"We'll be alongside at dawn," said Bitts. "We're cleared into Italy and all we have to do is sail. So I'll up anchor and away. Have a good night's sleep. When you get a look at Rome traffic, you'll need it!"
Well, I didn't get a good night's sleep. You would have thought all that walking would have tired Teenie out. But after two pieces of hashish candy and other things, I was giggling and doing other things until past midnight.
True to his promise, when I awoke, Captain Bitts had us tied up alongside a dock in Civitavecchia. It was early. The steward had left a port open the night before and it was the din that had awakened me. I looked out. I had a vista of the dock, a forest of cargo booms and funnels and a locomotive stopped nearby which just then gave another blast on its whistle and almost caved in my eardrums. The Italians are an industrious people and especially when it conies to making noise.
I was about to draw back when a flash of color caught my eye. It was Teenie in some scarlet running shorts and a bikini bra. She was at a peddler's stand looking at guidebooks. She was apparently having an argument against his efforts to sell her lottery tickets.
Once more I was about to draw back when I saw a shadowy figure beyond Teenie. A hand reached out and seized her arm.
The black-jowled man!
There he was in his three-piece suit!
He glanced toward the ship and then he yanked Teenie into the dimness behind the booth. They seemed to be having an argument. He had his face very close to Teenie's and he was scowling as he talked.
Then she said something.
He looked at her. And then he did an astonishing thing! He went down on his knees and raised his hands in supplication.
She kept shaking her head. Then she raised a finger in admonishment. He looked at the ground under his knees in dejection.
Teenie kept on talking. Then she started to walk away.
The black-jowled man grabbed at her wrist. She stopped. She spoke.
He looked at the ground again and then he nodded slowly.
She walked back to the ship. The black-jowled man got up, staring after her. He dusted off his knees.
Teenie yelled something to the port gangway sentry who yelled something up to the deck. Then one of our own sailors appeared and Teenie yelled something at him.
She turned and went back to the black-jowled man and they went off down the dock and out of sight.
At breakfast, I was astonished to find Madison. I should have thought he would be off to Rome. I said so.
"Oh, Teenie has gone there," said Madison. "She left word that she might be absent a day or two. I don't think she'll find much about Spartacus in Rome anyway. He was defeated way to the south, in Lucania, when he was attempting to cross to Sicily. Besides, I've got to get my notes together on Napoleon. What a man. He did such a thorough job, France has never amounted to a hill of beans since. Just a little foreign runt, too. What a PR triumph!"
We saw nothing of Teenie for two days. She came back in a small truck. It was stacked with glittering trunks and luggage. She bounded up the gangway in a silver sequin hunting outfit topped with a plumed hat.
I was on the deck and she bounced up to me. "Look at my silver boots!" she said, lifting one sideways so I could see it better. "Ain't they the screaming most?"
"Teenie, what on Earth is in all those trunks and bags?"
"Oh, them," she said, glancing down where the crew was bringing them aboard. "They're mostly empty. I didn't have anything to put my stuff in. A couple are full, though. That's what delayed me: The (bleeped) modiste didn't have a single model the same size I was and I had to stand around getting measured and measured and fitted and fitted. And she kept putting big hems in, saying how I'd grow. Well, maybe I will. Man, do they have great food in them deluxe hotels! I thought all wops ate was spaghetti and I haven't even seen a strand of it! The greatest chow you ever chomped. Am I in time for supper? Boy, am I starved!" She started to rush off. Then she halted. "Those black grips are yours. You didn't have any luggage either." She rushed off.
She appeared at dinner in a black silk evening gown, obviously created by one of Rome's finest couturiers, the effect spoiled somewhat by the rubber band on her ponytail.
"What about Spartacus?" said Madison.
"Who? Oh, yes. Spartacus," said Teenie. "Well, it seems we have to go to Naples to find out."
So I told the captain to sail for Naples, but Teenie didn't seem to have her mind on outlaws. She came into my bed salon in a negligee of absolutely transparent sea green, put a new phonograph down in the middle of the rug and sat before it.
"This is the greatest gadget, Inky," she said. "It runs on batteries and it plays a record upside down or vertical or any way at all with a laser beam. No chance for a roll to slide a needle out of a groove. And now I can play my records without a single scratch."
It had two detachable speakers she set up some way apart. "I got some yowley new singles, too. Just wait until you hear this one!"
She turned it on full volume. The drums pounded. The guitars yelled. The bass boomed. A tenor and a chorus sang:
I'm sneaking up on you.
I'm going to get you, you, you.
You're going to get yourself in my dutches!
Look at these daws, claws, daws!
Yay, yay, the trap is set, set, set!
So stick in your foot, foot, foot!
So stick in your neck, neck, neck!
Stick, stick, stick in, stick in, stick in
Your naked neck in, neck in, neck in!
So stick in all of you! You! You! Woohooo!
Oh, I'm going to get you, you, you!
I'm sneaking, I'm sneaking, I'm sneaking
Up on yooooooooooooooooonuunuunuunuu!
WATCH OUT!
The last part of the song almost made me jump out of my skin.
"Ain't it flowy?" said Teenie with dreamy eyes.
"It's terrible," I said. "It doesn't even rhyme."
"Oh, but the sentiment," said Teenie. "I just love a sentimental song. Here's a bhong I fixed for you. Have a puff."
I took one puff.
Suddenly the whole room went up in a spiral of bright pink. As I tingled from head to toe, I still retained wit to ask, "What was in that pipe?"
"Hash oil," said Teenie. "The absolute jet plane of Mary Jane. It's the very best in Rome. Fifty (bleeping) bucks a gram! And I got a whole bottle of it!"
The sea-green negligee slid to the floor. I had enough wit to know what would happen now. But all I could do was giggle.
And horror of horrors, the music did sound wonderful, even the shouted, "WATCH OUT!"
Oh, Gods, if I only had!
In Naples, another teeming forest of cargo booms with tugs and trains running about under them like wild animals, we found no trace of Spartacus. But Teenie got on the trail there of somebody called Garibaldi who had helped wrest a lot of Italy from the age-long domination of Austria and gotten shot for his pains. And this took us to a place where he had once landed-Palermo, Sicily.
Of course, in Palermo, one had access to a whole island full of bandits and outlaws that not even the Italian government could cope with. This was the ancestral home of the Mafia. In a hired car, Madison, Teenie and myself drove all over that very extensive island. And one could imagine, from that rugged and sometimes barren terrain, how it could breed so many hit men. It was no surprise to be told that it had been largely settled by pirates.
We even took an excursion to the eastern end of the island where Mount Etna smokes into the sky. The name itself means "I burn" and judging by the number of eruptions and lives taken by it, it is well named.