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cards to various dealers and collectors he knew, expressing the hope that they would call on Signor Brett to discuss his own collection and theirs. Ruggerio would have preferred to present the American connoisseur to the dealers in person, but Signor Brett had been firm on the point. In a society as small as Venice a man would bejudged by the company he kept. Ruggerio, foppish, quaint, and ingratiating, was not the man to present an American dealer to Venetian art circles. Palewski was fishing for a Bellini. Whatever the bait, the hook had to be clean, sharp—and expensive. A man like Ruggerio would merely foul it, like weed.
    Quite what the bait would be, Stanislaw Palewski had no idea. It was unlikely that the Bellini was on open sale. Discretion would be required, not least because the Austrians, by all accounts, watched the market jealously.
    He stood up, stretched, and went to his bedroom, where he found his battered leather-bound copy of Vasari’s
Lives of the Painters
.
    He read it again at the open window, listening to the shouts of the gondoliers and the backwash of the boats and skiffs below, locating in his mind’s eye Vasari’s comments about churches and paintings in the city. He was not a true connoisseur of painting, but by the time he had finished the chapter about the Bellinis, and his bottle, he knew what he needed to know.
    He sensed that Mehmet II, the Conqueror of Istanbul, had created a little revolution in Venice.

 
    S IGNOR Brett’s card, too, created a minor stir in the city.
    Gianfranco Barbieri stood for a long time at the great arched window on the piano nobile of his Zattere palazzo, looking out across the canal to Giudecca. He tapped the card against his perfect teeth, wondering who Brett was and whom he worked for. What kind of a man came from New York? A financial man, no doubt: Gianfranco always seemed to be reading about another American banking scandal, another astonishingdefault. People got burned lending to Americans. But they got rich, too—why else would they go on lending?
    He would have to be careful.
    He touched his fingertip to the small scar on his lip. The scar was not unattractive, and it gave him a mildly quizzical, amused expression, as though he were smiling at something only he could see.
    Gianfranco liked to think of himself as a very careful man.
    Across the city, close to the Arsenale, another man was pondering the arrival of Brett’s card.
    “Popi” Eletro rubbed the ink with a heavy thumb, then ran the lettering beneath a nail that looked hard and yellow. The card itself was unfamiliar: plenty of rag, but not Venetian. Not French, either. He would have said Turkish, but it was probably American, like the man. He grunted and stared up at a Canaletto on the wall. Canaletto in the land of bears and Indians?
    There was money in furs.
    His eyes slid from the first Canaletto to another three hanging beside it. Big pictures. Worth money, as soon as the glaze dried. What a shame this Brett couldn’t buy them all! Four matchless Canalettos. All of them, unfortunately, identical.
    Popi levered himself from the swiveling leather chair and reached for his hat.
    It was time, he thought, to visit the Croat.
    He’d have had his drink by now; he’d be ready to work again. If not, well, sometimes you needed to be cruel to be kind.
    Popi walked, scowling, from the Arsenale toward the Ghetto. It was a long, difficult route: as late as 1840, few of the canals had been provided with pavements and the fashion for filling them in had not yet begun. Districts were still preserved as the islands they had always been, clustered around their church, their
campo
, and their well, speaking a dialect that marked them out from other islanders in the city.
    Popi did not ponder the irony that a man who made his living from canals should detest them, but it was so. They were sluices of gossip, in his opinion—gondoliers to recall the address you visited, boatmen to noteyour passing. Beggars