Nailed on Hard Wood
1.
It was a sunny day in the Mediterranean. It was always sunny and the island of Cassini was no different than a lot of the out of the way Italian islands that dot the water off the mainland. I was of two minds on the subject. I don’t object to sunshine, or warm weather, but I can’t say I was happy with the circumstances of my arrival on this little island paradise, a visit that would culminate in at least one miscarriage of justice, several deaths, and leave me out of the running for any future Olympic trials.
My name is Mick Holmes, “Mickey” as my associates call me. For the first part of my adult life, I lived in a walk-up flat in London, and fancied myself a bit of a writer. As things happen, I became engaged to a girl whose father ran a successful wine importing business and wanted to pass it on to someone. So I ended up, almost by default, in the wine trade. I learned that wine importing involves a lot of meetings, mainly with lawyers and accountants, and does not involve a lot of drinking wine. It did however introduce me to the idea that there were more exotic places where interesting things happened, beyond just the growing of grapes. It struck me that the wine I was supposed to be selling had led a more interesting life than I had.
So I elbowed the loved ones and took off for the continent without leaving a forwarding address. That was five years ago. When I got a bit short on the necessary, I wrote up an embellished version of my autobiography for a magazine, throwing in a few details that were, to be fair, exaggerated. There were fewer exotic French girls in my real life. Nevertheless, I discovered there was a market for these stories and got on what was, if not a gravy train, at least a source of ready income. My publisher ended up being a small, but competent Italian house who sold a certain type of fiction to the masses, in English, French, German, Italian, and Turkish. They were thinking of branching out into Hebrew.
I was on my way down the Via Petrarca in Naples to the publishing offices of Edizioni Suscitare. It was a name chosen by the proprietor who had seen the English word “arousing”, and thought it meant something more literary. He translated it literally into his native Italian using a dictionary, resulting in a name that more accurately described their catalogue than he might otherwise have liked. It didn’t hurt sales, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. In England and America women in beauty salons liked reading something published with an Italian seal of approval. Is sex more appealing if you say it in Italian? I wouldn’t know. I’m English.
I walked up the 12 stairs to the double doors of the old 6 storey villa that housed Edizioni Suscitare and the office of its proprietor, Giovanni Amparo, a man of late middle-age who still fancied himself a ladies man. He had two problems translating this idea into reality; first, he favoured a large waxed moustache that looked like he had just tried to eat an aging guinea pig after coating it in brill cream, and second, he had a fatally weak bladder. I was unconcerned by these details, focused as I was on delivering the manuscript for my latest opus “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, a hard hitting exposé of the gun-toting, vigilante culture of the late 1800s in America, as told through the eyes of a naïve young saloon girl. It was destined to be a classic. So I walked up the stairs and into the building to negotiate terms.
The reception room inside the door was a testament to austerity and cost-cutting. White walls around a large open marble tiled floor that echoed like a tomb when you walked across it. I walked across it, counting out twenty sharp steps, the sounds of my shoes ricocheting off the walls. Through the windows I could see the bay down the hill, and Vesuvius across the bay. I should have felt some sort of foreshadowing. Actually, I did, but it had nothing to do with that particular volcano. Any eruptive tendencies were entirely focused on the person behind the large mahogany desk at the far end of the room.
I’d like to say she was a statuesque blonde of the Ursula Andress school, all sultry looks and a bust that would have made Michelangelo proud to have sculpted. Instead, she was a slim, almost petite brunette, with full lips and dark Italian eyes that smouldered, or would have if she ever looked up from the novel she was reading. Her name would be Maria, Gina, or something else somewhat unassuming. I saw the title – “Six Inches to Heaven” – one of my latest triumphs. That had to be a good sign, for my bank account, if not other things.
The intercom on her phone went off and she looked down at it with some annoyance, finally selecting, apparently at random, a button on the console. It must have been the right one. The voice of her boss and my patron, Signor Amparo, came through, sounding strained.
“Giovanna,” Amparo said in a strained tone.
“Si, Signor Amparo.” Her voice was soft and husky. I wanted to hear it again, if only to confirm that such a sound had actually been made by the small woman at the desk.
“Um,” said the console, still using Amparo’s strained voice, “when Signior Holmes arrives, please entertain him for a few minutes. I will be…indisposed.”
“Si, Signor Amparo,” said Giovanna. She looked up at me, quizzically. I noted that she had a slim neck, and a plunging neckline. I held up my manuscript and smiled.
Giovanna was a professional woman, well trained in making clients comfortable in the inevitable event that Amparo had to keep them waiting. He would be taking care of the requirements of nature for several minutes. I resigned myself to the wait.
A few minutes later, I was trying to work out the style of hooks used in the fastening of Giovanna’s bra. She was warm and soft and took her duties to entertain me seriously.
The intercom went off again, just as I worked out the Rubik’s puzzle between her shoulder blades.
“Giovanna,” said the intercom. “Giovanna?”
“Mickey,” said Giovanna, rubbing her thigh up the outside of my leg. I sat down on the intercom, apparently hitting the correct button, because it went dead.
I manoeuvred Giovanna subtly and seductively into the large, bright, tiled washroom behind her desk. “Quick, in here,” she gasped and dragged me through the door. There was a brief but intense interlude in which I became more acquainted with the various load bearing capacities of Italian porcelain, as well as the capacities of Giovanna, while we waited for Signor Amparo to arrive.
“Giovanna?” said Amparo’s voice through the door. He had come into the reception area from the staircase door. The name seemed to be the only word he remembered. “Giovanna!?”, he inquired more forcefully. His footsteps echoed around in stereo effect. I could hear them distinctly through the bathroom door, even above the sounds Giovanna was trying not to make.
“Oh no!” said Amparo in anguish, from outside the door.
“Oh, si!” groaned Giovanna.
“Madre di Dio,” moaned Amparo, “not again.”
“Again,” gasped Giovanna, “oh, again!”
The footsteps echoed closer and the door handle moved. I expressed gratitude for Giovanna’s foresight in locking the door. “Oh God!” I gasped.
“Oh God,” said Amparo’s voice, almost in despair. “Please open.” I could only imagine his urgency. I was feeling a compelling urgency myself.
“Please, please, please!” chanted Giovanna.
“Oh God,” prayed Amparo desperately outside the door, “take pity on me. If you will open the door, send me a sign.”
“Yes, yes, YES!” cried Giovanna.
“Grazie!” said Amparo in relief.
There was a pause, while Giovanna and I recomposed ourselves, and Amparo gave appropriate thanks to God for his mercy. I turned the key and opened the door.
“Ask, and it shall be opened unto you,” I said. Amparo looked surprised. I don’t think he thought anyone but Italian Catholics knew the Bible. He turned to look at the door to the washroom as the toilet flushed. A moment later, a demure Giovanna appeared and sat down primly at her desk.
“Mr. Holmes is here now, Signor Amparo,” she said quietly.
“Later, Giovanna,” said Amparo, darting into the washroom.
A few minutes later, Amparo took my manuscript and briefly praised my work ethic. Such was his condition that the meeting was short and concluded on favourable contract terms. These had been arranged in advance by my agent, working with one of Amparo’s staff who did not have his extraordinary afflictions. I knew my books sold. My agent told me so, and I had the income tax bills to corroborate his story. It was all going too well.
As I was stepping out of Amparo’s office, he said, “Mr. Holmes, I have just a favour to ask.”
“A favour,” I said. “What sort of favour?” I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me to make Giovanna an honest woman. I thought she had been completely honest with me already.
“We send your manuscripts to be typeset and printed, how do you say, off site,” he said. He pronounced it “ouf sahyit”. “The manager of the printing firm has expressed an interest in meeting you. He has read several of your manuscripts now, and they have had, er, an impression. Our contract (accent on the second syllable) is important to Suscitare,” he said.
I knew I always got aroused by contracts, especially if it meant me getting paid. I agreed to meet the printer, a Mr. Alberto Ficenza. I was always happy to meet a fan. I think that was my first mistake.
Outside the publisher’s building, I hailed a cab. Italian taxicabs are small, ancient, and noisy, in my experience. This one pulled up in a cloud of noxious exhaust that would have made a 1940s diesel cower in fear. It was an old FIAT 124 and sounded like a sewing machine crossed with a lawn mower. I got in and gave the address, and we were off down the winding road. Something made me look back.
It was a blue late model Citroën. I always thought they looked like insects. This one had been buzzing around me all day. The way it was sticking to our back bumper left me no alternative but to think he was deliberately following me. What’s more, he wanted me to know he was following me, and that whoever was in that car would meet me at our destination.
I didn’t like that. I’m a fairly tall man, but not built like a rugby forward or an American football linebacker. I didn’t really want to fight it out with an unknown opponent, whatever he was opposed to. I sat back on the grimy vinyl of the FIAT seat and worried. The FIAT screamed along, the driver occasionally grinding the gears, in the traditional Italian manner, and we made good time across town.
The printer had his offices across the street from the Piazza del Mercato, near a popular pizzeria. We pulled up rather abruptly, only to be hit in the back bumper by the blue Citroën. Whoever the fellow was, he really didn’t want me forgetting about him.
I paid the taxi driver while a large, jovial man got out of the back of the Citroën and laughed at me.
“Don’t look so worried,” he said congenially. “I ain’t here to hurt you.”
“Forgive me if I’m not entirely comforted by that,” I said.
“Come on, Mickey-boy,” said the man, putting an arm the size of a German Shepherd dog around my shoulder. “We’re both here to see the same guy. We’re gonna be pals. What say?”
He was obviously American, of the stereotypical persuasion that you normally only see in my novels. I could have written this guy. The only problem was, I didn’t know what this one wanted. He was built like he wasn’t used to people not agreeing with him. I thought I’d brazen it out and test that theory.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go see what our friend Mr. Ficenza has to say. We can work on the friendship part later.”
“I like you, Mickey-boy,” said the guy. I still didn’t know his name. Girls get into that situation all the time, I’m told.
I, on the other hand, like to know who is taking advantage of me. “You know me,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”
“The name’s Miller,” said the big guy. “Charlie Miller. Call me Mitch.” It made about as much sense as anything else that day.
“Okay, Mitch,” I said. “Take me to your leader.”
“Not my leader, Mickey-boy,” said Mitch. “Just the guy who wants to offer you a job with my leader.” He winked. I don’t think he found me attractive, so I just stayed worried. Something felt wrong about this job, like fish with birthday cake, and it wasn’t even my birthday. We went through the glass doors and into the building.
Up on the fifth floor is where Ficenza had his suite of offices. There wasn’t a printing press in sight. I assumed that this was just where he hung out, and that the real work of creating my masterworks went on somewhere else. There’s always a somewhere else. It felt like someone was showing me the part they wanted me to see, while what I wanted to know stayed hidden. I wasn’t even sure I really wanted to know yet.
Ficenza wanted to get friendly, and poured drinks for Mitch and me. We sat on a white leather sofa like three former footballers chatting about the weekend’s cup final results. Mitch seemed totally at ease. Ficenza was friendly, but he kept sweating and wiping his forehead with a pink lace embroidered handkerchief.
“So tell Mickey about the job,” said Mitch. “You’ll love this,” he added to me. “It’s like straight out of the penny magazines back in the old days.”
“Yes,” I said, sounding more calm than I felt. “Tell me about this job. The sooner I reject it, the sooner I can get back to wasting my life.”
“Aw,” said Mitch. “Don’t be like that. This is the real thing, Mickey. A great opportunity.”
“Well, let’s hear it,” I said.
“An acquaintance, no, business associate of mine,” said Ficenza, “is planning to go into politics. He has led a, how shall we say, dissipate, life. This is not good for elections.”
“Tell him who it is,” said Mitch.
“He has read your books, and likes your style. He says, if he can be perceived to be so much larger than life, as a hero, with beautiful women, and a taste for adventure, the public will love him.”
“Tell him who it is,” said Mitch.
“So,” I said, “I’m supposed to ghostwrite the backstory for a politician with a past, not to make it less lurid, but to make it look fun and exciting. He’s racy, but fun?”
“Sort of like this,” said Ficenza. “You will need to emphasize his sense of fairness. He is big on justice. He wants to clean up the mafia.”
“I don’t do political facelifts,” I said.
“Maybe you can start,” said Mitch. He threw a 5x8 inch envelope at me. It spilled onto the coffee table. There was a lot of money there. It was real, and Her Majesty stared up at me from it, as serious as the number of zeros on the notes.
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” I said. I was starting to sweat now. I didn’t think that now that I knew the story, Mitch would be very happy if I declined. I was not interested in finding out what his discretion clause would be. “Who’s the lucky protagonist?”
“Hah,” said Mitch. “I knew you were our boy.” He grinned and lit a cigar.
Ficenza frowned at the cloud of blue smoke, wringing his manicured hands. “It is Antonio Valenti. He is leading a conservative party on the island of Cassini. He has worked hard to clean up the island’s image.”
“I’ve never heard of Cassini,” I said honestly. “It doesn’t seem to have an image.”
“Can’t get much cleaner than that,” growled Mitch. He smiled and blew a smoke ring.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I had just been hit by a vision and I didn’t like it. “You mean Tony Valenti, the so called “law and order” candidate. He used to be in the mafia, didn’t he, and was associated with all sorts of public executions, especially of women whose husbands weren’t quite paid up in their protection money or something.”
“He’s not into that stuff anymore,” said Mitch disapprovingly. “He’s cleaned up his act, cleaned up the island, and now he wants you to clean off his reputation. Shouldn’t be too hard. He was a movie star once? The girls loved him. Tony Vale.”
“I don’t remember him,” I said.
“You ain’t a girl,” said Mitch.
I don’t remember saying yes, but I didn't say no. I remember getting instructions to the ferry from Mitch, and Ficenza made a point of making sure I had that envelope of money. I felt like I had just sold my soul, but I wasn’t sure who had bought it.
“Mr. Holmes,” said Ficenza, as he patted the pocket of my jacket where he had just placed the envelope with all those portraits of the Queen, “are your stories in any way…um…autobiographical?”
“All of them,” I told him sincerely.
“What a fascinating life you must have had,” he murmured. As I left his office he was wiping his forehead again. I don’t think he got out much.
I was wondering what I had just got into.
(to be continued...)
1.
It was a sunny day in the Mediterranean. It was always sunny and the island of Cassini was no different than a lot of the out of the way Italian islands that dot the water off the mainland. I was of two minds on the subject. I don’t object to sunshine, or warm weather, but I can’t say I was happy with the circumstances of my arrival on this little island paradise, a visit that would culminate in at least one miscarriage of justice, several deaths, and leave me out of the running for any future Olympic trials.
My name is Mick Holmes, “Mickey” as my associates call me. For the first part of my adult life, I lived in a walk-up flat in London, and fancied myself a bit of a writer. As things happen, I became engaged to a girl whose father ran a successful wine importing business and wanted to pass it on to someone. So I ended up, almost by default, in the wine trade. I learned that wine importing involves a lot of meetings, mainly with lawyers and accountants, and does not involve a lot of drinking wine. It did however introduce me to the idea that there were more exotic places where interesting things happened, beyond just the growing of grapes. It struck me that the wine I was supposed to be selling had led a more interesting life than I had.
So I elbowed the loved ones and took off for the continent without leaving a forwarding address. That was five years ago. When I got a bit short on the necessary, I wrote up an embellished version of my autobiography for a magazine, throwing in a few details that were, to be fair, exaggerated. There were fewer exotic French girls in my real life. Nevertheless, I discovered there was a market for these stories and got on what was, if not a gravy train, at least a source of ready income. My publisher ended up being a small, but competent Italian house who sold a certain type of fiction to the masses, in English, French, German, Italian, and Turkish. They were thinking of branching out into Hebrew.
I was on my way down the Via Petrarca in Naples to the publishing offices of Edizioni Suscitare. It was a name chosen by the proprietor who had seen the English word “arousing”, and thought it meant something more literary. He translated it literally into his native Italian using a dictionary, resulting in a name that more accurately described their catalogue than he might otherwise have liked. It didn’t hurt sales, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. In England and America women in beauty salons liked reading something published with an Italian seal of approval. Is sex more appealing if you say it in Italian? I wouldn’t know. I’m English.
I walked up the 12 stairs to the double doors of the old 6 storey villa that housed Edizioni Suscitare and the office of its proprietor, Giovanni Amparo, a man of late middle-age who still fancied himself a ladies man. He had two problems translating this idea into reality; first, he favoured a large waxed moustache that looked like he had just tried to eat an aging guinea pig after coating it in brill cream, and second, he had a fatally weak bladder. I was unconcerned by these details, focused as I was on delivering the manuscript for my latest opus “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, a hard hitting exposé of the gun-toting, vigilante culture of the late 1800s in America, as told through the eyes of a naïve young saloon girl. It was destined to be a classic. So I walked up the stairs and into the building to negotiate terms.
The reception room inside the door was a testament to austerity and cost-cutting. White walls around a large open marble tiled floor that echoed like a tomb when you walked across it. I walked across it, counting out twenty sharp steps, the sounds of my shoes ricocheting off the walls. Through the windows I could see the bay down the hill, and Vesuvius across the bay. I should have felt some sort of foreshadowing. Actually, I did, but it had nothing to do with that particular volcano. Any eruptive tendencies were entirely focused on the person behind the large mahogany desk at the far end of the room.
I’d like to say she was a statuesque blonde of the Ursula Andress school, all sultry looks and a bust that would have made Michelangelo proud to have sculpted. Instead, she was a slim, almost petite brunette, with full lips and dark Italian eyes that smouldered, or would have if she ever looked up from the novel she was reading. Her name would be Maria, Gina, or something else somewhat unassuming. I saw the title – “Six Inches to Heaven” – one of my latest triumphs. That had to be a good sign, for my bank account, if not other things.
The intercom on her phone went off and she looked down at it with some annoyance, finally selecting, apparently at random, a button on the console. It must have been the right one. The voice of her boss and my patron, Signor Amparo, came through, sounding strained.
“Giovanna,” Amparo said in a strained tone.
“Si, Signor Amparo.” Her voice was soft and husky. I wanted to hear it again, if only to confirm that such a sound had actually been made by the small woman at the desk.
“Um,” said the console, still using Amparo’s strained voice, “when Signior Holmes arrives, please entertain him for a few minutes. I will be…indisposed.”
“Si, Signor Amparo,” said Giovanna. She looked up at me, quizzically. I noted that she had a slim neck, and a plunging neckline. I held up my manuscript and smiled.
Giovanna was a professional woman, well trained in making clients comfortable in the inevitable event that Amparo had to keep them waiting. He would be taking care of the requirements of nature for several minutes. I resigned myself to the wait.
A few minutes later, I was trying to work out the style of hooks used in the fastening of Giovanna’s bra. She was warm and soft and took her duties to entertain me seriously.
The intercom went off again, just as I worked out the Rubik’s puzzle between her shoulder blades.
“Giovanna,” said the intercom. “Giovanna?”
“Mickey,” said Giovanna, rubbing her thigh up the outside of my leg. I sat down on the intercom, apparently hitting the correct button, because it went dead.
I manoeuvred Giovanna subtly and seductively into the large, bright, tiled washroom behind her desk. “Quick, in here,” she gasped and dragged me through the door. There was a brief but intense interlude in which I became more acquainted with the various load bearing capacities of Italian porcelain, as well as the capacities of Giovanna, while we waited for Signor Amparo to arrive.
“Giovanna?” said Amparo’s voice through the door. He had come into the reception area from the staircase door. The name seemed to be the only word he remembered. “Giovanna!?”, he inquired more forcefully. His footsteps echoed around in stereo effect. I could hear them distinctly through the bathroom door, even above the sounds Giovanna was trying not to make.
“Oh no!” said Amparo in anguish, from outside the door.
“Oh, si!” groaned Giovanna.
“Madre di Dio,” moaned Amparo, “not again.”
“Again,” gasped Giovanna, “oh, again!”
The footsteps echoed closer and the door handle moved. I expressed gratitude for Giovanna’s foresight in locking the door. “Oh God!” I gasped.
“Oh God,” said Amparo’s voice, almost in despair. “Please open.” I could only imagine his urgency. I was feeling a compelling urgency myself.
“Please, please, please!” chanted Giovanna.
“Oh God,” prayed Amparo desperately outside the door, “take pity on me. If you will open the door, send me a sign.”
“Yes, yes, YES!” cried Giovanna.
“Grazie!” said Amparo in relief.
There was a pause, while Giovanna and I recomposed ourselves, and Amparo gave appropriate thanks to God for his mercy. I turned the key and opened the door.
“Ask, and it shall be opened unto you,” I said. Amparo looked surprised. I don’t think he thought anyone but Italian Catholics knew the Bible. He turned to look at the door to the washroom as the toilet flushed. A moment later, a demure Giovanna appeared and sat down primly at her desk.
“Mr. Holmes is here now, Signor Amparo,” she said quietly.
“Later, Giovanna,” said Amparo, darting into the washroom.
A few minutes later, Amparo took my manuscript and briefly praised my work ethic. Such was his condition that the meeting was short and concluded on favourable contract terms. These had been arranged in advance by my agent, working with one of Amparo’s staff who did not have his extraordinary afflictions. I knew my books sold. My agent told me so, and I had the income tax bills to corroborate his story. It was all going too well.
As I was stepping out of Amparo’s office, he said, “Mr. Holmes, I have just a favour to ask.”
“A favour,” I said. “What sort of favour?” I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me to make Giovanna an honest woman. I thought she had been completely honest with me already.
“We send your manuscripts to be typeset and printed, how do you say, off site,” he said. He pronounced it “ouf sahyit”. “The manager of the printing firm has expressed an interest in meeting you. He has read several of your manuscripts now, and they have had, er, an impression. Our contract (accent on the second syllable) is important to Suscitare,” he said.
I knew I always got aroused by contracts, especially if it meant me getting paid. I agreed to meet the printer, a Mr. Alberto Ficenza. I was always happy to meet a fan. I think that was my first mistake.
Outside the publisher’s building, I hailed a cab. Italian taxicabs are small, ancient, and noisy, in my experience. This one pulled up in a cloud of noxious exhaust that would have made a 1940s diesel cower in fear. It was an old FIAT 124 and sounded like a sewing machine crossed with a lawn mower. I got in and gave the address, and we were off down the winding road. Something made me look back.
It was a blue late model Citroën. I always thought they looked like insects. This one had been buzzing around me all day. The way it was sticking to our back bumper left me no alternative but to think he was deliberately following me. What’s more, he wanted me to know he was following me, and that whoever was in that car would meet me at our destination.
I didn’t like that. I’m a fairly tall man, but not built like a rugby forward or an American football linebacker. I didn’t really want to fight it out with an unknown opponent, whatever he was opposed to. I sat back on the grimy vinyl of the FIAT seat and worried. The FIAT screamed along, the driver occasionally grinding the gears, in the traditional Italian manner, and we made good time across town.
The printer had his offices across the street from the Piazza del Mercato, near a popular pizzeria. We pulled up rather abruptly, only to be hit in the back bumper by the blue Citroën. Whoever the fellow was, he really didn’t want me forgetting about him.
I paid the taxi driver while a large, jovial man got out of the back of the Citroën and laughed at me.
“Don’t look so worried,” he said congenially. “I ain’t here to hurt you.”
“Forgive me if I’m not entirely comforted by that,” I said.
“Come on, Mickey-boy,” said the man, putting an arm the size of a German Shepherd dog around my shoulder. “We’re both here to see the same guy. We’re gonna be pals. What say?”
He was obviously American, of the stereotypical persuasion that you normally only see in my novels. I could have written this guy. The only problem was, I didn’t know what this one wanted. He was built like he wasn’t used to people not agreeing with him. I thought I’d brazen it out and test that theory.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go see what our friend Mr. Ficenza has to say. We can work on the friendship part later.”
“I like you, Mickey-boy,” said the guy. I still didn’t know his name. Girls get into that situation all the time, I’m told.
I, on the other hand, like to know who is taking advantage of me. “You know me,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”
“The name’s Miller,” said the big guy. “Charlie Miller. Call me Mitch.” It made about as much sense as anything else that day.
“Okay, Mitch,” I said. “Take me to your leader.”
“Not my leader, Mickey-boy,” said Mitch. “Just the guy who wants to offer you a job with my leader.” He winked. I don’t think he found me attractive, so I just stayed worried. Something felt wrong about this job, like fish with birthday cake, and it wasn’t even my birthday. We went through the glass doors and into the building.
Up on the fifth floor is where Ficenza had his suite of offices. There wasn’t a printing press in sight. I assumed that this was just where he hung out, and that the real work of creating my masterworks went on somewhere else. There’s always a somewhere else. It felt like someone was showing me the part they wanted me to see, while what I wanted to know stayed hidden. I wasn’t even sure I really wanted to know yet.
Ficenza wanted to get friendly, and poured drinks for Mitch and me. We sat on a white leather sofa like three former footballers chatting about the weekend’s cup final results. Mitch seemed totally at ease. Ficenza was friendly, but he kept sweating and wiping his forehead with a pink lace embroidered handkerchief.
“So tell Mickey about the job,” said Mitch. “You’ll love this,” he added to me. “It’s like straight out of the penny magazines back in the old days.”
“Yes,” I said, sounding more calm than I felt. “Tell me about this job. The sooner I reject it, the sooner I can get back to wasting my life.”
“Aw,” said Mitch. “Don’t be like that. This is the real thing, Mickey. A great opportunity.”
“Well, let’s hear it,” I said.
“An acquaintance, no, business associate of mine,” said Ficenza, “is planning to go into politics. He has led a, how shall we say, dissipate, life. This is not good for elections.”
“Tell him who it is,” said Mitch.
“He has read your books, and likes your style. He says, if he can be perceived to be so much larger than life, as a hero, with beautiful women, and a taste for adventure, the public will love him.”
“Tell him who it is,” said Mitch.
“So,” I said, “I’m supposed to ghostwrite the backstory for a politician with a past, not to make it less lurid, but to make it look fun and exciting. He’s racy, but fun?”
“Sort of like this,” said Ficenza. “You will need to emphasize his sense of fairness. He is big on justice. He wants to clean up the mafia.”
“I don’t do political facelifts,” I said.
“Maybe you can start,” said Mitch. He threw a 5x8 inch envelope at me. It spilled onto the coffee table. There was a lot of money there. It was real, and Her Majesty stared up at me from it, as serious as the number of zeros on the notes.
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” I said. I was starting to sweat now. I didn’t think that now that I knew the story, Mitch would be very happy if I declined. I was not interested in finding out what his discretion clause would be. “Who’s the lucky protagonist?”
“Hah,” said Mitch. “I knew you were our boy.” He grinned and lit a cigar.
Ficenza frowned at the cloud of blue smoke, wringing his manicured hands. “It is Antonio Valenti. He is leading a conservative party on the island of Cassini. He has worked hard to clean up the island’s image.”
“I’ve never heard of Cassini,” I said honestly. “It doesn’t seem to have an image.”
“Can’t get much cleaner than that,” growled Mitch. He smiled and blew a smoke ring.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I had just been hit by a vision and I didn’t like it. “You mean Tony Valenti, the so called “law and order” candidate. He used to be in the mafia, didn’t he, and was associated with all sorts of public executions, especially of women whose husbands weren’t quite paid up in their protection money or something.”
“He’s not into that stuff anymore,” said Mitch disapprovingly. “He’s cleaned up his act, cleaned up the island, and now he wants you to clean off his reputation. Shouldn’t be too hard. He was a movie star once? The girls loved him. Tony Vale.”
“I don’t remember him,” I said.
“You ain’t a girl,” said Mitch.
I don’t remember saying yes, but I didn't say no. I remember getting instructions to the ferry from Mitch, and Ficenza made a point of making sure I had that envelope of money. I felt like I had just sold my soul, but I wasn’t sure who had bought it.
“Mr. Holmes,” said Ficenza, as he patted the pocket of my jacket where he had just placed the envelope with all those portraits of the Queen, “are your stories in any way…um…autobiographical?”
“All of them,” I told him sincerely.
“What a fascinating life you must have had,” he murmured. As I left his office he was wiping his forehead again. I don’t think he got out much.
I was wondering what I had just got into.
(to be continued...)
!
)
