Black Bridge (11 page)

“Did you notice when she returned?”

“No.”

Urbino thanked him and rang Orlando Gava's room on the house phone. Gava told him to come up. He came to the door in a black jacket. The black armband was still in place. His homely face with its pendulous lower lip was freighted with sadness. He led Urbino to a room furnished in antiques that overlooked the garden. Gava sat on the sofa next to scattered copies of
Gente, Oggi
, the
Gazzettino
, and the Rome and Milan papers. On a little table were several portrait photographs in elaborate frames and a flickering votive candle. Next to them was a small plastic aerosol inhaler. Urbino sat in an armchair, after removing from its cushions a worn leather book with protruding leather alphabet tabs.

“How are you feeling, Signor Gava?”

“Well enough. Asthma. It runs in the Gava family. An attack can come on in seconds,” he said gravely, nodding his head. “This room is filled with little things that could start me going before I could even say my prayers!” He cast an oddly fluttering eye around the room as if accessing its deadly possibilities. “Dust, the smoke in the drapes, even the newsprint! I guess I'm lucky—so far. Not like Rosa. All alone, and only forty-six. Exactly ten years ago. It puts me in such a state that I wish—”

He didn't express his dark wish but fixed his eyes now on the photographs. Urbino remembered how he had said “I'm coming, Rosa” before passing out for a second time.

“Well, you're not alone, Signora Gava. You have Livia Festa looking in on you.”

“Looking in on me? Where did you get that idea? Who wants her and her dog poking their noses around here?”

“You've heard about the young couple who were murdered, haven't you? They were staying here. You might have met them at the Contessa's reception.”

“Before that, here at the hotel. Barely a nod and a
buon giorno
at first, but the man became a lot friendlier once he saw Bobo and me together. Everyone notices him. An actor down to his fingertips! It'll be that way until he's made his last exit.”

He gauged Urbino's response with furtive glances from his bloodshot eyes.

“When did the man start being more friendly?”

“A few days before the Contessa's reception. Bobo and I were at the hotel bar. The young man came in with his sweet little girlfriend. He kept staring at us and said something to her. She looked nervous, but she always looked nervous, like a bird waiting for a snake to gobble her up, poor thing. He would shake his finger at her during breakfast and she wouldn't say a word. A saint. She reminded me of my sister. But I was telling you about Bobo and the young man, wasn't I? Well, that evening the young man came over to me when Bobo left and—”

Gava stopped abruptly as if something had just struck him and stared at Urbino, his pendulous lower lip more flaccid than usual, the sunlight from the windows glancing off his bald head. Once again, as he had been at the thermal spa, Urbino was reminded of the caricature of a corrupt Roman senator from the time of the Caesars.

“What did he say?”

Gava nodded his large head slowly.

“You're very curious about him, aren't you? Does it have something to do with what Livia said is your interest in solving crimes—like those threats against Bobo?”

“A commissario at the Venice Questura has asked me to help the police in whatever way I can.”

“I've already told them what I know,” Gava said warily.

“I'm sure you have, but if you wouldn't mind indulging me, it might help your brother-in-law.”

Urbino wasn't sure whether this inducement would loosen or tighten Gava's tongue.

“Of course I want to help Bobo,” Gava said quickly. “Let me see. What was it exactly that the young man said? Something like, ‘I see that you know the Barone Casarotto-Re. My friend and I are admirers of his.' Only then did he introduce himself. His Italian wasn't good so I answered in English. I introduced myself and said that the Barone was my brother-in-law. He sort of brightened up when I said my name, wanted to know if my sister, the Barone Casarotto-Re's wife, was in Venice, too. I said she had been dead for ten years. But when he started to say how sad it was to have her die so young—and maybe so suddenly—and how difficult it probably had been for the Barone, I excused myself and left. None of his business!”

Urbino asked if he had ever told Moss that Bobo had been married to his sister.

“I only said he was my brother-in-law.”

Urbino thought for a few moments. Just because Bobo was Gava's brother-in-law didn't automatically mean he had to be married to his sister. Gava's brother or sister could have married one of Bobo's siblings. Any of these combinations would have made them brothers-in-law. Italians usually didn't make fine distinctions in the question of in-laws. But Moss seemed to have known that Gava and the Barone were brothers-in-law because the Barone had married his sister. That may be why he recognized Gava's name—because of Gava's sister.

“Perhaps someone could have told him that Bobo had married a Gava,” Urbino said, “and might have pointed you out as the brother-in-law.”

“But he gave no indication that he knew who I was before he saw me with Bobo. It was Bobo who made the difference,” he said adamantly.

“Has your sister's maiden name been mentioned recently in articles on Bobo?”

“Not that I know of. If it has, it wasn't because he wanted to have Rosa remembered!” Gava said angrily. “He's hardly given her a thought since she died, unless he was thinking about the money she left him.”

“What exactly happened to her?”

“She was an asthmatic, as I said, and was dependent on her inhaler. She had an attack when she was alone one night. It seems she had no medication left. She lost consciousness and went into a coma. She never recovered. I almost died myself from grief. And from guilt.”

“But why should you feel guilty?”

“Because I was out enjoying myself with Bobo and Livia! Eating at one of the most expensive restaurants in Taormina. Not that I wanted to go but those two convinced me, said that Rosa would be fine for a few hours. She even encouraged me to go herself, but that was because she saw how much the others wanted it. Every year, when her anniversary comes around as it is now, I—I—” He shook his head slowly and when he looked at Urbino his eyes held a deep, dark sorrow. “This is my Rosa.”

Gava took one of the photographs from the table and handed it to Urbino. It was a three-quarter photograph of a sweet-faced woman about forty, dressed in black with a string of pearls. She had fair hair, simply dressed, and wore a tentative smile. The main resemblance to her brother was her sad eyes and a general air of ill health.

“
Simpatica
,” Urbino said, handing the photograph back.

“
Moltissimo
!” Gava kissed the photograph and put it back with the others. “These are my beloved dead: Rosa, our mother and father, our grandparents, our mother's sister—my godmother. They go with me everywhere. They're my portable graveyard,” he said with a smile that only added more sorrow to his face. “Who will remember me, I wonder? The only immortality we have is in the mind of the living! Don't forget it, young man! Someone will come along and throw all these away, be sure of it! And that day will be here soon! Very soon!” he said darkly, once again his eyes straying to Rosa's photograph.

“How did Bobo take your sister's death?”

Gava's head snapped up.

“I thought you were interested in the young couple! Why do you want to know about Rosa and Bobo?”

“You brought them up yourself, Signor Gava.”

“You can be just as slippery as Bobo! He told me that I would have to be careful with you. I see he was right.”

“When did Bobo mention me? Did he call you the night the couple was murdered?”

“There you go again! Questions instead of answers! I can see why Bobo is afraid of you. Yes, afraid! No, he didn't call me that night. Last night, to warn me that you'd be asking questions.
I
have nothing to be afraid of! But Bobo is scared silly of being associated with these murders. With good reason, too! First he gets those threats. Then this young man shows an interest in him and is murdered with his girlfriend. And today Bobo tells me that you might be asking questions about him and I should be careful of what I said. Oh yes, Bobo is afraid! He's not good enough an actor to hide
that
!”

Did Gava know something incriminating about Bobo? Gava, he had said, knew more about his life than he did himself. What power might it give the sickly man? Was he the type to abuse the power? He had been very quick to deny any role in the threats made against Bobo, but he had expressed his dislike of D'Annunzio at the reception, a dislike echoed in the threats.

“If you want to know more about the poor couple, ask Livia. She knows them from somewhere. She knows a lot about people. A crafty, devious woman! I wonder how she'd feel about someone knowing a lot about
her
?”

The possibility didn't seem to strike Gava as amusing, but quite the opposite.

9

Urbino and Festa took their drinks from the bar into the sun-washed garden of the flora. The weather had returned to goldenness but the crispness of the air was like a reminder of mortality. Peppino was nosing among the potted hydrangeas under the indulgent eye of his mistress. Festa, dressed in colors she informed Urbino were “eggplant” and “malachite,” rattled on nervously about her seamstress of the past twenty-three years.

“She made a matching coat for Peppino but it's too warm for him with the lovely weather we've been having.”

Peppino, hearing his name, jumped on her lap.

“It does get chilly at night, though. You must put it on him when you take him for a walk at night.”

“Of course, but listen to us chatting about Peppino as if he's the most important person around! It will turn his little head!” She paused and considered this part of Peppino's anatomy for a few moments, then said, in an offhand manner: “Now that
Pomegranate
has finished its run here, I suppose we won't be seeing any more threats against Bobo.”

“Then you think they had to do with the show?”

“With the show and with D'Annunzio, yes. What else? If they had received any publicity, I would almost have been glad for them. There would have been a bigger box office. D'Annunzio always thrived on notoriety.”

“And Bobo?”

Festa smiled. She must once have been voluptuous, with the kind of full body that, no matter what the vogue, never really goes out of style as far as most men are concerned. The way she draped herself in loose-fitting garments surely was intended not only to conceal but also to free the imagination of susceptible men. Bobo had his susceptibilities, it seemed, since he had almost married her at some time in the past, according to Gava.

“Bobo only likes
good
publicity.”

“Surely good publicity could be defined as any kind that brings in more money.”

“Not where he's concerned. He cares what people think. His good reputation is his fortune. He doesn't have Barbara's or Oriana Borelli's kind of money. Not by a long shot! Never did.”

“Have you spoken with him since yesterday?”

“Not since closing night. We had a drink at Harry's after the performance and then he walked me to the Flora. He called me on the house phone after we said good night. He wanted me to look in on Orlando. He had forgotten to mention it.”

Almost the same words as Bobo had used.

“And did you?”

Festa reddened.

“I'm afraid not. I—I forgot all about it.”

“But you did walk Peppino, I understand. Do you know about the murders of the young couple?”

“Of course. It's the talk of the hotel. So it seems you've switched your sleuthing from the threats against Bobo to the murders.”

Festa's voice held a note Urbino couldn't identify.

“The Questura thinks they might be related.”

“And why is that?”

If it was true that she and Bobo hadn't spoken since the murders, she wouldn't know about the threats and the
Baedeker
found in Moss and Quimper's room. He told her now, mainly to assess her reaction.

“My God! How terrible for Bobo! The very people murdered who might have been threatening him! I must call him at once.”

But she didn't get up. Urbino wished she had, for he wondered where she would have tried to contact the Barone. At the Gritti Palace or the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini, where she had no way of knowing he had been since last night?

“He and Barbara must be out and about somewhere. They really seem to be making the circuits, don't they? Leaves you with a lot of time on your hands. You should be able to solve this case in no time.” There was no mistaking Festa's tone now. It was pointed and snide. “Well, I'm not surprised,” she went on coolly. “About the threats originating with Moss, I mean. We can understand what he had against Bobo. The girl must just have been along for the ride. But how absurd for the police to think Bobo had anything to do with the murders!”

“What do you think Moss had against Bobo?”

“He was jealous!” She stared at Urbino as if he were a dunce. “Is it so hard to believe that a man in his twenties could be jealous of a man more than twice his age? Bobo is very appealing. His age and experience only make him more so. You can be sure that many men would like to be exactly like him. I don't mean to suggest that Bobo gave Moss any
reason
to be jealous. The little French girl wasn't his type, for one thing!”

“Gava said she reminded him of his sister Rosa.”

Festa raised an eyebrow that was more pencil than hair.

“Did he now? I knew Rosa. Nothing like the French girl, but brothers see their sisters differently than everyone else, especially
Italian
brothers,” she emphasized. “And Orlando refuses to let go after all these years. He's trying to—to immortalize her!”