“Just as you instructed, Signor Carmody.”
“What did you tell the driver?”
“Only that he is to pick up a passenger, transport him to an address he will be given, pick up additional passengers, and then proceed to a boat in the Lagoon.”
“Does he speak English?”
“Enough to understand simple directions.”
“You’re sure he can be trusted?”
“Assolutamente, Signor.”
“He’ll be ready to go tonight?”
“Any time you wish.”
“The way it looks now,” Carmody said, “we can do it tonight. I went to see Vickers and his boat this morning. I’m satisfied.”
“I was certain you would be.”
Carmody lit one of his thin, black cigars. “I’ll call you later and let you know what time the launch driver is to pick me up. Where do I meet him?”
“The Rio de Fontego, at the foot of Via Giordano,” Della Robbia said. “A quiet place without much water traffic, so you can be sure you are not followed.”
“How far is the Rio de Fontego from my hotel?”
“Ten minutes by water taxi.”
“All right, good.”
“There are other arrangements to be made?”
“No. I’ll handle the rest of it. But stay where I can reach you the rest of the day.”
Della Robbia said, “Va bene,” and got to his feet. “A safe journey, Signor Carmody.” He lifted his hand in a salute and moved off across the Piazzeta, disappeared into the crowd of tourists and pigeons in front of the Ducal Palace.
Carmody finished his cigar, walked away from St. Marks along the Grand Canal quay. He found a stop for water taxis, rode in one to the Rio de Fontego. It turned out to be near the arched Rialto Bridge, in the approximate center of the city. Via Giordano was a quiet street lined with old houses and a few small shops that would be shuttered after dark. From the seawall at the foot of the street he could see for some distance both ways along the canal and back along Via Giordano. Della Robbia had chosen well. Carmody hadn’t expected otherwise, but he hadn’t had any prior dealings with the Italian and he was a careful man besides.
He got back into the water taxi and went to keep his appointment with Renzo Lucarelli.
Lucarelli was forty-two years old, thick-necked and wolf-eyed. Until recently he’d sported a luxuriant black military mustache that made him look more like an Italian Army colonel than a criminal on the run. Carmody had had him shave it off for his new identity and passport photo. Lucarelli missed the mustache; he kept fingering his upper lip self-consciously, as if he felt conspicuous without it.
He peered at the map spread open on the table, laid a thick forefinger on an X marked on the Venice Lagoon. “This boat, this Piraeus, will meet the launch here?” he asked.
Carmody said, “That’s right.”
“But we can be seen from the Quartiere.”
“Who’s going to see us?”
“Gambresca has many eyes. So does the carabinieri—”
“Gambresca can’t have any idea when or how you’re leaving Venice; neither can the government. And there’s nothing along the Quartiere except warehouses and anchored freighters. Even if we’re seen, nobody’s going to question the transfer. Launches take passengers out to private vessels all the time. I know, I checked it.”
“But a little farther out on the Lagoon...”
“Listen,” Carmody said, “we want to stay in the shipping roads. Any farther out and we’re inviting the attention you’re so worried about. Besides, the quicker we get onto the Piraeus and out of the Lagoon, the better.”
Lucarelli stroked his barren upper lip. “You are certain of this man Vickers?”
“Della Robbia vouches for him. And I’ll be along to see that he’s no problem.”
“I do not like putting my life in the hands of men I have never met.”
“Yes? You’ve only known me four days.”
“I have known of your great reputation for many years,” Lucarelli said, and fingered his naked lip again. “The Piraeus is old and rusty, you said. Suppose something happens to her engines before we reach Sardinia? She might even sink in a sudden squall—”
“For Christ’s sake, Lucarelli, I told you the boat was all right. Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? How do you figure I got that reputation of mine? Now stop fussing like an old woman and quit asking questions I’ve already answered.”
Lucarelli gestured apologetically. “It is only that I am nervous, Signor Carmody. I meant no offense.” He lifted the glass at his elbow, drank off the last of the red wine it contained. Then he glanced over to where his woman sat paging through a magazine. “Rita, another glass of wine.”
She stood immediately, came to the table. She was tall and plump and huge-breasted, with thick black hair pulled back tight from her forehead and fastened with a jeweled barrette; Carmody thought she’d have made a fine Rueben’s nude. He preferred slender, less top-heavy women himself.
Her expression was neutral but her eyes betrayed her unease. She was not bearing up under the waiting any better than Lucarelli.
Lucarelli gave her his glass, then said to Carmody, “You will have some wine now, Signor Carmody?”
“No. And you’d better go easy on that stuff yourself. If we go tonight I don’t want you drunk or anywhere near it.”
“Then it will be tonight?”
“Everything’s set for it. I don’t see any reason for holding off another day.”
“Good. Ah, good.”
Rita poured Lucarelli’s glass full of Chianti, brought it back to him, went over and sat down again with her magazine. She hadn’t said a word since Carmody’s arrival twenty minutes ago.
The room they were in was the main parlor of a crumbling building perched on the edge of Rio San Spirito, in a northeastern sector not far from Laguna Morta and the island that served as the city cemetery. A poor neighborhood; and a poor house that had water-stained wallpaper, rococo lighting fixtures tarnished by age, and a lingering odor of damp decay mixed with the fish-and-garbage reek of the canal outside. It was a long way from the walled palace-house Lucarelli claimed to have occupied on Lido Island before the fat little world he’d created for himself had collapsed.
Lucarelli was, or had been, a smuggler and black-marketeer who dealt in the lucrative commodity of cigarettes. The Italian government owned a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of all tobacco products, and imposed a high duty on the import of American and English brands. Since most Italians preferred the imported to the raw homemade variety, and the demand grew greater every year, tons of contraband cigarettes were smuggled annually into the country. Lucarelli’s operation, independent of syndicate ties, had been one of the largest in the northern provinces. He’d had cigarettes coming into Venice across the gulf from Trieste and down from Switzerland, and a fleet of trucks and men to distribute them throughout Italy.
But then the Guardia de Finanza, the agents of the ministry that ran the monopoly for the government, had made a series of raids that left Lucarelli’s operation hurting and vulnerable. And one of the other cigarette smugglers in the city, a long-time rival of Lucarelli’s named Gambresca, had seen his chance and ordered two unsuccessful attempts on Lucarelli’s life with the Guardia de Finanza and the local carabinieri preparing to make an arrest on one side, and Gambresca and his group devouring what was left of Lucarelli’s empire on the other, Lucarelli had been forced to abandon his palace-house and most of his possessions and to go into hiding. The woman, Rita, his mistress of several years, was the only person he’d taken with him.
If he hadn’t waited so long he would have been able to get out of Italy on his own; he’d amassed a fortune in smuggling profits, most of which he’d brought with him in cash. But with the heat on from both sides, he’d been afraid to trust former friends and allies and afraid to chance any known escape routes. So, out of desperation, he’d gotten word to Guiseppe Piombo, Carmody’s Italian contact in Rome. It was costing him $25,000 for Carmody’s services, and it was cheap at the price. Lucarelli knew it too. If Carmody had been a gouger, he could have asked and gotten twice as much.