The Bellini Card

48

Palewski skirted carefully around the dark bundle of rags crammed up against the step and wall of the last bridge, and looked ahead to see if the restaurant was still open.

By the faint street light he saw a couple, with another man beside them, walking up the narrow calle. The man looked drunk.

Inside the restaurant he took off his coat and ordered a bottle of wine. The place was almost empty, and he asked the waiter for something easy, something quick. He didn’t want to keep them up.

The waiter smiled. “We await your pleasure, Signor Brett. What you want to eat, you may eat. Please.”

He ordered a dish of calves’ liver.

“A few minutes, signore. Your wine.”

Palewski ate hurriedly, his thoughts returning to the letters of credit that Yashim had provided. As soon as he finished, he placed some coins on the table and returned to his apartment, where he lit a candle and rummaged in his portmanteau for five thick and heavily folded sheets of paper, of the finest legal grade.

The money, he noticed, to be drawn in Trieste rather than Venice, on two separate banks.

He raised an ironical eyebrow at that. Venice, where the very business of credit had been invented, could no longer furnish a traveler with funds. Alfredo was right: it was a city with capital, of a sort, and no income.

Selling off its heritage, bit by bit.

He undressed, climbed into bed, and reached for the Vasari he’d left on the table with his afternoon nap. His fingers closed on thin air, and he looked around, surprised. It was as if the book had jumped from his grasp to lie a few inches farther off.

The mattress creaked as he leaned across.

Vasari! Again!

He changed his mind, blew out the candle, and in a few minutes he was asleep.