I had planned to be careful in Naples during my brief walkabout when my cruise ship docked in the old Italian port in June. Warnings were everywhere against pickpockets and purse snatchers:
The assistant maitre d' in the ship's dining room that morning had confided, "Oh, yes, every time our ship docks here, some passenger has something stolen: the jewelry, the purse . . ."
Guidebooks caution women walking in Naples to carry their shoulder bags on the side of their body closest to buildings because thieves ride their buzzing Vespas onto the sidewalks and yank the bags off the street-side shoulder.
And an otherwise gushing article in National Geographic Traveler offered this under the headline Caveats:
"Despite some recent improvement, Naples still has a well-deserved reputation for bag-snatching and other petty crime. . . . Watch for small scams - always check your change, for example, and see that cab meters are re-set and running before you set off."
Well, who didn't know that old scam? A guidebook reviewed in these pages a few years back stated boldly that outside of London, a majority of cabdrivers see tourists as "walking wallets waiting to be emptied."
So why wasn't I paying attention when I left the gangway of the ship that sunny morning? Perhaps because I was intent on finding a cabbie who spoke enough English that he could get me to the office of a courier service. I wanted to send guidebooks and material home, thus lightening the weight of my suitcases below the figure at which some airlines levy expensive overweight charges.
I was pleased at being greeted quickly by an English-speaking cabbie a few yards from the ship. I showed him the address of the courier office; he waved over a barrel-chested colleague and told him my destination.
"Go with Nicola," the first man said. As I followed Nicola to his cab, I noticed that the T-shirt, stretched over his broad back, spoke of a festival in Jamaica. I asked if he had been to Jamaica.
"Sure, I live there three months," he replied. By the time we reached his cab, we had discussed the few places on that island I could recall, and Nicola invited me to sit in the front seat. After all, were we not old Jamaica hands?
Through the windshield I looked at the seedy harbor district of Naples. But my attention quickly focused on the oncoming vehicles that Nicola kept driving us toward. If I see them, I thought, surely he must see them and will avoid them.
Nicola proved adept at near-misses and at chattering in accented English. Before we reached my destination, in less than 15 minutes, I knew that his wife's no-good brother living in Buenos Aires had cried poverty for so long that Mrs. Nicola had forced her husband to send him hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Though Nicola, I must understand, had to work day and night in this cab to keep his two children and wife clothed and fed . . .
We wound up at the DHL courier office, which actually was a travel agency. The clerk/travel agent charged me 47 euros (then about $55), to mail the 41/2 pounds of books and papers. She insisted that it could not be sent any other way than two-day delivery.
Nor would the clerk accept a credit card. Luckily, I had taken a 50-euro note from the safe in my cabin before leaving the ship.
Well, at least my errand was run and I could do some sightseeing before boarding a tour bus to the excavated ruins of Herculaneum, which had been buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
But Nicola was not ready to go. He was arranging a weeklong vacation to Croatia for his family. Did I mind if he took a while to complete the booking, he asked?
How could I begrudge my pal family happiness?
I spent several minutes trying to decipher travel brochures written in Italian until Nicola folded some papers, put them in his shirt pocket and told me that we could leave.
"Five hundred euros - is five hundred euros," Nicola lamented before turning the key in the ignition.
On the way back to my ship, I tried not to be concerned when he pulled out of a lane of traffic stopped for a light, drove alongside these cars in the empty oncoming-traffic lane and smoothly angled us in front of an electric trolley car that had been at the front of the line of vehicles.
Nicola ignored the three policemen standing on a corner across the intersection, and they ignored him. When the traffic light turned green, we zipped into a right-hand turn.
Nicola seized the opportunity to change his monologue - how Italy's acceptance of the euro had destroyed the national economy and, of course, his finances - to how useless the police were.
It seemed like an opening for me to comment on the warnings about purse snatchers and pickpockets. Nicola let me get out most of my sentence before he interrupted, as friends will do to each other:
"Naples is a big city, plenty of people living here, but only a few bad ones. They give city bad name. New York has crime, too, yes?"
You're asking me, a devotee of all the Manhattan-based Law & Order series?
We pulled alongside the ship, and as Nicola swung into a U-turn, he said, "That is 50 euros. Does not include the tip for me."
Although I thought my ear was well-tuned to his accent, I had to ask:
"What's that? Did you say 15 euros?"
"No, five-zero euros. That does not include the tip for me."
For the first time I noticed the zeros showing on the digital display of the cab's meter directly in front of me.
I looked around for someone to whom I could protest. But Nicola, who bore a striking resemblance to the pro wrestler Goldberg, had driven to a place on the pier where the only people were other taxi drivers.
As I reached for my wallet, I said only, "I'll need a receipt."
Without asking for confirmation, Nicola filled one out, tipping himself 10 euros.
The joke was on him: I had only 57 euros with me.
I showed him my wallet, he recounted the 57 euros, including some coins, and said, "It's good enough."
Now out of the cab, this Walking Wallet said, "It sure is," and slammed the door. I walked toward my ship, realizing that I had traded part of my time in Naples for Nicola's time in Croatia.
