Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

“Be assured that I didn’t have any relationship with him or the girl. That’s what you—we—have to convince your friend the Commissario about. I never saw either of them before Barbara’s reception.”

  The bold look he gave Urbino wavered. Fear was in the air. Whatever secret Bobo might be harboring, he was intelligent enough to realize that a murder investigation was bound to flush it out.

  Urbino brought up the incident of Moss and Quimper in the gondola beneath the Gritti Palace terrace.

  “I vaguely remember the couple in the gondola but I didn’t realize it was them. To know they were involved with those threats baffles me. Has it occurred to you that the murderer could have planted them in their room to point a finger at me?”

  “But if that’s what happened, you have a different kind of problem—just as bad if not worse. It would mean that the person threatening you is also a murderer, someone who might have killed Moss and Quimper for a reason related to you. If you’re hiding anything, whether about them or someone else, no matter how trivial you think it may be, it would be better to mention it now rather than later—all the more so if you’re innocent.”

  “‘Hiding anything,’ you say?” Bobo gave a hollow laugh, showing rows of impossibly white teeth. “I’ve already told the Commissario everything.”

  “But you didn’t mention that you had some words with Moss at your book signing, words that seemed to have something to do with Barbara.”

  “With Barbara? How preposterous!” Again the hollow laugh. “I don’t remember what we said to each other. Which means it must have been of little consequence.”

  “That wasn’t my impression.”

  “But that’s the problem with impressions, isn’t it? They’re so often wrong.”

  “What did you and Livia do after the performance?” Urbino asked, abruptly switching his focus.

  “We went to Harry’s Bar to celebrate our success.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “About half an hour—until ten-thirty.”

  “Not long for a celebration. What did you do then?”

  “I walked Livia to the Flora and left. No, wait a minute. Before I left I called her on the house phone to remind her to look in on Orlando. I had forgotten to tell her.”

  The Flora was about a ten-minute walk from Harry’s. Bobo had returned to the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini about twelve forty-five. Even a slow walk or the local vaporetto would have brought him back at least an hour earlier.

  “Moss called Barbara about midnight. He wanted to drop by. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Why should I?”

  “Moss and Quimper were staying at the Flora. You could have seen them when you walked Livia back. Moss could have told you he was thinking of coming here.”

  Bobo stared icily at Urbino.

  “I didn’t see Moss after the reception. I was only at the Flora a short time. We said good night and I made my way back here on foot. I got lost and ended up on the embankment across from the cemetery island.”

  This surprised Urbino. Although it was easy to get lost in Venice, it was unusual to go this far astray making your way to a palazzo on the Grand Canal.

  “And your nosebleed?”

  “Oh, that! I lost my footing going up a bridge. I didn’t hit my nose but the jarring provoked the nosebleed. I’m very sensitive when it comes to them.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t walk through the Rialto Market when you were lost?”

  “Absolutely not!” Then, with what must have been intended as a no-nonsense expression, he added: “Know this and know this well, Urbino: I want the murderer found as soon as possible. And not only because of how bad it looks for me. This person is crazed! Who knows which of us might be struck down next?” When he took a sip, his hand was visibly shaking. “Just knowing that someone other than that bumbling Commissario is looking into things will be a comfort. Barbara says that he’s asked you to help. Just watch out for his tricks! I give you a carte blanche to talk to whomever you like. I have nothing to hide. You’ll find me the soul of understanding and patience. After all, we both have the same end in mind, don’t we?”

  6

  After Urbino left, Bobo called the Hotel Flora from his bedroom. Disguising his voice on the off chance that it might be recognized, he asked for Livia Festa’s room. He waited impatiently as the phone rang. He was about to give up when Festa answered.

  Bobo spoke in low, urgent tones. Someone right outside his door would have been unable to hear anything he said until, near the end of the conversation, he raised his voice and said angrily: “Unless you want everything to come out, you’ll keep your mouth shut! Remember: I called you after we said good night. We talked for one or two minutes. I reminded you to check to see how Orlando was doing.” Bobo listened to her response then said: “You don’t need to know. Just don’t forget what I said. And we haven’t had this conversation. In fact, we haven’t spoken to each other since last night.”

  Bobo hung up and wondered if there was anything he had forgotten.

  7

  The next morning at Florian’s, Urbino took the Gazzettino from the rack and ordered a caffelatte. A piece on the murders told him nothing new. No mention was made of the threats against the Barone or the items found in the couple’s room.

  Urbino stared out into Piazza San Marco and thought about various aspects of the case. The swiftness with which Bobo had had his clothes cleaned by the Gritti housekeeper and the Contessa’s maid was puzzling. Did it say anything more than that Bobo was fastidious?

  Then there was Bobo’s casual dismissal of his encounter with Moss at the book signing. Why had Moss come unless for a compelling reason? Of course, a threat had been left. Perhaps that was reason enough for Moss and Quimper’s presence, but somehow Urbino doubted it. And anyone at the signing could have left the threat.

  On the short walk to the Hotel Flora, Urbino saw the Contessa. She was coming out of the Banca Commerciale Italiana. She had a strained look on her face and grasped her Gucci bag tightly under her arm. When she saw Urbino, she started.

  “Urbino! You shouldn’t creep up on people like that! What are you doing here?” Since “here” was the heart of Venice, she must have realized the strangeness of her question and quickly said: “Up early as usual, I see. I hope it’s to make efforts on Bobo’s behalf.” She paused, looked uncomfortable. “Well, I have to be going. I’m on my way to Venetia Studium,” she said, naming the shop that sold hand-printed fabrics and items done in the Fortuny “plissé” technique.

  She hurried off. Urbino watched her until she darted into the shop.

  8

  “Mademoiselle Quimper was nice enough but her friend was impossible!” the manager at the Hotel Flora said. “Always complaining—about the room, our rates, the breakfast, noise from the garden, everything! He had a chip on his shoulder. Very quick to anger—but don’t misunderstand me. No one deserves to die like that. My brother-in-law in the police gave me all the details.”

  “Did Moss or Quimper make any telephone calls from their room on the evening they were murdered?”

  “No—and they didn’t get any either. I was on the desk. It’s not my shift, but one of the staff got sick.”

  “I’m sure you’ve gone through it all with the police but would you mind telling me if you noticed anything unusual that night?”

  “Not really, but, well,” he said hesitantly, “there was something about the Barone Casarotto-Re. I didn’t tell the police because I forgot it at the time. My brother-in-law told me this morning that they found something in the couple’s room that indicated they might not have liked the Barone.”

  If Gemelli found out that one of his men was giving away vital information in a murder investigation, he would be furious. Urbino had to go cautiously.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

  “Neither do I,” the manager said quickly, “but you asked if I noticed anything unusual the night of the murder,
and the Barone came here about ten forty-five with Signora Festa. He made a call on the house telephone.”

  He nodded toward the small adjacent room.

  “Do you know which room he called?”

  “More’s the pity,” the manager said regretfully. “It was a few minutes after Signora Festa went up in the elevator. He talked for a few minutes and then left. Moss and his friend went out together about five minutes later. That was the last time I saw them. About ten minutes later Signora Festa came down with her dog.”

  “Did you notice when she returned?”

  “No.”

  Urbino thanked him and rang Orlando Gava’s room on the house phone. Gava told him to come up. He came to the door in a black jacket. The black armband was still in place. His homely face with its pendulous lower lip was freighted with sadness. He led Urbino to a room furnished in antiques that overlooked the garden. Gava sat on the sofa next to scattered copies of Gente, Oggi, the Gazzettino, and the Rome and Milan papers. On a little table were several portrait photographs in elaborate frames and a flickering votive candle. Next to them was a small plastic aerosol inhaler. Urbino sat in an armchair, after removing from its cushions a worn leather book with protruding leather alphabet tabs.

  “How are you feeling, Signor Gava?”

  “Well enough. Asthma. It runs in the Gava family. An attack can come on in seconds,” he said gravely, nodding his head. “This room is filled with little things that could start me going before I could even say my prayers!” He cast an oddly fluttering eye around the room as if accessing its deadly possibilities. “Dust, the smoke in the drapes, even the newsprint! I guess I’m lucky—so far. Not like Rosa. All alone, and only forty-six. Exactly ten years ago. It puts me in such a state that I wish—”

  He didn’t express his dark wish but fixed his eyes now on the photographs. Urbino remembered how he had said “I’m coming, Rosa” before passing out for a second time.

  “Well, you’re not alone, Signora Gava. You have Livia Festa looking in on you.”

  “Looking in on me? Where did you get that idea? Who wants her and her dog poking their noses around here?”

  “You’ve heard about the young couple who were murdered, haven’t you? They were staying here. You might have met them at the Contessa’s reception.”

  “Before that, here at the hotel. Barely a nod and a buon giorno at first, but the man became a lot friendlier once he saw Bobo and me together. Everyone notices him. An actor down to his fingertips! It’ll be that way until he’s made his last exit.”

  He gauged Urbino’s response with furtive glances from his bloodshot eyes.

  “When did the man start being more friendly?”

  “A few days before the Contessa’s reception. Bobo and I were at the hotel bar. The young man came in with his sweet little girlfriend. He kept staring at us and said something to her. She looked nervous, but she always looked nervous, like a bird waiting for a snake to gobble her up, poor thing. He would shake his finger at her during breakfast and she wouldn’t say a word. A saint. She reminded me of my sister. But I was telling you about Bobo and the young man, wasn’t I? Well, that evening the young man came over to me when Bobo left and—”

  Gava stopped abruptly as if something had just struck him and stared at Urbino, his pendulous lower lip more flaccid than usual, the sunlight from the windows glancing off his bald head. Once again, as he had been at the thermal spa, Urbino was reminded of the caricature of a corrupt Roman senator from the time of the Caesars.

  “What did he say?”

  Gava nodded his large head slowly.

  “You’re very curious about him, aren’t you? Does it have something to do with what Livia said is your interest in solving crimes—like those threats against Bobo?”

  “A commissario at the Venice Questura has asked me to help the police in whatever way I can.”

  “I’ve already told them what I know,” Gava said warily.

  “I’m sure you have, but if you wouldn’t mind indulging me, it might help your brother-in-law.”

  Urbino wasn’t sure whether this inducement would loosen or tighten Gava’s tongue.

  “Of course I want to help Bobo,” Gava said quickly. “Let me see. What was it exactly that the young man said? Something like, ‘I see that you know the Barone Casarotto-Re. My friend and I are admirers of his.’ Only then did he introduce himself. His Italian wasn’t good so I answered in English. I introduced myself and said that the Barone was my brother-in-law. He sort of brightened up when I said my name, wanted to know if my sister, the Barone Casarotto-Re’s wife, was in Venice, too. I said she had been dead for ten years. But when he started to say how sad it was to have her die so young—and maybe so suddenly—and how difficult it probably had been for the Barone, I excused myself and left. None of his business!”

  Urbino asked if he had ever told Moss that Bobo had been married to his sister.

  “I only said he was my brother-in-law.”

  Urbino thought for a few moments. Just because Bobo was Gava’s brother-in-law didn’t automatically mean he had to be married to his sister. Gava’s brother or sister could have married one of Bobo’s siblings. Any of these combinations would have made them brothers-in-law. Italians usually didn’t make fine distinctions in the question of in-laws. But Moss seemed to have known that Gava and the Barone were brothers-in-law because the Barone had married his sister. That may be why he recognized Gava’s name—because of Gava’s sister.

  “Perhaps someone could have told him that Bobo had married a Gava,” Urbino said, “and might have pointed you out as the brother-in-law.”

  “But he gave no indication that he knew who I was before he saw me with Bobo. It was Bobo who made the difference,” he said adamantly.

  “Has your sister’s maiden name been mentioned recently in articles on Bobo?”

  “Not that I know of. If it has, it wasn’t because he wanted to have Rosa remembered!” Gava said angrily. “He’s hardly given her a thought since she died, unless he was thinking about the money she left him.”

  “What exactly happened to her?”

  “She was an asthmatic, as I said, and was dependent on her inhaler. She had an attack when she was alone one night. It seems she had no medication left. She lost consciousness and went into a coma. She never recovered. I almost died myself from grief. And from guilt.”

  “But why should you feel guilty?”

  “Because I was out enjoying myself with Bobo and Livia! Eating at one of the most expensive restaurants in Taormina. Not that I wanted to go but those two convinced me, said that Rosa would be fine for a few hours. She even encouraged me to go herself, but that was because she saw how much the others wanted it. Every year, when her anniversary comes around as it is now, I—I—” He shook his head slowly and when he looked at Urbino his eyes held a deep, dark sorrow. “This is my Rosa.”

  Gava took one of the photographs from the table and handed it to Urbino. It was a three-quarter photograph of a sweet-faced woman about forty, dressed in black with a string of pearls. She had fair hair, simply dressed, and wore a tentative smile. The main resemblance to her brother was her sad eyes and a general air of ill health.

  “Simpatica,” Urbino said, handing the photograph back.

  “Moltissimo!” Gava kissed the photograph and put it back with the others. “These are my beloved dead: Rosa, our mother and father, our grandparents, our mother’s sister—my godmother. They go with me everywhere. They’re my portable graveyard,” he said with a smile that only added more sorrow to his face. “Who will remember me, I wonder? The only immortality we have is in the mind of the living! Don’t forget it, young man! Someone will come along and throw all these away, be sure of it! And that day will be here soon! Very soon!” he said darkly, once again his eyes straying to Rosa’s photograph.

  “How did Bobo take your sister’s death?”

  Gava’s head snapped up.

  “I thought you were interested in the young cou
ple! Why do you want to know about Rosa and Bobo?”

  “You brought them up yourself, Signor Gava.”

  “You can be just as slippery as Bobo! He told me that I would have to be careful with you. I see he was right.”

  “When did Bobo mention me? Did he call you the night the couple was murdered?”

  “There you go again! Questions instead of answers! I can see why Bobo is afraid of you. Yes, afraid! No, he didn’t call me that night. Last night, to warn me that you’d be asking questions. I have nothing to be afraid of! But Bobo is scared silly of being associated with these murders. With good reason, too! First he gets those threats. Then this young man shows an interest in him and is murdered with his girlfriend. And today Bobo tells me that you might be asking questions about him and I should be careful of what I said. Oh yes, Bobo is afraid! He’s not good enough an actor to hide that!”

  Did Gava know something incriminating about Bobo? Gava, he had said, knew more about his life than he did himself. What power might it give the sickly man? Was he the type to abuse the power? He had been very quick to deny any role in the threats made against Bobo, but he had expressed his dislike of D’Annunzio at the reception, a dislike echoed in the threats.

  “If you want to know more about the poor couple, ask Livia. She knows them from somewhere. She knows a lot about people. A crafty, devious woman! I wonder how she’d feel about someone knowing a lot about her?”

  The possibility didn’t seem to strike Gava as amusing, but quite the opposite.

  9

  Urbino and Festa took their drinks from the bar into the sun-washed garden of the flora. The weather had returned to goldenness but the crispness of the air was like a reminder of mortality. Peppino was nosing among the potted hydrangeas under the indulgent eye of his mistress. Festa, dressed in colors she informed Urbino were “eggplant” and “malachite,” rattled on nervously about her seamstress of the past twenty-three years.

  “She made a matching coat for Peppino but it’s too warm for him with the lovely weather we’ve been having.”