Farewell to the Flesh (13 page)

Urbino didn't know what he expected to find in the Calle Santa Scolastica but he wanted to take a look. Gemelli's scene-of-crime people would have been through it very thoroughly. Despite the odor of urine, the area was fairly clean, without even any boxes or plastic garbage bags set out for pickup. On the top water step was a used condom that must have been deposited or been washed up by the tide after the scene-of-crime crew had been there. They certainly wouldn't have missed something as important as that.

Urbino didn't venture down onto the moss-covered water steps but, from a more secure footing, looked down the canal toward the lagoon. He could see the Bridge of Sighs. A gondola was passing under it in his direction, crowded with a group of costumed men and women. When they saw him, they waved and shouted and one of them, dressed as a sorcerer, threw him a handful of golden-colored coinlike disks. It reminded him of the trinkets thrown from the Mardi Gras floats as they made their way along Canal Street. The people would scramble for them as if they were the most precious of objects. Urbino did no differently now. He picked up several of the disks and put them in his pocket, waving a thank-you to the gondola as it went up the canal.

12

After leaving the Calle Santa Scolastica, Urbino wandered for a while through the nearby working-class quarter of the Castello. Very few of the people in this area wore costumes and those who did had simple affairs that bore the look of altered bridal gowns and military uniforms, of hastily sewn sheeting material and remnants.

One figure stood out from the rest, however. Urbino saw it on the other side of one of the squares. It was vaguely familiar, with its green and blue embroidered robe and high headdress with silver baubles, Oriental mask, and feathered fan. It was surrounded by a group of young children who were tugging at the skirt and making gesticulations. Urbino couldn't hear what they were saying. A woman shouted something down from a window and the children ran off, but not before one of them had scurried back to try to pull a feather from the fan.

As the figure continued across the square in the general direction of San Marco, Urbino recognized it. It was Giovanni Firpo, whom he had last seen in the Piazza taunting Xenia Campi as she handed out her pamphlets decrying Carnival. Firpo, who lived in the Castello, probably had spent close to a month's wages from his job at the hospital on this year's costume. It was the same every year.

When Urbino reached the Public Gardens where the Biennale art festival was held every other summer, he sat down on one of the benches by the water. The odor of cat urine engulfed him. In a large fenced-in area behind him, hundreds of cats made their home in the dead leaves and under the bushes and trees. It was the fate he had rescued his own Serena from when he had found her shivering under a bush by the statue of Wagner on a wet day in November.

A girls' gymnastics class was jogging along the path that bordered the lagoon. Several of the girls jumped up on the stone wall and walked along it fearlessly.

Urbino sat thinking of what he had learned from the guests so far. No one seemed to have noticed anything unusual the night of Gibbon's death. Perhaps the most unusual fact had been that Lubonski had got up from his sickbed to leave the Casa Crispina and then had called Urbino. The only other person who Urbino knew for sure had been out that night was Nicholas Spaak, who had gone for a walk and had a drink at a bar. This didn't mean, of course, that no one else had gone out. It was ironic, but it might have been easier tracking the comings and goings of guests at one of the big hotels than at the Casa Crispina, where the guests had individual keys that they kept with them at all times. He would have to ask Xenia Campi a few more questions, since she had been sitting in the lounge that evening and would have been able to see whoever might have gone in or out. And he supposed there was a possibility that Sister Agata had seen or heard something even after nine-thirty although, from what he had heard, she was usually fast asleep by then.

Urbino was less clear now about what kind of person Gibbon had been than before he talked with the guests. Was there any consistency in their different views of Gibbon? The men—Lubonski and Nicholas Spaak—hadn't cared for him, whereas Dora Spaak and her mother seemed to have more benevolent opinions. But Xenia Campi hadn't liked him and the boys from Naples hadn't had anything bad to say about him. No, there wasn't much consistency in this direction, he said to himself as he got up and started back toward the Piazza.

13

“Wherever are you taking me, Urbino?” Hazel asked after they left the busy
calle
. “Is there really a restaurant around here?”

She looked down the length of the quay that bordered the still canal with its moored boats, many in need of paint and repair. Although the canal was only a few minutes' walk from the Grand Canal and the Zattere, it always had a quiet, secretive air. It was at its most charming in the spring and summer when flowers cascaded from the balconies and when the boats were freshly painted. Most of the windows of the buildings were tightly shuttered now, however, emitting only the faintest light between their chinks. The loudest sounds were their own footsteps and the gentle lapping of water against the water steps and boats.

On the other side of the canal a door opened and two clowns emerged, the white ruffles around their necks blowing in the slight wind. They hurried toward the nearby Campo San Barnaba.

“It's not only a restaurant but a simple one-star hotel with only seven rooms,” Urbino said. “The restaurant is on the ground floor. It has one of the best reputations in town. We were lucky to get a table tonight.” He pointed ahead. “Can you see the lantern?”

“Barely.” When they reached the unassuming front of the Montin with its two small iron-grille windows flanking the wooden door and its four-sided lantern with the establishment's name painted on it, Hazel said, “I like it already.”

The
padrona
greeted them with a big smile from the bar-reception area next to the door. A freshly lit cigarette was between her fingers. She was an attractive, slightly overweight woman in her fifties with blond hair and large, fashionable glasses. She led them between the double rows of long tables to a less than choice table near the kitchen and the doors leading out to the rest rooms and the garden restaurant, closed until spring. Urbino had Hazel sit so that she could have a view of the length of the long, narrow room.

“Buon appetito,”
the woman said in her smoke-hoarse voice. “Lino will be with you in a few minutes.”

Urbino didn't see the Contessa, Mrs. Pillow, and Tonio Vico anywhere. Either they hadn't yet arrived or were in the intimate room with the fireplace to the left of the entrance.

The walls were crowded with paintings—watercolors, charcoals, and oils of Venetian scenes along with portraits and modernist paintings suggestive of Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall.

“Some people say the paintings were left by artists as payment for their room and board but most of them are by Venetian artists of the fifties and sixties who patronized the place. I don't think they have room for many more, if any.”

Lino, a distinguished-looking man in his sixties, came to take their order. Hazel closed her menu and told Urbino to order for her.

“I'm sure everything is delicious here. Just order some of your favorite things.”

After Urbino ordered, he thought that some small talk was in order and told her how the director Salerno had used the garden of the Montin in one of his films. Although she looked at him attentively and asked an occasional question, Urbino could tell that her mind was elsewhere. After Lino brought a bottle of Bardolino and some mineral water, Urbino expected her to mention Gibbon but now she seemed to want to talk about the paintings near their table.

Urbino tried to be patient and reminded himself that he had been the one to ask her to dinner. On the walk to Porfirio's to pick her up, he had run through their conversation of the evening before and realized that she had ended by telling him very little about herself and Gibbon. Not much more than that they had planned to marry and then decided not to—although her implication had been that the breaking off of the engagement had been his idea.

After Lino brought the antipasto, Urbino surprised himself by asking, without any preliminary, how she had met Val Gibbon.

Rather than being ruffled by the abruptness of his question, Hazel seemed relieved. She took a sip of her Bardolino before answering, beginning in a neutral way, without much inflection.

“He appeared in my life as if out of nowhere. I was looking for someone to take photographs of Mother and Father's art collection after Father died, and I had hardly made an attempt to find someone, when there he was. He never told me how he knew. He said it would be one of our romantic little mysteries. All I cared about was that he had shown up in my life.” She had a faraway look in her eyes, then focused them on Urbino as she added, gradually becoming more animated, “Val was the first person I ever fell in love with. Before I met him, I thought I was in love with someone else, but after being around Val I knew I wasn't. I haven't mentioned this other man to the Commissario. He would just want to know who he was and then make his life miserable. He's an innocent in all of this, believe me—the quintessential innocent!—and he's nowhere near Venice. There's no point in dragging him into everything. I broke things off with him as soon as I realized how I felt about Val. Val was seeing someone at the time, too, but it was nothing serious. Not like us, he said. Oh, Urbino, I want Val's murderer found as soon as possible—found and punished! And I want to help in whatever way I can! He has no living relatives. None! At least I have an aunt and an uncle and cousins, but poor Val has been all on his own for the last twenty years, even before he went into university. There's no one to care about his being dead—murdered—except me!”

Without any warning Hazel burst into tears and took a handkerchief from her purse. She composed herself before going on with what was meant to be a brave little smile.

“The Mother Superior and Porfirio told me about your reputation for getting answers and knowing if they're the right ones. I can tell you go about it in a much more gentle way than Commissario Gemelli.”

“How did your visit to the Questura go?”

“It was like cat and mouse. I had to account for every minute between Porfirio's party and when they found Val. I told him that just because I didn't have a verifiable alibi didn't make me guilty. From what I understand it's frequently the people with the alibis who are the criminals.”

“You weren't at Porfirio's for the whole evening?”

“I wish I could say I was, but I went out about nine, after everyone had left, and walked around for a few hours. I got lost a few times but that only made my walk more enjoyable. To think that at the same time Val was being stabbed to death!”

Lino brought over two plates of yellow and green angel-hair pasta with a cream sauce and mushrooms.

“Commissario Gemelli seemed disturbed that I didn't have anything bad to say about Val,” she went on after Lino had left. “He said that usually a woman disappointed in marriage didn't have good things to say about her former fiancé. I pointed out that we had been having our disagreements but that it wasn't definite that we wouldn't be married.”

About to gather her pasta with her fork and spoon, she gave Urbino a quick glance, as if gauging his reaction to what she had been saying. She seemed to be waiting for him to ask her another question. When he didn't, she abandoned Val Gibbon as a topic and started to ask Urbino about himself—how he liked living in Venice, what his life had been like back in New Orleans, whether he had any brothers or sisters.

When he told her he was an only child, she said, “So am I! People usually feel sorry for me but it's never been a problem—that is, not until Mother and Father died and I was all alone. Father had a heart attack and—and Mother took her own life a year later.”

“I'm sorry.”

She put down her fork and spoon.

“Have you ever been married?”

“I'm divorced and”—he anticipated her—“I don't have any children.”

“Is your ex-wife Italian?”

“No, American, from New Orleans.”

There had obviously been a limit to what Porfirio had been able to tell Hazel about him. Hazel stared at him for a few moments as Lino took away their dishes. When he had gone, she asked, “Do you ever see her?”

“The last time was more than ten years ago, before I moved here.”

She waited for him to go on but, taking a sip of wine, he said no more. Hazel rested her chin on her hand and looked at him with a bemused smile.

“You're not comfortable talking about yourself, are you? That's all right. I'm sorry for being so inquisitive.”

“It's only natural that you would want to know something about me when you've been telling me such personal things about yourself.”

“To even things up? But there's one big difference between us, isn't there? I'm the one with the dead fiancé to account for, aren't I?” She said this in a light way, but her eyes were full of pain. “I promise I won't ask any more personal questions. It's Val I should be talking about anyway, isn't it?”

They finished their pasta in an awkward silence. Lino brought over the fish dish.

“Absolutely delicious,” Hazel said but despite her enthusiasm she put down her fork. “I was telling Commissario Gemelli the truth, you know, when I said that it wasn't definite Val and I wouldn't be married. I came down to Venice last week to see if we could work things out. It was nothing like infidelity or his being in love with someone else. It was something quite different, yet it was very important to us both. My parents were well off. My mother was a Baskew of Baskew and Baskew Milliners and my father owned several factories.”