Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

  Peppino, hearing his name, jumped on her lap.

  “It does get chilly at night, though. You must put it on him when you take him for a walk at night.”

  “Of course, but listen to us chatting about Peppino as if he’s the most important person around! It will turn his little head!” She paused and considered this part of Peppino’s anatomy for a few moments, then said, in an offhand manner: “Now that Pomegranate has finished its run here, I suppose we won’t be seeing any more threats against Bobo.”

  “Then you think they had to do with the show?”

  “With the show and with D’Annunzio, yes. What else? If they had received any publicity, I would almost have been glad for them. There would have been a bigger box office. D’Annunzio always thrived on notoriety.”

  “And Bobo?”

  Festa smiled. She must once have been voluptuous, with the kind of full body that, no matter what the vogue, never really goes out of style as far as most men are concerned. The way she draped herself in loose-fitting garments surely was intended not only to conceal but also to free the imagination of susceptible men. Bobo had his susceptibilities, it seemed, since he had almost married her at some time in the past, according to Gava.

  “Bobo only likes good publicity.”

  “Surely good publicity could be defined as any kind that brings in more money.”

  “Not where he’s concerned. He cares what people think. His good reputation is his fortune. He doesn’t have Barbara’s or Oriana Borelli’s kind of money. Not by a long shot! Never did.”

  “Have you spoken with him since yesterday?”

  “Not since closing night. We had a drink at Harry’s after the performance and then he walked me to the Flora. He called me on the house phone after we said good night. He wanted me to look in on Orlando. He had forgotten to mention it.”

  Almost the same words as Bobo had used.

  “And did you?”

  Festa reddened.

  “I’m afraid not. I—I forgot all about it.”

  “But you did walk Peppino, I understand. Do you know about the murders of the young couple?”

  “Of course. It’s the talk of the hotel. So it seems you’ve switched your sleuthing from the threats against Bobo to the murders.”

  Festa’s voice held a note Urbino couldn’t identify.

  “The Questura thinks they might be related.”

  “And why is that?”

  If it was true that she and Bobo hadn’t spoken since the murders, she wouldn’t know about the threats and the Baedeker found in Moss and Quimper’s room. He told her now, mainly to assess her reaction.

  “My God! How terrible for Bobo! The very people murdered who might have been threatening him! I must call him at once.”

  But she didn’t get up. Urbino wished she had, for he wondered where she would have tried to contact the Barone. At the Gritti Palace or the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini, where she had no way of knowing he had been since last night?

  “He and Barbara must be out and about somewhere. They really seem to be making the circuits, don’t they? Leaves you with a lot of time on your hands. You should be able to solve this case in no time.” There was no mistaking Festa’s tone now. It was pointed and snide. “Well, I’m not surprised,” she went on coolly. “About the threats originating with Moss, I mean. We can understand what he had against Bobo. The girl must just have been along for the ride. But how absurd for the police to think Bobo had anything to do with the murders!”

  “What do you think Moss had against Bobo?”

  “He was jealous!” She stared at Urbino as if he were a dunce. “Is it so hard to believe that a man in his twenties could be jealous of a man more than twice his age? Bobo is very appealing. His age and experience only make him more so. You can be sure that many men would like to be exactly like him. I don’t mean to suggest that Bobo gave Moss any reason to be jealous. The little French girl wasn’t his type, for one thing!”

  “Gava said she reminded him of his sister Rosa.”

  Festa raised an eyebrow that was more pencil than hair.

  “Did he now? I knew Rosa. Nothing like the French girl, but brothers see their sisters differently than everyone else, especially Italian brothers,” she emphasized. “And Orlando refuses to let go after all these years. He’s trying to—to immortalize her!”

  Urbino remembered the touch of irritation in Festa’s behavior the night of the Contessa’s reception when Gava had reached out to touch his black armband. There didn’t seem much love lost between Gava and Festa.

  “He said that you knew the couple from somewhere.”

  “He’s exaggerating as usual. I think he’s going senile! I saw them once before the reception. In Florence at Madova’s.”

  Madova’s was a fashionable glove shop near the Ponte Vecchio. Urbino usually went there twice a year with her, buying one pair of gloves to her half dozen.

  “I didn’t know who they were at the time. Madova’s has men clerks, who take the most wonderful care to be sure your gloves fit properly,” she began.

  Urbino nodded. The Contessa would place her elbow down on the counter, her hand standing upright, and the clerk would pull on a glove, inserting his fingers between each of hers in a smooth, practiced motion. It was a ritual that seemed to put the Contessa—and other women clients—in a flush of good spirits.

  “The clerk was being very attentive to Marie Quimper. He had just put a glove on her, seeing that it fit properly, when Moss slapped his hand away and pulled off the glove roughly. I don’t know if he was more angry at Quimper or the clerk. He looked like he was about to pick up the allargaguanti and poke their eyes out!”

  The allargaguanti was the wooden glove stretcher that Madova kept on its counter.

  “He had a crazed look in his eye. He dragged the poor girl from the shop before she knew what was happening. Neither of them recognized me at the reception and of course I didn’t say a word. So you can understand why I’m not surprised that this Moss was making threats against Bobo. That encounter showed how volatile he was.”

  “Did you notice anything at all about the couple at the reception that might be important? Any words they had with each other”—Urbino was thinking about the raised voices in the garden—“or with anyone else?”

  “Nothing at all. I hardly paid them any attention.”

  She stood up and rearranged Peppino in her arms.

  “Surely you realize the utter ridiculousness of Bobo being in any way involved in those murders! Look for someone with a grudge against Moss, someone he might have pushed around because of his jealousy. Don’t place any importance on those things found in the couple’s room.”

  Festa swept off in her eggplant and malachite with Peppino cradled in her arms and went up to her room.

  Before leaving the hotel, Urbino asked the manager if he had seen Gava coming in or going out on the night of the murders.

  “I haven’t seen him out at night at all since his attack, just in the morning. To get his papers and take his coffee at Caffè Quadri. But he’s certainly spry for a man his age. I pray God I’ll be the same.”

  10

  “We met them completely by accident, didn’t we, John dear?” Oriana said from a chair that looked like a slingshot. Urbino and Flint were sharing the neo-Biedermeier sofa, which gave a view through ceiling-high windows of the Basilica and the Doges’ Palace across the sparkling blue expanse of the lagoon. Urbino had come directly to the Ca’ Borelli after talking to Festa.

  “Completely,” Flint agreed. “At the exhibit at the Grassi Palace a week before the opening of Pomegranate.”

  “Why do you link it with the Barone’s play?”

  “Come now, Urbino,” Oriana said with a laugh. “John is just using Bobo’s opening as a point of reference. If you want the actual date I can look it up in my diary.”

  She smiled coyly and pushed her sunglasses higher up on the bridge of her nose. The only place where Oriana’s affectation of wearing sung
lasses indoors seemed to make any sense was in her own living room. There was so much chrome, unadorned white walls, and bright light that Urbino sometimes wished he were wearing a pair himself.

  “Oriana always takes her diary along with her so that she has something titillating to read,” Flint said in his drawl.

  Urbino didn’t draw attention to the lack of originality in the observation but asked them what their accidental meeting with Moss and Quimper had been like.

  Oriana said: “Marie—we didn’t know her name at the time, of course—came up to us and asked in the sweetest italiano if we knew where she could find the carving shown on the cover of the catalogue. I said to myself, ‘Now, if she isn’t the image of that americana who turned the head of the Duke of Windsor and made him give up the crown!’ What a love story! But none of her push and personality. Hugh came over a few moments later and we all introduced ourselves.”

  “Bobo wasn’t with you by any chance, was he?”

  “Of course not! We would have said if he had been! I’m not even sure if Bobo had come here yet.”

  “He had,” Flint clarified. “Don’t you remember? Barbara introduced us at Florian’s the afternoon before.”

  “Introduced you, dear! I’ve known Bobo for almost as long as Barbara. But yes, you’re right. I remember asking Barbara and Bobo if they wanted to come to the exhibit with us, but they couldn’t. They had something else planned. I believe you were at Abano.”

  “You must have become friendly with them quickly,” Urbino said.

  “Oh, you know me! The essence of congeniality! We chatted and looked at some of the exhibits together. John gave us the benefits of his expertise. Then it was lunchtime and I invited them to join us at the Montin.”

  “Did either of them bring up Bobo at any time?”

  “No, but I did. I told them about the performance. Hugh had read quite a bit of D’Annunzio. I found it strange. God, who reads D’Annunzio these days! But don’t tell Bobo I said so. I said that a friend was having a reception after opening night and why didn’t they come?”

  “Did you mention Barbara’s name?”

  “Name and title! Marie was impressed. She was such a sweetheart, poor little thing.”

  “And Moss?”

  Oriana frowned.

  “Very jealous. I mentioned at Barbara’s reception how upset he got when Marie asked to see photographs of John.”

  “What were your impressions?” Urbino asked Flint.

  “The same. I felt sorry for Marie. When the person you’re with is jealous, it’s hell for you.”

  “It’s hell for the jealous person, too, John dear, but you wouldn’t know about that, would you? I’m sure you’ve always been the object—or the cause—of jealousy.”

  Flint was wise enough not to respond to this. Instead he said: “Their murders must have had something to do with Hugh’s jealousy.”

  “You had plans to go to Chioggia with them the morning after they were murdered,” Urbino prompted.

  “Not plans,” Oriana said. “But when I suggested going to Chioggia that morning, John said it would be a nice gesture to see if they would like to go, too. He remembered how Hugh had mentioned the Carpaccio at the church there. I don’t remember myself, but art is John’s domain,” she said loftily and with a mischievous smile suggesting what her own domain was. “And John spent more time with them than I did. He took them under his wing, showing them some of the sights. But tell us! All these questions about poor Hugh and Marie! You think there’s some relationship between the threats and the murders, don’t you? I can see it in your face! Dio mio! Poor Barbara! If she knows, she must be absolutely mad—assolutamente! Excuse me.”

  Oriana bounded up.

  “I have to call her. Why don’t you two take the boat to your apartment, John? You said you wanted to go back to your place for a few hours anyway. You can show Urbino what we found in Chioggia and get his opinion. I have to look after Barbara, la poverina!”

  11

  Flint had a small ground-floor apartment in San Polo, a few minutes walk from the Rialto. It was a furnished apartment, most of the pieces dark, heavy, and worn. But scattered among them were Flint’s own belongings, which he proudly pointed out: a round table with mythological scenes of Wedgwood porcelain, several rococo Brustolon items, and a portrait by Lorenzo Lotto. It was none of these that Oriana had referred to, however, but a small bronze, finely designed and crafted.

  “Tullio Lombardo, I’d say,” Urbino said, examining it.

  Flint’s face lit up.

  “That’s what I thought! We found it in a shop in Chioggia.”

  They spent a few minutes chatting about the pleasures and surprises of stumbling on items like the bronze. Urbino got up and went to the window. It looked down on a typical Venetian scene—a small square with a covered wellhead carved with grotesque figures. Several obligatory cats sunned themselves and two old women in black were standing with shopping bags, their scarfed heads bent toward each other in intimate conversation.

  “I like San Polo,” Urbino said. “It has some of the best wine shops and restaurants. There’s the Frari and San Rocco and,” he added after a brief pause, “the Rialto markets. Do you shop there?”

  “I eat in restaurants. My kitchen is bare.” Flint said, his head bent over the bronze. “Wait until Oriana hears it’s a real Tullio Lombardo!”

  The phone rang. Flint jumped and picked it up. As he listened, his face was pinched with fear. After a few moments he put the receiver back in its cradle. He hadn’t said a word.

  “Bad news?”

  “A wrong number. Just someone jabbering away in Venetian dialect.”

  His face was drained of color. He looked down quickly at his Piaget watch.

  “That happens to me a lot, too. By the way, you say you found the bronze in Chioggia.” Flint seemed to become more at ease at this apparent return to the topic of the bronze, but his jaw tensed when Urbino went on: “Moss mentioned the Carpaccio in Chioggia to you. I suppose the two of you talked about art quite a bit. What kind of art did he like?”

  After a long pause, Flint said vaguely: “Modern art,” then, with more enthusiasm and an exaggerated drawl: “Severini, Balla, Magritte, Malevich, Tanguy, Dalí.”

  There was an air of improvisation in the list. It was as if Flint was pulling the names from the Peggy Guggenheim catalogue.

  “Somehow they don’t quite suit the impression he made on me, but then you did know him better.”

  “I wouldn’t say that! He wasn’t much of a talker. As for Marie, I don’t think I exchanged more than two or three words alone with her. Moss made sure of that.”

  Flint turned his face more directly toward Urbino, as if to illustrate exactly what the cause of Moss’s jealousy had been. The traces of age did little to detract from its appeal. Urbino wondered why he had changed careers.

  When Flint stole another look at his watch, Urbino left.

  12

  Bobo surveyed the calle. It was empty. It was a good thing he had made a dry run earlier because he would have had trouble finding it, even with the directions, even with his map. Surely he wasn’t far from a little square he sometimes visited, one with a D’Annunzio plaque lamenting the atrocities of war. But he had never wandered into this area of flaking, boarded-up buildings, where the gray, damp air penetrated to his bones.

  He grasped the package more tightly. He was rather surprised at how small it was, considering what was in it. But maybe it wasn’t so much what it contained that made the contrast with its smallness, but what its contents meant to him. And that was just about everything. Two people had already died—two stupid, infinitely selfish people who had wanted to bring down his fine scheme. But the nightmare hadn’t ended, not even with their deaths. It was going on and on, and he was worse off than he had been before. He was in even greater danger now.

  With both of them dead, he had felt a momentary sense of relief, but out there, he soon realized, was someone who knew. Who
knew everything and had already shown how far he—or she—was willing to go.

  When all this was over, he’d see that Urbino was put in his proper place. He knew he could do it with a minimum of effort. The Contessa would be his instrument. This gave him immense satisfaction and, full of nervous energy, he had to restrain a laugh.

  He found the building, reached up and pried loose the warped board. There was just enough room to push the package in. He heard it drop down onto the window ledge.

  He turned around and left as quickly as he could. Since he had decided to do this, he would do it the right way, the way that would make things best for him. He was determined to succeed.

  In a few minutes he was back in the thick of things, surrounded by people with their petty concerns.

  13

  The next morning, Urbino found the Contessa in the salotto blu. She was looking at a diagram of her bridge of boats that would span the lagoon from Venice to the cemetery island.

  Urbino asked her if she had found what she wanted at Venetia Studium yesterday.

  “Venetia Studium? Whatever do you mean? I—” Then she caught herself. “Oh, of course. No, there was nothing there that caught my fancy.”

  She studied the diagram as if she wanted to memorize it and then made a comment on the diversion of the water traffic around the bridge. Urbino asked if she would help find out more about Flint.

  “Don’t tell me you want to poke around in his affairs?” She put aside the diagram. “Whatever would that be in aid of? Oriana would be furious if she knew about it.”

  “We can’t care what Oriana will think, Barbara. I need to know more about Flint.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call Laura.” Laura was her friend who worked in the fashion industry in Milan. “Any information you get is going to benefit Bobo. He’s innocent, innocent, innocent! Of everything and anything! The world he’s had to trudge through lately is thick with corruption and deceit, but not one atom will cling to him!”