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attention and said to all of
us, "We would like to inform that Franco Petruzzelli died ... how
you say ... of natural causes."
    We all sighed at the same time.
    "Coincidence that at the time another family
wanted him dead, he died by himself." He nodded. "Good for us.
Maybe no more killing."
    I whispered to Charlie, "Told you giving
away that money was good luck."
    ***
    The airport reopened the next morning so we could
fly to Rome. We put our bags in the back of the taxi and Charlie
said, "So we really aren't related to anyone in Sicily?"
    "No." Mom shook her head like she couldn't
believe her oldest son was so dumb.
    The driver shut the trunk and we all got in
the car. He said to Mom, "You have relatives in Italia ?"
    "Yes," she smiled, "they're from the
north."
    Charlie and me looked at each other and
realized we'd been mega-stupid. And all that time I'd been worrying
about being related to a mafia boss for nothing. I slid down in my
seat.
    Charlie called out to Mom, "Why won't you
tell us who they are? They're descendants of Michelangelo, aren't
they?"
    Mom laughed. "No."
    "Leonardo di Vinci?"
    She turned round to face Charlie and rolled
her eyes.
    "The Pope?" I asked.
    Charlie clicked his tongue at me. "Max, the
Pope isn't Italian."
    "Enough guessing," she said. 'Our relatives
are a wonderful, normal family and like us, they aren't famous at
all."
    "That's okay with me," I said.

The Venetian
Job
    1. MR.
SCARFACE
    I n the distance, I could
see towers, church domes, a palace, lots of boats and moving specks
that must've been people. It was though we were about to arrive in
a strange city in a fairy-tale land. The whole city floated on top
of the water. "Wow," I called out from the back of the water taxi
as Venice appeared in front of us.
    Mom turned round. "Max, Charlie." She
pointed. "There's Piazza San Marco, the Bell Tower, the Winged Lion
on top of the column and the Doge's Palace." I could tell by the
way her eyes lit up that it was her favorite place in the world.
The last time she'd been here was before Charlie and me were
born.
    As we got closer, we got a better view of
the gondolas, ferries and all the people. Artists sat at easels
painting. Heaps of people were wandering and checking everything
out - even our water taxi. Ferries were coming and going and there
were shiny black gondolas parked at the dock.
    The driver steered our water taxi into a
canal. It felt like the beginning of a water ride at a theme park.
A ride where the boat cruises along all slow and safe and then you
realize you are actually at the top of a waterfall and you and your
boat are about to go over the top. But our ride didn't happen like
that. We went under a bridge and it was like we had entered a
magical place with three and four-storey buildings all squashed
together and where the front doors took you to a boat instead of to
a garden.
    I expected our water taxi to go real fast,
but it didn't. There were so many other boats using the canal, no
one could go fast. It'd be cool to go fast. There were boats making
deliveries, there were gondolas with passengers being shown the
sites, there were other water taxis and there was even a boat full
of Italian military police, the Carabinieri , each one with a black machine gun.
    "When will we meet Santo?" I asked Mom.
Santo was married to Mom's cousin, Caterina.
    "Tonight for dinner. You'll like him; he has
a great sense of humor."
    Santo was a policeman and Charlie and me had
lined up this Venice job. We were going to hang out with him while
he was on duty, instead of checking out boring paintings with Mom
and Dad.
    I said to Charlie, "I can't wait to catch
some bad guys."
    "Max," Charlie said in his superior voice,
"Venice is full of tourists. The most exciting thing Santo probably
does is give directions to lost foreigners."
    "Nah, something big and bad will
happen."
    "Yeah, right. The only big thing that might
happen is a boat that's full of people could sink." He peered over
the side of the