A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  “Che bello,” he said, and the gorgeous but not pretty Giovanna murmured in accord. The world from this view seemed magical with all of its strange beauty fading into night. Nick was too young to imagine himself ever owning anything substantial—not a house or an apartment or even a car—so he gauged his success on the rooms he managed to enter, on the forbidden gated enclaves to which he’d gained admission and was allowed, however briefly, to inhabit. By most odds, Nick Brink of Dayton, Ohio, shouldn’t be here, and that’s why it was so thrilling that he was. Already he’d come so far. In less than two days after touching down in Venice, he’d managed to stand on the balcony of a palazzo at sunset holding a drink next to a young woman who had been flung down a wire to open Carnival.

  When Nick stepped inside, West was jabbering on about the death of an American friend who’d lived in Venice for decades. “Topper was a huge supporter of conservation. We couldn’t afford to lose him. Of course, we all know why we lost him, even if no one could prove it.” Nick went to the bar and poured more prosecco into his glass. “You agree with me, don’t you?” West asked his oldest guests.

  The elderly Italian couple on the divan made up a hung jury on the Topper scandal. Giacomo nodded with a verdict of guilt, while Elisabetta shook her head in uncertainty. Eva, sitting on the floor and tangling her fingers in the fringe of a rug, asked who this Topper character was.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” West rasped. He launched into the story of Topper Horn, a dapper gay septuagenarian heir to a grocery-chain fortune who owned a magnificent palazzo on the Grand Canal. Topper liked Italian boys, so it was no surprise to his friends when he mentioned meeting a young Venetian at the train station one morning. This Venetian worked as a low-level security officer, checking passports and escorting German shepherds around luggage trolleys. The guy already had a wife and an infant daughter on the mainland. “But, ohh . . . ,” West cried. “Suddenly, we meet Luca, Topper’s new motorboat driver. A month later, Luca has been promoted to Topper’s private secretary. A month after that, none of us ever spoke directly to Top again. He only made contact through Luca. And that was it. The end.”

  But it wasn’t the end. One day the Grand Canal palazzo was put up for sale, and a year later there ran an obituary for Mortimer “Topper” Horn, who died of natural causes at his home in Monte Carlo, age seventy-nine. The Venetian had quietly liquidated all of Topper’s seizable assets and moved the cash (and Topper) to the tax-free safe haven of Monte Carlo. Luca inherited the whole bundle, and apparently he and his family were really enjoying Monte Carlo year-round these days, in case any of Topper’s old friends had any doubts.

  Giacomo laughed fiendishly, all open mouth and gold teeth. “Venetians are very smart! You underestimate us!”

  “Smart, yes! And wicked!” West slapped his knees. “But how fucking unfair! Poor Topper never even got a kiss from the guy. He lost it all and didn’t get one roll in the sheets! Give the man that much for his fortune!”

  “Dick, you’re going too far,” Karine muttered as she picked at the hors d’oeuvres. But in Nick’s prosecco-fueled estimation, it seemed a valid point. Poor Topper. He could have at least been allowed to see Luca naked.

  “We have something of a similar situation . . . ,” West said conspiratorially to Giacomo and pointed to the bookshelf that ran across the inner wall. He silently mouthed the rest of the sentence: next door. Nick’s heart skipped, and he glanced nervously at the chicken-wire bookshelf. “I’m actually to blame,” West said in a lowered voice. “I indirectly introduced Freddy to the guy.”

  “We miss Freddy!” Elisabetta pledged while selecting a fig from the plate. “I always picture him carrying off some ridiculous find from il mercato delle pulci.”

  “Well, this happened maybe four years ago. The kid was an African-American student visiting from”—West glanced over at Nick—“from New York, in fact.” Nick widened his eyes in surprise, as if he couldn’t believe someone from New York could be implicated in a Venetian scandal. But his cheeks were flushing, and he quickly took a drink from his glass to hide his face.

  “He was an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim,” West continued. “I was amazed he could speak Italian, because they can never learn the language.” At first, Nick took “they” to mean African-Americans, and his eyes shot to Eva to acknowledge the overt racism of her uncle’s comment. Eva was reaching for a fig, her expression concealed by her outstretched arm. Upon reconsideration, it was possible that West had meant young Americans can’t learn Italian, or, even more likely, American interns at the Peggy Guggenheim, which actually jibed with Clay’s own account of his coworkers.

  “I took him under my wing,” West said. “I even offered him a full-time job working with me on my Venice projects.” He lifted his palms as if being mugged. “I really dodged a bullet. Talk about catastrophe! Instead this kid went right for my neighbor. Of course, Freddy, poor guy, took to him in-stant-ly, like a fever. Eventually Freddy even brought him back to live with him in Brooklyn. You can imagine the rest.” West blinked his blue eyes as he delivered his next revelation. “Guess who inherited the bulk of Freddy van der Haar’s estate? Honestly, that kid should be thanking me. I won’t go as far as to say he murdered Freddy . . .”

  There it was again, for the second time today, a mention of that familiar suspicion. Nick winced, while Elisabetta stiffened in her seat. “You think that boy murdered Freddy?” she cried.

  West gently shushed her. He stood up and, with a devious grin meant to keep his audience enthralled, sneaked over to the chicken-wire bookshelf. West popped a lever, and one of the cabinets jolted open. He pulled it back to reveal a walnut door.

  “It connects!” he whispered, swinging his pointer finger back and forth as if testing the water temperature under a tap.

  Nick stared at the door, imagining Clay on the other side. It was agonizing to think that he and the guy he loved were separated by a mere inch of solid wood; Nick should be on the other side of that door curled up with Clay, watching a movie on his laptop. Instead he was here on this side, drinking prosecco with strangers and snickering about stolen fortunes and not defending his boyfriend when his reputation was being bashed around like a piñata. Nick had expected a few stings from West on the subject of Clay Guillory—it was all part of the plan. But the prosecco was filling him with reckless fantasies of taking noble stands and ripping walnut doors from their hinges. The two drinks had given Nick the misimpression that the present mattered more than the future. He set his glass down and decided to wait until dinner for a refill.

  “What is it like over there?” Elisabetta asked, as if she were inquiring about a foreign country.

  West laughed. “Oh, god, it’s like going from our side, which is Venice, right into Naples. Totally run-down, wires and broken sconces and rotting walls. Probably riddled with mice. It doesn’t have a direct view of the canal, so it’s as dark as night. And it’s still basically a youth hostel for the Guggenheim, which I never complained about because I respected Freddy too much. But even I have my limits . . .”

  West shut the bookcase cabinet. Just as he did so, the main door opened, and two more elderly Italians shuffled in behind Battista. Their dazed faces looked bewildered by the glimmering room, almost as if Battista had picked this couple at random off a highway and deposited them in a palace on the water. Karine ran over to administer double kisses. West clapped his hands.

  “Eva, Nick,” he said. “We are now outnumbered by Venetians! Which means it’s officially an Italian dinner party!”

  Battista relayed bad news: an important guest, the head of a renowned Venetian conservation nonprofit named Vittorio, had called to cancel. The royal family of Thailand was in town and demanded to be shown the sights.

  Eva let out a grunt of disappointment. “So much for the setup,” she said to her uncle.

  West wrapped his arm around her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. But if it’s any consolation, Thailand is the wealthiest crown. Vittorio needs to rattle his ti
n cup for donations. It’s a valid excuse. We’ll corner him next time.”

  Karine picked up a bell from an end table and rang it to signal that dinner was ready.

  Eva poked Nick’s bicep. “I’m stuck sitting next to you,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he replied. “Were you on a blind date with this Vittorio?”

  “Sort of. I want a job at his organization. That’s why I’m in Venice. I’ve been studying conservation in Toulouse for the past four years. But it’s all tapestries and medieval castles up there. I want to work here in Venice, and this guy’s the best there is. He restored the Frari, for Christ’s sake!”

  Nick didn’t know what the Frari was but hummed with admiration anyway. “Couldn’t you work for your uncle? It sounds like he’s doing those sorts of projects.”

  Eva pulled Nick by the arm toward the dining room. “I don’t have enough experience to tackle a public project. Venice wouldn’t let me touch any of its treasures, even if Uncle Richard is paying the bill. This city is so insanely bureaucratic, it has to approve every single decision, and of course it only wants to hire Venetian craftsmen. But I could work on those masterpieces under Vittorio because he wears the golden ring. Oh well, he can’t dodge us forever.” She whispered menacingly in his ear. “I’m going to hunt that motherfucker down and make him hire me.”

  The dining room mimicked the living room right down to the wavy terrazzo floor. The only difference was that the yellow satin curtains were pulled closed; Nick suspected that those windows didn’t overlook the canal. Perhaps they gazed out onto the entrance of Il Dormitorio. A large oval table was covered in a blue tablecloth; blue linen napkins folded into the shape of boats sailed on white china plates. The only clumsy touch was Eva’s wicker basket decorating the center of the table. Karine had clearly one-upped her family on their practical joke by insisting on using it as the centerpiece. Nick thought he could still make out a few of his teal jacket threads snagged on one of the wicker spokes. Karine went around lighting candles with a trembling match.

  As the guests collected in the doorway, West dealt silver coasters across the table for wine bottles. He flashed the last one in Nick’s direction, the silver catching the candlelight and bouncing a beam into his eye. The coaster in West’s hand scared Nick. He realized, a few steps too late, that he might have just walked into a trap. West might thrust the coaster into Nick’s palm in front of his friends and ask him to identify its origin and maker, like a magician forced to perform a card trick in front of a skeptical audience. The truth was that Nick couldn’t identify a French coaster from an Italian one, eighteenth from nineteenth century. At Wickston, Nick had cleaned and polished dozens of antique coasters, as they tended to be low-cost collectibles or affordable wedding presents. But Ari had been the one to authenticate them. As Karine announced that everyone should sit where they liked—“No order, no favorites”—West kept shining the coaster in Nick’s direction, clearly enjoying how it threw the light on him. Nick froze with one eye blinded by the beam. Please don’t ask me about it, he prayed. He’d been an idiot. He’d risked his and Clay’s entire future on a free dinner in a fancy palazzo on his second night in town.

  “Hey,” West said to him in the playful tone of a challenge.

  “Yeah?” Nick asked fearfully. He considered faking a stroke.

  A timer rang in the kitchen. Karine, who was clearing Vittorio’s setting from the table, warned her husband, “It’s going to burn.” Mercifully, West tossed the final coaster on the table and walked out of the room. The guests scattered to available chairs. Nick ended up with Eva on one side and Elisabetta on the other. The old woman dropped a digestion tablet into a glass of water and chugged the fizzy contents. “Devil stomach,” she told him.

  West carried in a steaming tray of baked pasta. “We were supposed to have this with sea snails,” he announced, “but Karine already ate them. Please don’t picture Karine with a pound of sea snail inside of her.”

  “Dick!” she wailed, tossing her napkin on her lap. “I had four! They were off! I’m saving you all from misery tomorrow.”

  The main course of pasta and chicken was followed by salad, followed by an enormous wedge of bone-dry Parmesan that was passed around with its own chisel. Five bottles of red wine were left open on the table, which allowed guests to refill their glasses with impunity. Elisabetta poured several rounds for herself and always topped Nick’s glass off on the route back to the coaster. The table was warm with laughter. Even Battista, scrunched between West and Giovanna, appeared to lighten over the course of the meal. Most of the dinner was conducted in Italian, which allowed Nick to drift along unnoticed in the current of the conversation. Eva and Karine kept up impressively, while West blinked and wrinkled his nose with baffled effort. Only during the salad course did the discussion return to Nick’s native tongue.

  “Where are you staying?” Karine asked him from across the table.

  Nick was prepared for this question. In fact, he had anticipated it ever since he arrived. He couldn’t mention Daniela. “Venice is very small,” Daniela herself had warned him. West might know her and might be able to trace her to Freddy, and from Freddy to Clay, and then there Nick and his boyfriend were, connected by a clothesline of intimacies. He had to be extremely careful about the facts he revealed tonight. It occurred to him that sitting at this table was not unlike family dinners back in Dayton when he visited over holidays in college. There, he’d learned how to dodge and evade dangerous questions, casting himself as an asexual, unthreatening lump of a person, a simple passer of potatoes.

  “I found a place near Campo Santa Margherita on one of those apartment rental websites,” he said buoyantly to Karine.

  Karine glanced uneasily at her husband. West’s face crumpled, and he put two fingers together in the shape of a crucifix or a riflescope.

  “Not you too, Nick!” West groaned. “Don’t say it! Those short-stay B&B rentals are exactly what’s destroying Venice!” Giacomo, who was reaching for more wine, grumbled in solidarity. “That’s why there are only fifty thousand Venetians left in Venice. Everyone else has rented out their homes to vacationers for a profit and split for the mainland! And they pay zero taxes on those earnings! Meanwhile, everyone who’s remained here has a rotating circus of strangers as next-door neighbors.”

  “Dick, you promised,” Karine warned. “No destruction of Venice tonight.”

  West couldn’t help himself. “One of the few expectations in life is that your city is going to outlive you, but—” Karine shook her head, and he laughed out an “Okay, okay.” He tapped his knuckles on the table. “Just promise me, Nick, next time you either stay at a proper hotel or here with us.”

  Nick was touched. Even if this were a onetime dinner, he’d made a good impression and was welcome back. He smiled appreciatively and asked Karine about Leipzig. Thankfully, she answered without catching his mistake. An innocent Nick wouldn’t have known about her previous Leipzigian existence.

  As the dinner wore on, Nick found it harder to dislike his host. West had been a nasty comedian in the living room, but he was far more considerate in the dining room. He was promiscuous with his humor, searching candlelit faces for signs of amusement to share. Over the cheese course, he talked about the various Venetian projects he was hoping to undertake—the restoration of a Carpaccio painting in a Murano church; a wrecked doge’s grave; an eighteenth-century carved bench that hadn’t been refurbished after the La Fenice fire. In return for his money and efforts, all he asked for was a small accompanying copper plaque reading RESUSCITATION GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY RICHARD FORSYTH WEST. “Because that’s what we are doing! We aren’t restoring, we’re resuscitating. We’re bringing ghosts back to life.” Like most zillionaires, West didn’t want to be remembered for how he’d earned his money but for how he spent it. Many lives might have been ruined in the amassing of his wealth, but now he was bent on uplifting lives by means of culture and taste.

  As West recited a few more project
s he was eyeing—should the local government get its act together and finally grant its approval—Nick noticed Eva’s finger tracing ever-widening circles on the tablecloth. “Stop!” she finally erupted. “It’s killing me that I can’t work on those projects!”

  “You’ll get your turn,” her uncle said confidently. “We’ll make sure of it. But now,” he crooned, “it’s time to dance. It’s our custom. Nick, you aren’t excused even if you’re new.”

  Nick didn’t realize until he stood up how much wine he’d drunk. The candle flames had burned into his retinas, and ghostly green diamonds pulsed around in the darkness. He somehow managed to find his way into the living room. Karine poured prosecco into what she described as her “special glasses,” which were wonderful embarrassments of bright glass squiggles with seahorse stems. The guests clinked rims as music exploded from hidden speakers. Scratchy 1970s Italian disco blasted through the room, all candy synthesizer flourishes, which caught everyone by their feet and rounded them up in the center of the room.

  The dance floor had always been the one place where Nick could put his brain to rest and lose himself in the motions of his body. Before he knew it, he was dancing to the dumb fun of the disco rhythm, and so were the four elderly Italians, shaking their hips and flapping their elbows. Elisabetta was particularly impassioned, waving her hands around her magenta head. Nick had never danced with old people in New York. It was a shame. And he never once danced with his family in Dayton. All those radios that his father fixed lying around, and they never once turned them on to dance. In Dayton, they were also never allowed to drink out of the “special glasses,” and they were forbidden to step foot in the living room except on holidays (for most of the year, the living room sat empty like a museum period room devoted to a twenty-first-century middle-class family in decline). Here, however, in the rich refuge of Richard West’s palazzo, a normal night of existence was celebrated with the very best. And why not? What was everyone so scared of breaking back there?