by Barbara Paul
“Yes, that is better,” Martino nodded. “That should get him here.”
Caruso blotted the letter and folded it carefully into an envelope. “Ugo, I want you to take this to Puccini. Do not leave it with the hotel clerk—hand it to Puccini personally.”
“I will take it, Rico,” Martino said. “I must go out anyway, to buy supplies.”
Ugo said, “Be sure you bring back the receipts.”
“You say that every time I go out,” Martino answered with a touch of exasperation. “Have I ever forgotten to bring back the receipts?”
“No. But that does not mean you will never forget.” Ugo was the bookkeeper in Caruso’s traveling household, a job that by rights should have been Martino’s. But with all his various abilities, the one thing Martino could not do was add and subtract. Not with any reasonable degree of reliability, unfortunately.
When Martino had left, Caruso told Ugo to prepare some wine and sat down to wait.
Forty minutes later, Puccini was there—breathing fire. “What do you mean, you refuse to sing? You signed a contract! Caruso, how dare you threaten me! You—”
“Let me explain, let me explain!” Caruso felt terrible; he was beginning to wish he hadn’t started this. “There is a reason—”
“Do I not have enough trouble without your threats? Elvira pours out her anger in long, long letters and Toscanini will never have Fanciulla ready in time and my new valet has run away! And now you tell me—”
“Fanciulla will be ready in plenty of time,” Caruso soothed. “And your new valet is probably just lost again.”
“No, no, he took all his clothes—and even some of mine! He has run away!” Puccini sank down into a chair. “Obviously he applied for the job only to get passage to America. He never had any intention of staying with me.”
Caruso tsk-tsked and made other appropriate noises until he finally got the composer calmed down enough to listen. “Puccini, I know something else is wrong—something is terribly wrong. I want you to tell me about it. Perhaps I can help!”
“What are you talking about?” Puccini snapped. “Nothing else is wrong! Isn’t that enough?”
Caruso swallowed and stuck out his chin. “I do not believe you.”
“Will you mind your own business? How dare you pry into my life! I tell you nothing is wrong.”
“If nothing is wrong, then why are you not enjoying yourself?” Irrefutable logic, from Caruso’s point of view. “Just think, Puccini. This should be a joyous time for you, seeing all the parts of your new opera come together. But you are listless, distracted—you seem indifferent to what is happening. How can you not care what happens to Fanciulla? Something is terribly wrong. Everyone can see it.”
The composer said nothing.
“Puccini,” Caruso said with a certain amount of unrehearsed bravado, “I am not going to let you go until you tell me what is bothering you. You and I, we will spend the rest of our lives right here together in this room—unless you tell me. I do not joke. You will tell me.”
Puccini stared at him a long time without speaking. His face began to change; he seemed to be aging even as Caruso watched. Then the composer gave a shudder and dropped his face into his hands.
Alarmed, Caruso jumped to his feet. “What is it? What distresses you so?”
Slowly the composer lifted a grief-stricken face from his hands; Caruso had never seen such a tortured look offstage in his life. Puccini had to swallow twice before he could speak. “Do you know a man named Luigi Davila?”
Davila, Davila … ah, Davila! Yes, yes—Davila was the pink-faced impresario whose name Caruso had managed to forget. The man with whom Puccini had left the Metropolitan Opera House. Luigi Davila. “I do know him, alas—I wish I did not! The man is a pest.”
“He is more than a pest,” Puccini said. “He’s a blackmailer. I am being blackmailed, Caruso. Luigi Davila is blackmailing me.”
“Oh, my dear friend!” Caruso’s heart melted in sympathy. “What a terrible, terrible thing!” Blackmail! The tenor wandered around the room, waving his arms in frustration. “My dear Puccini—I ache for you!” Because he couldn’t think what else to do, he yelled to Ugo to bring the wine.
Puccini was trembling all over. “It never stops. One misfortune after another.”
Ugo came in with the wine, took one look at Puccini, and asked if he should go for a doctor.
“No, no,” Caruso said, “just give him some wine. Quickly.”
Ugo poured them each a glass of wine, but the composer’s hand was so shaky the valet had to help him lift the glass to his mouth. “Is there something I can get you?” he asked solicitously. Puccini shook his head.
Caruso tossed off his wine and held the glass out for more. He seated himself opposite Puccini and took a deep breath. “Now then. Tell me the whole thing.”
“This, this Davila”—Puccini made the name sound obscene—“this Davila says he has evidence that will send Elvira to prison for the rest of her life.”
Elvira again! “What has she done now?”
“Nothing! It is that same tragic affair in Torre del Lago!”
“The servant girl Doria?”
Puccini nodded. “Davila says she didn’t poison herself. He says she was murdered, and it was Elvira who murdered her!” Both Caruso and Ugo were staring at him open-mouthed. “Neither Elvira nor I was in Torre del Lago when Doria swallowed the poison,” Puccini went on.
“But if you were not there …?”
Puccini didn’t seem to hear. “Caruso, do you know it took her five days to die? Five days. All that agony … the suffering she must have gone through! And the poor girl never did harm to anyone.”
Ugo filled the composer’s wineglass and patted him sympathetically on the shoulder.
Caruso tried again. “How could Elvira murder the girl if she was not there?”
“Davila says she did not administer the poison herself—she is supposed to have hired someone to do it for her. Davila says he has letters she wrote arranging the whole thing.”
“You have seen these letters?”
“He showed me one. Elvira did not write that letter, Caruso, no question of it. But it looks just enough like her handwriting that it might succeed in deceiving people who are not so familiar with her writing as I am. But it is not her writing. Besides, Elvira is not stupid—she would never put something like that down on paper. And then sign her full name? Preposterous. The letters are forged, and Davila knows I know they are forged. But they could still convict Elvira! He has me. I cannot risk even the accusation. They convicted her once before, in Torre del Lago.”
“But that was for defamation, not murder!”
“It makes no difference. You know how I got Elvira out of it—by paying off Doria’s family? The good people of Torre del Lago feel cheated. They would love nothing more than a second chance at my wife.”
Caruso jumped up again and started pacing the floor. He had trouble believing what was happening. And all because of that Luigi Davila! What kind of worm would take advantage of such a terrible tragedy to extort money from a man? How low, how vile! What to do, what to do? “Do you trust him to keep quiet if you pay him off?” he asked Puccini.
“He does not want to be paid off. He wants to be paid, and paid, and paid. He made it quite clear I am to see he lives in comfort for the rest of his days. Luigi Davila is a vampire—he will suck me dry.”
Wide-eyed, Ugo poured himself a glass of wine and drank it down fast.
“This you cannot agree to,” Caruso said in dismay. “Spend the rest of your life supporting that … that leech. Impossible.”
“But what else can I do?” Puccini groaned. “I cannot let Elvira go to prison for a crime she didn’t commit—she might even be hanged!”
“Does she know anything about this?”
“No, and you are not to tell her, Caruso.”
“Of course not, of course not. But we must think of what to do!”
“I’ve thought and
I’ve thought, but there is nothing.”
They mulled it over for a while, getting nowhere, not able to think of any possible line of action.
“Once again you have gotten me to talk, Caruso,” Puccini smiled sadly. “And I must tell you, I am grateful. I did want to tell somebody—it is a terrible burden to bear alone. But Caruso, you must mention this to no one else—no one at all.”
“I say nothing, I give you my word.” Then they both remembered the third man in the room.
Ugo held up his hands, palms outward. “I do not repeat one word of what I hear. I promise. I tell no one.”
“Not even Martino and Mario,” Caruso ordered.
“Especially not Martino and Mario,” Ugo agreed. “Martino talks too much, and Mario does not talk enough.”
Caruso didn’t quite follow that, but decided this wasn’t the time to pursue it. A little later Puccini left, after promising to keep Caruso informed. The tenor continued his pacing, thinking.
“Ugo—you know this Luigi Davila, don’t you?”
“I am not sure.”
“You were there once or twice when he wanted me to sign a contract—oh, you know, he is the one who tried to bribe Martino! Do you remember him?”
Ugo squinted his eyes. “Pink and fat?”
“That’s the one! Ugo, I want you to find out where he lives. Or where his office is—if he has an office.”
“How do I do that?”
Caruso glared at him; he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Eh, you can try asking at the opera house—Mr. Gatti knows everyone. Or—I know!—booking offices! Some of the other agents must surely know him.”
Ugo’s face lit up. “That is a good idea, Rico! I will go right now.” He hurried off to get his hat and coat.
Caruso continued his pacing and heard Ugo leave. Poor Puccini! How could any man bear it? He did not deserve this.
The tenor was jittery, edgy. He still had a rehearsal to get through today, and he was in no condition to concentrate on singing. He needed something to relax him. “Mario!”
He had to call only once; the youngest of his three valets was there, waiting quietly to hear what his employer wanted.
“I will have my massage now, Mario. Immediately!”
The young man didn’t so much as blink at this outrageous change in routine. Mario always gave Caruso a rubdown after rehearsals, when the tenor was tense and wound up. He must have wondered why Caruso wanted a massage now, before going to the opera house. When Caruso was ready, Mario started slapping scented oil on his back.
“Mario, what does one do with a blackmailer?” Caruso asked.
“One goes to the police, signore.”
“Hm. But what if going to the police causes harm? Harm to innocent people?”
“One goes anyway. Better the risk of harm than putting one’s life into the hands of a blackmailer.”
Caruso shook his head and dropped the subject. He’d forgotten the absoluteness of youth—this is right, that is wrong. “Mario, that suit you are wearing is starting to look frayed. You have been wearing it how long?”
Mario thought back. “Only two and three-fourths years.”
Caruso took a moment to figure out that three-fourths of a year was nine months. “Go get yourself a new one—have the bill sent to me.”
“Grazie, signore, grazie!” Mario beat a happy tattoo on the tenor’s back.
Caruso grunted and dismissed Mario’s sartorial problem from his mind. There had to be something he could do to help Puccini. There had to be.
New York barbershops were, to Enrico Caruso’s way of thinking, one of the seven wonders of the modern world. They were not just for haircuts and shaves—oh no! There one could also be perfumed, powdered, manicured, pedicured, steamed, and massaged. One could buy toilet articles there, or ease sore muscles by lying under a heat lamp. Or one could clear congested nasal passages by breathing a specially prepared sulpha vapor. And every barbershop in Manhattan boasted its own particular cure for hangover.
But what Caruso liked most about the better barbershops were their bathtubs. Huge, commodious things that were far more comfortable than the tub he used at the hotel. Plus rows and rows of bottled scent for the water: lilac, mimosa, sandalwood, musk rose, lavender, blue hyacinth, verbena, hibiscus, wisteria, violet, birch leaf, chinaberry, honeysuckle—the tenor wanted to try them all. (Except gardenia; Caruso never used gardenia. He couldn’t stand the soprano the scent was named after.) Caruso could soak in the barbershop bath for hours if he wished, the attendants constantly making sure the water stayed at the temperature he liked. New York barbershops were, in short, havens of repose and comfort for tired businessmen and distraught opera singers.
Mario’s massage had gotten him through the rehearsal well enough; but at the end of the day Caruso felt the need to soak and steam—and talk. He liked the camaraderie of the barbershops, but that wasn’t the kind of talk he wanted this time. He persuaded Pasquale Amato to go with him to Tonio’s on Seventh Avenue, where he asked for a private room with two tubs.
Once he and Amato were installed in their tubs, Caruso told the attendants not to come in until he rang for them. Then he proceeded to tell Amato everything he had earlier in the day promised Puccini he would never reveal to anyone.
Amato swore. “No wonder he has been distracted. How can a man concentrate on work with something like that hanging over his head?”
Caruso cast a quick glance around the small bathroom to make sure no one had sneaked in when he wasn’t looking. “Do you know what I think it is?” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I think it is the Black Hand!”
“Ah, not again!”
“Why not again? Because they fail to extort money from me? That does not mean they are going to stop! The Black Hand never stops.”
“Rico, that is the first thing you think of, naturally enough. But to assume this man who is blackmailing Puccini—”
“It is the Black Hand, I feel it!” Caruso was sweating, and not just from the heat of the bath. The last time he’d been in New York, the Black Hand had threatened his life. The price for his safety had been fifteen thousand dollars, to be delivered to an address in Brooklyn. Caruso had summoned the police, who’d provided the terrified tenor with an armed guard, even in the opera house. Then Martino had taken a dummy package to the Brooklyn address, where police were watching. Two men were captured; a third escaped. That had all been earlier in the year, in February, but Caruso still couldn’t think about it without breaking into a sweat.
Amato was watching his friend carefully. “Rico, are you still afraid of them?”
“Yes,” Caruso admitted without hesitation. “What of reprisals? One of the men escaped, remember. And they must have friends.” Caruso scowled. “And now they are after Puccini.”
“Do not be so sure of that,” the baritone mused. “The Black Hand is made up of thugs and hoodlums, Rico. I can believe they’d go to Puccini and threaten to break his arms or put out his eyes if he doesn’t pay them off—that is their style. No finesse. But think a moment. Can you really see these thugs going to the trouble of locating a sample of Elvira Puccini’s handwriting, and then sitting down and forging those letters? And doing a good enough job of it that most people would be fooled? Rico, a lot of those Black Handers cannot even read and write! This is just not their kind of crime. It is too calculated.”
A glimmer of hope appeared in Caruso’s face. “Do you really think so?”
“I really think so. In fact, I am willing to lay a small wager that Puccini’s blackmailer is one man acting on his own. You did say the man is a small-time impresario, did you not? Does that sound like the Black Hand to you?”
Caruso splashed his tub water happily; he was willing to be convinced. “So we have only one man to worry about. But what do I do? I sent Ugo to find out his address—I think I may sign a contract with Luigi Davila after all. A few extra concerts will not hurt me. I just might do it.”
“Cielo! Why?”
Amato threw back his head and laughed. “Sometimes you can be so wonderfully innocent, Rico! That is not the answer. Don’t you see, then he would just have his hooks into both of you. A man like that has no honor. It is a generous impulse, Rico, but a bad idea. I suggest you forget it.”
Caruso agreed readily, since he hadn’t thought too much of the idea in the first place. “By the way, you understand you are to repeat all this to no one,” he cautioned belatedly. “If anyone asks, you do not know anything about it. I gave Puccini my solemn word I do not tell his secret. But I am at my wit’s end trying to figure out how to help. You always know what to do, Pasquale. Suggest something.”
Amato was silent a moment. Then: “You are asking my advice?”
“Yes, I am asking your advice.”
“Then my advice is to stay out of it. You coerced Puccini into revealing his secret in the first place, yes? And if you start meddling you will just make things worse. Rico, old friend, mind your own business.”
“How can I do that?” Caruso protested. “When a friend needs help—”
“But since we both know you have never minded your own business in your life,” Amato went on smoothly, “my second piece of advice is to find this blackmailer and confront him yourself. Find this Luigi …?”
“Davila.”
“Davila, yes. Go to him and tell him you know what he is doing. If he thinks other people know about it, he just might back down. No man wants to be known as a blackmailer. Too risky.”
Caruso sat up straight in his tub. “You think that will work?”
“It might. It will depend on how easily intimidated this man Davila is.”
“Will you go with me?”
“How can I?” Amato blew soapsuds in Caruso’s direction. “I do not even know about this, remember? And Rico—I still think my first advice is the best. Don’t meddle in it.”
Caruso swooshed the water with his toes, thinking. “Pasquale—if our positions were reversed, what would you do? Would you stay out of it? Or would you try to help?”