Black Bridge (2 page)

The more the Contessa waxed, the more Urbino waned. All he could think of was what a disaster on horseback he had always been. And surely the Barone, despite his greater years, had never been cursed with an ailment as embarrassing as gout!

Urbino prepared himself for a long, uncomfortable session when the Contessa no sooner finished the one anecdote than she began another, this one about the Barone's brave rescue of his brother-in-law from the sea at Taormina.

He was therefore relieved when a woman in her late thirties came over to their table. It was Harriet Kolb, the Contessa's social secretary, a thin, unprepossessing woman with a receding chin. Her brown hair had recently been styled in stiff waves and she had added an uncharacteristic bit of flair to her usual brown cardigan and navy skirt in the form of a designer scarf and gold sea horse pin.

“Would you look through these pieces on the Barone for the
Gazzettino
, Barbara?”

She handed her a manila folder. The Contessa took out several sheets and a black-and-white photograph. She gave Urbino the photograph.

It was of the Barone Bobo at Gabriele d'Annunzio's home at Lago di Garda. He stood next to a cradle-coffin D'Annunzio had been fond of reclining in. The pose was self-conscious but it didn't detract from the Barone's striking looks.

“
Bellissimo
!” Harriet said and made a sound somewhere between a giggle and a whinny. “I can't wait to meet him. By the way, Urbino, you're not looking as fit as usual, if you don't mind my saying so. That gout attack a few weeks ago might have taken more out of you than you realize. Are you avoiding nightshade?”

“I hope so. Isn't that a poison—belladonna?”

Harriet gave a shrill, high laugh.

“Oh, avoid that at all costs! But only some nightshades are poisonous. Not potatoes, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes, although they might as well be for people like you and me! I stopped eating them in July. My joints are much better now.”

She flexed one of her elbows to demonstrate the results of avoiding the dreaded nightshade.

“My elbows used to be as pointed as daggers. They felt as if they—”

As Harriet ran on about nightshades and her joints, Urbino wondered how the woman could possibly be without one single eccentricity when it came to her work, as the Contessa claimed. The Contessa waited with a tolerant smile for her to finish, then handed back the folder.

“I'd better get these over to the
Gazzettino
then,” Harriet said. “There are some letters on the desk for you to sign. I'll post them in the morning.”

“I think Harriet has a crush on Bobo, don't you?” the Contessa said when the woman had left. “How you can be so impervious to his charm is beyond me!”

“But I haven't met him yet!”

“Neither has Harriet, and see how smitten she is! Oh, you're blind, Urbino! First with Oriana, and now Harriet.”

“Blind?”

“Blind to the mischievous little boy with arrows!” She looked fondly over at one of the bronze
amorini
. “You're missing so much!”

Her eyes were shining. If she was this way now, whatever would she be like when the Barone made his descent on Venice in all his talent and vigor?

“Oh, we're all going to have such a wonderful time together,
caro
!” the Contessa exclaimed. “Just you wait and see!”

Urbino had his doubts.

PART ONE

Murder on the Rialto

1

Wrapped in a canvas sheet and covered in one-hundred-and-ten-degree mud, Urbino lay on a gurney in one of the therapy rooms in Abano Terme. He felt as if he were in a secret room of the Marquis de Sade's château, surrounded as he was by antiseptic tiles, grotesque protrusions of spigots and hoses, and an ominous gaping drain in the floor. Only his face, chest, and right arm were free. The therapist had said he would be back in twenty minutes.

Urbino hoped so. Only five minutes had passed and he already felt like calling for help. Thank God for his free hand, which was intended to give the guests—never were they “patients”—the sense that they weren't completely restrained. He raised it to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead and tried to think pleasant thoughts.

He wasn't successful. How could he be, wrapped up like a corpse in a morgue? He was also dead tired, having tossed and turned for two nights in his overheated room, where a sulfurous odor had seeped under the door—the same sulfurous odor that was all around him now and that seemed to suffuse everything and everyone at the spa.

Why not just admit it? He had made a mistake. It would have been better to have checked into the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido or the Hassler Villa Medici down in Rome for a complete change of scene, but he'd stick things through for two more days. The Contessa wasn't expecting him back until then. In fact, she might not be that pleased to see him, occupied as she was with the Barone Bobo.

Two hours later, after a spell of sweating induced by the mud therapy that was supposed to “rid his body of its toxicity,” Urbino had a massage, then went to the pool. As he finished his last lap, he looked up to see Marco Zeoli's long, thin face, etched as it always seemed to be with fatigue. The assistant medical director of the spa held out a towel.

Zeoli was doing everything to make Urbino's stay as enjoyable as possible, in the hope that he would praise the spa to the Anglo-American community in Venice. If all went well for him, Zeoli, only forty-one, would soon be made chief medical director. He had been there for almost fifteen years, commuting the twenty-five miles from Venice, where he lived with his widowed mother.

“You seem in fine form, Urbino.”

Zeoli's cold, exact voice suited his severe look. He had always reminded Urbino of a figure out of a Goya painting. It was amusing, if not also a little disconcerting, that a man in his position didn't emanate more of an air of healthiness, unless it was to be found in the ever so faint whiff of the spa's salubrious sulfur that clung to his sallow skin.

“Not everyone comes here because of a problem, and yours is quite minor as far as these things go,” Zeoli quickly added. His professional eye made a quick examination of Urbino's right big toe as Urbino dried himself off. “Quite a few come just for rest and recreation—from as far away as England and Germany. That man and woman over there”—he indicated a late-middle-aged couple with round, healthy faces and reddish hair—“come all the way from Finland every year, and they're in the best of health. Remember that Abano's mud and thermal waters have drawn people since the time of the Romans. Maybe you can come back and work on your newest book. Our library is the best in Abano. If you have any problems or suggestions, let me know. Good day.”

Zeoli left.

As he sat in a poolside chair, Urbino thought about what Zeoli had said about the Romans and smiled to himself. The men and women in their white robes, in fact, did look a little like toga-clad Romans, especially an overweight, homely man taking off his robe at the other end of the pool. With his round, completely bald head and pendulous lower lip, he resembled a corrupt senator from the time of the Caesars. It was only his unmistakable aura of sorrow and preoccupation that softened the edges of the image. He caught Urbino staring at him and frowned.

Urbino turned his attention to
Fire
, D'Annunzio's novel about Venice, a fictionalized account of his affair with the actress Eleonora Duse. The hero was delivering a paeon to Venice at the Doges' Palace while his aging mistress gazed adoringly at him from the crowd. The scene was filled with passion and bombast, poetry and prophecy, which managed to be somehow both inspiring and ridiculous at the same time.

Despite all D'Annunzio's excesses, you could easily be drawn in, as Urbino was now. This was D'Annunzio's power, a power that the unattractive little man had exerted not only on the page but in the bedroom. All this made Urbino apprehensive about the Barone Casarotto-Re, who supposedly resurrected D'Annunzio's spirit, though obviously not his homely flesh.

“Excuse me, Signor Macintyre.” It was the pool attendant with a portable phone. “You have a call.”

“Urbino!” Urgency charged the Contessa's voice. “I hate to bother you in the midst of your mud”—her light laugh sounded strained—“but there's a problem. Everything is at sixes and sevens! Bobo is being threatened! You have to come back to Venice immediately and do something!”

“What's happened?”

“Have some sense! I can't go into detail over the phone. Come back to Venice. I'm counting on you.”

Urbino sighed. Suddenly, illogically, he didn't want to leave Abano. What was the Contessa pulling him back to? And what did it have to do with the Barone Bobo?

“All right, Barbara. The train will get me in at seven-fifteen. Have Milo meet me with the boat.”

Urbino could feel the Contessa's relief over the line.

“I'll make up for dragging you out of the mud like this,
caro
. I promise.”

2

When Urbino joined the Contessa in her
salotto blu
at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini, her face was becomingly flushed and the bridge of her nose was slightly sunburned, something she had never allowed to happen for as long as he had known her.

“Bobo is resting at the Gritti. He's been through so much in the past six hours, poor dear—and so have I! There we were at the Cipriani, having such a pleasant time with Oriana and John! Little did we know what was brewing for poor Bobo!” She sighed and shook her head, displaying brighter highlights in her hair than three days ago. “Would you make me another g-and-t?”

The Contessa's request and the empty glass she held out to him were the most vivid evidence she could have given of her strange state, for tea, mineral water, and wine were her accustomed drinks. Gin-and-tonic was for only special and not always the most auspicious occasions. Urbino knew very well that he should avoid alcohol because of his condition, but he felt he needed a drink to get him through whatever lay ahead. He fixed two gin-and-tonics. The Contessa took a sip of hers and narrowed her gray eyes as if she had just had a dose of medicine.

“Some envious, mean-spirited person is trying to undermine Bobo's success.”

She stared at Urbino for a few moments as if she suspected him of the deed.

“You mentioned that he received threats.”

“Not directly—not yet anyway. One was put in the
bocca di leone
at the Doges' Palace.”

Bocche dei leoni
—or Lion's Mouths—had been placed throughout the city during the iron rule of the notorious Council of Ten. Denunciations against citizens had been deposited in the marble boxes sculpted with lions and had often led to inquisitions, torture, and death. The ones at the Doges' Palace were among the few still left in the city, these days usually crammed with gum and cigarette wrappers.

“Here's a copy.”

She unfolded a white sheet the size of typewriter paper and handed it to him. Several sentences were printed in Italian in block letters in the middle of the sheet:

THE BARONE ROBERTO CASAROTTO-RE IS AS IMMORAL AS GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO, THE MAN HE USES FOR A MASK. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT D'ANNUNZIO IS DEAD AND CAN NO LONGER HARM ANYONE. THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT
.

“The original was on red paper, folded, and slipped into the
bocca
,” the Contessa explained. “The director of the Doges' Palace called the police. The
Gazzettino
got the same sheet in the mail with fifty thousand lire. The manager assumed it was meant to cover the cost of an ad but he didn't print it. He called the Questura, too.”

“What does the Barone say about it?” Urbino asked, handing the sheet back.

“Bobo is being brave, the dear man! He's trying to brush it off as a prank but he's upset. Who wouldn't be?”

“And he has no idea what it's about?”

“Absolutely none! How could he? There's nothing in those things but envy and mean-spiritedness! He's one of the most upright people I know. I have a nose for falseness”—she had a fine patrician nose which did, indeed, seem made for scenting out the undesirable—“and Bobo is as true as they come. He's being done an abominable injustice and I want you to get to the bottom of it. You will, won't you?”

“What did he say about that?”

“Oh, he's so self-sacrificing! He said there isn't any need for you—or anyone—to do anything, it will all blow over, but I don't believe him. What I
mean
,” she clarified, “is that, yes, I believe him, but he's wrong. It isn't over. He's trying to minimize things for my sake. But with you, he might tell the truth. I mean,” she repeated with a touch of impatience, “that with you he'll be more inclined to say how he really feels about this beastly situation!”

“Ah, but you're wrong, Barbara dear,” a deep male voice said in British-inflected English from the doorway. “What I tell you and what I tell others will always be the same. On that you can rest secure. You must be Barbara's dear friend Urbino. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

The Barone Casarotto-Re strode over and looked down at Urbino from his six-plus feet of height. He grasped Urbino's hand and gave it a firm shake.

3

Everything about the Barone Roberto Casarotto-Re seemed to shout with vigor—his clear dark eyes, his olive skin, his sinewy figure, even his white hair, which had receded but not noticeably thinned. The Barone's teeth, however, were perhaps too white and too regular to be real.

Before Urbino had time to realize what the Contessa was doing, she spirited away her gin-and-tonic to the drink table and rang for Lucia to bring in the tea tray. The Barone went over and kissed her cheek.

“You and Urbino should get to know each other a little before you settle down to talk about serious things, Bobo. Everything is going to be fine. Don't you worry.”