“Not him,” Stone said. “He’s just having his first real crush. That’s the teenage version of trying to get laid with panache and style.” The old hippie was grinning. He clearly didn’t think that whatever the offense had been was that great, although Mazzare and Jones were both frowning pastoral disapproval.
Buckley didn’t ask the obvious question, but Stoner answered it anyway. “His date turned out to be a girl from an artisan family, dressed up in finery. No sweat—except the Venetian upper crust assumed she must have been a whore—since no lower-class girl could have afforded those clothes—and they were a bit miffed that she wasn’t wearing the customary red shoes. Go figure.”
“Oh.” Buckley saw the story vanish before it even formed. Who wanted to hear about horny teenage boys and the fixes they got themselves into thinking with their dicks? Any villager in Germany could tell you that story. By the baker’s dozen.
But maybe there was a different angle. A political angle. “Was she one of the chambermaids here?”
Stoner nodded.
Buckley smiled thinly. “Bet you dollars for donuts she was inserted into your staff by the local Committee of Correspondence, then. I know there’s one here in Venice, although I haven’t been able to find out much about them.”
“Mister Buckley,” Mazzare said sternly, “I’d really appreciate it if you’d be a little careful there. We are trying to avoid obvious links with the Committee. I realize asking that of you is probably a waste of my time. Still, I am asking.” He sighed. “How many of our staff do you think belong to the Committee?”
Buckley shrugged. “Hard to say. For women, membership in the Committees of Correspondence tends to be elastic in areas outside of the United States itself. At a guess, I’d say Frank’s new girlfriend is the only actual member of the Venice Committee—but if you looked closely, you’d find that lots of the other chambermaids are friends and relatives of hers. Think of them as Committee, once removed. Most of your staff, of course, are Francisco Nasi’s people.”
Jones groaned. “Our security’s perfect, then, and we’re totally compromised anyway. Wait’ll I see Luzzatto again.”
The Jewish commercial agent was back in the ghetto for the night. Venetian law might be elastic on the restrictions on its Jewry, but Luzzatto liked to observe the proprieties. Doing so practically defined the man, in Joe’s limited experience with him. Buckley realized that Jones had a point about Luzzatto’s handling of the set-up of the embassy. His own sources said that Luzzatto had regarded the Committee as a good voucher for the reliability of prospective staff. If he hadn’t, he’d have had trouble getting any help at all for the embassy. The plague a couple of years before had sorely depleted Venice and everyone from the doge on down was having trouble keeping servants. Being picky about who one hired was a recipe for a very short queue of applicants.
Still, it sounded like Mazzare didn’t want to frighten the notables, and there was every chance that the Committee connection would be spotted. Whatever the history books might say about Venice being in the first years of its decadent period, the Council of Ten’s agents were still justly feared.
“The girl probably wasn’t a prostitute,” he said, in an attempt to change the subject. “She could have borrowed the clothes, easily enough, assuming she’s connected to the local Committee. The CoCs almost always have a presence in the needle trades. It’s easy enough to get your hands on finery for an evening, if you know a seamstress working on something. Just hope you don’t run into the real owner or that she doesn’t recognize her own outfit on someone else.”
“If you wind up doing a story on them, Joe, let me have a copy. Although I did get a briefing and I should have—” Mazzare let out another deep sigh. “What’s done is done. I suppose we should look at what we’re paying our staff, make sure the girls don’t have to sell themselves.”
Buckley bit down on what he’d been about to offer, that the embassy was in fact paying very generously—even by the standards of Venice, a town where plague had made pretty much every job market a seller’s market. He was, he told himself, a reporter, not a researcher for the embassy.