The Gondola Scam (22 page)

The sketch hurt my fingers. It was
already charred, fell onto her carpet. I'd lit it practically without thinking.
I watched the flame move casually along to the comer, eating away Ricci's name
in that painfully meticulous copperplate. Gone.

Her hand lifted my chin, exposing my
mind to those luscious fevered eyes. I gave her a delighted grin which felt
from the very depths of my soul. I knew I'd kill her now. It

was out of my hands. Tonio and his lady
had not only done for Malleson and Crampie. They'd just foully murdered a
precious antique from the hand of Ricci himself. My own laborious crap could be
crisped or slung out for all I cared. But people who murder antiques shouldn't
be allowed. Everybody knows that.

I pulled a face, almost laughing now
the responsibility had passed from me.

"Sorry about your carpet, missus,
but you told me."

For an instant she seemed a little
puzzled. Then she shrugged and rose.

"What's your preference,
Lovejoy?"

"Faking? Oh, furniture, jewelry,
sculpture, if I'm on my own. Tapestries and oil painting, with the right
help."

"Stonework?"

My grin was wider and more heartfelt than
ever. I even felt happy. "
Anybody
can fake stonework."

"Take him on, Tonio."

"Don't,
cara
. There's something wrong."

"Nothing that a new suit wouldn't
cure, Tonio."

She snapped her fingers and they
fetched her another cigarette box. I drew breath, glanced at her oil paintings.
Her eyebrows raised inquiringly. I answered with an apologetic shrug.
"Light, Lovejoy."

The same red fire, miles inside her
exquisite pupils. She blew the smoke into the air with an upward jerk of her
chin, and gave me an amused glance of understanding. I was one of her serfs
now.

I cleared my throat. "Any time you
want your oil paintings cleaned, lady."

"Clean yourself up first,
tramp," from Tonio.

"Do you always dress like
that?" Her interest stung me.

"Geniuses are allowed. And if I'm
to work anyway."

"Working clothes are different,
tramp."

I looked Tonio up and down.
"Apparently. Mrs. Norman, that percentage."

"Two things, Lovejoy. First, the money
from our scheme is so vast that your pathetic little requirements are
insignificant. You'll see in good time. Take him out there in a few days,
Tonio."

"Better be tonight,
cara
. There's an
acqua alia
due soon."

"Tiresome. Tonight, then."

"Out where?" I asked.

Nobody spoke until she said coldly,
"And the second is speak when you're spoken to. Understand?"

Everybody paused while I assimilated
her last instruction. "You mean like them?"

"Well." She flicked ash on
the carpet just too quickly for them to streak for ashtrays. They'd both
twitched. I hadn't moved. "Well, almost."

Placido gave me a handful of money at
the door. Tonio told me to make myself presentable, bloody cheek, by fitting
myself out at a tailor's near the Calle delle Bande, to be on the Zattere,
tramp, by eight tonight. He shut the door without waiting for my reply.

The San Moise is hardly the prettiest
church in Venice, but even ugly churches do for lighting candles. As I lit the
four—Mr. Malleson, Crampie, Cosima, and a just-in-case for Nancy—I saw again
those huge wells of eyes with their distant reflected scarlet flames. A second
later, thinking, I put more money in the slot and lit a fifth candle for her.

On the way out I thought. Oh, what the
hell, returned and did a sixth, though Tonio didn't deserve it. He was just
lucky that generosity is my strong suit.

Pleased, I went shopping among the
crowds, looking for Goldoni's shop, where they sell the big navigation maps of
the lagoon.

21

Resplendent in a new off-the-peg, I
tasted the coffee and sank a couple of giant
margherita
pizzas in the comer nosh bar on the della Bande. Not
that I was pleased about being well dressed. As my usual grubby self I could
fade among the mob. Immaculate as any wedding guest, I'd stand out like a
daffodil in a goalmouth. The lady brought over my omelette and some of those
thick torta slices that make Italy a green and pleasant land, so I was in good
nick to wrestle the problem of the vast nautical chart I'd tried to spread on
the world's narrowest counter while perched on the world's most pointed stool.
One thing's sure, I thought fervently, in the nosh bar din, it's a hell of a
lagoon. When I saw where I'd been, pushing Cosima to safety, I had to order
some more cakes to stop myself throwing up from sheer fright. It's those deep
blue channels and pale green sedgy
barene
that scare me.

The big problem was how an ultra-nervy
supercoward weakling like me could make headway in this game. It had all
escalated in a way I couldn't understand. Easy, though, to see why old man Pinder
was eager to employ a divvie— best to be careful even if a bird as aggressive
as the luscious Signora Norman was here at the business end of so much
syndicated money. Clearly Caterina didn't trust dearest Mama. Her mistrust had
reached Granddad Pinder—perhaps the penny only dropped when he realized that
his lovely quiet scam was going awry after the savage assault on Mr. Malleson
and Crampie. Hence he suddenly needed a divvie that bad, to seek exactly which
fakes had gone where.

Another big curved-horn dolce with
cream, and I could look my own enormous ineptitude in the face. What the hell
did I do now? Not just the ultimate in cowardice, but an incompetent one at
that.

My one bonus was that Cosima was fine,
so they told me on the blower. From their guarded inquiries, they taped
incoming calls, but I was past caring. Anyway, I changed my voice each time,
talking through combs, tissue paper, doing it in funny accents and being
different relatives and whatnot. No worry there.

Ranged against me was my monumental
ignorance, my thoroughly chicken-hearted nature and innate incompetence. I
didn't know practically everything. For example, what Mrs. Norman was up to.
Tonio's role anybody could guess, but was he Mrs. Norman's bloke or Caterina's?
Both? Playing one against the other, with Mama's money as encouragement?

There were some meager bits of
knowledge. The scam was painfully real. Cosima had nearly died, and gunshots
are proof of the most absolute kind. And now I knew some of the participants.
Mrs. Norman was boss, with gelt and power. They'd mentioned a Luciano,
presumably an expert faker. And an island. And if Luciano the faker was there,
with Lovejoy the newly recruited forger being taken there, the island was the
center of the scam, right? Answer must be yes. I shivered at the thought of all
those bones on that other island.

"Another two of those cakes,
signora, please," I asked, to keep out the cold, and settled down to
memorize the islands of the lagoon from my chart.

As long as I got the direction and
distance of tonight's boat journey, I'd be able to identify the island, then
find my own way there whenever I wanted, right?

Answer: no. Because there's such a
thing as a blindfold, and such a thing as suspicion. They turned out to possess
both.

Curiosity made me peer from the St.
Theodore's column in the direction of the Riva. Curiosity drove me among the
crowds past the dozing Ivan the Terrible, past my artist—still grumbling to all
spectators about money—to the second bridge, where I sat to watch for Cesare.

His boat was there. He was there, too,
with a harassed new girl courier I'd never seen before, clipboard and all.
Maybe Cosima's ex-partner, now relieved of her boyfriend, and holding the fort?

Cesare's boat left with a load of
tourists about five, probably to the Marco Polo for the departing Alitalia 294,
which meant a good hour even if little boats like his don't have to go all the
way round through Murano like the big ones do. Reluctant to risk being
accidentally spotted from the hotel or by the boatmen, I ducked down past the
San Zaccaria, long way round, and popped into Vivaldi's
Pieta
church, the one which old Pinder got so burned up about.

I should have gone round to the Cosol
office and steamed Giuseppe's garrulous mouth open, demanding all he had on
Mrs. Norman's private planeloads of moviemakers, but I was tired and dozed off
in one of the pews. Dozing is a mistake in Venice. The vibes of ancient life
come out of the walls at you. Bound to, in a place like that. I dreamt of
wading and drowning, woke in a cold sweat , when a drove of chattering children
came pouring in to ' draw the orange, white, and black mosaics in their school
exercise books. Then I realized my dream was true, except it wasn't me
drowning. It was children. The lovely church which harvested Vivaldi's music
and Tiepolo's magnificent artistry belonged to the foundation which reputedly
harvested the newborn illegitimate babes thrown alive into the canals, to drown
in the filth and darkness. To avoid scandal. What with the men of Venice away
on the war galleys for so long, the Pietd did a roaring rescue service.

The little bar on the Garibaldi was
open. It's the only one in Venice without a big glass of colored water for you
to drop tips in. Six o'clock and dark when finally I left the bar. Seven-thirty
I was outside of another three pizzas and waiting for action at a table on the
Zattere waterfront, watching the big ships thrash by. Never know why, but a
ship entering harbor always looks reluctant, and one setting out looks eager.
With me it's the other way about.

This boat taxi picked me up exactly at
eight.

The water taxi man didn't have to ask
my name. He simply walked up among the tables, tapped my shoulder, and led me
to his boat. Shoddier than Cesare's, and the boatman wore the air of a
part-timer, not an authentic Venetian taxi man.

"Where are we going?" I asked
chattily.

"Talking not allowed." No
information, but no secrecy either. I sat inside the cabin, able to see us head
noisily away from the Zattere waterfront cafes.

His crummy boat just about made it to
the Giudecca, a long thin island which curves round Venice's bottom, forming a
wide natural harbor. He dumped me quite illegally on an
azienda
waterbus jetty where the number eight stops near the
Eufemia church and chugged off without waiting to be paid. An all-time Venetian
first. It unnerved me more than any rip-off.

Ten minutes later, wandering and
wondering if Tonio and Placido had forgotten, I was collected by an equally
decrepit but open boat steered by the hairiest boatman on earth, a real
Cro-Magnon. He transferred me in the darkness to a more respectable cabin
craft, an unnerving experience which left me shaking. They could have drowned
me. A cheerful geezer hooded me with a bag thing. There were no lights. He tied
my hands and sat me on a bunk in the cabin.

"Look," I said in an appalled
muffled falsetto. "What if we sink?"

"We drown, signore," he said
pleasantly. "I can't swim either. We Venetians have this superstition:
Learn to swim and the lagoon thinks you distrust her."

"She does?" I bleated, scared
out of my wits.

"And takes revenge. Especially at
the time of the
acqua alta
."

"High water?" That's what
Tonio had warned Signora Norman about.

"Signore,
acqua alia
is 110 centimeters above sea level. When the sirocco
meets the north bora winds, it will rise twice that."

"But Venice is only thirty inches
above sea level as it is. You mean she could go
four feet under?"

I gave a bleat. He fell about at that,
so much that the boat swung and I lost my sense of direction. I'd never met
such poisonous hilarity before. Before that, I'd been sure we were heading in
towards the Fusina channel. Portia had set out from there to defend her lover
from the wrath of Shylock in the
Merchant
.

I listened. For anything. That clonking
lagoon bell. The long cacophony of bells the San Giorgio Maggiore sometimes
stuns you with, warning women to keep away. Well, hormones and monasteries
don't mix.

"What's up?" I croaked inside
my hood. The engine had cut. "Are we okay?"

"
I
am." A guffaw, the sadistic pig.

Then it dawned on me. You can detect
the way a small boat is turning sometimes by its engine sound, depending where
you are. The swimmer's trick in the water. Cut power, and a boat can bob in any
direction. Bitterly I sat cursing the time I'd wasted memorizing that bloody
massive map. We did the engine-cutting trick four times in the next hour. At
the finish I didn't even care where we were, much less know, and nodded off in
my hood.

And screamed. The boat had touched
something solid, immovable. Feet clumped, hands pulled me, and blokes talked
quite casually. I tried kicking and holding on to the cabin door but was prised
loose by a simple nudge. They shoved me, wailing inside my hood, onto the
gunwale step and over the boat's side. Legs together in a panicky attempt to
hit the water feet first, the jarring concrete nearly popped my head off. Land.
I was on land. I'd nearly peed myself from fright. I vaguely remember tumbling
over and lying shivering while everybody had a good laugh and a boat bumped
small vibrations into the stone. Then I was tugged to my feet and hustled up
some steps, me holding back and trying to foot-feel my way while they had a
whale of a time hauling me along and telling me, "You're all right,"
as I stumbled and crashed behind my captors. My elbows kept being brushed,
first this side, then that, and now and again my hood was scratched.