The Bellini Card Read Online Free PDF Page A

am going out,” he told the valet.
    At Florian he ordered wine and a dish of polenta, which arrived smothered in onions and anchovies and put him in a better mood. He asked for grappa. He’d been hungry, thirsty, and thrown by that horribleunexpected corpse floating in the water. Who knew how the poor fellow had got there? Missed his step in the dark, maybe. One thing you could say about Venice: it would never do to trip in the street.
    He leaned back and began to survey the square for the first time. At one end, beyond the enormous tower that reminded him, once again, of Cracow, stood a squat church, like a pig in rut. The arcades that lined the piazza on three sides were pretty fine. The pigeons were returning to their roosts with the dusk; little fires were springing up across the piazza, and the air had begun to fill with the scent of roasted chestnuts. It was after nine.
    “Permesso?”
    The man had his hand on the back of a chair. Palewski raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
    The stranger pulled out the chair and sat down. He put his forearms on the table.
    “Parlite Italiano?
Good. My English is poor, Signor Brett.”
    His frank blue eyes looked Palewski in the face. He was a big man in his early fifties, Palewski judged, with a fine head of black hair. How the devil did he know his name?
    “And you are, Signor—?”
    “Brunelli.” He put out his hand. “Commissario. You are welcome to Venice.”
    Palewski blinked and shook hands.
    “The boy at the Inghilterra said you had come out,” Brunelli explained. “And I needed a little air. Perhaps a grappa, too.”
    He clicked his fingers and the waiter came forward.
    “Grappa—
due
. The polenta is good here, Signor Brett.”
    “Thank you, I’ve eaten,” Palewski replied. He eyed the commissario uncertainly. He had told the valet he was going out, nothing more. “How did you know I’d be here?”
    Brunelli shrugged lightly. “On their first night in Venice, everyone comes to Florian. Or Quadri,” he added. The waiter laid the glasses on the table. Brunelli took a sip. “Or have you perhaps been to Venice before?”
    “It’s my first time, Commissario.” Some functionary of the police, evidently; for a few moments Palewski had allowed himself to forget that he was in Habsburg territory.
    He downed his grappa and called for the bill. “Do excuse me, I’d like to walk a little.”
    Brunelli rose to his feet with surprising lightness for a large man.
    “Let me walk a little way with you, signore,” he said. “I will show you the pillars of St. Mark.”
    Palewski bowed stiffly. The evening was warm but his hands were cold, and he could feel the beating of his heart.
    “You were in Istanbul?” the commissario remarked casually, as they strolled along the arcade toward St. Mark’s.
    The ship’s manifest, of course, would have given this man his name and his port of embarkation.
    “I went to buy a statue,” Palewski said. He and Yashim had devised this story together. “For a collector in New York.”
    “Did you have any luck?”
    “Not yet. Ottoman bureaucracy is very slow.”
    The policeman nodded. “Here it is the same. Vienna is a long way away.”
    Palewski did not reply. He had recognized, with a shock, the gray-coated Habsburg sentries strutting outside the government buildings at the far end of the piazza. It had been many years since he had seen the uniform: columns of soldiers in greatcoats, marching through snow. Vienna seemed uncomfortably close.
    “You deal in artwork, Signor Brett.” The commissario sighed. “And in Venice?”
    “And in Venice, yes. There is a lot to see.”
    They turned in front of the basilica and began to walk toward the water.
    “A strange thought, Signor Brett, that our Tiepolos and Titians may end up in the land of beavers and savage Indians.”
    “Would you rather see them in Vienna, Commissario?” Palewski tried, and failed, to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
    Brunelli’s voice came from behind.