The Last Gondola Read online

  Urbino opened one panel of a double door ornamented with gilded sea horses. Immediately beyond were the waters of the Grand Canal and the blue-and-white-striped pali of the Contessa’s boat landing, where the Contessa’s sleek motorboat was moored to the broad steps.

  The Contessa used this entrance whenever she went out in the motorboat. On the occasion of her parties, it was the point of entry into the palazzo for those of her guests who arrived by boat.

  Urbino closed the door. A massive armoire carved with dolphins and seashells caught his attention. He went over to it. Inside were umbrellas, boots, and a waterproof. If so inclined, he could easily have climbed inside and, though slightly cramped, closed the door behind him.

  10

  Urbino hurried back to the Palazzo Uccello to keep his promise to Natalia, but as he walked over the bridge in front of the building, he saw that he was too late. The locksmith had already arrived and he was bent over the front door lock, surrounded by his tools and kit.

  Demetrio Emo was an obese, baldheaded man in his early sixties with unusually pale skin and small features lost in the vast expanse of his face. But it was not his grotesque appearance that disturbed Natalia. It was his reputation. Emo had once been a priest attached to the nearby parish of San Gabriele until scandal had hounded him. Ten years ago, affairs with two women parishioners had led to censure from the bishop. Emo had left the priesthood rather than allow himself to be sent to Sicily as the bishop had ordered. Rumors had circulated for a while after he left. Some claimed he would marry one of the women, others that he still said mass in his apartment for a small group of devotees. But Emo had remained a bachelor, if not a celibate one; and whether he was conducting rites, no one had ever been able to verify.

  Urbino wasn’t judgmental about Emo. The locksmith was better out of the priesthood and leading the kind of life he was more suited for, although Urbino often wondered if he was proving to be as successful with women now, denuded as he was of his vestments and the allure of forbidden fruit. Urbino gave him his commerce for Emo’s sake as well as for Gildo’s, his nephew, who had fallen under his care since the death of both parents shortly after Emo had left San Gabriele. From what Urbino had seen, he had done a good job with Gildo, and the young man spoke well of him. Gildo bore no scars of an immoral influence.

  But devout Natalia had never become reconciled to the man. She referred to him as a devil and kept her distance.

  One corner of Emo’s mouth twisted upward in a smile when he saw Urbino. “It seems that Natalia has more strength than you have, Signor Macintyre, maybe too much for a woman her age.” Emo’s voice was low and smooth. It forced Urbino to listen carefully.

  “It’s beyond repair this time,” Emo said. “I’m putting in a new lock. The very best.”

  “Good.”

  Urbino left him to his work and went to the kitchen. At the counter Natalia was measuring out hazelnuts and dried fruits.

  “He did it on purpose, Signor Urbino! He came half an hour early! He knows I don’t like him! He probably knew you weren’t here. You should have stayed,” she said, in a wounded tone.

  “But you don’t seem to be punishing me, Natalia. Isn’t that panforte you’re making?”

  “Go away and take care of that devil,” she replied, not able to restrain a smile. “You’ll have lunch whenever he decides to leave. Sarde in saor and polenta unless I change my mind and just give you a tin of tuna fish!”

  Urbino returned to the ground floor and went to Gildo’s quarters. They were small and wedged in beside Urbino’s studio for art restoration. It was a hobby of his, but he hadn’t pursued it recently. If he couldn’t find more time for it by the end of the summer, he would expand Gildo’s cramped living space.

  The door of Gildo’s apartment was wide open. Urbino called his name. There was no response. Magazines and catalogues about boats and sailing were scattered across the floor of the parlor. Several atlases weighed down a shelf, and one wall displayed a large, detailed map of the Venetian lagoon, which showed all the channels, islands, and mudbanks.

  On a table beside the door was a mobile phone. Urbino had given it to Gildo as a convenience for them both.

  In the middle of the floor was a forcola. Urbino assumed it must be the same one he had seen in the gondola with Gildo a few hours before.

  Not wanting to intrude any farther into Gildo’s private space, he looked at the oarlock from the doorway. When installed it would be affixed to the starboard gunwale. By deft positioning of an oar in its notches and curves, the oarsman steered the gondola in various directions. With its liquid double curves and smooth, polished surface, the forcola, carved from walnut wood, resembled a piece of modern sculpture. This one, however, had some flaws in its carving. Urbino was able to note them even from a distance.

  “Good day, Signor Urbino.”

  Urbino turned around. Gildo stood a few feet away holding one of the cloths used to polish the brass and steelwork of the gondola.

  He was slim with curly, reddish blond hair cut short. His face was open, handsome, and ingenuous, and touched with a melancholy that made it more appealing.

  “I was just admiring the forcola.”

  “It’s not so perfect, but I like it. Please come in.”

  The two of them stood looking at the forcola. Gildo gave a barely audible sigh.

  “Is there something wrong with the one on my gondola?”

  “This is not for your gondola.”

  “Oh.” Urbino paused. “Where did you get it?”

  “A friend made it. He was a remero apprentice in the Castello district.”

  A remero was the skilled craftsman who made the oarlocks.

  Urbino nodded.

  “But your friend should continue as an apprentice. He has a good chance of being one of the best if he sticks to it.”

  Gildo did not respond right away.

  “It’s kind of you to say that, Signor Urbino, but my friend is dead.” He moved his hand over the smooth surface of the forcola. “No one wants it. I’ll keep it here if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course. I was thinking before you came in about how a forcola wouldn’t be out of place in a modern museum. I’ve seen things that aren’t half as lovely and interesting. It has a fine form.”

  The melancholy expression lifted momentarily from Gildo’s face. He seemed about to say something.

  “Ah, here you are, Signor Macintyre,” Demetrio Emo said in his soft but insistent voice. The large man had somehow crept upon them unheard. He cast a quick glance at the forcola and then at his nephew. “The new lock is installed. Here are the keys. Let’s hope that Natalia uses less force with it.”

  “What do I owe you?” Urbino asked, as he pocketed the keys.

  “Don’t worry about it now. I’ll send you a bill. Gildo and I will have a little visit before I go back to the shop.” He squeezed into the room. “I haven’t seen much of him lately.” He threw his arm around the young man.

  Urbino said good-bye and left. Before he was out of earshot, Emo said to Gildo in a tone of disapproval, “Do you think it’s a good idea to have this here to look at all the time, my boy?”

  The gondolier’s response was lost on Urbino.

  11

  Two mornings later on the last day of February, a Thursday, Urbino was sitting at one of the cafés in the Campo Santa Margherita with the person he hoped would give him more information about the Ca’ Pozza. She was his friend Rebecca Mondador, an architect who had helped him with the original renovations of the Palazzo Uccello.

  It was a brisk day. Clouds moved quickly above the broad open space in the direction of the Madonna on the tall, red campanile of the Church of the Carmine across the rooftops. Residents of the area, most of them either elderly men and women or young mothers with children, gossiped and shopped among the stalls of the fish and vegetable markets set up beneath bright awnings. Two children with a broom and a rowboat oar were trying to dislodge a soccer ball from the bare b
ranches of the tree outside the window of the café. From a building at the far end of the square, statues of Santa Margherita and the devil that devoured her looked down on the lively local scene.

  “The Ca’ Pozza and the building next door were owned by the Ruspoli family from Rome until the fifties,” Rebecca was saying, her raised voice doing its best to compete with the music blasting over the café’s radio. She was an attractive woman with a small, pointed face. “The Ruspolis bought them for almost nothing after the war. They completely renovated them on the inside. You know how it is. You can do anything to the interior as long as you maintain the integrity of the facade.”

  Rebecca, who had earned her degrees in the States, spoke excellent idiomatic English.

  “I hoped to get plans and photographs, maybe before and after shots,” she explained, “but there’s nothing in the archives. The architect is dead, and the contractors have gone out of business.”

  She looked out into the square with a puzzled frown.

  “In fact, it’s unusual how little information there is on the renovations of either of those two buildings,” she went on. “If I search around more, maybe I’ll find something, but you shouldn’t get your hopes up too high. This is Italy, not America. But to keep to what I know, Samuel Possle bought the Ca’ Pozza back in fifty-six at a real bargain.”

  She named the figure. It was low, even allowing for inflation over the years.

  “Maybe he gave them double that in dollars under the table,” she said. “And it gets stranger. Once Possle moved in, he had most of the interior restored to what it had been before—or close to it from what I’ve been told. He used the same architect and contractors.”

  “What about the records from that renovation?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing. But I’m surprised that you didn’t learn some of these things from Benedetta Razzi.”

  “What has she got to do with the Ca’ Pozza?” Benedetta Razzi was a widow who had helped Urbino in one of his cases.

  “Not with the Ca’ Pozza. The building next to it. You mean you don’t know? She bought it after Possle bought the Ca’ Pozza.”

  Rebecca was referring to the building that might have been the source of the laughter and sobs the other night.

  “She’s not too happy with the building these days, I hear,” Rebecca was saying. “There’re been a series of break-ins in the neighborhood over the past few months and one or two muggings.” Rebecca lived in San Polo but not near the Ca’ Pozza. “They say it’s a gang of kids. Drug related, it seems, and a teenager fell to his death from Razzi’s building. She claims it’s all bringing down the value of her property.”

  “I was in San Polo late the other night,” Urbino said. “I had the feeling that someone might be following me.”

  “Be careful! I certainly am. These kids have mugged people even in the middle of the day. I know how you like to take your long walks, but you’re not invulnerable. You’ve been mugged before, remember, and it was near San Giacomo dell’Orio, wasn’t it?”

  Urbino nodded. San Giacomo dell’Orio was on the edge of the Santa Croce district near San Polo. This had been in the summer, in the middle of one of his investigations.

  “I’ll try to be careful. Benedetta Razzi, you say? Looks as if I’ll pay her a visit.”

  “Don’t forget your charm and a little gift for her children.”

  Rebecca was being ironic when she mentioned Razzi’s children. Razzi was childless, but she had a vast collection of dolls she pampered.

  One of the boys outside the café had finally managed to get the ball down, and he was kicking it around with his friend. It collided with a man in his sixties wearing a long, gray coat. He was walking from the direction of San Bàrnaba. He had a full head of snow white hair. The man smiled good-humoredly and kicked the ball back at the boys. He was carrying a large black portfolio and a small wooden box with a handle.

  “Oh, it’s Lino Cipri,” Rebecca said.

  Cipri was a painter who spent most of his time and made most of his money copying the work of other painters. He was excellent at it, and it was all very legal as long as he signed his own name to the canvas.

  “Cipri’s overdue on a painting for one of my clients,” Rebecca said, as she stood up. “It’s all your fault, your fault and Eugene’s, that is.”

  During a visit at Christmas, Urbino’s former brother-in-law, Eugene Hennepin, had commissioned Cipri to make a large number of copies of paintings in the Accademia Gallery and the Ca’ Rezzonico. He was still working on them. Urbino was the middleman.

  “I think I’ll walk with him and see what’s going on, if you don’t mind being left alone. I’m afraid that all he can think about these days is Eugene’s money. I need to impress him with his other responsibilities.”

  Rebecca pulled on her coat.

  “By the way,” she said, “how is Habib doing? I thought he would send me a postcard.”

  She and Habib had become close during the past year and a half.

  “Give him a chance! He’s fine, but busy. He’ll be back in early April.”

  “Good. Plenty of time before the installation.”

  Habib was exhibiting at the Aperto, devoted to up-and-coming artists. It was mounted every Biennale at the old naval rope works near the Arsenale.

  “Habib at the Biennale! Who would have thought it!” Rebecca enthused. “Give him one of these for me as soon as you see him.”

  She bent down and kissed him on each cheek. As she straightened up, she put her hand under his chin and lifted his face.

  “You look tired, Urbino dear. Burning the midnight oil at the Palazzo Uccello?”

  “Something like that,” he said. Urbino had been suffering from the same dream for the past two nights.

  Rebecca dashed across the square toward Lino Cipri. The painter had caught sight of her and was waiting for her to join him.

  12

  At three o’clock the next morning, Urbino made an attempt to loosen Possle’s grip on him. Even sleep provided no relief because of his troubling dream. He had awakened from it a few minutes ago, and the faces of Possle and the Contessa were still swimming toward him, encircled by bright flames. He would not be able to get back to sleep easily. He needed to chase Possle away.

  Fortified with a glass of the bourbon he saved for special occasions, he went to the library. He put Elgar’s Symphony Number One on the player and sank into an old leather armchair that had once stood in his New Orleans house. Serena settled herself in his lap a few moments later.

  Encouraged by the noble theme introduced in Elgar’s first movement, he devoted himself to considering the Contessa’s problem. He reviewed what he had learned from her staff and from the Contessa herself. The more he went over the details, few as they were, the more he realized that he needed to know several essential things before he could even hope to make any progress.

  He put a time frame around the Contessa’s loss of her items. She had worn the mauve-and-blue tea dress on the afternoon they had gone to the film festival on the Lido. If he remembered correctly, she had also had her slouch hat with her. It was a bit battered, but it was a personal favorite of hers. The film festival had been in early September. She had decided on the silver cascade necklace for the Feast of the Salute. That had been on November 21.

  She had noticed the necklace missing in the middle of January, and in quick succession she had discovered that the other items were gone. There seemed to be a period of four and a half months. Anytime during that period her things could have been taken. He now had a rough framework to work with. In one way or another, the previous autumn was the crucial period.

  As the allegro molto movement of the symphony began, Urbino reviewed the Contessa’s schedule the past autumn. From what he could remember, she had been at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini all that time, except for day trips to Florence and Milan, three days in Rome in late October, and a week in Geneva in early December for her medical tests. Whenever
she was away for extended periods of time, Vitale gave extra vigilance to the house, or he was supposed to. Urbino had no doubt that the majordomo would emphatically inform him that he had done just that.

  Urbino tried to recall the Contessa’s houseguests during this period. Two young English cousins had spent several days at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini at the time of the Regata Storica. That had been in September after the film festival. Between Christmas and New Year’s the Conte’s grandniece and grandnephew had stayed with her.

  All these visits had fallen during the period when the objects had disappeared. He didn’t think that any of the Contessa’s guests had taken them, but their presence in the house would have meant less attention to security with their comings and goings.

  The lyrical adagio movement began. Urbino leaned back and closed his eyes, stroking Serena. It was the most perfect thing Elgar had ever done, and Urbino found encouragement in the fact that he had done it in his middle years.

  When the movement was over, Urbino returned his thoughts to the Contessa’s items and ran through the tentative time scheme that he had put together. There would have been many opportunities for an enterprising and lucky thief to have got into the less-than-secure Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini and taken the dress, scarf, hat, and necklace. But there was some comfort in having established some points of reference that could prove to be useful as he continued to look into the matter.

  After awaking Serena, he got up and straightened the scattered books as the fourth movement played. Then he searched through some old newspapers and magazines. After a few minutes he found what he was looking for. They were photographs of the Contessa that had appeared that fall. They had both joked about how she had been getting a lot of positive media exposure during a relatively short period of time.