The Vatican Rip

by Jonathan Gash

I shut up and stuffed the card away thinking, ah well, I might be able to do a deal with the waiter.

  During the rest of the time until we closed at eight there was only one notable moment – notable for me, I mean. There was a small object, solid bronze, of a kind I’d never seen before. It stood only a couple or so inches high and, apart from a small flattening of its upper and lower surfaces, was almost completely ellipsoidal. It emitted strong secret chimes, so it had lived for generations in that fond symbiosis which makes genuine antiques the most wonderful things on earth. I gaped. I don’t often feel an ignoramus among antiques.

  She asked me, ‘Well, Lovejoy? Is it genuine?’

  ‘It feels so. But what the hell?’ I was puzzled and turned the bronze solid over and over in my hands. A simple bronze solid.

  She glanced oddly at me and took it, twisting its ends and pulling. ‘Two pieces,’ she said. ‘There?’

  She set down on the display case a beautiful tiny anvil. I’d heard of these rare Continental jewellers’ anvils but had never seen a collapsible one in my life. There it sat, solid bronze, even engraved with vine leaves and small florets on its side. One simple twist and it had become a functional, highly specialized instrument, a positive godsend to any aspiring Benvenuto Cellini. I stared and stared until my eyes misted over.

  ‘Lovejoy?’ her voice said from far away. ‘Are you all right?’

  I looked at her. Ratty as hell, but staggeringly beautiful. ‘I’m indebted.’ My voice was a croak.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘For showing me an antique I’ve never seen before.’

  She gave me one of those eloquent shrugs. ‘Don’t make too much of it, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘Thank you, signora.’

  She moved on. For just a moment her cheeks coloured. Maybe I’d revealed too much intensity all of a sudden. I know people don’t understand, and I’d seen enough to realize that Adriana was an out-and-out pragmatist. I followed meekly.

  For teaching me that antique I was in love with her for life.

  That evening was memorable for two things. First, I planned the rip – suddenly knew exactly how it could be done, starting right in Adriana’s emporium. Second, I dined lonelier than Shackleton on his ice floe.

  I was given a small table by a casual waiter. Not the slightest chance of any deal with him either, because at the other end of the restaurant in grander circumstances dined Signor and Signora Albanese. Not a word passed between them except pass the salt and suchlike. And no friendly wave across the tables to lonely old Lovejoy.

  The grub was great. I wasn’t told what I could have or what wine the bill ran to. I just kept a wary eye on the waiter’s expression and pointed interrogatively. He swiftly got the idea.

  ‘Fritto misto alla romana,’ he decided, sizing me up. It was a cracking fry-up, and I waded merrily in. We’d decided on Zuppa inglese for pud, because I’d remembered the name from one of Maria’s test runs back home, and anyway who can resist trifle in hooch?

  Every so often I checked that Adriana and her wealthy businessman weren’t hoofing off leaving an unpaid bill and me to lifelong dishwashing, but they stayed. He was preoccupied. As far as I could tell she hardly ate enough to last the night.

  Even when I got up to make my way out into the dark Roman night I kept my cool. Partly sloshed and replete with my lovely grub, I plodded solemnly past their table and said nothing. But what was driving me demented was the bird from the Museum, the one I thought had a look of Maria. During my meal she had sat at a table near the door, dined sparsely in quiet solitude and never once appeared to notice me.

  Now, Rome’s not the biggest city in the world. That’s a fact. Plenty of cities are far more crowded. But it isn’t so small that you bump into the same person in every nook and cranny. I already knew that Arcellano had plenty of minions. And if one of Marcello’s killers was a delectable female, it was tough luck on her because tomorrow I was due to start preparing to rip off His Holiness the Pope. I was in no mood to muck about.

  I’d never mugged a bird before, but I went out into the darkness prepared for business.

  Chapter 13

  Befuddled but determined, I waited in the gloom of the church doorway. The petite woman emerged, looking from side to side and obviously puzzled. The minute the restaurant door had swung to I dived to the left and raced across the street. The great façade of the Sant’ Andrea della Valle gave only little cover and the main street was well lit but I trusted the sudden switch from a cosy interior to a place of pedestrians and cars would momentarily disconcert her. I pressed back in the doorway, trying to seem casual because a cluster of people opposite were waiting for the 64 bus.

  She dithered for a second, half-heartedly made to start one way, then hesitated and finally gave up. She wasn’t daft, though. She pretended to stroll one way, then suddenly turned down the Corso del Rinascimento, walking at a hell of a lick. All this was in case somebody was following, which of course I was. Some instinct made me dart across the road and into the zigzag alley which leads off the main street. I ran into the dark and emerged a few seconds later in the Navona. By lounging against the corner shop and looking as though I’d been there for days I could see into the Corso with little chance of her seeing me.

  Sure enough she turned into the square within minutes, starting down it past the first of the two splendid fountains. This was a problem, because apart from the great central obelisk and the fountains there was no shelter for me if she suddenly looked back, and I already knew she was suspicious-minded. The square is racetrack-shaped. Popes and suchlike used to flood it in the old days for water pageants, and indeed it used to be a racetrack, but now it has a couple of good cafés and a load of artists and drifters. Indeed, some were still drifting. She was halfway down when I finally made up my mind and streaked off left into the parallel street to wait, breathless now and still woozy from the grub and the wine, by the alley corner.

  I was almost level with the second fountain, Bernini’s great and spectacular Nile figure with its hand to its eyes. As I waited, listening to her footsteps approaching down the square, I had to smile. Bernini’s friends used to joke that the statue was hiding its gaze from the sight of Borromini’s church across the square. Gianlorenzo Bernini was Borromini’s boss, and probably the greatest religious architect of all time. He was everybody’s darling – except Borromini’s, who was a sullen, withdrawn, paranoiac genius and who hated his witty, eloquent, talented gaffer. Borromini’s supporters retorted that in any case Borromini’s beautiful church was designed to support Bernini’s obelisk should its base crack, like that ghastly fiasco at St Peter’s when Bernini’s proposed south tower cracked its wonderful Maderno base. There was no love lost between these two geniuses, such opposites of temperament. I always wonder if Bernini actually cracked the base deliberately – Maderno being Borromini’s close relative and all that. Anyhow, their hatred died only when Francesco Borromini, that great sour and brooding genius, committed suicide during a fit of despair in 1667, leaving the field clear for Bernini. I’m actually on Borromini’s side, though I’m completely unbiased—

  ‘Lovejoy?’

  I nearly leapt a mile. The woman was standing a couple of yards behind me. I cursed myself for a fool. The vicinity of such lovely statuary had distracted me. Daft to lurk so near antiques of such quality.

  ‘Yes. Erm . . .’ My heart was thumping. She’d scared me out of my wits.

  ‘Why are you following me?’

  ‘Erm, no, miss. Erm . . .’ I was thinking, God Almighty. What if she screamed for the police? ‘I thought you were following me.’ It sounded lame. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘I have a message for you.’

  I was getting a headache. It was all too complicated. I realized I was dog-tired. ‘From whom?’

  ‘An old lady. A friend of yours. She says she has a proposition.’

  ‘I don’t know any old . . . wait!’ It wasn’t far from here that I’d
done Carlo over and recovered some of my money from the old cow. ‘Anna?’

  Anna had mentioned a spare room, suggested I lodge with her, in fact. And there’d been something about a daughter . . . I asked what was the proposition.

  ‘You’ll have to come.’

  A passing couple sniggered across the alley in the darkness. They were assuming the worst, that we were making a proposition of a different kind under concealment of night. I shivered suddenly as the glamour of the Navona faded in the chill night wind. Abruptly I was washed in the cold realization that it was here poor Giordano Bruno had been burned alive. Original and brave thinker, he had walked this very spot, been led on to the wood pile simply to provide a spectacle for the nerks of this world. Even when the poor bloke came to London to try to scratch a living by teaching bored young ladies, we’d been so offhand he’d been driven away. And tonight was the first night Marcello would spend in his grave, the first of eternity. And the first night of widowhood for his wife. And the first night as orphans for his two infants. I swear my teeth chattered from the cold.

  There was sweat on my face and my forehead was burning. I leant back against the wall, bushed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the bird was asking.

  ‘Will she help me?’

  I felt her smile. ‘She offered once before.’

  I walked with her then among the narrow streets. It was only when she pulled a door open and stepped inside that I realized we were in the alley where Carlo and I had had our disagreement.

  Gingerly I followed into the passageway. The minuscule light just about reached the floor from its furry flex. Plaster was off the walls. It looked unswept.

  ‘Er, one thing, miss.’ I didn’t want knifing.

  ‘What is it?’ She paused, key in a door by the stairs.

  ‘Erm, where’s Carlo these days?’

  ‘Recovering in hospital,’ she said pointedly. ‘At considerable expense. Come in.’

  ‘Erm, wish him better.’

  The room was tidy but small with a couple of curtained alcoves. A dressing-table with hooped lights of the sort you see in theatre dressing rooms occupied one end. A divan, two small armchairs and a vase of flowers. A radio. A curtained window. A faded photograph of a man and a woman smiling. A table lamp.

  ‘This is it, Lovejoy.’ It wasn’t a lot, but I’d have settled for anything. She motioned me to a chair.

  I asked anxiously, ‘I suppose Anna’s gone to bed?’ I somehow had the idea I’d get a better deal from the old devil than this quiet young bird.

  She made no reply, just looked at me as if I’d come from Mars.

  I floundered on, ‘Look. The trouble is I have no money for rent. Not yet.’

  ‘Until after you do the job?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said before I could stop myself, then I thought, oh what the hell if she knew. I was exhausted, unutterably weary. ‘How much is the rent?’

  ‘We’ll decide tomorrow. You sleep there.’ She indicated the divan.

  I was too tired to argue. I’d hardly slept for the past two nights. And the days had been hell. She discarded her swagger jacket and started putting things away. I waited foolishly.

  ‘Erm . . . are you upstairs, then?’ Old Anna must already be snoring her stupid head off.

  ‘No. There’s another divan behind the curtain.’

  I cleared my throat. Well, if she said so. ‘Was this Carlo’s?’ I noticed a man’s coat hanging behind the door. Tired as I was, I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings that might cause old Anna to come creeping in with an axe to defend her gorgeous daughter’s honour.

  She was getting out a couple of blankets. ‘Use this cushion for a pillow. You’re hardly conscious. There’s a loo second door under the stairs. The hall light’s always on. If you’re shy you can undress under the blankets.

  I got my shirt off while she wiped her face with some white cream stuff at her giant illuminated mirror. She was beautiful sitting there. ‘Incidentally,’ I told her, thinking I was being all incisive and knowing. ‘Tell your mum Carlo’s a drunk. He drank umpteen bottles of wine when he was supposed to be following. I knew he was there all the time.’

  She was quite unperturbed, creaming away. ‘You evidently pride yourself on your powers of observation, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I’m not bad,’ I confessed, chucking my trousers out and hauling the blankets up. I decided to take my socks off the minute I got warm.

  ‘You’re not all that good,’ the luscious creature said. By turning my head on the cushion I could watch her wiping her lips with a tissue. It was so lovely I had to swallow. She looked good enough to eat.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m Anna.’

  There was a century pause, give or take a year. I cleared my throat. Anna’s decrepit clothes hung by the alcove. And on that dressing-table stood boxes and tubes and sprays and paints and cylinders – enough make-up to service the Old Vic in season.

  ‘You’re who?’

  ‘Cretino!’ she said scornfully. ‘Go to sleep.’

  My head was splitting. This bird had just said she was old Anna. Sometimes things get too much. It’s always women’s fault.

  My cortex groped for its one remaining synapse and switched to oblivion.

  Chapter 14

  A clamouring alarm clock shot me awake at ten past eight. I was relieved because I’d had a hideous dream in which Maria became the bird and old Anna became Adriana, and Carlo and Piero advanced towards me with knives while Arcellano stood by lighting cigarettes. I sweated into consciousness.

  Anna had gone. Presumably she was already out on the streets conning the tourists. Quite a worker. Old Anna’s black dress had gone from its hanger. The old bird was nicer than this young one. For the life of me I couldn’t think of them as one person.

  On her dressing-table stood a paper bag with rolls and jam. One of the curtained alcoves turned out to be a tiny kitchen with an unbelievably complicated kettle that defeated me. Outside I found a shower by the loo but no telephone, which was a setback because I badly wanted to phone Maria. It was at least worth a try.

  I washed and ate. Anna had left a battery shaver in clear view, and a note on her chair. It read:

  Lovejoy,

  Be here at three.

  Anna.

  Another woman giving me orders. That was all I needed.

  Fabio was in a hell of a mood when I reached the Albanese Emporium dead on nine.

  ‘Walk round him, Lovejoy,’ Piero advised me laconically. ‘He’s had a tiff with his boyfriend.’

  ‘Shut up, you great buffoon!’ Fabio squealed.

  Adriana arrived in time to prevent bloodshed and got us all working, me on a collection of prints she had purchased a week before.

  That morning my main intention was to work out the details of the rip. Instead I had two successes and one failure. All three came through Adriana. By elevenish I had picked out the spoiled prints and the forgeries and took them in to the boss. She was ploughing through a catalogue from Sotheby’s Rome office – only a stone’s throw from us. She pulled a face when she saw how many there were in the dud pile.

  ‘Put them back in an auction,’ I advised.

  ‘Brick them?’

  ‘Why throw away good prints after bad?’

  To ‘brick’ a group of sale items offered at auction is to include something really quite good or valuable – or a forgery which appears so – in among the dross. This makes for a better price. The risk you take is that the bidders will be too thick to recognize the valuable antique and you’ll finish up having thrown it away for a song. I never brick my stuff. It’s an insult to a superb genuine antique to make it live among a load of tat.

  I told her, ‘Think how you’d feel.’

  She actually did begin to smile but throttled it at birth. ‘Very well. Into next week’s auction.’

  I said, ‘Erm, thank you for the supper last evening.’

  She looked down at her cata
logue. ‘Not at all. I’m glad you dined well.’

  As I made to go I pretended to notice a small stand on her desk, a simple circular base with a neatly turned stem not quite ten inches tall. She kept appointment cards in the slot at its top. It still had its screw. ‘Excuse me, please, signora. Do you still have the embroidery fans?’

  ‘The what?’ She saw I was holding the stand. I knew she didn’t know what it was. Fabio had its partner on his desk.

  ‘There is a crenellated embroidered fan-shaped piece of material which goes with this.’ The penny still hadn’t dropped. ‘It’s a rare American candle screen. Ladies used them to shield their eyes from direct glare when sewing. Seeing you have the pair . . . Look, signora,’ I suggested. ‘Why don’t I restore these in the workshop? I could clean them up and maybe we can find the screens. They’re really very valuable . . .’

  That was my first success, gaining access to the workshop. My second came when Adriana, passing for the umpteenth time to check I was still hard at it, actually came in and commented, ‘You seem at home here.’

  I was concentrating on milking the screw out. ‘I am. Why is it such a shambles?’

  She gazed about and did her shrug. ‘The business can’t run to a craftsman.’

  ‘Because that’s tragic.’ I indicated a small table in the corner. I’d not had time to have a look at it, but it looked a good early nineteeth-century French occasional table. Some goon had stuck its broken leg with sticking plaster. A couple of planks lay across its precious surface. ‘The poor little sod,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘Can you? Having them mended costs the earth.’

  ‘I can do better. I’ll make you a reproduction piece, something really splendid.’

  ‘The true wood will be expensive.’

  ‘I’ll make it pay.’ I’d nearly said worth your while. Adriana got the switch and went all prim.

  ‘Do you have a piece in mind, Lovejoy?’

  ‘I think so.’ I had a piece in mind all right. ‘A Chippendale rent table.’

  She thought a second, weighing time against lire. ‘All right. Go ahead. But don’t botch it. It’s a highly specialized—’