In the evening of 12th April, Scott was chatting to Gianni at the curve of the Via Veneto when a shiny black car drew up.
‘Sono loro!’ someone shouted, and all the photographers scrambled into position. Rather than joining the throng, Gianni shimmied up a lamppost and yelled at Scott to hand his camera up to him.
The car door opened and Richard Burton got out on the road side then walked round to open the door for Elizabeth Taylor. No one had been sure if they would come out that evening after the Vatican pronouncement, but here they were, large as life and dressed up to the nines. She was wearing a black dress so tight it looked as though it had been glued to her, and Scott noted there were no creases to indicate any underwear. Round her neck was the famous Bulgari diamond and emerald necklace Burton had bought her recently. He hoped Gianni got a good photo because there was plenty he could write about.
Usually the couple hurried with heads down straight into the bar or restaurant they were visiting, but tonight they lingered, making sure every photographer got the shots they wanted. They didn’t respond to reporters who were shouting questions about their reaction to the Vatican outburst, but Scott sensed this was their answer. It was a calculated ‘Fuck you, we don’t give a damn!’ to the cardinals. He warmed to them.
In this day and age, how dare a church single out one individual whose marriage had broken down from the millions of others around the world? Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t even Catholic. She’d converted to the Jewish faith for husband number three, Mike Todd. How rude for a country’s churchmen to lambast a visitor whose presence had brought much wealth and industry to their country. The latest estimates were that Cleopatra would cost twenty-five million dollars. It was the most expensive film ever made by a long shot, and much of that money was being ploughed into the Italian economy and thus into church coffers. Scott decided that was the article he would write: about the ridiculous hypocrisy of the Vatican and the power they still wielded over the Italian government in 1962.
He hung around outside the Grand Hotel until word came from a reliable source that Burton and Taylor were going to the Cha Cha Club after dinner. Scott decided to see if he could get in. Not many of the doormen in Rome knew he was a journalist. They thought he was a smart-looking young American with money so he could still get access to the clubs other journalists were banned from. He was waved straight into the Cha Cha, where he bought a beer and wandered round on the lookout for evidence of drug-taking. To his surprise, he came across Helen, sitting in a corner nursing a drink.
‘Hey, I was planning to call you tomorrow,’ he exclaimed. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m fine. I came out with a couple of girls from the set but they’re off dancing with Italian boys.’ She made a face.
‘So the vitamin injection is still working, is it?’
‘I’ve had to have a few more but I feel so great afterwards that it’s worth it.’
Scott frowned. ‘That must be expensive. I thought the doctor said you would need only one more treatment?’
‘Trust me to be the one that needs more!’ she laughed. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?’
‘I saw that man – Luigi – in a bar last week openly selling drugs to someone else. He’s a sinister kind of guy. How did you hook up with him?’
‘One of the other girls recommended him.’ The band began to play a popular Italian song ‘Quando, quando, quando’ and Helen started to tap her foot to the drumbeat.
‘Wanna dance?’ he asked. ‘I warn you, I’m not very good.’
‘I’d love to.’ She was already on her feet, grinning broadly. ‘I love dancing.’
She gave a little wiggle from her head to her toes and segued into a version of The Twist, her body languid and the movement flowing rather than tight and jerky.
‘Wow! You sure can move,’ Scott called, and she grinned.
He did his best to keep up but in truth he just wanted to watch her. She had true rhythm in those skinny hips and she kept changing the choreography. Some girls did the same thing from the beginning to the end of a record but she put in her own cute little moves, using her hands, her head, her whole body.
They danced three numbers but when a slow record came on, Scott held his hands up and said, ‘I’ve had enough humiliation. Can we sit down?’
Scott bought some drinks and, once they were sitting down, he asked more about Luigi. ‘Does he deal for a living or does he have a day job as well?’
‘God no, he only deals. He’s busy morning, noon and night. He’s got dozens of customers. You wouldn’t believe how many people in Rome take drugs.’
‘So is he like a boss? Is he Mister Big?’
She considered this. ‘He’s somewhere in the middle, I think. He controls Via Veneto, which must be an important patch, but I once went with him to a house on the coast where there were some guys who were his bosses. He was really nervous. I saw him put a gun in the glove compartment of the car.’
Scott was aghast. ‘Why did he take you with him?’
‘I wondered about that. I suppose he was scared of these men and thought they would have to behave well in front of me. Which they did, by the way. There were half a dozen guys there but one of them gave me a smoke of eroina that made me all woozy. Then they all started laughing at me.’ The words poured out of her and she seemed to have no notion of the danger she’d been in.
‘Jesus Christ, Helen! What were you thinking? You could have been killed or raped. Anything could have happened!’
‘I know. I only thought of that afterwards. At the time, I wanted a fix and Luigi said he would give me one if I came for a drive with him. So I did.’ She shrugged. ‘Thank God you got me off that stuff or I don’t know what would have happened.’
Scott’s brain was ticking. ‘Where was this house on the coast? Can you remember?’
‘It was somewhere past Anzio. We drove through the town then out the other side where a road goes down the coast. That’s where it was. A really big house, right on the edge of the ocean, with palm trees and a swimming pool in the garden. And there was an old tower across the bay.’
‘Do you know who owned it? Did anyone mention a name?’
‘Not people’s names, no.’ Her beehive hairdo was slipping and she repositioned it with one hand. ‘But I did notice that the house was called Villa Armonioso. There was a sign on the gate. Isn’t that odd? The “harmonious villa”, and it’s actually full of drug dealers. Why did you want to know?’
Scott held out his hands. ‘I’m just amazed by the volume of drug trafficking here.’
‘Don’t mess with Luigi if you see him,’ Helen advised. ‘He’s not nice when he turns on you. He’s very cross with me for giving up because he’d been hoping I’d introduce him to lots more people at Cinecittà and maybe even deliver drugs on the set for him. Fortunately, I never got that desperate.’
There was a sudden commotion as the crowds parted and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton arrived and made their way to a table reserved for them and their group. Roddy McDowall and his friend John were among them. Booze was brought by the bottle rather than by the glass, at Richard’s noisy request.
‘That’s the second time I’ve been with her today.’ Helen told Scott about the scene in the dressing room. He tried to memorise the words she said Elizabeth had used, to reproduce them exactly in the piece he intended to send to his editor later that evening: A source close to Miss Taylor told me that she laughed off being called an erotic vagrant.
Scott kept an eye on the Burton–Taylor table and noticed that Elizabeth was knocking back her drinks just as fast as Richard, and appeared the worse for wear. Her bra strap was sliding down her arm and her hair was tousled. All at once she got up, knocking over a drink, and bolted for the exit, trotting unsteadily on her high heels.
Scott decided to follow. ‘I have to get up early in the morning,’ he told Helen. ‘It’s been great to see you though. Let’s get together again soon.’
‘My appetite’s back. Maybe we could have that dinner?’ she suggested.
‘I’m busy this week but how ’bout after Easter?’ He gave her a hug. ‘Look after yourself, sweetheart. And be careful who you talk to about Luigi or you could find yourself in big trouble.’
‘I know. I will.’ She lifted her face towards his and he gave her a kiss on the cheek. She looked impossibly young, without a hint of a wrinkle, and he felt a twinge of worry for her. Her tongue was too unguarded and she knew some dangerous people.
Outside the club, he found Gianni and asked if he’d managed to take a photo of Elizabeth on the way out.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know whether you will want to use it. Her head was down, her hair was messy, and she was crying.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes. Big crying.’ He imitated.
‘I’ll use it if you’ve got a clear shot,’ Scott told him, then jumped on his Vespa and went back to the office to write his story.