Frail Barrier (5 page)

It was the Church of San Gabriele, flaking from age, dampness, and the poisonous exhalations from petrochemical plants in nearby Marghera. It wasn't its early fifteenth-century Gothic pedigree that made Urbino pause to contemplate it. He was interested in its more recent history and for the role it had played in his life.

For the Church of San Gabriele was the site of a murder that had set him on his course of sleuthing.

Lying in one of the church's chapels was a glass coffin containing the preserved body of a female saint. It wore a white gown, crimson gloves and slippers, and its face was concealed beneath a silver Florentine mask. Snatched from Sicily by so-called sacred thieves of the Venetian Republic, the diminutive corpse had been at the center of his most macabre case.

Urbino shifted his gaze to the other side of the square where another building, with damp-warped shutters and chipped, leprous statuary and stones, seemed aloof despite its lighted windows and open doorway. This was the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina. During one carnival the mother superior had asked Urbino to use his discreet detecting skills to clear her house of suspicion following the murder of a guest of the convent's pensione. The frenzied festival, where nothing was what it seemed, had provided Urbino with a series of clues that led to the unmasking of the murderer at the contessa's ball only a few minutes before the clocks had started to chime the end of carnival.

He resumed his walk, pondering these two investigations that had followed each other in quick succession. He moved down the narrow streets, over the bridges, through the squares, and under the covered passageways of Cannaregio. He didn't have to give much attention to where he was going, so familiar was he with the route. And yet details registered with great vividness – a flower-bedecked street shrine to the Virgin lit by a votive candle; a woman applying gold leaf to a harlequin mask behind the window of a closed shop; diners in the garden of a small restaurant; a brightly lighted window displaying eighteenth-century gowns, jackets, purses, boots, and trunks; and a death notice, affixed to a weather-beaten door.

But all the while Urbino was carried along on the stream of his thoughts about the occupation that seemed to have chosen him rather than the other way around.

The contessa called him a nosy parker. It was true that without his curiosity, whose intrusiveness was peculiar, considering how much he cherished his own privacy, he would never have gone far in any of his investigations.

But even more than curiosity, his passions for justice and order drove him. He had a strong need for due rewards and punishments, and an impatience with unanswered questions and untied strings.

Still harboring these thoughts, Urbino reached the lagoon where a vaporetto was making its way to the lace island of Burano. Considering the drift of his reflections, it was understandable that the figure of a lacemaker now appeared before him, an old, half-blind woman whose death had started him along another one of his twisting paths, motivated once again by curiosity and his love for order.

He stopped for a drink at a small café on the Fondamenta della Sensa. As he sipped the chilled white wine and watched the men playing cards at a table set up beside the canal edge, he realized what he would do when he left the café. He wouldn't go directly to Da Valdo. There was still enough time to catch Albina there. He usually allowed himself the luxury of having more time than he needed to get from one point in Venice to another, for he knew how little he could ever resist the temptation of wandering.

And wander a bit more he would do this evening as he visited some more spots where the dead had quickened him into motion.

Urbino frequently got into these states. Like a ghost, he thought to himself, or like a criminal revisiting the scene of the crime – except, of course, that in his investigations he only had to think like a criminal, not be one. Sometimes the line between the two seemed much too thin for his comfort.

He often heard the words of childhood priests in New Orleans come back to him:
Thinking of something bad is the same as doing it. You have already sinned
.

He reentered the bustling areas, and soon found himself among the strong flow of people again. As before, he was moving against the current as he went down the wide Strada Nuova lined with shops, over the Ponte Santi Apostoli where diners were finishing their meals under the
sottoportico
, and past the large, square mass of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi that housed the central post office.

In the Campo San Bartolomeo Venetians, most of them well-dressed in the latest fashions and colors, milled about or stood in small groups, smoking, laughing, talking. For this was one of the main meeting places of the city, presided over by the statue of the playwright Carlo Goldoni, who cast a bronze eye and a bemused smile over just the kind of activity and Venetian types that he had satirized centuries ago.

Urbino exchanged a few words with friends who were on their way to a wine bar near La Fenice. He declined their invitation to join them.

A few minutes later he paused in the middle of the Rialto Bridge to take in the view of the Grand Canal as it swept toward the Ca' Foscari. Soon, the Ca' Foscari, because of its position at the great bend in the Canalazzo where the regatta had its finishing point, would be the most watched place in Venice.

The pavements and the landing stages were crowded. A raft of gondolas laden with tourists passed under the high arch of the bridge in the direction of Ca' Foscari.

Urbino descended the steps of the bridge and went past the Church of San Giacomo di Rialto to a broad, open area along the Grand Canal. Scraps of lettuce and crushed tomatoes littered the stones. He proceeded slowly and carefully. A group of young people were at the far end, drinking, laughing, and dancing. During the daytime this was the city's main vegetable market. Late one November night it had been the site of a bloody double murder that had directly affected both him and the contessa.

After contemplating the scene, he continued deeper into the San Polo district. He moved away from the shops, most of them closed now, and entered a nest of alleys until he reached a remote corner of the quarter. There, he stood on a small, stone bridge. The odor of moldering stone and decaying vegetation hung in the air. Further along the narrow canal a lantern on the stern of a gondola glowed and rocked as the boat moved in the direction of the Grand Canal. The two gondoliers were singing verses of
‘Torna a Surriento'
in turns, competing with each other in their powerful tenors as the song proceeded to the accompaniment of an accordion. The song became fainter as the gondola turned into another canal, and soon Urbino was surrounded by only the sound of water lapping against the stones of the bridge.

He gazed up at the crumbling façade of a palazzo with boarded-up windows. The building, with its eroded stone loggia, showed the ravages of a recent fire, a fire that could easily have claimed his life and that of the contessa if circumstances had been slightly different. The palazzo was not only a reminder of the undeniable pleasures of his sleuthing – for he had made some order here and triggered a grim form of justice – but also a warning of the dangers it could bring him and those close to him.

With his thoughts considerably more sober now than they had been when he had left the Palazzo Uccello, he set off in the most direct way for the Accademia Bridge.

Although this was one of his favorite walks, through the twisting lanes of San Polo and into Porsoduro and the lively area around the Campo Santa Margherita, he enjoyed it less this evening than he usually did. The sight of the burned-out palazzo had dropped a chill over him that the humid air only made more uncomfortable.

He didn't stop until he reached the Accademia Bridge. Tourists lined both sides of the parapet, looking up and down the Grand Canal, taking photographs, pointing. Urbino managed to find a free spot at the wooden railing. On his left the rich marbles and carvings of the Palazzo Barbara – actually the two Gothic buildings that went by that name – were brightly illuminated. He stared at the palazzo, trying to change his mood by thinking about Henry James, who had used it as a setting in one of his greatest stories.

But the chill that had dropped over him remained, for James's story was not only one of love but of death as well. So as not to risk making the chill any keener, Urbino avoided looking down the Grand Canal to a long, low white building on the right, which housed the Peggy Guggenheim collection. For near the palazzo's water steps one summer afternoon during the Biennale Art Exhibition the body of a lovely young woman had floated to the surface. Urbino, who had been on the terrace of the palazzo at the time, had realized that one of his investigations had turned deadly serious and that the contessa herself was under a dark shadow of suspicion.

He checked his wristwatch. He would have to hurry now if he wanted to catch Albina before she left the Caffè Da Valdo.

The night sky had become thickly covered with low clouds during the past half-hour. Thunder rumbled. It seemed that the city was going to get some brief relief from the heat and humidity, but the storm that would bring it was certain to come with a price.

Urbino left the parapet of the bridge, made his way slowly through the crowd, and moved toward the steps that would bring him down into the San Marco quarter. Before he reached the steps, however, he bumped into a couple. It was Romolo and Perla Beato.

‘Urbino!' Perla said with a bright smile. She was a slim, blonde woman in her mid-thirties with smoky brown eyes and high cheekbones. ‘There must be better ways to meet each other. We haven't seen you in ages. But excuse us. It was our fault. We're trying to catch the boat.'

Romolo was a portly man in his early sixties with thick hair that had been snow-white ever since Urbino had first met him fifteen years before. He was dressed in a well-cut suit. Since marrying Perla five years ago, he had shown a much greater interest in his appearance.

‘No, it was my fault,' Urbino said. ‘I wasn't looking.'

‘Either you do not look because you are always in your own world,' Romolo said with a smile, ‘or you are always looking. A man of extremes.'

Both Romolo and his wife preferred to speak in English with Urbino.

‘Are you going to Harry's?' Urbino asked.

Romolo and Perla were regular patrons of the bar. The vaporetto from the Accademia stopped in front of Harry's Bar.

‘Harry's in the month of August!' Perla cried. ‘Have you lost your wits? With all those tourists sticking their heads in to have a quick look, not to mention the ones taking their time and nursing Bellinis?'

Perla's English, perfected when she had studied alternative medicine in London, was much better than her husband's, although she strained too hard for idioms.

‘I'm going to Santa Lucia now,' Romolo explained. Santa Lucia was the name of the train station. ‘To see Rocco for a week.'

Rocco, his son, lived in Padua where he taught art history at the university.

‘Don't forget the business that goes with the pleasure,' Perla reminded him. She planted a kiss on his cheek, bending slightly from her greater height.

‘I won't. I'm having problems with one of my tenants,' Romolo explained to Urbino with a frown. ‘He hasn't paid the rent in three months.'

Romolo owned buildings in Padua that he had inherited from his father, an industrialist. His income from the buildings supported his love for music – and for Perla. What he earned from his voice lessons could barely pay for their frequent trips and her clothing bill.

‘Romolo is much too gentle for a businessman, but that's one of the reasons I love him. I had to insist that he go to Padua.'

Perla gave him another kiss and put her arm around his shoulder.

‘Yes, you certainly have been insisting, my dear.'

Urbino thought he detected a slight edge in his words, but Romolo looked up at his wife with what seemed a warm smile.

‘You should also be happy, Romolo dear, that you're getting away from another one of our storms,' Perla said.

‘My dear, storms can come anywhere and any time. If I – or you – try to avoid one, we will only find another.'

‘True, my dear. But don't forget “O
Sole Mio,”'
Perla said with a slight tremor in her voice.
‘“L'aria serena, dopo la tempesta!”'

She half spoke, half sang the words of the old Neapolitan song that gondoliers had appropriated as their own. Her face looked strained.

‘Brava!
You show your husband's expertise,' Urbino complimented her. ‘By the way, Romolo,' Urbino said, ‘how is Claudio doing with his voice lessons?'

‘Very well. He's a young man of many talents. In fact, he—'

‘But we must hurry,' Perla broke in. ‘The boat is coming.'

The
diretto
was about to pass beneath the wooden bridge.

‘See you soon, Urbino,' Perla said as she took Romolo's arm.

Urbino fought his way to the railing at the opposite side of the bridge and waved at the couple before Romolo boarded the boat. After blowing her husband a kiss, Perla went down the Calle Gambara in the direction of the Beato apartment near the Zattere.

One dim light illuminated the interior of Da Valdo. Most of the tables had chairs turned upside down on their surface, exposing loosely intertwined wooden slats beneath the seats. The table legs cast a twisted net of shadows around the walls.

Da Valdo, popular with tourists and locals, was in a corner of the Campo Sant'Angelo on the route to the Rialto from the Accademia Bridge and the Piazza San Marco. Its outdoor tables provided a clear view of the tilted bell tower of the Church of San Stefano.

Inside, steins and green and purple plastic grapes hung from the wooden beams of the low ceiling. Behind the bar were an Italian flag and photographs of footballers and of Valdo, the owner, with friends and clients. One wall held a calendar and posters. Another had a collection of photographs. They were of the
acqua alta
of 1966 and the collapse of the Campanile in San Marco in 1902. Other photographs, of carnival and the Regata Storica, were much more recent.