Reuben without hesitation commanded a martini, a glory of the restaurant, mixed, stirred and refrigerated before being served. Cynthia had a Bellini.
“Oh my God,” Reuben suddenly burst out, as they drank. “The Radleys. They’re still here!” He had spotted, coming through the swinging doors at the front, Mildred and George Radley, their new “friends” from the Baxter dinner, who were shown to a table across the room. This did not prevent booming Texas “hi’s” from being shouted, as if it were the most amazing coincidence in the world that the Frosts and the Radleys should be found together in the best-known restaurant in town. All suspicion of Reuben’s leftism seemed to have passed and the Radleys acted as if they expected to be invited over. Fortunately, from the Frosts’ viewpoint, it was too crowded for such moving around.
George Radley would have fitted right in at any suburban American country club, with his burgundy slacks and green jacket. Mildred, on the other hand, was wearing a proper couture Baxter, a navy cotton, elegantly simple and dotted with a pattern of small white flowers. Again, Reuben thought, here was living proof that you could buy elegance but (as in George’s case) couldn’t do much about acquiring taste.
The Radleys were heard clear across the room as they ordered their drinks—a double Jack Daniel’s for him, a rum and Coca-Cola for her.
“It’s a good thing Jack Valier isn’t here,” Reuben whispered to Cynthia.
“Why?”
“He’d be singing “Rum and Coca-Cola.” I told you he’s the Andrews Sisters’ biggest fan. ‘Both mothah and daughter/Workin’ for the Yankee dollah.’”
“Reuben, please. Maybe you’d like to join the Radleys.”
“No, dear, I want to stay right close to you and have another one of these,” he said, gesturing for a second martini. “How often do you have the chance to spend ten thousand lire for a drink?”
“We’d better eat,” Cynthia said matter-of-factly.
Though they planned to dine lightly, they ordered enthusiastically. With little prompting, Reuben opted for the Carpaccio and Cynthia the lobster ravioli, to be followed in his case by the risotto con carciofi and in hers by pollo al curry, curried chicken, which she described as a “little change of pace,” all to be washed down with a pitcher of the house Cabernet.
“That note you received doesn’t exactly clarify things, does it?” Cynthia observed while they drank.
“I’m not sure I’ve sorted it out yet. What’s your opinion?”
“It’s probably all redundant now, but let me tell you what I thought about this afternoon, on the boat coming back from Burano. Tabita was very quiet, very subdued, so I just stared out at the water and tried to come up with a theory.”
“I never did ask you, did you get to San Francesco del Deserto?”
“Oh yes, we did. It’s really wonderfully serene, Reuben, just like Assisi. You can imagine St. Francis talking to the birds.”
“Assuming he ever got there.”
“He was supposed to have been shipwrecked on the island, isn’t that the story?”
“That’s the legend. But enough of St. Francis. Holy fellow that he was, I don’t think he’s going to help us find Gregg Baxter’s murderer. So tell me what you worked out.”
Valentino, Harry’s most veteran waiter, served Reuben’s Carpaccio, blood-red sliced raw beef with cross-hatched ribbons of mustard on top. Cynthia’s four raviolis, in a light sauce, looked delicious but austere.
“You can’t beat the Carpaccio here,” Reuben pronounced, after his first bite. “In New York, everybody wants to junk it up with Parmesan, or hearts of palm, or God knows what else. Here they do it the way old Giuseppi Cipriani intended, God bless him.”
“This ravioli isn’t bad,” Cynthia said. “It’s scrumptious, if the truth be told.”
“Don’t let it stop you from telling me your afternoon thoughts.”
“They’re not remarkable, I’m afraid. I started with the idea that we have four actions that are most likely connected. Getting the arsenic from Ceil Scamozzi’s workshop. Poisoning Baxter’s insulin. Taking the glass dagger from Tony Garrison’s suitcase. And the murder itself, of course.
“I went over the cast of characters that we know, to see who might have done all four things.
“As we’ve discussed, I eliminated Eric Werth and Jim Cavanaugh—and Nicolò Pandini. Granted they were all in the neighborhood when Baxter was killed, it’s pretty hard to link any of them to stealing either the arsenic or the dagger, or tampering with Baxter’s medicine. Agreed?”
“Basically, yes. I may want to come back to Pandini when you finish.”
“Well, then, as for the others, all of them were in and out of Ceil’s and the Baxter suites of rooms at the hotel. In other words, each one could have done everything except kill Baxter. So we have to look at that. Valier told you that Ceil Scamozzi and Luigi Regillo were seen going home on the circolare at ten forty-five. And we saw Dan Abbott in the bar at the hotel around eleven-fifteen.”
“So we can eliminate those three, unless one of them sneaked back to Haig’s Bar,” Reuben said. “Valier says that Scamozzi and Regillo didn’t, that no personnel on the water-buses stopping at the Giudecca saw them after they’d crossed to go home. As for Abbott, he would have had to slip past either the Cipriani boatman or the guard at the back door—and then slip by them again to come back when he had finished his dirty work.”
“Which leaves us with three possibilities—Tony Garrison, Tabita and Doris Medford,” Cynthia said.
“And Medford’s out because she was busy making love to Jim Cavanaugh.”
The serving of Reuben’s rice with artichokes and Cynthia’s chicken delayed conversation briefly.
“I think there’s another possibility,” Reuben said finally. “We’ve found out that Pandini and Luigi Regillo know each other. As Jack Valier and I agreed earlier, Pandini could have committed the murder after Luigi had done all the rest.”
“So we have three suspects, counting Regillo and Pandini as one,” Cynthia said. “But then we get the complication of the note about Abbott.”
“Yes. I think there are two ways of looking at that. One is that some good citizen, using me as a bocca di leone, just as Valier predicted, really meant to denounce Abbott as the murderer. Which we agree is off-the-wall, right?”
“I certainly think so,” Cynthia said. “It just doesn’t add up that he was in the right place at the right time to kill Baxter. And look at all he’s done to get Tony Garrison free. Not precisely what you’d do if the police would be likely to make you a suspect once they’d given up on Tony. And we can’t forget his eagerness to find the guilty party—by involving you, for one thing—which doesn’t gibe with his being the murderer himself.”
“So far, I think we’re on the same track,” Reuben said, as the waiter interrupted to take orders for dessert. Normally, Reuben might have been tempted by Harry’s extraordinarily rich chocolate cake, but in the present circumstances it would have been a needless distraction. He and Cynthia had only espresso.
“So we go to the second theory,” Reuben continued. “That the actual killer sent the note fingering Abbott to divert attention from himself—or herself.”
“Now it’s getting interesting,” Cynthia said. “Take the three suspects we had before the business of the note came up. Garrison is in jail—he couldn’t have left it. The next most likely culprit, Tabita, was with me all afternoon, so it couldn’t have been her. Pandini was en route to Milan. And just for good measure, Doris Medford was already there.”
“So that leaves only Luigi Regillo, although nobody apparently saw him at the hotel today,” Reuben said. “It may be worth it to have Valier check on his movements from the time I saw him at the Ferrovia.”
“There’s another ridiculous alternative.”
“What’s that?” Reuben asked.
“That Abbott wrote the note.”
“Wrote the note accusing himself of murder? Ridiculous isn’t a strong eno
ugh word.”
“It was just a wild idea,” Cynthia said.
“It seems to be a terribly serious conversation over here. Are you working out your investments?” asked Arrigo Cipriani, elegant in his customary double-breasted suit, who had come up to their table.
“No, no, just some speculating about recent events,” Reuben said.
“Gregg Baxter’s murder?” Cipriani asked.
“Yes.”
“It would be nice if it were solved. Every tourist business in Venice would be grateful.”
“I can’t say it looks like it’s affected you,” Reuben said, surveying the packed room. Cipriani smiled contentedly and shrugged.
“Nor, I noticed, has anything occurred to cause you to lower your prices,” Reuben added.
“Oh, Mr. Frost, please, please. I hear that so much, how expensive Harry’s Bar is. How expensive Venice is. No one remembers one small fact—that everything here has to be brought in by boat. As someone once said, if you eat an apple in Venice, it means it has been shipped in. And once you’ve finished it, the core has to be shipped back out. It is very, very costly!”
“Well, Arrigo, we will do our little bit for you,” Reuben said. “Our modest little repast—just what we wanted, no complaints—was splendid.”
“Thank you. See you in New York soon, I hope,” Cipriani said, before moving on to greet others.
“As Harry once observed, he’s the only man in the world named for a restaurant,” Reuben remarked after he had left.
“Not true,” Cynthia said. “There’s that waiter at Vico in New York who named his son for the place.”
Reuben smiled, then sucked in his breath at the check that was presented, wishing that he received the voce amica, the discount at Harry’s given to regular local customers.
When the check had been paid, the Frosts stood up, attracting the attention of the Radleys who waved at them vigorously. A cordon of diners still prevented the Frosts from nearing their table.
As the Radleys bade their long-distance farewells, Reuben noticed with horror that they looked like figures from some reverse minstrel show, with white skin and black teeth. They had clearly eaten the pasta made with seppie, and the sauce of black squid ink had grotesquely darkened their teeth. Why they were both oblivious to this was a mystery; perhaps too much Jack Daniel’s and too much rum. From a distance, there was nothing either Reuben or Cynthia could do to tip them to their risible condition; they would just have to go on embarrassing their country and themselves.
The Frosts laughed over the Radleys on the trip to the hotel. As they reached it, Reuben noted that he’d had a very busy day. “I want a good night’s sleep so I can dream about all those expensive apple cores being carted out of Venice.”
CHAPTER
24
Ruskin Gives a Hint
Commissario Valier was again on the phone to Reuben early Thursday morning. He was calling from his apartment and said that he had been up most of the night questioning Nicolò Pandini. The streetwise Pandini had been eager to talk, but only to tell a story that distanced him from Gregg Baxter’s murder.
As Valier recounted that story, Pandini had admitted going out in the gondola on the fatal Thursday night and had described how Baxter had spotted a dark-skinned couple, sitting with two other men, on the deck of the Gritti Palace. His English had not been up to understanding exactly what the nearly hysterical Baxter had shouted to the group, though it was sufficient to catch an impassioned reference to AIDS. That had been enough to inhibit any sex between them and the gondola ride had been a chaste one, except for a few feints by Baxter under the blanket covering their laps and a few calming caresses by Pandini.
Sex or no sex, Pandini had felt entitled to full payment at the end of the ride. The frustrated Baxter had first disagreed, then relented, when Pandini threatened to make a scene outside Haig’s. According to Pandini, the last time he saw Baxter was when the designer headed back into the bar at roughly twelve-fifty—“after which our angel Pandini went straight home to his mama.”
The next day, hearing about the murder, Pandini ran off to a cousin’s (as Valier had suspected). He made the mistake of telling the cousin why he needed shielding so that, when the murder started dominating Il Gazzettino and the television, his protector decided he should pay for the privilege. This easily exhausted the money Baxter had given him, so he had needed to find help elsewhere to finance a trip to Milan, where he could lie low until the furor over Baxter’s death had abated.
Pandini had contacted Regillo, whom he first described as a friend and then admitted had been a furtive client for his services as a prostitute. He did not, of course, suggest that he was attempting to extort money from Regillo; his former customer was making a “loan” to him at the Ferrovia when Reuben had seen them together.
Then there was a long pause in the conversation. Neither Valier nor Frost could think of an enlightening comment about Pandini, or about the letter accusing Dan Abbott. Reuben finally suggested that Valier have someone check on the movements of la marchesa Scamozzi the previous afternoon and of Luigi Regillo once he had made his “loan.”
“Unless you have a better idea, I plan to visit Mr. Garrison this morning,” Valier said. “It is very Christian to visit those in jail, no?”
“You’re filled with the milk of human kindness, Jack.”
“Grazie, Avvocato Frost.”
Reuben repeated to Cynthia what the Commissario had told him, then announced that, since there didn’t seem anything useful he could do immediately, he was at last going to San Zanipolo.
“Unless something breaks, I may spend the whole day there,” he said. “But I’ll leave word downstairs in case anyone wants me.”
“I’m off to the Fortuny Museum. Ceil Scamozzi got me so interested in Venetian fabrics that I want to see what Fortuny did.”
“Don’t find any more arsenic,” Reuben commanded her.
Frost walked from San Marco to Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the church named for two (alleged) fourth-century martyr brothers and called by all Venetians San Zanipolo. It was a brisk walk, taking him along a series of inland canals where he eyed the traffic; he thought again of the apple-core theory as he saw a barge fully loaded with cartons of Kleenex and was very much amused as he spotted a young gondolier rowing some early-bird tourists along—while listening to a Walkman. Not to mention the burly operator of a motorized barge who had a teddy bear propped up next to the tiller.
Frost reached the Campo in front of the church, from which he approached the red-brown brick facade, noting in his Lorenzetti that it had been built by the Dominicans and consecrated in 1430. As the “Pantheon” of Venice, it was said to contain the tombs or monuments of 25, 45 or 46 of the 118 Doges, depending on which source one consulted. Whatever the figure, Frost had narrowed his search down to the three or four that he thought would be the most interesting; he would do more if there was time, perhaps when the church reopened in the afternoon.
Out of loyalty to the Commissario, Frost headed to the huge Baroque mass against a high brick wall of the nave that constituted the monument to Doge Bertucci Valier (1656–58) and his son Doge Silvestro (1694–1700). It also honored Silvestro’s Dogaressa, Elisabetta Quirini, the one whom Jack Valier said had driven her husband to a terminal paroxysm of apoplexy. Turning to The Stones of Venice, Reuben could only conclude that John Ruskin had viewed the monument on an off day: the statues of the two Doges were described as “mean and Polonius-like,” and that of the Dogaressa as a “consummation of grossness, vanity, and ugliness,” the figure of “a large and wrinkled woman, with elaborate curls in stiff projection round her face.” Reuben wondered if Commissario Valier had ever read Ruskin’s description.
Frost moved on down the aisle to the choir and the monument to Doge Michele Morosini (1382), with its elegant gold background, which Ruskin had apparently seen in a better humor and had called the “richest monument” of the Gothic period in Venice. It was a splendid memorial for a
Doge who had died of the Black Plague less than five months after his election.
From here Frost was drawn to the opposite wall and his principal objective for the morning, the tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin (1476–78), a collaborative effort of Pietro and Tullio Lombardo, father and son. Although one modern critic called the huge work the “manifesto of Venetian classicism,” it had sent Ruskin into even higher orbit than usual. He pointed out that Vendramin died “after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice.”
“He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile [Turkish] devastation rising in the blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.”
Then Ruskin relates how he borrowed a ladder from the sacristan, climbed up on the monument and discovered, horrified, that the recumbent figure of Vendramin had been carved only on the side that showed to the viewer below. The other was completely blank. To Ruskin this was a “lying monument to a dishonored Doge,” “dishonesty in giving only half a face” when one “demanded true portraiture of the dead,” the product of such “utter coldness of feeling” as could only grow out of an “extreme of intellectual and moral degradation.”
Frost stepped back and took a final look at the enormous monument, just as the church was being closed for midday.
As he walked outside, Reuben kept thinking about the half-completed likeness of Vendramin that had so troubled Ruskin. To the ordinary observer, it was whole and complete, but if one looked behind, if one looked carefully … Was there a lesson here to be applied to the pursuit of Gregg Baxter’s murderer? Could looking at the facts in a new and skeptical way be illuminating? The idea was intriguing. He decided to eat simply at a small bar nearby.
Frost sat at an inconspicuous outdoor table and ordered a simple foccacia con frittata, an omelet with herbed bread, and a small carafe of white wine. As unobtrusively as possible—the restaurant was not crowded—Frost tore out some sheets from his notebook. As he ate, he wrote down a separate, possibly useful “fact” on each scrap of paper. Then he sorted and resorted the pieces, climbing a figurative ladder to look over, under and around each shred of information, to doubt and question what it appeared to convey.
A Very Venetian Murder Page 20