Scott was disappointed to read in the Italian press that police had traced the letter threatening Elizabeth Taylor to a Canadian man with mental health problems. Why had he written in Italian? That’s what had raised Scott’s hopes that it would turn out to involve an Italian crime family – maybe even the Ghianciaminas – but no such luck. The letter-writer was just another of the many lunatics who sought fame – or at least notoriety – by association with a public figure they had built up in their heads to be a symbol of all that they needed to make their own lives work out.
The day after his night visit to Anzio, he continued his research. First he went to the customs office in Rome to check the register of shipping, but there were dozens of ships whose names began with RE and ended with A: Regina Carolina, Regina Aurora … he’d never be able to identify the one he had seen. Next he made enquiries about tracking car number plates, but struck a blank there as well. If he’d had a contact high up in the police force, maybe they would have been able to help, but Scott’s most valuable contact in Rome was Gianni, and he knew without asking that this was way beyond his photographer’s sphere of influence.
Nevertheless, Scott began writing his article. He framed it around H****, a pretty, naïve young girl in Rome, who was sucked into the murky world of drugs. He wrote about a dealer called L****, who deliberately targeted her, bled her dry of money then demanded sexual favours in return for further supplies. He wrote about the young men who drove drugs up from the south in cars with secret hiding places, and left them in a garage to be stripped of their cargo. And he wrote about a crime family called the G*****s, who were untouchable because of their political influence and the bribes they paid to the police force and customs officials, so that no one intervened when motorboats carried unregistered cargo out to huge ships off the coast of Anzio in the middle of the night. What’s more, no one investigated when an American journalist was kicked half to death in the street.
He widened out the article to explain Rome’s current position as a world centre of drug trafficking, with money laundered through the booming construction industry and every bay and outcrop of the long Italian peninsula providing possible locations for smugglers to load international shipments. He used information from Bradley Wyndham’s research about bribes paid to politicians in return for clauses in shipping bills that relaxed regulations. And he finished by writing about H****’s lonely death when, distraught and fleeing from the people who had destroyed her, she slipped, hit her head and drowned.
The first draft of his article was much longer than the Midwest Daily normally ran, so he began to hone it, tightening sentences and slashing unnecessary words. He typed it up himself in the evenings, once his secretary had left, and always hid it afterwards in the secret compartment by the shutters.
When he left the office he felt nervous, as if someone might guess what he was up to and seek to put a stop to it. He even considered asking Gianni where he could purchase a gun for self-protection. He’d briefly been a member of a rifle-shooting club at Harvard and, although he’d never fired a handgun, he reckoned he would know what to do. Perhaps he should get one before the article’s publication. He felt excited and nervous all at once.
Most evenings he went to the Via Veneto or Piazza di Spagna to have a beer with Gianni and catch up on news of what the stars were doing and where the best photographs might be taken. He looked forward to these chats. Gianni had fast become his best friend in Rome, but Scott didn’t confide in him about the article. Gianni sensed there was a secret project and assumed it was to do with the death of the makeup girl in Torre Astura, but he didn’t ask questions.
Everywhere they went, Scott kept a wary eye out for Luigi. It seemed unlikely but, if Ernesto had reported their conversation and Luigi asked around, he might realise that Scott was a reporter and, what’s more, that he was investigating him. He was several inches taller than the dealer, and probably much fitter, so he reckoned he could beat him in a straight fistfight but what if he had a knuckleduster, like Alessandro Ghianciamina? Or a knife? Or friends nearby who would pitch in?
Fortunately, there was no sign of Luigi that entire week. He must be lying low somewhere.
One evening, after a couple of beers with Gianni, Scott slipped back to the office to take some papers out of the cubbyhole, planning to read them before going to bed. While he was there, the telephone rang and he picked it up automatically.
‘Scott!’ his editor yelled down the line. ‘Knock me down with a feather. Is it really you? I haven’t heard from you in such a long time I reckoned you had resigned from the job and just forgot to tell me.’
‘Sorry, boss, I’ve been working on something really big. I’ll be ready to send it to you in a few days.’
‘I don’t want something in a few days! I want something for tomorrow’s paper. What’s happening on the Cleopatra set? Which stars are in Rome? What’s the latest on Taylor and Burton? You’ve got two hours to knock out a story before I slash your name from the payroll. Understand?’
Scott grimaced. He wasn’t ready to send the drugs piece yet, and he didn’t think readers in the Midwest would be interested in the story of Diana’s imprisonment and release.
Suddenly he remembered something Gianni had mentioned earlier. Seemingly there was a scene in the film in which Cleopatra slaps Mark Antony and he hits her back, knocking her flying to the floor. Elizabeth had refused to use a stand-in for the action, despite the fact that she suffered from a back problem, which could be exacerbated by the fall. Anyway, the shots of the scene were sent out to Hollywood for processing, which was necessary with all the film they shot. At Elizabeth Taylor’s insistence they were using a type of film called Todd-AO, which had been pioneered by her late husband Mike Todd, and it couldn’t be processed in Rome. While in transit, this particular roll of film got damaged, so they were going to have to reshoot the scene and take the risk of injuring Elizabeth’s back one more time.
‘Perhaps Elizabeth and Richard enjoy hitting each other,’ Scott wrote. ‘There’s nothing like a spot of fisticuffs to stoke the flames of passion. Although it seems that in their case there’s already a blazing conflagration.’
He cringed at the cliché. It wasn’t his best piece ever but it would do. He filed the copy and headed home.