A Very Venetian Murder Page 19
Eager for a change of scene, and having decided not to try Valier again right away, Reuben prepared to continue his visits to Doges’ monuments. After consulting his map he set off on the circolare to the Ponte delle Guglie, the very bridge where the raucous students had shouted taunts at Gregg Baxter’s party guests. From here he walked to the church of Gli Scalzi, or Santa Maria di Nazareth, which had been started by the discalced, or barefoot, Carmelites (the “Scalzi”) in the second half of the seventeenth century. Much of the cost of the Baroque facade, Reuben read, was paid by one Gerolamo Cavazza, a wealthy social climber who had bought into the nobility. Reuben was reminded of Cavazza’s striving counterparts in twentieth-century New York who had donated wings and galleries to the Metropolitan Museum; some things never change, he concluded.
Inside Gli Scalzi, he found the yellow and red marble slab commemorating Ludovico Manin, with its unadorned legend: MANINI CINERES, the ashes of Manin. Manin, who took office in 1789, was the last Doge. He presided over the dissolution by the Maggior Consiglio of the thousand-year-old Venetian Republic in the face of an invasion by Napoleon’s troops, on May 12, 1797. His memorial was not much to look at, amid banks of hideous electrified candles and in front of a dreadful grass-green and yellow rug covering the steps to an altar.
Looking at this austere monument, Reuben remembered Manin’s words as he handed his corno, his symbolic headdress, to his servant after the fall of the Republic: “Take it, I shall not be needing it again.” The servant did so, and promptly sold it. No, Reuben thought once more, some things truly do not change.
Outside the church, Reuben was reminded of home by a line of African street peddlers vending their wares. Did they come here to practice before moving on to New York? Or were these deportees from the United States? Reuben wondered. What he did notice was a change in fashion. Fake Vuittons and Guccis had been replaced by counterfeit Timberland shoes. (He was later to learn from the Caroldos that Timberlands were currently the rage among Italian teenagers, hence the market for the ripoffs.)
Being almost next to the Ferrovia Santa Lucia, the railroad station, Reuben decided to go there and try to reach Valier once more. He walked across the plaza to the post-World War II monstrosity in search of a public telephone. He went inside, and eventually found a bank of them on a wall facing binario quattro, the departure platform for Milan. It was three-thirty, according to the large clock facing Reuben, who was about to turn his attention to the tricky business of activating a Venetian pay telephone, when he stopped abruptly. Across the way, at the foot of the platform, was Luigi Regillo, talking intently to a younger man Frost did not recognize. Curious, he pulled shut the door of the telephone booth and from this partially obscured position watched Regillo and the stranger a few feet away.
Their discussion was animated. Perhaps the reason was as simple as the fact that two Italians were talking. Yet the degree of volubility and gesticulation was such that Reuben suspected otherwise. The two had something stormy to discuss.
While he watched, Regillo removed an envelope from his loose, unstructured coat and handed it to the stranger, who put it in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket. Then he and Regillo embraced and kissed—straight on the mouth, no brushing of cheeks. The younger man went off down the platform.
Regillo hesitated for a moment and then turned quickly, placing him in position to look directly at Reuben. Frost turned at once to face the telephone and assumed, though he could not be sure, that Regillo had not seen him through the glass door of the phone booth.
Nonetheless, Frost was nonplussed. He did not wish to be seen spying by a possible murder suspect. Or suspects, as he soon discovered when he finally tracked down Commissario Valier.
CHAPTER
22
A Busy Day: III
Frost was relieved to find that he could use coins to make his call; it would not be necessary to undertake the difficult, and sometimes impossible, task of finding where to purchase a gettone for use in the pay telephone. He rang Valier. This time, to his relief, he got through.
“We have things to talk about,” he said to the officer.
“I hope so,” Valier replied. “Your friend Garrison certainly doesn’t. Come subito.”
So instructed, Reuben took the number two diretto, the fastest service to San Zaccaria. Here he disembarked and went across to the office of the Squadra Mobile. Valier was in shirt sleeves, tie askew, when Reuben was shown in.
“This Garrison is a tough nut. He refuses to admit anything. Niente,” Valier said. He looked exhausted.
“I assume he denies that he’s guilty,” Reuben said.
“Deny! He has more denials than St. Peter!”
“His girlfriend, Tabita, told me an interesting tale this morning,” Reuben said, then repeated it to the detective.
“He’s already insisted to us that his pugnale was stolen,” Valier said. “Do you believe him?”
“If he told you that, it either means it really happened or that she’s in this with him.” Reuben then went over the other possibilities he and Cynthia had explored.
The wide range seemed to dishearten the worn-out Commissario. “If Garrison is not our pigeon, we have to start back at square number one,” he said.
“Oh, not quite,” Reuben said. “Or at least I’d start with Tabita herself, Luigi Regillo—and the hustler, Pandini. Speaking of which, I just saw Regillo at the Ferrovia. He was seeing off some young fellow to Milan. My God, do you suppose …?” Sitting now in Valier’s office, his mind fully concentrated on Baxter’s murder, he had suddenly had a jolting thought.
“Suppose what?” Valier asked.
“That I saw Pandini? Could that be? Had I found your hustler without even knowing it?”
“You could recognize him again, no?”
“Oh yes, I think so.”
“Good. I have a picture of the vagabondo. His dear mother gave it to one of my men.” Valier rooted amid the disordered piles on his desk and eventually produced a framed photograph. The boy in the picture was younger than the man who had been with Regillo, but the resemblances were there, the hooded eyes, the cleanly angled face, the fleshy lips.
“This is Pandini?” Frost asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s who I saw.”
Frost’s announcement galvanized Valier into action. He first called for a railroad timetable, which a functionary, out of breath, rushed into the office.
“You sure you mean the train to Milano? Not Roma, not the local to Padova or Treviso?”
“I didn’t see him get aboard, but he walked down the platform where the train to Milan was standing.”
“Let’s see,” Valier said, studying the schedule. “Milano. A train at three thirty-five. Due in Milano at six-forty. That must be the one.” He got on the telephone, barking orders. Then he began questioning Reuben about how Regillo’s companion was dressed.
“He had on one of those World War II bomber jackets the young people are wearing. It was leather and had several markings and insignia on it. I only noticed one I recognized, the old American Army Air Force emblem—a white star enclosed in a blue circle, with another red circle in the middle.”
Valier was puzzled, so Frost picked up a pad from the desk and drew an illustration. While Valier was studying it, the telephone rang and Reuben was able to overhear snatches of a conversation he guessed to be with a police officer in Milan. Another one, with a colleague in Brescia, followed.
“Let’s hope your spotting Pandini hasn’t used up our luck,” Valier said, when he had finished. “If Pandini was on that train, and if he wasn’t going only as far as Padova or Vicenza or Verona, where it’s too late to catch him, and if there’s no snafu and the police are wide awake when he debarks in Brescia or Milano, then we may have found our man. If, if, if.”
“Why don’t you have them pull him off the train at Brescia?” Reuben asked.
“I’d rather deal with the P.S. in Milano. Besides, to delay a train long enough
for a search is … is … Forget it.”
“Where was he hiding, did you ever find out?”
“No. Pandini’s family is a bad lot. Big and bad. Some cousin had concealed him, I’m sure of it.”
“He certainly wasn’t trying to hide at the Ferrovia.”
“Why should he?” Valier said, spreading his hands upward in a gesture of helplessness. “He knows very well that we don’t have the manpower to spare to keep a constant watch for him at the station. And the young ones on the regular patrol, they’d be lucky to spot their own mothers.”
Valier got up and peered out his window. “Any other surprises for me, Avvocato Frost?” he asked.
Frost was chagrined. In the excitement of Pandini’s discovery he had completely forgotten Cynthia’s news about the missing arsenic. His memory was failing, he had no doubt of it; an unwelcome, quick vision of Edgar Filbert flashed through his mind.
Valier, made aware of the arsenic problem, looked perplexed, and then perhaps angry.
“This badly confuses things, doesn’t it?” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“It makes Pandini a less promising alternative to Garrison. Is it not doubtful that he stole the poison from la marchesa?”
“Yes, no question about that. It’s also unlikely that he poisoned Baxter’s insulin. But how about this, Jack? Regillo takes the arsenic and poisons the medicine. Then, when that doesn’t work, he steals Garrison’s dagger, which he gives to Pandini. Probably telling him in the process that there was a good chance Baxter would be at Haig’s Bar Thursday night looking for a pickup.”
Valier lifted his chin and thoughtfully scratched under it with the fingertips of his right hand. Then he said slowly, “That may fly, my friend. Yes, it may fly. But until we talk with Eccellenza Pandini, Mr. Garrison will remain a guest of my government. Don’t forget, in all those scenarios you worked out, he figured in all but one of them—the one in which someone else really did steal his pugnale.”
“Where is Garrison now?” Frost asked.
“He was taken about two hours ago to Santa Maria Maggiore, down near the Piazzale Roma.”
“You’re aware that Garrison now has a lawyer?”
“Oh yes. Avvocato Mancuzzi has declared his interest. He need not worry. We have not abused Mr. Garrison. We will treat with proper respect a man who may have killed the richest person ever murdered in Venice. With all the notoriety, we’d be fools to do anything else.”
“I’m reassured—I think.”
“Personally, I wish la signorina Medford was the guilty one,” Valier added, leaning back in his desk chair.
“Ms. Medford?” Reuben queried. “You must have taken a terrible dislike to her.”
“Oh no, not at all. It’s only that I’ve always wanted to arrest an English-speaking woman for a big crime.”
“Dare I ask why?” Reuben asked.
“So I could sing to her—‘Lay that pistol down, babe/Lay that pistol down/Pistol packin’ mama/Lay that pistol down.’ They sang that on the radio all the time in Arkansas,” Valier said, laughing heartily.
“Good grief,” was all Reuben could say.
Frost believed that he himself had not heard “Pistol Packin’ Mama” in at least forty-five years, but the tune would not leave his consciousness as he walked to San Marco. Shaking his head, as if the physical gesture would rid him of the song, he thought about the day’s events and was discouraged. There were too many pieces that did not quite fit together, too many signs pointing in too many directions.
What he needed, he decided, was a comfortable dinner with Cynthia. When he stopped for his room key, he asked Gigi to make a reservation at Harry’s Bar. Then, once he’d climbed the stairs and opened the door to Room 201, he found an envelope on the floor. It was of luxurious stock, the sort that Tabita had bought the other morning, as was the single sheet inside it. The envelope was addressed to REUBEN FROST in block capital letters and the message inside consisted of one line:
DON’T OVERLOOK DANIEL ABBOTT
Frost hurried to the lobby and demanded to know from Gigi who had left the anonymous missive.
The concierge examined the envelope and said he’d not seen it before. “Besides, Signor Frost, if someone had given this to us, we would have kept it here in your mailbox if you were out. We would not have put it under your door.”
Frost walked away, frustrated. Then he turned back and asked whether Gigi had seen la marchesa Scamozzi or Luigi Regillo that day. The concierge said he had not, but that it had been extremely busy—a large party of guests had arrived on the Orient-Express from London—and he might have missed them.
Frost murmured perfunctory thanks and returned to his room. A few minutes later he fairly jumped at Cynthia when she returned. “Has Tabita been with you?” he demanded.
“Why, yes, dear. You asked me to take her, remember?”
“Of course. But I didn’t know if she had gone along. She was with you all afternoon?”
“Yes. Why?”
Frost told Cynthia about the note he had found.
“If the note was left this afternoon, I’m afraid you’ll have to look for a guilty party other than Tabita.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Since there was time before dinner, he decided to call Abbott, who turned out to be in his suite and invited Frost to come by.
“I got some mail,” Reuben said, once seated across from Abbott, who was wary as he took the sheet proffered to him and read the brief message.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Where did this come from?”
“The stork brought it, apparently. Or maybe one of those overweight seagulls out on the lagoon. In all seriousness, I don’t have any idea and neither does the concierge.” Reuben described how he had found it under his door. “I assume we can ignore the message,” Frost said, looking at Abbott closely to study his reaction.
“What can I say?” Abbott replied with a tight smile. “It’s too absurd to deserve comment.”
“But it may be important—even crucial—to discover who left this thing.”
“Who could it be?” Abbott said. “The obvious candidate, Tony Garrison, is still being held by the police. Doris Medford’s in Milan. What about Ceil Scamozzi or Luigi Regillo?”
“I doubt that it was Regillo—or Pandini, the hustler Baxter picked up,” Reuben said. He described for Abbott his encounter at the Ferrovia. “Maybe it was la marchesa, but Gigi said he hadn’t seen her—or Regillo—in the hotel all day.”
“Ceil or Luigi could have hired somebody to bring the message over,” Abbott volunteered.
“I suppose. But it would have been pretty risky to send a stranger on such a delicate mission.”
“That leaves only one person,” Abbott said. “I hate to say it, but that’s Tabita.”
“Not possible,” Reuben replied. “She was with my wife all afternoon, in Burano.”
“She was?” Abbott said.
“That’s definite. I just confirmed it with Cynthia.”
“Perhaps Eric Werth and Attorney Cavanaugh came back here from New York,” Abbott said, but without much conviction.
“Hmn,” Reuben said. “Implausible, I’d say.”
“Are you going to tell Valier about this?”
“Certainly,” Reuben said. “If I can get hold of him, which hasn’t been easy. Meanwhile, I suggest you ponder who your friend might be.”
CHAPTER
23
Harry’s Bar
“A trip to Venice wouldn’t be complete without dinner at Harry’s Bar,” Reuben said to Cynthia in their room, as he changed into a business suit for the evening.
“You and Hemingway,” Cynthia said. “But I’m only teasing. Of course we should go. It’s fun. Just bring money.”
“I know, I know. Do you suppose it’s the most expensive restaurant in the world?”
“Don’t forget Tokyo.”
“You’re right. But it’s still troppo caro.”
“We’ve already sent two guys to bring him back here,” Valier had explained. “With luck, I’ll have something to report tomorrow morning.”
Then Frost told him about the missive accusing Dan Abbott, which provoked an Italian profanity on the other end that he did not understand.
“So you have become a bocca di leone,” Valier said. “Someone has slipped a denunciation into your open mouth, or at least under your door.” They discussed, inconclusively, what this development meant, before Valier asked if he could send an ispettore to pick it up. Frost willingly agreed.
“How’s Garrison?” Reuben then asked.
“Stewing in his own juice—sugo suo,” came the reply. “Don’t worry, we’re not torturing him. We don’t want to upset Avvocato Mancuzzi. I should tell you, if Mancuzzi hasn’t already, that the Sostituto Procuratore has decided to sign an Ordine remanding Garrison to prison.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, but let’s not lose sight of the love letter someone sent me.”
Frost, once he had handed the note he had received to the ispettore from the P.S. who called for it, was satisfied there was nothing more he could do that evening. So he went off with Cynthia to Harry’s in an ebullient mood, in spite of the day’s confusing events.
Arrigo Cipriani greeted the Frosts as long-lost friends, which they weren’t, quite. They usually made one visit to Harry’s each year—and sporadically patronized Cipriani’s two boomingly successful restaurants in New York. But their custom could not compare with that of the visitors who dined at Harry’s each day. Or the doyens of the fashion industry who were regulars in Manhattan. Nonetheless, Arrigo seated them at a relatively uncramped table in the downstairs bar, where they could watch the hordes of the less fortunate on their way upstairs (to the grander of the two dining rooms, but not the favorite habitat of old hands, attracted by the more raffish bar).