“You have no idea with this one.” Ben tapped his leg and felt the key in his pocket. “I think I’ll go try the one on the end. You’re right. She probably just wrote it down wrong. Thanks.”
“Come back for a drink if you can’t find her,” the waiter said. “Nothing makes us forget them like wine.”
Ben cracked a smile. “No such luck. This one is unforgettable.”
He wandered down the street and waited, but it was dead quiet. The street was hardly wider than an alleyway back in LA. There were no shops and only a couple of quiet restaurants, neither of which looked like it catered to tourists. In the maze of Venice, this tiny street managed to be completely anonymous while only five minutes’ walk from the madness of Piazza San Marco.
“Incredible,” Ben said, leaning out over the canal where gondoliers pushed gawking tourists through the narrow canals. Some sang. Most chatted on their mobile phones.
Ah, Venice.
He had to admit, the note had been a surprise. What was Tenzin doing in Venice? What did this have to do with Alfonso’s tarì? And where the hell did she expect him to go?
He was leaning on the end of the building, watching the gondolas push past when an old man shuffled out of the nearest door. It was a green maintenance door with electrical-shock warning signs screaming in yellow and various outlines blocked out. Apparently that doorway was not a good place to walk your dog.
The stocky old man turned to lock the green door and noticed Ben. He scowled, took a moment to look him up and down, then snorted while nodding.
“Okay,” the man said, giving Ben a “hurry up” hand as he walked across to the opposite door. “What do I expect? Does she tell me anything? Of course she doesn’t.” He stopped and turned to Ben. “Do you have the key or not?”
“I think so?” Ben held up the key and the old man nodded and took it.
“Fine, fine.”
The old man must have been Tenzin’s caretaker. Or… something.
The old man kept grumbling. “‘A friend soon,’ she says. When is soon? Of course soon is three months later. Because I have nothing else to do but wait for her friends.”
“Oh God.” Ben had a depressing flash of insight that the old man could very well be a vision of his future. Fifty years from now, his youth gone, still managing to get pulled into Tenzin’s schemes. “I need to rethink my life.”
The old man opened a heavy wrought iron gate and raised a finger as he squinted at Ben. “Yes. You do. And don’t forget to lock the gate on the way out. The code is written on the wall in the courtyard. Five hundred years old and she can’t remember a gate code. She has to carve it into perfectly good plaster. Bah.” He threw up his hands, let go of the gate just as Ben caught it, and walked away.
“Bye,” Ben called. “Thanks.”
The old man just threw up a tired hand and kept walking.
“Really, really need to rethink my life,” Ben said under his breath as he hoisted his bag higher and walked into the entryway of…
One seriously cool house.
“Holy shit.”
It was a “house” the same way Giovanni’s house in Rome was a house. Just a Venetian version. There were rooms on either side of him, but a wide, open-air hallway led back to a lush green courtyard where an old marble fountain trickled and orange and lemon trees were espaliered along the walls, interspersed with raised beds of herbs and vegetables. Three stories up, arched windows opened over the courtyard, letting in whatever trickle of breeze the sweltering day allowed.
Past the courtyard, a wide entry hall floored in black-and-grey-checked marble led to a private dock with another elaborate wrought iron gate. White marble statues lined the entry, and Moroccan lanterns with brightly colored glass dripped from the ceiling. Ben could hear a gondolier whistling past the gate, but the man paid him no attention as he explored.
“This. Is. The. Coolest,” he said. And a pretty brilliant setup for an air vampire. He kept in the shadows of the entry hall and realized that, except for the courtyard, the whole first floor was light safe. No direct sunlight could get in with the high walls and soaring buildings across the canal. At night the private, open-air courtyard would give Tenzin access to the rooftops of Venice while the canal, though not ideal for an air vampire, provided another exit route.
He wandered up a half flight of stairs off the entryway and saw a carved wooden door cracked open. He peeked his head in and saw a fantastic suite complete with a sitting area and small kitchen. There was a bedroom that faced the corner canals and a bathroom with the biggest tub he’d seen so far in Italy.
“Mine,” he said, pulling the thick velvet drapes back to look out the windows. “So, so mine, Tiny.”
Ben wandered back to the stairwell and up to the second floor, but the massive arched doors were locked. He poked around the ground floor a little more. It was well maintained, had a surprisingly updated kitchen, but wasn’t anything shocking. Another bedroom and what looked like a utility room of some kind. Laundry facilities and gardening tools mainly. Ben’s suite was the only room with air-conditioning, so he tossed his bags in the wardrobe and collapsed on the bed.
❂
TENZIN landed in the courtyard of the Venice house just after dark to the echo of Louis Armstrong singing “Hello, Dolly!” coming from the hall on the ground floor. The turntable had been dragged out of the utility room and a pile of old records sat on the table next to it. The colored lanterns were lit and the gate to the canal was swung open. A wine bottle was open on the lacquered table, and Ben was lying stretched on the chaise facing the canal, a glass of wine dangling from his fingers as he watched the shadows of the gondolas pass.