Lovers (68 page)

“Sensible girl, wore a warm sweater, warm jacket, took my advice,” Branchie noted approvingly as he greeted her.

The Gritti-based journalists were crowded around the tables on the large floating platform, surrounded by ornamental wood railings and decorated with pots of pink geraniums, that lies in front of the Gritti Palace Hotel. The most expensive lunch in Venice is served at this unique restaurant right on top of the Grand Canal, with its striped awning and obliging headwaiters. In the middle of the platform, an aisle leads from the front door of the Gritti to a narrow bridge that descends to a smaller floating landing stage for boats of all kinds. The alfresco entertainment consists of watching the water traffic at close range, with the added bonus of seeing travel-weary arrivals, followed by porters carrying their baggage, make their way through the elegant restaurant, either looking around in bewilderment at the unexpected crowd, or showing their familiarity with the process by whisking by as unconcernedly as if no one were scrutinizing them.

The special
vaporetto
arrived at the Gritti dock, to a
chorus of mock cheering. Almost all of the press would rather have stayed in Venice for the afternoon, but they knew the rules of the junket game, and were cynically resigned to their expected attendance at the ceremony. There was a rush for the best seats in the bow of the
vaporetto
, from which the view was incomparable.

Gigi and Branchie watched the outside deck of the ferryboat fill without impatience, since Branchie had declared his intention of sitting inside, where there would be plenty of room and no drafts. Gigi saw her father and Sasha, both unsmiling in the crush, motioning urgently at her to join them, but she wasn’t able to leave Branchie’s side, as they were carried along onto the ferry.

Finally the mob thinned and Branchie, followed by Gigi, made his way across the short bridge onto the floating landing stage. Just as he was about to grasp the hand of the crewman who stood at the open railing of the
vaporetto
to help people on board, a sudden movement in the waters of the canal caused the landing stage to lurch and the large ferry to swing slightly sideways, leaving a three-foot gap between dock and boat.

A man with longer legs, a man with better reflexes, a man who didn’t obsess about things that were buried in the waters of the Grand Canal, could probably have made the muscular adjustment necessary to leap safely onto the deck.

Branchie did not. He missed the boatman’s hand and fell neatly into the canal, his mufflers floating on the surface, while the water closed over his head.

Within seconds the journalist was pulled out of the Grand Canal by Gritti porters while crewmen held the
vaporetto
safely away from the landing stage with long hooks provided for that precise purpose.

“HEPATITIS!” he sputtered as he regained the Gritti, wiping his face with the nearest tablecloth, and drying his hair as quickly as he could. “Hepatitis minimum, pleurisy, pneumonia, double pneumonia, nephritis, damn this place, double hell, double hepatitis, A, and B, I’ll be lucky to get
home alive … Kate Hepburn fell into the canal doing a movie, never the same … sue the place, sue Ben Winthrop, stupid idea … leaving this plague spot as soon as I get dry …”

“Branchie, Branchie, drink some brandy,” Gigi begged, dancing around him in worry as the
vaporetto
slowly pulled away, bearing Sasha and Vito and a full load of press.

“Drink!
Do you want to kill me?
I shut my mouth tight when I went in, hair’s still dripping filthy pig slop into my face, dead cats, dead rats, raw sewage, need good shower, disinfectant, that’s the first thing to do! Come on, help me to my room. Call the manager, get antibiotics!” Waving his tiny arms, followed by a trail of Gritti porters and two concierges, Gigi and Branchie regained his room.

Within half an hour Branchie was in bed, thrice scrubbed from head to toe and back again, dried, stuffed full of an assortment of antibiotics and a couple of stiff shots of neat scotch.

“Oh, Branchie, I’ll never forgive myself,” Gigi cried, full of remorse. “It’s all my fault.”

“Hell it is, young Winthrop’s fault, that drydock ceremony, I said it was a stupid idea in the first place, vainglorious, that’s what it is. Hubris. Silver dollar, my ass. Here, give me some more scotch. No ice, for God’s sake, ice kills you, made from local water. Alcohol might kill the germs if it gets to them soon enough, so they say, doubt it, worth a try.”

Gigi poured him half of a water glass full of scotch and watched anxiously as he swallowed most of it.

“Do you feel any better?” she asked.

“If
I wake up tomorrow, I’ll find out. Another of Winthrop’s victims, that’s what I am,” Branchie said malevolently, “like the Mullers. Should never have come, didn’t take my own advice.”

Branchie was obviously not going to be a happy drunk, Gigi thought, calculating her chances of getting to the railroad station by speedboat before the
vaporetto
. She still had plenty of time, for the trip down the Grand Canal had
been planned to be slow and stately and gala. What did he mean, ‘victims,’ she thought, adjusting his pillows.

“You know about the Mullers?” Branchie challenged her, slurring his words. “Bet you don’t, think you do, but I bet you don’t. Nobody does but Mullers and me.” He pulled the blankets up to his chin and glared at Gigi.

She looked down at him, giving him challenge for challenge. “The people who owned Kids’ Paradise? I most certainly do. I work with their representative, Jack Taylor.”

“He tell you that?” Branchie shot back in a bellicose voice, rising up from the pillows.

“Who? Jack? Tell me what?”

“That he represented the Mullers? Bet he told you they still owned a piece of the business, eh? And you believed him? Hah! Another of Winthrop’s victims, that’s what you are. Bought the party line, eh, like everyone else? Bet you anything you never met a Muller face to face, my dear. Eh? Am I right?”

“So what if I haven’t?” Gigi demanded, “They’ve all gone to live in Sarasota. What difference does it make? Jack represents the family, and I ought to know since The Enchanted Attic was my idea. I’ve been working with Jack since then.”

“Good idea too. Smart girl, good marketing. Winthrop took over every last store, foreclosed, tough luck for Mullers. Lost everything. Bankrupt. Living in Sarasota because they owned vacation house free and clear, not by choice, believe me. He’s a vulture, young Winthrop, picked their bones clean, think I’m going to sneeze.”

Gigi hastily threw him a box of tissues. “Ben
foreclosed?
That’s nonsense! He
saved
their company.”

Branchie grinned at her nastily. “Don’t believe me, my dear, why should you? Jack Taylor takes orders from Ben Winthrop, gets paid by him, company man, hundred percent. Normal, don’t blame Taylor, doing good job. But Mullers built their business from nothing, Winthrop’s first tenants, paid him good rents for fifteen years, he could have left them a tiny slice of pie, that’s my opinion.
Enough for everybody, but not Winthrop’s style to share, he forced them to go bust, their problem, not his. Strictly business, typical Ben Winthrop style. Mullers were victims, can’t say they weren’t, can you now, eh?”

Gigi felt a thickening of the atmosphere in the room, as if it were getting darker inside but not outside, as if the air, like gas, could be ignited with a spark of electricity.

“Victims?” she repeated, sickened as she made herself say the word again. “Your book’s gone to your brain, Branchie. I’ve never heard anyone say anything against Ben’s ethics.”

“He covers his tracks. People can’t talk about things they never heard of. ‘Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue,’ Seneca wrote that, nothing’s changed. Worse today. Young Winthrop’s my special interest, I’m world’s expert on him. Only expert, too. Hah! I keep my ear to ground, watch whatever he does. Follow up, ask questions, get the material. He’s the vulture, I’m hawk. Got lines out everywhere, but nobody understands Winthrop like me. Wait till my book’s published, you’ll see. He’s done dozens of tricky land deals, county officials bought off … Cleveland, Des Moines, Fort Worth, corruption you’d never imagine, my dear, quick, smooth, almost untraceable unless you know where to look, who to talk to. He’s smart, runs tight ship, but I’ve been on to him from beginning. I know dirty truth, and when I write my book, so will everyone else. He’s done it before, he’ll do it again. Over and over. When my book exposes him, everybody’ll know. Until then I keep his secrets, it’s my material, nobody else has it, Ben Winthrop’s my beat. Shouldn’t be talking to you. Take the Severinis, for instance—give me that glass, my dear, believe this stuff’s working.”

“What about the Severinis?”

“The same story. Lost their company because of this new cruise line. Other journalists here, they know that? Of course not. Small family company, the Severinis, nobody gives a damn outside of locals, my dear And me. Good example of Winthrop’s style. They were in trouble
anyway. He picked up those engines for what it cost to make them minus giant discount for cash. Last straw for Severinis. Excellent bargain for him, should have been a Venetian himself. Merchant princes they were, never lost a bean. Wasted no time on mercy.”

“The engines … in Trieste?” Gigi breathed.

“Know a lot for a PR girl, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t know much … I just heard someone mention something about engines from Trieste,” Gigi said, probing further, her blood thundering in her ears.

“Three of them, custom-built, Severinis couldn’t give them away, don’t go into shipbuilding, that’s my advice. They took a risk, bad timing, young Winthrop picked them up for much less than cost, Swiss lucky to get anything. Hah! Even the Swiss lost out there. Still, fifty percent of something better than hundred percent of nothing. Severinis had to close down. Finished. Bones picked clean, like Mullers. Old company too, established hundreds of years, employed lots of people. He never gave them a chance. If Winthrop paid honest price, the Severinis might have kept their heads above water, not easy in Venice. Hah! Look at me, half-drowned, hepatitis B. My last visit here, my dear, I’ve taken the pledge. If I live.”

“But … but … why wouldn’t Ben pay full price?” Gigi whispered urgently.

“Told you before. Not Winthrop’s style. He’s a vulture. Not satisfied until the other guy’s finished. Way he does business. Show no mercy. Vulture does what a vulture does. It’s his nature, his style, for him it’s normal. Never shares a scrap, not a scrap of a scrap. How does any man start with borrowed money and become almost a billionaire in fifteen, sixteen years? It’s why he’s interesting … not like the good gray Winthrops of today. More of an old-style Venetian, maybe even a Borgia. Good for my book. Close the curtains, my dear, I’m going to sleep. Don’t worry, I’ll cover story, say nice things, not your fault, should never have come to Venice. Remember … ‘successful
crime … called … virtue’ … You’re not too young to learn … useful fact …”

By the time Gigi’s
motoscafo
brought her to the railroad station, she’d missed all the press buses. She hailed a taxi, bribed the driver to break every law, and found herself entering the shipyard just as the last of the journalists straggled through the gates. She leapt onto the last bus to the drydock and stood on the edge of the bleachers that had been set up above the wide area, the size of three football fields, that was dug down more than a hundred feet into the surface of the shipyard so that its gates could be raised slowly into the sea to allow the ships to float. All three freighters lay there, one of them totally covered in scaffolding.

From the minute she’d run out of Branchie’s room, Gigi had accepted the truth about Ben Winthrop. She had finally identified the pattern that had puzzled her for so long, a pattern of which she had seen only fleeting glimpses, hints, edges of edges, shadows on the water, as thin, yet as disconcerting, as the first wisp of a dense fog.

She could easily have cut Branchie short as soon as he mentioned the Mullers; she could have shaken her head at his drunken garrulousness, deafened herself to his self-appointed authority, and left him to recover from his imaginary hepatitis with his scotch and his blankets. However, she had been physically unable to leave the room. She had felt an overpowering need to learn what he knew. She’d encouraged him to spill out details in spite of her ever-increasing revulsion. Even if Ben himself hadn’t authenticated Branchie, she still would have known that the facts he’d shot at her were as real as they were befouling. They fit too well with everything that had bothered her about Ben Winthrop.

If she had been truly in love with Ben, she would never have encouraged Branchie, she wouldn’t have stayed there gathering information until he fell asleep, she would have brushed him off, become instantly, self-protectively, and
willfully deaf to criticism of the beloved, as so many women manage to be about the men they love, and by now Branchie would be forgotten, a small-time hobbyist historian who, by his own admission, would probably never see his unpublishable book in print. A drunk, obsessed, bitter man who envied Ben and should be discounted totally.

Gigi looked around for Vito. She needed to talk to him as never before, although she should be at the base of the drydock, standing on the platform that had been set up for the welder, who was busy with his torch, observed by the other members of the official party: Ben, Erik Hansen, the head of the management team, Renzo Montegardini, the naval architect, Eustace Jones, the hotel manager, Arnsin Olsen, the chief engineer, Per Dahl, the captain, and another man, whom Ben had told her would be the mayor of Mestre. They were surrounded by a large group of press photographers from news services and magazines.

To hell with where she should be. If they were in a hurry to put an American coin in that plate, let someone empty his pockets and find one.

Gigi scanned the crowd. As she did so, she saw Vito and Sasha running toward her.

“Jesus, where’ve you been?” Sasha gasped.