Midnight in Venice (20 page)

 

Olivia woke up, her head pounding, an unfamiliar room spinning around her. It was the sirens that had roused her, creeping through the drug-induced sleep.
Acqua alta
—high water. She closed her eyes, waiting for the sirens and the spinning to subside.

Where was she? She remembered nothing after the plague doctor put the evil-smelling sponge to her nose. Chloroform? Would serious kidnappers resort to a murder-mystery cliché to knock out their victims?

Thinking back, she slowly pieced the events together. She'd been writing a text to Marco about his apartment. He'd asked her to check the water level around the palazzo. It had been fine, but the lights were on.

She remembered the text she'd sent:
In a gondola. Looks fine from the canal side, but I'd call the caretaker anyway. Did you know your lights are on?

Then Orlando had leaned close to her and whispered:
I saw that plague doctor when we were in Al Bottegon.

She remembered looking up from the screen to the bridge ahead of her. It was the plague doctor all right, and suddenly she knew who was under that mask. Only it was impossible to believe.

No. It can't be. It doesn't make sense.

An instant later, the plague doctor held up its cellphone and looked at the glowing display, then back to her.

Marco.

The plague doctor was Marco.

All along it had been Marco.

But how could it be? Marco was in Iceland. Maybe someone using his phone?

She opened her eyes again. The room was spinning a little less, and the sirens had stopped. For now. She could just make out a stone floor, a door to the street, a bare lightbulb, a beamed ceiling above her with stairs leading up to a trapdoor. This must be the ground floor. When the high water struck, would it be flooded?

She was cold and stiff, the only thing between her and the floor a canvas tarp. Her arms and legs were still bound, and along with her pounding head she could feel a lump on her forehead.

It just couldn't be Marco.

The staff members prefer to text each other
, Silvio had said that first day when he'd given her the company phone.
And it doesn't matter if you're in the next room or on the other side of the world . . .
And Rocco on the day of the concert, saying,
I thought I saw Marco near San Marco the other day, but Silvio tells me he's in Iceland.

All she had to prove that Marco was in Iceland were his texts, and they could just as easily have been sent from his Venetian apartment as from Reykjavik. Was there even any Aron? Or was that something else he'd made up?

A moan came from beside her. Orlando.

He signaled her to come closer and removed the tape from her mouth with his bound hands, then she did the same for him.

“You okay, Olivia?”

“Yes,” she whispered.
Okay
in this instance meant “not dead.” “How about you?” she asked.

“Hell of a headache. Anyone else here?”

“I don't know. The high-water sirens woke me. What's going on?”

“I think we've been kidnapped. They know you're Alessandro's girlfriend.”

“But I'm not. Katarina—”

“Just a distraction. I doubt very much that she's alive. I think that was just to get Alessandro out of town. But there is something I don't understand. They were waiting for us. How did they know we'd be there?”

“My cousin Marco texted me and asked me to go by his apartment to check the water levels.”

“Your cousin Marco? Happy Spiders Marco? But isn't he in Iceland? I don't get it.”

“I don't either.”

She told him about the text she'd sent and the plague doctor looking at his phone.

“Why would your cousin kidnap you?”

“I don't know,” she whispered, recalling what Claudia had said about him:
An impractical, unrealistic dreamer and a disaster in the making
.
I only hope for your sake he's paying his taxes.

Was he paying his taxes? Was he in serious debt? She thought of the palazzo worth millions of euros. The art, the antiques. Her missed student loan payment. Had he orchestrated the kidnapping of his own cousin to get himself out of financial trouble?

No, it didn't make sense. He'd only just found out she was seeing Alessandro, and she had seen the plague doctor on her first day in Venice.

The trapdoor in the ceiling creaked open, and footsteps approached.

She closed her eyes, hoping that whoever it was thought she was still unconscious. It was the only thing she could think of doing. Beside her, Orlando was quiet.

“Olivia? Are you awake?” It was Marco. There was no mistaking it. It wasn't a theory anymore. It really was Marco. She'd been kidnapped by her beloved cousin!

She opened her eyes and found herself looking into his. At least he wasn't wearing that hideous mask. Even in the dim light of the room, she could see he looked terrible, his eyes underlined with dark circles. His cheeks were hollow and covered by an unfashionable amount of stubble. It was a shocking transformation.

“How could you—” she started.

“Shhh! We have to be quiet,” he said, glancing toward the trapdoor. “They don't know I'm down here talking to you. I'm so sorry, but I didn't have a choice . . .”

Olivia couldn't believe what she was hearing. “You always have a choice,” she whispered. “I'm your cousin. I love you. How could you do this to me?”

“If I didn't, they were going to the police about the drugs—”

“The drugs?
You
put the drugs in my suitcase? Is that why you invited me to Venice, so you could use me as a drug mule?”

“No, of course not. And it wasn't supposed to go like this. It was supposed to be simple. I just needed you to take the suitcase to New York and—”

“And if I got caught? Like I did? Honestly, Marco, haven't we watched enough thrillers to know it's never that simple? How many times have we watched
Fargo
together? I can't believe you could be so stupid!”

“I'm so sorry.” Marco's hands were shaking, and she could see that his nails, once so finely manicured, were chewed ragged. “I got in over my head. I didn't pay all the taxes due from Happy Spiders the first year—they were so much higher than I expected. And I already had the offer in on the palazzo, and for that I had to pay all kinds of taxes and extra fees I wasn't expecting. Then there was still the Toronto condo and its monthly fees. At first, I wasn't worried, because Happy Spiders was doing so well. But then the app market got flooded with games, and sales started to drop. I missed payments on the taxes I owed. And I didn't dare let Silvio know I couldn't make the investment in the company he expected . . .”

Olivia couldn't believe what she was hearing. Claudia—her uptight, obnoxious,

holier-than-thou sister—had been completely right about him.

Beside her, Orlando hadn't said a word; she assumed he was probably committing all this to memory.

Marco went on, clearly hoping she'd take pity on him once she knew everything. “Dino overheard me on the phone one day, trying to talk myself out of a mess I was in with the bank. He told me he had a proposition for me. At first, I wouldn't go along with it. I said I couldn't set you up like that, but Dino told me he'd been doing this for years and never been caught. There was almost zero risk. Then Vanessa was—”

“Did you kill her?” Her cousin was all the things her sister had said and more, but a killer?

Marco shook his head vigorously. “No. It was Benito. He shot her and put her body in a dumpster on Murano, not realizing it belonged to the Zucaro studio. After you were caught with the drugs and disappeared, I thought you'd been killed too. Benito killed Katarina, you know.”

“But Dino said Alessandro's wife was alive and living in the United States . . .”

“She's not—that's another woman. He just said that to get Alessandro out of the way so he could arrange your kidnapping.” Orlando's suspicions were right. Where was Alessandro now?

“When you texted me from Alessandro's the day after you were caught at the airport with the drugs to say you were okay,” Marco continued, “I was relieved and told Dino's lawyer that Dino had better stay away from you because you were dating a cop named Alessandro Rossi. That was when I found out Alessandro was a billionaire and that Dino was involved in the death of his wife. So Dino made his immunity deal with the cops and arranged your kidnapping. If I helped him, I got half of the ten million he's asking for your ransom. If not, he'd turn me in with Benito and the rest of the gang.”

“And you agreed?”

“I had to. I didn't have any other choice. I needed the five million. Besides, I would have gone to prison.”

“So you risk my life? I can't believe this. I'm your family. I admired you. I loved you. I would never do anything to hurt you. I wouldn't take a quarter from your coffee table without asking.”

Marco was crying now.

She felt no pity for him. “And so all those texts from Iceland about meeting Aron—you made all that up while you were watching my every move?”

He nodded, tears running down his cheeks.

Somehow that seemed worst of all. It was so pathetic—he'd made up a love affair with the man of his dreams while ruining her own.

“And by the way,” she asked, “where did you get the violet glass beads you gave me for Christmas?”

“Dino.” Marco's voice was barely a whisper.

“You gave me a murdered woman's stolen glass art? How low is that?”

She didn't expect an answer, and Marco didn't give her one.

Having suddenly run out of adrenaline to fuel her anger, she felt exhausted. Her head pounded, and she was back to being scared.

Now that it was quiet, she heard water lapping against the door that led to the street. The
acqua alta
was starting.

Orlando broke the silence. “Okay, so what now?” he asked Marco. “Why are you here alone? Where are the rest, what do they have planned, and who are they? If you help us out now, I'll see you don't end up in prison for the rest of your life.”

“The others are upstairs. Three of Dino's cousins from Albania. It's a family business. They told Alessandro to call by midnight.”

“How did they think he was going to get the ransom money if he went to the States?”

“They knew he wouldn't get that far with the fog.”

“What time is it now?”

“Almost eleven thirty.”

“And he hasn't called?”

Marco shook his head.

“And what happens if he doesn't call?”

Marco let out a stifled sob. “I don't know.”

Olivia knew he was lying.

Marco shakily rose to his feet. He looked like an old man.

“I'm going to the police now,” Marco said, wiping away tears with his sleeve. “If the others come down, tell them you haven't seen me. They took my cell, but there's a security guard at the Customs House. I'll get him to call.”

“Where are we?” Orlando asked.

“We're in an empty palazzo across from Olivia's apartment.”

“You'd been watching my apartment ever since I arrived?” Olivia asked.

Marco looked down at his feet.

“Why?”

“To keep an eye on you, and I think Dino wanted to test me to see if I'd really go through with it.”

“Glad you didn't let them down,” she said sarcastically.

“I better put the tape back over your mouths,” he said apologetically.

That done, he turned and went to the street door, but cried out the moment it opened. He staggered back through the doorway, his head banging against the frame, while behind him entered a large man.

“Thought you might try something like this,” the man growled as he bound Marco hand and foot. “Going to call the police, were you? Always knew you couldn't be trusted.” Olivia recognized his voice as belonging to one of her attackers.

“You might want to get off the floor and hop over to one of those benches,” he said to Olivia as he taped Marco's mouth. “The water's rising, and we want your last half hour on earth to be comfortable. It doesn't look like your boyfriend's going to call. Seems like we overestimated how much he wanted you back.”

Forming the shape of a gun with his hand, he put his finger to her temple.

“Pow,” he said with a laugh. “See you soon.”

 

Alessandro stood on the steps of the Salute. In just over half an hour, the clock would strike midnight. He had no idea what to do, but he had to do something, anything.

He ran down the steps and across the square to where Placido waited in his boat. “Wait for me,” Alessandro called as he ran to the entrance of the Customs House and found the security guard.

Alessandro pulled out his badge. “Seen anything unusual?”

“I only watch this door, and I haven't been on duty for long,” the guard said, shaking his head. “Soon after I came on, Maria, the blind woman who begs at the Salute, came out of the church, babbling incoherently. Everybody ignored her, until she grabbed some young punk by the arm. He pushed her off the steps, maybe broke her leg. I called an ambulance, but I don't think that's the kind of unusual activity you're looking for—”

“No. Perfect. Thanks!”

Placido was waiting for him, engine running. “To the hospital!” Alessandro called, leaping into the boat. “And there's no time for caution. Someone's life depends on it.”

Placido didn't need to be told twice. “I'm taking the Pietà canal,” he said. Behind them the Customs House and the Salute were swallowed in fog.

Alessandro called Columbo. “Nothing,” he called into the phone over the racing engine. “There was no phone number.”

Columbo swore.

“The lock was forced,” Alessandro went on. “They must've been there. I just spoke with the security guard at the Customs House. He said Maria was babbling about something. She must have heard something. Then someone pushed her, and she was taken to the hospital. I'm on my way there now. Call ahead and tell them I'm coming.”

“Okay,” Columbo said grimly. “Heard from Pamela, and she told me everything. I'm furious with her, but that can wait.”

“I have to go. I have twenty-one minutes to return that call.”

“I know. Try not to get yourself killed in the meantime.”

They were across the Grand Canal now. The sirens hadn't lied: already the tide was washing over the Piazza San Marco and creeping toward the basilica.

They passed the Bridge of Sighs, no longer looking as if it were suspended between stone buildings but rather floating in clouds.

“There! There!” Alessandro shouted as he saw the opening of the Pietà.

There was a grinding sound, and the boat reared like a horse, pivoting on its stern before crashing down again on the canal. Alessandro felt the shock of the impact through his spine, sure for a moment he was going to fly right out of the boat as it lurched around the corner. Passing under a bridge, the boat's side scraped along the stones.

Water churned up behind the boat and crashed over the sides of the canal and up against doors, the motor's roar echoing between the buildings. The boats moored along either side smashed against one another.

Visibility was near zero. The buildings had trapped the fog between them, and Alessandro could only pray there were no other boats on this stretch of canal.

But as he'd learned over the years, it wasn't the things one worried about that came to pass but the completely unexpected. One moment they were flying down the canal, and the next they were sputtering to a stop.

“We're out of gas,” Placido said. “There should still be lots—”

13 minutes. An unlucky number.

“Find some and meet me at the hospital,” Alessandro shouted as he jumped out of the boat and into the ankle-deep water that flooded the
fondamenta
. This stretch led to a dead end at the lagoon, and so he turned, going back in the direction they had come until he reached a bridge.

These were not streets he knew well, but he was pretty sure that if he turned right at the end of this street and then took an immediate left, it would take him straight to Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where the hospital was located. Only somehow he overshot the street's entrance in the fog and ended up running in a circle before finding the right way.

He careened around the corner, narrowly missing an old woman walking a cat on a leash. She cursed him as he ran on, keeping tight to the wall until he emerged onto the square. He ran past the statue of Colleoni on his horse toward the doors of the hospital.

9 minutes.

Two security guards were waiting for him. “She won't talk to anyone but you,” one of them said as Alessandro flashed his badge.

“We have to run!” Alessandro called to them as they led the way.

There was another guard outside Maria's door, and inside a doctor sat next to her bed. “I don't want you—” the doctor started to say, but Alessandro didn't wait for him to finish.

“Maria! It's me, Alessandro. What happened at the church this evening? It's very important!”

“Oh Alessandro! No one listen to old woman! I told man in square to call police for me and he call me a filthy gypsy, push me down. Push down old blind woman! I couldn't get up, and woman phoned ambulance. I come here and no one listen to me. They think I crazy and make things up for attention. But I tell them, I work for police, I must talk to you.”

“I'm here, Maria. I'm sorry about what happened today, and I'll talk to the doctor.” Alessandro could feel the doctor's eyes on him. “But now tell me what you saw.”

Maria wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her hospital gown, and Alessandro prayed she hadn't forgotten what she'd seen.

5 minutes.

“Did you find a piece of paper in the church, Maria?” he asked.

She nodded. “The Albanian men, they put it there. After the mass, priest and everyone leave and they start talking about Signorina Olivia. They say they going to leave note there for you. I take it to give to you.”

“Thank you, Maria. May I please have it now?” Alessandro fought to keep his voice under control. He prayed the staff hadn't thrown it in the garbage along with the other “clues” she filled her pockets with.

If he didn't call the number on that paper in 4 minutes and 29 seconds . . .

She reached into the pocket of her blue hospital gown. “They want to take it, but I say it was for you. I only give to you.” She looked toward the doctor with her dim eyes. “Alessandro. He a good boy.”

A puzzled expression crossed her face. “I know I put it in this pocket. Where is it?” Her brow wrinkled into even deeper lines as she concentrated. “Did you steal it from me?” she asked the doctor suspiciously.

“Check your other pocket, Maria,” Alessandro answered for the doctor, willing patience into his voice.

3 minutes.

2 minutes and 59 seconds.

58.

57 . . .

Maria shifted in the bed and searched her other pocket. “No, it was nurse who took it. I know she took it from me. She is working with Albanians, Alessandro. You arrest her.”

Alessandro wanted to scream. He ran his hand through his hair and turned to the window. In just under two minutes the clocks would strike midnight.

And when they struck, no one would hear the gunshots accompanying them.

“Olivia, forgive me,” he whispered, imagining her terror as a gun pressed against her forehead, seconds that felt like hours as she waited for the explosion that would rip through her brain.

“I remember,” Maria cried. Alessandro jumped and, turning around, saw Maria pull a crumpled paper from the front of her hospital gown.

“Give it to me!” Alessandro demanded as he tore it from her hand. It was a fifty-euro note.

“No, not that. That from Signorina Olivia.” She reached into her gown again. “Here it is.”

Alessandro took it, then pulled out his cell and punched in the numbers, willing his hand to stop shaking.

1 minute.

One ring. Two rings.

“Come on, answer, you bastards!”

Three rings.

“
Pronto
,” said a man's muffled voice.

“Rossi here. You'll get the money.”

“Cutting it close, aren't we? The ring almost caused the gun to go off in my hand. Here, someone wants to say a few words to you.”

“Alessandro, I—”

“Olivia!” Alessandro cried.

“That's enough,” said the muffled voice. “Five-hundred-euro notes in two gym bags. At 2 p.m., a boat will pull up at the Salute vaporetto stop, and the driver will ask for you. Don't get any ideas of putting sharpshooters on the rooftops. And if you don't come, the girl and the cop get it. Don't get any ideas about putting a tracer on the bag, either—we'll find it. Feel free to mark the bills, though. Where we're going, no one will care. When we've reached our destination, you'll receive another call, telling you where to find her. But the slightest sign of trouble, before or after you make that drop, she gets it, and the cop too. Understand?”

“Yes, I'll do exactly as you say,” Alessandro said. He had no choice.

“Don't try calling this number again—it no longer exists.”

Call Ended
flashed across the screen.

He hit Columbo's number.

“I have no choice,” he said to Columbo after filling him in.

“We don't pay ransoms,” Columbo said. “Ever. No exceptions. As I said before, it would spark a kidnapping epidemic in this country we haven't seen the likes of in fifty years. And frankly, Alessandro, I don't believe for one moment you'll ever get Olivia back. They'll take the money and leave you waiting for that phone call forever.”

“If we arrest their boat driver and he doesn't return with the money, they'll kill Olivia and Orlando for sure,” Alessandro replied bitterly. “So unless we find out where they are and carry out some sort of Bruce Willis commando raid where only the bad guys are killed, I don't see how there's any other choice. I'm going to have to pay the ransom and take my chances.”

As he hung up, Maria was proudly telling the doctor that she was a spy for the police and on their payroll. The doctor looked like he wished he were somewhere else.

Alessandro placed a call to his lawyer. “Gino, get that ten million in five-hundred-euro bills by noon.”

“Five-hundred-euro bills? And I suppose I don't know that's the denomination of choice for criminals everywhere,” Gino answered. “Ten million fits nicely into two duffel bags and can be easily carried by a strong man such as yourself. You do know this will immediately raise alarm bells at the bank. As a matter of fact, it might prompt the bank to call the Guardia di Finanza. Convenient, as that would be you. Should I pass on your number? Or maybe you should just tell me what you're up to so I can start working on your defense.”

Just as Alessandro was thinking his lawyer was taking lessons in sarcasm from Columbo, there was an incoming text from Columbo himself:
You have 10 minutes to tell me you'll follow orders, or I have to report you've gone rogue. It's a lot of years in prison even you won't be able to buy yourself out of. And it'll all be for nothing. You know they'll kill her anyway for fear she knows anything that could give them away.

Alessandro sat on the edge of Maria's bed and put his head in his hands. Everything Columbo and his lawyer had told him was right.

But he'd made the call on time and bought himself until 2 p.m. Fourteen more hours. Olivia was alive—for now.

He would risk the twenty years in prison if he could bring back Olivia, but he knew they'd take the money—if the bank would even give it to him—and kill her anyway. And even if he could carry out a successful raid, he had no idea where she was in this labyrinth of a city.

And so the outcome would be the same: Olivia was going to die, and he was powerless to stop it.