The Gondola Scam (10 page)

Only a couple of rooms, and a counter by the door, everybody was
in earshot of everybody else. That was half my reason for choosing it, but the
talk turned out to be money, family, money, trade, money, and money. Not a
whisper of antiques or fakes, and nobody mentioned the big house by the
traghetto
—the Palazzo Malcontento on my
guide map. Of course, somebody within earshot mentioned the scandalous theft of
St. Luce's remains and the mysterious ransom demand of 1981, which focused
brief attention on money. And no sight of Cesare. A long shot, really. After an
hour—to me a good meal should last five minutes at the outside—I went out to
explore Venice on foot.

It's easier said than done. During the meal I studied the map.
Venice seems nothing but landmarks. In the end I'd picked out a few. St. Mark's
Square was a natural, and the Rialto Bridge is the world's most famous bridge,
sure to be well signposted. Two. And Mrs. Norman palazzo near that gondola
ferry lay somewhere between. It looked easy. After all, the whole place was
only about three miles by one. The canals were sure to be named, and Cesare's
circular tour had shown me Venice's shape. The position of the other islands
would show you which bit of Venice you'd reached. Simple, no? Answer: no.
Unless you've a superb sense of direction, you're bewildered after a hundred
yards and find yourself going anywhere but where you want.

A mist had descended. This seems to be the pattern in late March,
foggy mist till midmorning, then hazy sun till dusk, when the mist comes back
for the night. A bell was clonking monotonously out in the lagoon beyond the
Riva wharf side. Tugs, ferryboats, water taxis, and the rows of covered
gondolas nodding between Harry's Bar and the Doge's Palace were inactive now.
Few people, the tables and chairs stacked, the ornamental tubbed trees cleared
away, a handful of young wanderers with haversacks waiting dozily for a night
boat. It was all very evocative, listlessly beautiful. I'm not a sensitive
bloke, but the melancholy quickly seeped into my bones. I wasn't cold, not like
Connie gets. It must have been the unrelenting vibrations emanating from
ancient Venice and sounding on my recognition bell. I shook myself, plodded
over the Rio del Vin bridge, and was off, weaving slightly.

Lights guide you at all 449 bridges, and the calle alleyways are
fairly well lit as long as you are near the main centers, where elegant shops
and posh restaurants abound. Yet it's an odd feeling being able to touch both
sides of the high street as you walk. You soon get so used to it you're
astonished when you come out unexpectedly into an open square.

Away from the main Marzaria shopping thoroughfare, though, the
tangle worsens. The canals develop an annoying habit of looking familiar when
you know for a fact you are seeing them for the first time. The calli become
narrower and more convoluted as you walk on. Bridges become more frequent and
acutely angled. I gave up trying to follow door numbers as a bad job. They are
supposed to be supremely logical—start at nil and simply progress consecutively
until the district runs out—but I couldn't quite get the hang of where Venice's
six sestieri actually were, or which way the bloody numbers went at the
trillion intersections.

In Cesare's water taxi I'd worked out that the Palazzo Malcontento
was less than eight hundred yards from the Riva as the crow flies. On foot it
took me an hour, and I'm a quick walker. When finally I emerged into a narrow
campo beside a church, and saw at the end the Grand Canal with the
traghetto
jetties, I knew it was luck
more than judgment.

The place was ill-lit. The hotel on one side was barely into its
tourist season. A few tatty trellisworks marked off stacks of cafe tables, but
the tub plants were dead and the ornamental electric bulbs trailed forlornly on
frayed wires. The hotel seemed stuporose. The gondola ferry seemed to have
jacked in for the night. I strolled down the campo to the Grand Canal.
Obliquely across and left was the Chiesa della Salute. Right, if I dangled out
far enough, would be the Accademia Bridge but beyond there the backward S of
the Grand Canal concealed everything else. Well, well. Casual as any actor from
amateur rep, I gaped left. Carrying a camera has always embarrassed me, but I
badly felt the need of one now. Nothing would be easier from here than to
pretend to photograph the string of lagoon lights near the island of San
Giorgio, and accidentally include the canal side aspect of the Palazzo
Malcontento, but it was too late for good ideas like that. Typical. Several
lights were on in the house, but mostly the windows were shuttered. No
surrounding garden of course, though there might well be a tiny courtyard
hidden somewhere behind those house walls. I'd seen enough stray tendrils here
and there to suggest that little manufactured gardens lurked out of sight. The
two doors had that terrible implacable continental finality about them—doors
are there to be closed, not necessarily opened. The lowest windows were firmly
shuttered. No finger holds. It was all bad news.

The hotel reception clerk glanced up as I passed the door. He must
have caught the altered shadows. The campo was better lit than I’d appreciated.
An outside wall lantern on the big house and the hotel hallway shed more light
than a thief would want.

Depressed, I found a dogleg
calle
and came out on a little bridge at the back of the palazzo. The canal below ran
at right angles into the Grand Canal. A small but elderly barge thing was
moored in it. One of those water doorways, heavily barred, tunneled its way
into the side of the house, presumably where groceries and whatnot were
delivered from supply boats. Great, I thought bitterly. The one nook} way in,
and bars a mile thick.

By the time I'd found the wider
calle larga
which ran towards S. Mark's Square I was miserably
sober. The big house was virtually impregnable. I knew nobody in Venice, so no
chance of wheedling my way in as a friend of a friend That fashion-conscious
killer who had smirked in his yellow fancy DeLorean would be on his guard as
soon as he showed up in his posh yacht and spotted me. It was hopeless.

Even St. Mark's Square looked hardly alive. A few strolling night
owls crossed in front of the great Basilica, peering up at the bronze horses
which stand in front of the upper facade s central window. Venice acquired them
in the Fourth Crusade, but they were made a thousand years before that
shambles. Only one place was open, a crowded coffee bar where distracted young
blokes slogged to serve late customers along the counter's entire length.

"Coffee, please."

'Two, please," a bird's voice corrected at my elbow.

'Two," I agreed, wondering what the hell. The crush was too
great for me to turn, but I glimpsed Cosima's drained face in the mirror.

No place to sit. I made it to the stairs where people were
clustered. Cosima helped. We squatted on the fourth step.

"Upstairs is closed this late," she said, huddling the
cup to her and breathing in the steam. "Nobody'll push past."

"Lucky for us."

"You look like I feel." Her dark eyes held me briefly,
let me go.

"Eh?"

"Exhausted. Fed up."

She was right. I suddenly realized I was all in. Time to chuck in
the sponge for today. I didn't quite cheer up, but it was close.

"I'm glad you happened along, Cosima." I meant it.

"You stole Cesare," she accused. "Made me later
than ever."

"Sorry. Your partner didn't show, eh?"

"No. The bitch never does. One phone call from that lout in
Mestre and she's flat on her back. Leaves me to do it all."

"Extra money, though?"

"That's a laugh. I've phoned nine agencies for a substitute
but it's too early in the season, you see."

Honestly, for the first time I really looked at her. I mean,
really looked, to see the person she was. Of course I knew she was a bit of all
right from having seen her at the airport and on the Riva. Black hair straying
and bouncy, with her distraught air lending her youth an added charm.

She dressed in bird's clothes, too, which is something of a
novelty in these days of scrapyard-lumberjack fashion. Travel couriers can go
practically anywhere they like, right?

"Are you really desperate?" I asked, all offhand.

She looked at me, also probably for the first time. "Yes.
I've not stopped. Been doing tomorrow's reservations since your lot arrived,
not counting the afternoon flight."

I said, "I'm a registered travel courier."

"You are?" Her eyes widened so suddenly at me I nearly
fell into their darkness.

"Except ..." I hesitated for form's sake. "I've only
ever done the Portugal runs."

"That would be all right," she said eagerly. "Do
you have your cards?"

"Well, no. I'm on holiday leave. But I know my registered
number. It's X-2911894, London."

With some excitement we got it written down in her notebook. I
invented a travel firm called Leveridge and Kingston in Bury Street, near St.
James's, because snobbery is a con's greatest ally. Anyway, it would take them
at least four days to check. By then I hoped to have sussed the palazzo's
secret and be independent of Cosima. Optimism's always a laugh.

"This is very kind of you." She was having doubts as we
drank our coffee. "Why would you do this? It's a waste of your own
holiday. And the pay isn't. . ."

I looked away, working as much embarrassment into my face as
fatigue would allow.

"Erm, look, Cosima." I tried to go red, but you never
can when you want to. "I've never done this before. . . . Follow a girl, I
mean. I only hired Cesare to find out who you were," I went on, inwardly a
tortured soul. I turned on my most transparently, sincerely honest gaze and
looked at her. "I don't know quite why, but when I saw you standing there
at the airport ..."

She flushed, glancing away and back. "You mean . . . you mean
you were . . . ?”

My shrug wasn't as Latin as I wanted, but I did my best. "I
suddenly had to . . . well, find out where you went. Are you angry?"

"No," she said, still uncertain but trying for emotional
distance. "Not really."

"I'm trying to be honest with you, Cosima," I said
hesitantly.

"Oh, that's very important," she agreed.

We agreed for a minute or two that honesty was vital in
relationships and finished our cappuccino among the cafe's throng.

"Positively no obligation," I said as a weak lightener.
"But I'll help. And I'll not bother you. Word of honor."

"Only if you're sure."

Worrying I'd acted too well, I assured her I wouldn't mention my
catastrophic love-smitten condition ever again. Gravely she accepted the
promise. We made pedantic arrangements for next day. I was to come with her to
organize the morning arrivals, then do the afternoon airport run to collect
tourists on my own. Cesare apparently knew the ropes well enough to help if I
got in a mess. Self-consciously she wrote a telephone number and an address on
a torn page.

"That's me, Lovejoy. For business purposes."

"For business purposes, Cosima."

"I'll arrange pay on a daily basis."

We rose to go and I risked a joke. "You mean I also get
paid?" But I was so clearly trying hard to be brave she gave a relieved
smile.

She needed the number-one waterbus, so I walked her past the great
Campanile to the San Zaccaria stop on the lagoon waterfront. I couldn't help
asking as we crossed into the Piazzetta, "Two horses?"

She squinted up into the gloom. "You mean four. See?"

"Four, yes, but only two genuine. The two on the right are
fakes."

"Who told you? It's practically a state secret. They are
being replaced by official authentic copies. The originals will go into the
Marciano Museum."

"In the interests of conservation." I'd blurted out the
bitter remark before I could stop myself.

She glanced at me. "Why, of course."

We made only stilted chat after that until the waterbus came and
we shook hands like folk leaving a party suddenly gone sour. For all that, I
stood on the undulating jetty and watched her go. I waved once. She didn't wave
back. I suppose she needed to think, same as me.

11

It being so early in the year, the hotel was only able to provide
half-board. Breakfast was tea and a wad, unless you went mad and ordered
English breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and the rest, then extras were written
on your bill. It looked like being a hard day, so I stuffed with everything I
could lay hands on. Maybe the hotel management wouldn't care for the idea of a
guest transmuting into a courier. As long as I didn't actually starve, I could
always sleep dangling in some belfry.

Airports are all madhouses. God knows what they're like in high
season, but on my first full day I learned the hard way that Cosima's
exasperation was completely justified. Our own band of tourists was insane.
Before we'd been in action ten minutes I could have cheerfully shot the bloody
lot. Cosima had me stand in the thin crowd of couriers, depressives to a man,
and hold up a placard labeled
cosol
in red. I felt a
conspicuous twerp, and Cosima said that's what it's all about. "Believe
me, Lovejoy," she warned anxiously, "if they can fall into the
lagoon, they will. Last week I lost a whole Ami family—they turned up in
Belgrade." She stuck three badges on me.