Chapter Twenty-three

The feel of a gun at your throat has a marvelously concentrating effect on the mental faculties. Everything suddenly became very clear. I looked from Davis to Susyn. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I said, “Shit!” because nothing else quite seemed to fit.

Davis dug the barrel deeper into my throat and said, “Don’t make a sound.”

I looked at Susyn. “You had to make sure didn’t you? You had to be sure that I could identify them.”

“They promised to let you go if you couldn’t.”

“They knew. We were eye to eye in Marseille. Either they lied to you, or you are lying to me.”

Davis caught my arm and dragged me around. “Just shut up,” he snapped, “or I’ll dump you right here.”

I believed him. He could fire once and fade into the shadows. Susyn could tell the police that it had been a robbery attempt and give a false description. No one would know. And Susyn had done all she would for me – if she had done anything at all.

So I waited without resistance, calculating my chances. There are always chances, but right now they looked awfully slim.

Davis reached down for something he had dropped. I couldn’t make it out in the darkness, but it was a shopping bag. He draped it across his arm to hide the gun. He said, “Let me tell you how it is going to be. You and I are going to walk. I’ll have the gun on you every second. You aren’t going to get away. If you try, or if you call for help, I’ll shoot you dead. Then I’ll run, and I’ll be lost in this rat’s maze before anyone has time to finger me. Clear?”

“What do I get for cooperating?”

“You live.”

“For how long?”

“Where you are, every minute is a free gift.”

He was right. What he didn’t know was that I have been in that place before. He could read the fear in my eyes, and I made no attempt to disguise it. If anything, I tried to look more scared. Fear is good; fear is a pipeline to adrenaline, and adrenaline is power. I was scared, all right, but I was not panicked.

Like I said, I had been here before.

Susyn squeezed by behind Davis, not looking my way, and walked away into the light. I watched her go, letting the anger build inside me to augment the fear. I was going to need them both.

Davis moved his head and I went the way he had gestured. We passed the open air restaurant and headed down the street, opposite the direction Susyn had gone, toward the darker part of the city. Within five blocks there were no more restaurants and few hotels. The lights and the pedestrians were spaced farther apart.

“You really made a fool of me, didn’t you?” I said.

Davis did not answer. He had fallen slightly behind so that I could not strike back against him without turning around first.

“Did you enjoy watching me trying to find Raven for you?”

“I wasn’t there. Alan and I were looking, too.”

“Alan? Skinny guy? Your partner?”

Davis did not reply. We walked on, deeper into the darkness. Finally he said, “To me, you were convenient. Alan thought it was funny as hell.” more tomorrow

“Tell the Senator that you did your best in an impossible task. What else could he expect?”

“I’m worried about Raven.”

“Don’t be. If we couldn’t find her, neither will Skinny and Davis.”

Susyn toyed with a piece of lettuce. “I need to call California. I can’t abandon the chase without talking to the Senator.”

While she was gone, I drank coffee and watched the gondolas and vaporettos slip past on the Grand Canal. Eventually, I stole one of her lamb chops.

When she returned, she was much subdued. She said, “The Senator asked me to get some more information from you before you disappear.”

“Sure.”

“Raven’s assailants – why do you call them by those names?”

“One called himself James Davis when he tried to strike up a conversation with Raven in Bermuda. We assume that it is an alias. The other one was skinny, so I call him Skinny. I don’t know him by any other name.”

“How many times did you see them?”

“Twice. Once when they were throwing Raven off the cruise ship . . .”

“You actually saw that!”

“Through binoculars. I was half a mile away. We talked about this before.”

“I want to get it absolutely straight to tell the Senator. Could you identify the two?”

“Yes.”

“From that far away.”

“No. But they came at us again in Marseilles, and I got a good look at them. They were closer to me than you are right now.”

“So you could pick them out of a line-up?”

“Yes.”

“Or a mug book?”

“Yes.”

Her brows had drawn together, and there was a strange intensity in her violet eyes. She sighed, then made a wry mouth and said, “I guess if you have to go, you have to go.”

“My train is leaving in an hour.”

“Then we’d better get back.”

She paid while I waited, then we stepped out. The streets were less crowded than before. Beyond the street, near the canal, all was inky darkness, and I could just see figures silhouetted against the light reflecting off the water.

“Let’s look at the canal one last time,” she said, and caught my right arm in a passionate grip. We moved into a patch of darkness, toward the water. A figure waiting there moved aside.

“Now!” Susyn hissed in a new and strident voice. Her grip on my arm tightened and she let her knees go slack. I was pulled off balance, and before I could jerk her upright, the figure who had moved aside, lunged forward and jammed the cold steel barrel of a pistol into my throat.

A stray flicker of light caught his face. It was Davis. more tomorrow

Raven was in danger, but I had no way to find her. No leads at all. The chances of her being in Venice were infinitesimal. Either Eric would have known that he couldn’t play here, or they would have found out immediately and left. Of course, Raven could have put her plastic to use and paid their way, but I couldn’t see Eric going for that. Nor did I think Raven would support a man for long.

I got up and paced the room. It was over. Susyn could do what she wanted, but she might as well go home and wait for a call from Raven.

Large changes were taking place in Europe that summer, especially in the Eastern bloc. By training and by passion, those events were my destiny. I had loved a woman and had lost her – nothing new in that. I had a life to get back to.

If I was out, I wanted all the way out. I took a ten minute walk to the Ferrol and a twenty minute wait in line to buy a ticket. The train was leaving at five minutes past midnight. 

I returned to the hotel. Susyn was still not back at the room. On impulse, I packed and left my backpack with the concierge.

It was past ten PM and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Now that I was financially on my own again, it was back to stand-up sandwiches. I went looking for one. The man behind the counter took a sandwich off the stack in the cooler and put it into one of those waffle iron heaters they only use in Venice. It came out crushed, with dark crisscross burns across the bread, and it tasted fine.

I walked back toward the hotel with a feeling of freedom. Susyn was sitting in the waiting room, angrily rolling my note back and forth between her fingers.

*       *       *

We went to an outdoor cafe where she ordered dinner and I had coffee. The note had told her I was leaving, but she had to hear it from me. 

“It’s a dead end, Susyn. They hustle street musician so fast there isn’t time for an echo. If you want to hire some local troops to sit in the train station with a photo of Raven, go ahead. But you might as well be in Munich or Copenhagen or Brussels. The only thing we know is that somebody said that Raven said that she wanted to come to Venice.”

“You said you could find her.”

“No. I said that I knew how to go about finding her. I didn’t guarantee success.”

The waiter moved in with a plate of food for her, but she only picked at it. I went on, “We did it right. We followed the only course of action that stood any chance of success. And we almost caught up with them in Montreaux. An hour earlier, and we would have made contact.”

“What am I going to tell Senator Cabral?” more tomorrow

Venice came into sight. She had lighted herself for the night. Gondoliers were hawking their services at the water side and the evening press of tourists filled the streets. I worked my way back to Plaza San Marcos, dodging pigeons in the square and looking for street musicians. There were none.

Twenty minutes later I found out why. A bearded youth with guitar set out his empty guitar case and began to play. Three bars into his first song, a police office tapped him on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Venice is not like the rest of Europe and it does not want its uniqueness diluted by such commonplaces as street musicians.

If Eric knew that – and Colin said he has been on the circuit for years – then he and Raven would never have come here. I was wasting my time.

*          *          *

I wanted to sit down to think about it, but you can’t sit down in Plaza San Marcos without paying a fee. Try any of the hundreds of chairs that line the edge of the Plaza and you will find a waiter insisting that you order or move on. 

Venice is a lovely old lady, slowly dying of inner rot. Tourist Venice is her defense against the hordes who invade her every year. From the time you step off the train, every restaurant, every boat ride, every souvenir shop is designed to move you swiftly from the Ferrol to Plaza San Marcos and back again, lighter of cash, and out into the real world again.

You must fight past her defenses to see the real Venice behind the merchant’s mask. Fortunately, it is easy. Find any well marked street, find a sign that says turn right, and turn left instead. You will be in another world.

The streets where the tourists are led are narrow and crowded; when you leave the beaten path, the streets give solitude. I sought that solitude now, weaving through back streets, crossing narrow bridges over narrower canals. Under clotheslines with dripping wash where stray cats nod benignly from their broken stone wall thrones. Where children play. There are children in Venice. You can see them if you leave the gaudy human snake that slithers from train station to Plaza San Marcos and back again.

*       *       *

The search was over. It had been a two week vacation from acknowledging the fact that I would never see Raven again. Now that reality had to be faced. And another reality – the sure knowledge that I did not want to repeat my bedding of Susyn. Not tonight – nor tomorrow, nor the day after. If there was a train out tonight, I would be on it. Not to Paris or Marseilles. Certainly not to Oslo, but to some place the two of us had never discussed or planned for. For Brendisi, perhaps, and then to Greece. Anywhere that was not associated with the name Raven.

When I got back to the hotel, Susyn was not there. She had left no message in the room and no message at the desk. I stretched out on my bed – still unused – and thought some more about my situation. Nothing changed. more tomorrow

Chapter Twenty-two

Her needs and desires were as fierce as mine. By afternoon we had explored each other from hairline to instep. Softened after passion, her face was even more childlike. Her fingers worked and nuzzled at my arm as she lay back in near sleep.

As I lay beside her, she became a stranger. In a manner I could scarcely understand, our lovemaking had built a wall between us. Something had gone subtly awry in the fall of her hair and the set of her half glazed eyes. 

I left her on the bed, showered and changed into fresh clothes. When I returned, she had pulled the sheet up to cover herself. She smiled and patted the bed beside her. I shook my head and said, “I am going out.”

“Let Raven wait.”

“No. I’ll see you this evening.”

“Where will you go.”

“First the youth hostel, then I’ll take a vaporetto out to the Lido to check out the campgrounds.”

“She’ll never be there.”

I shrugged. “You’re probably right. Still, it’s a way to proceed.”

“I’ll check the hotels here close to the train station.”

“Good.”

“Ian?”

I paused with my hand on the doorknob. She said, “What’s wrong?” I just shook my head and went on out.

*       *       *

Across the Grand Canal, you enter shadows where narrow passageways between the houses and shops cut out all but the high noon sun. It is a maze of interconnecting streets, interlaced with canals. An easy place to get lost, and a place that makes getting lost a pleasure. I moved in mazed confusion myself, in bittersweet afterglow.

If you follow the signs, you will eventually reach Plaza San Marcos. You will know you are getting close when every shop sells food or expensive trinkets. Then, just when you think all of Venice has turned to Rodeo Drive, you debouch into the vastness of San Marcos square. The Cathedral of St. Mark rises in enameled splendor, all domes and gold and mosaics. Neither eastern nor western, neither Roman nor Orthodox, but with a double helping of pretentiousness from each. I forgive its ugliness only because it is in Venice.

I wormed my way through the crowds, past the Doge’s Palace, and took a vaporetto across the lagoon to the Lido. Campgrounds and pensiones line the water for several miles; it took the rest of the day to canvass them, without success.

I reboarded the vaporetto and found a place at the rail. Locals commuting to Venice sat near the center of the open deck, reading their papers like the commuters on any bus or train anywhere in the world. The rest of us lined the rail for the unparalleled view of Venice that would soon be unfolding.

Five minutes later, something like one of Christ’s miracles repeated itself. It was a walking on the water. A whole village of locals appeared mirage-like, standing on the waters of the lagoon, miles from any shore or island. Only the boats that had brought them out, and were now aground, dispelled the fantasy. Here the waters of the lagoon were only inches deep at low tide, and locals had come to gather mussels. more tomorrow