The Gondola Scam (11 page)

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?

That was the last coherent thought I had for a couple of hours.
The tourists came through the Customs like a football crowd. We couriers held
up our placards and bleated our firms' names, me caroling "Cosol Tours,
folks." The whole row of us was overrun within seconds. I was engulfed by
a motley mob, all ages, that plucked at my clothes, explaining mistakes,
complaining, waving documents, showing me passports and tickets. One woman had
lost a child and expected me to find it. One bloke had acquired two infants and
wanted to hand them to me. One senile old crone had left her hand luggage in
Zurich. A tiny psychopath nicked my clipboard to play with. It was a nightmare.
"Cosol," I kept calling, holding my stick aloft to attract more of
these psychotics.

Cosima had to rescue me finally because I couldn't match up the
sea of expectant faces with the names.

"They're all foreigners," I whispered frantically.
"They aren't English or Italians."

"German, American, Danes," she whispered back.
"Talk English slow."

She made me stand by the door and tick them off. Apparently the
greatest mistake of all is to take away tourists from some other courier's
group, because you can never completely undo the documentation. Cesare loaded
their cases—my God, did they bring frigging cases—until his boat was heaped
high with the damned luggage. Cosima hung back to settle a Customs officer's
apoplexy over something a young couple were bringing in, while I tried to put
the flock into the boat in some sort of order. We had two hotels to call at,
eighteen people all told. I almost lost an elderly bloke with a bad leg—another
boat looked easier to board and he nearly escaped. It was only when Cesare
noticed some old bird's anxiety that we re-counted, and I went running
hectically among the other water taxis yelling the old bloke's name to get him
back. Silly old sod. My head was splitting as we made space for Cosima and set
off south towards Venice.

Trying to be a typical courier, I assumed a boisterous Italian
accent and pointed out landmarks, mostly wrong, and giving out exotic snippets
I'd picked up about Byron, so much a part of Venice. That started them all
asking breathless questions. Odd how people go for extravagant behavior. We're
all a bit like that, deep down, wanting to hear about Byron's Venetian
roistering, scandals, his wild affairs. People are weird. Like, it's exciting
to hear of the great poet-hero's splendid triumph in the swimming race from the
Lido all the way up the Grand Canal. It's somehow less pleasant to hear that he
loved to display his superb grace in the water because his ungainly club-footed
lameness was so obvious on land. Hence his love of the night hours. The
superstitious Venetians of those days would not stand within thirty paces of
the deformed. I had the sense only to mention the posh bits.

We passed the cemetery island of San Michele that Napoleon got
organized, and penetrated Venice proper. From then on it was bedlam. We
separated our mob into two groups, luggage and all. Distributing them into
separate hotels took us over an hour. Two people had not arrived on the plane
and we had hell's own job persuading the second hotel we hadn't sold them into
slavery or— worse—to another hotel.

That gave us fifty minutes before I re-zoomed to the airport for
the next horde. Cosima sat with me at one of the Riva caffs and went over the
procedure. We were still very proper with each other, but I didn't mind. She
would look after this morning's lot. The Ami tourists now due would be my sole
responsibility.

"I like Yanks. I'll guide them round Byron's haunts."

"You can't do the guide's job, Lovejoy. They're two different
roles in Venice. I suppose they're combined in Portugal?"

"Mmmm? Oh, mm."

More bad news. She saw me off in Cesare's water taxi, calling
worried last-minute guidance till we left earshot. I gave her my most confident
grin and waved. She wore fawn and cream. All the way, till Cesare gave a
bad-tempered swing of the bow taking us behind the Arsenale, I could see her
slender loveliness showing against the pastel-colored buildings. Well.

Cesare said very little on that trouble-free run back to the
mainland. Almost as if he was furious at something. Still, the guidebook said
Venetians were secretive, so I tactfully didn't ask him what was up. Deep down
I'm a pretty sensitive sort of bloke.

That afternoon everything went right. Unbelievably, I found myself
ahead of schedule. By two o'clock my tourists were ensconced in the hotels,
signed for, the desk registries satisfied, Cesare's books made up, the Cosol
dockets filled in on Cosima's clipboard, and not a single family in Belgrade. I
kept my phony Italian accent to lend authenticity, and it worked quite well as
long as Cesare wasn't too near and giving me the bent eye.

Even better, they were a talkative friendly bunch, as Yanks tend
to be, and wanted me to be in the downstairs bar at three to advise on
restaurants and other aspects. A pleasant shapely bird called Nancy,
mid-thirties, caught my eye, with Doris and Agnes, two attractive blue-rinsed
middle-aged women, all towing a mild-mannered tubby bloke called David and
forming a separate mini-group "being from California, y'see." Nancy
explained she was David's secretary from Sherman Oaks, saying it as if the rest
of California were a suburb and getting a laugh.

We reassembled downstairs in such high spirits I was more than a
little narked that Cosima wasn't there to see
 
how well I was doing. I dished out Cosima's Little
pamphlets full of shopping and dining hints, and gave them all a brief account
of the tourist map in that dulled voice couriers use when they've said it a
million times before. Though I say it myself, I was very convincing. The one
hassle was something to do with a bathroom plug, easily passed on to the desk
clerks.

David Vidal, the tubby Californian, suggested we take a quick
stroll "to catch the light," whatever that meant. Doris and Agnes
eagerly agreed, and I was co-opted to lead a small schismatic group out there
and then, even though I explained their guide would be along to give them their
private countdown at breakfast tomorrow. I must say, they're keen in
California, and nearly as hot in Florida—two elderly Miami couples wanted to
come along too. So it was that, under Cesare's sardonic eye, I emerged onto the
Riva leading a party of eight towards St. Mark's with David turning around,
judging the sky, and holding up three little cameralike gadgets he had hanging
on him. Still, it takes all sorts.

They wanted to dash into the Doge's Palace. Going all debonair, I
paid the pittance entrance fee, pretending it was my pleasure to treat them.
Actually it broke my heart, but I was desperate to wheedle my way into favor.
Maybe they'd insist to Cosima that I be promoted to a guide.

In the mad dash around the Palazzo Ducale before it closed, I was
a real ball of fire. The faster we went, the more pleased my mini-mob became.
We saw the Great Council Chamber, the Lion's Mouth letterbox where you slipped
denunciations of treason—in the days of the Doges, Venetians got a hundred
pieces of gold for each accusation, so a lot of it went on—and the exquisite
ceilings. I was practically in tears as we zipped in and out of the chambers,
corridors, prisons, galleries. To me speed is the modern disease. Dashing past
Veronese's Juno Offering Gifts to Venice is a crime. It's the only genuine one
of that set, as I pointed out to Nancy. The French kept the rest after 1797,
though you're not supposed to notice. We were lucky and got into the Room of
the Three Inquisitors, but Tintoretto's ceiling paintings have been replaced.
David Vidal sympathized with my abject disappointment when I told him what was
the matter.

"Look okay to me," he said, quizzically peering upwards.
He simply hadn't stopped judging the sky. Even surrounded by these massed
treasures, he was still glancing at windows, the bum.

"What are these things?"

"These? Light meters."

"You a photographer?"

Agnes laughed. "David's a moviemaker, here on assignment.
We—"

A quick glance from David cut her prattle. I pretended not to
notice and carried on my distilled guidebook patter. I had a few successes—the
Bridge of Sighs, the prisons from which Casanova escaped in 1775—but mostly
missed out. David was mad at Agnes. Agnes was pale. I was still trying gamely
as we emerged on the quayside of St. Mark's Basin, pointing out which of the
thirty-six palace capitals were real medieval stone carvings. Nancy was up in
arms at the idea that half were modem replacements.

"That's cheating, if the guidebooks say only three are
reproduction!"

I had to smile. Trust a woman. "Mostly a harmless trick,
love."

"Well, as long as somebody keeps records."

"I'm sure somebody probably does."

'Don't you
know
?"

'Of course," I said smoothly, thinking. Oh, hell. I'd
forgotten for the minute I was a Venetian. "Erm, in the, erm, Venetian
Antiquities Section of the, erm. Buildings Ministry."

"Well,
that's
a
relief!"

David examined one of the phonies closely. "How can you tell
the difference?"

"They feel, erm ..." I recovered quickly, and gave a
convincing laugh. "Well, actually, we couriers are given Ministry
notices."

He looked doubtful. "If you say so, Lovejoy."

The Floridans wanted to tip me as I got them back to their hotel
in the gathering dust. I refused, all noble, saying it was my pleasure. Tom, an
elderly Miami boatbuilder, said how well I'd learned English for an Italian.
Nancy was the only one who'd cooled appreciably during the brief walkabout.

"Almost too idiomatic," she said sweetly. She was having
a good laugh inside, the way women do when they've rumbled that you're up to
something.

"I spenda two years inna London." I did some hurried
bowing and scraping, but she gave me a sideways glance.

They thronged the bar. I escaped by pious pleading that it was too
early for me to drink intoxicating fluids. I was knackered and tottered into
the lift amid a chorus of bye-byes. My room was 214. It overlooked Ferrari's
rotten garish statue of Victor Emmanuel, but you can't have everything.

I practically fell inside, looking forward to a hot soak, a brief
kip, then a long read about Venice and a quiet nosh at the boatmen's caff near
the San Zaccaria. The light in my room was on.

Cosima was sitting on my bed, reading my Venice book.

"Lovejoy. Where've you been?"

"Working," I said. "You?"

12

The next two days I worked like a dog. We handled six planeloads
of mixed tourists, two on charter flights, which necessitated taking on an
extra two water taxis for those. Cesare saw to them. He was great but ever more
taciturn, not at all like the cheery bloke I'd met on my first day. The better
our little trio functioned the surlier he became. Odd. That earlier banter we
had enjoyed was gone. Cosima on the other hand was blossoming, looking more
radiant every day. Shrewd as always, I supposed her bloke had finally showed
and that after working hours she was enjoying life to the full. Though I must
say she wasn't getting much of his company the rate we were going. We hardly
had time to snatch a bite in the waterfront caffs. We noshed like a Biggin Hill
fighter squadron waiting for tannoys to shout the scramble.

For all that I was oddly happy. It was as if I'd found a safe
niche where the problem of Crampie and Mr. Malleson, and the scam which old Pinder's
granddaughter and her killer boyfriend were supposedly helping the old fool to
plan, could be comfortably forgotten. Maybe it was Cosima's accusation which
had cleared the air, something like that.

That night I got back after showing Nancy and David and their pals
the Ducal Palace; she had chucked the book aside but stayed on my bed and
demanded to know where I'd been. Women always have me stammering, as if I've
really been up to no good. And honestly, hand on my heart, I honestly hadn't
even thought of Nancy like that until Cosima said her name.

'I was only out walking," I'd explained.

'With eight of the Americans," she blazed. "Including that
fat bespectacled Waterson woman who fancies herself."

Nancy wasn't fat. "They wanted to see the San Marco. I
thought I was helping you out."

"Lovejoy." She swung off the bed, furious but pretty as
a picture. "I've seen the way you look at these overdressed tourist
bitches. Well, just let me tell you that if you step one single inch out of
line, I'll have your courier registration canceled. On the spot! Do you
hear?"