Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

  “I can understand you championing him, Barbara. You’re a loyal woman, but I don’t want you to end up hurt. You’re becoming very fond of Bobo.”

  “Too fond, is that what you mean? And why shouldn’t I be? Doesn’t he deserve it?” The Contessa raised her little chin. “He compliments me. He makes me feel ten times more alive. When we’re not together, I have the strangest ache!” She looked at him with eyes in which surprise was almost keener than the softness one would expect to find, given her words. “Oh, you don’t have to say it! I know it as clearly as I know my evening prayer! I’m a walking, breathing cliché! But I can’t help it!” She paused for a beat. “I don’t want to help it—and don’t tell me that I must!”

  “But if it’s confusing your judgment, Barbara! If it’s setting you up for a great fall or worse, I can’t just stand around and say nothing! You can’t expect that! I’m going through a lot myself! Don’t forget that we have a very special relationship. That we—”

  Urbino was almost glad when Harriet’s entrance interrupted him. He was angry and he was hurt, and he was afraid where these feelings were leading him.

  The Contessa, however, was seeing a new side to him that she didn’t find at all disagreeable. She regretted the interruption and hoped that Urbino wouldn’t lose his fervor, even if he said things she didn’t like to hear.

  With different moods, therefore, Urbino and the Contessa turned their attention to Harriet. The woman looked even more careworn than yesterday. If this was the result of a diet of natural foods, the avoidance of nightshades, and the suffering of periodic liver injections, then the woman should quickly seek out a completely new regimen—and perhaps a medical adviser other than Zeoli.

  “This came for you today,” she said in a dull, troubled voice, handing the Contessa a postcard. “I thought you’d want to see it immediately. I read it. I’m sorry, but it was almost automatic.”

  The Contessa looked at the front of the postcard, then turned it over. She spent several moments reading the back before handing it to Urbino with a frown.

  The card showed a woman on a gurney. Her body was smeared with grayish mud. Behind the woman was a tiled wall with spigots and a hose. Standing over her, holding a metal bucket and wearing a smock, was a smiling, middle-aged woman. Printed in ink in English beneath the name of Zeoli’s spa was: “Why not ask the Barone Casarotto-Re about Helen Creel? If he won’t tell you, the therapist on the front of this card will. A concerned friend.” The printing seemed identical to that on the threats.

  “This is marvelous!” the Contessa exclaimed. “Bobo is off the hook! Moss and Quimper are dead and he’s still getting threats—or whatever you want to call this trash!”

  “It’s postmarked the day of their murder,” Urbino pointed out. “Does the name Helen Creel mean anything to you?”

  “Absolutely nothing! And not to Bobo either, I’m sure!” She looked up at Harriet. “Thank you, Harriet dear. If anything else like this arrives I want to see it at once. By the way, are you still leaving this evening?”

  “Yes, Barbara. I hope you understand.”

  “I want you to be happy, dear.”

  When Harriet left, the Contessa explained: “Harriet has decided to take an apartment. A dismal place in the Ghetto. Perhaps it’s for the best, though. She’s become difficult.”

  “In what way?”

  “Mistakes, forgetting or misplacing things, but it’s more than that.” She gave Urbino a quick look. “Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m sure she’s in love with Bobo. She acts so nervous around him, stealing glances, fidgeting when he looks at her. And she always seems in a daze. Yes, she’s in love with Bobo!”

  “Obviously it has to be Bobo,” Urbino said with irritation, “since we all know he’s so irresistible! But even before he graced us with his magnetic presence, Harriet was sprucing herself up. I say it’s Zeoli.”

  The Contessa gave a little laugh, more an expression of delight in Urbino’s reaction than in what he had said about Harriet and Zeoli.

  “The relationship made in heaven? But I still say she’s finding it too painful to be around Bobo now that he’s staying here himself. But whether it’s Bobo or Zeoli, I won’t be completely sad to see her go.”

  “I remember how happy you were to have her staying here before Bobo came on the scene!”

  “So I was.” She looked down at the postcard. “But I’m surprised at us, Urbino! What kind of sleuths are we? We must get a plastic bag to put the postcard in.”

  This had barely been accomplished when Bobo and Zeoli came into the salotto. Urbino quickly slipped the postcard into his pocket.

  14

  Five minutes later, Urbino and Bobo were alone in the morning room. The Contessa was entertaining Zeoli, who had come to collect her donation to the health spa.

  The two men sat across from each other in armchairs covered in Fortuny fabric. Bobo, dressed in fawn-colored corduroy trousers, crossed one long leg over the other and regarded Urbino with a barely perceptible smile,

  “Let’s not waste our time, Bobo. The chances of the threats having been planted in Moss and Quimper’s room are minimal. I’ll be the first to apologize if it turns out they were. But you should wake up to the fact that you’re about to be pulled in for something more serious than questioning. I’d like to help you.”

  “Indeed? How noble of you.”

  “There’s no need to be so snide, Bobo. I want to tell you what I learned from Orlando.”

  When he finished, Bobo said: “I called him this morning. He wasn’t all that coherent. He even tends to hallucinate when he’s had one of these asthma attacks. Something to do with his medication.”

  “Did it have the same effect on your wife? She was an asthmatic, too. These susceptibilities often run in families. Like your nosebleeds.”

  Bobo said coldly: “I’ve often thought Orlando developed asthma out of sympathy with Rosa. He was so devoted to her. But certainly neither Rosa nor her condition can be pertinent to your inquiries.”

  “That remains to be seen.” Urbino reached into his pocket and took out the postcard. “And what about this?”

  Bobo’s first response, when he saw the plastic envelope, was to say: “How antiseptic!” but then a flicker of fear crossed his handsome face. His hand shook as he took the postcard and turned it over. By the time he had read the back, he had himself under control.

  “Who is Helen Creel?” Urbino asked.

  “The name means nothing to me! What the hell is going on! It was bad enough when this—this trash was directed only against me. But Barbara! I won’t stand for it!”

  And Bobo went on and on in a theatrical display of outrage. Urbino let it run its course before saying: “So you have no idea why it mentions you in reference to a woman named Helen Creel?”

  “None at all!” He jumped to his feet. “But Marco Zeoli is with Barbara now! This is his thermal spa, isn’t it? You don’t think there’s some connection? I mean about his coming just when the card was delivered?”

  Urbino followed him to the salotto blu, where the Contessa was alone. Zeoli had just left. Before Bobo could do or say anything, Urbino excused himself and went after Zeoli.

  15

  Even out on the stern of the vaporetto in the crisp air Urbino kept catching whiffs of the mephitic odor that always seemed to cling to Zeoli. He could no more escape it than he could the unwelcome assault of Zeoli’s account of the ravages of serious, untreated gout, all the details of which Zeoli seemed determined to give him without interruption.

  Zeoli looked everywhere—at the facades of the palazzi, the boats, the gray waters, the embankments, the cloud-filled sky, the screaming seabirds—everywhere but at Urbino. As they approached the Rialto Bridge, his eyes didn’t even flicker in the direction of the vegetable market. The pace of his professional flow quickened.

  Urbino endured it for as long as he could. When Zeoli was catching his breath, Urbino said quickly:

  “You may be in a p
osition to help Barbara and me—and also the Barone. She received this in today’s mail. It’s a postcard of your treatment center.”

  Urbino took it from his pocket and handed it to him. Zeoli gave the front only a glance before turning it over. His eyes moved quickly over the brief text. Sweat gleamed on his narrow forehead despite the cool breeze blowing off the Canal.

  “It refers to someone named Helen Creel and to the therapist whose photograph is on the front,” Urbino said. “But you understand English. It also mentions the Barone. He’s been threatened several times, and Barbara is worried that this is another threat,” Urbino explained vaguely. “Do you know this therapist?”

  “She works at the hotel.”

  A look of withdrawal came over Zeoli’s lugubrious face.

  “Do you know who Helen Creel is?”

  “Is this a guessing game?” he snapped. “They sell those cards all over Abano! I have no idea what this is about.”

  Urbino could scent fear on Zeoli as unmistakable as the sulfur that emanated from his skin and clothes. Unless Urbino was completely misreading the man’s response, he not only recognized Helen Creel’s name but associated it with something far from pleasant.

  Not to seem too eager before asking his next question, Urbino stared silently out at the palazzi lining the Grand Canal. On the right was the Guggenheim Museum, one of whose paintings had recently helped him reach some answers in a delicate investigation that had also involved the Contessa. Encouraged by this reminder of a past success, he looked across the Grand Canal to the Casetta Rossa. It was in this small red house that D’Annunzio had lived during the First World War and, blind in one eye and lying immobile, had written his memoirs.

  But it was less these details that Urbino considered now than a pomegranate tree, planted by D’Annunzio, that flourished next to the building as a reminder that the past was never really dead.

  “There’s another thing,” he said in what was perhaps too casual a voice, turning back to Zeoli. “It’s about the murder of the couple in the Rialto Market. Did you notice anything about either of them at the reception that might be even remotely significant? Something you overheard, something you saw? Anything?”

  Zeoli looked stunned.

  “Nothing! And there’s absolutely no relationship between them and the center—none whatsoever—if that’s what you’re suggesting!”

  When the boat was pulling into the San Marco landing, Urbino brought up Harriet’s visit to Zeoli the night of the murders.

  “She stopped by to talk about treatments at the spa. You know how—how concerned she is about her health. I don’t remember exactly what time she left. Excuse me.”

  Zeoli got up and pushed his way through the crowd in the cabin. By the time Urbino got off the boat, he was nowhere in sight.

  16

  That evening Urbino, with his cat Serena curled on his lap, tried to put the case in the back of his mind, where, he hoped, wonders might somehow be worked on it. He wanted to read nothing that would remind him of the murders or the Barone and opened a familiar volume of Henry James. It was a story, like most of James’s, in which the deaths were natural and the only violences were the cutting words, turned backs, and whispered rumors of the drawing room. This was the kind of world he himself preferred, the one he had tried to create for himself here in Venice. Ironic, then, wasn’t it, that he found himself involved in yet another murder investigation!

  But perhaps not so strange, really. His serenity had once again been shattered, this time by Bobo and the murders in the Rialto. And he hadn’t been in the best frame of mind to begin with, not with his recent gout attack that had so prostrated his body and his spirit. He had to get to the bottom of things and then his world would be in order again, wouldn’t it?

  Not quite, not if Bobo remained in the picture. If he did, things would never be the way they used to be, and this realization caused him a pang. If it hadn’t been so late, but especially if Bobo hadn’t been staying with the Contessa, Urbino would have called her, perhaps even gone to see her.

  When he tried to escape into the pages of the James story, however, he found he had, after all, made a poor choice in his reading material. It was a sad tale of the drift of a man too proud and self-absorbed to recognize and return love until it was too late. Certainly a more disturbing tale for the midnight hour than any ghost story could be.

  He snapped the book shut and got up, sending Serena springing to the floor. A few minutes later, his scarf wrapped tightly around his throat against the cold, damp night air, he was striding away from the Palazzo Uccello. The calli were almost completely deserted. It was a clear night and he could see the stars overhead. He briefly considered going to the Ca’ da Capo but turned in the opposite direction.

  He soon found himself standing on the Rialto Bridge, all its shops long since shuttered. He looked down the broad sweep of water lined with Gothic and Renaissance palazzi. The three-branched iron lampposts and a few random lights from the private residences and hotels were reflected murkily in the Grand Canal. At the moment no boat broke its still surface. He had a partial view into someone’s apartment through a window. A bookcase, a portrait of a nude woman, a Murano chandelier.

  He was now standing at what had once been the commercial heart of Venice. Banks, insurance companies, a stock market, artisans’ workshops, stores, warehouses, a clandestine slave market—they had all made this area buzz with getting and spending, with business and barter. The top-heavy quality of the Rialto Bridge had always struck Urbino as appropriate, considering the burden of ducats that had been made and lost on its high arch and in the surrounding area. The Rialto was still very much of a bazaar, its shops crammed with jewelry, trinkets, and vegetables, but it was a mere shadow of its former grandeur and power.

  This was the place and the hour Moss and Quimper had met their deaths. They too might have walked over the bridge and paused like this to look down at the untroubled scene, have peered into the same window, little knowing that in a matter of minutes they would both be brutally murdered a short distance away.

  But perhaps they hadn’t been blithe at all that foggy night, but filled with trepidation and some presentiment of what was about to happen. Surely they realized the danger they had put themselves in by threatening Bobo?

  Urbino turned from the parapet and went down the bridge toward the green market. He walked beneath the shadows of the Church of San Cassiano, with its huge twenty-four-hour clock, then past the crouching stone figure of the hunchback of the Rialto. Had Moss and Quimper peered nervously beneath the arcades of the Fabricche Vecchie very much as he himself was now doing?

  A few moments brought him to the Erberia on the Grand Canal. Wooden and cardboard crates, wooden price signs, and stray pieces of fruits and vegetables littered the darkly shadowed stones. There was a deathlike stillness.

  He walked along the water’s edge to the traghetto station from where passengers were ferried to the other side of the Grand Canal. It closed every night before nine so there was no chance that, even if the fog hadn’t been a problem the night of the murders, one of the traghetto men might have seen something.

  But this wasn’t exactly where Moss and Quimper had been murdered, and he felt he needed to go there. He crossed the marketplace to the roofed area of wooden storerooms. Despite the hour the door was still open and Urbino thought he heard voices from somewhere among the warren of storerooms. He went in. The urinals were still illuminated so perhaps the attendant hadn’t forgotten to lock up but was still there.

  A church bell tolled the first hour of the new day. Hoping that he might be somehow inspired by the grim associations of his surroundings, he walked past the rows of slatted and wired-enclosed storerooms to the bank of the Grand Canal where it made a sharp curve by the massive stone arch of the Rialto Bridge. It took little imagination to add to the scene Moss’s and Quimper’s bloody, lifeless bodies sprawled on the stones, thick fog drifting around them.

  But who else had been
there? Who had lain in wait or stalked them? Bobo came too easily to mind. It couldn’t have been him, even if he couldn’t account for his time during the crucial period. No, Bobo couldn’t have been the one—although perhaps he hadn’t called Festa on the Flora telephone but Moss and Quimper to set up a deadly rendezvous. But if he hadn’t called Festa, why had she lied? Perhaps she desperately needed to protect herself as well. She had been out with Peppino after Moss and Quimper had left the hotel. Maybe she and Bobo were acting in concert? They could even—

  Urbino stopped himself from building his house of cards any higher. It was his dislike of Bobo that was enticing him on. He had to keep an open mind—yet surely not if it meant ruling out Bobo when he should be putting him as squarely within the picture as anyone else.

  Pits and traps all around him. Urbino turned away from the Grand Canal. Being here, perhaps a little foolishly, at the exact hour of the murders had brought him little more than confused thoughts. Maybe tomorrow at Abano he would start to get the kind of answers he needed. With this hope, he walked back in the direction of the main door.

  Urbino picked his way carefully through the area of storage rooms. He heard a sound behind him as if one of the wooden crates had been pushed a short distance against the stone pavement. He stopped and listened, but the sound didn’t come again. Then suddenly a cat darted past him. Giving a silent little laugh of relief, Urbino continued toward the door. When he saw that the lights were now off in the urinals, he quickened his pace, fearing what he might find. Yes, the door was now locked tight as several pushes and nudges showed him.

  “Is anyone there? I’m locked in.”

  His own voice echoed back at him. He waited a minute or two by the locked door. Maybe there was another way out. He searched among the storerooms but didn’t find any, then went back to the Grand Canal. But he realized there was no way out here either. The other door was locked and the massive Palazzo dei Camerlenghi at the foot of the Rialto Bridge walled him in.