Death and Judgement Read Free Page A

position in a law office in Venice, where he soon became an expert on international law, one of the few men in the city to interest himself in such matters. After only five years, he left that firm and set up his own office, specializing in corporate and international law.
    Italy is a country where many laws are passed one day, only to be repealed the next Nor is it strange that, in a country where the point of even the simplest newspaper story is often impossible to decipher, there sometimes exists a measure of confusion as to the exact meaning of the law. The resulting fluidity of interpretation creates a climate most propitious to lawyers, who claim the ability to understan d the law. Among these, then, Avv ocato Carlo Trevisan.
    Because he was born industrious and ambitious, Avvocato Trevisan prospered. Because he married well, the daughter of a banker, he was put in familial and familiar contact with many of the most successful and powerful industrialists and bankers of the Veneto. His practi ce expanded along with his waistl ine, until, the year he turned fifty, Avvocato Trevisan had seven lawyers working in his office, none of them a partner in the firm. He attended weekly Mass at Santa Maria del Giglio, had twice served with distinction on the City Council of Venice, and had two children, a boy and a girl, bom bright and both beautiful.
    On the Tuesday before the feast of La Madonna delta Salute in late November, Avvocato Trevisan spent the afternoon in Padua, asked there by Francesco Urbani, a client of his who had recently decided to ask his wife of twenty-seven years for a separation. During the two hours the men spent together, Trevisan suggested that Urbani move certain monies out of the country, perhaps to Luxemburg, and that he immediately sell his share of the two factories in Verona which he held in silent partnership with another man. The proceeds from those transactions, Trevisan suggested, might well follow the others quickly out of the country.
    After the meeting, which he had arranged to coincide with his next appointment, Trevisan met for a weekly dinner with a business associate. They had met in Venice the previous week, so tonigjht they met in Padua. Like all of their meetings, this one was marked by the cordiality that results from success and prosperity. Good food, good wine, and good news.
    Trevisan’ s partner drove him to the railway station where, as he did every week, he caught the Intercity for Trieste, which would get him to Venice by 10.15. Though he held a ticket for the fust-class section, which was at the back of the train, Trevisan walked through the almost empty carriages and took a seat in a second-class compartment: like all Venetians, he sat at the front of the train so as not to have to walk the length of the long platform when the train finally pulled into the Santa Lucia station.
    He opened the calfskin briefcase on the seat opposite him and pulled from it a prospectus recently sent to him by the National Bank of Luxemburg, one offering interests as high as 18 per cent, though not for accounts in Italian lira. He slid a small calculator from its slot in the upper lid of the briefcase, uncapped his M ontblanc, and began to make rough calculations on a sheet of paper.
    The door of his compartment rolled back, and Trevisan turned away to take his ticket from his overcoat pocket and hand it to the conductor. But the person who stood there had come to collect something other than his ticket from Avvocato Carlo Trevisan.
    The body was discovered by the conductor, Cristina Merli, while the train was crossing the laguna that separates Venice from Mestre. As she walked past the compartment in which the well-dressed gentleman lay slumped against the window, she first decided not to bother him by waking him to check his ticket, but then she remembered how often ticketl ess passengers, even well-dressed ones, would feign sleep on this short trip across the laguna, hoping this way not to be