ragazzo , we take you there...”
Trey hung back, torn between having no idea what to do and really wanting to be taken back to the hotel. Any of the private eyes in Black Ace would, no doubt about it, trust their
instincts...but those instincts would also be backed up by the fact that those PIs were packing heat, just like Signor Giovedi was. And what kind of person wandered round on holiday with a
gun in a shoulder holster?
“You coming or what, kid?” the woman asked, blowing a large, bright pink bubble.
Quite why the sight convinced Trey it would be okay to go with them he didn’t know, but it did.
Which was how, after being treated to a large vanilla ice cream, covered in real milk chocolate shavings, and an orange fizzy drink, Trey found himself in a water taxi,
being delivered back to the Hotel Excelsior by César and Isabella Giovedi – as unlikely a pair of rescuers as it was possible to imagine.
César was in business (and although he never specified the business of what, Trey thought he had a pretty good idea that it was probably as legit as a nine dollar note), and Izzy, as she
liked to be called, offered that she had been in the business of show, as she put it, before the two of them had met and married. César did say that he came from Naples, and he was taking his
wife on a grand European tour, explaining in great detail that although Izzy was also Italian she had been born in New York. But he never said one word about what Trey thought of as The Incident,
and neither did he explain how come they’d just happened to be there or why he’d stepped in to help. While Trey was desperate to ask, he thought that maybe it would be better if
he just accepted what had taken place and left it at that; frankly, he was so glad to still be in one piece that he was prepared to believe whatever he was told.
César and Izzy had waltzed into the Excelsior and taken him right up to the manager’s office, where César explained about Trey getting lost and he and his wife finding him;
he did not, to Trey’s great relief, go into too much detail. The manager, acting as if this sort of thing was a daily occurrence, replied that he would make sure every effort was made to
contact Mr. MacIntyre and inform him of his son’s safe return. All the while Trey stood in the middle of the proceedings feeling like he had to be asleep and dreaming as it was all so weird .
After saying a loud and quite embarrassing Arriverderci! – Izzy planting a kiss on both his cheeks – Trey went up to the suite to wait for his father. Who, if Trey was
any judge, was not going to be best pleased with how the day had turned out. Once he’d washed off Izzy’s lipstick he went out onto the balcony; the red Macchi M.52 had gone, as
he’d feared it would have, and a boat was now moored where it had been when he’d left the hotel in the morning.
It had been a strange day – a lot more exciting than he’d ever imagined it would be – plus, in the process of getting lost and being found, the story of The Man With the
Pencil Mustache had gotten even more mysterious. He didn’t want to believe his rescuers had been lying to him, but wasn’t it really a bit too much of a coincidence that they
should be right there when he needed them? If that kind of thing ever happened in one of his stories he always thought the writer was taking the easy way out and not being very original. There was
now no doubt in his mind that there was definitely more to this than met the eye. But exactly what was completely beyond him.
6 “WHERE EAST MEETS WEST, SON!”
T he next day Trey’s punishment for getting himself lost turned out to be going back with The Formidable Aurelia to every single one of
the places he’d missed seeing the previous day. All on his own, while his father stayed at the hotel. No doubt working.
He was beginning to wonder why on earth his pop had ever brought him on this trip if all he was going to do was act like he