Those Who Walk Away (14 page)

“You put him off exactly where?”

Coleman told him, near the Pensione Seguso on the Zattere quay.

“At what time was this?”

The conversation was in Italian, in which Coleman was adequate though not perfect. “As nearly as I can remember one-thirty in the morning.”

“Was he a little drunk?” asked the officer politely.

“Oh, no. Not in the least.”

“Where is his wife?” asked Dell’ Isola, pencil ready, taking it all down.

“My daughter—died about three weeks ago,” said Coleman, “in a town in Mallorca called Xanuanx.” He spelled it for the Italian, and explained that she and Garrett had been living there.

“I am sorry, sir. She was young, then?” Dell’ Isola’s sympathy sounded genuine.

Coleman was touched, unpleasantly, by his kind tone. “She was just twenty-one. She was a suicide. I think—I know Signor Garrett was unhappy about this, so I can’t tell what he might have done that night. It is possible he decided to leave the city.”

Three or four policemen were now standing around listening, standing like tailors’ dummies, their eyes fixed on Coleman and Dell’ Isola alternately.

“Did he say anything that evening about going away?” Dell’ Isola looked towards Inez, too. She was standing a few feet away, though someone had offered her a chair. “He was depressed, you say.”

“Naturally—he had not been happy since my daughter’s death. But he did not say anything about going away,” Coleman answered.

There were a few more questions. Did Signor Garrett suffer from blackouts, amnesia? Was he trying to hide from anyone? Had he any large debts? To these questions Coleman answered in the negative “as far as he knew.”

“How long will you be in Venice, Signor Coleman?”

“Two or three days more.”

He asked for Coleman’s hotel, his permanent address—Rome, and Coleman gave street and number and telephone—then thanked Coleman for his information and said he would pass it on to the American Consulate. “You were present the evening on the Lido, Signora?” he asked Inez.

“Yes.”

Dell’ Isola took Inez’s address in Venice also. He seemed pleased to be in charge of inquiries here, though he said the building was not his headquarters. “Were there other people present?—May I have their names, please?”

Coleman told him, Mr and Mrs Francis Smith-Peters, now at the Hotel Monaco, and Mrs Perry at the Hotel Excelsior, Lido.

It was over.

Coleman and Inez walked out into the chill day again. He wanted to visit the church of Santa Maria Zobenigo, which he told Inez cheerfully had no ornament on its façade with any religious significance. Inez knew this and was familiar with the church. She wanted to buy a pair of black gloves.

They went to the church first.

It was after three when they returned to their hotel for a rest. Coleman wanted to make a drawing, and Inez suggested they have tea sent up, as she felt chilled to the bone. At four, the telephone rang and Inez answered it.

“Oh, ‘allo, Laura,” Inez said. She listened for a moment. “That sounds very nice.” She was lying back on her pillows in her dressing gown. “Let me speak to Edward. They would like us to have dinner tonight at the Monaco, and a drink first at Harry’s Bar.”

Coleman grimaced, but agreed. It was hard to manufacture prior engagements in Venice, since he knew so few people here, only three, and unfortunately every one of them was out of town.

Inez said yes. Harry’s Bar at seven. “Yes, we did. No, they know nothing. A bientôt.”

Inez and Coleman were a little late at Harry’s. The room was three-quarters full. Coleman looked around first for Ray, quickly, then saw Laura Smith-Peters’s red-blonde head at a back table. She was sitting opposite her husband. Coleman followed Inez towards them. Waiters in white jackets swooped gracefully about with trays of martinis in small straight tumblers and plates of tiny hot sandwiches and croquettes.

“Well, hello!” Laura said. “It’s so nice of you to come out to meet us on a night like this!”

It was raining lightly.

Coleman sat down beside Inez.

“What have you been doing all day?” Laura asked.

“We went to a church,” said Inez. “Santa Maria Zobenigo.”

They ordered, an americano for Inez, Scotch for Coleman. The Smith-Peters had their martinis.

“Delicious drink, but awfully strong,” said Laura.

As if a martini could be weak unless it was full of ice, Coleman thought.

“How can a plain martini be weak?” Francis said brightly, and Coleman hated that his thought had been echoed by this bore.

They had not yet been questioned by the police, Coleman decided.

Coleman girded himself for a deadly evening, and determined to order another Scotch as soon as he could catch the waiter’s eye. A waiter did come, with a saucer of olives which he set down, and a plate of hot croquettes which he offered. The Smith-Peters accepted, and the waiter served them a croquette each in a paper napkin folded in a triangle.

“I should be dieting, but we only live once,” said Laura, before taking a bite.

Coleman put in his Scotch order. He glanced at the door ahead of him as a man and woman came in.

“So you went to the police today, Ed,” Francis said, leaning towards Coleman. His grey hair was neatly combed over his bony head. His hair looked damp, as if he had just applied tonic.

“I told them what I knew,” Coleman said, “which isn’t much.”

“Do they have any clues at all?” Laura asked.

“No. The police station hadn’t even heard of Ray Garrett. They had to send for someone who didn’t know much either, but he took a few notes from me.” That was all he ought to say, Coleman thought.

“Did he say anything about taking off some place?” Laura asked.

“No.”

“Was he depressed?” her husband asked.

“Not very. You saw him that night.” Coleman took an olive.

Francis Smith-Peters cleared his throat and said, “I was going to go to the police just as a matter of duty. You know, as a fellow-American. But I thought since you’d seen him last—”

“Yes,” Coleman said. Francis’s tenor voice was as unpleasant as a rotary saw to Coleman. And Francis’s eyes were on guard, Coleman saw, beneath their bland friendliness. If Francis had gone to the police, he might have felt obliged to tell them—only after leading questions, of course—that Coleman hadn’t liked Ray Garrett, and that there had been some unfriendly words from Coleman to Garrett. Coleman sensed all this, and sensed it in Laura, too.

“I felt the same way,” Laura put in. “You knew him so much better and you’d seen him last.”

It was probably Laura, Coleman thought, who had kept her husband from going to the police—although Francis’s Italian was so non-existent Coleman could understand his reticence. “Let’s stay out of it, Francis. You know Ed doesn’t like him, and we don’t know what happened that night.” Coleman could imagine the conversation in their hotel room.

“I don’t know that neighbourhood,” Francis said, “around the Zattere quay. What kind of neighbourhood is it?”

“Oh, quieter than here, certainly,” Coleman answered.

“What do you think happened, Inez?” Laura asked. “You’re so intuitive.”

“About this?—No,” Inez answered. “He’s—” She lifted her hands in a helpless shrug. “I just don’t know.”

“What were you going to say?” asked Francis. “He’s what?”

“If he’s so depressed, maybe he went off somewhere—left everything—I suppose that’s possible.”

Coleman felt the Smith-Peters doubted this, and that they felt Inez did not believe it herself.

“The alleys,” Coleman said, “the alleys in Venice, if someone wants to hit you over the head and take your money—there’s always a canal handy. Just roll the body in.” The American table on his right was noisy. One of the men had a laugh like a dog’s bark.

“What a horrible idea!” Laura said, rolling her blue eyes, looking at her husband.

“See anyone around when you let him off?” asked Francis.

“I didn’t get out of the boat, so I couldn’t see much,” Coleman said. “I don’t remember. I turned the boat around and headed for San Marco.”

“Where was Corrado that night?” Laura asked Inez.

Inez shrugged, not looking at Laura. “Home? I don’t know.”

Inez had asked Coleman that, too.

“I looked for him, but it was after one then, after all,” Coleman said. He glanced at the door and started, sat forward with a jerk, and looked immediately down at the table. Ray had come in the door.

“What’s the matter?” Inez asked.

“Almost—almost swallowed an olive pit,” Coleman said. He saw, without actually looking or seeing, that Ray had gone out again, having seen him. “I did swallow an olive pit,” Coleman said, smiling, realizing that he had no olive pit in his mouth to produce. He was glad Inez was so concerned with him, she had not noticed Ray, and that the Smith-Peters had their backs almost to the door. Ray had a beard along his jaw. He had jumped back as quickly as Coleman himself had started in his seat. “Whew! Gave me a queasy minute. Thought it was down the windpipe,” Coleman said, laughing now.

The others talked on after that about something else. Coleman did not hear a word. Ray was still alive, and on the loose. What was he up to? He certainly wasn’t trying to get the police on to him, or he would have come straight over. Or were the police collecting themselves outside now? Coleman glanced again, furtively, at the door. Two tall men were leaving, laughing and moving slowly. The door, like the windows, was of clouded grey glass, and one could not see through it. At least five minutes passed, and nothing happened.

Coleman forced himself to make conversation.

Where was Ray hiding out? Wherever he had been the past week, he would have had to change his abode today because of the newspaper picture, Coleman thought, unless he had told the truth to whomever he was with—but Coleman didn’t think that likely. Or did Ray have close friends here? Coleman began to feel angry, and afraid. Ray alive was a horrible risk for him, the risk of being accused of a murder attempt—two, in fact. The second one, however, was provable: someone must have seen Ray in the water that night, someone who pulled him out, or if by some miracle he had swum to the Piazzale, someone or several people must have seen him soaking wet that night. Coleman concluded that he had better finish the job, eliminate Ray; and though he realized this thought was prompted by emotion—mainly fear—he still felt it was a valid thought, and that logic would soon provide him with a better method than those he had been using up to now.

10

R
ay crossed San Moise, the street of the Bauer-Gruenwald, and entered the Frezzeria. He walked quickly, as if Coleman were pursuing him, though he realized this was the last thing Coleman would dream of doing now, Coleman in the bosom of his friends again! Still with Inez, who must suspect Coleman, and yet they’d be in the same bed tonight. The world did not care really whether he was alive or dead, if he had been murdered or not. Perhaps it was the beginning of wisdom to realize this. He could have been murdered, and by Coleman only, but the world didn’t seem to care.

These thoughts went through his mind very rapidly, in a matter of a second or two, then he remembered—and slowed his steps to save energy and also to avoid attention—that he had to plan what to do next. He had been out of Signora Calliuoli’s house since 11 a.m. A few moments before eleven, after catching sight of his picture on the front page of the
Gazzettino
on a news stand and reading the lines under it, he had hurried back to the Largo San Sebastiano, where the door had been opened for him by the elderly woman who had said she never slept. Ray had said that he must be leaving. He had paid Signora Calliuoli through tomorrow, he said, but that did not matter. He told the woman that he had just telephoned Zurich and learned that he had to go there at once. Then Ray had gone upstairs and packed his few items before Signora Calliuoli, out marketing for the midday meal, or Elisabetta, in the bar-caffé, could notice the picture and recognize him. The elderly lady had been hovering in the hall as Ray came down with his suitcase, and he had asked her to convey his good-bye and his thanks to Signora Calliuoli. She had looked sorry to see him go.

His suitcase had not weighed much at first, but by now it did. He went into a bar and ordered a cappuccino and a straight Scotch. He thought of the gondolier who had fished him out of the lagoon, an oil-and-vegetable gondolier. Ray dreaded staying up until 3 a.m. to find him at the railway station, but he could think of nothing else to do. It was the annoying passport business, the fact that even if he faked a passport number for a while, too many people would get a close view of him in an hotel. He was in no mood to approach another girl, like Elisabetta, and he didn’t know any. And if he looked for a room to rent in the
Gazzettino
, the landladies might be suspicious of a young American resembling, even with a beard, the picture on the front page of a newspaper they probably bought.

Ray went into a small restaurant, where he sat at a table near a radiator. He pulled one of his books out of his suitcase and spent as much time as possible over his dinner. Afterwards, he felt more cheerful, and took a vaporetto from the Giglio stop to the Piazzale Roma; and, as he had hoped, there was a diurnal hotel where one could have a shower and a shave and at least relax. Here no passport was demanded. He was a little worried that there might be police on the watch around the station, but he did not look at anyone, and nothing happened.

When he went out at 1 a.m., it was much colder. He asked the ticket vendor at the waterbus stop where the vegetables and oil were loaded, and was directed by a vague wave of the arm to the ‘Ponte Scalzi.’ Ray walked past the railroad station into the darkness. There were barges and gondolas along the canal, moored for the night. A few oil stoves burned on their decks. He saw one man.

“Excuse me,” Ray said to him. “At what time do the boats come for the vegetables and oil?”

“Around six in the morning,” replied the man, a squat figure before a stove on a barge’s deck.

“I thought some gondolieri brought their boats earlier and slept?”