The Gondola Scam (19 page)

18

Choice is power. Some poor bloke
enjoying a well-earned nosh in that roadside trattoria west of the village
church of Altino found that out when I nicked his car in the time-honored way
(comb through the window rubber, join the starter wires under the dashboard)
and recklessly drove it down the path as near to the water as I dared. It was
quite fair, really. If the people of ancient Altinum hadn't migrated into the
lagoon fifteen centuries back to found Torcello and Venice, Cosima and me
wouldn't have been in all this frigging mess. If anybody owed us, it was
Altinum.

I'd chosen—well, guessed—landfall where
shore lights showed and where the black-pointed hulk of a boat-house promised
there was access for a car. Cosima hadn't coughed now for some time, maybe
hours. Speed. I wanted— had to have—speed, but making a safe landfall wasn't
easy. Once I almost ran full tilt into a marker post, and twice I tangled with
those projecting tops which crisscross patches of the lagoon and mark the
limits of the valli fish farms, and had double nightmares ripping myself free.
Somehow in my mad scramble away from Santa Ariana I'd lost Cosima's lighter, my
only source of light. I had to go by what glimpses of road lights showed to the
north and west, and even then had to cut speed to a slow crawl in case I ran
aground or got entangled again. Considering the conditions, I was lucky to
reach the lagoon shore as I did, only having to shove the bows off a dozen or
so times when clumping into the
barene
.

There was a clear reach of water and a
channel running to the northwest from the boathouse. That structure was pretty
derelict, maybe even unused. All the better, because

I didn't want a telltale clue like a
sandolo
showing we'd got away.

"Come on, darlin'," I said to
Cosima as I lifted her from the boat. "We're nearly there."

I swear she almost muttered something,
but there wasn't time to chat. I staggered up the truckle landing stage and
with only two rests made it to the car. No lights. She had to go in the
passenger seat upright, head back, because like a nerk I'd stolen one of those
small two-door things without a lift-up rear door. I'm pathetic when it comes
to planning. The position she was in made her breathe funny and hissing. I
rushed down to the
sandolo
and untied
it. It was only a couple of hundred yards down-channel to open water.

That engine was great. I used the stem
rope to fix the outboard handle to dead ahead and opened the throttle to half
speed. Then I pointed the
sandolo
out
into the mid-channel heading into the lagoon and let go.

Away she went, straight as an arrow. I
found myself shouting, "Thanks, mate," as the little boat trundled
off on its own into the darkness. For a few seconds she showed blackly against
the pallor of the waterway, then only the faint scut of white water gave her
position. Then that too was gone and only the engine sound remained, receding
as she ran the channel. With luck she might even get an uncontrolled mile, or
even further, before she stuck and exhausted her fuel aground on one of the
barene
.

Utterly knackered now, I lurched up to
the car. As the channel ran inland, it widened to include a couple of small
reedy mid-river islands. A road crossed above there, showing bits of the
terrain when motor headlights swept over. Probably the road from Altino village.
Follow that coastwise, and you'd reach Mestre, Venice's oily land-based
neighbor. It had to be that way.

No signs of agitation as we drove
grandly past the trattoria. Altino is now no more than a village, maybe only a hamlet.
Signposts told me it was a few miles to Mestre, to Treviso, to Padua.

"Hold on, love,” I told Cosima.
"We've a little way still to go."

A little way meant twenty-five
kilometers. I decided to aim for the hospital in Padua. The motor clock
placidly showed it was ten past ten. Astonishingly, the Marco Polo airport
lights showed to our left after we'd gone barely a couple of miles, and we were
in Ca' Noghera. Unbelievable The whole swinish world had been living normally
while my poor Cosima got shot and I'd been terrified out of my skin. I
swallowed my hate and concentrated.

We drove serenely towards Mestre as if
we'd been out for a quiet supper. There was an overcoat in the car. Useful, for
a born planner.

"Johanne Eich," I explained,
beaming, to the admission nurse. Going the whole hog, I gave that brilliant
Regency gunsmith's Sw'ss home address as well. "Though," I added with
a flourish of invention, "I work in Geneva."

"And you found the lady . . .
?"

"A short distance from Vicenza.
There she was," I said, graphic and eager, "staggering along the
road. She actually fell! I actually saw her! Naturally I thought she was drunk,
until the headlights revealed her condition."

'The doctor says she appears to have
been shot."

"Shot?" I was a picture of
the flabbergasted Swiss businessman. "Then how fortunate I urged you to
contact the police! Who knows," I speculated grandly, getting carried away
with jubilation now Cosima was safe in hospital, "what disorders have been
perpetrated? You must order the police to investigate instantly!"

"Do you know her?"

"Certainly not," I lied.
"Incidentally, shouldn't you ask for my car license number?
Identification? You must also ask for my detailed account of—"

"Of course."

The lass was plump and fetching, and
swiftly becoming irritable. I was sorry to rile her, but I had to portray the
classical image of solidity or I'd never get away before the police came
pouring in.

"Here. Let me write it."

Heel of my left hand to steady the
admission form, because fingerprints and characteristic skin impressions end at
the wrist line. Meticulously I recorded the number from the Swiss-registered
saloon I’d memorized from among the cars in the street near Padua's railway
station.

"It's a company car," I
solemnly informed her. "Now, signorina, you must record that the injured
young lady gave me her name. Maria Guardi, she said. Please write it
down."

"I am, signore."

"But you must not simply take my
word for it," I preached maddeningly. "You must demand to see the
documents. They are in a special double-lock compartment in my
automobile," I announced affably, twinkling what I thought might look like
a Swiss businessman's affable twinkle. "I'll get them. The signorina will
not mind if I leave one or two of my company's business cards?"

"There's no need for all
that," the poor nurse said wearily.

"No trouble, no trouble. All
records must be
complete
at all
times. It's practically my company motto. An incomplete record is no record at
all. You agree, I'm sure."

I strolled out, then ran to the car. I
was on the main road as the police car zoomed in the hospital entrance.

Half a tank of petrol. Quite enough for
what I wanted. Well, not
wanted
exactly. Had to do, more like. Compelled. Everything was out of my hands now.
The others, whoever they were, had forced the issue. They'd tried to kill me
and Cosima. After my trick with the
sandolo
,
perhaps they even thought they'd succeeded.

The geography of Italy's a mystery to
me, and the car's owner proved to have been an uncooperative blighter. Not a
single road map. Sometimes you can't depend on anybody. Vaguely I had a notion
that Padua lay between Verona and Venice, but exactly where was anybody's
guess. I'd told the nurse Vicenza because I'd seen it on a sign pointing in the
opposite direction to that indicating Mestre.

Trains would run from Verona towards
Switzerland. If the police found this car and news got about, the hunter might
assume I'd lit out for Geneva and safety—as long as it was found nearer the
Swiss border than Padua, since he might learn of Cosima's presence in the
hospital sooner or later.

Before carrying Cosima so dramatically
into the hospital's casualty area bawling for assistance with the exaggeratedly
odd accent, I'd used a ballpoint to write in her palm, "One. You."
That way she'd realize I was in the land of the living and probably still
somewhere around.

The other bastards were going to
discover that fact the hard way. I'd make sure of that.

For a steady thirty-six hours after I
dumped the stolen car by the railway, I slept in the station at Verona, ate,
rested in the museum, noshed, went to the pictures for another kip, noshed. And
phoned the Padua hospital asking how Maria Guardi was coming along, please, and
giving the name of the Verona newspaper when asked for my name by the diligent
ward sister. I was a wreck, but with a vested interest in recovery of all
kinds.

The day after the day after, I felt at
last I'd returned from outer space, and caught the train to Mestre.

19

A heartfelt love message before this
next bit: Dear ugly town of Mestre, Lovejoy adores you.

Now, nobody likes Mestre. Worse, nobody
even
pretends
to like it. Everybody
who works there wants to work somewhere else. People who live there loathe it
because it isn't beautiful. Tourists zoom into Padua or Venice. Nobody likes
it.

Except me. I thought, do think, and
will forever think that good old Mestre is great. Ten out of ten on the Lovejoy
scale. One corrosive breath of its poisonous smog, and my heart warmed with love.

For a start, it's hideous. It's
horribly industrial. Its traffic is a shambles, its buildings ridiculous. It is
definitely shop-soiled. Its docks are full of oil and all the greasy activity
which the undesirable substance brings. Love on sight.

Soon after arrival I stood watching
traffic along the Ponte della Liberta, comparing. At one end of the long
causeway sits sluttish old smog-ridden Mestre. At the other lies queenly
Venice, glittering, spectacular. And make no mistake. Venice is a luscious
sight, pulling and compelling.

The sky was a balmy blue. The lagoon
shone the azure back into the air about the Serene Republic, imparting a
fluorescence so bright it almost hurts your eyes to look.

It was over to the left, out there in
the lagoon from where I was standing, that my little Cosima had nearly died.
The hospital said she was now out of the worst and was expected to make a
steady return to health and who was speaking, because the police . . . ? Don't
get me wrong. I wasn't actually planning revenge. I'm not that sort of bloke.
No, honestly. Ask anybody. All right, I admit that revenge is a pretty good way
of getting even, but it's hardly my style to hold a grudge. Reasonable old me,
always trying to be fair. The bad temper I'd felt, the hatred, the panic and
sick fear were all gone now. I was my usual smiley self.

Standing there near the causeway in the
sunshine, I thought of Venice.

These days we can't even begin to
perceive what "Venetian" meant to the ancients. Oh, the factual bit
is clear: Venice was viewed as a strong maritime power simply because she was.
And okay, Venice meant self-interest. Like when the thousands of knights and
soldiers of the Fourth Crusade arrived at the Venetian Lido asking for help in
the name of God, charity and compassion, the Doge of Venice actually demanded
what was in it for him.

But beyond Venice's blunt greed there
was something deeper and especially horrid. To the ancient people of the past
centuries Venice simply meant fright, evil, everything sinister. Venice meant
perverse secrecy of the most surreptitious and malevolent kind. Venice meant
secret trials, silent stabbings, spies, clandestine murder, and sudden
vanishing without trace. Venice meant a slit throat while sleeping, and violent
unfathomable assassination. Venice meant poison—it took a Venetian priest to
murder a communicant by slipping poison into the very Host. Venice meant sly
crime and refined treachery and skullduggery. Venice meant a reign of hidden
terror, brutal but stealthily quiet imprisonments. Venice meant stark cold
cruelty.

Throughout the long centuries of her
prime, Venice was a permeating fear, a cloud of terror over Europe, a world of
malevolent horror. Strong men quaked before her. Wise men shunned her. Rich men
durstn't trust her. Poor men were simply out of Venice's reckoning, and
thankfully praised God for being so. Even her glass industry was partly tainted
by this weird fame. Venetian glass was reputed so delicate that it would
shatter if poison touched it.

Her reputation was not undeserved.
Venice's secret councils saw to that. Venetians learned to go about their business
with a cool disregard for the abrupt absence of friends. One morning the feet
of three miscreants were observed sticking up out of the paving in St. Mark's
Square, where they'd been buried alive—and all Venice passed by this fearsome
execution blandly oblivious. God was obviously in His heaven, and the dreaded
Council of Ten was simply doing its usual Venetian stuff in the dark hours.
Naturally, other nations were at it too. Like the time the Venetian ambassador
was shocked to find his current secret correspondence, neatly labeled and bound
into volumes, pointedly displayed on the shelves of a London library— possibly
the all-time put-down for a spy. Despite these occasional setbacks, though, it
was generally conceded that for dank dark deeds Venice took the biscuit. Nobody
argued.