Anna made a mental note to have Brian add the Tanzanian artist’s name to the list she had given him.
“Count Alessandro Favier is back from a South African excursion with Count Sergio Corrin,” an early 1985 snippet in the Gazzettino reported, showing Alessandro in a safari jacket.
“By the way,” Margo added, “Alessandro answered a question about Sergio in Africa.”
“And?”
“Last year, Sergio decided to make an investment in a mine,” Margo said. “He had problems arranging the funds transfer long distance, which is sort of hilarious, since he owned a bank. Alessandro sent him the money, and Sergio paid him back when he returned to Venice.”
Shows how much Dudley knows, Anna thought.
“Alessandro had made lots of investments with him over the years, either in art or in real estate, here and abroad,” Margo said. “Sort of like the old trading organizations of ancient Venice.”
Changing reels, they spotted a June 22, 1985, article on Sergio’s contentious divorce in La Repubblica. “Jet-setting Count Corrin, ex-head of CONSOB, dumps wife for nubile student.” The Corriere della Sera interviewed Arianna along with her two devastated daughters as they were leaving for the mountain air of Cortina. “I hate him,” Constanza said. “He deserted us.” Arianna added, “I just want to hide.” Anna studied her face, trying to imagine it younger and in profile, without success.
“Look at Agatha.” Margo had noticed a photograph of an all-female rowing club in a September 1984, edition of the Gazzettino. The caption in Italian made them smile: “Ladies practicing for upcoming regatta. Agatha Filbert rowing since 1950.”
“She must have been in great shape,” Margo said. “Turned the male-dominated sport on its head.”
In June 1983, the Gazzettino reported that Sergio had resigned from Banca Serenissima to “pursue other interests.” Anna knew this was shorthand for anything and everything: being asked to leave, leaving of his own volition, a mutual decision.
The seventies chronicled Sergio’s activities heading CONSOB and official actions the regulator took.
“Dullsville,” Margo said.
Margo and Anna noticed a positive review in Corriere della Sera of a 1969 book written by Sergio: Transparency and the Italian Stock Market. Other articles, on Sergio attending society galas, heading up major art restorations, scouring the world for art investments, yielded little.
“Why don’t you take the rest out of order?” Margo suggested. “It might spice things up.”
When a big portrait of Pablo Morales flew by, Anna flinched. His black eyes had the same intensity she had seen at the party. She reversed the reel, overshooting the page, then undershooting it, before hitting it squarely. “Peruvian Consul in Venice Loses Medical License in Peru,” the headline in a 1981 Gazzettino screamed.
The story was so long, it was illustrated with two other photographs. One was of Pablo with several native Peruvians in ponchos, the group symbolically pouring chicha beer onto the earth for the summer solstice celebration, the snow-capped peak of Salcantay, or “devil’s mountain,” behind them. Fanfarone’s article took pains to point out the translation. The caption read, “Heathens Feeding Pachamama—Mother Earth.” The second photo showed Pablo ministering to elderly, comatose patients, all Caucasian, with the caption, “Feeding them drugs.”
Margo scanned the article, nibbling on her thumbnail. “Did you get it all?”
“Let’s print it out, so I can study it later.”
The Italian papers had covered Pablo’s disgrace in depth. He had had to return to Peru for a long trial—a huge scandal in a country with an Indian majority and a white upper class in control. “Atahualpa’s Revenge: Euthanasia,” the Gazzettino quoted from El Sol Cuzqueño, a Peruvian newspaper.
Switching to other reels of the same vintage, Anna picked up the thread. “Condemnation by the Catholic Church,” reported Avvenire. “Doctor Death Uses Morphine and Potassium,” the Corriere proclaimed, along with “Morphine Stock Missing at Hospital in Cusco.” One story quoted someone from Clínica San Cristobal: “They only die when he’s on duty.” Another had Pablo saying, “I was only trying to help.” Though he was ultimately found innocent of the second-degree murder charges, he was stripped of his medical license.
“I can’t believe it,” Margo said.
“Could he have possibly done this? You know him. And how can he still prescribe medicine in Italy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where he got that angry scar on his jaw either. He definitely has a temper. You’ve heard him yelling at Yolanda in front of everybody. But murdering patients? I can’t see it.”
“The question for us is did he aim deadly anger at Sergio? Maybe it’s just one step from murdering the healthy. I’m sure he can handle a knife well, after practicing for years with a scalpel. But why?”
Looking frantically for a follow-up article, the women finally found a 1985 society column in La Repubblica. There was Pablo, resplendent in white tie, toasting government ministers at Lima’s Country Club Hotel. After years of self-imposed exile, first in the jungle at Manu, helping indigenous people, then at his llama farm in the Sacred Valley, funding summer camps for orphans, Pablo Morales was back. The article cited the change of government in Lima, Yolanda’s family connections, and Pablo reentering favored political circles.
“Who knows if he was unjustly accused,” Margo said, turning the page of her notebook. “I’ve seen plenty of people framed.”
Anna mulled over what could have prompted the intense Italian newspaper coverage of one Peruvian man, halfway across the world. She leaned over and glanced at the words written in Margo’s notebook. “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of the rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.”
“Oh, that,” Margo said. “I read it a long time ago, when I studied here. St. Augustine.”
Caffè Florian
Wednesday, early afternoon
Anna and Margo luxuriated in the open air. Flanked by columns of polished stone, their comfortable chairs were at the head of a phalanx of little tables leading into the heart of Piazza San Marco. Anna studied the rivers of tourists flowing from all corners of the earth. Swirling together, some tarried by the famed clock tower with its Moorish statues, awaiting the clanging of its bells; others lined up in crowd-control lanes in front of the basilica, while still others formed eddies, snapping photos of humans with pigeon companions. The sun’s gentle rays burnished the quartet of bronze horses prancing atop the church’s ornate balcony, mouths neighing, plaited manes billowing, hooves lifting. The equine prizes from Constantinople, along with porphyry figures of emperors, and the bones of St. Mark adorned the basilica—treasures of ancient cultures pirated to Venice in carved wooden ships returning from foreign wars and mercantile conquests, now delighting tourists instead of nobles.
Other visitors were wandering at a languid pace, exploring the blown glass and delicate lace stores framing the piazza, or, like Anna and Margo, treating themselves to the pricey but gracious service offered by the two historic caffès on opposite sides of the square. Sun-warmed pigeons patrolled Caffè Florian, hoping for pastry crumbs. A ghostly white pigeon, breaking rank with its brethren, approached Anna, its yellow beak open to reveal a gray, withered tongue. I don’t have anything for you, she thought, relieved that the birds, unlike men, were authentic and acted without contrivance.
“Anything new come in from your office?” Margo asked.
“Not as much as I had hoped. I’m having them check on the guests at Dudley’s party and everyone staying at the count’s palazzo.”
“What are you saying? Me and Angela, too?”
“I don’t want to be accused of shielding anyone.”
“Can’t you take us off the list? It’s an invasion of privacy.”
“Sorry.”
“They’ll see all my overdraft
s.”
“Believe me, no one is interested in them. Were you able to speak with Kitty?”
“Yes. She only saw the waiter screaming as he exited the overlook area, but she stayed calm enough to wheedle the story out of him. Sergio’s hand had been cut off, and there was a woman running from the body.”
Anna tried to avoid picturing it. “Oh, God. Takes a person really hating him to do that. Did the waiter describe the woman?”
“Too dark.”
Anna worried about sharp shards of truth and lies crashing together, cutting her.
The noon pealing of bells, with St. Mark’s Campanile in the lead, suddenly erupted, drowning the buzz of tourists in the square, the music from church bells big and small enveloping the city.
“My bad hangover headache’s coming back with all these bells.” Margo rubbed her forehead. “Where the hell’s Angela? I told her to come early. God, I need a cigarette; I forgot them at the palazzo. I’m going to order an appetizer for us to share.”
Anna wondered where Margo packed the calories. “We’re going to eat in an hour with Roberto.”
“It’ll be longer than that. I’d like to try a red wine from Alto Adige, recommended by a vintner I met at the party. But more to the point, the best hangover cure is more booze.” She nodded to a hovering, white-jacketed waiter.
“Desidera?” the waiter asked.
“Prendiamo una bottiglia di San Pellegrino, due bicchieri di vino Lagrein, un piatto di polenta con funghi porcini e formaggio, come lo fanno qui,” Margo replied.
“And Liliana?”
“It was a short conversation. She slammed the door in my face once she finished calling you a string of nasty names, wrapping it up with puttana.”
“The poor woman. She knew my name?”
Margo nodded.
“You think she’s broadcasting me as a slut to everyone in town now?”
“Nah. Maybe a few. Otherwise she’d be lowering her own standing.”
“How did she find out?”
“I didn’t have a chance to ask. One thing I did find out, though. She’s keeping Sergio’s gallery open. You’d think she’d sell it, or at least close it for a week.”
“Guess she can’t bear to part with the cash she’d lose by putting up a ‘Death in the Family’ sign,” Anna said.
“Too bad Sergio’s funeral won’t take place for a while. We could’ve attended to see who might be acting strange, like in the movies.”
Anna doubted that ever worked. “You see Pablo around the palazzo. Can you ask him when we could meet with him?”
“What should I tell him it’s about?”
“His fascinating life. Or better, maybe I’m planning a trip to Peru.”
“All right. Oh, look, here comes Angela, slow as a tortoise. She has such an orderly existence. Everything in its place.”
Anna couldn’t imagine that.
“We were starting to worry about you,” Margo said to her cousin.
Angela’s pale face shone in the sun. Dark circles framed her eyes. “Here you go, Margo.” Settling into a yellow woven chair, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse and placed it on the table.
“Well? Were you able to change your flight?” Margo asked.
“Nope.” Angela glanced at her with a hint of anguish. “They’re completely booked. I’m wore out and stuck here till late next week.”
“Angela’s homesick,” Margo explained. “Don’t worry, we’ll enjoy the time here together. Anna, we’re at the oldest caffè in Europe. This is where Wagner wrote some of his operas.”
“He wrote another opera in the humongous Palazzo Rezzonico, where he died, I read,” Anna said. “So many famous people have died in Venice.”
When the waiter served Margo, Anna couldn’t help sampling the delicate polenta, drenched in early-season porcini mushrooms and melted asiago cheese.
“And lived,” Margo said. “With fifteen hundred years as a city, Venetians have a lot of history. More than California.”
“It depends when you start counting,” Anna said, thinking she sounded like Pablo.
“How was your walk back to your hotel last night, Anna?” Margo said after taking a sip of wine. “It must have been beautiful.”
“Lovely and a bit windy until I got lost and someone started following me. I ran all the way back to the Accademia Bridge.” Her gaze vacillated between the two women.
“Are you sure? Did you see who it was?” Margo sounded concerned.
“Too scared.” Anna tasted her wine.
“You still look it,” Angela said.
“Someone wanted to catch me, to harm me. I could tell.”
“Venice is crammed with people,” Margo said as the dulcet concert wound down. “And as I told you, all the dead-end alleys and canals make it so hard to escape, violent crime is rare here.”
“Easy to say in the sunlight,” Anna replied. “You weren’t with me. When it’s deserted, the city changes and seems . . . sinister. I don’t buy that safe-as-a-church propaganda. The shadows had shadows. What about those murdered doges? And Sergio? Sometimes evil men—I mean, evil things happen here, too.”
Margo put her fork down. “All you heard were footsteps,” she said, as if she were explaining the law of gravity to Anna. “Those other people had histories here. You don’t have any enemies. What would this person have wanted, your purse, your passport? Maybe you just drank too much wine at Dudley’s.”
Anna felt the sting of betrayal. She wasn’t the one with a hangover. “That’s a little rich, coming from you just now.”
“What I’m dying to know,” said Margo in a smoky voice, “is where Roberto dashed off to. He asked questions about you, Anna, and left the party just after you did.”
“Maybe Roberto was following you, with lust in his heart, and those were his footsteps,” Angela said playfully. “Better ’fess up.”
“As a matter of fact, he did track me down—earlier,” Anna said. “I ended up pushing him away.”
Margo emitted a soft yelp. “I should have known.” She lit a cigarette and took a puff.
“He’s not my type,” Anna said.
“Speakin’ about Roberto,” Angela said, “he’s late.”
“I’ll call him,” Margo said, and disappeared inside the caffè.
“She still throws a hissy fit about her old boyfriends,” Angela said.
“Eighteen years later? Really, I have no interest in him. I’m still trying to escape from my husband. I came here to get away from it all, although my plan isn’t working.”
Angela slid the last bit of polenta into her mouth.
“You have so much to look forward to,” Anna said. “You’ll be seeing your family and your baby soon.” Anna had missed the exquisite rotundity of pregnancy. Just a soft heaviness that ceased too soon and became a stabbing pain.
“Why, thanks. It can’t come fast enough.”
Margo bounced into her chair. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. I caught him working.”
“That’ll give us time to hear more about Alessandro and his family,” Anna said.
Margo looked blank.
“You promised me.”
“Oh, all right.” Margo shook her finger at them. “This can go no further. As you can imagine, Alessandro became terribly upset when he came back from Milan and found his home empty. So upset that he had a huge fight with Gaetano, who accidentally fell down the stairs.”
“What did Gaetano have to do with it?” Anna asked.
“He let Gabriella walk out of the house. The man carried her bags! I can’t blame Alessandro for being angry.”
“Didn’t the police suspect him?” Anna asked.
“Sure. He had a motive: revenge, jealousy. But he also had an alibi and witnesses in Milan, businesspeople who had met with him. Alessandro’s not a cruel man. He gave his wife and daughter a huge funeral and buried them in the family crypt over on San Michele. That’s how the story of the ‘Gondola Murders,’ as the police calle
d them, ended.”
“And San Michele is exactly where?” asked Anna.
“On the back side of Venice. It’s the cemetery island,” Angela said.
“For most people, their bones can rest there under a gravestone for a number of years, then have to be dug up and sent to another island,” Margo said. “Burial space is impossible here.”
“So creepy.” Angela’s voice squeaked.
“Angela, when you’re dead, you’re dead. Who cares?” Margo shrugged.
“Betrayal can turn you inside out,” Anna said unexpectedly. “It can shatter you and change everything. All of a sudden, you realize that the world that you thought existed was only in your imagination.” Her skin felt prickly. She remembered how Jack’s model smirked if she happened to drop by his studio unannounced. And Sergio, how he threw back his head laughing with the young woman he had just kissed in Milan. Her voice grew loud. “Part of your goddamn identity, maybe the best, most loving and trusting part of you, just goes up in smoke. Leaving the rage, the hurt.”
The women looked at her, wide-eyed.
“Anna’s right,” Angela said. “It’s hard to tell what a person would do in the heat of the moment. Gabriella might have been laughin’ at him. His anger could have exploded. And his witnesses—if business people are greedy enough, you can always pay them off.”
“I heard Alessandro tried to put a spin on it,” Margo said, “that Gabriella had hired the gondolier to take her and her daughter on an outing. I don’t think many people bought it. At this point, of course, the tragedy is only a faint memory among a few Venetian aristocrats. Poor Alessandro. The proud Favier line stops with him. The plaster hands are all he has.”
“More than anything,” Angela said, “what surprises me is Gaetano stayin’ with him all these years. Talk about abuse.”
“Don’t you see?” said Margo. “They are like two trees that have grown together so they don’t fall over. Both are maimed.”
A Forgotten Place
Venetian Blood Page 15