Sharon smiled sweetly. “Your secret is safe with us, Lieutenant. Ruy could care less, and me—well, I’m just the temporary buck-passer. Temps are always forgetting to pass things along, you know.”
“Uh, thanks. Yeah, well, I did go out there. Twice. Once with my buddy Conrad and once alone. Conrad couldn’t come along the second time because, well—”
Sharon smiled more sweetly still. “Yes, Lieutenant. I know about his girlfriend. The whole embassy knows. I remember Father Mazzare muttering just the other day that if one of our Navy officers manages to get the daughter of an Arsenal guildmaster pregnant, he’d strip his hide off. More precisely, he’d have Gus Heinzerling strip his hide off.”
Billy grimaced. Then, shook his head. “Not much chance of that! You wouldn’t believe the way they watch their girls around here.”
“Come on, it’s not that bad.” Sharon gestured toward the embassy building. “After all, none of the chambermaids have chaperones watching over—oh.”
It was Billy’s turn to smile. “Yeah. Oh. Sure, they let them work out of the house. But the minute there’s a whiff of anything . . . You have noticed, maybe, that Giovanna Marcoli hasn’t worked here for weeks. Soon as Old Man Marcoli got wind of Frank—zip—out she came. He hasn’t let her out of sight since, let freedom ring be damned. She’s under his eye or that of her brothers and cousins every minute.”
Sharon frowned. “I’d gotten the impression that the Marcolis approved of Frank. They certainly haven’t ordered him to stay away from Giovanna, I know that much.”
“Approval’s got nothing to do with it, ma’am. They do approve of Frank. I think if he asked her to marry him—and he just might, too, he’s that bowled over—they’d agree in a heartbeat. But there won’t be any hanky-panky going on before then, if you know what I mean.” He glanced toward the Arsenal. “It’s the same with Conrad’s girl. He’s actually gotten pretty damn popular over there, even with the guildmasters. I think they admire his cussing ability, if nothing else. It is pretty impressive.”
That was interesting. Sharon hadn’t paid any attention to the embassy’s progress in the Venetian shipyards, since the first days after their arrival. Between her heavy nursing duties—more like half-faking a doctor’s consultations—combined with Magda’s round-the-clock commercial ventures, she’d been too preoccupied with her own affairs. The last she’d heard, Conrad had been encountering sullen resistance in the Arsenal to his new-fangled American notions.
She suddenly remembered the heavy turn-out from the Arsenalotti at Buckley’s funeral. “What’s the sentiment over there, these days? About Joe’s murder, I mean?”
“They’re really pissed, ma’am—uh, pardon the language. But, I mean, they really are. Conrad told me just last night that if they ever figure out who did it, the bastard’ll be lucky to get out of town alive. There are thousands of those Arsenalotti and they’re tough as nails. They’ve run people out of Venice on a rail before, you know.”
Belatedly, he realized who was present. He bobbed his head nervously toward Sanchez. “Uh, meaning no offense, Don Ruy.”
The Catalan grinned cheerfully. “None taken, I assure you. And you are indeed quite right. I have personal experience with those fellows from the Arsenal. Most forthright, they are, in moments of displeasure. I was reminded at the time of the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Except the bulls were more civilized. And considerably less insensate.”
“They do that already, Ruy?” Sharon asked, her curiosity momentarily piqued. “Running the bulls at Pamplona, I mean. I thought—I don’t know.” She issued a little laugh of embarrassment. “I thought maybe Ernest Hemingway invented that.”
“Oh, no. La Fiesta de San Fermin dates back two centuries already. He was the saint who was gored by the bulls, you know. He was probably drunk at the time. He often was, they say. The manner in which this made him a martyr of the Church escapes me at the moment. Saint Ernest, I believe, is the one who was martyred by a great fish of some sort.”
He said the last with a perfectly straight face. Sharon didn’t dare ask if Ruy had any idea who Ernest Hemingway was, or if he’d ever read The Old Man and the Sea. With Ruy, you never knew. He was just as capable of inventing a story on the spot, and improvising it to incredible lengths without missing a beat.