I just jumped like
I was on the ground, so I was way ahead by the time we reached the
end of the pillars.

Then I had to stop because a couple of guys
wearing jeans and black shirts were standing right in my way. They
had a picture of two crossed swords on their shirts - like a logo.
Who did they think they were? Samurai warriors? Didn't they know
they were in Italy? Going round them would've been easy except one
of them grabbed me under the arm and snarled at me in Italian.

"Hey!" Charlie yelled at him.

Then the other one grabbed Charlie. I
screamed at them, "What do you want us for?"

"Quiet!" He pushed me in the back and forced
me down the steps to the floor of the amphitheater.

Charlie was next to me. We swapped worried
glances. Whatever they wanted, it couldn't be good. I looked around
for Dad and Mom, but couldn't see them. They were never around when
we needed them. The black-shirt guys forced us out the back of the
amphitheater to a dungeon, which must've gone underneath the
amphitheater. They pushed us in and closed the iron gate behind
us.

When I heard the clang of the gate shut, I
began to sweat. What did they want?

They pushed us against a wall and one said,
"You know who kill Petruzzelli?"

"WHAT?" I stared at him in disbelief. "As
if!" A weird thought entered my head. We could be on one of those
crazy reality TV shows. These guys could've been asked to terrify a
couple of tourists. I looked around for a hidden camera, but it was
a bit hard to see anything because it was pretty dark.

"You talk to
Carabinieri
. What about?"

Charlie answered slowly. "They asked us why
Mr. Petruzzelli spoke to us in the hotel. When he found out we were
from Australia, he asked us to send him stamps."

"Stamps?"

Charlie did a whole charade of sticking a
stamp on a letter and posting it. He looked like a total loser, but
the black-shirt guy understood. I began to breathe more slowly.
They only seemed interested in getting information.

"
Carabinieri
tell you how he die?"

"No," Charlie and me said and shook our
heads at the same time.

"Oh," he replied. "You stay in his
hotel?"

We nodded.

"Franco Petruzzelli kept black book. You
must get for me."

We nodded. Disagreeing with him didn't seem
like an option. Every hair on my body stood up. There was a noise
at the gate. I turned to see a bunch of the school kids - there
were seven of them. Words fired in each direction. They way
outnumbered the two black-shirts. One of them yelled at us in
Italian and pointed to the open gate.

We knew what he meant. Charlie and me were
out of there. The boy followed us.

"GO!" one of them shouted at us.

"Them no good," another said. "Stay
away."

We all ran back the same way. I couldn't
hear the black-shirt guys behind us. When we reached the arena, we
said to our rescuers, "Grazie."

I wanted to say so much more, like, We owe
you big time! And I wanted to find out about Franco's black book.
Maybe his black book was famous in Sicily. It might be like a
history of the Sicilian mafia over his lifetime. But I couldn't
because we didn't speak the same language. That sucked.

"Ciao," they replied. They stood and waved
while we ran off.

Breathless, we found Mom and Dad, who were
looking out over the sea. We had to get away in case the
black-shirts came after us again.

I held my stomach and screwed up my face. "I
need to lie down," I panted. "I think breakfast gave me food
poisoning. Can we go back to the hotel?"

M
om and Dad complained a
bit because they would've liked to hang round longer. I lay back in
the back seat of the car and groaned every now and again. Charlie
backed me up by saying he felt a bit sick too.

Mom turned round to us. "That's strange, I
feel fine." She checked with Dad. He felt fine too, of course.
"That's a shame,' she said. "I wanted to go shopping. If the
airport reopens, it'll be our last day here."

"What?" I said, too loudly for someone who
was meant to have food poisoning.

Dad said, "The airport is still closed. It
should reopen tomorrow or the day after."

Charlie and me looked at each other. I knew
we were thinking the same thing. That gives the black-shirts extra
time to find us. They knew our hotel. Of course Franco's bodyguards
would have his black book. As if we could steal it. We'd have to
stay real close to Dad - not that he'd be any help if there was
trouble. I wondered if the junior black belts Charlie and me had in
taekwondo would help if the black-shirts found us.

When we reached the center of town, I
declared, "My stomachache has gone. I'm okay now." I didn't want to
go back to the hotel. And anyway, there were meant to be fake
soccer shirts. I'd need a bigger size Manchester United shirt when
I grew some more.

So Dad found a car park and we wandered up
the main shopping street. Charlie and me stayed right behind Mom
and Dad because we didn't want any guys with black shirts pushing
us into a dark alley.

First, we stopped to buy postcards. I wrote
one to my two best friends.

Hey Thomo & Chook,

The pizza in Italy is the best and the TV in our
hotel room has about 100 channels. We're in Sicily and there are
guys with black suits and black sunglasses who carry guns. Like out
of a movie.

C u,

Max

I'd tell them about Mr. Mafia and the
black-shirt guys when I got home.