A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  The narrow, dingy entrance hadn’t changed since the first time Clay had stepped over its threshold four years ago. Cables and wires snaked across the low, water-damaged ceiling, and the red-marble floor tiles were covered in cardboard squares to sop up shoe water. In his final years, Freddy tried to make short pilgrimages to Venice every six months. And to pay for the year-round upkeep, he constructed a colony of upstairs bedrooms out of drywall and rented them out to the interns of the Peggy Guggenheim. They were ideal tenants—short-term, primarily from wealthy families, and too young and dizzy on Venice to complain about the lackluster accommodations. The supervisor at the museum, a shaggy-haired Italian woman who spoke English with a comical Irish accent, had alerted Clay to a cheap available room for rent in a palazzo in Cannaregio. “The house belongs to a very, very old American family,” she proclaimed, clearly dazzled that there could be such a thing as an old family in a young country. “I can’t name them, of course, but they only rent rooms to us.” The single rule of the house was so bizarre that Clay really did feel as if he’d entered an upside-down universe. “One restriction,” the supervisor warned. “You must be careful not to touch the ceiling!”

  Clay trudged up the steps to the common area with its small, dumpy kitchenette. He’d met the latest band of intern renters when he’d arrived a few days ago, and the remains of their breakfasts cluttered the countertop: a spilled box of muesli, two banana peels, a disemboweled moka coffeepot. The place really did resemble a dormitory. Freddy had barricaded the walls in drywall to protect the frescoes and stuccos hidden behind it. But Freddy didn’t have the heart to cover the extraordinary fresco on the ceiling—he loved looking at it too much.

  Clay gazed up just as he had on the first day he’d moved in as a renting intern; only then had he understood the museum supervisor’s warning. Across a dim blue rectangle in the center of the ceiling ran a frolic of pink and gold paint strokes portraying a floating Madonna surrounded by garlands and horny mating doves. According to Freddy, the fresco had been painted in 1698 by Sebastiano Ricci; the van der Haars had kept the main jewel of Palazzo Contarini for themselves. Clay never tired of looking at it, but now it came with the price of loneliness. Freddy was truly gone—even down to his ashes, which Clay had covertly poured into a nearby canal in a one-man ceremony the morning he’d arrived. He wished he’d brought Nick back to Il Dormitorio to stand with him underneath this forgotten masterpiece. The echoing sound of suitcases being wheeled along the pavement outside only made the loneliness inside the room more acute—surely the vibrations from that unholy, oblivious sound of newness was responsible for the cracks veining the ceiling.

  Adjoining the common area, separated by more drywall and a locked door, was Freddy’s (now Clay’s) private chambers. It consisted of a bathroom and a bedroom flocked with the thick red velvets that Freddy favored, possibly for velvet’s terrible propensity to trap the reek of cigarette smoke. Clay had already thrown out several of Freddy’s old boxes—one contained a stash of needles and rubber tourniquet bands from the Great Venice Heroin Relapse of the early 1990s. Clay was sure to find more depressing artifacts in the closets.

  Clay walked over to a wall of cabinet bookcases, the cheap linoleum-tiled floor whimpering at each step. The middle bookcase cabinet was a false front; it popped open on hinges to reveal a bolted Louis Seize walnut door. For reasons that Clay never understood, this solitary door remained the single connecting link between the van der Haar quarters and the rest of Palazzo Contarini. It had stayed like that over the decades and through its various owners. Clay knocked four times on the walnut door, the long-established signal between neighbors, and unlatched the lock as he waited for the approach of footsteps. Eventually, the bolt was yanked on the other side. The door flew open, letting in an explosion of afternoon light.

  A tall white-haired man stood in the doorframe. He had a wide Nebraska-shaped forehead that was mildly sunburned; a black mole crested the wave of his left eyebrow, and white scruff covered his cheeks and neck. He was still handsome in his late middle age, and growing oddly more handsome as he receded into the soft years of retirement. This man looked at Clay with an expression of affection so blinding it was as if the light bouncing off the Rio della Sensa emanated directly from him.

  “Clay!” he boomed. “We just got back from Capri.” Clay nodded, and the man shifted his expression to one of puckered sorrow. “I’m sorry about Freddy. Jesus, I really thought he’d outlive us all. Did you get my flowers?”

  “Yes,” Clay said to Richard Forsyth West. “They were beautiful. Freddy loved lilies. I wish he could have seen them taking up half the brownstone.”

  “No need to thank me.” West spread his arms. “Come here. I’ve been waiting to give this to you.” And as if this small gift still confounded its recipient, Richard West named it. “A hug.”

  Chapter 6

  In the middle of the night, Nick received the text he had been waiting for.

  He’s back in town. Try him tomorrow at Mercato del Pesce/Rialto fish market. He usually goes there @10 on Saturday mornings. Good luck. I love you.

  The “I” of the text was Clay, writing from his new Italian mobile; the “he” was their mark, Richard Forsyth West. But what captivated Nick about the message—what left him tossing around on Daniela’s lumpy guest-room mattress—was the un-simple declaration of “I love you.” Those words were a pure line of risk, and Nick hadn’t expected them from someone as guarded as Clay. Nick drifted for minutes in the warmth of the phrase, sinking into each word and battling his instinct to play it cool by not responding. But he understood that a neck had been exposed and a vulnerable vein held to the light, so he grabbed his phone and quickly typed, I love you too and won’t let you down. Then for the rest of the night Nick did love him too.

  Daniela had made ravioli for dinner, velveteen squares of noodle filled with dishrag-limp mushrooms. Over glasses of red wine, Nick said words like “ravioli” and Daniela corrected him by repeating the same words back to him; this tedious game of international tone deafness played out for the duration of the meal. After dinner, Daniela dug through a drawer to locate a spare set of house keys and encouraged Nick not to be afraid of the toilet brush—“Americans are so filthy with bathrooms, why is that? Tell me why you are so clean with your dogs but not with your toilet bowls?” While clearing the plates, she asked if she could take Nick out for a coffee the next morning. “I want to talk to you about Clay,” she said with an unnerving tenseness. “I want to make certain things clear about him. Tomorrow, after you’ve had a decent night’s sleep.”

  Nick was the first to wake in the morning. Headachy from the wine and still high from Clay’s text, he carried a fresh pair of underwear into the bathroom to take a shower. Although he only urinated in the toilet, he whisked the plastic brush thoroughly around the bowl for fear of being blamed for any residual muck. By the time he had unlocked the bathroom door, Daniela was already dressed and waiting in the kitchen, peeling an orange at the counter with the long, unvarnished fingernails of an acoustic guitarist. Nick had a towel wrapped around his waist and his briefs on under the towel, but he crossed his arms over his chest in adolescent modesty.

  “Good morning,” Daniela sang with a slight ring of reprimand over the length of his shower. She was wearing the same magenta pants and red blouse that she’d had on the day before, switching only her jewelry. A meteorite of topaz hung from a long gold chain between her breasts, and several gold rings encircled her fingers. Nick was curious about Daniela’s body—what she’d kept, what she’d improved upon. His close friend Seth in New York was transgender, and Seth had simply let all the hair grow everywhere while still debating about starting hormones. Seth wasn’t even convinced “she” was better than “he” anymore and yet wasn’t sold on the incertitude of “they” either. Daniela, however, whom Clay termed “old-school,” had found her freedom in drawing far more certain conclusions.

  “Well, get dressed,” Daniela wailed impatiently, a
s if she’d been goading him all morning.

  “Che ora è?” Nick asked. When he heard it was only eight fifteen, he figured he could have coffee with Daniela and still find the Rialto fish market by ten. He put on a clean white Oxford but decided to stick with the blue trousers and green wool jacket he’d worn the day before. Twice, he checked to make sure that his old Wickston business card was in his wallet.

  When he opened the guest-room door, Daniela surveyed him through her enormous glasses. “Didn’t you have that outfit on when you arrived?”

  Nick was too polite to accuse her of the same crime. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered.

  “It will be too warm for that jacket today.” Then she shot her finger up in inspiration and barged past him into the guest room to fish through a pile of bags. She emerged with a plaid blazer of thin blue, gray, and teal stripes—the pattern was called the Prince of Wales check, which Nick could identify only because it had been a favorite of Ari’s father. “I bought this for my boyfriend, Benny, but it was too big on him.”

  Nick slipped it on and inspected himself in the mirror. The jacket was too short in the sleeves, but he scrunched up the cuffs and liked what he saw: a young man in a relaxed silk jacket who happened to be wandering a Venetian fish market.

  “You don’t mind if I borrow it?” he asked.

  She patted his chest. “Keep it. Now, do you have your set of keys? I cannot be letting you in every time you forget them!”

  They passed down the tunnel of Calle Degolin, and Daniela guided him around the curving gray backside of a Gothic cathedral. A slender canal glittered in the sun, and a warm breeze stroked their faces.

  “In spring, the canal water is still fresh,” Daniela said. “By summer, with all the tourists, it turns to sewage.”

  “But you like living here, don’t you?”

  “It takes a certain kind,” she replied. “Eccentrics and individualists. Loners with good manners. The very opposite of the tourists.” She sighed wistfully. “I’m afraid the tourists are finally winning. We’ve been conquered by a well-organized army of occupiers who have no interest in staying more than three nights.”

  Nick didn’t bother to memorize the zig or zag of their path down side streets and across bridges. He was too absorbed by the discovery of every unordinary brick and stone. At the third canal, a gunshot blast of pigeons exploded over the water, and behind it lingered the tinny cries of seagulls. A teakettle screamed from an upper window, and in another window, green shutters were slapped open by saggy, matronly arms.

  Daniela led Nick into a corner caffè on the white trapezoid of a campo. Older locals collected at the zinc bar counter. Daniela asked Nick what he wanted—anything approximating a large American coffee—and shooed him toward a table by the window. A minute later, she placed two coffees down and sat across from him. As Nick rested his elbow on the wood, twin splashes escaped from the coffee cups. He grabbed a matchbook from a nearby ashtray and ducked down to wedge it under the wobbly leg. It was an old waiter’s trick that he performed almost by instinct.

  When he resurfaced, Daniela gave a nod as if suitably impressed. She pressed her elbow on the wood to test his efforts.

  “I don’t know exactly how long you’ve known Clay—” she began.

  “Two months,” he told her firmly.

  “Okay,” she said in a dismissive tone. Nick knew that any answer he provided had already been deemed inferior. “I met him four years ago after he’d been an intern at the Guggenheim. Clay was in a bad place at the time, he’d taken a few punches in Venice. But, oh, when they met, Freddy fell for him hard. I could see it right away. Freddy was devoted to the teeth, probably in love, ready to throw everyone else aside to spend as much time with Clay as possible. He gave him little gifts, like a gold ring, a musty Emily Dickinson book—the kind of tokens that pass like secrets between two people. Clay was clearly being courted. You see, Freddy collected people.”

  “I got that impression,” Nick said.

  “I’ll admit, I was initially skeptical. Understand, we’re an old family of international psychotics and misanthropes. It isn’t like today with this blind acceptance blasting on everyone in all directions. Now you could find someone like me on TV, couldn’t you?” Daniela laughed. “Well, that wasn’t the case back when. That’s why we treated each other like brothers and sisters, a family that would always take care of our own, and we could be very suspicious of strangers who wormed their way into our group. Freddy was particularly susceptible because he had that gilded last name that spelled money. And let’s face it, Freddy was incredibly lonely and had a weakness for youth. Clay wouldn’t have been the first young man to try to charm his way through the door to take whatever he could.”

  Daniela rested her purse on the table and removed a folded piece of mint-green stationery. It looked to Nick like expensive paper, its texture almost the consistency of chalk.

  “You’ve heard the rumors,” Daniela said, nodding in affirmation for him. “They started circulating the day Freddy died. I was barraged with calls from close friends. Clay had murdered Freddy, just as they predicted he would. Clay had been alone at Freddy’s bedside and delivered a fatal dose in order to get his hands on the van der Haar fortune.” Daniela shook her head. “These friends meant well. Don’t blame them. They were looking after their friend. And Freddy could have a wicked sense of humor, telling people that Clay was only sticking around to vacuum up the dollar bills once he croaked. But that wasn’t the case. Not at all.”

  Daniela handed Nick the mint paper, which he unfolded to find a typed letter signed with a scribble of green ink.

  “I received that letter from Freddy about a year ago when he was so far along on his death march that he could barely speak by phone.”

  My Dearest Dani,

  Is the mail still slow in Venice? If it is, you may be reading this as haunted words from the dead. Boo! Peter had the nerve to call me yesterday from 29 Palms and ask Clay if I’m dying. Clay turned to me—I was bedridden on the sofa like King Sardanapalus in that Delacroix painting (did we see that in Paris? I’m forgetting everything)—and asked me, “Freddy, are you dying?” I belched out, “I’d say so!” Peter told Clay to tell me not to die until after his trip to Hawaii. Thus, I’ve acquiesced to a few more months of existence while Peter fails at surfing (or is he failing at the surfers?).

  But now for the reason I write. Doll, I’m asking you for a favor. Tell our siblings to stop ganging up on Clay and spreading the rumors about him gold-digging for my money. I’ve gotten separate visits/calls from Bruno, Laurie, Kiko, Jules, Gitsy, Nan, Marc, and, believe it or not, London Ted, each one expressly informing me that I’m being taken advantage of by a hustler from the Bronx. And out, out, out I must kick Clay to preserve my friendships and legacy. Dani, it just isn’t true! You met Clay in the kinder twinkle of Venezia. You see him for the loving, good-hearted young man he is. Please share that impression with the family—convince them with your fascist willpower! They don’t know what a godsend Clay is. He’s the only one taking care of me—and how awful it must be to spend your vital days on a putrid old valetudinarian. Can you imagine either of us doing that in our gorgeous twenties? I honestly wouldn’t be alive without him, and I’d happily give him what’s left to repay his devotion. But [and here, in green ink, Freddy added a caret and wrote “between us”] there is nothing left to take. Beyond nothing. Niente.

  Please intercede. I pray I will be strong enough to visit Il Dormitorio once again and we can dine like two hungry hookers at L’Incontro. I was just recalling the time we sneaked onto that private jet and landed in Le Bourget and were almost arrested on the tarmac. When was that? When were we last young?

  Yours,

  [And here an F was scratched in green]

  Nick glanced over the top of the stationery where Daniela was staring at him with a look of vindication. Nick thought the vindication was misdirected. Daniela should have been sharing this letter with Bruno, Laurie, Kiko, Jules, Gitsy, Nan
, Marc, or London Ted, not the lovestruck boyfriend of the slandered and blamed.

  “Did you have any luck changing their minds?” he asked.

  She took the letter from him, folded it, and returned it to her purse with tremendous care. “I tried my best, but they’d already made up their minds. Clay never had a chance.” She tapped her nails on the table. “I thought you should know, in case you had doubts. Clay was loyal and dedicated to Freddy right to the end. He did more than any of us to help him.”

  “I don’t have doubts about Clay,” Nick assured her. “I know he didn’t kill Freddy.” Technically, he didn’t know that for certain; he merely assumed it. Did you murder your best friend? wasn’t exactly a question that flowed from the lips when falling in love. And love ruled out the possibility of that person being a murderer. Despite the New York rumors, Nick couldn’t picture Clay maliciously ending a life, especially Freddy’s, which he’d cared for more than his own. “Not a chance he murdered Freddy. No way.”

  Daniela gave a snort of satisfaction. “Good.” She removed her glasses to pinch her eyes. The bridge pads had left red indentations the size of houseflies on her nose, and she blinked around with a scrunched face that seemed to mimic the world her eyes must be taking in. She slipped the glasses back on. “Now that I’ve been honest with you,” Daniela said ominously, “I’d like for you to be honest with me.”

  Nick let out a gurgling laugh. “About what?”

  “What are you and Clay plotting here in Venice?”