In the distance, I could see towers, church domes, a palace, lots of boats and moving specks that must've been people. It was though we were about to arrive in a strange city in a fairy-tale land. The whole city floated on top of the water. "Wow," I called out from the back of the water taxi as Venice appeared in front of us.
Mom turned round. "Max, Charlie." She pointed. "There's Piazza San Marco, the Bell Tower, the Winged Lion on top of the column and the Doge's Palace." I could tell by the way her eyes lit up that it was her favorite place in the world. The last time she'd been here was before Charlie and me were born.
As we got closer, we got a better view of the gondolas, ferries and all the people. Artists sat at easels painting. Heaps of people were wandering and checking everything out - even our water taxi. Ferries were coming and going and there were shiny black gondolas parked at the dock.
The driver steered our water taxi into a canal. It felt like the beginning of a water ride at a theme park. A ride where the boat cruises along all slow and safe and then you realize you are actually at the top of a waterfall and you and your boat are about to go over the top. But our ride didn't happen like that. We went under a bridge and it was like we had entered a magical place with three and four-storey buildings all squashed together and where the front doors took you to a boat instead of to a garden.
I expected our water taxi to go real fast, but it didn't. There were so many other boats using the canal, no one could go fast. It'd be cool to go fast. There were boats making deliveries, there were gondolas with passengers being shown the sites, there were other water taxis and there was even a boat full of Italian military police, the Carabinieri, each one with a black machine gun.
"When will we meet Santo?" I asked Mom. Santo was married to Mom's cousin, Caterina.
"Tonight for dinner. You'll like him; he has a great sense of humor."
Santo was a policeman and Charlie and me had lined up this Venice job. We were going to hang out with him while he was on duty, instead of checking out boring paintings with Mom and Dad.
I said to Charlie, "I can't wait to catch some bad guys."
"Max," Charlie said in his superior voice, "Venice is full of tourists. The most exciting thing Santo probably does is give directions to lost foreigners."
"Nah, something big and bad will happen."
"Yeah, right. The only big thing that might happen is a boat that's full of people could sink." He peered over the side of the boat and screwed up his face. "And we'd have to jump in this cold, murky water and save them."
I shook my head. "I need a good story to tell my class when I get home." Before the school holidays, my teacher had said when we got back to school we all had to have a good story to tell. The story could be true or false and the class would guess if the story was true or not. I needed the best, most unbelievable story. What was the point of helping a Venetian policeman do his job if I didn't end up with a good story to tell? "Saving a billionaire from a kidnapper would do." If we rescued a billionaire, we'd probably get a reward. Then I'd get a story and lots of money.
Charlie rolled his eyes. "You can always make up a story, like discovering that you're related to a mafia boss."
Typical Charlie - he was so negative. A good feeling told me something exciting would happen. It didn't tell me exactly what, but it wouldn't be as exciting if I knew already.
The water taxi pulled up at a door and, like magic, the door opened. The taxi driver and the man at the door spoke in Italian before we stepped from the boat and in through the door. It took me a few minutes to realize that we'd arrived at our hotel. Where else do guests arrive at their hotels by climbing through the back door?
A tall man in a dark suit greeted us. He had a thin black mustache and he was way too serious. On his right cheek there was a long scar - it might've been made by a knife. He told us he was at our service and shook our hands in turn. He kept calling Mom and Dad Mr. and Mrs. McLean as he took them upstairs to their room while Charlie and me waited. The hotel seemed small, but it was real posh. The furniture looked antique and the paintings looked expensive. The place was so quiet, it seemed as though we were the only people in the hotel. There didn't even seem to be anybody else working at the hotel. It felt strange.
The man with the scar appeared and bowed. "I'll show you to your room. May I call you Charlie and Max?"
"Sure," replied Charlie.
Why hadn't we checked in? Didn't they need our passports?
He took our suitcase up the stairs and we followed. The room he showed us was as posh as. Pictures were painted on the walls, like in Pompeii before it got buried. Our window overlooked the canal, so we could see boats and gondolas passing. The strange thing was that the beds were unmade. The sheets were folded at the end of the bed.
The door closed behind him as he put our suitcase down. "You have arrived at a very difficult time. Every member of the hotel staff, except for me, has fallen ill."
"The flu?" I asked.
He shook his head. "A rare illness. They have a rash and sores on their bodies." His voice sounded cold. "Very unpleasant."
"We can go to another hotel," I said. There was no way I was going to get sores all over my body.
He stepped closer to us. "No, no, no. Venice has no other accommodation at the moment. You will be fine. However, I need your help."
Charlie and me didn't answer. I didn't like the sound of this.
Mr. Scarface pointed to the beds. "If you could make your own beds and ..." He bent down and pulled out a feather duster from under the bed. "If you wouldn't mind ... the room hasn't been dusted for a while."
We didn't say anything at first. Then Charlie blurted out, "Sure. We'll make our beds and dust."
Mr. Scarface bowed again. "Grazie. Thank you. I'll see how your parents are getting along." He slipped out and silently closed the door behind him.
We stared at each other. I said, "I'm not staying here for a million bucks."
"Me either. We'll have to find somewhere else to stay."
"What's the point of staying at a hotel if you have to make your own bed?" I grabbed the TV remote, got up on the bed and began to jump up and down. I flicked through the channels. "At least we've got cable TV."
"We'll pretend we're staying until we've got somewhere else to go." Charlie began to make his bed. "The last one to make his bed has to dust."
As fast as I could, I jumped off the bed and put the sheets on. Once I'd got the top sheet on, I looked up and I could see Charlie was going to win. I threw the blanket down and lay down on the bed with my hands behind my head. "I win."
Charlie smiled sneakily. He did that when he knew something I didn't know. Then he copied me by lying down and putting his hands behind his head. "You haven't put your pillowcase on."
Far out! I got up and realized it'd fallen on the floor. "I don't like them," I said.
"You need a pillowcase. With all those people getting sick, the pillows might be contaminated."
I jumped off the bed and put the pillowcase on. "Okay, I'll dust." After two minutes of flicking the feather duster over some of the furniture, I announced, "That'll do."
The door opened and Mr. Scarface appeared. He didn't even knock! "Your mother is resting. Can you cook? I need help in the kitchen."
"Why's she resting? She's not sick!" She'd been okay when we were on the boat. Deep in my gut, I had a bad feeling.
"She's fine. Don't worry." He smiled down at us as though we were four years old. "The kitchen is this way."
As we followed him down the stairs, I suggested we go to the shop and buy our food.
He turned to me. "That's very kind of you, but we must think of our staff. They need to eat."
"WHAT?" Charlie said too loud. "Where are they?"
Mr. Scarface put his finger up to his lips to tell us to be quiet. He whispered, "They're staying in the basement. We've turned it into a hospital for the time being."
"WHAT!" I slapped my hand over my mouth. I whispered, "But they might be contagious."
He nodded. "The hospital is full. Do not concern yourself, a doctor visits them every day."
Is that allowed? I wondered as he opened the swinging doors of the kitchen.
At least the benches and the floor looked clean. I sniffed. And there wasn't a bad smell.
He gave us both an apron. "I understand your mother is Italian, so I assume you know how to make pasta?"
"Yeah, yeah," lied Charlie. Toast was about the only thing Charlie could cook.
As Mr. Scarface got out flour from a cupboard, Charlie whispered to me, "As soon as he leaves the kitchen, we'll run."
"Yeah, good idea." Mr. Scarface was lying. He was up to something bad. I reckoned Mr. Scarface was poisoning the staff and that was why they were all sick in bed. The hospital wasn't full at all. He was definitely lying about that. Why would he want to poison them? I didn't know, but I could find out. We'd been in Venice for less than an hour and I might've already got my story.
As Charlie and me watched Mr. Scarface make dough, I worked out what we had to do. Escape, find Santo at the police station, get him to arrest Mr. Scarface and find out why he was poisoning the staff, then get a real doctor to help the poisoned staff and then, at home, I'd tell my class about Mr. Scarface and how I'd uncovered his evil plan.
Easy as making pasta.