The Gondola Scam

by Jonathan Gash

  “It was a perfectly innocent remark, Gerry." Keith pushed me to a chair while Gerry broke out the wine. Neither said hello. I said wotcher, and sat there feeling an interloper.

  "No remark's innocent! Is it, Lovejoy?" Gerry demanded, white as a sheet and glaring at his mate.

  "Erm," I quavered. I was in crossfires of my own.

  "That's right! Side with him." Gerry fetched a glass, pointedly leaving Keith's on the tatty sideboard.

  "I wasn't," I said quickly. "Honest."

  Keith's turn to go all frosty. "Oh? So I'm in the wrong! Is that it?"

  I began to get a headache. "Honestly. I don't even know what it's all about—"

  Gerry went all dramatic. "He said I should paint engines instead of butterflies. Would you stand for that poisonous remark, Lovejoy?"

  "I said nothing of the kind, dear—"

  "You did! I distinctly heard you."

  Christ. People say they're worse than women, don't they? "Keith can't have meant it like that, Gerry," I said in an inspired moment.

  "Then how did he mean it?"

  "Erm, probably, erm, that your talent should, well, conquer new fields."

  "Lovejoy’s right, Gerry. You know you're better than you think."

  Gerry was mollified. "Am I?"

  "'Course you are," Keith said. "Plain as silly old day."

  "Really? Honestly?"

  Keith rushed the bottle over to us, and it was the end of World War III, thank God. We drank to Gerry's new career as engine artist and chatted amiably about the merits of oils and egg-tempera. Gerry was impressed, once we got talking, because I knew how to transfer Old Master oil paintings to new canvases. We all finished up slightly merry, which suited me because I was keeping a frantic eye on the wine and the time and working out how to get round to the all-important question of doom.

  "I'm so glad we met up again," I confessed eventually. "Cosima's glad, too."

  They were pleased. "She is?" Keith popped another bottle. "Nice little thing. Wrong clothes, of course, and scandalously thin feet for wearing cage heels. Be sure to tell her that having no dress sense isn't her fault."

  "I like her, too," Gerry added. "You've made an absolutely marvelloso choice, Lovejoy. Remember you don't actually have to look at her dreadful blouses. Somebody said she cooks, though women can't. Can she do kibbeh?"

  “Think so,” I guessed hopefully. Sounded like swimming.

  "We must try them." Gerry gave a beatific smile. I'd have to warn Cosima to be on her best culinary form that night. Nobody gets criticized like the cook at the best of times.

  "It's a date," I said. "Not too soon, though. I've an engine problem." So much for tact.

  "Engine?" Keith unglazed. "What engine?"

  "Somebody I know wants to, erm, borrow a powerful boat." I scraped together a little circumspection. "Any idea where I, er, he could get one?"

  "Of course!" Gerry nudged Keith into a reply.

  "How fast does it have to go, Lovejoy?"

  "Not speed. Strength. Like those stone lifters."

  "A working dredger?" Keith really lit up. His subject.

  "Something like that, I suppose."

  "Funny. I've just been giving two of those a good going-over," Keith said.

  "Astonishing coincidence," I agreed gravely.

  Gerry refilled Keith's glass, giggling. "Know what I think? I think naughty old Lovejoy didn't come just to see us. He was only after our dredgers."

  Keith was looking wary, mistrustful swine. "Hire, Lovejoy? Borrow? Or . . . ?"

  I cleared my throat and peered into my empty glass, but Gerry stood there holding the bottle. Both were watching me, exchanging glances. No good mucking about.

  "This friend of mine was wondering where he could, well, get onto one that's, well, moored. Just interest. No, er, need for anybody to spot him. Like the two near the Sacca Serenella, in Murano."

  "See what I mean, Keith?" Gerry relented with the plonk. "Watch him."

  Keith nodded, still suspicious. "They're blocking the wall near the Canal of the Angels. Istrian limestone."

  "Look, Keith. How strong are they? Pulling."

  "Depends what you—your friend I mean—wants to pull. Suppose this glass here is a pile of Istrian pine, like they use ..."

  He was off, frowning with concentration, moving crockery and matches about the coffee table and muttering lunatic technology. I settled back with relief. These amateur enthusiasts are great. No, really. I mean it. Daft as brushes, every single one, and boring as algebra, but great. All I wanted to know was if there was a night watchman and how to work the damned thing.

  "Paying attention, Lovejoy, dear?"

  I looked up into Gerry's sardonic gaze. "Of course," I said, at my most innocent. "I'm really quite interested m i| engines."

  "Don't you mean your friend is?"

  "Erm, sure. My friend."

  Gerry tapped Keith's wrist. "If you lend Lovejoy one of those filthy machines, dear, make him promise to put it back, won't you?" He smiled roguishly. "We don't want the police calling here spoiling our breakfast." Keith fell about at that. Some private joke.

  Yet it is an important point. Keith must be well known as the keen amateur who had been dissecting the bloody dredgers, and police jump to nasty conclusions.

  Keith abandoned his gear ratios. "Would tomorrow do, Lovejoy? Your, ah, friend could come over with me. The foreman's a sweet bloke."

  "My friend hasn't much time," I said. "It'd have to be tonight."

  Keith ended the long pause by saying, "You—he— can't see much of the engine in the dark, Lovejoy."

  "He'll manage."

  'There's an acqua alta."

  Suddenly apprehensive, Gerry sat beside Keith. "The sirens will go soon, during the night. The radio said."

  "Dredgers don't work on, in a high water?" Keith was asking a question.

  "But one could, right? And nobody'd see."

  Gerry suddenly said, "Don't ask Keith to go with you, Lovejoy."

  "Go where?" I demanded indignantly. "Look, Gerry. Have I said anything about Keith going anywhere? Well? Have I?"

  Gerry had a hand on Keith's arm. He'd gone white. "Send Lovejoy away, hen. For his own sake. He's a bad dig."

  I said disgustedly, "Keith. Just tell me how to move one of the damned things, and I'll do the best I can."

  Keith tried. "Don't get upset, Lovejoy. Gerry only meant—"

  Hamming away, I kept it up, all brave and quiet and hurt. "Honestly, there's just no trust anywhere nowadays. I didn't come here to drag you into my troubles. Tell me quick. Is there a guard, and how do I switch the bloody thing on?"

  Over Gerry's protestations Keith began to explain, gradually submerging in his subject. Gerry glared all sorts of despair at me, but I ignored the silly nerk. I wish I'd been cerebrating, because things might have turned out different, but all I could think was, if Keith won't nick a dredger and bring it to the island dead on time then I'd have to do it myself. None of it was my fault. God alone knows why people keep blaming me.

  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 st
reet 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 two 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 rel
ief 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.