Over the bridge, we skirted the green space surrounding the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti.
“Remind me to stop there on the way back to get Akiko some flowers,” Mary Alice said as we passed the tiny floristshop tucked up beside the gates of the palazzo. Buckets of blooms were banked against the front of the shop, spilling onto the pavement. Peonies and lilies of the valley jostled with callas and honeysuckle, sending a riot of perfume into the air. Small potted lemon trees and ferns stood by for the more practical buyers, but even these were glossy green and luscious.
We had no choice but to cross the wide-open length of the Campo Santo Stefano, but we kept our heads down, large sunglasses firmly in place. Mary Alice even wore a hat, a crushable straw thing with a broad brim that threw her face into shadow. A few more turns brought us out in the narrow alley that ran beside the Teatro La Fenice. In the side wall of the theatre, there was a service entrance of wide blue doors embellished with metal bars that looked like spears. Just opposite there was a campiello, a miniature square that housed a taverna, a pair of boutique hotels, and a few private apartment buildings. It was late afternoon, the perfect time to settle in with a drink, so Mary Alice and I chose that as our surveillance cover, diving into a pair of red leather armchairs set outside the taverna just as they became free. We ordered spritzers and a charcuterie plate and settled in to wait, looking like any other women of a certain age enjoying an unseasonably warm Venetian afternoon as we picked at the food and sipped our drinks.
We dragged it out as long as we could before giving up. A succession of builders and decorators had used the side door of the theatre, but everybody who had gone in carried a ladder or a paintbrush.
“I amstarving,” Mary Alice muttered as she reached for the last of the prosciutto.
“You’ve eaten a pound and a half of pork by yourself,” I reminded her.
“Charcuterie calories don’t count. Everybody knows that.” She wrapped the scrap of prosciutto around a piece of provolone and ate it in two bites.
I looked away briefly from the theatre door. “What else doesn’t count?”
“Food eaten standing up, food that takes longer than forty seconds to chew, and anything eaten on Super Bowl Sunday.”
“Mary Alice, that is the most insane—” I broke off as the door opened. Mary Alice was too well trained to turn around. Instead, she watched in the reflection of my sunglasses.
“Is that a can of paint he’s carrying?” she asked.
“Yep. Still nothing but the scenic crew.”
She shrugged and went back to her picking. “You want the last of this?” she asked, nodding towards the plate. There were a few bits of cheese and a sad-looking olive. I shook my head and she helped herself. When she finished, she nodded somewhere vaguely in the direction of the Rialto bridge. “Over that way, there’s a pharmacy with a little sign in the window, one of those programmable things with the little red bulbs. It shows a number, just five digits. Do you know what the number is?”
“Should I?”
“It’s the current population of the city,” she told me. “There’s a memo taped up above it that shows Venice had a hundred and forty thousand people living here in 1750.”
“How many does it have now?”
“A hell of a lot less. That sign has become a tourist attraction. You know why? Because people are ghouls.”
“What’s ghoulish about it?” I asked.
“The number is always going down,” she explained. “It’s not just that the city is sinking, so is the population. Venice is dying.” She paused and pointed in the opposite direction. “Out in the lagoon, past Giudecca but before you get to the Lido, is an island called Poveglia. Do you know what it’s famous for?”
“Do I want to?”
“It’s the most haunted place in Italy. There was a mental asylum where experiments were carried out on the insane, but before that, it was the place they sent their plague victims to die alone so they wouldn’t infect healthy people.”
“Jesus, Mary Alice. That’s grim.”
She shrugged again. “There’s a cemetery island too. Nothing but graves. Like I said, Venice is dying. What do you think that says about Galina that she chooses to live here?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe she just lives here because her boyfriend works here.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I think she’s got that gloomy Russian thing going on.”
“She’s only half-Russian,” I reminded her. “She’s also half-Bulgarian.”
“Bulgarians are gloomy too,” Mary Alice said.
I couldn’t argue with that. I looked again at the service door of the theatre. “A man should have the good manners toshow up for his own extortion,” I said. “Even if it is a surprise.”
“Well, this one isn’t,” she said, gesturing towards the waiter for the check. She paid cash and we strolled out of the campiello.
When we got back to the house, ready to admit defeat for the day, Nat appeared from the kitchen, her hair standing on end, flour on her nose. She was wrapped in an apron that was creased and stained with what might have been blood or wine. Akiko was right behind her, also wearing an apron but looking much tidier.