The Venetian Job (6 page)

As Charlie and me watched Mr. Scarface make
dough, I worked out what we had to do. Escape, find Santo at the
police station, get him to arrest Mr. Scarface and find out why he
was poisoning the staff, then get a real doctor to help the
poisoned staff and then, at home, I'd tell my class about Mr.
Scarface and how I'd uncovered his evil plan.

Easy as making pasta.

"I
t's easy," Mr. Scarface
said as he rolled the dough. Then he put it through the pasta
machine. "We'll be making fettuccine."

"Great," said Charlie, pretending to be
enthusiastic.

"Wouldn't it be easier to buy it at the
shop?" I asked.

Charlie elbowed me. "Don't be stupid, Max.
We're in Italy. Pasta has to be fresh."

"
Si
," said
Mr. Scarface.

I folded my arms. Charlie could make it
then. Not that I couldn't make it. It didn't look any different to
mucking around with Play-Doh.

"Good, good," he said as Charlie took over.
"I need to check our patients in the basement. I'll be back soon to
see how you're going."

As soon as he'd left the kitchen, we took
off our aprons to make our escape. We tiptoed to the door and
peered through the glass panes.

"Looks clear," said Charlie.

"I reckon we get out of here, go straight to
the police station and find Santo. Then he can work out what's
going on here."

Charlie thought about that for a few
moments. "What about Mom and Dad?"

"Let's ditch them for now. They might be
sick already."

"Yeah, he agreed, "I want to get home alive,
not in a coffin."

He went out first. I tiptoed right behind
him. I couldn't hear a sound. Not once had I heard the phone ring.
And, except for Mr. Scarface, I hadn't heard any other person. This
had to be the strangest hotel on earth. I couldn't wait to
escape.

"This looks like the dining room," whispered
Charlie. "Let's see if we can get through here."

Once we were in the dining room, scary music
began to play. We both froze and my heart started to thump.

When I turned, I saw Mr. Scarface standing
next to Mom and Dad. The three of them were laughing.

I launched myself toward Mom. "Are you
okay?"

She hugged me. "Never better. Santo wanted
to make sure you had a good story for when you go back to
school."

"He's Santo!" I shrieked as I pointed to Mr.
Scarface. "Was that all a joke?" I said, looking over at
Charlie.

"I can't believe we fell for it." Charlie
seemed devastated.

I stared at Santo and the scar on his cheek.
He rubbed at it and the scar smeared; it was makeup. Then he ripped
off his mustache. Now he looked pretty normal.

He gave us a big smile. "Max, Charlie, I
must thank you. That was so much fun." Even his voice was different
now.

Finally, it really hit me that Santo, Mom
and Dad had played a practical joke on us. I stomped my foot. "I
can't believe you did that to us!" I glared at Santo, then added,
"Not that I was scared."

They laughed at us again as though we were
the dumbest kids on the planet.

Santo shrugged. "Your mother said you needed
a good story for school," he said. "Something unbelievable. So I
did my best."

He was trying to help me out, I realized.
How could I tell him I didn't want a crazy hotel manager? I wanted
real bad guys, serious crime and action.

Just then a woman appeared through a
doorway.

Mom said, "Boys, I'd like you to meet
Santo's wife and my cousin, Caterina. She owns and runs the
hotel."

Caterina looked pretty cool. Charlie reacted
first; he held out his hand so she could shake it. She ignored his
hand and gave him a hug. He looked embarrassed, but he hugged her.
Then she hugged me so hard it felt like all the air squeezed out of
me.

Santo waved his hand for all of us to sit
down on some comfy sofas. "Caterina," he said, "Charlie and Max
handled themselves very well in that difficult situation. I am most
impressed."

She shook her head. "I can't believe he put
you through that."

"It'll be funny when we get over the shock,"
said Charlie.

"So were you suspicious of me and my story?"
Santo asked Charlie and me.

I nodded. "Yeah, you gave me a bad
feeling."

He pointed his finger at me. "The question
is, why did you have a bad feeling? What did you notice that didn't
make sense?"

Charlie said, "Well, I didn't hear a phone
ring once. That was odd."

"We diverted calls to the hotel to my cell,"
said Caterina.

"Smart," Charlie and me said together.

I said, "And we didn't even check in or hand
in our passports."

Santo slapped his knee. "Oh, I forgot to ask
for your passports."

"And I bet there's a law against putting
contagious people with a rare illness in a hotel basement," I
added.

Everyone laughed.

"I expect there would be." Santo rubbed his
hands together. "So, Max and Charlie. You both know to look out for
the detail that doesn't make sense. That is excellent. That is what
policemen must do. And you can do that tomorrow when you accompany
me."

"Good." I slid to the edge of my seat. "So
tomorrow we'll get to see some action?"

Charlie interrupted. "Max only wants a
billionaire to be kidnapped. He's not interested in lost tourists
or sinking boats."

I shot Charlie a dirty look and then I
noticed the worried look on Santo's face. I said to Santo, "You are
a policeman. You do solve crimes, don't you?"

He shrugged. "Yes; however, it is very
unlikely a billionaire will be kidnapped."

I sank back into my chair. "Why then did we
see a boatload of
Carabinieri
on the
canal? Surely they'd only be here if something suspicious was going
on?"

He shrugged. "Who knows what the
Carabinieri
do? To this day, I am
yet to work that out."

"Why aren't you a
Carabiniere
?" I asked. "They have smart
uniforms."

"I wear I smart uniform!"

I asked, "So you don't think tomorrow
there'll be any bad guys or any action at all?"

Santo stared straight into my eyes. "Keep a
look out for the detail that does not make sense and you might get
to see some action. Anything is possible in Venice."

C
aterina put on a special
dinner for us. There were no other hotel guests at dinner, just
relatives. It was weird suddenly meeting about ten more relatives.
Some of them didn't speak English, so Charlie and me sat next to
Santo. He interpreted for us when the oldies got excited and broke
into streams of Italian. Everyone talked and ate and drank at the
same time. The long table overflowed with loads of different
dishes; I wished we'd eat like this at home.

Santo was glad we played real football. I
didn't tell him I barracked for Manchester United; he might want me
to barrack for an Italian team. He was very polite for someone
who'd played such a devious trick. I was warming to him, even
though he'd made me worry about catching a contagious disease.

Charlie and me had to answer lots and lots
of questions. Even before we'd finished the main meal, I'd repeated
sixty times how old I was, my favorite sport and my favorite place
in Italy. I reckoned you didn't really know someone just because
you knew a bunch of facts about them. Important stuff was that you
didn't hog the ball in a game, because you wanted to win the game
more than you wanted to score a goal. Or whether you could crack a
joke in some boring class with some boring teacher and make the
class and the teacher laugh. Or whether, at school, you took the
punishment alone when only you got caught pulling out the leads for
the DVD player, because no one wanted to watch a dumb documentary
about rare frogs.

Everyone sitting at the table told us what
we must see in Venice. I kept my mouth shut. They wouldn't want to
hear that I wasn't interested in checking out art, churches, towers
or islands, because I liked doing, not looking. Mom and Dad were
going to some boring modern art museum first, because a
wonderful
exhibition was about to
finish.

We were lucky to be able to help Santo with
his job, because we might find bad guys, crime and action.

***

The next morning, after breakfast, Charlie and me
met Santo in the hotel foyer. He wore a police uniform; it wasn't
as good as the
Carabinieri
uniform,
but I didn't mind because he'd arranged for us to go on his police
boat.

Caterina came out of her office to say
goodbye. "Santo will show you the real Venice. When you're out and
about, look past the historical buildings and the tourists. Look
for the ordinary and you'll see Venice is a city of people without
the cars."

Frowning, I whispered, "I don't want
ordinary. I want action!"

She patted me on the head as if I were four
years old. After we said goodbye to Caterina and she was too far
away to hear, I asked Santo, "What sort of criminals do you
catch?"

"We have very little crime." He stood taller
and smiled down at me. "Venice is a pleasant place with pleasant
people. Sorry, Max."

"So what do you do?" I asked as we left the
hotel and went out into a stone-paved courtyard.

"Yeah," repeated Charlie, "what
do
you do?"

Charlie and me stopped walking and waited
for his answer. The courtyard was empty, except for a couple of
pigeons. Still it felt like the different-colored two-storey houses
surrounding us were leaning in to listen.

"I keep my finger on the pulse of Venice. I
talk to the residents." Santo stuck his chin in the air and kept
walking.

Charlie frowned and ran to keep up with him.
"So you're a public relations officer?"

Santo shook his head. "No, no. It's my job
to look out for the detail that doesn't make sense."

"Have you ever solved a crime?" I had to
know the truth. All my dreams of seeing real action and catching
real bad guys weren't sounding too likely.

Santo looked uncomfortable for a second
before he rubbed his chin. "We don't have much day-to-day crime,
but three years ago there was a clever theft of twelve priceless
paintings. I'm surprised no one has made a movie about it."

"Really?" I said too loud as we entered a
narrow alley. "Were you on duty?"

Santo laughed. "The night it happened no one
realized there was a robbery. This is what we think happened. The
mastermind of the robbery knew that every year a very famous
composer, who owned a palace on the Grand Canal, hosted a big New
Year's Eve party."

"Mozart?" I asked as Santo opened a big iron
gate for us.

Charlie elbowed me. "He's dead!"

"The composer's name is Pierre." Santo
continued. "I suspect the mastermind even went to one of those
parties and that was where he got the idea. We are sure that over a
year before the thefts, he began to plan. He arranged for his own
people to work in the organizations that looked after the New
Year's Eve party. Pierre used the same businesses every year,
because they knew what to do and they understood his taste."

I nodded, but part of me wondered if he was
making up a good story.

"The accomplices took all sorts of jobs. One
did the flowers, a couple were involved with the catering, two
helped set up the orchestra and the most important person of all
was in charge of security."

We stepped out into Piazza San Marco. It was
early, so there were lots of pigeons and hardly any people. "Wow!"
I wanted to run through the middle of the piazza and make the
pigeons fly off, but Santo headed away from the piazza. "Are they
in jail now?" I asked.

Charlie elbowed me again. "Don't jump to the
end. I want to hear the story as it happened."

Santo grinned. He loved that we couldn't
wait to hear the whole story - I could tell. He continued, "The
brilliant part was that none of the accomplices knew the others
were accomplices before the night of the theft. They each had a job
to do and they did it. On the night, they identified each other by
a silver ring they wore on the middle finger of their right
hand."

"You must have caught them, if you know
that!"

"No," said Santo, "I worked that out from
the security tapes." He sighed. "Anyway, what we think happened is
that the man in charge of security was able to deactivate the
alarms protecting the stolen paintings. He did it one by one during
the course of the night. Nothing was done in a hurry. It was done
slowly and carefully."

Charlie sounded impatient. "So how did they
take the paintings without anyone noticing?"

"When the alarm had been switched off, the
lookouts who were security guards made sure no one was nearby and
the painting, including the frame, was switched. We're pretty sure
copies were made up and they were brought in by either the men who
set up the orchestra or the caterers."

"When did the owner of the palace discover
the paintings were fakes?"

"Over a week later. When there was no trace
of the thieves. They'd all left their jobs and they'd used fake
names and identities. We had no leads at all. The mastermind,
whoever he was, was very clever."

"Does that mean you didn't see the detail
that didn't make sense?" I asked.

"
N
o," said Santo. "The
mastermind pulled off the perfect crime."

"I'd love to catch a mastermind." I imagined
standing in front of my class and telling them about it.

It just so happened that
Princess Mary was also on holiday in Venice with the prince and
their children. They were kidnapped ... but Charlie, Santo and me
found the kidnapper's hideout and rescued the royal
family.