Liquid Desires

by Edward Sklepowich

  Black crepe encircled a death notice on the front door of the building. In stark letters beneath a not-too-recent black-and-white photograph of a smiling Flavia it said:

  Saturday, 25 July

  Returned to the House of the Father

  The good soul of

  FLAVIA MARIA REGINA BROLLO

  26 years old

  We announce this with profound sorrow, the father Lorenzo Brollo and the aunts Annabella Brollo and Violetta Grespi Volpi

  The date was that of the discovery of Flavia’s body, not her probable day of death sometime on Thursday night.

  Urbino pushed the brass bell. He waited several minutes and pushed it again, but there was no response this time either. Looking up again at the somewhat forbidding building, he started back to the Palazzo Uccello.

  Urbino’s nerves must have been a little on edge because after a few minutes he felt that someone was following him. It was such an uncharacteristic way to feel that he took special notice of it. Footsteps belonging to no one visible kept pace behind him and at times seemed to come from directly ahead. When he stopped, so it seemed did the footsteps, and no one appeared. He was in the network of alleys that twisted between San Giacomo dell’Orio and Campo San Polo, one of the more labyrinthine parts of the city that was dark and dank even at midday, like now. Someone who knew the city better than you could easily outwit you and be following you one minute and waiting for you around a blind corner the next. Urbino knew his way, but he wasn’t invulnerable. He reminded himself of the rash of muggings in this very area.

  But if he was being followed, it might not even be by a mugger. It might be by someone who wanted to frighten him away from asking any more questions about Flavia.

  Urbino quickened his stride and felt better once he became part of the corso della gente that flowed, eddied, and became periodically dammed at intersections and on the steps of the Rialto Bridge. He didn’t feel completely secure, however, until the door of the Palazzo Uccello was closed firmly behind him. He was sweating, and it wasn’t only because of the heat.

  The phone started ringing as he went up the staircase. When he picked it up, an unfamiliar male voice asked in precise British English, “Am I speaking to Signor Urbino Macintyre? Yes?” The voice was well modulated and commanding despite its lowness. “This is Lorenzo Brollo. Would it be possible for us to have a talk?”

  Urbino could hardly have been more surprised. He was also a little uneasy. Had Brollo seen him outside the Palazzo Brollo? Could Brollo himself—or someone Brollo knew—have been following him?

  “A talk?”

  This was exactly what Urbino wanted, but he was so taken off guard that all he could do was repeat what Brollo had said.

  “Exactly, Signor Macintyre. Tomorrow morning at eleven?”

  Brollo didn’t wait for Urbino to say he could make it. He just hung up—and, Urbino couldn’t help but notice, without giving his address.

  Urbino changed his shirt, which was damp with perspiration, and then sat in the study with Serena on his lap. He tried to make some sense of Brollo’s call. The man’s voice echoed in Urbino’s mind. It was the kind of voice that would brook little resistance. It belonged to a man accustomed to having his way. And he was having it with Urbino, wasn’t he? Urbino was going to see Brollo at Brollo’s request and at a time the man himself had decided on. It didn’t make Urbino feel comfortable at all.

  Puzzling over Brollo’s possible motivations for setting an appointment for tomorrow morning, Urbino went down to a room on the piano terreno that was bare except for a large table and various chemicals and implements. This was where he occasionally restored oil paintings, something he had learned to do in preparation for a biography on a Venetian family of restorers. He had become competent at restoration, and it both soothed and gratified him to bring even a small patch of canvas back to its original freshness.

  Last month the Contessa had given him a portrait by Bartolomeo Veneto that had hung in a room now being done over at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. It was an engagement portrait in semiprofile of a young lady of Cremona painted in 1542. She was dressed in a red velvet dress with puffy sleeves and an embroidered top, a large, padded turban, pearl eardrops, a necklace of amber beads, and delicate leather gloves with reversed cuffs.

  He had already gone over it with cotton swabs dampened with saliva and mineral spirit and was in the process of removing the old yellow varnish with poultices, leaving only a thin layer of the original varnish. He was now working on one of the long corkscrew curls from her temple to her chin. He cleaned carefully and methodically, marveling, as he always did, to see the original colors coming out.

  As he worked, he couldn’t get Lorenzo Brollo’s unexpected phone call out of his mind. Violetta must have told Brollo about Urbino’s visit earlier that day. How close was the relationship between Violetta and Brollo? Italians usually didn’t distinguish between blood relatives and in-laws. Violetta had praised Brollo, saying he had treated Flavia like a princess, but she certainly hadn’t had any good words to spare for Brollo’s sister. What was her name? Annabella. The sister with the passion for flowers, the unmarried sister who had devoted her life to her brother ever since his wife, Regina, died. Violetta had said that she wouldn’t be surprised if Annabella were the source of the story about Alvise. Annabella, she said, had done everything she could to turn Flavia against Violetta and against her own mother. But Violetta could very well be trying to turn Urbino against Annabella, even before he met her.

  Brollo’s call had to be related to his visit to Violetta. Perhaps Violetta and he were acting in concert in some way—Violetta to protect her sister’s reputation and Brollo to save face. The voice that had come so imperiously over the telephone belonged to a man who wanted to be in control of appearances.

  Urbino continued to work on the corkscrew curl. The color of the Cremonese lady’s hair was only slightly darker than Flavia’s had been, and the turban on her head, although much larger and ornate, reminded him of the one Flavia wore in Nude in a Funeral Gondola. He stared at the lady’s face, and for several moments it became Flavia’s, strangely serene and yet just as strangely imploring.

  Before he saw Brollo tomorrow morning, he should go back to the Casa Trieste and ask Ladislao Mirko some more questions. Maybe he could find out why Flavia had preferred to stay there instead of her own home, and could get some insight into the relationship between her and Mirko. He should also see Bruno Novembrini again. Urbino had to go to Brollo’s armed with more information about Flavia than he already had. Neither Mirko nor Novembrini had been eager to talk about Flavia last week, but now, with Flavia dead, they might be in a different frame of mind.

  Urbino looked at his watch. It was almost three. He could be on the other side of the Grand Canal at the Casa Trieste to see Ladislao Mirko in less than an hour.

  Before he left for the Casa Trieste, however, he called Bruno Novembrini and told him he had some questions about Flavia Brollo. Novembrini asked him to hold for a few moments. Urbino could hear a muffled conversation on the other end. When Novembrini came back on the line, he said in his deep voice, “Massimo seems to think it might be a good idea if I talked to you about Flavia. Maybe he’s afraid if I hold things in I’ll get blocked and then where will much of his income go?” Novembrini laughed, but Urbino felt it was less for Urbino’s hearing than Massimo Zuin’s. “Shall we say seven-thirty in Campo Santa Margherita?” Novembrini named a café.

  11

  As Urbino went up the dark staircase of the Casa Trieste, Ladislao Mirko, wearing his black skullcap, peered down at him. The thin, homely man was paler than he had been last week, and the two gaping holes that were his nostrils seemed even larger. A scratch marred his cheek and there were dark rings beneath his dull, lifeless eyes.

  “Hello, Signor Macintyre,” Mirko said in his nasal voice. “Flavia told me who you must be. She said I should be nice to you.”

  Sniffling as if from a cold, Mirko led him along the upper h
all to a dark, windowless room filled with a few pieces of furniture. A calendar and a map of Venice were tacked on the walls. At the back of the room a large wooden table, with a tabby cat curled up on it, faced the door. Behind the table was a curtain on a runner, drawn partway and revealing the edge of a stove.

  “Sit down,” Mirko said, going behind the desk.

  Mirko gave off a rancid odor. Urbino couldn’t tell if it was his breath or his body—or both. Whatever it was, Urbino wished he weren’t in such close quarters with him.

  “You know Flavia Brollo is dead, don’t you?” Urbino asked him, sitting down on the sofa.

  “Yes, I know she’s dead,” Mirko said, touching the end of his nose with several fingers.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  Mirko had just said that Flavia had told him to be “nice” to Urbino. Urbino hoped that this meant that he would get some answers from him.

  “Last Thursday night about seven-thirty,” Mirko said without any hesitation.

  Commissario Gemelli had said that Flavia had been dead by no later than midnight Thursday. Mirko was giving Urbino the first piece of information he had about where Flavia had been the night she died. He hoped that the Contessa was having success with Corrado Scarpa. Urbino desperately needed a full chronology of Flavia’s last night.

  “Wednesday, when she came back from Asolo,” Mirko continued in his nasal voice, “I told her that a man with an American accent was asking about her. She said it must be you, the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini’s friend, and that I should tell you the truth if you ever asked me anything again. Flavia loved the truth. She hated secrets.”

  “You were with Flavia at the Contessa’s villa in Asolo.”

  Urbino still wasn’t sure whether Mirko recognized him from that afternoon.

  “Yes. We were good friends—for fifteen years!” The whine was back in his voice. “That’s a long time! We looked after each other, like brother and sister.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “I tried to convince her not to go, I really did, but once she got an idea in her head, you couldn’t stop her. She wanted to tell the Contessa that the Conte was her father.”

  Mirko scooped up the cat, pulled the table drawer open, and took out a small metal object. He held the cat tightly in his lap as it squirmed and cried. Pushing the pad of one of the cat’s paws to extend its claws, Mirko started to trim the claws with a clipper.

  “You have to do this every so often,” Mirko explained with a little laugh, “or else something like this happens.”

  He indicated the scratch on his cheek.

  “I know,” Urbino said. “I have a cat myself and quite a few scratches.” He watched Mirko trim the cat’s claws for a few moments and then said, “But why did Flavia think the Conte da Capo-Zendrini was her father?”

  Violetta Volpi claimed not to know where the idea had come from—unless, she said, from Annabella. But perhaps Mirko, who had been Flavia’s friend for fifteen years, was in a better position to know. There were many things that one would share with a close friend but never with a relative.

  Mirko smiled at Urbino, revealing several missing side teeth. “You won’t believe me when I tell you.” He paused, clearly savoring Urbino’s anticipation. “It was Flavia’s own mother who told her. It’s the truth! Flavia told me.”

  Mirko continued to clip the cat’s claws. His own nails, broken and encrusted with grime, could have used some attention themselves.

  “Yes, that’s what Flavia said, and she never lied to me. She said that her mother had been driven into another man’s arms by Lorenzo and his scheming sister. She told me two or three years after we got to know each other. She said she trusted me enough to tell me.”

  Urbino wondered if it was the memory of Flavia’s trust that made Mirko furrow his brow the way he now did. The cat howled and tried to escape, but Mirko got a firmer grip and started on another paw.

  “And there’s something else,” Mirko said, not looking up at Urbino. “An argument Flavia and I overheard the summer her mother died. I was visiting Flavia at the villa they were renting on Lago di Garda even though Lorenzo wasn’t keen on Flavia hanging around older guys—or any guys at all. She was fourteen. Flavia and I were walking past her mother’s bedroom when we heard Lorenzo, Flavia’s mother, and her Zia Violetta arguing. Violetta shouted to Lorenzo, ‘Flavia’s not your daughter! You know it’s true. Why don’t you admit it!’ Then we heard her saying something about the Conte da Capo-Zendrini. There was a slap and Violetta started to cry. Flavia’s mother was crying, too, and called out Lorenzo’s name, kind of shocked. Lorenzo told Violetta to leave them alone. Flavia and I got out of there fast. Her Zia Annabella was coming up the stairs. After that time at Lago di Garda Flavia would ask me to go over the argument again and again, to tell her what I remembered, and she would always nod her head. ‘He’s not my father,’ she would say. ‘I always knew he wasn’t.’ Oh, there’s little doubt that the Contessa’s husband was Flavia’s father. Even so, I told her not to go to see the Contessa. I was afraid of what the Contessa might do to her—and to me.”

  When Flavia had given Mirko permission to tell Urbino the truth—if, in fact, she had—had she meant he should confide all this? Urbino asked himself. And did it make sense that Flavia would have gone in search of “proof” that Alvise da Capo-Zendrini was her father if she had learned it from her mother? Perhaps, however, Flavia needed something more tangible than the word of a dead woman. She might have been seeking out a living witness. But what about Mirko himself? He might have been the “proof” she had gone out to get.

  Something else puzzled Urbino. If Flavia had believed for over ten years that the Conte da Capo-Zendrini was her father, why had she only started to act on it recently?

  “When you saw Flavia on Thursday night, did she say anything about having some kind of proof that the Conte da Capo-Zendrini was her father?”

  Mirko looked up, his dull eyes returning Urbino’s gaze for a few moments.

  “She had her mother’s word. She believed that more than anything else. And there was what we heard at Lago di Garda.”

  “On Thursday evening did she ask you to tell the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini what you both had heard at Lago di Garda?”

  “She said that I might have to. Flavia was very upset that evening. After about ten or fifteen minutes she rushed out to see her Zia Violetta. I never saw her again.”

  “But didn’t you wonder where she was when you didn’t see her for several days? And especially when she was so upset? She stayed here with you most of the time.”

  “Not with me, but in the pensione,” Mirko corrected, sniffling and touching his nose. “Sometimes she’d go off for days—even weeks. She’d spend them with an American woman in Asolo or with that pompous artist Novembrini. She liked to say that her home was everywhere and nowhere.”

  “So Flavia had her own room here,” Urbino said, looking pointedly at the drawn curtain. “But you don’t have many rooms to rent out, do you? It must have cut into your profits to have Flavia take up one of the rooms—unless she paid you, of course.”

  “She never gave me any money, and I didn’t want any! Money had nothing to do with our friendship.”

  “Maybe you got the price of the room from her in some other way,” Urbino risked saying.

  “Listen to me!” Mirko said angrily. “Flavia and I were only friends—like brother and sister, as I said! All I ever wanted from her was her friendship!”

  “It’s just that I need to know as much about Flavia as I can. Not only for the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini’s sake but for Flavia’s, too. Hasn’t it occurred to you that she might have been murdered? She drowned, but there were wounds on her forehead. She might have been hit first.”

  Mirko’s fear was as palpable as his odor.

  “Murdered! Where did you get a crazy idea like that! Who would want to murder Flavia? Everybody loved her.” Fear still showed on Mirko’s face as he shook his head. “You’re wrong.
Flavia talked about suicide so much it scared me. She was fascinated with it.” Mirko was talking more quickly now. “Probably because her mother killed herself, right? Don’t they say that children usually end up doing the same thing? After her mother killed herself Flavia used to say that her mother was at peace. It would sometimes pop into my head that she might do the same thing—yes, even last week when she left so upset. But what could I do?”

  Mirko released the cat and watched it as it ran from the room. When Mirko met Urbino’s eyes, the fearful look was still there but also something else, something very much like guilt. Was Mirko considering his own culpability if his friend of more than fifteen years had killed herself and he hadn’t been in a position to help her?

  “What do you know about the medication that was found among Flavia’s things?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you ever see her take it?”

  “Many times. She said it helped her be happier.”

  “What doctor prescribed it for her?”

  “I didn’t know everything about Flavia! Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know who the doctor was. Maybe that was why there was no label on the bottle.”

  “So you know there wasn’t any label?”

  “Of course. I saw that bottle plenty of times. And others just like it,” he quickly added.

  “Did you ever ask her why there was no label?”

  “What’s going on here? The police took that bottle and that’s that. Those pills show that Flavia wasn’t on an even keel, don’t they? Why worry about the label?”