Gianni the bodyguard and his drinking companions fell for it hook, line and sinker, with much nudging in the ribs about women who liked big ones. I suppose they thought my Italian wasn’t up to mucky innuendo. By the time I’d finished my first beer, they were competing over who was going to buy the next one. By the time I’d finished my second, his heavy, muscular arm was draped over my naked shoulders and his equally heavy cologne had invaded my nostrils. The hardest part of the whole production number was hiding my revulsion. If there’s one thing I hate it’s hairy men, and this guy was covered like a shag pile carpet. Just the thought of his shoulders was enough to make me feel queasy.
I was on my fourth beer when I casually let slip that I was staying at Casa Nico and that I’d left my car down there while I walked up the valley. Immediately, Gianni volunteered to drive me back down. Then, of course, he suddenly remembered how terrible the cooking was at Casa Nico. Cue for nods of agreement from his buddies, coupled with nudges and winks acknowledging the cleverness of Gianni’s moves. Why, he asked innocently, didn’t I come back to the villa with him for some genuine Italian home cooking. His boss was away, and he was a dab hand with the spaghetti sauce. We could eat on the terrace like the rich folks do, and then, later, he could run me back down to the pensione.
I looked up adoringly at him and said how delightful it was to meet such hospitable people. We left a couple of minutes later, accompanied by whoops and grunts from his cronies. In the car, he put a proprietary paw on my knee between gear changes. I fought the urge to lean over and grip his balls so tight his eyes would pop from their sockets like shelled peas. He was the driver, after all, and I didn’t want to end up in the riverbed looking like spaghetti sauce.
As we approached the villa, he pulled a little black electronic box out of his tight jeans and punched a button. The gates swung open, the Alfa shot through and I got my first full frontal view of the Villa San Pietro. It was magnificent. A modern villa in the style of the traditional houses that front every fashionable resort in Italy. Immaculate pink stucco, green louvered shutters. And a satellite dish the size of a kid’s paddling pool. “Molto elegante,” I said softly.
“Good, huh?” Gianni said proudly, as if it were all his. The drive swung round the side of the house, past a tennis court and swimming pool and over to a separate, single-story building. As we drew near, Gianni hit the button on the box again and an up-and-over garage door opened before us. Inside the garage was the stretch limo, Turner’s Merc and a small green Fiat van. At the sight of Turner’s car, I started to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Gianni had said we’d have the place to ourselves. But Turner had come back to the villa with him in the afternoon, and his car was still here as proof positive that he hadn’t left. Maybe he’d nipped into Sestri for the evening in a taxi. Somehow, I didn’t think so. For the first time since I’d started this crazy expedition, I allowed a trickle of fear to creep in. Maybe I should have listened to Richard after all.
We got out of the car and Gianni folded me into a bear hug, his tongue thrusting between my teeth. It felt like my tonsils were being raped. “What happened to dinner?” I asked as soon as I could get my mouth clear. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t think about having fun when I’m hungry.”
Gianni chuckled. “Okay, okay. First the food, then the fun.” He leered and gestured with his thumb toward a door at the side of the garage. “That’s my apartment over there. But we’ll go over to the house to eat. My boss has better food and drink than me.”
We walked over to the house, his arm heavy across my shoulders. We crossed a marble patio, complete with built-in barbecue and pizza oven, and entered the kitchen through tall french windows. It was like a temple to the culinary arts. There was a freestanding butcher’s block in the middle of the floor, complete with a set of Sabatier knives in their slots. Above it hung a batterie de cuisine. On the blond wooden worktops, there was every conceivable kitchen machine from icecream maker to a full-sized Gaggia. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the walls, while pots of fresh basil, coriander and parsley lined a deep windowsill to the side. “He likes to cook,” Gianni said. “He likes me to cook too, when we have guests.”
“Nice one,” I said. “Where’s the drink?”
He nodded toward a door. “Through there. There’s a wet bar in the dining room. It’s got everything. There’s white wine in the fridge, and red wine in the cupboard here. Why don’t you help yourself?” He moved toward me again and clutched me close, his huge hands cupping my buttocks. “Mmm, gorgeous,” he growled.
I reached round and let my fingers stray up and down his back. That way I stopped myself thrusting my thumbs into his eyeballs. “Tell you what,” I whispered. “I’ll fix us some cocktails. I might not be much good in the kitchen, but I’m terrific with a cocktail shaker.”
He released me and leered again. “I can’t wait to experience your wrist action.”
I giggled. “You won’t be disappointed, I promise you.”
I left him staring into a big larder fridge. He hadn’t lied about the wet bar. It did have everything. The first thing I did was dredge my phial of Valium out of the bottom of my bag. I’m pretty hostile to pharmaceuticals in general, but if I didn’t have the Valium, I’d have blackened stumps where my teeth should be. I tipped the tablets out. There were six. I hoped that would be enough on an empty stomach to knock Gianni out before I had to test whether I really did have the skills to stop a man in his tracks. I spotted a sharp knife by a basket of lemons and oranges, and quickly crushed the tablets with the blade. Then I took a quick inventory of the bar. What I needed was a cocktail that was strong and bittersweet.
I found the measure and the shaker sitting on a shelf behind me. A small fridge contained a variety of fruit juices and a couple of bags of ice. I settled on a Florida. Into a cocktail shaker I put three measures of gin, six measures of grapefruit juice, three measures of Galliano and one and a half measures of Campari. I tossed in a couple of ice cubes, closed the shaker and did a quick salsa round the bar with the shaker providing the beat. “Sounds good,” Gianni shouted from the kitchen.
“Wait till you taste it,” I called back. I chose a couple of tall glasses and scraped the Valium powder into one. I topped it up with about two-thirds of the cocktail mixture and stirred it vigorously with a glass rod. I poured the rest into the other glass and topped it up with grapefruit juice and a dash of grenadine syrup to make the colors match. I swallowed hard, picked up both glasses and walked through to the kitchen. Gianni was chopping red onions with a wide-bladed chef’s knife. “A very Italian cocktail,” I announced, handing the drugged glass to him.
He took it from me and swigged a generous mouthful. He savored it, swilling it round his mouth before swallowing it. “You’re right. Bitter and sweet. Like love, huh?” The leer was back.
“Not too bitter, I hope,” I giggled, moving behind him and hugging him from behind.
“Not with me, baby. With me, it’ll be sweeter than sugar” he said arrogantly.
“I can hardly wait,” I murmured. I wasn’t exactly lying. I moved away and perched on a high stool, watching him cook. The onions went into a deep pan with olive oil and garlic. Next, he chopped a fennel bulb into thin slices and added them to the stewing onions. He took a basket of wild mushrooms from the fridge, washed them under running water, patted them dry lovingly with paper towels and chopped them coarsely. Into the pan they went along with a torn handful of coriander leaves.
“It smells wonderful,” I said.
“Wait till you taste it,” he said. “There’s only one thing tastes better.” Time for another leer. The temperature was rising in more ways than one. The only good thing about that was the speed at which he was drinking his cocktail.