The Gondola Scam (24 page)

The loo was a chemical can. No chance
of flushing into the lagoon a message in a bottle, or a marker dye to trace.
And no watches. No clocks. No radios. No apparent ventilation except the hood
which hung suspended over Giovanni's masonry comer.

The goons knocked off after about four
hours, and were replaced by a bloke who whistled through his teeth and read a
kid's color comic. Occasionally he chuckled, and sometimes read a difficult
passage moving his lips with his forehead frowning in concentration.

They took us away one by one about an
hour after this neanderthal was replaced by our two originals. Home time. I was
last to go, apart from Luciano.

"Why the ten-minute intervals,
Luciano?"

"It's the arrangement here."

"Who makes the arrangements?"

Silence. Luciano polished his specs and
had a good look at my carving. "Not bad. Good and fast."

"Better than your crummy plaster
cast of the original. Careless."

He murmured apologies. "Done
officially while they restored it a couple of years ago. We weren't really
organized and used all sorts of rubbishy labor."

"At least tell me about my pay,
Luciano."

"They'll tell you."

I gave up and wandered about looking at
the others' progress. For all my criticism of Domenico, he'd fairly shifted. A
youngish bloke across the other side was faking one of the monumental arched
Tiepolo paintings from the Madonna dell' Orto church apse, but I noticed he'd
had the sense not to use the camera lucida trick for that majestic piece. As
the goons called me, I felt a gentle bong of recognition in my chest and went
past Luciano's high desk. An illuminated page lay fully exposed on it among his
forged pages. The forgetful old lunatic had carelessly left a priceless original,
beautiful and redolent with age, glowing in all its serene tempera brilliance
for any careless nerk to scrape its wonderful surface with a ruinous elbow.
Luciano must be past it. I tutted and maneuvered it gently under the protection
of a new sheet of parchment. Then I cursed myself. Luciano was regarding me
quizzically. The sly old sod had done it deliberately, been watching all the
time.

I said pleasantly, "You're not a
bad advert for senility, Luciano. Keep it up."

"Don't talk so much, son," he
said. Not a smile. "Go home and rest."

I went up to the goons and obediently
bent my head to be hooded.

"Be at the same place, same time,
tonight," the nerks said. "Understand?"

"Carlo's day off, eh?" I
asked jokingly into my hood, but nobody answered.

A stranger in a stranger's boat dropped
me off at the Zattere waterfront after four blundering and scary switches of
craft out in the darkness of the lagoon. It was getting on for five-thirty.

When you think of it, having no place
to sleep's no hardship for an hour or two. Or three. Or five. After that it
gets to you. Gradually as the hours pass a kind of restlessness seeps into your
soul. You don't need a place to rest, but the idea that you haven't got one to
go to eventually becomes pretty horrible. You become desperate.

Maybe that's what made me burgle
Giuseppe's Cosol office.

It's less than a twenty-minute walk
from the Zattere across the Accademia Bridge, even going a long way round to
avoid my old pals of the Riva wharf. True to the style of the Venetian early
worker, I whistled, kicked the occasional carton, and generally made myself
part of the local scene.

Giuseppe's precautions consisted of a
chain with a padlock, and the old double lock. Two keys are supposed to make it
difficult. As if two hands and two bits of bent wire were rarities.

Half past six o'clock in the morning
when I found the lists. The garrulous chatterbox hadn't even filed the damned
things. Cosima would go berserk at all this untidiness. I risked the light
after shutting the door to the staircase. The lists were almost complete.
Giuseppe was hardly in for Venice's Dedicated Worker award, so he'd probably
bowl up no earlier than 9 a.m. Plenty of time. I made myself some instant
coffee on his office's mini-boiler and settled down comfortably to read.

Signora Norman had truly forked out.
First class for David, Nancy, and the older pair. Which raised a lorry-load of
new questions. Why exactly did a lady pulling an antique scam so huge that it
needed a whole factory full of forgers need a movie mogul? And why had he
vanished so suddenly that his secretary Nancy wasn't even allowed time for the
entirely harmless purpose of leaving her erstwhile lover a thoughtful little
souvenir?

Nearly seven o'clock when I'd finished
searching, and the dawn showing and the mists clearing. Nothing, except more
suspicions. Grumbling, I nicked the paltry sum of ready cash scattered around
in the drawers and left.

I didn't shut the door. Let somebody
else worry for a change. Even if it was only Giuseppe.

My first two goes on the phone were
hopeless. Something to do with time zones. Third go I got a secretary after
spending a fortune in these gettoni you have to buy in order to use the
Venetian blowers. My accent was phony as anything.

"Iz zatt joo, David?"

"Mr. Vidal's at a signing
conference today, sir."

"I particularly want speaking wiz
eem. Eez ee returned from Venice, ja? Eee said me ring most urgent. Zee
financial contract—"

Uncertainty crept m, thank God.
"Hold, please." I was down to my last three tokens when the girl said
breathlessly, "You're through, sir."

And David's voice said, "Hello.
Vidal here."

Lips pursed, I gave a crackly
electronic splutter and downed the receiver gently.

Message: David vanished fast, but made
it home. And it probably was the same for the other three. I'd have to think
some more when I wasn't so knackered.

Happier now the possibilities were
narrowing, I went down the Lista di Spagna looking for lodgings.

Not far from Harry's Bar is the
Giardinetti near where poor distended tourists queue for a million years to go
for a pee. Always there are the relieved halves of couples hanging about while
the other half, still bulbous with agony, wait in agonized lines clutching
their 200-lira tickets, praying for an empty loo. Sitting by the trees, I
decided it might be my last chance to see Cosima so, knackered as I was, I'd
have to take it. I went among the mobs to the boat terminus at the San Marco.

Maybe it was because I was so exhausted
that I accidentally made an astounding discovery. A Lido steamer was pulling
out as I plodded towards my waterbus stop. What with the droves of children and
the engines, I put my fingers in my ears. There was an odd beating sensation. I
stopped, removed my fingers. Stuck them in again.

Block your ears, and the big boat's
engines went thump-thump-thump. Remove them, and the engines whine and growl
amid the pandemonium of the crowd, the rush of water. I did it so often, just
to check, that two little children on the concourse started laughing and
imitating. With a sheepish grin I moved away, then went into a cafe for some
wine and a quick change of mind.

The walk to the railway station took me
thirty minutes and half a liter of bianco. The train journey to Padua was about
the same.

23

For the purposes of visiting Cosima, I
became the excitable relative of a patient in the women's surgical ward. My
mythical sister was suffering from some unspeakable—not to say unpronounceable—malady,
and my anxieties knew no bounds. I explained this to everyone I met in the
hospital corridor. The most baffled country cousin in Padua that day, I managed
to blunder into the outpatients' entrance and got myself redirected. God, but
they're patient in Padua. If I'd been that nurse in Outpatients, I'd have flung
me out.

Cosima was up! I mean it. Really
sitting up and having a drink. No tubes, no drips. And bonny as a bird, in a
new nightie, with her hair done and her face shining. Her face lit to see me.
And I too was all of a do, until she asked me where Cesare was today.

"Cesare?" I hadn't mentally
cleared him of shooting Cosima, so her mentioning his name with such
expectation pulled me up short.

She searched my eyes. "Didn't he
find you? I've had him searching all Venice for you."

"Lazy old Cesare!" When I'd
glimpsed Cesare he hadn't looked at all like a boatman doing a desperate
private eye. And there are ways of putting the word out which only boatmen
knew. Cesare hadn't searched very hard.

"Then how did you know to come
today? I go to convalescence in an hour."

We talked of our day out on the lagoon.
The police had maintained a bedside vigil until she'd given her story.
Mercifully, she'd told them I was just a casual acquaintance, that we'd met
somewhere at a party. She actually remembered very little of our escape, except
being lifted ashore and the
sandolo
rocking, and having this dreadful cough which pained.

"And hearing you blaspheme,
Lovejoy."

"Me?"

"In a car. Everything was dark.
Your face was lit by the dashboard's glow. You were threatening fire and
slaughter against everybody on earth. Even Cesare."

"Me?" I was appropriately
amazed. "I'm not like that. Delusions, love. Common in gunshot wounds."

She shook her lovely hair. "I
tried to ask you to stop shouting, Lovejoy. But you looked . . . possessed. A
fiend."

"When did Cesare show?"

"Giuseppe and Cesare come almost
every day. And the two Australians. They've all been so marvelous."

I was so busy crossing suspects off my
mental list that I had no response. My silence was her big moment.

"Where did you go, Lovejoy?"

"Go? Me? Well, I was so
exhausted—"

"You vanished." She looked
aside along the ward, coloring slightly. "I read your message on my hand.
The police said a Swiss businessman found me and fetched me in. They thought
you'd drowned."

'They're always red hot." I'd made
the bitter crack before I could prevent myself. The comprehension in her gaze
was unnerving.

"So you were simply keeping on
running. I knew it. Why?"

"I had to, love. What did the
police tell you?"

"Nothing. They thought some madman
had shot me, or a stray bullet from an illicit marsh hunter."

"Accidental, eh?" Good old
police. Same everywhere, desperate not to get too involved in troublesome
mischief.

"Lovejoy. If Cesare didn't find
you to bring you here today, why did you not keep on running?"

Honestly. Women are always after
motives.

'That was me phoning," I said
indignantly. "Didn't you get messages?"

She smiled, my downfall.
"Practically every two hours. However did you manage to dash around to all
those different places so fast?"

"I was in Mestre all the—"
Caught.

"All the time?" she completed
for me. "So you only pretended to run." No smile now. Just a terrible
sadness and eyes slowly filling. "Darling. What is it that you're doing?
Even before this . . . accident, I wondered about you. So many things
unexplained. And your mind's always miles away."

See what I mean? Women are really sly.
Even when there's nothing wrong their busy little minds are working out
different angles It's no wonder most of the world's bent, with all this
suspicion going on.

After that it wasn't a lot of use. I
tried hard being happy and friendly and she tried hard to match my poisonous
chirpiness but we parted a few minutes later, me with the address of her
convalescent home written out and her with my bunch of chrysanthemums. She'd be
gone a few days.

"I'll phone, love," I
promised.

"Where will you be, Lovejoy? In
Venice?"

"Certainly," I said heartily.
"Where else?"

''At the same hotel? Honestly,
now."

"Of course! I'll keep in touch,
through Cesare.”

"And you'll look after yourself?
Promise?"

"Hand on my heart," I said
fervently. That was how we parted, truth and lies approximately half and half.
I was heartbroken, because I sincerely really honestly loved Cosima, and now
she'd as good as told me it was goodbye. That's always heartbreaking. But at
least things were a lot dearer.

From the Padua railway station I phoned
my lodgings along the Lista di Spagna in Venice and explained that Lovejoy,
who'd taken a room there today, had just died in a plane crash over the Aegean
and wouldn't be needing it anymore, thank you.

Another two half-liters later I broke
into Cosima's little apartment, locked the door after me, and went fast asleep.

Watching Cesare and that thin lass
going over their clipboards in the dying sunshine made me quite envious. It's
the humdrum blokes of this world that get on. The meek really do inherit—if not
the earth, at least the leavings. Cesare'd kept a low profile. Then, when the
Lovejoys and other scatterbrains have blundered on their lunatic way, idle sods
like Cesare inherit the birds.