The Girl from Berlin--A Novel

by Ronald H. Balson

  Late December arrived, and Bologna was again dressed in its Christmas best. Smiles were exchanged in the piazzas. Street vendors were selling hot chocolate, chestnuts and gingerbread. Bologna seemed energized, but Mama’s spirits continued to be low and she felt out of place. Her frames of reference were missing. The ground on which she stood was unstable and she couldn’t get a foothold.

  The BSO was having its Christmas party, and I thought it might be a chance to get Mama out of the house and into a brighter atmosphere. She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, “please don’t ask me to do that. I couldn’t face all those people. Go without me. I would just be a distraction.”

  I decided to take a stand. Something had to be done. “No, you wouldn’t. You know everyone there, and they’d all be happy to see you. You can’t stay in this room forever, Mama. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for me.” I had no right to be self-centered, but it just came out of my mouth. Tears rolled down her cheeks. I was immediately sorry, but she waved me off. “You’re right. It’s not fair to you. Help me get myself together and I’ll go with you.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  She smiled. “You made your point. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  The night of the party, I asked Franny and Natalia to come over and go with us. Mama was waffling. In the end, we practically had to drag her to the Teatro. It was nothing short of a kidnapping. We made sure she wore her nicest evening dress, and Franny did her hair and applied her makeup.

  The BSO party—the singers, players, producers, directors and theater staff—was sparkling and festive. The food, the drinks and the conversations were carefree and lively. The evening was a great release for our hardworking opera company. In the midst of this gaiety, Mama was forced to wear a smile and interact with people at the party. It wasn’t all that long ago that my mother was active in the Berlin social scene. She could be charming, elegant and fashionable. I just had to nudge her into that persona. Soon I could see vestiges of it returning, and it was a pleasure.

  At one point, Maestro Vittorio came over, engaged Mama and me in conversation and then said, quite unexpectedly and with a twinkle in his eye, “Ada, we know that your contract with us will expire at the end of January, and that makes us all very sad. What would you say to an offer to stay on for an additional year?”

  I looked at Mama. This time she had a genuine smile on her face. Almost giddy. “I would say I am honored, Maestro,” I said. Mama clapped. It was so good to see her mood brighten. Maybe she could turn the corner. I wondered if Uncle Wilhelm had arranged the extension, but Vittorio said, “It appears that Signor Fishman will be leaving us. We’ll be short a first violin. Ada, I need to tell you that the entire orchestra, almost every person, asked me if I would extend the offer to you.”

  I was dumbfounded. The orchestra that viewed me with a jaundiced eye for the first six months of my residence? That orchestra? Then I looked around the room and all the members were facing me and smiling. I was blushing so much my cheeks must have been purple. They all raised their glasses in a salute. I bowed to them and said, “Grazie mille, miei cari amici.”

  The party went well into the night, and although it was ten days before Christmas, the temperature was agreeably warm, and the outdoor cafés were alive. Mama and I stopped for a hot mulled wine with Franny and Natalia. Natalia mentioned that she was leaving in a couple of days to join her family in Pienza. Her mother was making a Chanukah dinner. “Her latkes are the best,” she said. “Why don’t you all come with me?”

  “I’ll come,” Franny said, “but I don’t know what a latke is. Is it a cookie?”

  Mama laughed. She actually laughed!

  “You should come too, Mrs. Baumgarten,” Natalia said. “My mother would love to have you, and I know that she welcomes your expert cooking advice.”

  Mama looked at me. “I don’t know, I’m not really very good company these days.”

  “Nonsense,” Natalia said. “My mother would love to have someone else in the kitchen. Lord knows, it’s not me.”

  Mama looked at me. “Should we go?” she said.

  “Absolutely, Mama. It would make me so happy.”

  I was booked for Sister Maria Alicia’s Christmas series. I couldn’t cancel even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. Beniamino Gigli had asked for me personally. “You go with Franny and Nat,” I said. “I’ll join you when the series is over.”

  Mama hesitated and started to shake her head. This was a lot to ask of a woman who had been practically comatose for the past month. But Franny and Natalia were up to the task. “Oh, come on,” Franny urged. “We’ll all take the train and the bus. It’ll be fun. We’ll spend a week in the country, and we’ll eat Mrs. Romitti’s latke cookies!”

  To my surprise, Mama agreed. “All right. I think it would be very nice,” she said. “Ada, you have to join us as soon as your concert is over.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “But, Franny, they’re potato pancakes, not cookies.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Bologna, August 2017

  “A CLASSMATE OF MINE practices with a large firm in Bologna,” Giulia said. “She told me that Giuseppe Hernandez is still registered on the roll of active attorneys, and she gave me his address on Via Farini, two blocks from the Bologna courthouse. I tried calling him, but I keep getting a voice message.”

  “So we’ll pay him a visit,” Liam said.

  “Exactly.”

  On the second floor of a small, three-story, cameo-colored building in central Bologna, an office door listed the names of six attorneys. One of them was Giuseppe Hernandez. An older woman was seated behind a reception desk. “Is Signor Hernandez in today?” Giulia asked.

  The woman smiled and shook her head. “He doesn’t come in very often. He’s retired now, but he still keeps his licenses current as an avvocato and a notaio. Once in a while, someone will ask him to prepare a contract or notarize a purchase. These days you’re more likely to catch him in his garden than at the courthouse.” She wrote down his address, Giulia left her business card and they departed with a thank-you.

  Hernandez’s house was south of Bologna in hilly country, almost all the way to Madonna di San Luca. His home was tucked in a wooded grove of cedar and fir trees. True to the prediction, Hernandez was out behind his house tending his large vegetable garden. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat. A white cotton shirt loosely covered his thin frame. He was bent over, pruning a bush, when he noticed their arrival. Peering over his glasses, he said, “Something I can help you with?”

  “We’re sorry to disturb you at home, Signor Hernandez, but your office gave us your address,” Giulia said. “She said you wouldn’t mind.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Luisa said that?”

  “Well, not those exact words.”

  He nodded his understanding. “So now you’re here, what do you want?”

  “A few minutes of your time, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Hernandez thought for a moment, shrugged and said, “Well, you’ve driven all this way on a hot day. Would you care for a glass of ice tea?”

  “Thank you, you’re very kind.”

  Hernandez served tea on his patio and set out a plate of kumquats. “I picked these just this morning,” he said. “They’re delightfully sweet and juicy, not like what you’d find in the stores.”

  Catherine picked up a kumquat and closely examined it.

  Hernandez laughed. “It won’t bite you. It’s the only citrus where you eat the skin and the pulp. In a kumquat, the skin is much sweeter than the pulp, but mine are sweet all the way through. Try it.”

  Catherine took a small bite of the rind. “It is sweet.” He nodded and smiled. Then she bit though the fruit and made a puckery face.

  “Sometimes the insides are a little tart, if you don’t know what to expect,” he said. “You have to get used to the taste. Now, why did you folks drive all the way out here?”

  “In 1995, you notarized a deed from Carlo Van
ucci to Gabriella Vincenzo.”

  As soon as Catherine uttered those words, Hernandez face turned serious. “And?”

  “That deed has been challenged and ruled invalid in the Siena court.”

  Hernandez nodded. “The judge, did he rule it was out of the chain of title?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “Because it was.”

  “Out of the chain? You notarized that deed,” Giulia said forcefully. “A notary is responsible for researching the property records and verifying ownership. A notary stands behind the deed as a guarantor of its authenticity.”

  “What is it you want of me, Signorina Romano?”

  “An explanation. The truth.”

  “I have just told you the truth. Now you may show yourselves out.”

  “Not so fast,” Liam said. “We didn’t drive all the way out here to be dismissed like schoolchildren. Gabriella Vincenzo is about to be evicted from her property, the property she’s lived on all her life. She says it’s her property and I believe her.”

  “I do too. I met her just that one day in June 1995. She seemed very honest.”

  “Why are you so flippant?” Catherine said. “As a notary, you can be held liable for negligently certifying title to property. Gabriella could sue you for the value of her property.”

  “Is that why you came out here, to threaten me with a civil suit? If so, you would be wasting your time. Now, please leave.”

  “Not until we get an explanation,” Liam said. “I won’t see this woman tossed out of her home.”

  “You will leave, all of you, because I will call the polizia if you don’t. Now go!”

  Catherine sensed that Liam was preparing for a standoff. She took his arm. “C’mon, Liam, there’s nothing more we can do here.”

  As they turned to leave the garden, Liam said to Giulia, “You’re going to have to find this Vanucci guy, and when you do, I’ll wring his neck.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Hernandez called. “You leave Carlo’s family alone. Do you hear me?”

  Liam spun around. “Really? If you’re threatening me, Signor Hernandez, you’re wasting your time. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  Hernandez lowered his head and said, “Come back. Sit down.”

  When they reassembled, Hernandez said, “Carlo Vanucci was a close friend and like an uncle to me. My father and his father were partners in their law firm. Carlo’s daughter is ill, and she knows nothing of this transaction. You leave her alone.”

  “What about Carlo?”

  Hernandez shook his head. “He is dead for many years. He died two days after we signed the deed to Vincenzo.”

  Liam leaned forward. “Come on, Giuseppe, tell us about the deed. Tell us why Carlo would give Gabi a phony deed for property that he didn’t own.”

  Hernandez shook his head. “It wasn’t a phony deed. Carlo said his title was good. If Carlo said so, it was true. He was a man of his word.”

  “I want the whole story,” Liam said.

  “That is the whole story. Carlo showed up at my office in June 1995, dying of cancer. He was weak and thin and could barely stand. Carlo said he was under an obligation to deed a farm near Pienza to Gabriella Vincenzo. I agreed to help him, but we had to follow the statutes. I know my legal obligations as a notary. We would have to go to Siena, to the registrar’s office, I would have to check the property book and verify the ownership, and then we would go to Gabriella’s, where we would all sign the deed. He said that was fine because he was the owner.

  “When we got to the registrar’s office and I looked at the book, I saw that the property was not in Carlo’s name. I said, ‘Carlo, you cannot deed this property, it is in someone else’s name.’ A corporation, as I recall.”

  “Quercia?”

  Hernandez nodded. “Yes, that’s it. Quercia Company. Carlo said, ‘That’s a mistake. I am the owner.’ He was insistent. He said he got the property by a valid deed forty years earlier. He said there must be an error in the registry book. The book we were looking at didn’t go back forty years. It only went back to 1980. We needed to see the prior book. Sometimes there are copying errors. It’s not unheard of. The clerk said that the older book was off-premises, that he would have to order it and it would take a few days.”

  Hernandez stopped again as his words caught in his throat. “Carlo looked at me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Giuseppe,’ he said, ‘I don’t have a few days. It took every ounce of strength to get here today. I am in horrible pain. Please believe what I say. The book from the 1930s will show I have good title.’

  “Like I said, I would do anything for Carlo, but to protect my license, both Carlo and Gabriella signed a waiver acknowledging that I could not confirm ownership in the registry book. I took the signed deed to Siena and placed it for recordation. My dear friend died two days later. End of story.”

  “I wonder why Gabriella never mentioned the waiver,” Catherine said.

  “Please don’t bother Carlo’s family,” Hernandez said. “His children don’t know anything.”

  “May we have copies of the documents in your file? There may be something that would help us.”

  “There is nothing in my file,” Hernandez said tersely. “It has all been destroyed. I only keep records for seven years. There are no files for this matter. You should leave now.”

  * * *

  “IT SEEMS LIKE WE’RE back to square one,” Liam said in the car.

  “With this testimony, do we have enough to ask the judge to postpone the eviction?” Catherine asked. “Maybe just to give us time to check out his story?”

  Giulia shrugged. “I don’t know. We really don’t have any evidence to show that Quercia’s deed is invalid. We still lack tangible evidence, but we could be getting closer.”

  “Yes, but can we get there before September 10? Maybe we should ask for an extension now.”

  “You’re more experienced than I am,” Giulia said. “What would you do back in Chicago?”

  “I’d file a motion. What do we have to lose? We can offer to bring in Berto to testify to what he saw. Maybe he’ll mention what Fabio said to him. We can bring in Hernandez, who will testify about Vanucci and that Vanucci was an honest man. And there is the matter of the missing registry book. Maybe there’s enough mystery that the judge will give us a little time to finish the investigation.”

  “I find it very disturbing that Hernandez destroyed the file,” Giulia added. “Most attorneys I know keep their real estate files in storage for many years. There’s no need to destroy a file in seven years.”

  “And why would he want to destroy a signed waiver that protects him from a lawsuit?”

  * * *

  THE GROUP SETTLED IN around the dinner table with a mixture of hope and frustration. The day had produced hints but no solutions. They felt sure they were close to a break in the case, finding that smoking gun; they just hadn’t come across it yet. Floria had prepared ravioli and Liam was eagerly eyeing the meal. As they were passing the dish around, Liam’s phone rang. “Signor Taggart, it is Lorenzo. I am standing at the end of your driveway. Can you come and talk to me? Alone?”

  Liam raised his eyebrows. He pointed to his phone and mouthed, “Lenzini.”

  Catherine shrugged.

  Liam looked at his plate of steaming ravioli. “Damn.”

  “What do you suppose he wants?” Catherine said.

  “Maybe he wants to make a deal? I don’t have a clue.” Liam frowned. “All I know is that he’s interrupting my ravioli dinner.”

  “Watch out, Liam. He’s a snake.”

  Lenzini was leaning against his car when Liam approached.

  “Thank you for talking to me,” he said, and he extended his hand. “I am really not the bad person that Signora Vincenzo assumes. As they say in the American movies, I am only a mouthpiece.”

  “I’ve seen you in action. You’re a prick. What is it you wish to talk about, Lorenzo?”

  “I see in
you a practical man, a man who has been around in many a heated controversies, but a man who keeps his head on straight. You must know the signora cannot win this case. VinCo will never allow it. Your young avvocata, Giulia Romano, is a child. She lacks the experience and credibility to convince the judge to overturn his rulings. I am sure you realize that—”

  “Hold on, Lenzini. First of all, she’s a damn good lawyer, and secondly, you aren’t going to scare us off this case by—”

  “No, no, no, no. You misunderstand me. I am not trying to scare you. Just the opposite. I am appealing to your practicality. The signora cannot win. You can’t defeat VinCo with the testimony of an unemployed boyfriend and a broken-down old lawyer. You won’t have the registry book. You won’t have the contract. We’ve taken great care to close all the open doors. We’re not amateurs, Liam.”

  “Where is this going?”

  “I’m sure you know that VinCo has offered a generous settlement to the signora.”

  “Which she has rejected.”

  “Again, I know this. But I am talking to Liam, the practical man. There is a lot of money here. VinCo is a billion-dollar company. There is money for Signora Vincenzo, and there is also more money. What does Liam and his lovely wife need to make this trip worthwhile? Hmm?”

  “What?”

  “How would two hundred thousand euros sound?”

  “You’re offering me two hundred thousand euros?”

  Lenzini shrugged. “That kind of money can go a long way for a hardworking private detective and his solo practitioner wife raising a young child. Maybe a new home? School expenses?”

  “What about Gabriella?”

  Lenzini smiled. “Now I can see you’re thinking clearly. We could add another fifty thousand euros to her offer. Do we have an arrangement?”

  “Is that how you took care of Santi and Giangiorgi?”

  Again, a wide smile from Lenzini. “Much, much less, I assure you. What do you say, Liam? Can we end this today?”