The Gondola Scam (21 page)

The dashed-off drawing I'd picked up
had the name Sebastiano Ricci evenly subscribed in that immortal copperplate.
In my whole life I've seen three R.V.H.'s items j found, and the great museums
of Europe abound with ! them, so you've no excuse for ignorance. Sebastiano
Ricci, as far as I remembered on the spot, painted a chapel apse in Chelsea
Hospital. Most of his stuff is in Windsor Castle or at Venice's Accademia.

Fully armed for battle, I got the train
across the causeway. By eleven I was disembarking from the number-two waterbus
at the Rialto on the Grand Canal, and cutting through the narrow
calle
that brings you out by the Goldoni
Theater. Ten minutes later I was ringing the brass push bell of the Palazzo
Malcontento, and smiling with fright, but in sure anticipation.

Looking back on it now, I think how
reasonable I was to go berserk.

20

The bloke who eventually opened the
door was twice my size. All curly black hair and droopy mustache. Nothing to
match Ivan the Terrible's description this time. He might actually be the man
in the waiting motorboat who watched me the day Cosima showed me round the
Gobbo's market. We greeted each other politely, friendly politicians.

"Name of Lovejoy." I offered
the information into his longish silence. A waterbus rushed past. The
traghetto
man cursed in his rocking
gondola.

"The
locande
are—"

Cheeky swine. I didn't want a place to
doss down. "I want to see the lady of the house, please. Signora Norman."

'Not in." Slam.

Ah, well. I idled over to watch the
traghetto
come and go across the Grand
Canal, keeping an eye on the Palazzo Malcontento. I'd never seen so much
wrought iron. Even the balconies of the great tall rectangular windows were
covered with the damned stuff. Lovely and antique, but you'd need oxyacetylene
and a Sheffield gang just to let in some fresh air. Clever of Mrs. Norman.

No sign of any motorboat moored
alongside the house, but then there might be all kinds of sneaky little private
canals which we tourists never even see. No action by the time the
traghetto
gondola bumped into its pier
on its eighth rocky trip, so I went and pressed the bell again.

He came out ready for a dust-up, moving
with aggression written all over him. I begged with the speed only cowards
achieve for him to accept a gift for the signora. He halted at that.

"A gift. Personal."

"Where is it?" He stood
vigilant and still while I drew out the flat cylindrical box. I rattled the
sycamore disc inside, tempting.

"It's a genuine Elizabethan
coaster, signore." I opened it and showed him, passing the box but keeping
the inscribed coaster. "Hang on, though."

Signor Gambello had let me have—well,
I'd nicked it, actually—a ten-inch piece of his metal rod to sharpen on the
lathe. While this goon looked on in amazement I put the coaster flat on the
palazzo wall and slammed the pointed metal through the wood. Quick as that, I
chucked it to him to keep both his hands occupied. It broke my heart to skewer
the lovely thing, especially as I'd made it look so original and antique.

"What—?"

"Grazie."
I smiled, swiftly backing off to where the two
traghetto
men were now still, looking at
our little scene. No arguments, not even with aggressive goons, until I knew
whose side I was on. Or better, who was on mine. The nerk went in slowly,
staring at me with malevolence. He'd remember my face now, but then I'd
remember his.

Ten minutes later he came for me. I was
sitting perched on the
traghetto
pier
railing reading notices about long-gone gondola regattas, and let myself be
invited in.

'The signora's assistant will see you
now," he announced at the air over my head.

“Ta," I said, slipping round him
and into the palazzo's doorway at a rapid trot, slamming the door behind me so
he was left outside. Assistant, indeed.

These Venetian palazzi have an aroma
all their own. Some find it claustrophobic, even musty. To me it's beautiful.
It's antiques, antiquity projecting from the lovely ancient past into this
crappy modem world, and still going strong. Still lived with, despite the folly
and stupidity of our modem-day daftness. It's love, hallowed and enshrined—

"I don't believe it!" A
staccato laugh ripped down the stairs at me. Ugly, shrill. "It really is
the tramp with that ridiculous car!"

A young bloke wearing a pink cotton
suit and a cravat was staring down into the hall over a luscious oak balcony.
The wall lights were subdued greens, yellows, rose colors in ghastly Murano
glass, but I recognized the laugh from that day Mr. Malleson had outbid the
ring dealers and Connie and me were in the Ruby at the pub. I'd found the
Norman family's hatchet man. The one who'd done in Crampie and Mr. Malleson.

"Good day, signora." I spoke
up the staircase, swallowing my hatred and smiling. "Lovejoy."

The thundering on the door made me
shout.

"What have you done with dear
Placido?"

"Locked him out, I'm afraid.
Sorry." Placido was a laughable name for a ten-ton mauler.

"You have?" the pink
apparition said with awe. "He'll be in such a temper!"

"What
is
it, Tonio?" a woman's voice called.

"Some scruff, dear. No need to come.
I'm getting rid of him."

The door was being pounded. Excited
people outside were asking what was going on. It was all getting rather out of
hand.

I yelled, "Signora? Don't come out
if you're ugly."

''What?''
the voice demanded.

"You heard."

The enemy was coming down the stairs,
practically quivering with anticipation at the excitement of taking me apart,
when she appeared on the landing above us.

"Wait."

Tonio halted his pigeon-toed descent.
"Don't spoil it now, dear."

'You're the cocktail man," she
observed to me.

'Eh? Oh." That middle-aged aggro
over the cocktail in the hotel bar the night me and Nancy made smiles. I went up,
ignoring the burning hatred in Tonio as I passed. "You're the lady with
more money than sense. I remember. I'm Lovejoy."

She was being amused at it all when I
finally stood beside her. She was holding my skewered coaster. "Explain
your insults."

"You've got to be rich to buy a
two-carat Royal Lavulite stone. You've got to be senseless to plonk it in the
middle of a Florentine-set gold crucifix like you did."

We processed, me first, into a grand
chandeliered room of rectangular windows, darkened paintings, and heavy
furniture. A telly was showing muddy red lines across people's faces. The clue
to her amusement was in her screaming boredom. Well, if the script called for
me to be a diversion, I'd divert all right.

"It was done by a great craftsman,
Lovejoy. Are you a jeweler?"

"I'm an expert forger, love.
That's a million things a jeweler isn't."

In the room's light she was lovely. No,
gorgeous rather. Her hair could only be called rich, obviously shaped daily by
dedicated salon slaves. Her clothes had that casual fawn style only wealth
brings. She'd not been expecting visitors, but her makeup didn't war with her
earrings and her opal nail varnish didn't drain the colors reflected from a
single one of her three rings.

"Or an expert lunatic who impales
a genuine Elizabethan posset coaster?"

Her eyes never left me—God, her black
eyelashes were a mile long—as she failed to take a cigarette from a carved box
of Bengal ivory. Failed because my fingers were there first, crushing the
cigarettes into an unsmokable mess.

She recoiled slightly. "You're
insane."

"No smoking where there's these
lovely oil paintings, missus. Even the rich shouldn't be that dim. Especially
them." I looked sadly at my ruined handiwork. "And I made the
coaster. Finished yesterday."

"You?" Tonio came sulking
beside her as she spoke. "I suppose you've witnesses?"

"Two in Mestre. One here—me. I'd
never do that to a genuine antique."

"You're always stopping me,
cara
,” Tonio grumbled. I was beginning
to hate the way he kept his opaque stare fixed on me. It's the way folk look at
the salad in a restaurant—dull stuff, eating a chore, something to be got on
with, then forgotten.

She sat to show how beautiful her shape
was. "Hush, Tonio. Bring us a drink. What else can you make. Lovejoy?"

"Not for me, thanks," I said
quickly. The sudden pallor round Tonio's mouth meant he was determined to keep
Venice's medieval reputation alive even if it meant poisoning my sherry.
"What else? I can fake anything."

Tonio pigeon-toed out of the room, a
lot of paces before he looked away to see which way he was going. I'd made a
real friend there. Shallow eyes unnerve me. I get to imagining there's nobody
behind the corneas.

"Prove it."

I fetched out my little Ricci sketch
for her.

''
You
did this?"

"
Certo
, signora."

"How?"

"Mind your own business."

Tonio returned, with Placido carrying a
salver. She reached unlooking for her glass. The nerks guided it into her hand.
I'd found the boss all right. I presume the brownish fluid was her famous rusty
nail cocktail, but the glass was a perfect glowing example of Venetian
eighteenth-century ware. I almost wept with longing. The two goons stood about
in hope of an order to exterminate.

"Cara,"
Tonio said as she placed her lips loosely about the rim.
"This man's a dealer. I saw him with your daughter."

His putting the relationship so
spitefully into words shocked me, but I did my innocence bit, glancing about
with quizzing curiosity before letting my brow clear and recognition show.
"I see. You're Mrs. Norman? Mr. Pinder's daughter?" "Yes."

I sat, unasked, nodding slowly as if
realizing. "I see." "You see what exactly?" She hated me
for knowing her daughter. Notions of aging thickened the atmosphere. We all
ignored them, but I wouldn't like to be in Tonio's lemon-leather shoes when she
got him alone. Odd how older women don't realize they're twenty times better
than young popsies.

"If I'd known you were the lady in
charge here, it would have been a lot easier for me, signora."

'You have one minute," she said.
"Time him, Tonio." I spoke from a dry throat. "I'm a dealer,
true. And I've forged a few antiques in my time. The woman in the dealers' ring
took me to see old Mr. Pinder. He told me about some scam in Venice, a lot of
forgeries and fakes. Wanted me to work for him."

"Why didn't you agree?"

"I'm no glue-and-saw hack, love.
I'm superb." Tonio snickered and nudged Placido, but I kept on. "The
old man seemed nice enough, and the girl said the wages would be high. But
that's not enough. I've given you proof I'm a great forger. So I want a
percentage. No flat rates for me, love, if it's a really big scam."

'To which Mr. Pinder replied . . .
?" I shrugged. "No offense, but it was obvious the boss was here in
Venice, not him."

'The address!" Tonio put a hand on
her shoulder. There was a lot of possessiveness in the air, and none of it
anything to do with me, worse luck.

"Daddy and Caterina would never
tell you, Lovejoy." "Mr. Pinder got reminiscing. I pieced it
together." "He's lying,
cara
!
He's some sort of agent—" "No. Babbo does, all the time." She
held out her glass as if in disdain. They leapt to collect it. "I want
this sketch examined. Bring Luciano."

"He's on the island."

Tonio bent and whispered into her ear.
She smiled, gleeful like a little girl given a pleasant surprise.

"Yes. Give Lovejoy the cigarette
lighter."

Placido passed me a gold cube.
"Ta. But I don't smoke, missus."

"And pass him the sketch,
Tonio."

Lighter. Ricci's sketch. I held them
both. There was no danger to anyone, but I felt my chest chill with that awful
cold which true terror brings.

"Let me look!" She came
across, knelt in front of me. "Now bum it, Lovejoy."

"Eh?"

"You heard the lady, tramp."
Tonio toesied over to enjoy the fun. "Light the lighter. Bum
the—your—sketch."

He clicked the thing in my hand. The
flame was blood red, some fancy gimmick. She had her forearms on my knees. Her
eyes were enormous, dark, made into deep tunnels by the reflected fire.
Excitement was making her breathe quicker. Our faces were inches apart, her
lovely arms on my knees.

"Well?"

Neat. A true forger would bum it
uncaring. He could dash off another fake in a trice on the back of an envelope.
A phony—especially one with some vested interest— couldn't or wouldn't, or
would risk his neck with some hesitation.