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  Benno, ever the statie, would despise a shoddy investigation.

  “You got to ask!” Benno’s hand pounded the table, sloshing coffee out of my mug. “Use some shoe leather. Okay, maybe the margarita drinkers at the bars over there and the coked-up hookers patrolling Hard Core”—a particularly vile, garish strip club on South Water Street—“wouldn’t have noticed Santa Claus at the river. Still, you got to ask. Like those little guys … Asians … fishing off the walkways all kinds of hours even if it would be a waste of time because them Asians never talk to cops. But a kid, first Cambode we took in the state police, did me a favor, checked them out with me last week. One remembered an old man with a cane on a foggy night a couple of weeks ago. Thought he banged the cane on a car window and got in.” Benno shook his head. “Probably not Palagi. Doesn’t fit. Likely some old doofus coming out of Hard Core.”

  I asked, “Why are you so sure he went in the river off South Water Street?”

  “Had to be inside the Hurricane Barrier,” he replied. “No way a body gets up river from the Bay through those narrow tainter gates in the Barrier. And why walk far if you live a couple of hundred feet from the water.”

  “So, what do you think happened?”

  Benno wiggled out of the booth and slid his notebook back inside his jacket pocket. “They kept the case open after I got a look at the file because I asked questions, like what’s with the gun in his pocket. Got them a little pissed. But they’ll close it today, tomorrow, soon, without something else.” Then, pointedly, he added, “If you need me, you got the number.”

  “But…”

  His breakfast tab was left for me as though it was already an expense of an investigation.

  George, the gap-toothed morning counterman, grinned broadly as he took my twenty at the register, ready with a wisecrack for any familiar face from College Hall. “Hey, Mr. Temple, what do you get when the Godfather becomes a Carter professor?”

  “Jeez, George, I don’t know.”

  “Somebody who makes an offer you can’t understand.”

  Heh, heh, heh.

  3

  THE GREEN, THE PHYSICAL and cultural center of Carter University’s historic main campus, was crowded with barely awake, earbudded kids toting backpacks and holding cell phones and Starbucks cups on their way to classes or the dining hall. As I paused for the passage of a phalanx of cyclists and four black-caped Goths on skateboards, my cell phone vibrated with a text from the Provost, the University’s chief administrative officer, asking that I join him in his conference room in College Hall. I found him holding a newspaper, his bushy white hair and brows, long nose, craggy jaw, and slate gray eyes projecting a biblical anger.

  “Palagi’s financial advisor is caught in Sugarman’s fraud!” The Provost’s voice struggled to contain his exasperation.

  The Wall Street Journal that he thrust at me was folded to a headline that read Ravensford Capital Clients in Sugarman Ponzi. The article reported hundreds of the Ravensford’s investment accounts were in jeopardy, the SEC and FinRA were investigating, as was the US District Attorney. As I finished the grim news, he handed me a monthly statement from Ravensford Capital listing the number of units the Italo Palagi Trust owned in the Select Investment Fund, the dollar value per unit, and a total value of six million five thousand and twenty-one dollars as of August 31. “The Bursar says nothing in our files contains any mention of Palagi’s assets being invested with Sugarman.”

  Unspoken was our mutual awareness of Bernard Sugarman and his infamous Ponzi scheme, dubbed by New York tabloids as Bernie’s Follies. Posing as one of New York’s and Palm Beach’s cagiest investment managers, Sugarman had taken in billions into his investment company by promising moderate but steady returns through his proprietary option and stock index strategy. Employing dozens of feeders—investment advisors, hedge funds, and money managers—including, apparently, Ravensford Capital, Sugarman kept his cash machine rolling for decades by craftily creating an image of exclusivity, giving investors, including significant donors to the University, the warmth of positive returns even in a down market, allowing them to indulge in the sweet pleasure of financial ignorance.

  “Under his trust’s provisions,” the Provost continued, “Palagi kept control of the investments during his lifetime. Started off at Smith Barney and then went over to Ravensford maybe ten years ago. The Bursar is sending over his files. If there’s anything left, get it out of there. You’ve got the helm.” The Provost, a graduate of Annapolis, was addicted to Navy vernacular.

  Open-ended, you’re the lawyer, questions were thrown my way every day. “Let me get up to speed,” I responded and as quickly recollected a scheduled ten-thirty meeting. “I have an appointment this morning with Brunotti to discuss Palagi’s son’s claim to the estate. Should I tell him?”

  The Provost blinked and tugged at his Churchillian blue with white polka dot bow tie. He never disguised his disdain for Direttore Cosimo Brunotti, Palagi’s successor at the Institute. “You have to keep a relationship with him,” he replied slowly as though he had decided that he didn’t. “We’ll inform him when we have a plan of action. Otherwise, he will go off half-cocked.”

  I agreed. Brunotti was pompous, temperamental, and notoriously oblivious to budgetary constraints. As between us, we had reached a level of polite animosity in our dealings.

  “The Bursar also said since Palagi’s death, we haven’t received a nickel from the Italian bank that administers Palagi’s royalty account.” Long before he arrived at Carter, Palagi wrote, anonymously, a series of thrillers wildly popular in Italy with an Italian James Bond-like hero. Royalties, along with license fees from movies, television, games, and clothing lines, had made Palagi wealthy and even today produced a stream of income that he generously shared with the Institute. “Something else we have to look into.”

  I thought of Benno Bacigalupi’s suspicions as to Palagi’s death but decided the Provost had enough to digest this morning. Instead, I offered, “Outside of his trust, Palagi had other assets, his condo for instance, and whatever bank accounts and personal property he might have. After some specific bequests, the balance goes to the University. His two apartments in Italy are also in his trust, so there will be something left.”

  “The Institute has four sources of annual funding,” the Provost rejoined, ticking them off his raised fingers, “its endowment income, annual donations, our portion of Palagi’s royalties and license fees, and general budgetary support from the University. Endowment income is down, donor support both from here and Italy has slumped, and his royalties and fees are miniscule compared to what we once received. Part of our budget expectation for the Institute’s continued viability was receipt of Palagi’s trust assets. Without those funds …”

  4

  HOUSTON, WE HAVE A problem,” I whispered to Marcie Barrett, my longtime legal assistant and friend, as I entered the third-floor suite of the Office of University Counsel. She was on the phone, tasked with double duty with our shared secretary out for a week of vacation, and held up a wait-one-minute finger in reply. I went into my cramped, file-strewn office and sat behind a multi-drawered yellow oak desk, a family heirloom from behind which my great-grandfather ran Temple Bank, Providence’s largest at the time.

  “What happened?” Marcie asked expectantly as she entered, her washed out, greenish eyes apprehensive.

  As I explained the decimation of Palagi’s trust, astonishment flushed her face. I instructed her to make it a priority to go through the expected files from the Bursar and flag information on any person or persons handling the account at Ravensford Capital and anything else she thought pertinent. “And call Champlin & Burrill”—our principal outside counsel—“for a teleconference this afternoon. I need securities and bankruptcy lawyers.”

  “Six million dollars! Gone like that,” and she snapped her fingers. Then, she said, “And I thought this would be the top of our agenda.”

  She handed me a United States District Court civ
il action complaint entitled GLBT Campus Action Coalition v. Carter University with a summons directed to the Office of the University Counsel, Alger M. Temple, Esq. “Served this morning.” I skimmed through the twenty-page complaint. The Coalition, together with the Student Council, with an ACLU lawyer, claimed a violation of student First Amendment free speech rights because campus police had removed flyers—copies attached—posted on dorm and classroom walls and bulletin boards, as well as utility poles, trash containers, and benches on Thayer and Waterman Streets, depicting graphic lesbian lovemaking in a promotion for a campus feminist discussion panel on female sex at various ages and levels of maturity.

  I sat back, frustrated; the University is constantly hauled into court or administrative hearings because of a perceived violation of student or faculty rights. After ten years as University Counsel, I should be inured to the sound and fury of an Ivy League campus with its significant population of cultural war militants whose throbbing moral certainties exhibited little concern for the sensibilities of others. But I was not. I hated the manufactured crises, the passionate outcries that led to demonstrations and sit-ins, even more the daily pettiness that arrived at our office. That part of being University Counsel was like being Attorney General in a mini-state inhabited by the opinionated, the insensitive, and the stubborn, surrounded by antagonists ready to rub each others’ faces in the merde.

  I handed the complaint back to Marcie, telling her to send it on to Champlin & Burrill for review and comment. She ran her fingers through her prematurely white curly hair, grimaced, and left my office. I snapped on the iMac on my credenza to search for information on Palagi’s investment advisor, Ravensford Capital. My screensaver was a last year’s vacation image of Nadie Winokur, my fiancée, under a red umbrella on the patio of Osteria Pazanzo in Chianti, her eyes shining and expectant, her lips pressed to blow a kiss. It made me feel better. Nadie, the wunderkind of the Department of Psychology, was beautiful and vivacious, self-assured, passionate about life and her causes. Her happy image soothed my angst; we would be married weekend after next followed by a week in Rome and another on the Amalfi Coast. Just had to pace myself until then, not get too deeply involved in anything, not let campus mean-spiritedness get to me.

  Ravensford Capital’s elaborate website invited inquiries from qualified investors to consult with the firm’s team of experienced advisors. Its pages stressed the firm’s adherence to high ethical standards and fidelity to client interests, and a pledge of client focus; one of many graphs depicted growth in assets under management to over nine hundred million since it began operations in 1986. The site pop-ups touted various domestic and international investment vehicles and listed the names of a dozen or so partners and managing directors, giving a general impression that Ravensford Capital—the name seemed so very WASPish considering the ethnicity of its partners—was an aggressive money manager and not exactly Morgan Stanley. How much had it lost to Sugarman?

  For some practical guidance and financial community intelligence, I telephoned my older brother Nick, a partner at the venerable international investment house of Brown Brothers, Harriman. “They’re going down, Algy. Started out on Long Island, came into mid-town eight or nine years ago. Some of the money maybe is … or was … warmer than most. But that’s a rumor, I hasten to say.”

  “What’s likely to happen?”

  “In days, a week at most, bankruptcy. Probably, the principals have already liquidated everything they could, gotten their money out—they always do. If your professor had his trust funds there, you’re not going to see very much except something from SIPC insurance, maybe not.”

  “Any chance of getting anything out now?”

  “Not on your life,” he replied soberly.

  Near to ten thirty, I entered Marcie’s office where she was working through two cartons of Redweld files. “Years of monthly statements from the Bursar,” she said as she looked up . “Shouldn’t you be leaving for the Institute?”

  “Yeah,” I replied sourly and continued out of the office and down the hall to the men’s room. A splash of cold water on my face refreshed me; I wiped dry, caught my reflection in the mirror over the sink, and thought of Nadie as captured in the screensaver. When she looked at me, did our twenty-plus years difference in age creep into her mind? To be honest, nobody was going to confuse me with George Clooney. The image I saw was comprised of bold features: a large, square head, a long, straight nose over a full-lipped mouth, ears that protruded from wiry, salt and pepper hair, and the Temple family’s formidable jaw: the family portraits in Temple House’s library evidenced that jaw had been in our genes for decades. I took a step back and let my hands slide to my hips. All in all, not bad; I was trim, tall, broad shouldered and under my shirt there was a body kept in reasonable shape from daily exercise. Right now, I could carry off my years well enough but I wondered when or if age would eventually give her pause.

  I leaned in to the mirror. My blue-gray eyes, Nadie said, gave me a defining look, what she called “self-possession” which I flattered myself meant a calming seriousness of purpose. With the preening Cosimo Brunotti next on my plate, I would need self-possession super-sized.

  5

  THE INSTITUTE FOR ITALIAN Studies was located off campus in a three-story, ecru colored Italianate house on Benefit Street, only a block away from Temple House, my family’s historic Federalist-style mansion. As I awaited admission at the entrance off its John Street parking lot, I recalled, upon my return to Providence to practice law at Champlin & Burrill, my mother’s dismay over the building’s deterioration into a neighborhood eyesore when savaged into Class C office space, with For Rent signs sprouting on ragged lawns. As the doyen of East Side society, the matriarch of a family with a two hundred year history in Providence, and as a Trustee of Carter University, she fostered its eventual purchase and renovation by the University with anonymous and substantial financial assistance from Temple family’s trusts. Her gift fulfilled two lifelong interests; not only was she an ardent preservationist, she was also an Italophile who relished the idea of a center of Italian culture at the University. To her surprise and chagrin, the building’s designation as the home of the Institute was not without protests from some Carter faculty who ridiculed the restored mansion as a “jewel box” for a program of studies derided as “a mere cultural ornament” and “expensive monument to Western elitism.”

  Wounds were opened within the liberal arts departments that two decades later were still healing.

  “Buon giorno, Signor Temple,” Brunotti’s attractive secretary smiled and escorted me to a second-floor room, ducal in its rich furnishings of heavy brocade curtains, eggplant-colored walls, parquet floors, and thick red rugs under an elaborate ceiling medallion supporting a chandelier sparkling with Murano glass. “Direttore Brunotti will be with you momentarily,” she said and left me to sit in a stiff back chair before an ornately carved, marble-framed desk centered in the room, its surface bare except for a remote control device. A wall-mounted plasma screen behind the desk displayed a computerized map of Italy, which with the click of a remote allowed Brunotti to zoom in on the smallest Italian city and call up names, parties, politicians, reporters, economic data, and history, even the latest political gossip.

  A door opened behind me. “Alger. Good. You are prompt,” was weightedly spoken in a vaguely Euro-smoothie accent.

  I acknowledged Cosimo Brunotti with a barely audible “Direttore” as he strode across the room toward me, his demeanor, his bullet head with black hair combed straight back, and formidable chin daring disagreement. He was dressed in a well-cut, dark blue, double-breasted suit with pleated trousers pressed razor sharp, a white shirt with collar pin holding in place a red Pucci ‘key’ tie, and a matching red pocket square, clothes, I thought, meant to distinguish him from the Institute’s academics, or an administrative functionary like me. I shook his delicate hand which was withdrawn quickly as he passed me on his way to the desk in a billow of cologne. Despite h
is demeanor and attire, he failed to achieve the effortless la bella figura that he too obviously sought. He was, to put it bluntly, overdone, a Milanese bling.

  “This Palagi business…” Brunotti leaned in toward me, his fingers splayed on the desktop, his face fixed in a frown as though gathering thoughts from far more important matters, and proceeded to enumerate the many inconveniences and annoyances resulting from Italo Palagi’s death, all of this business clearly irritating and beneath his status as Direttore. His air of self-importance made me wonder, again, how the Institute’s Leadership Council, a group of its largest donors sprinkled with Italian governmental officials, got it so wrong when it recommended Brunotti to succeed Palagi.

  A beep from speakers below the plasma screen interrupted his complaints and a name flashed over Verona. Brunotti eyed the screen as two more beeps registered and he touched buttons on the remote to transfer the incoming call or e-mail elsewhere. “Over the summer, he became exceedingly unpleasant and difficult.”

  Brunotti paused for my reaction to his dismissive comments, probably because my mother’s good will toward Palagi had not been transferred to his successor whom she found to be a pretentious ass. Not getting any response, he made a very Italian dismissive hand gesture of one in authority to someone not attentive to his needs.