The Alchemist's Pursuit

7

San Samuele, the parish where Caterina Lotto had died, lies directly across the Grand Canal from San Barnaba, but I know it well because there is a traghetto crossing there, and when traffic is light the boatmen will sometimes let penniless boys ride for free. Giorgio rowed us there and promised to return at noon. It is far from being the best area in the city, and Caterina must have gone down in the world, but that is normal in her profession.

Finding the great Matteo Surian, Matteo the Butcher, proved more difficult than I expected. True, he had retired from the War of Fists years ago and if he was a courtesan's doorman he might have retired from his official trade also, but he was still a legend. He had just been arrested and released for a murder that must be the talk of the parish. Despite all that, the first three pairs of ears I asked had never heard of him. The last pair belonged to a burly youth dressed as a porter and Violetta intervened.

"Oh, please help us. I would be so-o-o grateful!" She accompanied the words with a smile that suggested she wanted to rip all his clothes off and her own as well and rape him, right there in the campo.

He turned brick red and said, "Try the magazzen, madonna."

Every parish has a magazzen, where cheap wine is available around the clock, and San Samuele's is larger than most, perhaps because so many of the cheaper prostitutes live in that area and bring in trade. It was not a place I would willingly take a beautiful girl, but I dared not suggest that my companion wait outside.

Even on that workday morning a surprising number of customers were sitting around in the dim, rank-smelling place, all of them male. Right away I spotted the man we wanted, slumped at a tiny table in the farthest corner with his back to us, a huge hunched shape, paradigm of abject drunken misery. No one else could be that big or that unhappy.

"There he is," I said and took two steps.

My way was blocked by a competent-looking young bravo with one hand resting on his sword hilt. "Sit there," he said, nodding to a table well away from Matteo.

Keeping my hands in full view, I said, "Hello, Ugo. Been a long time-Alfeo Zeno."

Ugo lowered his guard half a hairsbreadth. "You're on the wrong side of the canal."

"Viva Castellani! But you remember that I was a friend of Matteo's? I held his shirt back in '82, remember? I'm here to help him."

"Come back in a month. He can't be helped right now."

I was afraid of that. Matteo had been a proud fighter all his life, a man other men either feared or greatly respected. Multitudes had cheered him. To have his woman murdered and then be accused of killing her must have been a thunderous shock to his self-esteem, even if his relationship with Caterina had been purely business, which was highly improbable.

"We can try," Violetta said in Helen's seductive tones. "I was a friend of Caterina's."

Ugo glanced at her, expanded the glance into studied appreciation, and reluctantly stepped aside. "If he doesn't want you, you're out." Since everyone else in the room except Matteo himself was watching our encounter, that seemed very likely.

"Is it true the sbirri arrested him?" she asked.

Ugo nodded. "Idiots. About forty of us marched on the jail."

That was worrisome news. The Ten might pay little heed to the death of a prostitute or two, but the slightest hint of civil insurrection will always trigger repression. Nevertheless, I just said, "Thanks," and escorted Violetta over to the fallen hero.

Matteo's great fists, resting on the table in front of him, were battered wrecks but his features, although too coarse to have ever been handsome, had suffered no damage during his pugilistic career. His clothes were of a style and quality that he had never worn as an honest tradesman, but they were stained and rumpled as if he had been in them since Sunday. His graying beard was matted with grease.

While I fetched a stool for me, Violetta sat down on the one opposite him. He raised his gaze from the wineglass to regard her with eyes like gory stab wounds.

"I'm Violetta. Caterina are I were friends in her great days. She was a wonderful person. I've seen the picture Titian painted with her as the Goddess Juno."

Those awful eyes turned to me.

"Alfeo Zeno. I held your shirt on the Ponte dei Pugni on All Saints' Day in 1582. Proudest day of my life."

He let the information soak in like the slow flow of a tide, but eventually he nodded slightly and reached for the wine flagon. The waiter rushed over with two more glasses, and I could almost hear the tension in the shop snap.

Matteo took a longer look at Violetta, then me again. "You her doorman?"

I grinned and nodded, which was a lie, but a lie in a good cause and one that might suddenly become an unwelcome truth if the unknown strangler continued his rampage. Yes, we're all pimps together.

"You done good. Lucky man."

"None luckier," I said. "Matteo, I also work for Doctor Nostradamus. You know of him?"

But Matteo was studying the empty glass in front of Violetta, over which the neck of the flagon wavered unsteadily in his grasp. I beckoned the waiter and told him to bring a bottle of his best. I would take the cost out of Violetta's hundred ducats.

Matteo set the empty flagon down heavily. "She can still stiffen a man right up with one glance," he mumbled. "Even now. Could, I mean… before."

The waiter brought a dusty bottle and poured three glasses. It wasn't bad. Even the drunken pimp looked pleased when he took a swallow.

"They threw me in jail," he said.

I said, "Nostradamus sent me. You've heard of him?"

"They thought I done it."

"You do want the murderer caught, don't you? You want to watch his head being chopped off?"

"What had she ever done to deserve that?"

"Did you see who-"

"I loved her! It was my house. She paid me rent, but that was all."

Trying to hold a conversation with him was like trying to catch fish in the middle of the Piazza. Violetta and I took turns casting nets, but always hauled them in empty. I was ready to give up when suddenly something silvery flapped in our web.

"He the wizard?" Matteo mumbled.

"Nostradamus is not a wizard," I protested quickly. "He's a wise man and a seer. He's very clever and he wants to catch the strangler. It would help if you could answer some questions."

He scowled at me. "The sbirri send you?"

"No."

He belched. "The Ten?"

"No." The buzz of talk had resumed in the magazzen now and I didn't think anyone could overhear our conversation, but I would have bet my liver that at least one person in that room would be reporting to the Ten before nightfall. "If you can tell us what you know about him, it would help Nostradamus to find the Strangler." Somehow the killer's description had become his name in my mind.

"Didn't get a good look at him." The giant pushed down on the table to straighten himself. Amazingly, he even seemed to sober up a little also. "He came early, 'bout sunset. Boy brought a note, see, and she sent back word that she would be ready then. And he came, but I didn't see his face much."

"What did you see of him? Was he big? Small?"

"All men are small," Matteo said deadpan. He had probably been making that same joke for forty years. It was a reflex. "Dressed like a friar. All I could see inside his hood was beard."

"Dressed like a friar?" Violetta said. "But you think he wasn't a friar?"

"Didn't smell like a friar."

That was not conclusive evidence. Vows of poverty do rule out spare linen and luxuries like soap, but many laymen in Venice cannot afford them either.

"Masked?" I asked.

"This's Carnival, isn' it?"

"But did you see anything of his face at all?"

"Beard. Gray beard."

"Did you see what he was wearing on his feet?" I asked, not expecting an answer.

"Bare feet. Saw them when he came down. Had bare feet."

I glanced at Violetta and saw my own doubts mirrored in her. It takes a lifetime to become accustomed to walking the streets with bare feet. Even genuine friars often wear sandals. Our murderer had taken his disguise very seriously.

It took a lot of questions and repetition, but gradually a picture emerged. The former hero had sunk to being a harlot's doorkeeper. He lived in a room at street level. Anyone entering from the calle faced a staircase going up, with Matteo's door at the bottom standing open during business hours. The big man let visitors in; more important, he would see them leave, so no one could get away without paying. There were two rooms upstairs. The other one was occupied by someone named Lena, who was out of town. He did not say that she had gone off to the mainland to have an abortion, because that would make him accessory to murder, but that was what I suspected.

Caterina's had been a grim life for a woman who was once the toast of the Republic and had sat for the great Titian. She had still been able to insist on appointments, apparently. Had she lived another five years or so she would have been sitting in the window, bare-breasted, trying to haul the drunks in off the street.

Matteo had seen the Strangler and told him to go up-"Door on the right."

Then he had heard some bumping-"Very fast worker, I thought."

After that nothing until the second customer of the evening had plied the door knocker.

Matteo had offered him a seat, planning to go up and tap on the bedroom door, but the friar was already coming down, silent on his bare feet. The friar had handed him the agreed fee of one lira and left. The second man had been directed to the door on the right, had gone up, and had run down again, screaming. By that time the friar had vanished into the dark and the fog.

Caterina had been lying on the floor, fully dressed, with a purple groove around her neck where the rope had dug into the flesh.

There had been no sex, no robbery, just death.

No, Caterina had not had an alarm bell like Violetta's. She had sometimes banged on the floor, and then Matteo would go up and thump the john a few times before throwing him out. Evidently the friar had overpowered her before she could signal properly and all Matteo had heard had been her death throes.

Violetta was Medea, eyes blazing green in the gloom, ready to go and inflict a few death throes herself the moment she knew the target.

"That leaves one big question," I said. "I'm sure the sbirri asked you already, but I must. Did you hear the man's name?" Matteo would not have read the note.

"No," the big man growled. "But I know the name he gave her. She laughed, see, and told me an old friend was coming to see her at sunset."

"Did you see the note?" I asked eagerly. "Did you give it to the sbirri?"

No, he mumbled. He'd looked but couldn't find it. The sbirri thought the friar must have found it and taken it.

"But she did tell you the name of this surprise caller?"

Matteo reached for the wine bottle, tilted it up, and drained it. If he had been drinking like this all week, it was amazing he hadn't killed himself yet.

"She did. Sbirri wouldn't believe me. You won't."

"Try me. Nostradamus has taught me to believe all kinds of unbelievable things."

"Gattamelata." Matteo's eyes burned with a challenge to call him a liar.

I would never be so stupid as to do that, but Gattamelata means "Honeycat." I looked at Violetta, whose mouth framed a perfect O of surprise.

So now we had a name for the Strangler, except that Gattamelata had been dead for a hundred and fifty years.