A Beautiful Crime Read online

  He’d send her a photo of Piazza San Marco, he told himself. He’d send her a plane ticket one day if he could.

  Passengers began to fill the bus’s confetti seating. Nick got up to help a woman who was battling a fold-up stroller. When he sat back down, he checked his phone: his forty-five minutes had shrunk to thirty-five. What if he arrived at the dock an hour late and he and Clay couldn’t find each other and he had to spend all his money on a night at a hotel? He searched out the window for the bus driver and saw the beefy young man from the plane walking toward the bus. Worse, the guy was waving directly at Nick’s window. Fears of another package-tour monologue flooded Nick’s head. Dude, save me a seat, the guy mouthed.

  Nick was already climbing out of the bus by the time the young man reached it. “I forgot something,” Nick said apologetically. “Have a great trip! Enjoy the wells!”

  Hauling his suitcase across the road, he followed the signs for water. He hadn’t gambled away the comforts of New York to reach Venice on slow rubber wheels; he was going to enter the city the right way. He hurried along the strip of white pavement. He prayed he wasn’t too late. He couldn’t afford a ride on a motoscafo, and he had no intention of paying for one.

  The scheme that he and Clay had devised—a harmless con that would settle their debts and set them up for years to come—involved a single deceitful act on Nick’s part. All that was required of him, really, was the gentlest of lies, a mere nod of the head and a few rehearsed sentences delivered with a reassuring smile. The problem with the plan was obvious to Nick: he was not a gifted liar. But he would use this boat ride into Venice as a trial run.

  Ca’ Rezzonico, he repeated in his head, Ca’ Rezzonico. Then San Samuele.

  The sky had darkened by the time he reached the airport’s pier. Nick scanned the chaotic waterfront activity. Tourists lined up in front of wood docks that extended into the brackish lagoon. At the end of the docks, sleek brown motorboats the shape of fingernails idled while picking up passengers. Nick had imagined the waters of Venice as still as dusty glass, more a mirror than a motion. But the surface was surprisingly choppy, and seagulls skimmed it tensely before tumbling back over the waves. One motoscafo sped off toward a cloudburst of sunlight on the horizon, a couple standing at the bow, their arms intertwined. The image of the couple on the vanishing motorboat was so familiar to Nick that his mother might have shown it to him in his crib: “On our planet, this is what romance looks like.”

  Rain began to strike the water’s surface with the ferocity of machine-gun fire, and those travelers not far along in line retreated to the shelter of the information kiosks. Nick took his carry-on bag in one hand, lifted his suitcase in the other, and ran through the crowd of trunks and toddlers and flowering umbrellas. On the farthest dock he spotted a teenage girl struggling to thread her broken arm through the sleeve of a raincoat. She stood at the front of the line with the rest of her family. Nick raced toward them as a motoscafo roared up and the father began shouting and gesticulating to the captain.

  “Excuse me,” Nick exclaimed, targeting the mother. “Lynn?” She looked up without a hint of recognition. Her straw hat had vanished, and she was covering her head with a magazine. “Do you remember me? I’m the one Giulio didn’t send.”

  Her eyebrows rose, and she flashed her white teeth. “Oh, yes, hello.” She turned to her children and husband. “Look who’s here! The one Giulio didn’t send!” Lynn had stolen his joke and run off with it, which Nick took as a positive sign. The husband wiped his forehead, glanced warily at Nick, and then down at Nick’s hands, as if he expected them to contain an item they’d forgotten.

  “Did you say you were taking a boat to San Samuele?” Nick asked.

  “That’s right,” the father answered coolly as he passed his family’s suitcases over the dock’s edge and into the captain’s arms.

  “Well, my dock is—”

  “Ca’ Rezzonico, we know!” the wife intoned. “Kids, get on before it pours.” The boy was the first to take the captain’s hand and jump down onto the deck. The daughter paused on the precipice, apprehensive about navigating the drop with her cast. Nick rushed over and guided her by her good arm as the captain intercepted her at the waist.

  “Well,” Nick stammered, left alone with the parents. Parents of any sort made Nick nervous, although these two didn’t have much in common with his own. They looked exhausted by the strain of the past twelve hours, not by the past thirty years. “I wondered if you might consider sharing your water taxi,” Nick said. “Our docks are right across from each other. We could split the fare.”

  “The driver wants two hundred and fifty euros to take us!” the father howled. “Because it’s raining! Why would it cost more because it’s raining? How does that modify the route from the airport? Do I look like a dupe?”

  “John,” his wife moaned as she shook out the magazine. “You’re complaining to someone who’s offering to cut the price in half.” She eyed Nick sympathetically. “Of course we have room. Anyway, you’ll get soaked if you stay here.”

  “But his suitcase is enormous. The captain will charge us—”

  “John!”

  “All right, fine,” John groused. “Yes, let’s split it.”

  Nick waved his arm like a maître d’ to invite them to board first. Both Lynn and John descended and disappeared inside the boat’s low cabin. Nick paused on the dock, double-buttoning his green blazer and ensuring that it concealed his back pocket. He hurled his overweight suitcase into the arms of the grumbling captain, then took the man’s hand as he descended onto the deck. He ducked into the cabin and climbed onto one of the long chrome-accented benches upholstered in butterscotch leather. The inlaid wooden floor was pin-striped tan and chocolate. The Venetian “taxis” held little resemblance to their ripped-vinyl New York counterparts, and to Nick’s initial appraisal, seemed worth every bit of the two hundred and fifty euros that John was going to shell out.

  The kids sat on one side, the parents on the other. But as a unified family they stared down at Nick as if he were an intruder who’d just barged into their hotel room. He glanced at Lynn, relying on her camaraderie to ease the tension, but she didn’t soften. The job was left to Nick.

  “I’m so glad Giulio sent you guys to collect me,” he proclaimed. The parents and daughter laughed, all but the boy slouched in the corner, studying Nick with a look of sullen boredom.

  “I like him!” Lynn concluded as she nuzzled against John, as if liking a strange young man made her more susceptible to liking her husband. John wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Our docks are very close,” Nick promised. “They’re right across from each other on the Grand Canal, so it’s really not out of your way.” He had no idea if this was, in fact, the case. He was merely repeating John’s earlier assertion. He should have studied Clay’s map more carefully. Why had he even mentioned it? He’d already talked himself onto the boat; they couldn’t kick him off now. Maybe he was alleviating his own guilt about sticking them with the fare. But really, what harm was he doing? They would have paid the full price for the motoscafo whether he was on board or not.

  “Do you know Venice well?” John asked him.

  The backward lurch of the boat saved Nick from answering. Through the swinging cabin doors, he saw the captain rotate the wheel and spin the craft in the direction of open water. The captain sucked on an electronic cigarette, which blinked with rainbow colors on intake.

  “Is this your first time to Venice?” Nick asked.

  Lynn gripped John’s khakied knee. “Is it that obvious? I honestly don’t know why it’s taken us so long. Venice is the first place you’re supposed to visit. We’ve been everywhere but!” She shot a look at her daughter. “August, stop it!”

  August was inserting a ballpoint pen into the elbow-side opening of her cast. “It itches,” she whined. According to the subway-grade graffiti covering her plaster cast, August was well liked, even occasionally loved, by her friends
.

  “I’m not saying you deserve a broken arm, dear. However, you should have realized . . .” Lynn trailed off.

  August scowled at her mother and hid the cast in the folds of her dress.

  Nick smiled at her sympathetically. “How did you break it?” he asked.

  “Skiing,” she replied with a determined tilt of her chin. “In Sun Valley two weeks ago. I was on spring break.”

  “Skiing!” Lynn wheezed incredulously, as if to refute the official story. Nick would spare asking August any particulars on the accident. He hoped she’d return the favor when a touchy subject came his way.

  “It gets less itchy after a while,” he promised her.

  “Couldn’t he pay for his own boat?” the boy yelled while kicking his wet sneakers on the cushions. Nick had harbored an irrational fear of little boys ever since he’d been one. Their fitful, unremarkable lives demanded so much—including victims.

  “Magnus!” the father erupted. The man’s freckled hands balled into pale fists. The abrupt pitch of John’s anger frightened Nick more than it seemed to faze the little boy, who continued to glare at him from his corner. Nick wouldn’t want John’s anger turned on him.

  “Sorry,” Lynn said. “He’s tired from the flights. We had to make extra connections because we booked so late. And you wouldn’t believe the difficulty we had finding a palazzo last minute with a bedroom for each of the kids.”

  “I’m not sharing!” August griped, although it seemed to Nick that she had already won that argument.

  “We pulled them out of school,” Lynn whispered with a guilty wink. “We couldn’t resist. And in light of what August did . . .” Lynn went mute over what was clearly an ugly incident in Sun Valley involving her daughter, or at least her daughter’s arm. After a minute of uncomfortable silence, Lynn retreated to a description of the palazzo they were renting: its views of the canal, its oddly impractical and garish art-deco bathrooms, a private rose garden with a restored water fountain. Nick set his concentration on autopilot, wowing at the appropriate pauses. Meanwhile, his brain was scrambling over the next step in his plan. It was hard to concentrate amid the relentless, stomach-heaving slap of the boat against the waves.

  Nick decided he’d better pull the trigger while he had the courage. He dramatically groped the front of his pant pockets, beating his palms against his upper thighs as if putting out small fires.

  “I think I’ve—”

  But August shouted over him: “Look!” She pressed her finger against the cabin’s rain-streaked window. “Venice!”

  Nick leaned forward with the rest of the family to gaze through the slender rectangle. There it was, like a tilted postcard in a frame. From a distance, it looked like a tiny raft adrift in the sea, piled with impossible treasures. The sun sparkled across the water, almost blinding Nick as he tried to make out the skyline. The beauty of it—or the expectation of its beauty—put a halt to his performance.

  “The rain’s stopped,” John announced. He lifted his arms, unlatched a section of the cabin’s roof, and slid it forward. The back of the boat was now open to the salt air. Nick and his newly adopted family climbed across the seats and stood together on the bow. The wind spilled over them, and droplets of seawater covered their faces and arms. Both Lynn and August were shivering. Nick was glad he hadn’t tossed away his wool blazer. The borrowed outfit, which he’d deemed so ridiculous a half hour ago, was proving practical for weathering this chilly, glittering speedway across the lagoon—doubly so when he thought about it, as he doubted this family would have invited him on board if he’d been dressed in a T-shirt and jeans.

  “I need my phone!” August ordered. Lynn hurried to retrieve it from her purse. The motorboat shot past overgrown islands littered with broken columns of brick and stone. A tiny Italian flag whipped around on the back of the boat, its tattered tricolor tail mopping up rainwater. The airport was long behind them. Ahead, the captain vaped, the light shimmered, the gulls swooped, and Nick thought he could see the hazy pink peaks of San Marco. How could he have ever considered taking the bus?

  August asked her mother to take her photo. Lynn demanded that Magnus be included, which set both Magnus and August off in separate directions of resentment. As the rest of his family argued, John nudged Nick’s elbow. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I’m Nicholas.” Nick saw no reason to lie.

  “Where are you from?”

  Nick had two choices, and technically neither was a lie. He opted against New York. “Dayton, Ohio,” he said. Did any city on the planet sound more trustworthy?

  “Ahhh,” John purred. “We’re from San Diego, but my company does a bit of business over in Cincinnati. I’ve heard wonderful things.”

  “Cincinnati is very close to Dayton,” Nick replied, also not a lie.

  “Ohioans are good people,” John said, “kind people.” Nick had been told this fact his entire adult life by those who’d never stepped foot in Ohio. For some reason, the rest of the world felt the need to remind Ohioans of their inherent goodness. “What do you do for work, Nicholas?”

  “I’m in antiques,” Nick said, not a total lie, although the truth would require flexing the past tense. “Mostly silver.”

  “Ahhh,” John purred again. “An antiquarian.” Nick turned to face him. He thought it might be smart to study the man he was swindling. In direct daylight, John’s freckles multiplied like cells in a petri dish. He was a blur even while standing still, the vast needlepoint of red-brown dots swirling around his fragile features. If anyone had to identify John in a lineup, they’d recognize him solely by his skin. Nick knew that the majority of white America must still see Clay the same way: as a blur of black skin. He wondered if Italy was different in that respect and if that was the reason it kept drawing his boyfriend back like a second home. Maybe there was less rage here all around. Nick hoped so.

  “You know,” John whispered confidentially, “we’ve inherited a set of silver candlesticks from Lynn’s uncle. Eighteenth century. Boston maybe? That’s what he told us. Nothing too valuable, but you never know.”

  “Not by Paul Revere?” Nick asked simply to gauge John’s knowledge on the subject. The man shrugged. “Candlesticks are very rare in eighteenth-century American silver. But you’re right, you never know.” John grinned at this thrilling possibility. Nick understood one of the fundamental laws of antiques: nearly every American household was certain it owned at least one genuine relic. In a young country with an unreliable memory bank, anything passed down more than two generations was treated as a museum-grade artifact. But it didn’t matter. Right now, Nick wasn’t in the business of candlesticks. He was in the business of gaining John’s trust. “If you send me some photos of them, I could take a look. I know a few collectors who might be interested. No promises, of course.”

  “Of course!” John dug into his shirt pocket and extracted a business card. “Email me directly.” He pointed to the address printed below his name, JONATHAN ALBERT WARBLY-GARDENER. Nick slipped the card in his blazer pocket.

  “Hey,” Lynn yelled over to them. “While you two are conducting business, you’re missing Venice!”

  And they were. A tunnel of buildings had closed around them, mossy mosaics of brick and stone. The green-black waters of the canal lapped against rotted wood doors. The motoscafo passed through shotgun-thin alleys, under arched bridges so low Nick’s head almost skimmed their underbellies, through a parade route of tourists loitering on all sides, half like neon angels in cheap plastic rain ponchos, the other half dressed for heat that hadn’t yet arrived. Far above dangled balustrades and flowerpots and the exquisite embroidery of diamonds and crosses set in ancient, bloodshot marble. Every building was a new discovery. They stood together on the boat, struck silent in the religion of looking. Nick loved each detail that passed before his eyes: the seaweed shadows under the water’s surface; the gondola prows bobbing at their mooring stations like rooster heads; the flash of olive skin and clothespinned l
aundry in the highest open windows. Nick loved all of it. A part of him had expected to be disappointed by Venice; surely the city had been overhyped his whole life. Now he faced the far more unusual prospect of agreeing with common opinion: Venice was a symphony playing inside a shipwreck.

  “Isn’t it something?” Lynn surmised.

  The boat turned left onto the Grand Canal, affording the five passengers a view of an entire menagerie of palazzi across the water. The captain yelled over the cabin roof, “San Samuele?”

  Before John could confirm the dock, Nick called to the captain, “Ca’ Rezzonico, primi!” It was vital to his already regrettable plan that he be dropped off first. The driver’s face creased in uncertainty. “Due stops,” Nick faltered, holding up two fingers. “Primi Ca’ Rezzonico. Then San Samuele. D’accordo?” The driver grunted and returned to the wheel.

  John opened his mouth to counter Nick’s orders but closed it again. There were too many amphibious sights and sounds and close calls with lumbering tourist-laden vaporetti to sweat the question of who should be dropped off first. August shook her phone at Nick. “Can you—?” she asked. Peace had been restored in the Warbly-Gardener tribe.

  The family of four posed against the butterscotch bench with the scrawl of centuries drifting behind them. Nick clicked three shots. When Lynn exclaimed, “You should have been in the picture with us, Nicholas!” he felt like he might throw up.