last scraps of Mussolini’s war. I started the engine and swung around the big stern.
The guard may have seen the boat, but none of us looked back, just headed straight down the canal to the open water. We had a real chance now. To catch up, the police would have to go all around the tail end of Venice, skirting San Elena, minutes behind. We passed under the bridge and shot across the water toward the channel lights. I peered into the darkness, trying to measure how far I could see past the buoys before everything was swallowed up. Still no moon. We wouldn’t need to hide behind anything-the air itself would do it if we were outside the range of the lights. But it was a fine line; too far and you risked shallows.
“Is he okay?” I said to Rosa. “It gets choppier out here.”
She didn’t say anything, just held him, a cushion.
“Where is the car? The casino?” The big parking lot at the vaporetto landing stage, where it would be easy to be overlooked in the crowd.
“No, at the end. The Excelsior.”
“The Excelsior?”
“It’s not open yet. No one will be at the dock. It’s easy to find.” All worked out, the next link.
“Not in the dark. We’ll have to go to the casino and then follow the lights down.”
“No, go straight across. That was the idea. No one will see us.”
“You can’t cross the lagoon in the dark. That’s why they mark the channels.”
“It’s a shallow boat.”
But the lagoon could be even shallower. That was what had always protected Venice-not water but mud. Sometimes only a few feet under the surface, sometimes less, rising in little underwater islands.
“We can’t go at this speed. If we hit something, we could wreck the boat.”
“If they come for us, they’ll look in the channel,” she said.
I nodded. “All right. But it’ll take more time. Can he wait?”
He was lying still under the tarp, maybe passed out.
“Yes,” she said. “Now.” I looked at her face, suddenly soft. “He’s dead.”
“Oh,” Claudia said, a whimper.
“Are you sure?”
Rosa pulled back the tarp, as if seeing him, his perfectly calm face, would be evidence. “In the Arsenale. I didn’t want to say then.”
We were still moving slowly in a direct line to the far lights of the Lido. I looked around, checking for boats, then back at his face, streaked with blood where he had wiped it, sweating, a kind of camouflage effect in the dark. A boy who’d delivered medicine.
“Better cover him up,” I said, not wanting to look anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Rosa said quietly, and for an odd second I thought she was talking to me, but her face was turned to his, words to a comrade.
Claudia moved forward and helped her with the tarp, folding it around him. “Let’s go back,” she said. “They won’t expect that. We can hide you, get you away somehow tomorrow. It was the wound that was the problem-we couldn’t hide him. He would have died.”
“He did,” Rosa said, but Claudia wasn’t really listening, busy with the tarp, absorbed now in a new plan.
“Do you think they saw our faces?” she said to me. “In that light? The boat could be anyone’s. We could go back. Nobody would know.”
“I can’t stay in Venice,” Rosa said. “They know it was me. Even if they didn’t see,” she said, spreading her hand to take in the boat, “they know it was me. They’ll hunt for me.”
“Not at Ca’ Venti,” Claudia said. “They already did.”
“And what do we do with him?” Rosa said quietly.
“Is there some rope?” Claudia said. “It’s better if it’s tied. The tarp will come loose, even if we roll it.” She was folding it under him, talking to herself. “How can we weight it? Not that it matters. You use those big stones and it’ll come up anyway. Nothing keeps it down. It’s the tides, isn’t that what they said? The tides loosened the tarp.” She turned to me. “We’ll have to explain why this one is missing. There’s nothing over those stones now. Someone might notice.”
I looked up to find Rosa watching her, studying her face.
“You want to put him in the lagoon? This boy?”
“He’s dead, yes?” Claudia said.
Rosa looked out to the dark, then shook her head. “Not to the fishes. I’ll take him.”
“In the car? With a body? Where?”
“He’s Carlo’s son,” she said simply. “I can’t just throw him over the side.”
“Two can do it,” Claudia said, not hearing her. “The boat won’t tip.”
“An expert,” Rosa said, dismissive, then turned to me. “They’ll find the car. Then it’s someone else.”
“They can trace it?”
She shrugged. “You will never get me out of Venice. Not now. This is the best way. Get me there, then it’s my risk.”
“And when they ask how you got there?” Claudia said.
“When they ask?” Rosa said. “They won’t ask me anything. If they can ask, I’ll be dead.”
She said it casually, sure of things. A car punctured with bullet holes, the only way it would be stopped. But it could happen the other way too. An undetected dash to Jesolo, then the whole Veneto to disappear in. Taking the body to friends.
“You’re not turning around,” Claudia said.
“After we drop them,” I said. “We can’t keep her in Venice.” The train station would be swarming with police, the highway bridge guarded. Not even a tarp to hide under.
“Who’s that?” Claudia said, swiveling around. A distant engine, a light shining in front, coming slowly.
“Not police,” Rosa said. “Fishermen, maybe. They go out at night.”
“Have they seen us?”
“Not yet. Soon,” Rosa said. “Pull to the left.”
I turned the boat slightly, on an angle now to the channel markers, stretching across the lagoon like highway lights. The fishing boat would pass without even noticing us, heading for the opening to the Adriatic. The chugging was nearer, a steady hum, then suddenly, as if it had found a road, it sped up, moving its lights right to left to make sure its whole path was clear. On the swing left the light caught us, something unexpected in the dark. A man shouted. The boat came toward us, shining its beam down.
“Where are your lights?” the man yelled in Italian. “What’s wrong?” Just people in distress.
I idled the engine. “Broken,” Rosa yelled back. “It’s all right, we’re fixing it.”
“You’ll get run over. Go back to the channel,” he said, waving his arms. “Someone will pick you up.”
“We’re all right. We’re going to the Lido.”
“Bah,” he said. “In the dark. Sciocci.” This to the other fishermen, disgusted by our ineptness. “Then follow us. It’s another channel.”
I turned my head away from the light, looking toward the main channel markers, the string of white, now with a small blue light moving along it.
“Rosa, police. Tell them to go. The police’ll see us.”
I imagined someone with binoculars, scanning, drawn to the spot of light, two boats, one familiar.
Rosa shouted something up, forced and hearty, and the fisherman laughed but turned the boat, moving the light away. It started out again.
“It’s luck for us,” Rosa said. “We can follow them. They know the channels.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him to stop looking down my dress.”
I opened the throttle, following the fishing boat but keeping far enough back to stay in its shadow. We were making better time now, getting closer. I looked left, keeping the blue light in sight. One of the night ferries to Trieste was coming up behind it in the channel, and in the bright lights I could see it clearly now, a police boat, probably the one that had spun off through the Arsenale yard. The ferry passed and the blue light kept following the channel, the only place we could sensibly be.
“Are they still there?” Claudia said, watching me.
