Liquid Desires

by Edward Sklepowich

  How was Urbino to interpret Annabella Brollo? He could understand why Flavia and Tina had joked about her being a witch when they were girls. There was something out of focus about her, and he suspected it wasn’t just the anisette she seemed to drink like baby’s milk. How much could he believe her? Not only had she accused her brother of being a liar, but she had also pointed a finger at Massimo Zuin. Urbino thought he knew what the argument between Flavia and Zuin had been about—Zuin’s star artist, Bruno Novembrini. It was fairly clear that money had changed hands, perhaps a very large sum. Urbino would have to speak with Massimo Zuin.

  When Urbino reached the calli on the other side of Campo Giacomo dell’Orio, the crowds thickened. Usually he preferred to be solitary, but this late morning, with the experience of the Palazzo Brollo so disturbingly fresh in his mind, he was happy to be among people who seemed troubled by nothing more than where they would go for lunch. He stopped in a bustling trattoria and had a plate of risotto and half a carafe of wine. He wasn’t all that hungry, but he felt that he wanted to do something that affirmed life. What better way than eating?

  No sooner did he think this than he thought of another way: sex. But because of Urbino’s obsession with Flavia Brollo’s murder, his mind didn’t rest there but inevitably flowed on to the final destination in this world of stone and water, dreams and desires—death.

  It was as if he saw the two words embracing there in front of his eyes as he looked through the windows of the trattoria. Sex and death. Those had been the words he had spoken out loud on the Ponte degli Alpini, taking the Contessa by surprise.

  Now, here in the trattoria, surrounded by the boisterous diners around him, Urbino realized what had been teasing his mind since that moment on the Ponte degli Alpini. It was as neon-bright as the sign in the trattoria window. It was a phrase that had flashed in electronic text before his eyes at the last Biennale, part of the disorienting barrage that had driven the Contessa from the exhibit room like Mrs. Moore from the Marabar Caves.

  FATHERS OFTEN USE TOO MUCH FORCE

  Lorenzo Brollo hadn’t mentioned this particular phrase from the exhibit he had despised. And neither had he mentioned two others that also burned their way into Urbino’s mind now in the busy trattoria:

  MURDER HAS ITS SEXUAL SIDE

  EVEN YOUR FAMILY CAN BETRAY YOU

  4

  “Brollo took Flavia’s stuff,” Mirko said as he sprawled on the threadbare sofa at the Casa Trieste. He was wearing his woolen skullcap and a green kimonolike robe, and he kept jiggling his foot. In the hall outside, a small, dark woman about forty was sweeping the floor. “He came a few hours after you left with a big brute of a guy. I kept some things for myself, though. This is hers”—Mirko indicated the robe—“but I always wore it more than she did.”

  The robe must have made him feel close to Flavia.

  “What else? Did Flavia leave any money here? Did you give it to Brollo?”

  Mirko shot him a quick look. The scratch was still faintly visible on his cheek.

  “Money? What money did she ever have? She lived mainly on handouts from Violetta and Bernardo. And didn’t I already tell you I never took any money for her room! Listen! Are you spying for Lorenzo or something? He gave me hell about the scrapbook. Swore up and down, said that he could get me in trouble with my license. All I kept was this robe and that book over there.”

  He indicated the biography of Eleonora Duse on the table.

  “About the scrapbook,” Urbino said. “Things were missing. Some clippings with photographs—photographs of the Conte and Contessa da Capo-Zendrini—maybe some other items as well.”

  Mirko seemed genuinely surprised.

  “I remember a lot of clippings with photographs,” Mirko said, running a finger under his nose. “Flavia pointed out some of the Conte once. There was one with his wife and another with several men. The Conte had his arm around the shoulders of a little man with round glasses. So those clippings were missing? I guess Flavia took them out.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “Of course not, but who else would have done it? You don’t think I did, do you? There are plenty of people who come in and out of here.”

  “Didn’t you put it in the safe?”

  Mirko’s foot stopped jiggling and a veiled look came into his eyes.

  “Maybe I should have, but I didn’t think it was anything valuable.”

  The cleaning woman peeked around the door. She looked nervous.

  “Excuse me for interrupting, Signor Mirko, but I couldn’t help hearing what you said. There was a strange old man in the parlor here on Tuesday afternoon when you were out. As old as Methuselah, he was. Must have been let in by one of the guests. Said he was looking for a room but that he didn’t think this was the kind of place for him. I don’t know how long he was here. I was cleaning one of the rooms upstairs. He left right after I came down.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Agata?”

  Mirko was obviously angry with her.

  “I—I’m sorry, Signor Mirko. You were at the Questura with the registration slips and I left before you got back. I forgot all about it till now. I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “It’s all right, Agata,” Urbino said. Mirko looked at him sharply, as if it wasn’t his place to excuse the woman for her laxness. “Exactly what did this man look like?”

  “Very small and thin—and old, as I said—maybe as old as eighty, but he had a lot of energy. I hope I have his energy if I get to be his age.”

  It sounded like Silvestro Occhipinti. Agata said the man had come to the Casa Trieste on Tuesday, the day Urbino was sure he had seen Occhipinti crossing the bridge in San Polo. Tuesday was also the day he had been mugged.

  After Agata left, Mirko remained silent for a few moments. Then, barely able to control his irritation, he said, “Does this old man sound like someone you know?”

  “No,” Urbino lied.

  “Well, do you think he could have taken those clippings from Flavia’s scrapbook?”

  “It’s possible. Did you notice a reproduction of a painting by Salvador Dalí in the scrapbook? It was on a page torn from the Guggenheim catalog.”

  Mirko got up and went behind the table that stood in front of the curtain drawn across his private quarters. He opened a drawer and took something out.

  “This page?” He handed Urbino the missing catalog page. “Flavia gave it to me two or three years ago.”

  After examining the page and seeing that there were no marks or writing on it, Urbino handed it back to Mirko.

  “Why?”

  “Because she knew I liked it. I don’t mean the painting you’re talking about—but the one on the other side. The one by Yves Tanguy. Ever since I was a teenager I liked his stuff. It looks like things I used to see in my own head when I was—was ‘expanding my consciousness,’ as we used to say back then! Before Flavia’s mother died we used to go to the Guggenheim, sometimes with Tina Zuin. They would go to look at the Dalí. I would look at this one here”—he pointed to Tanguy’s The Sun in Its Casket—“and the three or four other ones they have by Tanguy. I felt as if I were on a trip! He was probably on something when he painted them!”

  “I’m surprised that you didn’t tell me about it when I was looking at the catalog.”

  “Don’t try to make anything of it, Macintyre!” Mirko slapped the page down on the cluttered desk. “I didn’t even think about it at the time.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Hard to believe or not, it’s the truth!”

  It was completely possible, Urbino supposed, that a mind clouded by drugs could have forgotten about the missing page. What had Brollo said? That Mirko had probably not made a clear-minded decision in decades?

  “Do you still have the catalog?”

  “I told you that Brollo took just about everything.”

  Mirko gave Urbino a resentful glare, furtive and sullen.

  “Is there anyt
hing else you haven’t told me?” Urbino asked. “It’s in your best interests to tell me everything you know.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that? I’ve got nothing to hide! I’ve been up-front with you. My God! Brollo comes here like he owns the place and throws all this money at me. I took it. I’m no fool. Brollo says the money’s for Flavia, but I could tell he wanted me to keep my mouth shut. Even if I hadn’t already told you what I know, I would tell you everything now no matter if Brollo likes it or not! Listen, Macintyre. All this hasn’t been easy on me, you know. I cared for Flavia. I loved her.”

  Tears seldom make a person more attractive and Mirko, homely to begin with, was no exception. He took out a handkerchief.

  “She was the only person who really cared for me. The only one! Do you know what that means to someone like me?”

  Mirko wiped his face. He shrugged and gave an embarrassed smile.

  “I know what I look like, Macintyre. And I know what people think of me. When you’re not attractive, they treat you differently. It’s as if you’re living on a separate planet. But Flavia made me feel special. Now all I have is this.”

  He threw out his thin arms, indicating the walls of his pensione. His face clouded, and he lowered his arms. What schemes had Mirko been involved in to keep his pensione solvent and to keep himself supplied with drugs? Urbino thought of Flavia and the money she had got from Massimo Zuin.

  “Is Annabella Brollo a frequent visitor here?” Urbino asked suddenly.

  “Annabella Brollo? Why should she come here? Flavia never got along with her.”

  “Not to see Flavia. To see you. She was slipping into the pensione when I was leaving the first time I came here.”

  “Well, maybe she did come that day, but it was the first and only time.”

  “I don’t think so. I think she comes very often. She just told me that she overheard an argument between Flavia and Massimo Zuin at the door of the pensione. Do you know anything about it?”

  Mirko seemed genuinely puzzled, screwing up his thin, ugly face. He dabbed at the end of his nose with the handkerchief.

  “The only argument I ever overheard that had to do with Flavia was the one at Lago di Garda, and I’ve already told you about it. If Flavia and Massimo Zuin had some words together, I never heard them. Maybe I was at the Questura with the registration slips. Flavia never mentioned it to me.”

  “Why does Annabella Brollo come here?”

  “She—she wants things from me. Something to help her sleep. She has insomnia. I give her some of my sleeping pills. Don’t get me in trouble, please,” the man pleaded. “It’s nothing more than that.”

  “I’m not interested in what pills you might have given Annabella Brollo. But speaking of pills, what about the ones the police found here among Flavia’s things?”

  “What about them? I’ve already told you that I don’t know where she got them.”

  “Didn’t she get them from you?”

  “From me? You’re crazy! It must have been some doctor.”

  “Perhaps. Did you ever see her take any of those pills?”

  “See her?” Mirko looked confused. “People don’t always take their medication in front of other people.”

  “True enough.”

  In the silence that followed, Mirko seemed pensive, as if he were weighing various possibilities.

  “You’re trying to get me into trouble,” Mirko eventually said with a sniffle. “Even the suspicion that I could have had anything to do with those pills Flavia was taking could make things rough for me. I can’t get into any trouble about drugs. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I would think that you’d be more careful, Signor Mirko, especially after what happened to your father. Yes, I know how he died. Drugs can be dangerous.”

  The fear in Mirko’s face seemed more genuine now than it had a few moments before. Urbino stared at him. Gradually, the fear was replaced by a lopsided smile, exposing his yellowed teeth. Despite the smile, however, there was still a guarded look to Mirko’s face.

  “I’m as careful as I can be, Signor Macintyre. We all have our little vices, no?”

  For a few brief seconds Mirko looked like a mischievous urchin. Tina Zuin had said that Mirko could be charming in his own way, and perhaps he had been ten years ago when she had dated him.

  When Urbino asked Mirko if he knew that Tina Zuin and Bruno Novembrini were having a relationship, Mirko seemed relieved at the change of topic.

  “Sure,” Mirko said. “It just goes to show you what a bastard that Novembrini is. They were probably even carrying on when Flavia and Novembrini were together.”

  “Did you give Flavia advice about her relationships?”

  Again Mirko gave his crooked smile.

  “Like brotherly advice? I suppose I couldn’t help it.”

  Urbino tried to detect something other than fraternal affection in Mirko’s face before Mirko took his handkerchief from the pocket of Flavia’s robe again and wiped his nose.

  5

  After leaving the Casa Trieste, Urbino set out for the Danieli Hotel. He had promised to help Eugene move to the seclusion of the Cipriani Hotel on the Island of Giudecca for the last few days of his stay.

  On his walk through the thronged calli, Urbino thought about Ladislao Mirko, Occhipinti, and the Lago di Garda argument.

  Mirko’s fear could almost be smelled like the rancid odor the man threw off, but was it fear of getting into trouble with the police because of drugs? If that happened, he could lose the Casa Trieste. Who knew? Maybe his drug habit had already seriously endangered his pensione and he was hanging on by only his dirty fingernails. Brollo had said that Flavia had given Mirko money. Could Mirko be feeling the pinch more now that Flavia was dead—and, with her, her generosity? There was still the question of the money that Zuin had given Flavia. Had Flavia given it all to Tina and the Riccis? Brollo had given Mirko a large sum, ostensibly for Flavia’s expenses, but Mirko said he had been trying to buy his silence. If Brollo had, were there other things Mirko could tell him about Brollo that he hadn’t told him yet?

  Then there was Silvestro Occhipinti. He wasn’t a complete innocent in this matter of Flavia’s murder. Urbino now knew one of the things Alvise’s old friend was hiding—a visit to the Casa Trieste after Flavia’s death. Agata had described a man who was either Occhipinti or someone who looked and acted very much like him.

  Had Occhipinti taken the clippings of himself and Alvise from Flavia’s scrapbook? Perhaps he had gone to the pensione more than once. Occhipinti had been in Venice at the time of Flavia’s death and, considering his cold, he might very well have been out in the storm on the last night she had been seen alive.

  It would be a double blow to the Contessa to have to face both Occhipinti’s villainy, no matter what the motive, and Alvise’s betrayal. Although the argument at Lago di Garda and Graziella Gnocato’s revelation of what Regina Brollo had told Flavia about Alvise in no way came close to proving that the Conte was Flavia’s father, they didn’t disprove it either. How far would Occhipinti go in protecting Barbara and Alvise’s reputation?

  As Urbino waited for Eugene in the Danieli bar with its smell of leather and its air of expensive comfort, he went over the argument that Mirko said he and Flavia had overheard at Lago di Garda: Violetta’s challenge to Brollo to face reality and admit that Flavia wasn’t his daughter. The mention of Alvise’s name. Regina’s cry of despair. Brollo’s rejection of Violetta. The slap.

  Yes, the slap. But who had slapped whom? Mirko had assumed that Brollo slapped Violetta, but perhaps Regina had slapped her, or one of the women had slapped Brollo. Or Brollo had slapped his wife. Mirko could be telling the truth but only the truth as he had heard it, not as he had seen it. There could be a big difference.

  Not long after the Lago di Garda argument, Regina had killed herself. More than ten years later her daughter was murdered.

  It made sense that Regina would have confided in her sister about Alvis
e, especially since Violetta had once gone out with him. Regina might even have taunted her sister with it, making Violetta furious enough to reveal everything to Lorenzo. According to Graziella Gnocato, Violetta often used to rave against the Contessa. Now, however, Violetta was keeping her silence. Perhaps her desire to have revenge upon the Contessa was weaker than her fear of Lorenzo.

  Urbino could understand fearing Brollo. The man was in control, yes, but once he let himself go, it could be violent. “Fathers often use too much force,” Urbino repeated to himself.

  He had to talk with Annabella. She had been living in the Palazzo Brollo since Regina had killed herself. Surely she could tell him about Flavia’s life behind those forbidding walls. Hadn’t she already said, at the door of the Palazzo Brollo, that her brother was lying—that, in fact, he always lied? If he could unlock her lips, what could they tell him?

  6

  Eugene had said he would be satisfied with nothing less than a gondola to the Cipriani, so here they were being rowed across the stretch of water between the Doge’s Palace and the Island of Giudecca. For part of the distance they were accompanied, almost stroke for stroke, by another gondola with a reclining couple being serenaded by a dark little man with a mandolin.

  But for the rest of the trip their gondola was like a black swan among Leviathans as it made its way to the Cipriani at the tip of the Island of Giudecca. Eugene’s face became tense whenever they were washed by the wake of a boat, but he said nothing and pretended to be enjoying every minute of it.

  Urbino felt a little like a pasha against plump Oriental cushions and fantasized about being rowed to a remote part of the lagoon, far away from the madness of high-season Venice and the swirl of questions surrounding Flavia’s life and death. Perhaps when this business about Flavia and Alvise was all over, in whatever way it might happen, he could redeem the summer in Asolo with the Contessa, who might need his companionship more than ever. They could take day trips throughout the Veneto in her Bentley, haunt the Caffè Centrale, and seclude themselves in her gardens for long, restorative afternoons.