A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  West removed his arm with the abruptness of someone who had broken his own protocol on personal space. He seemed slightly embarrassed. “Please let me know your thoughts after you visit the church,” he said. “I want to hear your take on the pigments. See for yourself if they pop.” West talked like he’d restored the painting with his own hands. But Nick couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to introduce his business card, which had been the explicit goal of this morning’s expedition. He pulled out his wallet and removed it. He’d already jotted his cell phone across it.

  “Here’s my card. You can text me on my number here.”

  West stared down at the white rectangle. “Wickston,” he muttered. “Silver, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Nick said and launched into his prepared speech. “We pretty much rule the corner on colonial silver sales in New York. I’m actually in Italy because of a meeting with a client in Milan. He wants me to authenticate some recent acquisitions of German silver. That’s my primary role at Wickston. Authentication. But I thought I’d give myself a week in Venice first. Why not, right? I couldn’t miss Venice.”

  West flicked the card across his palm as if to test the quality of the paper stock. “You ever run into a guy named Dulles Hawkes?”

  “Sure,” Nick replied. “Hawkes was our only competitor in New York before he closed a few years ago. Between us, I always thought Dulles was a bit of a mess. Not exactly trustworthy when it came to sales either. But . . .” He discreetly trailed off.

  West nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I tried to use Dulles for a purchase or two. He was a disaster.” West flicked the card again before storing it in his pocket. “I have an idea. We’re having a little dinner party tonight at my palazzo. It’s nothing fancy, but why don’t you join? We have plenty of room.”

  “Yes, please come!” Eva exclaimed as she wedged the bouquet into the shopping bag on Battista’s shoulder. “It’ll be our way of making it up to you for the damage to your jacket.”

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Nick said cautiously. He hadn’t expected an invitation to West’s house. The plan had been to introduce himself and hand over his business card, nothing more. If he accepted the invitation, he would have to extend his act for an entire evening rather than a mere few minutes in a crowded market. Not to mention the fact that Clay would be right next door, separated from him like a secret buried behind the wall.

  “Don’t think too hard about it,” Eva said, feigning offense. “You don’t have to let us down gently. There are plenty of other strangers for us to lure home.”

  “No, no, of course I’ll come!” Nick replied. Like so much in his life, he let the flow of the conversation decide his fate.

  “Excellent,” West said. “I’ll text you the address. We’re in Cannaregio.” Nick already knew the palazzo’s location. He’d considered walking over there last night just to see the setting of so many of Clay’s stories. “Say seven o’clock?”

  “Battista is a terrific dancer,” Eva swore, grabbing the Italian’s overloaded arm. “It’s something to look forward to.” She was clearly making an inside joke. A flame of embarrassment colored Battista’s face, and Nick’s stare fed its fire, reddening his cheeks even further. He must have humiliated himself by dancing one night in front of them.

  Eva confirmed that Battista was West’s assistant when she introduced him. They exchanged rote Ciaos at a range close enough for Nick to smell nicotine on his breath. West pointed Nick in the direction of the Gesuiti, which he now had the obligation of visiting. He was sure to be asked his impression of the Titian that night.

  Nick skipped up the marble steps of the Rialto Bridge in a flush of success. At the top of the bridge, he briefly hallucinated a sighting of the Warbly-Gardeners in a motoscafo speeding right under him. But it was a different tourist family lounging on the back cushions, and Nick had already let go of yesterday’s disasters. He was too busy arguing with Clay in his head that a closer friendship with West would only serve to help their scheme. It wasn’t a betrayal to be welcomed into the man’s house for an evening. Nick could still be one hundred percent faithful to the person he loved while standing on the other side.

  Chapter 7

  In the hush of early evening, Venice changed from past to present. Lights glowed in windows, pulling attention away from the ornate architecture to favor the haphazard clutter of modest rooms. The boat motors drowned out the murmur of sightseers. In the daytime, it was easy to forget that a sea lay just beyond the city and that the canals weren’t mere cartoon strips of water. But in the evening, when the sun slanted to the west, a lonely, restless sea air rolled in with the Adriatic tides. Venice became a port town again, a struggling maritime capital trying to beat back the waves. The sea grew like an imagination in the dark.

  Nick felt a sense of anticipation in the night ahead. He wore his green wool blazer, having dropped off the ripped Prince of Wales jacket at a tailor after his visit to I Gesuiti. Earlier that afternoon, paying the one-euro entrance fee, he’d entered the spacious, whipped-cream-walled cathedral constructed in the shape of a Latin cross. Nick found the restored, still-sooty Titian painting slightly underwhelming. He’d been far more impressed by the church’s inlaid marble floor of green, white, and gold; the glitzy pattern spilled down the altar steps and spread across the nave like the kind of wall-to-wall carpeting preferred by Houston housewives. Nevertheless, Nick made an effort to study the Titian, right down to Saint Lawrence’s chiseled torso and overly worked-out legs; while being barbecued alive, the saint raised a tentative arm toward a starry rupture in the night sky. It was with zero guilt that Nick assessed the sexiness of each armored torturer surrounding the saint. To the artist’s credit, the painting did capture the pitch and sway of a crisis—Nick deposited those words, pitch and sway, into his memory bank to spend later on Richard West.

  The only errand that Nick hadn’t accomplished that afternoon was a text to Clay informing him of West’s dinner party. By the time he returned to Daniela’s, he’d convinced himself it would be smarter to see how he fared that evening before needlessly worrying his boyfriend. Nick might very well bomb tonight with the Wests and return to his minor background role in the scheme. Anyway, he and Clay were meeting up tomorrow in an out-of-the-way church. It would be easier to explain in person. Mission accomplished, he’d texted instead. See you tomorrow.

  Approaching West’s palazzo, Nick passed a long, lean alley that ended in a green door. He suspected it might be the entrance to Il Dormitorio. The tiny, derelict palazzino had crooked shutters, and bird’s nests of weeds filled the crooks of the windows. There was no light visible, but Nick had to assume that Clay was home. He felt a pang of longing as he overshot the alley and continued toward the front door of Palazzo Contarini.

  Nick briefed himself on his lies: You work at Wickston. You’re an expert in authentication. You’re here by yourself before a business trip to Milan. He checked the map on his phone and discovered that he was only four feet from the palazzo’s entrance. The brick wall gave way to an iron gate with an enormous stone sculpture of a bird at its peak—it looked more like a pterodactyl, although Nick guessed the medieval artist was aiming for an eagle. The gate was ajar, and Nick drifted into a small garden where a square of mowed grass was pinned at each corner by a cypress tree. Blue vines wove through a rickety pergola. Against the far wall, the first flashes of white wisteria petals hung from flaccid branches. Two squat, leafless bushes were spring’s last holdouts.

  The inner iron door to the palazzo was locked. Nick rang a chrome bell and eventually heard approaching footsteps. When the door opened, it was Battista who stared out with an unwelcoming squint.

  “Hi!” Nick chirped, putting so much of his heart into his smile he forgot to try out his Italian. Nick had developed a small crush on West’s assistant and hoped they’d be drunkenly flirting over a plate of sea snails by night’s end. Battista gave an unenthusiastic nod before stepping back into the darkness, which didn
’t bode well for Nick’s chances. Battista wore tight camel-colored trousers that reminded Nick of horse-riding jodhpurs and a white button-down that still held the creases of its cardboard packaging. Stringy black chest hair erupted from the open shirt collar.

  Battista led Nick into a murky cavern tiled in red-and-white limestone. Two wooden doors creaked against their chained lock. Nick noticed with a novice’s fascination how moss-green water flowed under the doors and rippled over marble steps. There were water stains along the walls from previous floods, some as high as Nick’s head. Battista leaned against a column by the staircase to light a cigarette and gestured curtly toward the staircase. His message was clear: Nick would have to find his own way into the party. Nick started up the steps, shouting back a belated “Grazie, mio amico!”

  One flight up, after fumbling around in the pitch-black stairwell to locate the doorknob, Nick didn’t so much enter the light as stumble into it. For a moment his eyes were blinded with brightness, the world gone as white as lit kerosene. Blinking, he focused his eyes on the floor and waited until they took in the polished tan-and-black terrazzo. Two pitch-black silhouettes stood nearby. As the colors slowly bled into the room, he saw two young women glancing over with amused smiles. One was Eva in a silk burgundy dress with straps tied like shoestrings at her shoulders. She came toward him with her arm extended.

  “I know it’s bright,” she said. “We get this weird prolonged glare off the canal. We usually have to wear sunglasses in here.” Eva wasn’t kidding. She kicked a fabric box filled with sunglasses by the door. “Help yourself.”

  “I’m okay,” Nick replied with a laugh. He didn’t recognize the other young woman. She had large brown eyes, a smile containing very large teeth, and a pronounced cleft chin. Her hair was long and dark and fell around her face, and her skin held the ochre tan of a recent vacation. She wore a knit top and matching pants in a funhouse camouflage pattern of zigzagging peach and lime stripes, which Nick identified as the staple of a famous Italian fashion house. Eva looked so small and serious next to the striking Italian woman, her skin so pale that Nick could make out the circuitry of blue veins at her temples and wrists.

  “This is Giovanna,” Eva said. “She was just showing us her pictures of”—Eva grunted in search of the proper description—“basically skydiving into Piazza San Marco during Carnival.”

  Giovanna tapped the screen of her phone. Nick stepped forward to get a look. Sure enough, as Giovanna’s scarlet fingernail swiped through an album, a giant human ball of tulle, lace, and wavy brown hair could be seen descending over thousands of revelers. Close-ups revealed not only Giovanna’s supersized features expressing the supersized fear of falling but that she was harnessed to a black cable, which extended from the top of the piazza’s bell tower to a wooden stage assembled on the cobblestone.

  “I had to do it!” Giovanna squealed. “The Flight of the Angel is a tradition that opens Carnival!”

  “Please don’t scare us with those photos!” Richard West huffed as he swept into the room. He had on the same clothes he’d worn to the market that morning, right down to his striped espadrilles. The rope-soled slippers seemed a more practical accessory as he glided across the marble floor. He rattled a red glass filled with ice cubes. “I’m going to have a talk with your parents, Giovanna. How could they let you risk your life on that crazy wire? Why Nick, hello! You made it!” West smiled at him as he swerved toward a blue-clothed table where more red glasses sat beside liquor bottles and a bucket of ice. “Let’s get you a drink. We’re doing Aperol spritzes. Not very original, I know, but I hope you like them.”

  “I love them,” Nick insisted. He’d never tried Aperol before and hoped it wasn’t as horrific as grappa or absinthe or any of the other novelty European alcohols that Ari’s friends routinely served at dinner parties.

  “My parents were very proud that I was chosen,” Giovanna swore. “It’s considered an honor.”

  “This is why I don’t have children,” West said as he mixed prosecco with what looked like an economy-sized bottle of orange cough syrup. “Eva, promise me that you’ll never trust Italian safety precautions when you agree to be swung hundreds of feet over cement. They could have at least suspended you over water. There happens to be a lot of that just now in Venice.”

  “I don’t think I’m Descending Virgin material,” Eva replied.

  “I wasn’t a virgin!” Giovanna stammered. She caught her own joke and laughed at it as she gathered her hair behind her shoulders.

  West padded over and supplied Nick with his cocktail. The thick red glass had crisscross gilding around its rim. He took a sip of the bitter-citrus drink; the tart cringe of the lips was easily disguised by a smile.

  “Are you having a good time?” West asked, as if Nick had been in the house for more than a few minutes. Nick glanced around the room again with clearer eyes. He took in the heavy yellow curtains lining each window, a tarnished mirror suspended over the fireplace, a showdown between chocolate velvet divans in the corner, and the cabinet bookshelf with chicken-wire glass that ran the length of the wall by the front door. A few muddy paintings hung here and there, glazed in a greasy green varnish as if seen through tinted sunglasses. A marble coffee table held a yellow vase from which the fish market’s orange roses poked. Around the vase, glossy magazines had been left open. Nick presumed they might be deliberately turned to editorials featuring this very palazzo. It was, without question, a stunning room deserving of photo shoots. The only odd flourish was a luminous brass doorstop holding one of the balcony windows open; it appeared to be a replica of the human brain. At least, it would have struck Nick as out of place had he not already read up on West’s wife.

  “Your house is beautiful,” Nick told his host. “Truly, it is,” he added, as if West might have received a number of disingenuous compliments in the past. West nodded happily and patted him on the back. He turned to Giovanna.

  “Karine and I couldn’t deal with Venice during Carnival. Otherwise we would have been there to watch you drop. We went to Capri, where it’s perfectly empty off-season, and we hibernated in the dead quiet of Hotel Quisisana for two months. God, it was wonderful. No offense, Giovanna, but Carnival’s gotten too crowded and depressing.” Giovanna grimaced at being forced to defend a tasteless holiday that had elected her as its symbol.

  West glanced at Nick. “I took one look out the window right before Carnival started, and it was pouring. I don’t mean rain, I mean people. People have become the weather in Venice. And for Carnival, it’s all drunks from Padua with cheap plastic masks strapped to their faces, vomiting on every footbridge. It really has come to that! At two in the afternoon!”

  Nick was about to make a comparison to the evil holiday of Santacon that pillaged downtown Manhattan for an entire day each December. But before he could speak, a male voice from deep in the room boomed, “Catastrophe!”

  Nick didn’t know how he’d failed to spot the skeletal old man sitting on one of the chocolate divans in the corner. If he had spotted him, he might have mistaken him for dead. He was pressed deeply into the sofa, his head slumped against the wall with his eyes tilted toward the window; his arms were splayed out on the cushions, and an expired cigarette was wedged between his fingers. An empty glass ashtray lay a short distance away, with a contrail of ashes drawn across the velvet. The liver-spotted Italian rotated his head to face his audience. He had a manicured gray beard and shiny gray hair, but his sideburns and eyebrows were jet-black.

  “It is our mayor, bad, bad,” he decreed in a garbled Italian accent. “He’s from Mestre. Only cares about Mestre. Hates Venezia. Destroys our city with that hotel development he is building in Mestre right now.”

  “Giacomo’s right,” West told Nick. “The mayor’s a mini Trump from the mainland. A self-righteous, self-made thief. He’s filling his own pockets with our tourism dollars and doesn’t care one shit about preserving our delicate ecosystem. It’s disgusting. That new hotel site in Mestre is cost
ing—”

  “No more talk about the destruction of Venice!” a woman with silver shoulder-length hair announced as she entered the room. “You promised one evening’s hiatus, Dick. No planning Venice’s funeral tonight!”

  West’s wife was more remarkable-looking in person than Nick’s Google searches had indicated. Karine had disturbingly prominent cheekbones—the image that came to mind was of vintage hubcaps. The sleeves of her blouse were folded at the elbows in origami-like precision, and its tails were tucked into a long pleated skirt. Her hair was parted so severely down the center, not a single strand had defected to the opposing side. She didn’t introduce herself to Nick but simply took his hand and said warmly, “So glad we have someone new over for dinner.” Nick found himself looking at Karine’s teeth—there were tiny chips along the ridges of the top row. He complimented her on the house, although West must have done most of the decorating before she ever moved in. Perhaps Karine’s lone contribution was the gaudy doorstop.

  Karine West née Hirscher was born in Austria to American diplomats and had served as the CEO of a neuroscience research clinic in Leipzig, Germany, for thirty years. In a sense, Karine and West were still newlyweds, having only married two and a half years before. Nick sensed they had already fallen into a familiar marital pattern, West working himself into a frenzy on a topic and Karine sagely applying the brakes.

  A pudgy Italian woman with magenta-dyed hair appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray of food. She aimed the tray at the man lying on the divan.

  “Elisabetta.” Karine held up a hand. “Stop helping! Sit down next to your husband. Let us be the hosts tonight!” Nick slipped from Karine’s side, attracted mothlike to the piano nobile’s Byzantine windows. The glare had finally receded from the room, leaving dusty halos around the interior lamps. As he walked across the marble floor, he realized that its surface was wavy, as if it had been molded over the centuries to mirror the shape of the water. Giovanna stood outside on a narrow stone balcony. Nick joined her, looking down at the skinny canal below. The water was pea green under the pink haze of the disappearing sun. They stared over the terra-cotta rooftops and into a distance of antenna-like spires and bluing night. A police boat screamed down the canal, and its wake slapped against the palazzo’s mooring piles. Venice might be sunk in the past, but it wasn’t Nick’s past. To him it felt new and possible.