Chapter 11 Summary

Tom walks briskly across the terrace and into Dickie's studio. He asks Dickie if he wants to go to Paris in a coffin. Tom has met a man named Carlo in the village, a disreputable Italian who will pay them 100,000 lire each to pretend they are corpses. Tom thinks the scheme has something to do with drugs. Dickie insists Tom must have misunderstood the man's Italian, so the two go to the bar to find Carlo. Carlo proves to be an unwashed but freshly shaven minor thug with dirty nails. He takes one look at Dickie's tan, worn but expensive Italian clothes and American rings, and decides Dickie is not the man for the job. Dickie ridicules Tom for the suggestion, but Tom insists a month ago, in Rome, Dickie would have accepted. Dickie calls the man a dirty crook, and Tom says...