Of course, maestro, Crivano says. Of course I do.
Shutters open on a shop to the left, but Crivano doesn’t look back. I have caught him! Verzelin whispers, clutching Crivano’s hand. In my glass! I have, I have caught. Hold a mirror up to Christ, dottore! Is that not the Second Coming? Have you seen, dottore? Have you? What good is it to witness, if you never tell?
They’ve reached the fondamenta. The lagoon is before them, black and limitless, with a scattering of lanterns across its surface, a careful thread of light that joins the mainland to the Grand Canal. From nearby buildings issue snores, muffled voices, the sound of a couple fucking, but no one is afoot. A hundred yards south along the quay is a stand of holly-oaks; Crivano spots a white rag draped over one of the lower limbs. Come on, he whispers, pulling Verzelin’s arm. Quickly.
I worked so hard, Verzelin says. So hard. Now I see. The peacock, he’s a holy bird, dottore. Just count the eyes on his tail.
Crivano takes a moment to scan windows and balconies, but no one seems to be watching them. They’re almost to the trees. On the quay before them, two kittens are picking at the discarded head of a shad; aside from them and the water, nothing moves. Crivano lets Verzelin step ahead, then puts a gentle hand on his back.
The draped branch points to a palina where Obizzo’s small black sandolo is moored. Obizzo has removed the passengers’ chairs from his boat; there’s a wadded sheet of sackcloth in the bare hull, partly covering a coil of hemp cord and an irregular block of limestone. Obizzo himself is hunched in the stern, hidden under a broad-brimmed hat and a shabby greatcoat. As Crivano and Verzelin draw even with the bow, he stands and scrambles forward.
Verzelin gasps, stops in his tracks. Even in his blighted state he recognizes Obizzo at once. You, he says.
Crivano lifts his walkingstick crosswise in both hands and drives it against the base of Verzelin’s skull. Verzelin’s head pops forward, he staggers, and Crivano slips the stick under his chin, laying it across his neck just above the thyroid cartilage. Then he tucks the right end of the stick behind his own head, levers it back with his left arm, and crushes Verzelin’s larynx.
Verzelin struggles, clawing the air, and Crivano catches his right wrist with his free hand to wrench it immobile. Obizzo has Verzelin’s legs; he twists them, grimacing fiercely, as if Verzelin is a forked green sapling he’s trying to snap in two. Held off the ground, Verzelin writhes, grasping at nothing with his unbound left arm. There’s a dull pop—a femoral head dislocating from an acetabulum—and Verzelin’s body goes heavy and slack.
Like Antaeus, Crivano thinks. He holds on awhile longer, certain that the stick is tight across the carotid artery. Many years have passed since he last did this. He thinks about those other men—the touch and the smell of them, the sound of their interrupted breath—as he waits for Verzelin to die.
Come on, come on, damn it! Obizzo whispers. His hat has fallen; he retrieves it, puts it on backward, turns it around, watching the lights in the nearby buildings with stray-dog eyes. Every soul in Murano would know him at a glance.
All right, Crivano says. Take his legs.
They put Verzelin’s body in the bottom of the hull and hide it with sackcloth. Crivano wraps the cord around the torso—both legs, both shoulders, a double-loop at the waist—and ties it with a surgeon’s knot.
Obizzo is in the stern, his long oar at the ready. That’s enough, dottore, he says. Get out and cast me off.
Crivano springs to the quay and plucks at the dockline. Be certain to put him in the water at San Nicolò, he says. Sink him in the channel. If the cord breaks, he should float out to sea.
When will I hear from you?
Crivano loops the line and drops it into the sandolo’s bow. I’ll find you in the Rialto, he says.
When?
Crivano doesn’t answer. He watches Obizzo bring the small boat about. The sleeves of Obizzo’s coat slide back when he lifts his oar, baring his thick forearms, and Crivano wonders what wild canards he tells his passengers to explain the burns that mottle his furnace-roasted skin. After a few long strokes and an angry backward glare, Obizzo fades into the dark.