Lucifer's Shadow

25 Rizzo’s prize

Rizzo stood in Mestre station, watching the grey steel luggage lockers, wondering if the prize was worth the risk. The item behind the grey metal door seemed to mock him. He was coming to hate that plain, dusty box and the hunk of wood it contained. Everything else had been of marginal worth, maybe a few hundred dollars. This strangely alluring object, which he had prised from the dead arms of Susanna Gianni, was of a different class. Its value was perhaps even higher than the sum which Scacchi now appeared willing to pay. He could, he knew, take the plane to Rome and try to find a better price, but Rizzo was aware of his own limitations. The only people he knew in Rome were accustomed to dealing in dope and tobacco and sundry containers ripped off from the transport trade. The violin would mean nothing to them. He could spend months trying to find the right outlet, months in which Massiter might finally work out what had happened that day on San Michele. Prudence demanded he cut a deal swiftly with Scacchi and realise what would be, for him, the single greatest prize of his life.

There, too, the instrument taunted him. Rizzo had believed, always, that his chosen trade had a goal, an endpoint. The day would come when he had enough money to open some small bar restaurant near the university, in Santa Margherita. There he could steal legally, from the tourists and the students alike. He could be his own boss. He could mess with the women who came through the doors and waited on the tables. This dream lay constantly at the back of his head, warm and comforting and, until he had snatched the dusty fiddle case from Susanna Gianni’s coffin, entirely unrealisable. Ordinary thieving would never pay for it. Scacchi’s $80,000 could open two bars, maybe more. Rizzo’s days as a crook could be over. Yet, now it seemed close, the idea gave him no cheer whatsoever. He was, and would remain, a murderer and a thief, because that was his nature. The loathsome violin seemed to remind him of the fact. The thing was like some poisoned apple. He felt as if he could die from a single bite.

Rizzo thought of the policewoman. He would have killed her, given the opportunity, and not regretted the act, even though that would, he knew, have set every cop in the city on his back. Now she was probing, searching, asking. He had heard she was working the streets, asking questions about something that had gone missing from a casket on San Michele. Maybe she would get close. Maybe he really would have to kill her. But not if the crazy instrument that started it all was gone from his life.

The station was near empty. It would be easy to take the case, catch the bus to the airport, walk out into the marshes, and dump it there. Massiter would never know. The steady round of work — of thieving and odd errands for the Englishman when he was in town — would always put bread on the table. Then Rizzo thought of the way Massiter had tried, so coolly, so stealthily, to intimidate him in the big apartment overlooking the canal. The one with the weird paintings and floorlength mirrors that might, or might not, have held Fellini’s corpse. He thought of Massiter’s cold hand on his mouth and felt the flicker of a rising flame of anger.

“Bastardo,” Rizzo said softly to himself. He looked at his watch. There was just time to meet Scacchi’s man at the appointed place. Not that he planned to walk through Venice carrying a violin case, announcing his perfidy to all. Rizzo marched over to a luggage store and bought a cheap holdall. Then he opened the luggage locker, took out the dusty case, and placed it neatly inside the nylon bag. The smell had gone. It just looked like old junk. But it felt heavy underneath his arm. He imagined the entire world was staring at him, screaming, “Murderer! Thief! Murderer!” as he carried it.

He caught the bus back to Piazzale Roma. The ancient Guarneri sat on his knees, deep inside the bag. He stared at the flat grey surface of the water as the bus sped along the narrow finger of artificial land that joined Venice to terra firma.

Rizzo wanted rid of the thing as soon as possible, this very day if Scacchi’s man was willing. Not once in his life had he expressed an interest in music or attended a concert. Yet now, watching the tankers and liners manoeuvre towards the port like overweight dancers trying to negotiate a ballroom floor, he couldn’t stop wondering what the damned thing sounded like.