would look: the engagement party, a public attack, then the private killing, driven to it. Nothing else would be believed.
I looked down at Gianni again, not moving, then back into her eyes. Frantic, the way they’d been, standing over him with the stone raised. For me.
“We have to get him out of here,” I said.
“Out of here. But they’ll know-he came here.”
“Nobody knows that. Nobody knows you came here either. Nobody. We have to get him out.”
“Out,” she said vaguely, meaning how.
“The tarp,” I said, stepping away from his body to reach the edge of the covering. “We’ll wrap him in this.” Two pieces. One would never be missed.
“Oh god,” Claudia said, not moving.
“We’ll have to use the boat.”
“The boat,” Claudia said dully.
“We can’t carry him through the streets. We have to dump him in the lagoon.”
“They’ll find him.”
“Not if we weight him down. Here, give me a hand with this.”
“But they’ll look. They’ll ask questions.”
“We never saw him. Quick,” I said, gesturing at the tarp.
“You’ll be in trouble too. For me. The police-”
I went over and took her by the shoulders, still trembling under the coat.
“I need you to help me move him. To get him on the tarp. Can you do that?”
She said nothing for a minute, just looked at me.
“Nobody will know,” I said, then let my hands slide away from her. “We need to roll him over. Onto the tarp.”
“There’s blood,” she said quietly.
“Take his feet,” I said, still looking at her.
Then she nodded, calmer, almost herself again. She stepped to the other side of the body and bent down to grab his legs. I looked at him again. Shiny leather shoes, white tie, already dressed for burial.
I crouched down and put my hands on his shoulders, ready to push.
“Okay, when I say-”
A groan, faint enough to be a sound out on the canal, then an almost imperceptible twitch in his arm. Another groan, louder this time, and Claudia made a little cry, her hands to her mouth, and jumped away.
“Oh god,” she said. “He’s not dead.”
A stiff body, no longer pumping blood. It had never occurred to me to check. Now I leaned over him, listening, my fingers touching the side of his neck. But what were you supposed to feel? A pulse, any movement at all. If he were alive, there’d be breath. I put my ear next to his mouth. For a second, nothing, then the faint gagging sound again. I looked up at Claudia, our eyes meeting across the body. Alive. To have her arrested, sent-out of the way. Ruin everything. I felt a slight movement in his shoulder and looked back down. Eyes still closed. A blotch of red on his shirtfront. Just dead and now alive again, unstoppable. No expression on his face-maybe the way it had been, nodding at the hospital, sitting on the terrace at Villa Raspelli, calmly leaning over my mother, touching her soft throat. Not the first time. Unstoppable, about to get away with all of it. Get us out of the way. I looked up at Claudia again, the same shiny eyes, and then grabbed his shirtfront and began dragging him to the steps.
“Adam,” she said, but what I heard was the scrape of his clothes across the stone floor, another whispered groan. The back of his head left a smear of blood behind. Unstoppable.
I dragged him over to the steps, then, kneeling, pushed his head into the water and held it there, forcing it down, my arms clenched, shaking. Do it. A whimper from where Claudia was standing. I felt the wet creep along my legs. Nothing moved in the water, then a few bubbles appeared, rising out of his mouth, and the body began to twitch, maybe an unconscious reaction, a last gasp. Not thrashing for life, just a series of twitches. I held his head under by the throat, hearing my own blood in my ears, watching the bubbles. How long? Then suddenly his body shook and his eyes flew open and I felt they could see me through the mirror of water, knew it was me leaning over him with my hand on his throat, choking him, until the water finally rushed in and forced out the last bubble. I held him for another minute, until nothing moved at all, then stood up slowly, my arms dripping with water. His eyes were still open, rigid now, not focused on anything. I took a deep breath and for a second expected the fear again, the free fall in my stomach, but what I felt, dazed, was the ease of it. A matter of a minute to kill. In the war we always wondered if we could do it, stick the bayonet in. And now I had, with no more effort than it would take to nod.
I turned to Claudia, but neither of us said anything. I could hear a ship’s horn-the moist air in the lagoon was probably thickening to fog. Easier to hide. I nodded at the wall switch.
“Get the lights. We don’t want anybody-”
Claudia glanced down at Gianni, his leather shoes sticking up incongruously on the water stairs, then went over to the wall.
With only the lamps from the indoor hall, we had to work in shadows. I looked across the canal to the neighboring buildings. A few upstairs lights, the rest of the windows dark. No one seemed to have noticed anything. Even the marchesa was away. I pulled the boat around.
I laid out the tarp, then dragged Gianni up to it by the feet, hearing thuds as his head hit the stairs. I pitched him forward so that he was sitting up, then started to take off his jacket, struggling with the arms.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to wipe up the blood. I don’t want to use anything here. They might miss it. That’s it. Okay, use this, then we’ll throw it in with him.”
She hesitated for a second, not understanding, then looked at me, dismayed. I nodded. She waited another second, staring, then shivered and took the wet jacket and began mopping the floor around us as I moved him onto the tarp. We threw the jacket over him and weighed it down with paving stones, then rolled the tarp over and tied it at each end with some rope I found near the water gate. I didn’t think anyone could see us in the half-light of the room, but we worked quickly, making sure the blood was gone, then lugging the heavy bag toward the steps.
“Here, let me steady it, we’ll just slide him in.”
Claudia was sweating, her face flushed from the lifting, and when she looked up, waiting for me, I felt the closeness again, not fear this time, something more intimate, in it together.
I was lifting the rolled tarp over the gunwale when the phone rang. We froze. Two phones ringing, one upstairs, one in the hall. Looking for him. Drawing attention to the house. I stood still, as if any movement might be seen through the water gate, eyes peering around the edge of curtains, curious about the phone. When it stopped, I realized I had been holding my breath.
I took up the tarp again. “On two,” I said, and she lifted with me and he was in, the boat rocking from the sudden movement. I steadied it with my foot and reached out my hand to help her in. She stopped, a small panic in her eyes.
“I can’t swim,” she said.
“Do you want to stay?” I said.
She glanced quickly at the dim entryway, then shook her head and stepped in, clenching my hand until she sat.
“It’s cold. You’ll need a coat,” she said, motioning toward my jacket, wet at the sleeves.
“No time,” I said, untying the boat and pushing off into the canal. “We’ll have to use the oars until we get farther out. The motor’s too loud.”
As we floated quietly toward the Zattere, it occurred to me, a stray thought, that nothing ever changed in Venice. Muffled oars, a body taken away in the night. I looked across at Claudia. Over fans at La Fenice.
The rain had left a heavy mist over the water. When we reached the Giudecca channel, there were a few distant shafts of yellow lights from boats and a much stronger wind that cut into my wet sleeves. I lowered the small outboard motor into the water and jerked hard on the starter cord. A sputter, not much more than a grunt. How long since it had been used? Was there even gas in the tank? Another pull. Why not just dump him here? The Giudecca was a deep channel, not one of the shallow city canals, but too near. The tides that flushed out the city could flush things back in. I imagined Gianni stuck just a few feet underwater in a side canal, waiting for the
