Black Bridge Read online

  She arranged her round features into a good semblance of sorrow.

  “Just one more thing. About discovering his body. You told the police you were wearing gloves.” They both looked down involuntarily at her ring-studded fingers. “And in fact your fingerprints weren’t found on the doorknob. But the maid insists that you weren’t wearing gloves that morning.”

  Festa stopped, bringing Peppino up short on his leash.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about! You don’t have to pass any intelligence tests to become a maid, not even at the Flora! Good day!”

  After she stooped down to pick up Peppino and walked indignantly over the bridge near Harry’s Bar, Urbino called Gemelli from a nearby phone box.

  “Look into the death of Rosa Gava Casarotto-Re in Taormina ten years ago. Probably the same day that Orlando Gava died,” Urbino reminded him.

  10

  “John’s at home, Urbino dear,” Oriana said over the phone. “Neither of us saw anything that night, thank God! We were here—the whole night. Filippo had business down in Rimini. And no, I’m afraid I don’t know where Barbara has disappeared to, but don’t worry. She can look after herself. They probably found some cozy hotel somewhere. Barbara’s in mad, marvelous love! Let her be! This doesn’t happen that often in a person’s life, especially someone Barbara’s age. As for my own sweetheart, I’ll call him to tell him to stay put until you get there.”

  Half an hour later Urbino was looking up at Flint’s building from the other side of the little square. He was about to cross the square when the door of the building opened. A swarthy man with a briefcase came out and gave Urbino a quick, appraising glance before plunging into the calle that twisted its way toward the Rialto Bridge. Urbino waited a few moments before ringing Flint’s bell.

  “What do you want now! Haven’t you got—” Flint shouted in surprisingly colloquial Italian and without the trace of a drawl. He broke off when he saw it was Urbino. “Urbino!”

  “Could I talk with you a few minutes?”

  “I was just going out. Let me get my jacket.”

  Flint locked the door. When they were in the square, Flint guided Urbino in the direction opposite to the one the swarthy man had taken. Flint ran on about the storm last night, his Southern accent getting thicker and thicker. He and Oriana had watched most of it from the living room of the Ca’ Borelli. “Reminded me of the storms you and I have in our part of the country,” he said, apparently aiming for a note of national fellowship. “God, the way they come sweeping in from the Gulf! I remember one when I was nine or twelve years old. Half the county was flooded and—”

  Flint exuberantly continued his reminiscence. He was more at ease the farther they got from his apartment. From the storm he went on to enthuse about something he had come across in an antique shop in the Dorsoduro quarter.

  Urbino patiently listened to his description of an ebonized vase stand by Brustolon similar to the ones at the Palazzo Rezzonico. He made appropriate comments and noted the former model’s nervous energy. It was only when they emerged from the damp and dark of the alleys into the bright air and light of Campo San Polo that he was able to broach one of his reasons for seeking out Flint.

  “I’m trying to piece things together about the night Moss and Quimper were murdered. It’s important to gather every scrap of information, no matter how insignificant it seems.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “For example, they went from the Flora to the Rialto. Someone must have seen them.” Urbino saw no reason to divulge their encounter with Bobo in Campo San Luca. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, or perhaps someone has mentioned seeing them to you.”

  “And who would have done that? I was with Oriana the whole evening—and night,” he emphasized. “It’s not as if Oriana and I are suspects, is it? Ha, ha!”

  His laughter echoed across Campo San Polo.

  “Don’t forget what happened to the Baron Corvo,” he said.

  Flint smiled but his eyes didn’t look amused.

  “He lived in that palazzo right across the way, didn’t he?” Flint continued. “His hosts gave him the old heave-ho when they saw how he had abused their hospitality in his book. Fidelity to one’s friends—and the friends of one’s friends! Can you imagine Oriana’s reaction if she knew we were on your list, however far from the top? By the way, if you turned your talents to Corvo, I’m sure you’d do a wonderful job. You should do a book on him.”

  “Perhaps I will one of these days. You were at Cinecittà after leaving modeling, I believe,” Urbino said to get things back on track as they walked across the square toward a café.

  “Only for a short time. It didn’t suit me.”

  “Did your and Livia Festa’s paths cross there?”

  “I was introduced to her on a set. I doubt if she remembers, though.”

  He waited for Urbino to confirm this but Urbino knew the virtues of waiting.

  Flint broke the silence when they reached the café and did it in a rapid flow: “You’re asking about Festa because you think there’s something strange about Gava’s death, right? You probably think it has something to do with the murders. Oriana and I know Festa found the old man’s body, but from what I could see she’s never acted at all suspicious. You could be right, though. Whoever murdered Moss and Quimper must have done in old Gava. It makes perfect sense. Maybe I can move farther down your list when I tell you I was playing cards with my landlady and her brother in her apartment above mine until the wee hours of that morning.”

  “Thank you for the alibi, but I haven’t said a word about Gava.”

  “You didn’t have to! I can tell you think it’s all connected. And I think so, too! Find Gava’s murderer and you’ll find Moss’s and Quimper’s.”

  “That could very well be,” Urbino said. “In all your contacts with Moss—”

  “‘All my contacts’!” Flint interrupted. “Listen to you! I didn’t have very many!”

  “More than anyone I’m aware of, with the possible exception of his murderer.”

  Urbino let this sink in for several moments as Flint stared at him steadily.

  “Did Moss—or Quimper, for that matter—ever mention the name of Helen Creel?”

  Flint wrinkled his brow.

  “Helen Creel?” he repeated. “No, they never mentioned anyone with that name. I would remember.”

  Flint dropped into a café chair and motioned for the waiter.

  “Coffee? My treat.”

  Urbino declined and walked in the direction of the Rialto.

  11

  After leaving Flint, Urbino considered returning to Flint’s building and asking his landlady about the card game. He decided against it, however. Even if he might be able to get her to answer his question—and getting people to do this when he had no official status with the police was often impossible—he didn’t think it a good idea. She might tell Flint that he had been to see her, and Urbino didn’t think this was a good idea.

  Besides, Urbino somehow sensed that Flint would never have given himself the alibi of the card game unless it were true. His landlady, unlike Oriana, would not be so quick to lie for him.

  What had Flint said? He had been playing cards until the “wee hours.” Say that it was three, even four o’clock, when they had stopped. It still would have been possible for Flint to go to the San Marco area, slip into the Flora, and kill Gava.

  Possible, but rather unlikely. Surely he would have been noticed going into the hotel at that hour. Venice started dying many, many hours before that.

  Instead of continuing straight ahead to the Rialto, Urbino wandered through the twisting calli of San Polo, preoccupied with a hundred questions and his increasing nervousness over the Contessa’s absence.

  Wooden planks were still set up, but most of the water from the recent storm had either dried or subsided back beneath the paving stones. Within a few minutes he gave himself up completely to his thoughts. The external scene of crumbling
palazzi and crooked bridges and deserted squares soon receded into the background.

  Brooding made his steps random, his turnings unmindful, and he eventually found himself in an unfamiliar, empty calle. Recognition would surely come at the next turning or from the name of the calle painted on the side of one of the buildings.

  But when he reached the end of the narrow calle and looked down the next one he still had no sense of where he was. The name on the flaking building was not one he recognized. In rapid succession he felt humbled, irritated, and then tense, for he couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that someone was following him. Whether this came from a sixth sense or was the residue of his anxious minutes locked in the Rialto green market, he didn’t know, but it was very strong.

  He went down the calle, listening for footsteps behind him. He heard none. But this didn’t lessen his growing feeling of panic as images of the bloody bodies of Moss and Quimper flashed before his eyes. Pounding in his head was the thought he had had earlier, that the violence wasn’t over yet.

  When a familiar square opened ahead as if to mock him, Urbino was surprised to find how far he had wandered from his route. He tried to reassure himself that his frantic moments just now had been caused by nothing more than an overexcited imagination and continued in the direction of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini.

  In a few minutes he was standing on a bridge gazing at a crumbling palazzo. He often came here to look at this particular building for it was the one Henry James described in a story of deception surrounding the private papers of a famous American poet. The old palazzo had a garden, unseen from the bridge, which figured prominently in the story and which also had been visited by Napoleon. Urbino had once stood in the middle of the wildly overgrown garden, and still remembered the sense of melancholy and mystery he had felt.

  But this afternoon the garden’s associations were far less with Napoleon and James than with Bobo and the murders on the Rialto, for D’Annunzio had described the fruit-and-jasmine-scented garden in Fire, where he likened it to the “soul of the exile.” Bobo had interwoven parts of the description into Pomegranate.

  The evening of the Contessa’s reception Moss and Quimper had been wandering through the much different garden of the Ca’ da Capo. Had they had a rendezvous with someone? Had anyone overheard their conversation in the pergola? Urbino tried to remember where everyone had been at that time, which had been right before Gava’s collapse.

  Yes, it might help to know, as it would surely help to know exactly where Harriet and Bobo had been during the time of the murders. They both claimed they had been on walks, but perhaps their walks had taken the same path. Perhaps they had even been walking together.

  Harriet seemed afraid of Bobo now, but perhaps the Contessa had been right. Perhaps Harriet had fallen in love with him. Once in love, she could have been used by him in some way and was now regretting it.

  Urbino, considering these new possibilities, left the bridge and walked briskly toward the Ca’ da Capo.

  12

  “Don’t look at me like that!” the Contessa said later that afternoon when Urbino walked into the salotto blu.

  “Like what?” he asked. He wasn’t sure which of his several feelings he had conveyed. His surprise, his irritation, or, in fact, his admiration, for the Contessa looked particularly attractive as she sat on the sofa in a shaft of sunlight.

  “As if you’re looking at a ghost.”

  The image, given the way she seemed to glow with health and vitality, was so inappropriate that he smiled.

  “Does that smirk mean that you’re not upset with me?”

  “I’ve been worried sick about you, and you know it! Where have you been?”

  “Torcello.”

  “Torcello! Since yesterday afternoon?”

  “You saw what that storm was like! Thank God, there were two rooms at the Locanda Cipriani.”

  “A real stroke of luck. You could have called me! The phones weren’t out. But I suppose you didn’t even think of it. There’ve been two murders—maybe three, counting Orlando.” He fixed himself a drink and sat down. “And Bobo? How is he doing?”

  “Not well at the moment. He took to his bed as soon as we got back. It may be the flu.”

  “I want to talk with him.”

  “You’re going to have to wait! And so will Gemelli. He’s left half a dozen messages. I won’t have either of you pestering the poor man with your silly questions.”

  She watched him as he took a sip.

  “It’s obvious you’re not in the mood to tell me what this is all about.”

  “Do you really know anything about my moods these days, Barbara?”

  Fortunately, the Contessa was relieved from answering by the entrance of Harriet, her face pale and drawn. She handed the Contessa a folder.

  “My God, Harriet! You look completely knackered!” the Contessa said.

  This only made the secretary turn paler.

  “Go right home, my dear. Even better, stay here where you can be looked after properly. We’ll have the doctor in for you and Bobo both.”

  “Oh no! I’ll be fine back at my place, really! I think you’ll find all those letters in order. Excuse me.”

  When Harriet had gone, the Contessa said: “I suspect that might be an example of unrequited love.”

  “Do you still think she’s pining away for Bobo?”

  “Who else? Oh yes, I forgot! Marco Zeoli. Well, perhaps you’re right, but the man had better see what he can do for her before she collapses completely.”

  “What do you know about Harriet, Barbara?”

  “What do I know about her? She’s the best secretary I’ve ever had!”

  “And her references?”

  “Impeccable! What is the matter with you this morning, Urbino? Now dragging in poor, defenseless Harriet!”

  She went into one of her sulks which experience told him could last longer than his own patience. She usually could be jollied or coaxed out of them but this afternoon he didn’t have the inclination. Well, she was already upset, he might as well go all the way.

  “I have to ask you about something, Barbara. Gemelli knows that you withdrew a large sum from your account at the Banca Commerciale Italiana and that—”

  “He what! How dare he! I’ll have him sent straight back to Sicily, and don’t think I can’t, don’t think I won’t!” She glared at him. “How could you let him do such a thing!”

  “I’m hardly in a position to prevent the police from doing what they want to do—and need to do. You have to be protected.”

  “Deliver me from such protection, Sir Galahad! I can take care of myself, thank you! What I do with my money is entirely my affair! Alvise never put any strictures on it. I’ve given generously, as you’re very well aware! And I’ve given with some good sense, too, I hope, and I don’t need you or Gemelli asking me to render an account like some shopkeeper on the Rialto!”

  This reference to the Rialto, reminding her of the murders of Moss and Quimper, sobered her. She looked at Urbino with an almost desperate expression: “I’m in so deep, aren’t I? I feel like I’m about to drown.”

  And she did indeed take a long, deep breath as if in search of the air she needed.

  “Do you think I want to feel this way? Do you think that if I could be any other way, I wouldn’t?”

  When Urbino said nothing, she glared at him as if he had voiced his deepest criticism.

  “I don’t care what you think! I don’t care what anyone thinks! The only person who really understands is Oriana.”

  “Oriana! Don’t be a fool! I hope you’re not using her as a role model! Oriana and her string of gigolos!”

  “I’m well aware that Oriana isn’t exactly a saint but she isn’t afraid to feel! She follows her heart, wherever it leads.”

  “To her and Filippo’s destruction one of these days! But you might get there before her! Excuse me, Barbara. I think it might be better if I leave. I’ll stop by later when Bobo’s had enoug
h beauty sleep.”

  13

  On the traghetto ferrying him across the Grand Canal to the San Polo quarter, Urbino stared straight ahead at the farther shore, ignoring the chatter of two old women behind him.

  He didn’t regret anything he had said to the Contessa. He had a responsibility to save her from herself. Yes, he was jealous, but it wasn’t making him completely blind to what was going on—and it definitely wasn’t putting ideas in his head! Bobo was not to be trusted. If he was nothing else, he was a liar and a deceiver, and this was danger enough for the Contessa.

  And she seemed to be having second thoughts. What had she said? That she was in deep, that she felt she was drowning. Was it possible that she knew something about Bobo that she was keeping to herself, something that Urbino should know? Her defiant exclamation that she had to follow her heart could be a sign that she herself was beginning to fear where it was leading her.

  The best way to protect the Contessa was not to dismiss his suspicions of Bobo as mere jealousy. He was convinced that the more he learned about Moss and Quimper and the night of their murders the closer he would come to Bobo’s true villainy.

  Urbino stepped off the gondola and made his way quickly to the Zeoli apartment. Marco shouldn’t be back for at least another hour, and then he would have his winding-down time at the trattoria.

  The nurse answered the bell and led him to a dark room. The only source of light was a flickering television, its volume turned up high. The nurse left.

  Urbino was about to introduce himself when the wizened old woman sitting on the sofa shouted: “You’re Signor Macintyre, the American! Marco talks about you. Maybe you want more light. Young people don’t like the dark. Just pull the curtains back.”

  He went over to the window and pulled the curtains aside. Affixed to the outside of the window was a little mirror positioned so that it reflected a piece of the scene in the campo in front of the Zeoli building.

  “It’s enough of life for an old woman,” Signora Zeoli said, noticing him looking at the mirror. “Along with that.” She nodded her white head at the television where Zorro was riding away. “You can put the sound down.”