The Last Gondola (34 page)

Possle was a thief of one kind or another, and Guggenheim's distinction of having had the last gondola was one of his appropriations. Maybe Urbino wasn't too far behind him. Wasn't he more than a little proud of his own gondola, proud of the figure he cut in it? And didn't he sometimes fantasize, for long, self-indulgent moments, that he was one of the last of the passionate pilgrims who had descended on the city in the grip of what Henry James had called their palazzo madness?

But too much had been lost since those long-ago days. Nothing could bring them back.

Possle had dreamed that dream, and look what had become of him.

Casting a last glance down at the Canalazzo, this time in the opposite direction, toward the bend of the waterway where fog swirled around the Byron-haunted Palazzi Mocenigo, Urbino descended the bridge into the Dorsoduro. He searched out the square to catch any sign of another person in the shadows or the fog, but the area, with its shuttered kiosk and boat landing, was empty. The booth for boat tickets was closed.

Several minutes later Urbino found himself on a quay where fruit and vegetable barges were covered with tarpaulin for the night. To his right was a bridge on which a traditional bloody fistfight used to take place centuries ago between rival factions whose aim was to throw their opponents into the canal as violently as possible. Footprints, embedded in the bridge in white marble, gleamed in the dark and marked the spots where the rivals had confronted each other.

Urbino had always shied away from outward shows of aggression. Yet since moving to Venice he had become involved in devious and bloodstained forms of it. The mystery of the Ca' Pozza might be yet another example of this, except that in this instance he was directly responsible for having put himself in the heart of it.

As he continued along the deserted quay, his thoughts turned to the Byron poems. Possle had won them in a card game with Dilsizian, he claimed. He had a document to prove it. And Dilsizian had drowned on a pleasure trip in the lagoon.

Possle didn't seem to have ever been the type for fistfights any more than Urbino was, but appearances were nothing if they weren't deceiving. The young Possle could have brutally struck out to get what he wanted or to keep what he already had, just as he still might do. His current infirm condition didn't mean that he had been robbed of every power at his disposal. For there was the silent, cadaverous Armando, with his loyalty to Possle. Was the mute nothing more than a spectator, like the men and women who had gathered to see the fistfights on the bridge? Had this been his role over the many years of their relationship?

Or had it been something else entirely, a role more malevolent that was still unfolding? Had it been set in motion during the days of Possle's life of high publicity and might not end even with Possle's own death. And how might the clipping of the Contessa in Armando's little room, with Urbino's figure cut out of it, fit into the picture? Along with the belt, which he was now almost completely convinced was a woman's, that he had seen on the back staircase of the Ca' Pozza?

The questions unfolded out of each other like black flowers. Before he had proceeded much further he was in possession of a whole dark bouquet of them.

Their scent was as difficult to describe as the aroma that emanated from Possle's crystal vaporizer and as rank as the odor that Armando gave off. Only then, as he mentally clutched his perverse little blooms, did he realize where his footsteps were now taking him and where they had inevitably been taking him for the past hour.

No, not to the Ca' Pozza. He was strong enough to keep to the resolve that he had made upon quitting the Palazzo Uccello. Tonight it was the Ca' Zenobio degli Armeni. The building was only a short distance down the quayside and over another of the city's ubiquitous bridges.

He was soon standing on the bridge that provided a view of the silent, unilluminated palazzo on the other side of the canal. Wisps of fog drifted against its white-painted baroque face. A small boat was moored by its water steps. One of the photographs of the palazzo that Urbino had bought from the friar on San Lazzaro degli Armeni had been taken from this same spot.

Last year Urbino and Habib had escorted the Contessa to a ball in the palazzo's sumptuous Sala degli Specchi with its waves of white-and-gold stuccoes, Dorigni and Tiepolo frescoes, and extravagance of ornate mirrors that gave the room its name.

But now its much more sinister association with the drowned Dilsizian and his Byron poems eclipsed the memories of that magical evening. Surely the Armenian had visited the palazzo as he had San Lazzaro degli Armeni. He might even have spoken about the poems to someone there, as he had to Father Nazar.

If Possle were to be believed, those same poems were now in his exclusive possession. They would be somewhere in the Ca' Pozza. Possle wouldn't be inclined to have them far from him, but somewhere in his bedroom or the gondola room. Perhaps they were buried among the cushions of the gondola. It somehow seemed the thing that Possle would do with his spoils.

On the Accademia Bridge, Urbino had reminded himself that Possle was a thief, the thief of San Polo, as the Contessa had dubbed him the day of their outing to the Naval Museum. Thefts came in many different forms. At first Possle's had seemed innocuous enough, being versions of the ideas and words of those who had gone before him. In a manner of thinking such pilferings weren't even thefts at all but instead clever, even artistic, manipulations, rearrangements, recreations. There could be no doubt that Possle, over the many decades of his life, had, in a sense, cobbled and created himself. Now that same self was trapped and decaying in the Ca' Pozza.

If only Urbino could find out whether the Byron poems had come Possle's way without any form of violence or deception. According to the report of the boating accident, it didn't appear that Mechitar had died through foul play, but Urbino had a temperamental and professional suspicion of appearances.

He had already stolen a key and broken into the Ca' Pozza like a thief. It was proof of how far he would go when it came to acquisition of the poems. Urbino wanted them, and he wanted them for the reasons Possle had named and for others he hadn't. It was a measure of Urbino's peculiar form of greed that, when he turned his back on the Ca' Zenobio and started to make his way toward home, he almost believed that with the Contessa's help he might succeed in laying his hands on them if they had indeed come Possle's way through a card game with Mechitar Dilsizian.

But then reality set in as he broke into his elastic stride. He had temporarily and conveniently forgotten about Armando, about Armando and his devotion to his twin sister, and about what might very well be the darker secret of the Ca' Pozza.

These thoughts made him more wary of the night and the fog than he had been when he had set out earlier from the Palazzo Uccello.

78

The next morning Urbino took the earliest train to Florence. He passed the time before his rendezvous at the Villa Serena wandering through the streets and in and out of some of the churches and galleries.

As he stood in the tiny Chapel of the Magi at the Palazzo Medici and in front of the Fra Filippo Lippi
tondo
of the Madonna at the Palazzo Pitti, his mind was far away from their charms: it was filled with thoughts of Samuel Possle and Dilsizian, Elvira and Hilda, Armando and Adriana, Gildo and Marco.

He was therefore glad when the taxi was climbing into the hills above the rose-colored roofs and domes of the city. The Villa Serena wasn't far from Bernard Berenson's former home, the Villa I Tatti. An
allée
of cypresses led to the entrance of a large Renaissance building. Other buildings, much smaller and of newer, but discreet, construction were nestled in gardens behind the main building.

Urbino wondered how Armando had been able to scrape together enough money for even a week at the clinic for Adriana, let alone the many months that Demetrio Emo had mentioned.

The director was a cheerful, efficient woman in her late fifties who lived on the grounds. Although it was a Sunday, she had agreed to see him when he had mentioned Adriana Abdon's name yesterday afternoon. She didn't have to consult her files to give him some of the information he needed.

“A beautiful woman with an exquisite voice. She first stayed with us twenty years ago. For five months. Two years later she spent a few more months here. The third time was much, much longer. Almost ten years. We discharged her into her brother's care.”

“Ten years? Are you sure?”

“Yes.” A reminiscent smile crossed her face. “The day she left she wore a dress that was an exact copy of one that I had bought myself a few years before for my fiftieth birthday. She always said she loved it and had many photographs of the two of us with me wearing it. Her brother must have arranged for it to be made.”

79

At nine the next morning, the first of April, Urbino telephoned the Venice Questura. After being on hold for what seemed hours, he was put through to Commissario Francesco Gemelli.

Over the years of his sleuthing, Urbino had developed a fragile relationship with the commissioner of police, since they both had need of each other and since Urbino had, on more than one occasion, allowed Gemelli to take all the credit for the solution of some crimes.

But the Sicilian was prickly and almost always hard to deal with. He listened to what Urbino had to say without interrupting him. It all sounded rather far-fetched even to Urbino's own ears, but he plunged on. When he was finished, there was silence from the other end of the line for what seemed a long time.

“And on the basis of these wild ideas, you expect me to make a fool of myself as well?” Gemelli finally said. “You haven't given me one shred of evidence that there's anything criminal here at all. The muggings in the area are another thing, of course.”

“I'm only asking you to put a few men in the area in case I need them.”

“The Venice Questura doesn't exist for your personal and private protection, Macintyre. Hire a bodyguard!”

Urbino remained silent. He was fairly confident that Gemelli would see that this could be a matter of his own self-interest.

Urbino wasn't proven wrong when the commissario said, “All right, Macintyre. All this sounds like infighting between you and this other American, but you haven't burned me, not yet anyway. But let me warn you, my men will have to have a good reason for going in—a very good reason.”

“I hope they won't have one.”

“In which case you'll be proven wrong.”

“I wouldn't mind that at all.”

80

Urbino was about to go downstairs to seek out Gildo in his quarters when the telephone rang. To his surprise it was the Contessa.

“I was going to call you a little later,” he said. “I wanted you to get as much rest as possible.”

“I feel a lot better. On the trip back from Bologna I did some thinking. And being away for a few days helped to clear my mind. As soon as I got back to the house, I went through all my clothes again, without Silvia. You'll never guess what I found.”

“You mean what you didn't find. One of your snakeskin belts.”

“Exactly! It's one I bought in Bologna years ago. Being in Bologna stirred up the memory. My belt on the stairs of the Ca' Pozza. What does it mean?”

“I prefer not to go into it over the phone.”

“Come here at two. I have some things I want to tell you, too. The appointment with Possle is at four-thirty, isn't it?”

“You're coming?”

“It's one of the things I want to talk about.”

81

“You look tired, Signor Urbino,” Gildo said half an hour later. He had been about to go out. He removed his cap and put it on the table in the middle of his crowded parlor.

“I didn't sleep well,” Urbino said. After his walk last night, he had spent two hours in the library, running various scenarios through his mind. And then, when he had finally gone to sleep, the same dream of Possle, the veiled lady, and the fire had tormented him, except now beneath the veil had been the face of Adriana. “I need your help, Gildo. May I sit down?”

Gildo cleared a pile of nautical magazines from a chair. Urbino seated himself. Gildo remained standing, his slim body tense, his open face clouded with uneasiness.

Urbino started to explain what he wanted Gildo to do that afternoon if necessary. He was taking Gemelli's suggestion of a bodyguard seriously. He wanted to reduce as many risks as possible. He knew that dangers remained, however, and yet he couldn't stop himself from going ahead. He had begun something, and he needed to see it to the end.

As Urbino spoke, the boy's expressive green eyes grew wider and his gaze moved from Urbino's face to the
forcola
. It stood there with them like a silent witness and reminder.

“That building frightens me, signore. I told you that.” Gildo's voice had an uncharacteristic fragility and tremulousness.

“Do you mean that you can't help me?”

The youth lifted his head a little higher. “I'll do as you wish. Maybe we'll find out what happened to Marco, as you say. And the Contessa is a good lady. I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her if she's with you.”

“Between the two of us, we'll be sure that it doesn't. And the police won't be far away if we need them. Take this.”

Urbino handed Gildo the copy of the key to the front door of the Ca' Pozza.

“And your cell phone is in good working order?”

Gildo took it from his pocket.

“Yes, signore.”

“And so is mine. Now to be certain that we both understand each other, why don't you repeat what I told you that you might have to do.”

“Very well, signore. I take you to the Ca' Pozza in the gondola. I moor the boat. You get out and ring the bell of the house. If you go in, I leave the gondola and stand by the door. I don't do anything unless I get the signal from your phone to mine. I don't even try to see where the police are waiting. If I get your signal, I waste not a second. I push the code for the police. They will know what it means. Then I take the key and I open the door. I must be sure to leave it open. I—I go inside and up the stone staircase. On the other side of the
sala
there's a room with a wide door, wider than the others. I go into the room.”