Farewell to the Flesh (24 page)

There was a restrained excitement in her voice. What could possibly have come up in the hour and a half since they had last spoken? He had some more people he wanted to see this afternoon. It would be difficult to see them all and be at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini at five.

“I'll try, Barbara.”

“Don't sound so eager,
caro
! I hope it's not a duty you're performing. Don't think that we Venetian widows are wandering around from room to room in our palazzi rearranging the bibelots and turning the pages of
Casa Vogue
waiting for our entourages of lean, young—or should I say leanish and youngish—American men to show up. I want to see you not for my own misunderstood self but for your own dear sake. This is a completely altruistic appeal. Come at five. I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?”

There was no further clarification. The Contessa had already hung up. He handed the receiver back to the sister, who was looking up at him curiously after this almost entirely one-sided conversation.

8

Ignazio Rigoletti was still at home after the midday meal. He was a dark muscular man in his late forties with an intense, hawklike face. Urbino and Rigoletti were sitting in the dark, underfurnished living room above the Corte Santa Scolastica. Rigoletti had been napping and his face was still rumpled from sleep. He yawned several times as he sprawled on the sofa under a collection of photographs of his days as a rowing champion. Rather than having a cup of coffee, which might have helped make him more alert, however, he was sharing a bottle of red wine with Urbino—and doing most of the talking and drinking himself.

“This area has changed during the last three years since I moved in. We didn't have all this business of
finocchi
coming in to have their bit of dirty fun. I lost my son almost ten years ago. He was a fine specimen of a man, nothing like the ones who come into the Calle Santa Scolastica. I used to think that they were foreigners, tourists—Xenia, my ex-wife, said they were—but I hate to admit we have more than enough of these so-called men living right here in Venice. Things have changed so much I wouldn't be surprised if six of them joined together and rowed a
caorlina
for the Regatta. Why not? They let women row in the
mascarete
!”

He shook his head in disapproval and took a sip of his wine. Urbino's glance went automatically to the photographs above Rigoletti, where he could make out much younger versions of the man, smiling confidently and proudly. A carefree, smiling Xenia Campi had her arm around a boy of about thirteen, both of them standing next to Rigoletti as he held a trophy in his hands. Another showed Xenia Campi on the Lido with her son and a petite dark-haired girl. One photograph seemed to be of the golden Bucintoro, the ceremonial barge that had carried the body of Pope Pius X in his crystal coffin down the Grand Canal. Urbino asked Rigoletti if it was.

“It certainly is. I helped row it.”

Rigoletti's eyes seemed to be looking at something beyond the room. He raised his glass in an ostensible salute to this past honor. Urbino did the same and took a sip of the wine. He realized that it was a mistake, however, to encourage Rigoletti to talk about his rowing days. He might not get the information he wanted until it was too late for him to be at the Contessa's at five. There was no question in his mind that Rigoletti would have willingly delayed returning to his job as a delivery bargeman for the sake of reminiscence.

Urbino put the conversation back on the track by mentioning that Commissario Gemelli had told him that Rigoletti had seen two men in the Calle Santa Scolastica the night of the English photographer's murder.

“Two
finocchi
, of that I'm sure,” Rigoletti said scornfully. “I didn't recognize either of them from the
calle
or the neighborhood. One of them was coming out when I was turning in. We practically bumped into each other but he was as cool as you could imagine. Just kept right on smiling! Hardly a flicker of surprise or worry on his pretty face. Someone like that could probably have just come from stabbing a man to death and act and look as if he were on his way to Mass! I tell you, Signor Macintyre, appearances are deceiving, though
he
looked enough like what he was to leave no doubt in my mind. He probably spends hours in front of the mirror to get himself to look so good.” He grinned. “Well, he wasn't looking so good this morning at the Questura.”

“You saw him at the Questura?”

“I went there to look at the drawings the artist made from my descriptions, and there in the flesh was the dark-haired guy I saw coming out of the Calle Santa Scolastica.”

It must have been after Urbino had finished talking with Gemelli and was on his way to the Casa Crispina.

“Didn't look at all as cool and collected as he did the night I saw him. They brought him into another room. An Italian, he was. I guess the police have a list of these people. I hope they do. In a little while I'll be looking at some more police photographs from Rome and then I'm going to the Casa Crispina with the Commissario.” He sighed. “Maybe I'll be lucky and Xenia won't be there. She'll sure as hell start in on me about something.”

“What about the light-haired man you saw coming into the Calle Santa Scolastica after you found the body?”

Rigoletti shook his head.

“I haven't seen anyone who looks like him. They had me go through the photographs in their books, also loose ones like snapshots.”

“Did you see anyone else suspicious the night of the murder?”

“Anybody wearing a costume or a mask looks damn suspicious to me. I saw plenty of them. There was a whole bunch coming up from the Riva degli Schiavoni, laughing and passing a big bottle of wine back and forth. I went to the restaurant in the Calle degli Albanesi to call the police, the place where the young kids hang out. You should see the kids in there! Some of them have their heads shaved. Now why would a guy want to go and do that? And the girls! They might not have been wearing costumes but they weren't wearing normal clothes either. My son never hung around places like that. Neither did his girlfriend, although I hear she's changed since those days.”

“Why didn't you call the police from here?”

Rigoletti's face betrayed a certain tension as he looked quickly at the telephone on a stand next to Urbino's chair.

“It was quicker to go to the restaurant.”

Urbino got up to look more closely at the photographs of Rigoletti's rowing days. Only when he was about to leave did he mention Porfirio.

“Good riddance! He came to the end he deserved, too, just like that scum down in the Calle Santa Scolastica! Broke his neck, didn't he? Well, he broke what was left of Xenia's heart when he forced us out of our home. Made me look like less of a man, too, when we had to live in one ground-floor room in the Castello. Maybe there's some justice in life if we wait long enough. I just hope Buffone suffered before he died, the way my Marco did.”

9

Next Urbino went to the restaurant in the Calle degli Albanesi that Rigoletti had made his call from. It was little more than a small snack bar with booths and a counter in the back. A television beamed down from a corner above the counter. It was crowded with youths, most of them not in costume. Loud music competed with the video music program on the television. Smoke was thick in the air.

A young woman was painting a boy's face as his friends watched and laughed. She looked vaguely familiar and for a moment he thought she might be the girl in the Piazza who had pointed him out to Leo and the other boys, the girl Xenia Campi was trying to interest Giuseppe in. But she gave him only a quick glance and turned quickly back to her work. He must be mistaken.

Urbino went up to the counter and asked the waitress, her black hair cut at oblique angles, if she had been working the night the English photographer was murdered.

She shook her head.

“Do you know anyone who was here that night?”

“Lupo,” she shrilled out above the noise. “This man wants to talk with you.”

A tall, thin young man with closely cropped hair dyed blond came from the back. It looked as if he had black eyeliner on. “What do you want? Are you with the police?”

“No.”

“You're not Italian, are you?” he said, picking up on Urbino's slight accent.

“No, but I live here in Venice,”

“So what do you want with me?”

“The girl tells me you were working here the night they found the man in the Calle Santa Scolastica.”

Instead of answering, Lupo stared back at him.

“I was wondering if you noticed anything unusual that night.”

“What's it to you if I did? I've already talked to the police. It was very busy here that night. It's
Carnevale
. I didn't know anything was wrong until that man who lives in the Corte Santa Scolastica came in to call the police. He has a problem, that one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Always complaining about the music, about the kids who hang out here, about how we're weird and not normal. He should talk! He's an old relic. We like to have our fun with him.”

He returned to his friends. On the way out Urbino looked for the young woman painting faces. She had left. As he was going down the Calle degli Albanesi toward the Riva degli Schiavoni, he heard footsteps behind him.

“Excuse me, signore, you were asking Lupo about the night they found the man in the Calle Santa Scolastica?”

Urbino turned to see an emaciated boy about eighteen.

“Do you know something?”

“I might,” he said, looking nervously behind him and running his tongue over his lower lip.

Urbino knew what he was dealing with and held out a ten-thousand-lira note. The boy frowned and Urbino took out another. He grabbed them and stuffed them into his filthy jeans.

“So?” Urbino prompted.

“I was in the place that night. A man with short light hair came in about ten o'clock. He was by himself. He had a drink but he stayed by the door, looking out, as if he was looking for someone or expecting someone to come along. He didn't pay much attention to anybody in here. He was young, younger than you, but not young like the kids who hang around the restaurant. He stayed for about ten minutes. I went out a little while after he did. I saw him going down toward the Calle Santa Scolastica. And there was another thing.”

He paused and licked his lower lip again. Urbino gave him another ten thousand lire.

“He was like you,” the boy said with an air of triumph.

“Like me? What do you mean?”

“He was an American. He spoke Italian with an American accent. His Italian wasn't good, not like yours, but he was an American just like you.”

He went back up the
calle
to the restaurant.

10

A few minutes later, in front of Harry's Bar, Urbino was confronted with the sight of Xenia Campi thrusting flyers into the hands of the people pouring off the vaporetti.

“Turn around, go back to where you came from!” she shouted in Italian. “Venice isn't your playground. I'm speaking to you Italians as well as to you foreigners. Venice won't take it anymore. Venice
can't
take it anymore. You're all murderers! Cities and civilizations can die just like people.”

She pushed a flyer at Urbino before she recognized him.

“Oh, it's you, Signor Macintyre. Are you going or coming?”

“Going.”

“Good for you! Go back to the Palazzo Uccello and stay there until Wednesday!” She gave him a sharp look, pausing in her distribution of the flyers. “You were at the scene of the crime.”

Xenia Campi said it without qualification or tentativeness. She looked away from him to thrust flyers into the hands of a group of people who didn't even glance at them but crumpled them up and dropped them to the pavement. Did Xenia Campi realize that she was contributing to the very problem she was decrying?

“How is Ignazio? I know you saw him! To think that he was the one who found the photographer's body! Now he has something else to talk about besides his old rowing days!”

Urbino detected a slight wistfulness underneath her criticism of her husband. He thought of the picture of the three of them—her, Ignazio, and their dead son, Marco.

“You know the boy Giuseppe staying at the Casa Crispina?”

A wary but somewhat sad look came into her eyes. She nodded.

“From Naples.”

“Did you ever see him or the two other boys talking with Gibbon?”

“He's a good boy! He's being led astray. If he was talking with the photographer it was only hello and good-bye. He keeps to himself. The other two are looking for trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if they thought the photographer had a lot of money and followed him to the Calle Santa Scolastica that night. The Neapolitans always carry knives! But not Giuseppe. He's different.”

“There's a young woman who paints faces in the Piazza. Do you know her?”

“There are a lot of girls who do that.”

“When I saw her she had her face painted red. She has short dark hair.”

Xenia Campi narrowed her eyes but didn't say anything.

“Someone said that she had been seen with Gibbon.”

No one had told him this, of course, but he wanted more information about the girl from Xenia Campi and he wanted to get it without mentioning Giuseppe again.

“That's impossible!” she said. “I know who you mean. She's a good girl. She would never have had anything to do with a man like that.”

“Are you sure she isn't someone you might have seen with Gibbon yourself in the Piazza? You told me that he was always being friendly to young women.”

“I meant only Signorina Spaak!”

She thrust a flyer at a couple who had just left a motorboat.

“Do you think that Porfirio's death has something to do with Gibbon's murder?” Urbino asked, taking a different tack.