Ravioli & Revolvers

By Paul G Turner

From the docks of St Malo, through the city streets of England, to the stunning Italian countryside, this fast-moving adventure sees a love affair start, against all odds, in the middle of an international manhunt by two competing groups of gangsters.
For Luigi Legrand, a charming quick-witted pickpocket, the dream of getting rich quick is shattered when his first day working on the St Malo docks ends in total disaster. Forced to go on the run from French gangsters, he relies on cunning and more than a little luck to evade them, as they pursue him out of the country.  
The French bullyboys are joined in the hunt by a pair of sophisticated Italian mobsters, with their own agenda, and the hunt is on. In the middle of the chase, Luigi encounters a woman like no other he has ever met and falls head over heels for her.
Will Luigi's quick wits and street smarts be enough for him to evade the hunters? Will he ever be able to stay in one place, and give love a chance?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marble City Publishing
• Release date: Nov 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201848071

Book preview

To my daughter, Emma,

for her unwavering support and encouragement.

They appear very similar, but they are not.

Behind the suave sophistication of the Italian awaits a cold-hearted ruthlessness, whereas, beneath the gallic charm of the Frenchman lies the beating heart of a raw brute.

Martine Grenoble, St Malo.

Prologue

Beside the freshly dug grave of Giuseppe Zanetti, halfway up the steep Sicilian hillside, a priest began to read from his bible to the gathered mourners. They listened intently to the steady pitch of his voice whilst the early summer sunshine roasted them in their black mourning clothes.

‘He was unlucky to go like that,’ said an elderly man hidden from the priest’s watchful eye at the back of the gathering.

‘It was not a good death,’ agreed another, his face dark and wrinkled from years of Mediterranean sun. ‘He would have wished to die proudly, properly.’

The two old friends shuffled closer to each other both sweltering in their best three-piece suits, each clutching their hats in front of them as a sign of respect.

‘His family has such a great tradition of dying well.’

‘But to choke on an olive? There is no pride in such a death.’

‘It could have been worse. He could have died peacefully in his sleep.’

The priest raised his voice as a warning to the old men who stopped talking for a few moments.

‘If only he had been assassinated,’ said the first man wiping perspiration from his forehead with a black silk handkerchief.

‘Yes, that would have been better. Maybe shot by a sniper or, even better, stabbed with a stiletto to the heart?’

A large woman dressed in a black dress turned and scowled at the two wizened men through her lace veil but their eyes had seen many more frightening and intimidating sights during their longs lives and they ignored her silent admonishment.

‘When it is my turn, I want to go out in a gunfight.’

‘That would also be a good death.’

‘Yes, nothing too complicated you understand. Maybe take a few people with me but leave everyone with something to talk about at the funeral, a bit of a legacy.’

‘Ah yes, but haven’t you shot enough people already in your life to be certain of your legacy?’

‘That depends. What sort of score do you need? I mean, how many is enough?’

The ancient Sicilian lifted his shaky parchment-like hands, squinted against the bright sunshine, and started counting on his fingers. His eyes stared into infinity as he relived moments from his younger years, days when his hands were steady, and his back didn’t ache when it rained.

‘I would say a dozen men would constitute a legacy.’ He nodded confidently to his comrade.

‘A dozen you say? In that case I am a few short of my quota!’

‘Ha! I am ahead of the target. That is why I chose a dozen.’

They chuckled and the large woman turned to them again and her veil bulged out as she hissed.

‘Shsh!’

‘Brothers, please, a man lies before us at the start of his final journey. Let us all show some respect,’ said the Priest who paused before turning back to the passage that he was reading. ‘It was our Lord Jesus’ greatest servant, St Paul, who gave us these words...’

The mourners fell silent again as the priest’s penetrating tones drifted up the hillside, beyond the baked stone walls of the graveyard and into the overgrown olive groves on the upper slopes. It was a timeless scene that had been played out over centuries in the beautiful but brutal Sicilian countryside.

‘I would like to go in the bedroom, in the arms of a beautiful young woman,’ started up the second of the two old men.

‘That would be another good death.’ His old friend gave a chuckle. ‘But is it not too soon after your wife’s passing to be thinking about such things?’

‘You make a good point. However, she died over five years ago and I mourn her every day, but I am sure she would understand that a man still has needs.’

‘Of course, of course,’ nodded the first, ‘But then, do you think you could manage okay?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, my old friend, we are neither of us young saplings thrusting up out of the ground. We are like the old olive trees, wizened and twisted, with bits dying away and falling off. Do you follow?’

‘Not really, no.’

The first aged Sicilian turned his back on the priest, stretched his shoulder to relieve the aching and then leaned forward to whisper to his friend.

‘Well, to speak plainly, could you still satisfy a woman, especially a much younger woman? She would have significant expectations. It could be like trying to play billiards with a piece of old rope, no?’

The priest’s voice started to get louder again, as a further warning, and a ripple of disapproving scowls spread through the mourners surrounding them. It didn’t work and now they both turned away from the mourners to obtain some privacy at the back of the crowd.

‘I walk for an hour every day, I eat fish three times a week and with a bottle of good Sicilian wine inside of me I am sure that I would be able to, as you put it, manage without any problems.’

‘Well, in that case, that would be a good death too, and plenty to talk about at the funeral, always assuming that you were able to manage.’

‘Well, as it happens, I have been thinking about this subject a lot over the past few months. If there was any doubt at all, I was talking to my grandson last week, and he tells me you can buy a little pill that gives you the vigour of a twenty-year-old honeymooner. He says you can buy them on the inter-web.’

‘You have a computer?’

‘No, of course not, but my grandson does.’

‘Well, that sounds like a plan then!’

The two men laughed and turned back to the gathering, ignoring the frowns and scowls that were now raining down on them from the other mourners. The veiled lady in black landed a savage blow on the shoulder of one of the men with her substantial handbag. He staggered and was caught by his elderly friend.

‘I bet you couldn’t ‘manage’ her,’ said the catcher.

‘AND IN CLOSING,’ said the priest, ‘I would like to invite you all to join me in a silent prayer for our brother Giuseppe as we commit his body to the ground.’

The mourners moved as one, putting their hands together and bowing their heads in prayer. The priest began to sprinkle holy water from a small silver goblet onto the dark wooden coffin. At the front of the small crowd a young woman began to sob and another relative put an arm around her shoulder.

‘This is still wrong,’ whispered the first man.

‘Agreed. This is not how he would want to have been remembered.’

‘Let’s show Giuseppe the sort of respect that he would have wanted,’ said the first, reaching inside his black jacket and pulling out an old but well-oiled revolver.

His friend met this with a toothless grin and retrieved his own small revolver from his waistband. For a moment the spark of lost youth flashed between them as they pointed their guns towards the baking sky.

‘For Giuseppe!’ they shouted, firing their guns into the air.

The priest and most of the mourners first looked up in shock and disbelief then started to scatter away from the gunfire. Two of the younger men rolled athletically away from the group, taking cover behind the nearest gravestones, appearing again with their own guns trained on the two old men.

‘Don’t shoot! Put your guns away!’ shouted the large woman to the young pistol-toting men. ‘It’s just Pepe and Gianluca, the silly old fools!’

The gunfire stopped and the smoke from their antique revolvers slowly drifted away across the graveyard, the sudden silence and cloud of cordite fumes stunning the crowd. The younger gunmen slowly stood up from behind their cover and holstered their modern weapons.

‘Are you two quite finished?’ asked the woman.

‘Not quite.’ Pepe smiled encouragingly to his partner. ‘For Giuseppe!’

They started firing again.

High above the chaotic graveside scene, hidden amongst the tangled olive trees, a man in a pale suit made the sign of the cross and tapped a number on his phone. It rang once.

‘Speak to me,’ said the metallic voice at the other end of the phone.

‘It’s over, Padrino. The last male member of the Zanetti family is buried.

Chapter 1

‘Merde!’ yelled Luigi.

The shock of the car hitting the water had winded him and Luigi could see stars from his head crashing against the headrest. He guessed that even a Ferrari wasn’t designed for a ten-metre drop backwards into water.

This is so stupid, thought Luigi, even for me.

The oily water sprayed through the air vents onto the hand-stitched leather and he tried to hold it back to preserve the air inside the car for as long as possible. He clamped his hands over the two nearest vents and for a moment he thought it would work but then the car started to sink into the sea.

He thought that he could hear gunfire? That made no sense, why would there be gunfire? Then the windscreen shattered and the harbour water rushed in. He threw his arms over his face and grabbed one last breath of air before the water hit him.

*

The day had started so well, with the sun on his back, working outside in the fresh sea air, and a job on the docks, a world that it was hard to break into. Normally you needed to be related to someone to get a job there but Father Stefan had managed to get him an opportunity and Luigi was determined to make it work.

He had been working hard all morning on the dockside, making sure cargo containers were located correctly on the back of each truck before they left. With the backdrop of salty sea air, the constant cries of seagulls around the harbour-side, Luigi was enjoying the physical work.

The crane operator swung the next metal container overhead and the pulleys screeched and complained as the heavy machinery shifted the twenty-ton metal box. Luigi located the hook on the end of his pole into a metal eye on the corner of the container and helped guide it into position on the bed of the waiting truck. He fastened each corner and the truck pulled away.

On the St Malo docks all the drivers and dockworkers were connected to Jean-Luc Grenoble, who ran all the docks in Brittany. The drivers were given jobs because they were connected which meant they hadn’t been trained in the basics of dockside safety, let alone taught to drive Heavy Goods Vehicles, resulting in a spectacular accident rate. The dock foreman had made it clear to Luigi that as long as the containers left the port on the back of a truck and no one got hurt ‘too badly’ then it was someone else’s problem after that.

‘Some of the guys may try and run you over a little,’ the foreman had warned Luigi, ‘but that’s just because we told them you were Italian.’

‘Half Italian,’ Luigi had corrected.

‘Sure, sure. They’ll just ‘half’ run you over then!’

The next driver approached at speed and bounced his front wheel over the ten-inch kerb, forcing Luigi to leap out of the way yet again to avoid being crushed.

‘Hey, watch where you’re going, you moron!’

The unshaven driver grinned smugly at him before giving him one very large finger and revving his truck engine aggressively to create a cloud of exhaust fumes.

Definitely a Belgian, thought Luigi.

On the other side of the harbour from the old city, the port at St Malo had two container loading bays although only one of them was currently operating.

Part of his job was speaking to the crane driver over the radio to guide him into landing his load perfectly onto each vehicle. The next container crashed spectacularly into the back of the driver’s cab, moving the whole vehicle forward a few feet. The truck driver shouted and started to climb out of the cab.

‘Hey, you stupid Breton,’ shouted Luigi into the radio. ‘What’s the matter? You have one too many brandies last night?’

‘Just do your job you dumb Italiano,’ shouted the crane driver’s voice through the walky-talky. ‘What’s the matter? Your girlfriend not let you get any last night?’

‘That’s right,’ yelled Luigi, ‘I was too busy last night. Just ask your wife.’

‘Just get that dumb Belgian to reverse up and get your sorry arse into gear.’

The dumb Belgian had by now lowered himself to the ground and as he heard this he turned his massive muscular frame towards Luigi almost blocking out the sun.

‘The guy’s an idiot,’ said Luigi calmly gesturing skywards up to the crane operator but squaring up to the driver as he did so. Luigi himself was an even six foot but he was dwarfed by the driver who was truly enormous.

The driver stared impassively from beneath a deep furrowed brow.

‘Yeah, what an idiot. I’ll sort him out later.’ Luigi jerked his thumb up at the crane operator again and then held out his hand in greeting. ‘No hard feelings?’

The driver stared even more impassively and, if anything, seemed to be getting bigger.

‘Okay, you need to reverse up a bit.’ Luigi mimed driving and the truck moving backwards.

The container swayed and creaked on its chains, the driver immovable as a lump of granite, and Luigi flexed his shoulders ready for the fight.

Luigi had never been in a fistfight. He had always relied on his quick wit and broad smile to charm himself out of any confrontation, although he knew that someday the moment might come, and it looked like the moment was now. Showing his broadest smile, Luigi shifted his weight lightly onto the balls of his feet and took a firm grip of the grappling pole, ready for action.

Faster than he would have thought possible, the driver snatched the grappling pole out of his hand, making him flinch and step back in a crouched position ready for the attack. The fight never came. Instead the driver hooked the container and through sheer brute force pulled it backwards on its chains so that the crane driver could drop it down on the locating pins.

Luigi breathed heavily as the container clanged into place then caught the locating pole as the driver tossed it back to him like a toothpick. Without any further comment the driver climbed back into the cab.

‘You big pussy,’ sneered a metallic voice from the walkie-talkie.

‘You talking about your wife again?’ replied Luigi but privately he heaved a huge sigh of relief. He didn’t need any trouble on his first day.

‘I’ll kick your Italian arse when I get down from here,’ shouted the crane driver as the next truck roared forward and Luigi held his hand up to stop him in the right place. The driver overshot by about three yards.

‘Back it up!’ shouted Luigi, holding both hands up as if to push the truck backwards himself. ‘Come on, let’s go, we haven’t got all day.’

The driver jumped out and wandered over the dockside to urinate.

Luigi jumped in the cab and reversed the truck himself. Nothing could annoy him today.

*

Luigi was proud of his Italian heritage from his mother’s side, and every time he looked in the mirror he saw her staring back at him through his dark eyes, narrow elegant nose and light brown skin. He could also see his father’s square jaw but he normally pushed thoughts about his father out of his mind, never wanting to spoil his mother’s memory.

There was a healthy rivalry between the tiny Italian community in St Malo and the French Bretons, and local connections were everything. The Breton dockworkers didn’t like an Italian being there, not even a half-Italian, but they limited their animosity to profanities and trying to run him over or drop a container on him.

At lunchtime Luigi ignored the other dockworkers when they walked off in a group towards the nearest bar and took his baguette and cheese down to the dockside. He sat with his legs over the concrete edge, watching the steady flow of leisure boats plough back and forth out in the main channel.

He was sitting in the gap between the bow and the stern of two container vessels and as the sun shone on his face he could see right across the channel to the Old Town with its thick stone walls, a citadel on the edge of St Malo. He’d been there many times, mostly pick-pocketing tourists, but he had promised Father Stefan he would stop stealing and so far today he had kept to that promise, although he hoped the docks and the containers full of goods offered much bigger opportunities in the future. He just needed to ease himself into the scene there and learn about how everything was managed, security, paperwork, the whole operation.

Luigi sliced a lump of cheese with his pocketknife, bit the end off his baguette, shoved the cheese into his mouth and chewed. The dryness of the bread and tang of mature goat’s cheese were washed down with water, a poor man’s meal, but a good one nevertheless.

His peace and quiet was soon interrupted.

Chapter 2

‘Hey, you there, Boy-band! I’ve got a job for you.’

The gravelly voice came from behind him and Luigi looked over his shoulder to see one of the dock foremen waving for him to come over to a lone container standing twenty yards from the dockside. There were two other yardmen standing beside him smoking and Luigi already disliked them all. He’d already been the butt of their jokes that morning with endless jibes.

‘Hey, look at those jeans. We running a photo shoot today?’

‘Better give him some office work. Wouldn’t want to chip his nail polish.’

‘We recruiting lady-boys on the docks now?’

No doubt they had in mind some new practical joke but he wrapped his lunch up and stuffed it back into his bag then swung his legs up onto the quay and sauntered over to where they were standing.

‘We’ve got a special cargo here that needs some ‘special’ handling,’ said the foreman, poking his fat finger at the container.

The foreman’s voice was deep and sounded like he was gargling marbles as he spoke. Years of smoking and drinking strong spirits would ruin your throat, not to mention what it did to your lungs or liver.

‘Why me?’ asked Luigi, ready for the inevitable practical joke. ‘I mean, no problem, but what’s so special about this cargo?’

‘You’re Italian right?’ asked the foreman, taking a metal crowbar and breaking open the seal on the container.

‘Half Italian. I’m French but my mother was Italian.’

‘Same difference,’ replied the foreman. ‘So this cargo is Italian too and needs a lady-boy like you to handle it. It’s an important cargo for Monsieur Grenoble himself, so if it’s not too much trouble we need a little princess with soft hands.’

‘And someone with clean jeans,’ said one of the other men.

‘Yeah, that’s right. Me and the boys here, we don’t have those skills, and we got dirty jeans. So we figured you for this job, Princess, and the boss would appreciate it if you could take the cargo to warehouse seven.’

‘Hey, if you want my help don’t call me ‘Princess’, okay? What’s so special about it anyway?’ asked Luigi, anticipating something that would cover him head to foot in filth.

‘You’ll see...Princess.’

The foreman wrenched open the door to the container, revealing a low curved shape covered with a beige tarpaulin. The two yardmen removed the webbing holding the cargo steady inside the container and then the foreman pulled the tarpaulin back with a flourish, leaving Luigi speechless.

It was a yellow Ferrari 430, gleaming clean with the sun glinting off the prancing horse on the rear panel.

‘It’s for Monsieur Grenoble himself. You get a scratch on this baby and you’ll end up at the bottom of the dock,’ growled the foreman, spitting lavishly on the ground.

Luigi was stunned. It was a thing of total beauty, a work of art, something that he could only dream of owning. The car was low slung and had beautiful curves and sharp yellow slats cut across the rear window above four stainless steel exhausts. The foreman retrieved a set of keys and jingled them while he examined the paperwork on his clipboard.

‘Now, manual gearbox, very powerful, turn the key in the ignition, and press the red start button on the steering wheel. A very nice car as you can see. You got all that?’

‘It’s a beautiful car,’ said Luigi, still mesmerised by the Ferrari.

So listen, Princess, you drive it very carefully,’ continued the foreman, ‘and you take it to warehouse seven over there, we’ve cleared a space and you don’t get a scratch on it. You understand me, Italiano? Not one scratch!’

‘I’m still French, but sure, no problem,’ said Luigi, taking the small silver key with the iconic red fob out of the foreman’s enormous hand.

He edged inside the container, which smelled of car polish, and ran one hand down the side of the car.

‘Hey, mind the paintwork!’ barked the foreman.

Luigi opened the long wide door and had to edge inside the car to avoid banging the door against the side of the container. He slid inside, pulled the door closed and wiped his hands thoroughly on his jeans. Then he ran them over the fine leather steering wheel. He surveyed the perfect round dials and controls and located the key in the ignition.

One twist of the key and a high-pitched electronic tone filled the cabin. Luigi froze for a moment, remembered the start button, and pressed it. A dab on the accelerator and the engine roared into life. It was heavenly music that penetrated Luigi to the bones and made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He revved the engine once or twice for effect and then put the car into reverse. He revved once more and lifted the clutch.

The engine stalled.

The hysterical laughter of the three men outside stung him badly.

‘Hey, Italiano, your mum teach you to drive?’

‘Is this car too much for you, Boy-band?’

‘They say only a real man can drive a car like this. Maybe you should get out and let one of us move it?’

Luigi started the engine again and revved much more aggressively.

He stalled again. The three dockworkers doubled over with laughter.

‘You dumb bastard!’

‘Hey, who taught you to drive? Your Grandma?’

‘Maybe a Belgian serviced your Mama about nine months before you was born?’

The mention of his mother was like a slap in the face. That was one insult he couldn’t let go. He contemplated getting out and punching whoever had said it but there were three of them and one of him so he quickly thought better of it.

With the stinging edge of their laughter ringing in his ears, he gunned the engine again, cranked the gear-lever into reverse, and made sure to give the accelerator plenty of gas as the Ferrari’s tyres span on the slick metal floor of the container. Luigi accelerated harder and the Ferrari’s rubber squealed against the metal, then they got traction and sent the yellow car flying out of the container, across the concrete, and straight over the edge of the dock. It fell backwards and hit the water.

*

Luigi forced his way through the gap where the windscreen had been and kicked hard up to the surface. He gasped for air and coughed out a mouthful of putrid water. He was caught in the gap between the rusting hull of a container ship and the seaweed-covered harbour wall. As the water cleared from his ears, he heard voices shouting and could see faces peering at him from above.

The car bobbed up to the surface again after its airbags inflated, pointing straight up in the air like it was about to drive up the side of the dock. Luigi grabbed the window frame to catch his breath, hidden from the angry voices above that continued to swear profusely, punctuated by the occasional ricochet of bullets off metal. Why were they shooting at him?

As the airbags deflated, the yellow Ferrari slowly slid back under the water, exposing him to the men on the dockside.

‘There he is! Shoot him, you idiots!’

‘I’m out, I need to reload.’

‘Me too! Don’t worry, he’s not going anywhere.’

He was a sitting duck if he stayed where he was and the distance to clear either end of the cargo ship was too far. Without a second thought, Luigi took an enormous gulp of air and duck-flipped under the water, holding on to the front grill of the sinking Ferrari which gently pulled him down into the gloom to a level below the hull of the container ship. Mercifully, container ships have a very shallow draft when they are empty and through the green haze and murk the dock water brightened as he slid below the bottom of the hull. With his ears popping from the pressure and the caustic taste of diesel in his mouth, Luigi pushed away from the car and pulled strongly against the water up to the surface on the far side.

Gasping for air, he frantically looked around him.

Oh God! He’d written off Jean-Luc Grenoble’s beautiful car and Grenoble had a fearsome reputation for settling any issues brutally and immediately. The dock foremen and his sidekicks were clearly going to lay the blame on Luigi; someone would need to be punished and that someone was him. It was their fault for insulting his mother like that but he imagined himself in front of Grenoble, explaining what had caused the accident. It sounded pretty thin.

He was safe for a few moments behind the container ship but if they came after him in a boat he would be an easy target. The distance between him and the Old City sea defences on the far side of the water was about three hundred yards.