The Gondola Scam (29 page)

Listening to Keith, I took notes.

27

The number-five
vaporetto
emitted its departing roar and left me standing on the
rocking boat stage in the night. God, I felt forlorn. I had a stupid urge to
shout after it, try a flying leap as it churned away. Daft for a grown man, but
those vague Venetian mists can give anybody the spooks. The canals and bridges
have a weak bulb or two bragging halos, but they don't seem to deliver the
light where it's actually needed. Like down here, where you're shivering and
all alone. Of course, Venice in a fog can be a mournful old place, with the
occasional distant chug of an engine and the bellowed warning "Ioooo"
of the gondolier. Cowards like me always find the picturesque somehow
impossibly macabre.

The Madonna dell' Orto church was
empty. I made sure by strolling round, pretending the aimlessness of the
tourist to an old lady who creaked into the gold-glowing church doorway for a
quick spiritual high. Venice was retiring for the night. The canal was a street
of black oil, what I could see of it. Above, scudding clouds soaked in moon
kept me rain-guessing. It wasn't my scene, especially when I got near the
funeral place.

I needed to steal a funeral barge, and
they were placidly moored facing the church. The trouble is, there's no real
school for thieves, is there? How do you suss out a canal in a night mist?
Twice I walked across the bridge which marked the end of the canal, and peered
hopelessly out into the dark blanket covering the lagoon, imagining I saw the
distant lights of the cemetery island of San Michele. The Sacca della
Misericordia turned out to be a big rectangular stretch of water facing
northwest, the way I wanted to travel. It was as handy an exit as ever I was to
find now I was having to do every bloody thing alone as usual. I walked back
towards the church, keeping close to the wall of the doorways and touching
drainpipes, not wanting to vanish with a splash.

Nowadays even posh antique dealers,
like most other criminals, use those little disposable Keeler pen torches, and
I carried two. The light just about made it to the wall. I climbed over and
dangled cautiously from the church bridge. The bridge's own single bulb was
practically useless. A good stabbing night, when you come to think of it.
Uneasily trying not to think at all, I replaced my pen and swung to and fro
from my hands till I was sure of the momentum, and let go. I hit the foredeck
of the funeral gondola with a hell of a loud thump, nearly braining myself on
one of its little gold decorative lions. But I'd made it. I dung and looked
about.

From canal level the bridge looked
impossibly far out of reach. Visibility was pretty bad, worse than on the canal
bank. I could see the wall of the funeral building, of course, the winch, the
double doorway. The bridge's feeble bulb. The narrow pavement opposite, and
vaguely the oblique gold blur of the church's doorway. A single lit window in
one of the terraced houses across the canal. That was that. Above, the moon
showed but too irregularly to be much help.

I clambered along the gondola. Behind
it, a larger boat was moored, and beyond that the indistinct darker mass of a
third. It looked as if I'd collected a funeral gondola and two funeral barges.
A fleet.

A funeral gondola is rowed by sad
gondoliers, but a funeral barge is a wide motorized thing, maybe thirty or so
feet long. It has a kind of well where you stand to drive between two
glass-enclosed cabins. There are tidy little white lacy curtains lending
elegance to these cabins. Uneasier still, I shone my torch to see I wasn't
accompanied by any terrestrial beings before making sure the starter motor
could easily be fired by slitting the insulation in the same old way. I'd have
to trust it was fueled up. The Volvo-Penta service station, about a hundred
yards down and on the right, would presumably have its own night watchman to
guard petrol supplies. I undid the ropes, swearing because they'd got wet
somehow, and pushed off.

It was only then that I noticed how
high the water was. I barely scraped under the bridge, poling away with the
nicked pole. The water had risen. Not only that. It was moving. Mostly canal
water just hangs about. One push on a pole and your craft careers along until
something stops it. Not now. I was struggling just to gain headway. I even
heard a gurgle as water eddied past, coming in from the lagoon to lift the
canal even higher. The barge moved with sedate grandeur bumping into the wall
of the Palazzo Mastelli with a nasty hollow sound which frightened me to death
and re-echoed for a million noisy years.

It's only about a hundred yards from
the church to the Sacca, but it felt like a circumnavigation. I was reduced to
giving
t
wo desperate long pushes, shipping the pole and trying to
keep the barge going forward by manhandling her along the canal wall. That
worked once or twice, but I was scared of rousing people. Even the most
tranquil Venetian would be alarmed at the sight of a stranger's claws emerging
from a mist-bound funeral barge to scrabble at his shuttered windows.

I knew the stone bridge had arrived
when I bonked my forehead. The barge just made it beneath, at the expense of a
cracked glass pane or two as it scraped under the arch, but by then I was too
worked up to care. I was late, and I still had to start the wretched boat and
get across to the island.

Visibility across the Sacca was worse,
if anything. The Volvo-Penta fuel depot's light was barely visible. No lights
showed out in the opaque blackness of the lagoon. Christ, but it felt spooky.
I'd assumed lights, direction easily found, maybe that ironic moon being some
use. Me in control. Instead, I was floating blind and becoming terrified of letting
go of nice solid stone. Once out there it'd be hit or miss. I tied the barge to
the bridge's balustrade and had a crack at the starter motor. You won't believe
this, but the engine was going a full minute before I realized it. The boat was
shuddering slightly and gently butting the bridge's arch while I like a fool
kept on trying to start it. Unbelievably quiet. It was a wonder I hadn't
electrocuted myself.

For a spilt second I dithered. Then
Caterina and her tame psychopath came to mind. And the fortune in fakes they
were going to double-steal. Plus some originals. All those desirables going to
undeserving nerks was a tragedy. I discovered I'd cast off without thinking.

Okay, I thought. Sod it. In for a
penny, in for a pound. I turned the tiny wheel. My great one-speed barge
trundled out into the void. I hoped there was water out there.

Caterina kept coming into my mind. She
had everything—looks, youth, wealth, intelligence, that commanding manner which
proved true breeding. Normally I'd have been groveling near her ankles. But
here I was, risking life and limb in a pathetic attempt to do her down. Surely
it wasn't because of Cosima? Or was I subconsciously so hooked on Lavinia after
today's carrying-on that I was talking myself into saving her skin at the
expense of Tonio's? It was all too much for my addled brain. I concentrated on
not knowing where I was instead.

The moon stayed where it was, thank
God. Even when it was cloud-obscured I could get an idea of its direction by
the glow. That mist was really odd, dense patches which suddenly thinned or
ended, leaving my silent runner quivering its nose towards a thick blob of the
stuff. It made the lagoon surface change, too, into a pasty kind of translucent
oil. Until then I'd assumed I knew everything about fog.

This was rotten stuff all right. Worse,
a siren went, almost frightening me out of my skin. Presumably the high water
was on its way, and here was me still a million miles—well, nearly four—peering
anxiously at the bright fog glow which indicated the Fondamente Nuove where the
big Lido steamers lay. Counting to a quick hundred to allow for getting past
the monastery (it's a barracks now, sign of these ugly times), I swung left and
knew myself heading for San Michele.

Venice's marine engineers aren't daft.
It would be cheaper and simpler to put these lights on floating buoys or
shorter posts, but you'd lose them in this dense lagoon mist. They've worked it
all out. As long as you know where the last one was and the next one should be,
you can keep going fairly accurately by staring upwards and slightly walleyed
until the mist begins to glow on your retina. That's how you follow the chain
of lighted blobs across the dark water. It's quite an art. I became quite an
artist.

The channel forks past Murano where the
St. James Marshes start. Right, a baffling course to the sea through stretches
of marshy islets. Left, more or less direct between two lines of marker lights
towards Mazzorbo and Torcello. I knew from my terrified checks of the marker
lamps that in the vast open expanse between Murano and the islets the lanes of
double lights ended. They became single, and finally the smaller channels had
none at all. Where they continued, though, they would show to the right. That
gave me a file to move along.

The island didn't actually surprise me
much, though even an unsurprising island can scare you a bit when it moves
swiftly out of a pitch-dark fog. I remember yelping, flinging the barge into a
dangerous turn and cutting the engine. Speed lost, sweat wiped from my
streaming face, and I was shakily in control again, able to take a mental line
from the moonshine and the one marker light still visible. Somehow I must have
come up on the channel side of the island rather than the western, because I
thought—or imagined, in my fear—I'd glimpsed a less-dark rectangle set in
brick. Possibly the relief of the Madonna which tourists competed to photograph
as the steamers pounded past.

The pale stone patch had looked
disturbingly near the water.

Apprehensive, now with more to worry
about than merely getting lost on a foggy night of the dreaded monster tides, I
put the barge at a silent glide along the southern approach.

San Giacomo's a low island. Soldiers
occupied part of it until 1964. The nearby Madonna del Monte had a munitions
factory, but I'd guessed from what I could recall of seeing the gaunt derelict
building that it was just too obvious for old Pinder's scheme. From some parts
of the lagoon you can practically see nothing else. The San Giacomo's a
different thing altogether, and I could remember the rough vegetation
overgrowing the few low red-tiled buildings, as seen from the boat to Torcello.
The island's unused landing point was the stepway beneath the Madonna relief.
Round the side might be a grottier but often-used landing stage which my feet
might just recognize.

Once you leave the main channel, you're
lost. No lights. Heart in my mouth, I set the funeral barge creeping at right
angles to my original direction. Bravery shouldn't feel like terror, yet in my
experience it always does. I was so sure I was being heroic. The island is more
or less rectangular, so I knew the barge was nosing through the fog a matter of
mere yards away off the shore. Scared as always, I fancied just then that I
heard a soft thud from out there in the misty blackness, but froze until I was
certain no boat was approaching. The question was when to turn inwards and meet
the island to find the landing stage. Answer: eighth go. Seven times my prow,
with its golden two-winged ball and little lions, muzzled to a stop against a
solid dark island. Seven times I slipped her in neutral and crawled forward to
push her off before resuming the journey. The eighth time I found nothing but a
level step all awash, and a low brick-supported archway with tendrils and small
clattering pods dangling in the opening.

That was a measure of the appalling
height the tide had risen. As far as I could recall, they had made me climb
steps. Now they were all awash. All height is relative. Everybody knows that.
But any increase is bad news when you're looking for some underground factory.

Some things were on my side: My barge
was black and quiet, and Tonio wouldn't come with lights blazing. He'd come
with stealth like me, the smarmy bastard, determined to rely on unfairness in a
fight. That meant my boat might remain undetected if I tied her close inshore
further along. This I did, moving by grope till I found a rickety post about
fifty feet from the submerged landing stage. Caterina might come alone, in
which case it was a waste—only partial, but still waste. But like all women,
she could have done the natural feminine thing and lied in her teeth.

The island was silent. The path felt
right. I risked the Keeler torch, crouching to peer at the ground and trying to
guess directions. Even the vegetation felt right. It was great. The watch I'd
borrowed from Gerry—at least they'd lent me that, I thought bitterly—showed one
hour to Caterina's arrival. For Caterina read Tonio.

Being alone on a derelict island isn't
good for one's nerves. For a lily-livered no-good like me, it's terrifying. The
place through which I was creeping was obviously some kind of derelict
vegetable garden, with stupid shoots trailing about and the path crumbling. A
couple of times I came close to brick walling, one with broken or shuttered
windows. Either monks or military. Originally, when blindfolded, I'd counted my
paces. I wasn't to know there'd be no need. The path led only to one place.

The doorway was steel, rivets driven in
at its sides and its two padlocks reinforced by a welded steel plate. The
purist would have been disappointed at these feeble precautions. I was relieved
and delighted. Of course, there was normally our full-time night shift of
industrious fakers busy in the subterranean forgery factory, and two or more
murderous men watching over all. It was only on such a night as this that
guards would seem superfluous.