Surviving Venice

by Anna E Bendewald

  She set her phone aside, licked her thumb, flicked the same page back, and started her chapter over in the perfect quiet of the deserted reading room.

  Karno was sitting in his office when the secure line rang and Negrali rattled off his verification code.

  “What’s up?” he asked the next pope.

  “You don’t sound desperate! Why not?” Negrali demanded.

  “Everything’s in place.”

  “The Verona’s keep surviving their boat accidents.”

  “Not a problem. No one suspects anything, boats have issues all the time. It’s not like the Veronas are going to stop using the waterways and start walking everywhere in Venice. I have a man who’ll plant another type of device on their craft while it’s docked at Raphielli’s ball. It’ll be foolproof. The propeller turns and boom. Not just a fire, total oblivion.”

  “It won’t be easy. You should see the Scortini palazzo. The party director has security everywhere and more coming by the minute.”

  “I’m not worried. My men tell me she’s got an army of people coming and going with food deliveries and flowers.”

  “Your men?”

  “Sì. The party director hired a security company, and that company needed more men for this job. They subbed one of my men over in the wing where Raphielli lives. He’ll be taking over when the butler retires at midnight.”

  “Do you have anyone who can get me into the party?”

  “What am I, a doorman? Figure your own way in. I thought you’d ingratiated yourself into Venice society. Hang on some influential arm or charm the mayor’s wife. My men say Elene Buonocore invited the movers and shakers because Signora Scortini doesn’t know anyone but battered women.”

  “Fine, I’ll get myself in. A plan just came to mind.”

  “You’re filled with plans for an old man.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Tomorrow after you take care of Leopold, I’m coming back here and claiming Peter’s throne as my first plan of business.”

  “Here, meaning?”

  “Venice, where I am now. I’m going to have it removed from Basilica di San Pietro di Castello, ship it up to Rome, and when Leopold is out of the way, I’ll rule from it!”

  “What’s Peter’s throne been doing in the Castello of Venice all this time?”

  “What indeed!” Negrali snorted.

  “Anyway, I have more good news,” Hiero said. “The Verona residence will be momentarily vulnerable when the Pope and Vincenzo leave for Rome early tomorrow morning. Two of my men have a plan to get inside in those wee hours of Ash Wednesday before sunrise. They’ll get Juliette in her sleep.”

  “At sunrise the boy scout leader, I mean, pope, will be delivering another scintillating speech about conservation and pollution. We have a plan to take care of him when he comes off the balcony into his residence,” Negrali bragged.

  “Uh-huh, that should be interesting,” Hiero said and hung up on the maniac.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Her ball was in full swing when Raphielli and her friends made their entrance into the party wing. The theatre space was a perfect square of four balconied floors with two stairways on each floor climbing to the next level all the way up to a fifth-floor perch with a knee-high balustrade. The main stage was on the second level where tumblers in alluring neon leotards were performing. A light show kept colors chasing through the air on fiber-optic wires while the lighting in the whole party space kept changing from bright to dim. One moment the place was sparkling and vivid with flashing colored lights bouncing off fractal screens, and the next the whole space was moody, shadowy, and darkly romantic. Music was booming on the ground floor but became quieter the higher one climbed.

  Marilynn took Raphielli by the hand and led her on a tour of the space, climbing the levels, making brief introductions, giving people the opportunity to thank her for inviting them, gush over their gifted costumes, and exclaim over the golden sheath and headpiece she was wearing. As the golden sunrise, she stood out because Ava had made sure no one else wore gold.

  To Raphielli’s horror, she recognized Donatella, Alphonso’s friend, the mistress, her face easily recognizable with a skimpy lace mask not really covering her orange features and the same fake lashes she’d been wearing that morning after the murders. Elene was at her side, and Donatella extended her hand.

  “So nice of you to invite me.” She eyed Raphielli’s glued-on dress and leaned forward to snark, “I see how you got Alphonso, with goods like that on display.”

  Raphielli suddenly felt cheap and ridiculous. She wanted to turn and run back down the stairs, but Marilynn continued to usher her upward.

  On the darker fourth floor, they passed an enormous pit of pillows that some people were busy rolling around in…with purpose. Ugh, having sex right here…sort of in front of other people? They continued climbing to the fifth-floor perch at the top of the space, where Marilynn handed her a microphone and spotlights found her. She remembered Juliette’s advice. “Establish yourself as the great woman you are. Think of yourself as the Unsinkable Molly Brown throwing her first party for Denver society.”

  The music stopped as Raphielli stepped to the edge of the perch and spoke into the microphone. “Welcome to Casa Scortini. Tonight, we celebrate Poseidon and the glory of our Venetian waterways. It’s the last night of Carnevale, and tomorrow is Lent, so enjoy yourselves to the fullest. Facciamo festa!” Everyone whistled and clapped and stomped their feet enthusiastically.

  Raphielli handed off the microphone as the music kicked into high gear, and out of nowhere performers tumbled through the air in front of her in the middle of the space on rings and clinging to silks. Instead of pressing the flesh with guests on the way downstairs, she evasively ducked in and out of people. It was easy to get lost in the crowd with everyone looking at the performers. She stormed into the dressing room and started stripping the dress off her body. An assistant hurried forward to help her with the feathered headpiece. “I want to wear the fighting fish,” Raphielli declared.

  The team flew into action and had her in the flowy tetra costume in a flash. The swirling Pisces three-quarter mask was in place, and as she turned to go, she bumped into several women entering the dressing room. Donatella was one of them but this time the hussy didn’t recognize her. “I need help to cinch my dress tighter,” she whined to an assistant. Then she and the other women started pawing the racks of extra clothing like they were at a sale.

  Raphielli slipped out to the dance floor where she found Carolette, resplendent in her ropes of pearls, dancing with Zelph, who wore an heirloom Scortini mask he’d coveted from the baùtta room in her home. Paloma was swaying gracefully amidst a group of people who had abandoned themselves to the music. As the lights dimmed, Raphielli had nothing more to do than to enjoy the fruits of so much production. She felt her shoulders loosen and she began to move. Song after song kept them dancing and everyone lost their inhibitions. Raphielli felt young and bold. She was anonymous even from her friends in this new costume. Bodies glided past her, some closer than others.

  At one point, as the lights went to almost total black, she smelled Gio and felt fingers on the back of her neck. He pulled her in for a kiss that melted her completely, and she threw her arms around him, offering her body through the filmy material. They swayed, mashing and grinding together and she offered her tongue for erotic kisses. As he cupped her breasts and grazed his teeth along her neck, she threw her head back and clung to him. Everyone around them was an anonymous throng of beautiful masks and peek-a-boo flesh. As the silver pins of light strung across the space started to pulse and grow brighter, he was gone.

  Raphielli ate, drank, watched show after show, and danced all night. Around one in the morning a trapeze act began way up toward the ceiling, and everyone’s eyes were glued to the death-defying leaps of the three acrobats flying high above the black stone floor. As Raphielli’s eyes followed the action, a flash of gold on the fifth-floor perch caught h
er eye. Someone’s wearing my discarded sunrise costume!

  She was miffed as she watched the woman step over to the low railing. In the next instant, a man in a plague doctor’s mask appeared behind her and shoved her over the balustrade into the void! Instead of plunging to her death, she was caught by the lighting web and bounced just a few feet down onto the fourth-floor passion pit of pillows as neatly as if the webbing were a safety net. None of the busy people in the pit noticed.

  A woman standing next to Raphielli caught the flash of falling gold out of the corner of her eye and clapped absent-mindedly without looking, then went on watching the trapeze over the other side of the party. Raphielli watched in horror as the man in the plague doctor’s mask got into a tussle with a man whose hat was knocked off revealing a shiny bald head. The bald man deliberately shoved the plague doctor off the perch. He didn’t catch on anything, but fell five floors straight down, landing in the shadows near the performer’s backstage area. The party’s safety team rushed over and slid him backstage. No one noticed the man fall because an erotic peep show of dancers had begun undulating inside fish tanks on the main second-floor stage.

  Looking back up, Raphielli saw the bald man had made it to the stairs where he was now fighting with a man in a painted red and silver mask. She darted past people and raced up the stairs toward them.

  When she got close to the fight she heard someone say, “Take it outside, you two macho assholes.”

  The man in the red and silver mask took a punch to the face that split his mask. He tumbled down a couple of stairs, losing his mask along the way. It was Luigi Lampani, and there was blood on his face. She ran to him. “Don’t move! Have you broken anything?”

  His eyes widened as he recognized her voice. “I’m fine, just bloodied my nose. I thought he’d killed you!”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Stay here, Elli!” Primo said in her ear, and he ran after the bald man who was making his way down the far staircase.

  “I don’t know, some guy in a plague doctor’s mask,” Luigi said as she helped him to his feet. “But the bald guy threw him over.”

  She felt Alphonso’s arms close around her.

  Luigi’s hands went to his face and he said, “It’s kinda refreshing to have a completely different pain in my head.”

  Alphonso ushered them to the next staircase, and they made their way past people having sex in the darkened recesses of the stairs. No wonder Benny wasn’t up for this.

  The lights began to flicker and then the house lights came on. The party was over. A deep horn sounded, and all the fractal screens flashed a message.

  CLAIM A CAPE AND PROCEED TO THE CANAL FOR POSEIDON’S ARRIVAL

  Doors opened to the outside calles, and Marilynn’s staff stood at each exit handing out a final gift from Raphielli: dark green capes to keep the guests warm while they watched the fireworks and the big god’s head rise from the deep. Alphonso kept a tight grip on Raphielli as they moved along with the crowd.

  “How did you know it was me under this new mask?” she asked him.

  “I’d know your body and the way you move anywhere. It seems Primo figured it out, too.” Alphonso’s voice was unemotional.

  “I have to see who tried to kill me,” she said and pointed to where her attempted murderer had landed.

  They followed Luigi to the backstage area where the performers’ safety team had covered the body with a white sheet. “He’s dead,” the safety captain said. “We called the police. They’ll be here soon.”

  Blood was seeping through the sheet from the man’s head and trunk area, and the plague doctor’s mask lay on the floor. She lunged forward and pulled back the sheet. Cardinal Negrali’s dead eyes stared up at her, and the back of his head was gone.

  Who was the bald man who’d shoved Negrali off the perch?

  Paloma had never had so much fun. Rich people were crazy! This party was total decadence. In the past, she’d only ever attended lame Carnevale parties where people in bad costumes tried to solve half-assed murder mysteries and everyone ended up drunk. This ball was magical! She’d danced, or mostly swayed and shimmied because her hip was still messed up, and at one point, someone came up behind her and trailed the softest kisses along her shoulder and neck. They didn’t grope her or anything, and she’d never been kissed like that before. It was a great night of gorgeous mostly-naked bodies performing superhuman feats. Even the fight on the stairs looked like something out of Phantom of the Opera. Maybe it was a performance, who could tell?

  When the lights came up the Frenchies found her and started dragging her along. “Come, get a cape! We don’t want to miss the big finale! We’ll see the fireworks before Poseidon’s head comes out of the water!”

  “I’m coming,” Paloma said.

  Carolette had love bites on her shoulders and Zelph was attached to her at the hip. “We’ve been invited to an enormous yacht for sunrise breakfast. You’re coming, right?”

  “How’re you getting to a yacht?”

  “It’s some member of some royal family. They have a carri di carnevale somewhere. We’ll party our way out to the lagoon where their yacht is moored,” Fauve said.

  “No, my hip’s killing me, I’m wiped out. I’ll go back to the home wing and keep Benny company. Where’s Raphielli?”

  “Mixing with all her new society friends. She’s got to mingle, she’s the hostess.”

  Once outside in the dark, Paloma snuggled down in her cape and the crowd clustered together as showers of golden fireworks started appearing over the palazzo, dazzling embers raining down weightlessly like stars falling. Then ominous music swelled from speakers that sounded like a giant was blowing a ram’s horn, and spotlights started searching the water. Bigger and brighter fireworks launched from barges on either side of the palazzo, the explosions became more dramatic, and the music got louder as Poseidon’s crown became visible under the green water. The crowd gasped and shrieked in surprise and pleasure as the god rose from the deep. Performers dressed as neon sea creatures started sailing down from the palazzo’s roof on wires and landing on a pontoon boat decorated as a coral reef.

  After shoving the plague doctor over the balustrade and getting into a scuffle, Mateo had scrambled through the crowd staying low. He had to get out. He snatched someone’s cloak off their shoulders, dragged it over his head, and ducked away in the crowd before they could stop him. He skirted the throng through an exit door. Coming to this party had been a catastrophe. It was like a Roman orgy inside a…well…a Carnevale! Raphielli had been killed, and he’d killed her murderer, but no one seemed to notice except two men, one who’d started punching him and the other guy who’d chased him.

  A police boat cruised past. I have to get out of here! He’d get over to the Verona’s boat and Noah would get him to safety.

  He ran down the little fondimenta and saw the Verona’s sleek boat around the corner from where the crowd was gathered staring in the opposite direction. Noah stood looking up at the fireworks. Mateo jumped aboard and over the music he shouted, “Change of plans! Get me out of here!”

  The last thing he saw were acrobats in neon fish costumes flying down from the roof. He didn’t hear, see, or feel the explosion that touched off when Noah started the motor. Parts of them flew through the air. But around the corner, everyone was watching Poseidon break the surface, and no one witnessed Mateo’s spectacular finale. The intensity of the fireworks decreased and, as a beautiful rendition of “Venezia, la Luna e Tu” swelled over the sound speakers, the palazzo’s security came running to see two sections of the Verona’s boat sinking beneath the canal’s surface. One of them stopped to look at the leg lying across the fondimenta. It was bare except for the glossy black shoe still neatly laced.

  Raphielli stood watching her party’s finale. Fireworks boomed all around and neon fish came sailing down on zip lines landing on the opposite sides of la Ponte di Smeraldi. Finally, Poseidon’s trident appeared, causing everyone to cheer and scream as
his eyes moved back and forth slowly sweeping the rowdy crowd. The biggest fireworks launched into the sky, and one final explosion ended the spectacle. The boom caught her off guard, and she shrank inside her cape within Alphonso’s arms.

  Quite a bit of smoke was carried on the wind, and the emergency fireboat that had been standing by revved its engine and burbled its way around the corner of the palace to check on things.

  “I’m done for the night,” she told Alphonso. “I want to leave the crowd behind.”

  “Okay. I’ll take you around to your wing and let your security take over.” His voice was tight.

  They met up with Paloma at the front door and a security guard stood back to let them in. Raphielli gave Alphonso a searching look.

  He said, “I figured out who you were because I knew what Petrosino was wearing. I watched you two together on the dance floor.” He turned away and raised a hand in farewell as he walked back down the steps and into the crowd.

  She knew how she’d responded to Gio and was mortified that Alphonso had witnessed them together.

  “Just you and your friends in residence tonight,” the security guard said, more of a statement than a question.

  Paloma answered for her. “Sì, our visiting friends have gone to breakfast. They’ll be back in a few hours.”

  He tapped his clipboard. “I’ve got the approved list of people allowed in. Rosa and Dante are gone for the night.”

  Raphielli knew Marilynn had taken care of everything. At the moment, she was probably personally taking care of Negrali’s body removal, which Raphielli preferred never to see again.

  “Well, if that was your first ball, you’ve set the bar pretty high for yourself,” Paloma said. She took hold of Raphielli’s arm as they walked alone down the dark corridor. “Wanna tell me what’s going on with you and Alphonso?”