Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel

by James Markert

  Frustration soon led to guilt, as periodically they’d stop to share things they’d skimmed, various thoughts and memories, random musings and an occasional note about something Magdalena couldn’t possibly have remembered—vivid descriptions of the Italian Renaissance, anecdotes about famous art and artists, musicians and scientists and builders. Memories from the fourteenth century, the fifteenth, the sixteenth and seventeenth. And all were jotted down as if Magdalena was not retelling stories she once heard but had actually lived them, as if she had been there herself with Botticelli and Leonardo and so many others in Milan and Florence and Rome centuries before her arrival at the Hospital of Innocents. The more they skimmed, the more they felt as if they were prying into an unstable mind, afflicted not only with memory loss but also with delusions of grandeur, until Vitto finally closed one journal with a loud pop and hurled it across the room.

  John and Beverly joined them a little while later and reported that the shovels had hit the top of the coffin. Vitto didn’t want to be out there. Didn’t want to destroy the perfect picture in his head of a beautiful mother, loved by all, now reduced to bones. According to Beverly, both Juba and Father Embry were pacing the piazza, nervous, as if they knew what would be found. Robert had gotten up a few times to shuffle out the entrance and observe for a moment before slowly moving back inside, where he’d been playing a game of chess with William when she and John came down.

  It was John, with fresh eyes and a heart not as burdened by personal memories, who found something an hour later in a box they’d yet to open. Inside one journal were folded newspaper articles from around the time of the tragedy in 1921, when Melvin Tuffant’s broken body was found on the rocks below.

  One of the articles showed a picture of Melvin from a story he’d done three months before his death about the discovery of a speakeasy in Los Angeles. The grainy photo showed crates of illegal liquor waiting to be loaded into a truck disguised as an ambulance, which had made regular runs up and down the coast. The reporter had posed with one arm atop a whiskey barrel, the contents puddled around his boots and sluicing toward a drain along the street curb, wearing a smile that made him much more human than not.

  It had clearly been a proud moment, a big break for the determined reporter who, according to the other articles, had gone on to become well-known for uncovering speakeasies and illegal distilleries up and down the coast. Then he had latched on to the Tuscany Hotel, on the alcohol it served and the gangsters who frequented it, and on Magdalena’s past, for his next big story.

  That investigation had ended in tragedy. And now Melvin’s son, who looked a lot like him, was outside digging up a coffin, searching for his own bit of fame. His own big break.

  Vitto shoved the articles aside and dug deeper into the box John had discovered. The four of them worked feverishly for the next fifteen minutes—eyes darting across pages, across lines and words and thoughts. Finally Valerie found the journal they needed, and when she handed it over her hands were shaking. Vitto read, hands trembling as well. Magdalena hadn’t pushed Melvin Tuffant. She’d tried to help him up, not force him down—after the gangsters pushed him over.

  Vitto closed the book and ran. Maybe if he showed Landry Tuffant what Magdalena had written in her journal, he’d put a halt to the digging, to the opening of that coffin.

  But by the time he hit the fresh air of the piazza, it was too late.

  Everyone was standing there—the guests, Juba, Father Embry, the police, Tuffant, even Robert, having just ingested a bit of news Vitto was about to hear for himself. All eyes turned to Vitto and Valerie and then Beverly and John, who’d just emerged from the wine cellar.

  Vitto held up the journal for Landry Tuffant to see. But before he could explain, the reporter, whose pale face looked like the life had been siphoned from him, said, “It was empty.”

  Vitto looked to Robert. “What’s he talking about?”

  Tuffant said, “The coffin. It was empty.”

  “What? No evidence?”

  “No,” Tuffant confirmed, still in shock, if not humiliated. Was that Dad’s plan all along? “Nothing. There was nothing in there. At all.”

  Again Vitto looked at his father for an answer.

  Robert said, “We never found her body, Vittorio.”

  Thirty-Three

  “You buried an empty coffin?”

  Robert didn’t deny it. Apparently Juba and Father Embry had known as well. When Vitto asked his father why, he said they’d done it so her friends and only son would have something to visit, someone to visit, somewhere to leave flowers.

  “For flowers? You did this for flowers?”

  “For you, Vitto. For you.”

  It made sense now—Father Embry’s hesitation and nervousness during the eulogy. So many years she’d walked down to the monastery church for confession. Had they planned it all together?

  “And I was tired of answering the questions, Vitto. Questions about your mother. The mysteries. Her mysteries. I needed resolution.”

  Snippets of the past became clearer. Those daily swims in the ocean. The fact that Robert, who’d loved Magdalena more than any man could ever love a woman, had rarely visited her grave. The many hours he’d spent standing atop the cliff overlooking the vastness of the ocean, her true resting place, a casket of endless water.

  “I was nearly a man grown when she died.”

  “But still a boy with little understanding of death, Vitto. Of pain and sorrow.”

  “I would have—”

  “What? Searched the ocean day and night until it consumed you completely?”

  “And you? Did you not search for her?”

  “Of course I did—for days. But I knew she was gone. I knew she’d gone back home.”

  “What? To the ocean? To the depths of the sea like some . . . ?”

  Like some god or goddess from her bedtime stories.

  Vitto hadn’t been able to bring himself to finish the question. And Robert, who understood it well enough, had no answer, at least none he was able to give in front of everyone listening on the piazza. He slumped in his chair, his aged body a bag of bones.

  Vitto looked to Landry Tuffant and tossed him the journal. “It’s near the end. About your father.” Then he descended the stairs again to the wine cellar. There, surrounded by aging wine bottles and dust-covered journals—little bits of fragmented truths—he could almost imagine he heard his mother’s voice. Valerie joined him, and they silently flipped through pages for thirty minutes before she kissed him on the head and left him alone. Twenty minutes later, footsteps whisked on the stone steps leading down—the tread too heavy for Valerie or William, not heavy enough for Juba, and Vitto doubted his father now had the strength to make it down.

  “Do you mind?”

  Vitto looked up to see Landry Tuffant standing with Magdalena’s journal resting against his chest, his hands holding it like one might an infant. Vitto nodded toward an open spot on the floor. Landry grunted as he sat, cross-legged and surrounded by stacks of journals, stacks of stories, stacks of memories.

  Landry’s voice was low and soft. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  And then they both sat silent for a while, sharing the knowledge of what had happened the night Melvin Tuffant died. It was all there in the journal, the story captured in Magdalena’s familiar scrawl.

  * * *

  After uncovering that first speakeasy in Los Angeles, Melvin Tuffant was a man with a mission, determined to make his mark and to come down on the proper side of Prohibition. He quickly became as well-known as the agents who tore down doors and spilled the spirits out windows and into the streets. His crusades left him little time for his young son, Landry, but the boy idolized him. And why not? Landry Tuffant’s daddy was in the newspapers, always out catching bad guys. A father a boy could be proud of.

  And a father who was intent on bringing down the Tuscany Hotel.

  The presence of alcohol at the hotel was common knowledge
, generally overlooked because of Robert Gandy’s position in society and the fame of many of its guests. Less well-known was the fact that gangsters and bootleggers had begun visiting the hotel, unwanted and uninvited. But Melvin Tuffant knew, and he wanted to break the story.

  The gangsters knew Melvin Tuffant as well, his reputation for covering the wins for the Prohibitionists, and they didn’t like that he was sniffing around the hotel, which was becoming one of their favorite spots to meet and discuss business. They were counting on Robert’s popularity and his stature in the community to provide cover. And to make sure he went along with their plans, they weren’t above a touch of blackmail.

  A couple of these gangsters, Italian brothers named Vitto and Vincent Cornolli, had known some street toughs from Pienza, where Robert Gandy’s wife, a woman with blazing orange hair and an inspiring personality, had supposedly come from. Rumor had it that she’d cut up some guy there and then burned him alive. This possibility gave them the leverage they needed to convince Robert Gandy to let them do as they pleased at the hotel.

  The reporter, Melvin Tuffant, overheard them talking and set about to write a story about it—the illegal liquor and wine still flowing through the Tuscany Hotel, the presence of the gangsters, and the tantalizing possibility that Robert Gandy’s wife was a murderer. The state might have turned a blind eye to everything going on at the Tuscany Hotel, but Melvin Tuffant wasn’t about to ignore it. To him this was the story of all stories.

  For weeks he hung around, watching and jotting down notes, until one night when rain poured down and the ocean waves roared and voices were muted by the force of all that water. That was the night when Vitto and Vincent Cornolli decided to teach the reporter a lesson. First they’d get him good and drunk. Then they’d give him a good beating, just for fun. Then they’d drag him out to the cliffs and get down to business.

  Getting Melvin Tuffant floppy wasn’t hard because he was a drunk, and they knew it. Melvin had made himself famous for helping the Prohibition agents lure so-called criminals out of their hidey-holes like some sneak-thief rat, but he liked to imbibe here and there from what was captured and drink himself goofy every night while no one was watching. So when they handed him a bottle, he guzzled it down good and fast, probably because he knew what was coming.

  The two brothers didn’t disappoint his expectations. At the cliffs they toyed with him like cats with a mouse. They held him out over the edge, at one time leaning him out and holding on to nothing but Melvin’s red silk tie while he pleaded for his life and the breakers foamed against the sharp rocks below. They were about to drop him when they heard Magdalena’s voice cut through the downpour—not asking but demanding that they put him down safely.

  She’d somehow found one of their machine guns and held it poised, pointed right at them, and from what they’d heard of her past, they knew she might have the sand to use it. So they took their hands off Melvin Tuffant and left him wobbling, drunk, right next to the cliff’s edge.

  Magdalena told the two thugs to go on, that if they did, nobody would ever hear of it. Melvin was sobbing and soaked to the bone, his glasses broken and lost in the mud as blood from his beating meandered down his jaw and onto his neck, his collar stained red and smeared.

  “They threatened to kill my family,” he blubbered to Magdalena. “Threatened to find my boy and turn him into soup.”

  “They’ll do no such thing,” Magdalena said while Vitto and Vincent laughed under their rain-soaked fedoras—eyes black, faces hard and chiseled.

  “I promise I won’t write the story,” Melvin pleaded. “I promise.”

  Vitto laughed and then, quick as a snakebite, kicked Melvin’s feet out from beneath him. The reporter went down, slipped, and found himself clinging to the cliff side, gripping for mud and grass and roots and rock while his feet dangled and his screams went muted by the rainfall and wind and ocean waves. Magdalena dropped the gun to save him, sliding onto the ground and gripping both of his wrists with every bit of strength she could muster. But she couldn’t get any traction, and she felt him slipping through her wet grip. She pleaded for the two gangsters to help.

  Vincent shielded his mouth from the wind as he lit a cigarette, and the tip glowed like a beacon in the fog. Vitto squatted down, and at first, Magdalena thought he was going to help, but then he brought his mouth toward her ear and spoke like the devil he was. Too much like a voice from her past. Too much like the degrading, abusive voice of Francesco Lippi.

  “You ever mention what happened here, even one word, and I’ll come back and ruin you. I don’t know what that man you cut up in Pienza did to you, but I’ll make it ten times worse. You understand?” She’d nodded profusely, too frightened to cry, but also losing her grip on Melvin Tuffant’s wet wrists.

  The gangster wasn’t finished. “You gonna need reminding? Huh?”

  She shook her head no, but he said, “You know how you’re gonna get reminded? That little baby you got growing in you—yeah, word travels—you’re gonna name him after me. You hear me? You’re gonna name him Vittorio. And you’re gonna call him Vitto just like I’m called. That way every time you look at him, you’ll remember. I’ll know you know, and everything will be jake.”

  Magdalena hissed defiantly, “What if it’s a girl?”

  He smacked the top of her head, forcing her face into the grass, and laughed. “Got us a funny broad here, Vincent.” He hunkered down toward her ear again. “You’ll name it Vittorio no matter. We clear?”

  She nodded, crying now. They walked away, disappeared into the shadows of the hotel while Melvin Tuffant screamed. A few seconds later she lost her hold, and he slipped to the rocks below, where he was found the next morning.

  The newspaper article that day and the ones that followed in the days and weeks thereafter, all written by friends and colleagues of Melvin Tuffant, referred to the death as mysterious, citing Tuffant’s fear of heights and stating that there was no way he would have been on the cliffs on his own. An anonymous source claimed to have seen the woman with the orange hair out there with him in the rain, arguing with him over a story he was investigating about her past. But with insufficient evidence and some muscling from Robert and Juba, the accusations soon went away, until the son, Landry Tuffant, dug them all back up again.

  * * *

  Landry placed the journal on the ground, the truth hovering around them like a suffocating hood. He looked like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. And then he did. “Good thing you weren’t a girl.”

  Vitto laughed, nodded, guessed it was a good thing. They shared a quick smile and then averted their eyes—to the walls, to the wine bottles, to the stacks of journals.

  Landry said, “Did she really kill that man in Pienza?”

  Vitto shrugged and stared at the reporter for a moment, no longer sensing trouble from him. Any threat had passed with what they’d learned from that journal. “Off the record?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Vitto perused the stacks around him and then settled on one he’d set aside earlier in the day—older, weathered books from Magdalena’s stay with Lippi, most of which had been too painful for him to read. He pushed them across the floor, close enough for Landry to reach. “Look for yourself. If she did do it, you’ll see why.”

  “I won’t write about it. You have my word.”

  “Good.”

  “Now I just want to know more about the woman who risked her life to save Dad.”

  Vitto nodded, folded his arms as if cold. The history of his name had cut sharper than any wind could. He stood from the floor. “I’m heading on up.”

  “You mind if I stay down here?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Vitto . . . the water in that fountain. Off the record. Does it really do what your father says?”

  “Is it slowly killing them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it is,” he said. “Maybe it isn’t. Or maybe it starts when we’re born? Are
we living or dying?”

  “A bit of both, I guess.”

  “Either way, ticktock goes the clock.”

  “But if it’s allowing them to live, how could it possibly be killing them?”

  Vitto paused at the doorway and turned back toward Landry. “You ever heard of the Moirai? The Fates in Greek mythology?”

  Landry shook his head no.

  “There’s a room here on the east wing, second floor, third from the southern tower. When I was fourteen, I did a painting of them on the wall opposite the door—a replica of a sixteenth-century oil painting by Salviati. They were three goddesses who determined how long a person’s life would last. Clotho spun the thread of life. Lachesis measured it. Atropos cut it at life’s end, and her decision was one that even the gods couldn’t change.”

  “You believe it works like that?”

  “I’d believe just about anything right now. But if it is like that, then the thread of just about everybody up there in the hotel is being measured and about to get snipped. Might as well let them enjoy it until that happens.”

  He started up the steps, but Landry stopped him on the second one. “You do know how those two brothers died, right? The Cornolli brothers, Vitto and Vincent? They were both found in an alley in San Francisco—side by side, neatly placed, facing the sky. Strangled by a rope.”

  “When?”

  “About a year after the night my father died.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Unsolved. I ran across the pictures years ago, doing a story on that new type of organized crime that Prohibition seemed to have started. There was something interesting about how they were found. They had coins over their eyes.”

  Vitto grinned. “For the boatman.”

  Thirty-Four

  After leaving Landry in the wine cellar with Magdalena’s journals, Vitto went straight to his father’s room and gently knocked on the door.