been demanding that he attend the meeting, only asking that he send his daughter to it.
I had no need of the vizio to gain admittance, because the doorman granted me noble honors. He deeply regretted that Ambassador Tirali had already left for the palace, but sier Pasqual was in residence. If the clarissimo would be so kind as to follow…He led us up the great staircase and left us in the imposing salotto while he went to report our presence. I headed for a Palma Vecchio I had admired the previous day.
Vasco could hardly have missed the difference in my reception. He strolled over to join me. “Friend of the family, are you?”
“Neighbor,” I said, peering at the brushwork with my nose almost on the canvas. “I feed the cat when they’re out of town.”
He said, “Hmm?” and after a moment, “Have you any theories on why your lunatic master is being so diabolically secretive about the name of the murderer?”
“Yes. What’s yours?”
“There are those who mistakenly believe,” he murmured, “that the Council of Ten, while often insanely suspicious of members of the nobility it thinks may be plotting treason with foreigners, is sometimes not as assiduous as it should be in charging the same aristocrats with purely criminal behavior. If your master shared this seditious misapprehesion, then he might think that he could force the Ten’s hand by exposing the culprit in public.”
“That assumes,” I said, “that he intends to accuse a noble. It also assumes that the Ten already know or suspect the culprit and have decided to let him off by accepting the Greek’s suicide as a confession of guilt, and that the chiefs of the Ten do not like this travesty of justice and seized upon my master’s offer as a way of frustrating the will of the majority. You are jumping to a huge heap of conclusions, Vizio.”
“So what’s your theory?”
“That he was telling the truth when he said that an accusation would not convince but a demonstration would.”
“That’s all?”
“No.” I backed away so I could admire the composition from afar. “He’s also a real Pantaloon who loves showing off.”
“He will be walking a very high wire tonight, then.”
Before I could counter that, Pasqual Tirali strolled in, looking frowsty, as if he had been dragged out of bed and had dressed in a hurry. I wondered if he had been partying all night with Violetta and thrust the thought out of my mind. Although this was an unconscionable hour to call on a patrician playboy, he embraced me and acknowledged Vasco’s bow with a gracious nod.
I explained our mission.
He frowned. “You told us yesterday, Alfeo, you had found no evidence that the procurator’s death was due to foul play.”
“I would still say so, but my master disagrees. He insists that he will unmask a murderer this evening.”
Pasqual smiled the irresistible Tirali family smile. “Then we must not miss the excitement. My father is very busy just now, getting ready to take up his new position, but I will tell him. How long will it take?”
“I should hope no more than an hour, Pasqual.”
“And you wish me to bring the same lady who was my companion that evening?” His face showed no sign of mockery or secret knowledge. If he was aware that he shared Violetta with me, then he was a stunningly effective actor.
“If you would be so kind.”
“It will be a pleasure. My mother?”
“No, he asked for only those who were in the viewing room.”
“Knowing my mother, she may not take no for an answer.” Subtly, he began moving us toward the door. “My father was very disappointed when he received your letter this morning, Alfeo.”
I mumbled my apologies.
“I know he sent you a reply leaving the offer open if you ever change your mind.”
That made me feel even more ungrateful, of course.
The inevitable question came as Vasco and I descended the marble staircase. “What offer?”
“The cat. He wanted me to look after it while he’s away in Rome.”
“This is my sty,” I said as we approached the Ca’ Barbolano. “Giorgio will take you on to wherever you want to go. You won’t mind if I do not invite you in? The neighbors would be shocked.”
“I understand entirely,” Vasco countered. “In my job I have to consort with the worst sludge imaginable. We shall meet again this evening, I expect. But hopefully not for the last time.”
I said, “Amen to that. I do so enjoy our little fencing bouts.”
As I emerged from the felze, I caught Giorgio’s eye and signaled Hurry back in Bruno sign language. Giorgio merely nodded, a gesture that means the same to Bruno and me as it does to everyone else in the world except Greeks. With Vasco aboard, the gondola sped off along the canal.
Our arrival had gone largely unnoticed, because the Marciana battalions were all out on the quay, having a screaming match with the workers on the building site opposite. Insults and obscene gestures flew back and forth. I was amused to notice that Corrado and Christoforo were over there, yelling abuse as loudly as anyone at their Marciana friends on this side. I did not bother to inquire the cause of contention. Just because this was Venice, I suspected. I sent Bruno off upstairs and leaned against the door jamb to judge the invective. The Marciana army won by default when the foremen opposite managed to drive everyone back to work.
Giorgio returned in an astonishingly short time, flitting his gondola along the Rio San Remo like a seabird. He pulled in to the quay and I lurched aboard. I would like to say I leaped aboard, but my leg was throbbing again. In fact he caught my wrist just before I fell overboard.
“Where did he go?”
“The Rialto.”
“Fast as you can!” I shouted, flopping down on a thwart. I almost never ask that of Giorgio and he responded with a wild swing of his oar, spinning the gondola on its axis to great shouts of rage from other boats going by, and then shooting it back the way he had come like a musket ball.
I knew exactly why Vasco had gone to the Rialto, but I had very little hope of finding him. The Rialto area is the commercial heart of the whole Republic. It has the only bridge over the Grand Canal, is where the banking is done, where most foreigners lodge, and where the great food markets are-hardly surprising that it is constantly crowded.
Giorgio shot the gondola in between two others in front of the Palazzo dei Dieci Savi and shouted “That way!” I scrambled ashore and hobbled as fast as I could along the Ruga degli Orefici, which was packed with people heading home for their midday meal. The bankers mostly congregate near the church of San Giacomo di Rialto, scribbling in ledgers laid out on tables under the porticos. If Domenico Chiari was about the same age as Vasco and myself, as Vasco had implied, then he would be no more than a clerk, a junior who might be sent off on errands anywhere in the city. So Vasco might have drawn a blank and headed back to the palace to report to Missier Grande.
But he hadn’t. San Giacomo answered my panted prayers, and I caught a glimpse of a red cloak. The vizio was standing by a pillar, having a friendly tete-a-tete with a man of our age, but shorter, pudgy, and bespectacled. The crowds had observed the cloak and left a clear space around them. Even so, the two men were conversing in whispers. Fortunately Vasco had his back to me, so I was able to approach unnoticed and come to a stop right behind his shoulder. I leered like a shark at Domenico so he could not help noticing me-eavesdropping is beneath my dignity and honor unless I can do it unobserved.
He flinched. With his eyeglasses balanced on an almost comically snub nose, he looked very owlish.
Vasco whirled around and bared fangs at me. “What do you want?”
“A chat with the illustrious Domenico.”
“Go away!” the vizio said. “Or I will arrest you as a public nuisance. Dom, never answer any question this character ever asks you. If he pesters you in any way at all, throw him in the canal.”
Chiari smiled nervously. “I don’t think I could do that without help.”
“A lot of help,” I suggested.
“Would four scriveners and two tallymen suffice?”
