A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  Most of Il Dormitorio’s short-term renters took their expulsion in stride. Only one, a sandy-haired Ivy League brat from Connecticut, proved intractable, stomping his feet and claiming tenants’ rights. It took an hour of compassionate sighing, a few veiled threats, and two hundred euros before he agreed to pack his suitcase.

  By three thirty, Clay was trying to decide what to do with a set of Georgian chairs upholstered in beige needlepoint—really the only valuable furniture left in the palazzino—when his phone rang. It was Daniela. In lieu of hello, Clay answered with, “I swear he’ll be out of your hair soon. Did he at least take you out to dinner?”

  There was a long silence before Daniela responded. “Hi, doll. It’s not that. But he is the reason I’m calling. He hasn’t come out of his room in two days. I’ve knocked several times, and he always says he’s sleeping.” She paused. “I think you should come over.”

  Clay hurried out of the house and headed south. As he crossed the Grand Canal, he heard a faint chanting in the distance, like cicadas chattering on a forest’s edge. These were human voices. Clay realized he’d been so engrossed in selling the house that he’d ignored the city around him. In retrospect, he recalled seeing banners suspended over bridges and white sheets hugging balconies that must have announced the details of today’s demonstration. He saw them now. A rally was being held this afternoon for Venetian residenti at Piazzale Roma, the symbolic entry point to the city where the buses and cars dumped visitors from the mainland. The specific target of the protest was the massive development in Mestre, along with the project’s phantom foreign investors. But for most of the Venetians gathering that afternoon under the hot spring sun, the real scourge was tourism itself. What would Venice be like without any Venetians living in it? There were only fifty-three thousand of these rare humans left, and that number was shrinking by a thousand each year. They were a people facing redline extinction, wiped out by foreign invaders who marched through their streets with cameras, shooting anything that didn’t move. Their neighbors and children were sent into exile so their bedrooms could be Airbnb’ed for prime weekend rates. The love of the city had killed its people. Quite simply, Venice had been visited to death.

  Clay passed dozens of protesters who must have just left Piazzale Roma. They carried homemade signs proclaiming VIVIAMO VENEZIA. NON SIAMO COMPARSE! (“We live in Venice. We are not extras!”) or VENEZIA NON È UN PARCO DIVERTIMENTI (“Venice is not an amusement park”) or MI NON VADO VIA MI RESTO (“I do not go away, I stay”). Others had simply adopted the iconic maroon-and-gold Venetian flag with the words RESIDENTE RESISTENTE stamped across it. Clay nodded in solidarity at the demonstrators. He wished he could swing by Piazzale Roma to raise his fist in support. But he was too concerned about Nick for any detours. He had texted him several times that morning, and he’d received ambiguous one-word answers in return: Great to Clay’s news that the house inspections were under way; Anywhere to Clay’s adventurous question as to the first place they should travel. Now those one-word answers seemed ominous. Clay purposely hadn’t texted any mention of Dulles Hawkes to Nick, hoping the antiques dealer would remain forgotten at the bottom of an elevator shaft for the rest of their lives. But now his stomach was turning over, converting vague, unverified fears into very real pain.

  The reverb of bullhorns pierced the air. The chanting grew louder as Clay cut a path near the Piazzale. He dashed down a tiny canal where the coppery water held the twitching reflection of the sky. Clay heard the Venetian chant clearly now.

  Mi no vado via! Mi no vado via!

  Mi no vado via! Mi no vado via!

  I do not go away. I am not leaving.

  He mouthed along to the words—although he was going away, he was leaving. Maybe forever, and that was his real final goodbye to Freddy.

  He turned down a sharp passage, in the opposite direction of Piazzale Roma. The cheering dissolved into a faint roar like television static in another room.

  When Clay reached Daniela’s apartment, a handsome older Chinese man with an oil slick of hair opened the gate. It was not ideal circumstances for meeting Benny, who was wearing a burgundy suit of lightweight velvet and a pair of dirty garden gloves. He’d been potting rosebushes in the strip of dirt that bordered the concrete, and he tugged off the gloves to shake Clay’s hand. Daniela wandered outside in a loose silk dress, a shade of orange that clashed exquisitely with Benny’s suit and her own red glasses. Daniela stared skeptically at the bushes, aware of their unlikely chances. Clay gave her a kiss on each cheek, careful not to smear her makeup.

  “Is he any better?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what happened. He seemed so happy up until a few days ago and then? I went to the protest earlier today—god, it felt good to scream with my city—and when I got back he refused to open the door.”

  “I’ll check on him.”

  “Take your time. Benny and I are having dinner with his family on Giudecca.” She stared apprehensively at her boyfriend. “It’s not a great night to meet your kids. The police are worried the demonstrators might get violent. And so they should get violent! But we could stay in and—”

  Benny shook his head. “They’re waiting for us, Dani.”

  Daniela pressed her mouth against Clay’s ear. “God help me. Meeting a family at my age? I feel like some horrible mistake has been made.”

  “They’ll love you,” Clay assured her before doing his best rendition of Freddy. “Break their hearts, doll.”

  Clay entered the apartment and knocked on the guest-room door. He knocked two more times before turning the knob. The shades were drawn tight over the windows, and the covered skylight bore only the scant outline of a fading afternoon. The room smelled of sour boyhood. Clay placed his hand on the leg lump of comforter at the foot of the bed. The body underneath it barely moved. He walked over to the side. There was only the faintest rustle of sheets.

  “It’s you,” the voice said. Nick must be looking up at him, but in the darkness Clay couldn’t make out his eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “I can’t.”

  It was right then that Clay knew what had happened. He pulled off his shoes and climbed into bed next to Nick. Slipping under the covers, he slid his arm under Nick’s back until his hand grasped his far shoulder. Then he collected all of Nick against his chest. He felt the pulse of Nick’s breath and the shiver of his eyelashes on his neck. Clay wrapped his arm around this body. He wanted Nick to feel forgiven. He wanted him to know he was forgiven before he ever felt a sense of blame.

  “You can tell me when you’re ready,” Clay whispered. “Until then, we’ll stay just like this.”

  Chapter 19

  Where do you go after Venice?

  It was a question consuming Clay as he marched, documents in hand, toward his appointment at the notary. It had been a hard week for the city—angry protests continued to flare each afternoon and a car had been set on fire two nights ago on the bridge connecting Venice to the mainland. The week had been equally rough for Clay and Nick. Just convincing Nick to get out of bed those first few mornings felt tantamount to forcing a new religion on a person. Slowly, though, Nick had come back to life, a little more skittish and sheepish than before, but every day less inclined to disappear into the snuffed darkness of Daniela’s guest room. Clay knew it was essential to put some distance between Nick and the scene of the crime. Leaving Venice as soon as possible was key, and Clay worked diligently on the last-minute preparations for the sale of Il Dormitorio. To hurry the process along, he sent West a bluffing text: Maybe it’s best we wait until fall. I have to be back in NYC next week, and we’ve been rushing when it might be smarter to pause and consider our options. West asked him to hold on and within two hours he’d set their meeting at the notary for Monday at 10:00 a.m. “Think about the first place you want to go,” Clay told Nick in an effort to keep him focused on the future. �
�Picture our next destination. It can be anywhere—seriously anywhere on the planet.”

  Strangely, when it came to choosing, neither of them could make up their mind. No place, near or far, seemed right. Bogotá. Cairo. Kuala Lumpur. Each exotic city was tossed out at random and dismissed with a shrug of doubt. Clay suspected that the stumbling block was money—for once, not too little but too much. The idea of living on an endless supply of cash proved as alien to both of them as visiting the moon—or, rather, like grafting the moon’s sulfurous atmosphere onto Bogotá or Cairo or Kuala Lumpur. As different as their upbringings had been, they had both been raised incurably middle-class. As kids, Clay and Nick could each envision earning money or stealing money or even performing degrading acts for money. But possessing a surplus of it took on the absurd logic of a dream.

  Clay finally made the decision for them. Last night, he’d texted Nick that their first destination right after the closing would be a train to Milan. And from Milan? Well, they’d figure it out once they got there. He thought it best not to upset Nick by mentioning that one of their chief search parameters might be “countries with no extradition treaty with Italy.” After all, they’d be traveling with the extra baggage of fraud and murder.

  Passing the train station, Clay took the white-stone Scalzi Bridge over the Grand Canal. The turquoise water rippled under its load of rush-hour traffic. At a kiosk on the other side of the bridge, Venetians snapped up the morning paper. They muttered in disgust over the latest turn in the Mestre imbroglio. Apparently the week of protests had induced an insider to come forward with a front-page-worthy reveal about the tourist development. As long as the headline didn’t read YOUNG WHITE MALE WANTED IN SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF DRUNKEN BRIT, Clay took any news as encouraging.

  He hurried through the spaghetti alleys of Santa Croce, hunting for the street that held the notary. Under Italian law, it was the buyer who chose the specific notary to oversee the closing, a stipulation not unlike letting the player cut the card deck after the dealer shuffled to ensure no collusion. But today’s seller of Il Dormitorio had found another way to beat the system. Clay was armed with a folder of his forged documents mixed in with the legitimate ones. He also carried his passport, his bank details, and the original van der Haar deed from 1894 (a little relic designed to entertain West during the proceeding and keep his attention off Clay’s trembling hands). He was as ready as he’d ever be to deceive his way through twenty minutes of formalities. At the end of those twenty minutes, four million euros would flow into his bank account. Yes, he was frightened. Terrified from throat to knee. But he could cheat a man he hated for twenty minutes in order to be free for the rest of his life.

  His stomach seemed less convinced. Clay stopped at a corner to take a few settling breaths. He popped a chalky pink tablet into his mouth—his fourth that morning. You can break down all you want after this meeting is over, he told his stomach, a driver appealing to a sputtering engine to make it to the next highway off-ramp. Get through this hour, and I promise you the best internist in Milan. He pulled out his phone to check the time: 9:50. He had ten minutes to locate the notary.

  He hurried down a passage that contained two bars and three mask shops but no notary. He careened left and fought past a barrage of deliverymen with their loaded metal trolleys blocking the path. The passage led to a Baroque church that Clay had walked by hundreds of times, and yet he couldn’t mentally connect this landmark to his notion of where the notary was. He spun around, rebattled the deliverymen, and ended up on a tiny stone-carved bridge. The stomach tablets weren’t working. He had five minutes until he was meant to be sitting across from Richard West to sign over the deed. Clay darted down a skinny alley that dead-ended in a canal. He was starting to panic, his folder of documents slick with palm sweat. He reversed and took a sharp right, only to arrive at the same Baroque church, where a group of Ukrainian tourists was now photo-stalking a flock of pigeons. The clock tower read one minute after ten. Clay picked up his pace, choosing movement over precision. Visions of West and the notary shaking their heads at his tardiness—This kid can’t be trusted, we’d better triple-check all of his paperwork—flashed through his mind. It would be exactly like Venice to tangle him up one last time.

  The city was no place for a sane person. Thus Clay took a nonsensical turn left, the very opposite direction from the way his brain told him to go. At five minutes after ten, he arrived at the notary’s front door. A brass plaque over the buzzer announced CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DEL NOTARIATO and notified visitors that the office was on the second floor. Clay pressed the buzzer and heard the drone of admittance.

  As he stepped inside, the first tendrils of air-conditioning slipped across his skin. He saw the stairs in front of him just as he heard a voice yelling “Stop!” from behind him. Clay turned around in the entrance; the door smacked against his shoulder. A sprinting, olive-skinned man with curly black hair came to a braking halt in front of the building. He had a newspaper curled in his fist and was panting so hard he doubled over. Only when the man looked up did Clay recognize Battista.

  “Crook!” Battista roared in English. “Cheater!”

  It was Clay’s worst-case scenario, the one he hadn’t even allowed himself to entertain. He slipped his folder of phony documents behind his back. He considered barreling past Battista and hurling them into the nearest canal.

  “All this time, he lied to me.” Battista lifted to his full height and jabbed his own chest. “Mr. West made me work against my own city,” he cried. “He made me betray myself!”

  Clay had no idea what Battista was talking about, but it seemed unrelated to the documents in his hand. He felt a wave of dizziness pass through him. So close to disaster, he stood there somehow miraculously unscathed. Clay had been keeping the front door open with his shoulder, but the drone sounded again from the upstairs office.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to West’s assistant. “I can’t talk now. I have an appointment. I have to go up.” He offered a sympathetic frown, as if to communicate that he knew better than anyone how manipulative Richard West could be.

  “You don’t understand!” Battista shouted, his voice breaking into a whine. He stepped closer and switched to his native tongue. “He made a fool of me, and why? For money. All this time, all these meetings where I bring blueprints and documents and bank checks, so stupid I was, fetching and retrieving like a dog, thinking we were working on conservation projects. That’s what West told me we were doing, I swear that’s what I thought!” The young man was on the verge of tears. He unrolled his newspaper and pointed at a photograph on the front page of a tan older man with rivulets of long gray hair covering his bald spot. A brown cigarette was clenched in the man’s teeth. The headline outed him as the head contractor of the Mestre development, the local man performing the evil bidding of the anonymous foreign investors. The newspaper had sensationally dubbed him THE JUDAS OF VENICE.

  “I have met this man many times,” Battista whispered, as if fearful that others on the street might overhear. “At hotels, at restaurants. I’ve passed envelopes and plans between him and Mr. West for months now.” He shook his head. “Don’t you see? West is one of the foreign investors in that development. Jesus, I’m so stupid! He’s happy to restore an altar painting and get credit for saving Venice. But he can’t resist making money, no matter what it destroys.”

  The buzzer droned again. Battista began to babble about his family—What if they found out that he worked for one of the developers? They’d disown him. He had lived in Venice his whole life. Where was he meant to go? Clay heard a commotion of voices on the floor above.

  “I’m so sorry, Battista,” Clay said somberly. “Richard West is a terrible person. I was his assistant once, and he screwed me over. I’ll never forgive him for it. But, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go upstairs now and sell him a house.” It was a shame Clay couldn’t explain to the unhinged young man the retribution hidden in that act.

  As Clay turned to go up, Battist
a lunged toward him and grabbed his arm.

  “No, you don’t understand!” he said, his eyes bright with tears. “Don’t you see? He’s tricked you too. Don’t go up there. It’s a trap.”

  Prosecco at 10:00 a.m. did not strike Nick as the shrewdest way to kick off his last day in Venice. But Eva was in a celebratory mood, plus she wanted to say goodbye in person. Come on, swing by for a toast on your way out of town, she texted. I have exciting news!

  Nick steered his heavy suitcase through the streets of Venice with his carry-on bag strapped on his shoulder. Even with his luggage he felt, for the first time in so many days, free, and light, and maybe, yes, even hopeful. The sun was warm on his skin, and the smell of brackish water teemed with amoebic life. Clay had saved him—that much Nick knew—and he would spend every day thanking him for that gift. Nick didn’t mind the heft of his suitcase, or the shoulder strap digging into his collarbone, or the sticky heat of the late-spring morning, because it all pressed him firmly onto the planet and he wanted to stay here—with Clay—for as long as he could. Yellow signs pointed toward the ferrovia. Once Nick reached the train station, he’d buy two tickets to Milan and wait, mind empty, heart open, for Clay on the platform.

  He wore his gift from Daniela, the Prince of Wales jacket. The tailor had done a nice job mending the sleeve; the rip was nearly invisible. Ahead, Nick spotted a postcard stand, and he stopped at it for a minute, realizing he’d forgotten to send his sister one. Now, on the last day, it felt too late. He’d write Margaret a postcard from wherever they ended up. Surely that destination would be almost as stunning as Venice.

  It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet when he reached the station—Clay wouldn’t be free from the notary for at least another half hour—and Palazzo Contarini wasn’t too far out of the way. Nick decided to push his suitcase in Eva’s direction. Why not drop in to hear the news that she’d finally gotten her hands on the Blue Madonna fresco? He could wish her all the best. He’d likely never see her again.