A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  Unfortunately, West wasn’t finished with him yet. “Freddy’s inheritor is that kid I was talking about, the intern from the Guggenheim. He’s in town right now, right next door.” West paused a moment as if a mutinous idea had overtaken him. “Wickston never thought about reaching out to him after Freddy died in the interest of selling the silver?”

  It was a smart question. But Nick saw in front of him a rather pretty dodge.

  “We’re not ambulance chasers, Richard.” It was the first time Nick called his host by his first name, and he enjoyed the way it leveled them into equals for a moment. Nick thought he’d never sounded so grown-up in his life. “We’re also not a pawnshop for heirs. We don’t barge into homes and turn over saucers to see who made them while offering our condolences. If this kid wanted to sell Freddy’s silver, he’d know to get in touch with us.”

  West nodded amiably. “You’re a class act!” He dramatized another pause, as if a second rebellious thought had taken mutiny of his brain. Nick sensed that the pause was performed in order to appear offhand. “You wouldn’t be willing to approach the guy next door—Clay Guillory is his name—and ask about his silver, would you? As a favor to me?”

  Nick’s jaw tightened. West’s proposal was driving Nick and Clay together when their whole strategy had been to keep their distance so there could be no connection, no evidence of a plot.

  West noticed Nick’s hesitation and rushed to explain. “I hope that didn’t sound too forward. I’m a greedy opportunist, what can I say? If you turn me down, I’ll still consider you a friend. But, you see, I’m curious about acquiring the silver, whatever remains of the family collection. That’s why I asked you about Dulles Hawkes at the market today. I tried dealing with him in the past when a van der Haar piece came up for sale. But Dulles was such an incompetent shithead that he could never get back to me in time, let alone negotiate a sale. So I thought maybe you could introduce yourself to Clay and ask about the silver. You know, you could check out what’s left and tell me what it might be worth.”

  West looked so hungry for his chance to fill his ludicrous mahogany cupboard that Nick finally grasped the essential beauty of their scheme. West would be getting exactly what he wanted, and so would they. Many of the finest antiques in museums were actually fakes; what harm would a few van der Haar forgeries do sitting in the gloom of this far-flung palazzo, gathering West’s admiration and fingerprints? They would satisfy West’s ego, while supplying him and Clay with the cash they needed to live. It was possible to make everyone happy so long as no one pushed too hard on the mirage.

  Nick faked a contrite frown.

  “The problem is, Richard, I don’t know Clay Guillory. So if I talked to him and leant my services, I would be doing so in an official capacity, under the Wickston name. Which means ethically I’d have to give him a fair assessment of the collection’s worth and whether or not he’d be smarter to take those pieces to auction or show them to a number of interested buyers.”

  West puffed his cheeks at the annoyance of Nick’s ethics—as if Nick’s ethics had always been the problem between them, and a night of dinner and dancing hadn’t softened them. But Nick already had a solution worked out. He would use his boyfriend’s ugly reputation to his advantage—after all, West had been too happy to toss it around for his own enjoyment. “But,” Nick countered with a raised finger, “if Clay is the kind of guy you say he is, a hustler who wormed his way into an inheritance, who all but murdered for money, he would probably take a decent offer of no-strings cash to get the pieces off his hands. It’s not an unusual situation in my line of work, I’m afraid. You could go talk to him, Richard. You could ask him if he has any of the pieces here, or even photos from Freddy’s estate. If you let me see them, I’ll tell you what they’re worth. That way, you could make a lowball offer and come out on top.”

  Even a rich businessman appreciated a bargain—especially a rich businessman. Nick felt certain he was winning West over. The man nodded in faster increments as the logic of the plan soaked into his brain. Nick, however, had to make sure he left no paper trail that could be used against him—just in case. “Of course, my appraisal would be purely off the record. I couldn’t do a certified Wickston report, not without having to consult the office. So this arrangement would be more”—Nick rummaged his head for the term—“a favor. Just some informal advice between friends.”

  “Where the hell did you come from?” West demanded in the warmest tone. He offered a handshake but deemed his own outstretched hand insufficient and put his arms around Nick for a hug. Nick found himself laughing in the embrace, still dumbfounded by his success, with his arms at his sides and his chin buried in his adversary’s neck.

  “Let’s have one last drink! A toast to you in Venice, my friend!”

  As they swept open the velvet curtain and walked down the hall, the blasting disco music reached Nick with the same shock as cold wind after hours spent in a heated house. They entered the living room, where everyone was lying across the couches or sunk deep into armchairs, melting into the patterns of the house. They’d all worn themselves out, except for the lone holdout, Elisabetta, who was speed-walking around the terrazzo in circles as if she might find the right beat to set them all dancing again.

  Chapter 8

  Clay loved getting lost. It seemed like the whole point of Venice, built to trick and confuse. Taking a wrong turn and nearly plunging into a canal or skipping over a bridge that dead-ended in a brick wall was part of the town’s fugitive magic. Only rarely, maybe once a year when climbing out of a midtown subway stop, did he ever lose his direction in New York.

  He had already memorized a good portion of the city’s terrain from his eight months living there. The northern neighborhood of Cannaregio, built on landfill instead of islands, took the shape of an elongated grid, with east-west streets stretching out like cello strings. The southern neighborhoods of San Polo and Dorsoduro were really a series of churches and squares, one feeding into the next like a trade route of interlocking kingdoms. The slow trudge of tourism around the area of San Marco turned every fast-food restaurant or brand-name boutique into an irritating landmark. Thankfully, there was still one neighborhood that Clay could count on for disorientation. In Castello he could still get hopelessly, irrevocably lost, the frantic brain tapping out the doomed distress signal, Where the hell am I? It was Castello where Clay arranged to meet his boyfriend at noon at the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo.

  In theory, the massive tan-brick church should be impossible to miss. In reality, even Clay tended to stumble upon it by blind chance. He didn’t even bother texting Nick more detailed directions than Follow the signs for the hospital, the church is right next door. That tip wasn’t entirely helpful, as old signs for the hospital pointed one way and newer signs pointed another. In Venice, you couldn’t worry about someone else’s navigational chances. As with climbing Everest, you’d be lucky to make it yourself.

  Sure enough, Clay found himself loping through the same minor campo for the third time that morning and shuffling down a promising side street only to realize he’d already gone past the shop with the delicate glass insects in the window. When he reached the Fondamenta Nuove for the second time, with its florist shops selling plastic bouquets to mourners awaiting boats to the cemetery island of San Michele, he laughed out loud. All these years, and the city could still throw his brain into slipknots. He dove back into Castello, took two turns, and for the third time that morning passed a woman in a red fedora walking an Irish setter. It was always like that in Venice: you encountered the same people over and over in the maze.

  Light rain turned into a downpour. Locals collected under caffè awnings. Venetians were patient about weather. They waited with long-suffering grandparent smiles for the toddler sky to tire itself out. Clay accepted getting soaked and finally hit the basilica with one minute to spare. He entered the dark vestibule. A plastic screen had been erected just inside the nave to allow tourists a view of the inte
rior without disturbing mass—or more likely to prevent them from entering without paying the four-euro admission fee. Clay could usually get around the fee by speaking Italian, but today he handed over two coins to the desk attendant. He felt buoyed by Nick’s text message declaring his run-in with West a success.

  The basilica was one of his favorite spots, not so much for its altar paintings as for its collection of interesting deaths. Twenty-seven doges had been buried in marble here—many were speed bumps randomly dispersed on the floor. But Clay’s favorite was the side monument dedicated to Marco Antonio Bragadin. The sixteenth-century Venetian captain had been captured in Cyprus while fighting the Ottomans and had been treated to an unremitting barrage of tortures. His nose and ears were sliced from his face; he was dragged by a horse through the streets; tied to a ship’s mast and whipped; and skinned alive from head to toe. The captain’s skin had been sent to Constantinople as a war trophy. Eventually, it had been stolen back by a Venetian sailor and interred in this basilica, in an urn under the marble bust of a man gazing upward, his face saying mutely, Wait, there’s more? It was a shrine devoted to how much pain could be inflicted on a person. But Clay knew there were other tortures, crueler ones, that the world could inflict. It could take away the people you loved. It could force you to watch them suffer without ever being able to help them. The world had endless, ingenious ways of smashing you to pieces. Clay skipped the visit to Bragadin’s tomb today.

  Down the basilica’s center aisle ran a grove of marble columns the size of California redwoods. The air inside was cold, and the church’s curved chancel reminded Clay of fingers cupped tightly around the flame of a cigarette lighter. There were few visitors this morning. Clay lingered near the front altar in the shadow of a column, checking the entrance for a sign of his boyfriend.

  Nick didn’t arrive at 12:05 or 12:08 or 12:13. But not long after, the door banged open and Nick slid in across the polished floor on his alligator shoes. Clay worried that Nick was going to run smack into the clear partition, but he managed to slow down in time to process it. Once Nick paid the entry fee, Clay stepped into the center aisle. They hadn’t seen each other since they’d traded I-love-yous, and now Clay felt the pressure of having to test the real-time validity of those texts. Nick hurried down the aisle, his excited grin advertising good news about their plan. He stopped short a few feet away, in a puddle of white light shed from a high window. Nick’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, as if he were hesitant to touch Clay in a Catholic church.

  Nick finally lost his battle of restraint, grabbing Clay by the arm and pulling him behind the marble column. As soon as they were out of sight, he leaned in with his eyes closed. His lips initially missed Clay’s mouth, catching his cheekbone with a streak of saliva, but made their way over with gentle precision. Nick was an excellent kisser. He had worked out a stealthy trick of modulation where his kisses went deep and lustful and then turned prudish and tentative as if he were battling second thoughts. After a minute, Nick pulled away. As he stepped back, he gave a slight wince.

  “Blisters,” he said. “My feet are killing me.”

  “You did too much walking in those shoes yesterday.”

  “Actually, it was too much dancing,” he replied. When Clay looked up in confusion, he laughed. “You aren’t going to believe it. Last night, I went over to West’s house. He invited me to dinner at the market yesterday. Afterward, he put on disco music and we all—”

  “What do you mean, you went over there?” Clay sneered. Last night, he had heard the music coming from West’s side of the palazzo, just as he always heard it blasting through the walls during one of his neighbor’s dinner parties. Clay had adopted Freddy’s routine of sighing theatrically whenever the abominable disco tracks set the floors and bookcases vibrating. (“Of course he likes disco!” Freddy used to hiss. “That stuff is ear poison! It’s soullessness set to a beat!”) Clay had listened to the echoing music as he sat in bed, his anger on a steady simmer as he went through Freddy’s old diaries and drawing pads. But not once had it crossed his mind that Nick could be on the other side of the wall, guzzling prosecco and white-boy-bopping along with West and the other assholes. His boyfriend had been dancing with the one man whom he hated most. Whatever Nick’s excuse was, it would still feel like a betrayal. For a paranoid second, Clay imagined a scenario in which he’d ripped Nick away from Ari Halfon only to deliver him to Richard West.

  “Wait!” Nick groused. “It’s not the way it sounds. It’s a good thing!”

  “Nick.” Clay reached out to snap his fingers in front of his eyes. “Can you hear me? That wasn’t part of our plan. You were supposed to hand West your business card and wait for him to contact you about the silver. You can’t change the rules as you go along. It’s our plan, the one that we made together, and it only works if we both follow it. It never involved you joining the Wests for dinner.”

  “Will you listen?” Nick pleaded. He stepped forward where a blade of light struck his eyes—such a beautiful color, his eyes were, a mix of autumn yellows and late-summer greens—and he immediately stepped to the side to escape it. “I knew what I was doing. I went over there to gain his trust. A business card wasn’t going to cut it. Don’t you see—he thinks of me as a friend now.”

  “Maybe you are his friend now,” Clay said caustically. He regretted the cheap shot as soon as he uttered it. It exposed his insecurities too plainly.

  Nick sputtered his lips. “You’re being stupid. I couldn’t turn down a dinner invitation. Not after I gave him a whole story about being alone in Venice for the first time and visiting the Titian he restored. If I’d refused, he wouldn’t bother to use my business card when the time comes.”

  “Does he still have that ridiculous van der Haar cupboard?” Clay asked, trying to reroute his anger onto the absent West instead of the fallible boyfriend in front of him.

  Nick nodded. “Yeah, he showed it to me.”

  “Freddy hated him for collecting that. Despised him. West is a vulture who can’t stop circling the van der Haar family carcass.” Clay’s own opinion of West clearly wasn’t proving enough of a deterrent. He was hoping Freddy’s might succeed where his failed.

  “I know all about it,” Nick replied. “He told me about growing up in the shadow of their mansion as a boy.”

  “Oh, god, that story!” Clay grunted incredulously. He wasn’t entirely ready to forgive Nick yet. “Was that before or after you danced with him?”

  Nick stepped forward, tolerating the stab of sunlight to the eye, and grabbed Clay’s hand. “Don’t be like that. I’m one hundred percent with you. And it was a good thing that I went over there. Don’t you want to know why?”

  Clay sighed in capitulation. “Okay, tell me why.”

  Nick began to describe the evening down to the dishware, his voice gaining texture and momentum as he set the scene for his expert handling of West. As Clay listened, he wondered whether Nick saw their plan as a game—not a life-and-death one either, but a little foreign-shore escapade that would later be glamorized into an anecdote of youthful misadventure. None of what they were doing was a game to Clay. He was depending on its success to keep his head above water. He had no backup plan if this one failed. And yet Nick was in a similar boat. He didn’t have much to fall back on either. Their attitudes marked an essential difference between them, and maybe it went back to the color of their skin or how they were raised. Clay had grown up expecting every door to be nailed shut before he even reached to open it. At twenty-seven, his arms were numb from pulling on shut doors. Failure was expected. But that didn’t seem to be the expectation for most of the young white transplants who flooded into New York City each year. Clay had watched them closely, as one does colonists on one’s home turf. They treated the world as if they’d always be protected in it, as if they couldn’t fail, as if even the dangers in the farthest corners of the night couldn’t touch them. Clay wondered what it was like to feel that safe in the world.

&n
bsp; Nick was describing entering West’s office when he glanced down the aisle and his face went pale. Clay turned to find the source of his fright. Against the bright light of the open doors, a woman stood at the back of the church, her arm raised, waving a yellow handkerchief in their direction. She whipped her arm back and forth the way a cruise-ship passenger leaving a port dramatically waves goodbye. She wore a brown skirt and a white blouse and had a shadow for a face.

  “Oh, shit!” Nick whispered as he ducked behind the column. “She saw us together! Shit, shit!”

  Clay continued to study the woman, trying to figure out who she could be. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized Nick’s mistake: it was the desk attendant, and she wasn’t waving. She was wiping the plastic partition with a yellow rag. Clay laughed as he followed Nick behind the column.

  “It’s just the woman from the ticket booth.”

  Nick clutched his forehead. “I thought it was West’s niece.”

  Clay felt relieved that Nick was at least taking matters seriously enough to be frightened of their discovery. “You still haven’t explained why last night was a good idea.”

  Nick licked his lips to indicate he was nearing the best part. “I convinced West to go to you directly about the silver. Honestly, that was always my problem with our plan. It was too coincidental that I show up with my business card one day, and you knock on his door offering van der Haar antiques the next. But last night, West asked if I knew about Freddy’s collection. I said I didn’t. But I recommended that he talk to you about it and that I bet you’d take a decent offer in cash if there happened to be any lying around. Don’t you see? It’s so much smoother this way. And now you have the advantage because he’s the one who’s coming to you, and not the other way around. We’re halfway there already!”

  Clay had to admit, it was a much smarter arrangement. Nick had managed to propel them several steps ahead. “All right,” he said nodding. “I give you credit.”