“You didn’t believe he had a painting which might be worth money?”
“Crazy Julio?” Mario sniggered into his hand. “His farm is just a patch of rock and his only crop is empty Pepsi bottles.”
“I see. Can you take me to him?”
Mario stopped sniggering on the instant, all his predatory instincts aroused. “Why do you want to see Crazy Julio?”
“The arrangement we have,” I reminded him, “is that you answer my questions. Can you take me to him?”
Mario stuck out his hand. “A hundred dollars,” he said peremptorily.
I touched his hand, trying to esp enough information to be able to proceed without him. All I could pick up was a blur of anonymous grey-green hillside strewn with boulders. The information I already had was enough to let me find Julio by working through a local inquiry agent, but that would use up extra time as well as money.
“Here’s fifty on account,” I said to Mario, slapping five bills into his palm. When can we go?”
“Tomorrow morning I will borrow my mother’s car and drive you to Paesinoperduto myself. How’s that?”
“It suits me.”
Mario gave a dry cough. “There will be a small extra charge for the use of the car. My mother is a widow, you understand, and hiring out the car my father left her is the only way she can afford a few little luxuries.”
“That’s all right.” Wondering if I had been too harsh in my assessment of Mario’s character, I arranged to meet him outside the hotel early the following day. I went back to the table and gave a glowing progress report to Carole. She was pleased enough to let us get on to first-name terms, but any hopes I had of further developments in the relationship were dashed when she insisted on our going to bed early, and separately, so that we would be fresh in the morning.
My room was cold and I slept rather badly, troubled by ominous dreams about a dark place and a strange wheel-like machine.
In the morning we waited outside the hotel for about ten minutes before Mario arrived to pick us up in a mud-spattered Fiat. It was my first time in Italy and, under the impression that Mediterranean countries were warm even in the winter, I had brought only a light showerproof. I was shivering violently in the raw wind while, in contrast, Carole looked rose-pink and competent in tweeds and fur. When Mario saw her the whites of his eyes flickered like the tallies of a cash register.
“Three thousand,” he whispered to me as she got into the car. “That’s the top rate around here.”
I bundled him into the driver’s seat and put my mouth close to his ear. “Keep quiet, you little toad. We Americans don’t sell our women—besides, she doesn’t belong to me.”
Mario glanced again at Carole and then eyed me with surprise and contempt. “You are a great fool, signor. A woman like that cries out for love.”
“You’ll be the one who cries out if you don’t shut up and start driving.” I slammed the door on Mario, but he rolled down the window and held out his hand.
“Two hundred kilometres at twenty-five cents a kilometre makes fifty dollars,” he said. “Payable in advance.”
Seething with hatred, but trapped, I paid him the money and got in the back seat beside Carole. As the car moved off with a loud churning of dry gears, she drew her coat closer around her and gave me a cool stare.
“You’re very generous with my money,” she said. “I could have bought this heap for fifty dollars.”
“Very funny.” I huddled up in the opposite corner, numb with the cold, and brooded on the unfairness of life. Mario was a character straight out of a blue movie, but I had an uneasy feeling he might be right about Carole. Perhaps, in accordance with the whole blue movie ethos, she was sitting there, ice cold on the outside and burning hot within—a human antithesis to a Baked Alaska—just waiting for me to produce my dessert spoon and gobble her up. Perhaps, incredible as it seemed, she was a girl who longed to be dominated and ravished. I allowed myself a lingering glance at Carole’s slim-sculpted legs and waited for her response.
“Keep your eyes on the scenery, junior,” she snapped.
“That’s what I was doing,” I said weakly. Mario’s shoulders twitched a little and I guessed he was sniggering again. I began staring out of the window, but the scenery was little consolation because we travelled only two blocks, went round a corner and halted in the dimness of a shabby garage.
“Just a short delay, folks—I’ll be with you in a minute,” Mario called out. He leaped from the car, disappeared underneath it and a few seconds later we heard a querulous whine, like that of a dentist’s drill, coming up through the floor. I bore it for as long as I could, then got out and looked under the vehicle at Mario. He had disconnected its speedometer cable and was turning it with a power drill.
“Mario!” I bellowed. What in hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Just covering my expenses, signor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I swore to my mother, on my honour, that we were only going twenty kilometres today, but I saw her taking a speedometer reading anyway.” He began to sound aggrieved. “The old bitch doesn’t even trust her own son! How do you like that? Every time I use her car I have to turn the speedo back or she would rob me blind.”
I gave a strangled cry of fury, grabbed Mario by the ankles and dragged him out from under the vehicle. “This is your last chance,” I told him in a shaking voice. “Drive us to Paesino-whateveryoucallit right now, or the deal is off.”
“All right. There’s no need to get tough.” Mario looked furtively around the garage. “By the way, now that you’re at my depot—are you interested in drugs? Pot, hash, speed, snow: You name it, I’ve got it.”
“Have you a telephone? I want to call the police.”
The effect on Mario was gratifying and immediate. He pushed me back into the car and we drove off without even waiting to disconnect the power drill from the speedometer cable. It thumped on the bottom of the car a few times before falling behind us. Carole gave me a puzzled look, but I shook my head, warning her not to ask any questions.
All I knew for sure was that, if Mario got the slightest inkling of our business with Crazy Julio, he would move in like a hungry shark let loose in a paddling pool.
The drive westwards into the first slopes of the Graian Alps was far from pleasant. There appeared to be no heater in the car and, for some reason known only to themselves, my nipples reacted to the cold by becoming unbearably painful. They were so hard they almost tore my shirt each time we lurched into a pothole. Carole was remote, wrapped in her plumage like a haughty bird. Even Mario had nothing to say, no criminal propositions to make. He drove with broody concentration, swerving every now and then in attempts to run over stray dogs. When we reached Paesinoperduto two hours after setting out, I felt like a very old man.
“Here we are,” Mario announced, suddenly regaining his voice. “And I have a good idea.”
“Yes?” I said warily.
“Crazy Julio’s farm is two kilometres north of here, and the road gets even worse. You and the signora will stay here and have some coffee and I will bring Julio to meet you.”
I shook my head. “Nothing doing, Mario. You are going to stay here while Miss Colvin and I drive to the farm by ourselves.”
“That is impossible, signor. The car insurance would not cover you to drive it.”
“The car hasn’t even got insurance,” I challenged.
“Also, you don’t know the way.”
“I can psi myself straight to it at this range.”
“But, do you think I could permit a stranger to drive off in my mother’s car?”
“Let’s see.” I glanced around the deserted market square in which we had stopped. “I bet I can even psi the local police station from here?