A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  “Hello, Mr. Guillory,” the director said graciously, shading his eyes with his hand. The man remembered his name. Clay had expected aloofness, dismissiveness, or even downright rudeness; he was unprepared for kindness. “I’m afraid you’ve discovered where I hide myself after work to cheat on my wife with a crossword puzzle.”

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” Clay said. The director shook his head and gestured to the empty chair across from him. “Oh, that’s okay,” Clay replied. “I really just wanted to stop to thank you.” The director raised his bushy eyebrows in curiosity. “My internship at the Guggenheim—”

  “—at the Peggy Guggenheim,” the director corrected.

  “Yes, the Peggy.” Clay felt his face grow warm. “It meant the world to me. I loved every second of it. And even if I wasn’t selected for the promotion, well, the internship saved me. I mean that literally. It turned my life around. So thank you.”

  The director gazed across the campo for a minute, as if pondering an answer for his crossword puzzle. His eyes drifted back to Clay. “You’re welcome. And thank you too. Thank you not only for being one of the most dedicated interns we’ve had in recent memory but for marching up to me right now and saying what you did.” The director picked up his ballpoint pen and tapped it against his newspaper. “Now that we have each other’s confidence, I will say that I was taken aback when I heard what you thought of us. We’ve always prided ourselves on our inclusivity. I don’t know what we could have done to treat you better, Clay, but if you were unhappy and felt disrespected from day one, I wish you had said something.”

  “What?” Clay’s hands curled around the back of the empty chair. “What are you talking about? I never said I felt disrespected. I was never unhappy. I never had one bad thought about you or the museum! Not on day one or on day one hundred and eighty!”

  The director’s mouth shrunk to a lipless seam, as if he were smiling through a toothache. He managed not to blink first in the ensuing staring contest. “Let’s not dredge it all up again,” the director said. “I’m happy you enjoyed the internship. Basta! That’s what matters. Whatever you said to Dick about the museum and whatever Dick told me when we were making our decision for Capo shall remain among the three of us. Does that sound fair?”

  It would be an exaggeration to presume that Clay set the world record for the fastest sprint between that particular campo in San Polo and the doorstep of Palazzo Contarini in Cannaregio. Surely at some point in the past half millennium of their coexistence, somebody had not only run this exact route through the city but had also beaten Clay by a fraction of a second. Nevertheless, by the time Clay crossed the last stone bridge, his knees ached and he tasted blood in his mouth. He was running so he didn’t have to think or hate or regret. He was running because he was in danger of exploding as soon as he stopped. In the palazzo’s faded garden, he fished the spare key out of his pocket, opened the iron door, and took the steps two at a time up to the piano nobile of West’s retirement home.

  The lights were on. An orchestral piece, heavy on violas, warbled on the stereo. A pair of white trousers and a white sports coat lay in a sloppy pile on the floor. Clay’s eyes landed on the set of oak doors that led into West’s bedroom. For the very first time, those doors were open. Clay walked softly toward the bedroom. This must be how murderers or thieves walk through their victims’ homes, he thought.

  West had tricked him. He had robbed him of the one thing he’d wanted most in order to keep his loyal, grateful servant who could now be available full time at his beck and call. Clay stood at the threshold of the open doors, aware that he must be visible to anyone within the bedroom’s darkness. He had no idea how large this room was or where it would lead.

  “Come in,” West called. “I need you.”

  Stepping into the dark, he picked up the scents of juniper and jasmine. He stopped in front of a bedframe. On the mattress he could just make out West’s body: his muscly arms stretched out across a bank of white pillows, the chum of his hairy stomach protruding between a ribbed undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts. One leg was elevated on a stack of pillows, dangling a wiggling foot, which appeared in the darkness almost like an outstretched hand expecting to be kissed.

  “Thank god you’re here!” the voice boomed. “I twisted my ankle getting off the traghetto at Santa Sofia. I had to hop all the way home.” There was a pause before the voice returned. “What’s wrong? Oh, don’t worry. An ice pack might be all it needs.” A hand fumbled along the wall and found a light switch. The man he hated was directly in front of him, sprawled across his king-size bed.

  West smiled cheerfully at Clay as if the twisted ankle was nothing more than fodder for a joke to be relayed over dinner that night. But his expression abruptly shifted. “Don’t turn around,” West ordered. “Or do. I’ve never realized how awful they are until this second. The past can be so offensive, can’t it?”

  Clay turned. On either side of the doors was the frescoed figure of a Moor. These two black men were shirtless. One carried the weight of a boulder on his shoulders; the other was posed in an effeminate contrapposto, holding up a bolt of diaphanous silk. Long-dead servants without names.

  “Awful, isn’t it?” West said when Clay glared back at him. “Unfortunately, we can’t paint over them. But just because they’re important artworks doesn’t mean we can’t cover them with a curtain.”

  Clay didn’t care which horrible reality West was trying to amend. It was too late for any understanding between them. Clay’s only thought was, You motherfucker. Tossing the spare key on the bed, he hissed, “I quit.”

  He bolted down the steps and across the garden. He ran for ten yards through the city he loved before he turned down the alley to Il Dormitorio. Once there, he slowed to a stagger with his hands braced behind his head. He got to the paint-chipped front door and crumpled against it, bawling into the doorframe. He cried for ten minutes or twenty, or maybe it was only two. He had no idea how long he stood there with his forehead pressed against the wood and his face muscles aching from the exertion. It was the sound of footsteps echoing down the alley that brought him back to the world.

  “You there,” a man behind him called. “Hey, you, by the door, crying.” The voice was deep and gravelly, yet it possessed the warbling sprightliness of a 1940s movie heroine. Clay lifted his head from the door. A chalk-thin man stood a few feet away, holding a black portfolio. He wore a full-length mink coat that was suffering severe hair loss and, underneath it, a flannel shirt with mustard stains down the front. His left earlobe was pierced with a ruby. A peach silk scarf encircled his forehead, and from it emerged quills of greasy gray hair. Wonderful, Clay thought. Another old white dude pretending to care while trying to get something out of me. He assumed this one would try to find a way into his pants. Still, he felt slightly ashamed of his naked display of grief, crying out in the open.

  “Hey, did you hear me?” the man asked as he put a cigarette to his lips. “I live in this house. Beat it. There are plenty of other places to sob your heart out. You’re blocking my door.”

  Startled by the brazen rudeness, Clay stood up straight. And that’s when he spoke his very first words to Freddy van der Haar. In five minutes, this encounter would spiral into tea upstairs under the Blue Madonna and, not long after, the closest friendship of his adult life—a bond so weird and sacred it could only be described as a family.

  Clay’s first words to Freddy were these: “You beat it, asshole. I live here too.”

  All these years later, West was still reliably punctual. As they’d agreed on the phone, at one p.m. the next day Il Dormitorio’s buzzer droned. Clay bounded down the narrow steps in a pair of brown cords and a white wool sweater. A damp semicircle saturated the collar from when he’d stuffed it into his mouth. His stomach had been acting up that morning—deep chisels of pain, pain colored the worming orange of scrunched eyelids—leaving him moaning on the toilet with his collar shoved into his mouth until the pain subsided. The diagn
osis was obvious—nerves, plain and simple, playing their usual gut-punch trick. He would need to drop by a pharmacy this afternoon. Freddy’s medicine cabinet was packed with vials of painkillers, but they had mostly expired around the year Clay was born.

  On the downstairs landing, Clay folded the collar over to hide the drool mark. Opening the door, he was greeted by a warmer day than he’d expected. Birds twittered promiscuously through the neighboring gardens. Baritone calls from gondoliers wafted from the Rio della Sensa. The air blowing through the alley advertised visions of headlong summers, sweaty afternoons shaded in the black crosshatch of a window screen, and long trips to chalky beaches. In Italy in particular, spring was summer’s best PR machine. Richard West stood in the center of this bright season, gazing up at the four flights of the decrepit house. Clay hadn’t bothered tidying up for his visit—he hadn’t done much more than leave a note on the dry-erase board instructing the interns not to be home that afternoon. But, as the palazzino’s brand-new co-owner, he now regretted that decision. West wasn’t disguising the fact that he was studying the house’s condition. He was dressed in his usual white linen with a red-and-navy polka-dot handkerchief tucked into his blazer pocket. He dangled a bottle of limoncello at his side like a school bell.

  “Clay!” West exclaimed, ringing the bottle at his thigh. “What a day! Thanks for making time for me! I’ve been looking forward to this!”

  It took tremendous effort not to slam the door in Richard West’s face. It took even more effort to mirror his smile. But Clay was not the same naive soul who’d worked for this man four years ago. In that interval, he’d learned to toughen himself. Still, he could hear the ghost of Freddy whispering in his ear: Don’t let this fucker in our house! Not for a second! Are you insane?

  “Come in,” Clay said with a wave. The hallway floor was still littered with grimy cardboard squares. Clay pointed to the bottle of limoncello. “It’s a little early for something so after-dinner, isn’t it?”

  West blinked down at the bottle and laughed as he stepped through the doorway. “Indeed! Karine brought back a whole case of it from Capri,” he complained, a traitor to his own gift. “I’m trying to run through it as fast as possible. Don’t narc on me if I accidentally leave the bottle here unopened.” West gave a wink of collusion. Clay ignored it, jogging up the steps to the main floor and exclaiming, “Sorry for the mess. The new interns aren’t exactly house-trained.” But when Clay turned around, West wasn’t behind him. He appeared a minute later, smiling innocently while feigning the slowness of age with a hand braced on his thigh. It was West’s eyes, though, that gave him away. They were blurs of blue, inspecting every cobwebbed nook and rotted wire of Il Dormitorio. Those eyes now skipped over Clay entirely and feasted upon the dingy open room of the piano nobile. West thrust the limoncello against Clay’s chest, as if diverting a child with a toy. Then he launched himself into the center of the room, his face lifted toward the ceiling in anticipation. His maroon loafers swirled over the linoleum in small, imprecise steps as he took in Sebastiano Ricci’s Blue Madonna.

  A tremor of anxiety flared in Clay’s gut: Could West’s real motivation for this visit not be the silver but simply to get his first real glimpse of this forgotten masterpiece? Maybe the ghost of Freddy had been right. Maybe Clay should never have opened the door to him. Clay knew he was betraying his dead friend by allowing West into Il Dormitorio. Freddy had shouted “Verboten!” at every attempt on his neighbor’s part to gain entry over the years. All friendly overtures had been met with a brittle, nicotine-yellow middle finger. Freddy had hated West long before Clay and his story of betrayal blocked his front door. Freddy took his hatreds seriously—he was passionate about them in the manner that others are passionate about first loves. “He’ll never take us alive!” Freddy had sworn, pretending to defend the bookcases from an imaginary raid with his skinny arms. He pressed his back against the shelves and glared at his sole audience member like a tragic starlet. “Do you know what men like West are really after, doll? They used to spit on me, which I could handle. Hell, I took it as a badge of honor. But then they figured out that we have something they don’t. On top of everything else they’ve taken and stolen, they want to be interesting now too! But we’re not going to let them take that from us.”

  There might have been some truth in that assessment. But Freddy was dead, and Clay was broke, and letting West into the house was only the first betrayal of the day. The second would come in selling him the silver. Those counterfeit van der Haar antiques had kept Freddy financially afloat in his last years, but he refused to allow even fake family heirlooms to enter his neighbor’s collection. The single stipulation Freddy had put to his dealer, Dulles Hawkes, was that the pieces could be sold to anyone—really, anyone in the known universe—except to Richard Forsyth West. “I don’t care if he keeps calling,” Freddy had told Dulles over the phone. “His little cupboard will stay bare.” For Freddy, it was a point of pride: in the last year of his life, he wet the bed, he vomited on himself, he couldn’t remember the names of the men he’d loved, or even recognize his own face in a mirror. But he would die before West got his hands on another van der Haar trophy, even an ersatz one.

  “Exquisite,” West whispered in awe, his arm rising toward the fresco. His fingertips traced the nude Madonna in midair. “Absolutely stunning. I wish my niece could see this.”

  Clay cracked the seal on the bottle of limoncello.

  “Do you want any?”

  West lowered his arm and dropped his eyes, as if descending sharply from a dream. “Well, maybe a smidge. We’ll need some ice, though.”

  Clay searched the freezer and found only empty ice trays. “We’re out.”

  West sighed in resignation. “Oof, okay. We’ll drink it like men.”

  Clay poured the pulpy, fluorescent-yellow liqueur into two shot glasses, unsure if it was humanly possible to drink such a substance “like men.” Or “like women.” It could only be drunk like fools. He didn’t want to imagine his stomach’s reaction to this goopy invasion. Clay slid one of the glasses across the counter. Before West took it, he motioned toward the ceiling.

  “It desperately needs cleaning,” he said. “Some water stains have gotten to it. Maybe even mold. You should have a professional take a look before it’s too late.”

  “I’ve only been back a few days,” Clay said.

  West nodded and took a sip. He feigned a benevolent examination of the ugly drywall room. Two spinsterly chairs with missing arms seemed to plead for euthanasia. A cardboard mousetrap was shoved behind one of the chair legs, a pink tail snaking out of one side.

  “So you own this place now?” West asked.

  Technically, Clay co-owned it. Frederick and Cecilia van der Haar had conjointly held the deed as the two beneficiaries of the van der Haar family trust. Their names had been listed for decades in the visura catastale, which was the official record of Venetian property. But in place of Freddy, Clay’s name now appeared alongside Freddy’s sister. Clay had never met Cecilia, the long-lost “foul-weather” sibling. Judging by Cecilia’s response to her brother’s death—a note sent through a lawyer notifying him that “she’s been informed and has asked, for the sake of the family, that AIDS not be mentioned in any obituary”—he didn’t care to meet her. Freddy refused to utter Cecilia’s name. He canceled her out of childhood photos by drawing a black line down her body as if voiding a check. “They’re wrong, doll. You can choose your family,” Freddy would always tell him.

  “Well?” West asked insistently. “Are you the owner?” His eyes probed his onetime assistant from across the counter. “Is it true that the place is yours?” Clay hadn’t meant to lie on this point—he’d wanted to use up his allotment of lies on the silver forgeries. But in the crosshairs of West’s condescending stare, he couldn’t resist bending the truth. He doubted any other moment this afternoon would be as rewarding as notifying West that they were equals under Italian law. Long gone was the Clay Guillory that
West knew, the young, Labrador-loyal assistant who had memorized West’s suit measurements and favorite restaurant tables.

  “Yep,” Clay replied, savoring the nonchalance of his answer. “Il Dormitorio’s all mine. Freddy knew how much Venice meant to me. We’re full neighbors, you and I. Funny, isn’t it?”

  That funny fact registered like cold air on West’s eyelids.

  “What about the sister?”

  “What about her?” Clay brought the glass to his lips and rinsed his gums with the citrus alcohol.

  “She doesn’t own a share?”

  “No,” Clay replied. “Freddy took over the house a long time ago in exchange for some other properties. His sister never liked it here. Who knows where she is now? Brazil, I think.”

  “Wow!” West marveled. “Lucky you! I’m impressed!” He winked, as if complimenting Clay on a clever chess move, as if Clay hadn’t deserved his inheritance after four years of looking after his dying friend. “I can’t help but think—” West cut his sentence off.

  “Think what?” Clay asked sharply. He sensed an accusation lurking at the end of that unfinished sentence: What a clever hustler you turned out to be. Clay steadied himself against the counter. The plan wouldn’t work if he showed anger. Winning this minor fight wasn’t going to help him. In fact, he’d only win today by accepting the role of the loser in need of some quick cash. Thus, Clay forced himself to take another sip of limoncello and repeated in a softer tone, “Think what?”