by Ewan, Chris
She took the wet towel from me and scrubbed away at the stain.
‘It’s fine,’ I told her, reaching up to steady her hand. ‘If anyone asks, I’ll tell them I cut myself shaving.’
‘That might make more sense if you’d actually shaved today. Don’t you have a white shirt downstairs?’
‘Not the kind to wear with a suit.’
Victoria sighed, as if I was an errant child, and dabbed at a spot of dirt on the elbow of the jacket. When she was finally satisfied, she plucked a blade of grass from one of the wide lapels and rested her head on my shoulder, considering my reflection in the mirror glass.
‘Look at you,’ she said, as if I was about to embark on my graduation ceremony. ‘You don’t scrub up too bad.’
‘I could say the same of you.’
‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen you in a dinner suit. Know who you remind me of?’
‘James Bond?’
‘Nope. The guy in your author photo.’
I could see what she meant. Back when I’d first been published, and I’d been asked to submit a picture of myself, it had struck me as a good idea to send in an image of a catalogue model in a tuxedo. I had a couple of reasons. One, as a burglar, it doesn’t pay to be too recognisable. Two, as an author looking to sell some books, I figured it couldn’t hurt to be as dashing as possible. Naturally, it had led to one or two complications, not least because it had slipped my mind to come clean with Victoria until some years ago in Paris. I guessed it was a good sign that we could joke about it now, although the subject still made me uncomfortable.
‘So, shall we go?’ I asked. ‘I just need to grab a few things first. Shoes, deodorant, my overcoat, a spectacles case full of burglary tools, your espionage kit. You know, the usual.’
‘Pitch ourselves into another puzzle?’ She winked at me in the mirror. ‘Why the devil not?’
TWENTY-NINE
The Casinò di Venezia was located in the Palazzo Ca’ Vendramin Calergi on the Grand Canal, not more than fifteen minutes’ walk from the Count’s home. It was ironic, really, because I could have saved myself a lot of hassle if I’d known to go there sooner. Mind you, it would have lacked some of the drama if I’d simply approached the casino on foot, as opposed to sailing towards it in a stolen motor boat, gliding along the misty waters and beneath the lighted windows and restaurants that lined the canal bank.
The casino had an imposing water entrance. A long wooden jetty sheltered beneath a burgundy canopy, surrounded by painted mooring posts hung with glass lanterns that were ringed in halos of blown fog. Two security guards in burgundy jackets hollered instructions to us as we drew close, helping to secure our boat to the landing stage. One of them even offered Victoria his hand as she hitched up her dress and disembarked our grubby vessel with all the poise of a minor European royal. A red carpet led the way to the arched entrance doors ahead of us, and Victoria took my arm as we passed through to a generous reception area.
The red carpet snaked across a shiny terrazzo floor towards an Istrian stone staircase that veered off to the left. Beyond the staircase, at the far end of the room, plush burgundy banners were suspended from the ceiling in front of double-height windows. Through the windows I could spy a lighted courtyard where a gleaming Jaguar sports car in racing green was displayed on an angled podium. It was the first car I’d set my eyes on for weeks, and I couldn’t help but wonder how it had reached its current location.
A high wooden counter ran along the wall to our right. Behind it, a strikingly tall woman in a tailored grey suit and businesslike spectacles smiled encouragingly at us. I led Victoria towards her and offered up a very English, ‘Good evening.’
‘Good evening, Sir.’ She glanced at my shambolic outfit, the borrowed tuxedo, stained shirt and winter coat that had only recently dried out following my plunge into the Grand Canal, then reassured herself with Victoria’s immaculate appearance. ‘May I see your passports, please?’
I removed the self-same documents from the inner pocket of the Count’s dinner jacket and passed them to her. Normally, I might have tried my luck with a stolen passport, but since there’d been no time to arrange anything for Victoria, I played it straight and provided our genuine papers.
The woman opened our passports and peered down from her considerable vantage point to compare our photographs with our faces. After offering up a polite smile, she scanned the barcodes into a computer on her desk. The move made me nervous. This was the first time I’d set foot inside a casino since Victoria and I had vacationed in Las Vegas. We’d only spent a couple of days in Sin City, but we’d managed to become involved in a diverting little scrape. Some troubling allegations had been levelled at us, and the thing that concerned me was whether the details were likely to flash up on the computer screen and bring our evening to an abrupt conclusion.
I studied the woman’s reaction. It was a little while coming (not to mention a fair distance away). Her lips puckered up and twisted around one another. Evidently the computer was taking longer than she was used to, and she filled the time by drumming her painted nails on her computer mouse. I was about to say something in an attempt to divert her focus when the computer emitted a discreet blip and our leggy gatekeeper inclined her head to one side, as if in mild surprise.
‘This is your first visit, Signor Howard?’
‘For both of us,’ I told her.
She tapped a key and a compact printer chattered into life. Two tickets emerged. She slid them across to me, along with our passports and a coupon for a complimentary drink. The tickets contained our names and the date, as well as a barcode. It was impossible to tell whether our presence had triggered an alert.
‘You must show this to the man by the stairs,’ she said, indicating a portly chap in a beige security guard uniform who was standing beside a velvet rope barrier. ‘And here is a plan of the building,’ she added, opening a small cardboard folder before us. She circled an area of the map in biro. ‘You are standing here. The first floor is closed.’ She crossed the relevant area of the floor plan out with two strikes of her biro. ‘But the gaming tables on the top floor are open. There is a room for your coats just ahead of you.’
I acknowledged the information with a nod, then gripped Victoria by the elbow and guided her towards the cloakroom. After ditching our overcoats, along with Victoria’s zipped weapons case, we presented our tickets to the security guard. He scanned them with an infrared reader, unclipped the velvet rope and ushered us up the carpeted stairs.
‘What do you think?’ I whispered to Victoria, who was busy lifting the material of her dress clear of her high -heeled shoes. ‘Would a warning have come up on her computer?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me. My name does tend to have that effect.’
Victoria wasn’t simply referring to events in Vegas. Years ago, she’d told me her father was a judge. Later, I’d discovered that was a white lie – or more accurately, a neon falsification. The truth was her dad was a professional casino cheat, last seen touring the Far East with Victoria’s mother and a crack team of white-haired accomplices. It wasn’t something she was necessarily ashamed about, but it did mean that her parents’ reputation had a way of preceding her – at least where gaming houses were concerned.
‘They may monitor us, see what we’re about,’ Victoria told me.
I glanced up. An opaque plastic dome was fitted to the ceiling above the first-floor landing. Behind the brown-tinged Perspex, a lens was pointing its beady eye at us, the camera connected to a flickering bank of monitors somewhere in the recesses of the palazzo.
The gaming floor in front of us was sealed off, just as we’d been warned. A pair of glass doors had been secured to one another with a padlock and chain, and the interior was concealed behind full-length blackout drapes. The ground was coated in dust and plentiful footprints that led towards an open store cupboard overflowing with building equipment. Hard hats and luminous safety bibs, sledgehammers
and spades, buckets of dried plaster and paint tins. It was hardly slick but I can’t say I was all that surprised. The place was typical of Venice – a prime example of shabby chic – and as if to prove as much, the main gaming floor at the top of the stairs was a statement in faded grandeur. Scuffed terrazzo floors, peeling flocked wallpaper, and a water-stained ceiling with broken cornice work. The space above our heads was dominated by two huge Murano glass chandeliers that were coated in dust and looked fit to drop at any moment, and the windows were dressed with discoloured net curtains.
Three roulette tables were positioned in the middle of the room, though only two were in use. Each table was staffed by four croupiers, two men and two women, all of them wearing cheap dinner jackets that fitted no better than my own. Business was slow. I counted nine players in all, plus a couple of aged men in tatty lounge suits who were marking off record cards with the sequence of numbers that had cropped up so far.
A doorway to the left took us away from the roulette action and into a small room containing dated slot machines without any players. The machines twittered and blinked to one another in a hopeless fashion, like a bank of forgotten super-computers still running calculations that had been solved decades before.
Beyond the slots was the cashing-out cage, an oddly futuristic space with a sculpted metal counter that looked as if it might have been ripped from a spaceship. Next door was a dingy bar that wouldn’t have been out of place in a provincial train station. The counter was faux-marble, with lager on tap and an eye-catching display of breath mints. A glass case contained a selection of drooping sandwiches and panini wrapped in cling film.
The place was staffed by a white-haired chap with a quite remarkable handlebar moustache. Dressed in a bright blue blazer with brass buttons, he appeared old enough to have laid the building’s foundations. I ordered a white wine for Victoria and a sparkling water for myself, palming him our coupons along with a modest tip.
I wasn’t sure we’d be staying long enough to finish our beverages. The casino struck me as a bust, and I couldn’t begin to understand why the Count had been so keen to come here. The table minimums at the roulette wheel were pocket change, and if you happened to win the jackpot on one of the slots, I feared there was a real danger you might be paid in lire rather than euros.
‘Spot anything interesting?’ I asked Victoria.
‘Not even close.’
‘I’m starting to suspect the Count might have misled us.’
‘Well, suspect away, because I’m inclined to agree with you.’
The barman presented us with our drinks along with a bowl of nuts. I waved the nuts away and led Victoria back through the cashing-out area to the slots.
‘What do you think?’ I asked, taking a sip of my water. ‘Give it another five minutes?’
‘I suppose so. The part I’m not sure of is what we do next.’ Victoria checked behind her, as if the answer might be creeping up on us. ‘We can go back and question the Count again, but that might not get us very far. It looks as if he’s already sent us on one wild goose chase. Who knows how many more he has up his sleeve?’
I was about to respond with some suggestions about how we might use her spy tools to encourage the Count to talk openly, when I noticed a doorway I hadn’t spotted before. It was located directly ahead, between a pair of twinkling slots and behind a freestanding notice board with a printed sheet tacked to it. The sheet had a bright orange background covered with slanted Italian text and copious explanation marks. In the centre of the page was an image of an open briefcase stuffed with an inordinate amount of cash. Below the case was the one piece of information I could understand. It was only a number, but it was a mighty impressive one all the same.
Euro 500,000!!!
I looked at Victoria. Victoria winked at me. I could hear a burble of voices coming from the room beyond the sign and I inclined my head towards the doorway.
‘You know,’ Victoria said, ‘I think we may just have found our goose.’
What we actually found was a rectangular room about the size of a basketball court. The room was filled with a distinguished-looking crowd in evening wear, drinking chilled prosecco from long-stemmed wine glasses and munching on canapés. A harpist over to our left plucked at a pleasing background melody, while two handsome types in burgundy shirts and black ties uncorked bottles of bubbly at a temporary bar.
Beyond the bar was an empty blackjack felt that a group of women in glittering gowns were leaning their hips against. Three more blackjack tables were positioned in the remaining corners of the room. None of them were in play, and all appeared to be functioning as makeshift seats.
Victoria seized me by the hand and dragged me through the well-dressed rabble towards the centre of the room. The wealthy mob became more congested the further we went, and I became aware of a good deal more men. If it hadn’t been for Victoria’s polite but firm ‘Scusi’s’ and ‘Per favores’s’, and her teasingly flirty smile, I dare say I wouldn’t have got anywhere close. As it happened, she squeezed us through to the very front, where I peered from over her bare shoulder at the cause of all the excitement.
A blackjack table had been cordoned off at a distance of perhaps five metres away by a circle of velvet ropes attached to brass bollards. The croupier was a thirty-something Italian with a serious, watchful expression, a well-oiled head of thick, black hair and a neatly pressed tux. The sleeves of his jacket were too long for him, stretching over his hands in a way that wouldn’t have been tolerated in Vegas.
The table was arranged for six players, but only five were in position – the chair on the inside right was empty. I recognised the player to the left of it. From the way Victoria pinched my hand, I sensed that she did too. He was a big brute of a fellow in a sizeable, threadbare dinner jacket that looked as if it hailed from a charity shop. His beard was full and ragged, and the hair at the nape of his neck was long and curled, like that of a woodsman. The last time we’d seen him he’d looked just as unkempt, although he had sported a fedora. It was a shock to come across him again in the casino, and I half-expected him to pick up on our alarm and turn slowly to offer us a disconcerting grin. Then again, it had to be better than having him watch us kiss. And besides, I could tell that he was focussed on the game, crowding forwards over the table as if it contained a mouth-watering feast he’d been waiting days to consume.
My eyes scanned the other players. Two were of Asian origin – one a hip young man with designer stubble and a preference for playing in wrap-around sunglasses, and the other a prim-looking lady in her late fifties who wore her hair in an immaculate bob and who favoured a Cartier gold watch on her wrist. Beside her was a stiff-looking, white-haired gent in a tuxedo that looked as if it had been shrink-wrapped to fit his wiry frame. If I’d had to guess, I would have said he was British or American. His neatly clipped beard didn’t shade it either way, but if I could have seen the bow tie he was wearing, I might have been able to narrow it down. The final contestant couldn’t have looked more Italian if she was featured in a pasta advertisement. Middle-aged and pear-shaped, she was dressed in a multicoloured blouse that was just a shade less dazzling than her smile.
Clearly, she was relishing the game, though it was difficult to understand why. Her collection of chips was modest, consisting of perhaps ten markers. The leading player was the Asian lady, who appeared to have enough chips to start a casino of her own. They were arranged in neat rows and columns, like a very large sum on a custom-made abacus. Next came the white-haired gent, and afterwards our friend Brutus the Snooper.
I heard a murmur of conversation between two Americans to my side and managed to catch the eye of one of them. Black-skinned, he was immaculately groomed, with a neat goatee beard and a pair of glittering diamond earrings.
‘What’s going on here?’ I asked.
‘Blackjack tournament.’ He backed away, as if giving himself more room to marvel at my ignorance. ‘Been running all week. Ten thousand euro buy-in. This is
the final table.’
Victoria craned her neck towards him. ‘They’ve been playing in a knock-out format?’
‘Sure thing. Winner takes the big one.’
‘The big one?’
He raised his eyes to the ceiling and Victoria and I followed their path. Suspended on a chain above the blackjack table was a clear glass box. Inside the box was an attaché briefcase that had been opened on an angle to reveal a bundle of neatly stacked notes. Now, I’m not one to make assumptions, or to jump ahead of myself, but I had a funny feeling that owning the case might make someone a cool half-million.
It was mighty impressive. Jaw-dropping, some would say. But the thing that caught my attention wasn’t the cash. No, what really caused my eyes to boggle was the case itself. I’d seen it before, you see – or rather, one just like it. I’d carried it in my hands, hidden it under my bed, broken into a palazzo with it. Then I’d prised it open and triggered the bomb it had contained.
Yup, that’s right, the reason my spine was tingling and my throat had gone dry was that it looked very much like the case Graziella had handed me.
‘What about the spare seat?’ I heard Victoria ask.
‘Oh that,’ said the second of the two Americans, a bloated Caucasian of about twice his companion’s age. ‘That’s what everyone’s talking about. Guy didn’t even show. A Duke or some crazy shit like that. Guess five-hundred-thou don’t mean jack to him, right?’
I nodded vaguely, then turned to face Victoria. I tried to signal with my eyes that something incredible had happened – that I had vital information to share with her. In truth, my discovery about the briefcase seemed so momentous that if I’d been writing the scene myself, I would have ended it at the precise moment I’d made the connection. Of course, that didn’t account for Victoria’s input, and the way she always strives to push my writing that little bit further. For her, you see, one revelation just wasn’t enough.