Elizabeth Peters - Laughter of Dead Kings

John tossed his suitcase onto the bed and began unpacking.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

John stiffened, gave me a piercing look, and then relaxed. “You’re always hungry. Call room service. You remember the procedure, I trust?”

That and a lot of other things, I thought, as I picked up the phone. John had brought me here after the end of our Roman escapade—if I may use such a light-hearted word to describe a scenario that included murder, attempted murder (of me), grand theft, fraud, another murder, attempted seduction (of me), and a spectacular nervous breakdown (not me). The hotel didn’t have a restaurant; if a guest wanted anything, from a gourmet meal to a piano, he called the front desk and asked for it—and got it. On the occasion of my first stay I had requested medical supplies and copious quantities of booze, in addition to food. The booze was for me. My nerves were in terrible shape. The medical supplies were for John, who had incurred a number of well-deserved injuries. He’d been one of the gang initially and had come over to my side only because…Well, to make a long story short, by the time we left the hotel next day I was inclined to believe he had repented of his evil deeds and learned to care deeply for me. At least I believed it until the next time we met…

With a sigh, I picked up the phone. “What do you want to eat?” I asked.

“Give it to me.” John took the telephone. “You don’t know anything about wine.”

“I know I want lots of it.”

The wine arrived almost at once. It was red. The waiter slithered silently out; John sat down next to me and raised his glass. “Cheers.”

“Is it the pope?”

“I knew you were going to say that,” John remarked with satisfaction. “That’s one of the reasons why I love you. Your bull-headed one-track mind. No, dear, it isn’t His Holiness. I don’t move in such exalted circles.”

“Shouldn’t you check to see whether Feisal has called?” I held out my empty glass.

“And I love the way you leap from one non sequitur to another. He’s barely had time to reach Cairo. Anything from Schmidt?”

I hadn’t bothered to turn my cell phone on after we landed, since I didn’t particularly want to hear from anybody, especially Schmidt. When I did so, I found not one but three text messages from him. Schmidt adores texting. He adores every new gadget until the next one comes along.

“Clara bit Suzi,” I reported.

“Good for Clara.”

“The damn woman has the run of my house. What do you suppose she—”

“Suzi is an unknown quantity and the least of our worries at the moment. She can’t have any knowledge of—shall we refer to it henceforth as Feisal’s loss?”

“She’d taken up with Schmidt before it happened,” I conceded.

“Anything else?”

“Just the usual. Oh, there’s the waiter. Good. I’m—”

“Starved. I know.” John went to the door and opened it. The hallway outside was discreetly dim, but I made out a cheering sight—a cart loaded with serving dishes. The waiter was an undersized youth possessed of an oversized mustache; grunting with effort, he propelled the cart forward.

John let him get all the way into the room before he moved. The boy let out a shriek as his arm was yanked back and up. The gun he had been holding hit the floor with a thud.

THREE

Don’t just sit there, do something,” John gasped. His prisoner was squirming and writhing and directing ineffectual blows at John’s midriff.

“Hit him,” I suggested.

“That would be unkind and unnecessary,” said a fourth party.

He stood in the doorway, pretty nearly filling it. His mustache was even larger than the boy’s. His gun was bigger too.

“Idiota,” he remarked, addressing the boy.

“Scusi, Papa,” said the boy. He kept swinging at John, who had shifted his grip and was holding the kid out at arm’s length. The mustache hung by a thread, or rather, a hair, and the face now visible to my wondering eyes was spotted with pimples.

“Let him go, you big bully,” I said.

“Damn it,” said John.

“Let us compose ourselves,” said the newcomer, in a fruity baritone. “Sir John, I beg you will release my incompetent offspring. Giuseppe, sit down and behave yourself. Signorina, my compliments.”

John dropped Giuseppe and gestured pointedly at the gun the big man held. “The atmosphere of cordiality would be improved if you would put that away, Bernardo, old chap.”

“Certainly. It was only meant to get your attention.”

“It did that,” I said, watching Bernardo stow the gun away in one pocket. He scooped up the weapon his son had dropped, and shoved it into another pocket. They did not improve the hang of his coat.

Bernardo chuckled. “You haven’t taken to carrying a weapon, have you?” he inquired of John.

John took his empty hands out of his own pockets. “How much did you pay Enrico?” he asked.

“You do him a grave injustice. It was not necessary for me to bribe him. Your arrival was noted and reported. Signorina.” He bowed gracefully. “May I offer you a glass of wine?”

“Only if you’re paying for it.”

This sally produced a shout of laughter. “Ah, she is witty as well as beautiful! I get it, as you say in America! Then may I beg that you will offer me a glass?”

I was beginning to like Bernardo. He was about John’s height, and about twice his breadth, especially through the chest and shoulders. He had an outdoorsman’s finely lined skin, eyebrows almost as oversized as his mustache, and a head of black hair so impeccably smooth it looked like a designer toupee. He bared a set of expensively capped teeth, and took a chair opposite me.

At his father’s request, Giuseppe produced another glass and we all settled down round the table. Giuseppe kept rubbing his wrist and shooting malevolent glances at John.

“None for him,” said Bernardo, indicating his son. “He does not deserve any. How true it is, your English saying, that one should never send a boy to do the work of a man. The mustache, as I tried to tell him, was a mistake.”

“Why did you send him, then?” I asked curiously.

“He must learn sometime. To your health, signorina. And to yours, my dear old friend.”

John acknowledged the salute with a sour smile. “What do you want, Bernardo?”

“Simple.” The big man put his empty glass on the table and leaned forward. “I want in on the deal.”

After our uninvited guests had taken their leave, John made sure the door was locked. “If you had bothered to close the door while I was subduing the incompetent offspring, Bernardo wouldn’t have got in.”

“He’d have got in one way or another,” I said, lifting covers. “Anyhow, what was the harm? He was very nice. Veal scaloppini? Tomato-and-mozzarella salad? Osso buco?”

“Don’t overdo it, Vicky.”

He wasn’t talking about the food. Abandoning my attempt at positive reinforcement, I went to him and put my arms round his neck. “As Bernardo might say, I do get it, John. He’s heard about—er—Feisal’s bereavement, and if he knows, so do a lot of other people. But he doesn’t know who pulled it off.”

“He thinks I did. What he was offering, in case you missed it, was to act as middleman in helping me dispose of it.”

“It wasn’t so much an offer as a demand,” I mused. “At least we know he wasn’t the one who stole Tut.”

“Splendid,” John said sourly. “We can cross one name off the endless list. I didn’t suppose he was; he’s never been known to operate outside western Europe.”

I couldn’t think offhand of anything positive to say about that. I carried my filled plate to the table.