The Gondola Scam Page 7

  The boatman put me down exactly on the Riva. We had a high old time arguing the price for my two-hour jaunt, but deep down I was badly shaken. From every side I had been slammed by emanations from antiques—the buildings and the treasures they contained. I could hardly see, let alone breathe or argue sensibly. Even so, I had a shrewd suspicion the boatman surrendered too easily to a price which was almost fair. Something was wrong. I made great play of standing on his wood jetty watching the tourists stroll among the cafe tables set out along the waterfront.

  "Apologies to Signorina Cosima if I made you late."

  "Cesare,” the boatman said. "Like Borgia."

  "Grazie, Cesare. Lovejoy,” I said. He didn't even guffaw.

  He tried the name experimentally while folding the money away. "Should you need to travel to the palazzo of your friends, ask along the Riva anytime, per piacere." He'd used the singular, palazzo. So he meant one in particular.

  I said carefully, "Friends? I know no one in Venice, Cesare."

  "Of course not," he said with gravity. "I meant should you wish to."

  "You know all about Venice."

  He smiled deprecatingly. "We Venetians know some, though not all. Much is rumor—especially about newcomers in rich houses."

  There it was. He had detected my interest in the palazzo. I smiled and nodded. "It's a deal. Give me a day to find my feet. Oh." I stopped on the stone wharf. "Give me a tip about Venice. Anything." I explained away his puzzlement: "I collect facts." All too often they mean survival.

  "Ah, capisco." He thought a second. "How long have you got?"

  "Ten days."

  "Then it will be useful for you to know that we Venetians buy wine by taking an empty bottle for a refill. Make sure it's a one-liter bottle."

  Bigger bottle, same price. "Very useful. Thanks, Cesare."

  "Wait, signore. In Venice we too collect useful facts."

  After a quick think I said, "Santa Claus is also patron saint of prostitutes."

  He nodded seriously, coiling the painter. "You are a careful man, Lovejoy. My tip will be most useful to you. Yours is without value."

  "Not everything is money."

  His audible gasp at this heresy gave me a grin. On my way past that daft plumed statue of Victor Emmanuel, the Cosol courier Cosima hurried out, pretty with exasperation. Almost before she reached Cesare's water taxi, she was blasting him for being late.

  Ten days, minus one.

  10

  Food is definitely funny stuff. Miles from home it takes on a weirdness that either turns you into a gourmet or repels you for life.

  To me, a plate of spaghetti is a full meal. To Venetians if s no more than a windbreak. After noshing enough to sink a fleet, they just soldier on through a jungle salad, then wade into half a fried calf followed by a gelato all the colors of the rainbow. It's nourishing just to watch. Mind you, it takes nerve. Seeing a Venetian whittle a mound of whitebait is like watching a seal cull.

  Go away from the Riva down one of those little alleys where your shoulders practically touch both walls, turn right, and you'll find one of the best nosh places in Venice. It's tucked under the shoulder of a bridge before the San Zaccaria. Venetian boatmen use it, so I felt it was as near to Woody's caff as I was likely to find, and in I went for a slammer of a meal. Some kinds of strange grub you can guess at, like how they'll do their veal. Others—fried rings of squid, for example—you don't know until you take your courage in both hands. Then there's polenta, which I tried because I'd never heard the word before, and got this yellow woolly maize breadcake, toasted hot as hell. It's the local equivalent of our pastie—filling, cheap, eaten anywhere anytime. Made me feel quite at home, especially when I began to get slightly pickled on the wine.

  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, bu
t 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.

  Cesare had taxied us across the lagoon before nine. Cosima was lovely in the morning haze, her hair blowing as our boat creamed between the lagoon marker posts. She looked really stylish, almost too well turned out for a travel courier. We avoided each other's eyes and did a great deal of agreeing. I wondered vaguely if she was dolled up because of some bloke coming on one of the flights. None of my business. Still, my improvised confession of instantaneous love had worked a treat. Before long I would be in charge of a tourist band and able to trail them anywhere.

  What more natural than select a "typical" Venetian palazzo—the Malcontento, for instance—and call to ask if the lady of the house would permit visitors to inspect the elegant interior of so classical a dwelling?