“His boat, yes. His remains, no,” Caravale said.
“But what would Domenico have been doing at Mount Zeda?” a puzzled, troubled Cosimo asked. “By that time he no longer had any interest in the construction business. It had all been turned over to Vincenzo. What would bring him to Mount Zeda?”
“Could it have been before the land was purchased?” Basilio asked. “Maybe it was when he was considering buying it.”
“No, no, my boy. I tell you, by then he had removed himself from such affairs, am I not right, Vincenzo?”
“That’s true, Uncle. Besides, the land had already been in our possession for several years.”
“You see?” Cosimo said. “Believe me, Colonel, I knew my brother. Like me, he was no longer at ease off the island. He disliked leaving it, other than to sail. Why would he have gone to Mount Zeda?”
“Ah, but can one really ever ‘know’ another person’s life?” Dante Galasso asked—gratuitously, thought Gideon. “Or does one simply choose his own reality from the web of stories, the ‘narrative,’ that each of us constructs for the consumption of the Other?” He spread his hands and looked around the room, smiling, waiting for acclamation.
“Asshole,” Phil grumbled to Gideon, who thought Phil had a point. His Italian wasn’t good enough to grasp every word, but he’d gotten the gist. He’d heard the same opaque sophistry, or close enough, from the postmodernist academicians at the university.
Seated next to her husband, Francesca rolled her eyes and let out a pained sigh. “Lecture number three hundred thirty-four,” she said, seemingly addressing the assembled ancestors who looked sternly down from the walls. “Reality as a Social Construct.”
Dante looked pityingly at her. “Ha, ha.”
Caravale, talking around the Galassos, replied politely to Cosimo. “We don’t believe he went there of his own free will, Signor de Grazia. We believe he was brought there, or carried there after his death, and buried.”
“But—” It was Basilio, bouncing with nervous energy, his pink face gleaming. “But—but that must mean... doesn’t that mean someone must have murdered him?”
Dante, apparently one of those compulsive talkers who either didn’t notice that other people paid no attention when he spoke, or else didn’t care, laughed. “What a privilege it is to see such an incisive mind at work, eh, Doctor?” he said to Dr. Luzzatto, sitting around the corner from him.
Luzzatto, chewing hard on his cigar, glanced at him without comment, then returned his attention to Caravale.
Out of the corner of his eye Gideon saw Bella Barbero’s plump bosom rise in indignation as she gathered her resources to defend her husband. But a couple of nervous, placatory pats on the arm from Basilio quieted her down.
“Do I detect an edgy undertone or two around here?” Gideon whispered to Phil.
“Always,” Phil cheerfully agreed.
“We’re proceeding on that assumption, Signor Barbero,” Caravale said. “As of today, the case has been reopened as a homicide investigation.”
“Finally,” said Vincenzo pointedly. He, too, was clearly simmering about something, and had been from the moment they’d seen him waiting on the dock to meet the
launch.
Caravale looked at him. “Excuse me?”
“I have thought all along that my father was the victim of foul play.”
Caravale stared at him. He doesn’t like being surprised like that, thought Gideon. And he especially doesn’t like it in public. “And why is that, exactly?” he asked.
“My father was a prudent man. He knew he was not an expert sailor. When he sailed, it was with a companion, often myself. Why would he go alone this one day, without telling anyone? Why would he leave so early, before anyone was up? That was not his usual practice. Why would he choose a day when the water was rough?” He shook his head. “It made little sense then, it makes little sense now.”
Muttering as much to himself as to anyone else, Dr. Luzzatto spoke around his fat cigar. “Not so, not so. When he had something to think about, some decision to ponder, he would go alone. It made his mind clear.”
“Once in a while, yes—”
“And on that day,” Luzzatto went ponderously on, scowling, his eyes focused inward, “I can tell you for a fact that he did indeed have something important to ponder.”
“Be that as it may, Doctor, as the colonel so rightly points out, his body was not found.” Angrily, Vincenzo turned to Caravale. “Do you suppose it might have helped if the
“What might have helped,” a tight-lipped Caravale shot back, “was your saying something at the time.”
Vincenzo leaned aggressively into him. “I did considerably more than say something. I gave your predecessor a list of my father’s enemies, men who would benefit from his death. He chose to pay no attention.”
Another surprise for Caravale. “You talked to Colonel Pontieri about it?”
“Of course I did. Look in the case records.”
Caravale looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to believe this or not. “Let’s move on,” he said after a moment.
“If you please, signore?” Cosimo de Grazia was gently waving his raised hand. With the starched white cuff of his shirt having slipped down, his wrist was like a dissection drawing in an anatomy text. Beneath the papery skin Gideon could make out not only the usual bony landmarks, but structures invisible in most people: the pisiform, the
