Death al Dente

by Peter King

  “No, I didn’t,” I admitted. It was true. I didn’t know that particular statistic—every time I heard it, the number had changed.

  “Yes, that’s so. Keeping that in mind made it easier to concentrate on factors that helped me solve the crime.”

  It was his hour of triumph and I was certainly not going to deprive him of a minute of it.

  “When Lansdown hears about this, he’ll want to play you in the movie.”

  Cataldo bristled. “I shall play myself.” He looked at Francesca. “I was an actor, wasn’t I? Remember that RAI film at Cinecitta?”

  “Yes,” she said obediently, “and you were very good too.”

  I was reminded of Orson Welles’ comment when making a film in Rome. “Everybody in Italy is an actor. Fifty-five million of them and they all love to act. The only people in Italy who can’t act are in films or on the stage.” I did not think it was an appropriate time to share that observation, though, so instead I asked him, “Do you know where Tomasso Rinaldo is now?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, casually blowing smoke away. He must have studied the way Marcello Mastroianni did that in City of Women. I wondered if he already saw himself in the role of Captain Cataldo.

  “Aren’t you worried he’ll get away?”

  “I instituted a six-man watch on him before we came into this room. He can’t get far. I hoped he would try, though, it emphasizes his guilt. Meanwhile, two of my investigators are interrogating Clara Rinaldo.” He gave a wolfish smile. “‘No better witness than a woman scorned’—isn’t that what your William Shakespeare said?” he asked, turning to me.

  “I don’t think those were his exact words, but something along those lines.”

  “What about Elena Pellegrini?” asked Francesca.

  “Two other officers are taking a statement from her.”

  “That’s your polite way of saying they’re grilling her, isn’t it, Carlo?”

  He smiled through the smoke. “The more guilt we pile on her, the more she’ll tell us about Rinaldo.” He puffed again with satisfaction. “He may be a lawyer, but he won’t squirm out of this.”

  He rose to his feet. “Now I must ask you to excuse me. There is much to do to wrap this up.” To me he said, “You may make your plans to leave anytime after tomorrow. I shall require statements from you before you go.”

  “Me too?” asked Francesca hopefully.

  “Of course you too.” He beamed and I got Francesca out of there before she could tell him again how wonderful he was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I HAD TO CHANGE flights in Rome. It is a busy airport, like all airports in capital cities. Fortunately, it was one of those days when no weather problems occurred and no mechanical faults or human errors showed themselves.

  Iberia Flight 269 took off almost on time. We lifted off the runway and turned to head west over the city, and I was able to pick out the massive circular structure of the Colosseum and mentally picture it with a hundred thousand bloodthirsty fans on their feet with excitement as a handful of men and women faced the unspeakable terror of hungry wild beasts.

  Within minutes, the blue Mediterranean was spread below, thin patches of cloud and haze disappearing as we climbed. By the time the flight attendant appeared with the drinks trolley, the islands of Corsica and Sardinia were visible as brown hulking shapes.

  “I’ll have a vodka and orange juice,” Francesca stated.

  After we had given our statements to Captain Cataldo at the Questura the previous day, Francesca had gone to her office to take care of requests for escorts. I went to the Ambasciatore Imperiale Hotel to phone Desmond Lansdown. I found myself hoping that she was being more successful than I was.

  “Mr. Lansdown is on location,” said a cool feminine English voice after I had had desultory conversations with three Spanish voices.

  “I know that,” I said patiently. “That’s why I’m calling him on this number. It’s the one he gave me so that I could call him on location.”

  “Mr. Lansdown is shooting right now—”

  “Then please tell him to take his finger off the trigger and come to the phone.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Can I have him call you back?”

  “It took a long time to get through, so I’d rather talk to him now.”

  “He gave me very strict instructions—”

  “Did you give him my name?”

  “What is your name?”

  I sighed but persevered.

  “I’ll see that he knows you are on the line,” she said in that same neutral tone. I could hear conversations in both Spanish and English then she came back on the line. “Is this an emergency?”

  “It has been a matter of life and death until now,” I told her. “Now it’s getting serious. Look, you wouldn’t want to be responsible for a woman’s life, would you?”

  I had been about to say “a person’s life” but at the last second, I decided to be gender-specific, making a wild guess that judging by her voice, this might get her attention. “Just a moment,” she said and after a series of clicks and pregnant pauses, there was a spatter of Spanish in another female voice then that East London drawl came through, loud and clear.

  “Lansdown here. A woman’s life is at risk, you say? Not anybody I know, is it?”

  “I just said that to get through to you. You’re not a prisoner in Leopold’s castle yet, are you?”

  He laughed. “No, I’m still crusading against the infidels. They’re nice chaps really, Spanish army in real life. What’s so important?”

  I told him. The whole story since our last conversation.

  “Well done,” he said admiringly. “Jolly well done. My congratulations to Cataldo—and you too. A great job … Rinaldo, eh, the lawyer fellow … yes, congratulations indeed. Now, what about the chefs?”

  “I have a full report for you. Shall I send it to your London office? Or do you want me to send it there?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said finally, “bring it here.”

  “Bring it? There? You mean Spain?”

  “Yes. A decision this important needs careful consideration. We need to discuss it. There’ll be a lot of questions I want to ask you. When can you come?”

  “But you’re still on location, aren’t you?”

  “Shooting on location is mostly hanging around for several hours so as to get five minutes in the can. I can arrange for us to have plenty of time to discuss this.”

  So it was that I started to make plans to fly to Madrid. I reached for the phone to talk to the travel desk at the hotel then hesitated. Instead, I phoned Francesca.

  I told her what Lansdown had said, adding, “Why don’t you come too?”

  “Me?”

  “Why not? You deserve a vacation.”

  “I do?”

  “Certainly. After all this stress, being nearly killed …” It took her a full half second to agree. “You’re right.”

  Full instructions were awaiting us at the car rental desk at the Madrid airport and Francesca said, “I’ll drive,” which suited me fine. It was a sunny day, warm and with a slight breeze. We headed west in the direction of Salamanca. Spanish drivers are not quite as macho as the Italian speed-merchants, but on the autopistas, Spain’s equivalent of the autobahn, they are no slouches. To Francesca, they were probably just dawdling.

  After an hour and a half of driving, we turned north and climbed into the Trabancos Mountains. The temperature dropped noticeably, but the air was clear and sparkling and within fifteen minutes, we could see the location site ahead of us on the edge of a great escarpment. It looked like Tent City.

  There appeared to be enough tents to accommodate an army, then I recalled Lansdown’s comment that they were using the Spanish army as extras for the battle scenes. They were a colorful array, and as we drew nearer, we could see the Spanish flag, red and yellow, fluttering over many of them. Other tents, many larger and multishaped, stood a distance away,
and close to them were several marquees capable of holding a couple of hundred people each. Various types of mechanical and electrical equipment was scattered everywhere, thick cables coiled like black snakes. Parking lots contained cars and trucks of all kinds. Trailers in every size and in haphazard patterns constituted a city of their own.

  On a hilltop across from the escarpment was perched a castle, an icon from another world. Flags in dazzling colors flew from the battlements and it was possible to espy sentries with long pikes but they were stationary, and I supposed they were dummies. Other figures moved, though, and the sun glinted off metal now and then. Massive towers looked impregnable, although I learned later that one of them was fiberglass.

  Francesca’s eyes were bright as she surveyed the scene. “Just like the old days for you?” I asked. “On location?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t seen many as large as this, though.”

  The recently leveled road was hard-packed sand, and we swirled dust as we drove to a guard gate to receive directions. Colored marker posts identified the various areas and we followed the yellow ones to a large square tent. We could hear voices inside.

  “How do you knock on the flap of a tent?” I wondered but Francesca just grinned, pulled the flap aside, and called out, “Desmond, are you decent?”

  He came out, clearly puzzled by the voice, then he smiled broadly and gave her a big hug. He released her to shake my hand. “Didn’t I tell you she was a great guide, assistant, and helper?” he asked me.

  “Crack shot and saver of lives too,” I assured him.

  He was wearing what looked like a leather harness, bulky and padded with big shoulder guards. His pants were of leather, too or a plastic that looked just like it. They were tucked into massive boots, and it was then that I realized he was towering over me.

  He chuckled. “It’s the boots. Give me about five inches extra height. Now I’m almost as tall as Richard. This way, you don’t have to shoot me standing on an orange crate, do you, Bob?”

  The latter was addressed to the thin, partly gray-haired man who had emerged from the tent. He had a strong face and a firm hand grip as Lansdown introduced him, and I recognized his name at once. Robert Stewart was considered one of the most experienced directors in the film business, renowned for his historical epics.

  “If you were wearing authentic armor, you’d need a reinforced steel platform,” said Stewart with a slight smile.

  “Hope we’re not interrupting,” said Francesca breezily.

  Stewart shrugged. “It’s okay. We were just going over the shooting schedule for the next few days. Some rain is forecast and we have to finish this sequence before it gets here. In any case, I have to go and talk to the military unit. Armies today fight differently than they did a thousand years ago.” He gave us a half wave and left.

  “So,” said Lansdown, “come on in and sit down.” He pulled the tent flap aside. “I suspect that remark about Francesca’s crack shooting has more to it. Tell me all about it.”

  Inside the tent, a large trestle table was covered with drawings and pages of script with colored overlays presumably showing changes. Canvas-backed chairs were scattered around. A radio receiver and transmitter was on a stand—it looked large enough for worldwide communication.

  Telephones were on a rack on the wall with wooden partitions between them, and some opened wooden shipping crates were piled high with Styrofoam bubbles. An air conditioner was an accouterment I had not seen in a tent before.

  We told him everything, filling in all the details between our phone conversations. Francesca interrupted me to add points, and when she described shooting the ex-convict, Perruchio, in the Ristorante Regina, I completed her account. “She shot him right through the bottom of her handbag! First shot in the heart, the second close to it.”

  “Incredible! Bloody amazing!” He looked from one to the other of us. “I want you to know I had no idea that this would turn out to be such a dangerous job. All I wanted to do was pick a chef—and here you get involved with murderous monks, assassins who are ex-cons, buffalo stampedes, dangerous gas sprayed on you from a crop-spraying plane. It’s all too much.” He paused. “That last episode—it sounds familiar somehow.”

  “It did to me too,” I admitted. “I still can’t think why.”

  “Well, anyway, I’m jolly glad you’re safe and sound. And that Nigel—who’d have thought it? Poor old Pellegrini. I liked him. The captain’s a great character, though, isn’t he?”

  We agreed.

  He asked more questions. He asked about buffalo, about the belltower on top of the duomo in Modena, about the rice fields, and finally shook his head in admiration. “Extraordinary! I’ve got to hand it to you two. I’m interested in all kinds of details—always have been. Nearly everything fascinates me.”

  A cell phone buzzed and I looked at Francesca. “It’s not me,” she said indignantly, and Lansdown said, “It’s mine. I leave it on the table here. Don’t want it to go off while I’m riding a horse into Jerusalem in the twelfth century.” He talked briefly and said to us, “I have to get the rest of my makeup on. Then we’re shooting a scene with the castle in the background. Why don’t you come with me, we’ll have a spot of lunch, I’ll be clear for a few hours, and we can get down to business.”

  Two very competent women dabbed and patted Lansdown’s face with powders, creams, and lotions while another combed and recombed his hair. “Need another color touch-up tomorrow,” said the latter, squinting critically. “Sun’s bleaching you out.”

  “Very tactful of you, Emma,” Lansdown said. “It’s really the gray showing through.”

  She squinted again, tilting her head. “We can take care of that too.”

  I had expected the donning of the suit of armor to be a long and painstaking task but modern technology had the answers. Thin aluminum was surface-treated to look like shining steel, and the separate units for the body and the limbs had tiny hinges. It all clipped into place quickly. A wizened old Spaniard carried the massive helmet outside. “Not,” said Lansdown, “because it’s heavy. It’s not, it’s plastic and aluminum, but it’s bloody hot in there, even with the visor open.”

  The set was a beehive and the main camera was the queen. Everything buzzed around it. The assistant director was the boss on the set, telling the dolly operators where to move, yelling questions to a camera technician staring at his light meters. A voice called out “Move that brute!” but before I could ask Francesca whom he was referring to, two men wheeled one of the massive light stands a few feet. Robert Stewart, the director, was aloof from all this, talking to the script “girl” who was at least his age.

  “That’s what I used to do,” said Francesca, looking on a little wistfully.

  “Wish you were back in the business?”

  “No. Assisting food detectives is much more exciting.”

  “It’s like the film business in some ways, I suspect,” I told her. “Long periods of boredom punctuated by minutes of activity.”

  “Yes,” she said softly, “but what activity!”

  A Spaniard, active and voluble, seemed to be the assistant director. “Gotta getta going!” he was shouting, clapping his hands. “Don’t wanna fall behind!”

  The director nodded. He had walked over to join another man standing by one of the cameras. “I’ve seen him before,” Francesca said. “He’s the director of cinematography, one of the best.”

  “Sound okay?” the director shouted and a response came.

  “Lights?”

  Another okay and one of the makeup women came out with Desmond Lansdown. The director gave him a critical examination, nodded, and turned him into position. Bob Stewart went over to the camera, spoke briefly with the director of cinematography, then came back and moved Lansdown again, the aim being to get him and the castle in the same shot.

  “Too much glare off the breastplate!” a voice called, and the armored figure was moved yet again. I was awaiting the traditional “Roll ’em!�
� but that had evidently been lost with the celluloid decades for all I heard were “All right, Des?” and a few more words. Then Lansdown was standing imperiously, head raised, looking at the castle.

  Off camera, something moved, a signal of some kind and with the camera still running, Lansdown reached up and slowly took off the helmet. He did it so that it appeared to weigh fifty pounds. The camera dollied in, a slight whir presumably being the slide of a zoom lens. A gust of wind caught the flags and for a few seconds, they unfurled fully. Lansdown took several steps. Then Stewart called out “Cut and print!” and it was all over.

  “That wind came just at the right second,” I said to Francesca, but she smiled and pointed to Bob Stewart who had a cell phone to his ear. Francesca said. “He was giving directions to the crew on the battlements when to start the wind machine. You don’t think they’d leave that to chance, do you?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  NOT AS GOOD AS Benson’s Brasserie,” commented Lansdown, “but pretty good food nonetheless.”

  The large marquee served as a restaurant for the “upper crust,” as Lansdown humorously referred to it. The director, the assistant director, the director of cinematography, the communications manager, an accountant, the electrical supervisor, and a handful of others were in there at lunchtime, and Lansdown had a word or a wave for all of them.

  Lobster salad, giant shrimp in a garlicky sauce, fresh bread, and a bowl with a bewildering variety of fresh fruit made a delightful meal, and we had a couple of bottles of Castilian wine, the wine of the region. “Miles and miles of open plains around here,” Lansdown commented. “You wouldn’t believe they could grow grapes that yield wines this good. None of them travel well, so nobody gets to know about them. Vinos verdes, they call them.” This one was a blend of grapes from Treixadura and Torrontes, and it was sharp and biting yet fruity at the same time.

  During the meal, Lansdown told us of his fascination with the character he was playing. “Poor old Richard Plantagenet has been getting a raw deal from historians for a lot of years. A hundred years ago, they had him pegged as ‘the worst king ever to sit on the English throne.’ Said he was ‘a bad son, a bad husband, a selfish ruler, and a vicious man’. Then, on top of that, they said he was a homosexual, though it seems that may be more a reflection on our times than on Richard’s.”