by Donna Leon
“Yes, it must have been,” she said, but she didn’t say any more than that.
“Are those boys good friends of Raffi’s?”
“One of them is. He helps him with his Italian homework.”
“Good.”
“Good what, that he helps him with his homework?”
“No, good that he’s Raffi’s friend, or that Raffi’s his.”
She laughed out loud and shook her head. “I will never figure you out, Guido. Never.” She placed a hand on the back of his neck, leaned forward, and took the drink from his hand. She took another sip and then handed it back to him. “You think when you’re finished with this, you could think about letting me pay to use your body?”
10
The next two days were much the same, only hotter. Four of the men on Brunetti’s list were still not at the addresses listed for them, nor did the neighbors of either have any idea of where they might be or when they might return. Two on the list knew nothing. Gallo and Scarpa had as little luck, although one of the men on Scarpa’s list did say that the man in the drawing looked faintly familiar, only he wasn’t sure of why or where he might have seen him.
The three men had lunch together in a trattoria near the Questura and discussed what they did and didn’t know.
“Well, he didn’t know how to shave his legs,” Gallo said when they seemed to have run out of things to list. Brunetti didn’t know if the sergeant was attempting humor or grasping at straws.
“Why do you say that?” Brunetti asked, finishing his wine and looking around for the waiter so he could ask for the bill.
“His corpse. There were lots of little nicks on his legs, as if he wasn’t too accustomed to shaving them.”
“Would any of us be?” Brunetti asked, and then clarified the pronoun. “Men, I mean.”
Scarpa smiled into his glass. “I’d probably cut my kneecap off. I don’t know how they do it,” he said, and shook his head at yet another of the wonders of women.
The waiter came up then with the bill and interrupted them. Sergeant Gallo took it before Brunetti could, pulled out his wallet, and laid some bills on top of the check. Before Brunetti could object, he explained, “We’ve been told you’re a guest of the city.” Brunetti wondered how Patta would feel about such a thing, aside from believing that he didn’t deserve it.
“We’ve exhausted the names on the list,” Brunetti said. “I think that means we’ve got to talk to the ones who aren’t on the list.”
“Do you want me to bring some of them in, sir?” Gallo asked.
Brunetti shook his head; that was hardly the best way to encourage them to cooperate. “No, I think the best thing is to go and talk to them.”
Scarpa interrupted here. “But we haven’t got names and addresses for most of them.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to go visit them where they work,” Brunetti explained.
Via Cappuccina is a broad, tree-lined street that runs from a few blocks to the right of the Mestre train station into the commercial heart of the city. It is lined with shops and small stores, offices and some blocks of apartment buildings; by day, it is a normal street in an entirely normal small Italian city. Children play under the trees and in the small parks that are to be found along its length. Their mothers are generally with them, to warn them about the cars and the traffic, but they are also there to warn them about and keep them safe from some of the other people who gravitate toward Via Cappuccina. The shops close at twelve-thirty, and Via Cappuccina rests for a few hours in the early afternoon. Traffic decreases, the children go home for lunch and a nap; businesses close, and the adults go home to eat and rest. There are fewer children playing in the afternoon, although the traffic returns, and Via Cappuccina fills up with life and motion as shops and offices reopen.
Between seven-thirty and eight o’clock in the evening, the shops, offices, and stores close down; the merchants and owners pull down metal shutters, lock them securely, and go home for their evening meal, leaving Via Cappuccina to those who work along it after they leave.
During the evening, there is still traffic on Via Cappuccina, but no one seems any longer to be in much of a hurry. Cars move along slowly, but parking is no longer a problem, for it is not parking spaces that the drivers are seeking. Italy has become a wealthy nation, so most of the cars are air-conditioned. Because of this, the traffic is even slower, for the windows must now be lowered before a price can be called out or heard and thus things take more time.
Some of the cars are new and slick: BMWs, Mercedes, the occasional Ferrari, although these last are oddities on Via Cappuccina. Most of the cars are sedate, well-fed sedans, cars for families, the car that takes the children to school in the morning, the car that takes the family to church on Sunday and then out to the grandparents’ house for dinner. They are generally driven by men who feel more comfortable wearing a suit and tie than anything else, men who have done well as a result of the economic boom that has been so generous to Italy during the last decades.
With increasing frequency, doctors who deliver babies in the private wards and clinics of Italy, those used by people wealthy enough to avail themselves of private medical care, have had to tell new mothers that both they and their babies are infected with the AIDS virus. Most of these women respond with stupefaction, for these are women who have been faithful to their marriage vows. The answer, they believe, must lie in some hideous error in the medical treatment they have received. But perhaps the answer is more easily to be found on Via Cappuccina and the dealings that take place between the drivers of those sober cars and the men and women who crowd the sidewalks.
Brunetti turned into Via Cappuccina at eleven-thirty that night, walking down from the train station where he had arrived a few minutes before. He had gone home for dinner, slept for an hour, then dressed himself in what he thought would make him look like something other than a policeman. Scarpa had had smaller copies made of both the drawing and the photographs of the dead man, and Brunetti carried some of these in the inner pocket of his blue linen jacket.
From in back of him and off to his right, he could hear the faint hum of traffic as cars continued to stream past on the tangenziale of the autostrada. Although he knew it was unlikely, Brunetti felt as though their fumes were all being blown down here, so dense and tight was the breezeless air. He crossed a street, another, and then another, and then he began to notice the traffic. There were the cars, gliding along slowly, windows raised, heads turned to the curb as the drivers inspected the other traffic.
Brunetti saw that he was not the only pedestrian here, but he was one of very few wearing a shirt and tie, and he seemed to be the only one not standing still.
“Ciao, bello.”
“Cosa vuoi, a more?”
“Ti faccio tutto che, vuoi, caro.”
The offers came at him from almost every form he passed, offers of delight, joy, bliss. The voices suggested undreamed of pleasures, promised him the realization of every fantasy. He paused under a streetlight and was immediately approached by a tall blonde in a white miniskirt and very little else.
“Fifty thousand,” she said. She smiled, as if that would serve as greater inducement. The smile showed her teeth.
“I want a man,” Brunetti said.
She turned away without a word and walked toward the curb. She leaned toward a passing Audi and called out the same price. The car kept moving. Brunetti stayed where he was, and she turned back toward him. “Forty,” she said.
“I want a man.”
“They cost a lot more, and there’s nothing they can do for you that I can’t, bello.” She showed him her teeth again.
“I want them to look at a picture,” Brunetti said.
“Gesù Bambino” she muttered under her breath, “not one of those.” Then, louder, “It’ll cost you extra. With them. I do everything for one price.”
“I want them to look at the picture of a man and tell me if they recognize him.”
“Pol
ice?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I should have known,” she said. “They’re up the street, the boys, on the other side of Piazzale Leonardo da Vinci.”
“Thank you,” Brunetti said and continued walking up the street. At the next curb, he looked back and saw the blonde climbing into the passenger seat of a dark blue Volvo.
Another few minutes brought him to the open piazzale. He crossed it, having no trouble making his way between the crawling cars, and saw a cluster of forms leaning against a low wall on the other side.
As he drew near, he heard more voices, tenor voices, call out the same offers and promise the same pleasures. So much bliss to be had here.
He approached the group and saw much that he had seen while walking from the station: mouths made larger by red lip-stick and all turned up in smiles meant to be inviting; clouds of bleached hair; legs, thighs, and bosoms which looked every bit as real as those he had seen before.
Two of them came and fluttered around him, moths to the flame of his power to pay.
“Anything you want, sweetie. No rubbers. Just the real thing.”
“My car’s around the corner, caro. You name it, I’ll do it.
“ From the pack leaning against the low wall that ran along one side of the piazzale, a voice called out to the second one, “Ask him if he’d like you both, Paolina.” Then, to Brunetti directly, “They’re fabulous if you take them together, amore; make you a sandwich you’ll never forget.” That was enough to set the others off into peals of laughter, laughter that was deep and had nothing of the feminine in it.
Brunetti spoke to the one called Paolina. “I’d like you to look at a picture of a man and tell me if you recognize him.”
Paolina turned back to the group and shouted, “It’s a cop, little girls. And he wants me to look at some pictures.”
A chorus of shouts came back: “Tell him the real thing’s better than dirty pictures, Paolina.” “Cops don’t even know the difference.” “A cop? Make him pay double.”
Brunetti waited until they had run out of things to say and asked, “Will you look at the picture?”
“What’s in it for me if I do?” Paolina asked, and his companion laughed to see his friend being so tough with a policeman.
“It’s a picture of the man we found out in the field on Monday.” Before Paolina could pretend ignorance, Brunetti added, “I’m sure you all know about him and what happened to him. We’d like to identify him so we can find the person who killed him. I think you men can understand why that’s important.”
He noticed that Paolina and his friend were dressed almost identically each in tight tube tops and short skirts that showed sleek, muscular legs. Both wore high-heeled shoes with needle toes; neither could ever hope to outrun an assailant.
Paolina’s friend, whose daffodil yellow wig cascaded to his shoulders, said, “All right, let’s see it,” and held out his hand. Although the man’s feet were disguised in those shoes, nothing could disguise the breadth and thickness of his hand.
Brunetti pulled the drawing from his pocket and handed it to him. “Thank you, Signore,” Brunetti said. The man gave him an uncomprehending look, as though Brunetti had begun to speak in tongues. The two men bent over the drawing, talking together in what Brunetti thought might be Sardinian dialect.
The blonde held the drawing out toward Brunetti. “No, I don’t recognize him. This the only picture you’ve got of him?”
“Yes,” Brunetti answered, then asked, “Would you mind asking your friends if they recognize him?” He nodded toward the group that still hung back against the wall, tossing occasional remarks at passing cars but keeping their eyes on Brunetti and the two men.
“Sure. Why not?” Paolina’s friend said and turned back toward the group. Paolina followed him, perhaps nervous at the risk of spending time alone in the company of a policeman.
They went back toward the group, which peeled itself away from the wall to walk toward them. The one with the drawing stumbled and kept himself from falling only by clutching Paolina’s shoulder. He swore viciously The group of bright-colored men crowded around them, and Brunetti watched as they handed the drawing around. One of them, a tall, gangly boy in a red wig, let the picture go, then suddenly grabbed it back and looked at it again. He pulled another man toward him, pointed down toward the picture, and said something to him. The second one shook his head, and the redhead jabbed at the picture again. The other one still did not agree, and the redhead dismissed him with an angry flip of his hand. The picture passed around to a few more of them, and then Paolina’s friend came back toward Brunetti with the red-head walking at his side.
“Buona sera,” Brunetti said as the redhead came up. He held out his hand and said, “Guide Brunetti.”
The two men stood as if rooted to the spot by their high heels. Paolina’s friend glanced down at his skirt and wiped his hand nervously across its front. The redhead put his hand to his mouth for a moment and then extended it to Brunetti. “Roberto Canale,” he said, “Pleased to meet you.” His grip was firm, his hand warm.
Brunetti held out his hand to the other, who glanced nervously back to the group and, hearing nothing, took Brunetti’s hand and shook it. “Paolo Mazza.”
Brunetti turned back to the redhead. “Do you recognize the man in the photo, Signor Canale?” Brunetti asked.
The redhead looked off to the side until Mazza said, “He’s talking to you, Roberta, don’t you even remember your name?”
“Of course I remember my name,” the redhead said, turning angrily to Mazza. Then, to Brunetti, “Yes, I recognize the man, but I can’t tell you who he is. I can’t even tell you why I recognize him. He just looks like someone I know.”
Realizing how inadequate this must sound, Canale explained, “You know how it is when you see the man from the cheese store on the street and he’s not wearing his apron; you know him but you don’t know how you know him and you can’t remember who he is. You know that you know him, but he’s out of place, so you can’t remember who he is. That’s how it is with the man in the drawing. I know I know him, or I’ve seen him, the same way you see the man in the cheese store, but I can’t remember where he’s supposed to be.”
“Is he supposed to be here?” Brunetti asked. When Canale gave him an empty look, he explained, “Here on Via Cappuccina? Is this where you’d expect to see him?”
“No, no. Not at all. That’s what’s so strange about it. Wherever it was I saw him, it didn’t have anything to do with all of this.” He waved his hands in the air as if seeking the answer there. “It’s like I saw one of my teachers here. Or the doctor. He’s, not supposed to be here. It’s just a feeling, but it’s very strong.” Then, seeking confirmation, he asked Brunetti, “Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. Perfectly. I once had a man stop me on the street in Rome and say hello to me. I knew I knew him, but I didn’t know why.” Brunetti smiled, risking it. “I’d arrested him two years before. But in Naples.”
Luckily, both men laughed. Canale said, “May I keep the picture? Maybe it will come back to me if I can, you know, look at it every once in a while. Maybe that will surprise me into remembering.”
“Certainly. I appreciate your help,” Brunetti said.
It was Mazza’s turn to risk. “Was he very bad? When you found him?” He brought his hands together in front of him, one clutching at the other.
Brunetti nodded.
“Isn’t it enough if they want to fuck us?” Canale broke in. “Why do they want to kill us, too?”
Although the question was addressed to powers well beyond those for whom Brunetti worked, he still answered it. “I have no idea.”
11
The next day, Friday, Brunetti thought he had better make an appearance at the Venice Questura to see what paperwork and mail had accumulated for him. Furthermore, he admitted to Paola over coffee that morning, he wanted to see if there was anything new on “Il Caso Patta.”
&n
bsp; “Nothing in Gente or Oggi,” she contributed, naming the two most famous gossip magazines, then added, “though I’m not sure that Signora Patta rates the attention of either.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” Brunetti warned, laughing.
“If I’m a lucky woman, Signora Patta will never hear me say anything.” More amiably, she asked, “What do you think Patta will do?”
Brunetti finished his coffee and set his cup down before he answered. “I don’t think there’s very much he can do except wait for Burrasca to get tired of her or for her to get tired of Burrasca and come back.”
“What’s he like, Burrasca?” Paola didn’t waste time asking if the police had a file on Burrasca. As soon as anyone in Italy made enough money, someone would have a file.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s a pig. He’s part of that Milano world of cocaine, cars with fast engines, and girls with slow brains.”
“Well, he’s got half of one of them this time,” Paola said.
“What do you mean?”
“Signora Patta. She’s not a girl, but she’s certainly got a slow brain.”
“Do you know her that well?” Brunetti was never sure whom Paola knew. Or what.
“No, I’m simply inferring it from the fact that she married Patta and stayed married to him. I imagine it would be difficult to put up with a pompous ass like that.”
“But you put up with me,” Brunetti said, smiling, in search of a compliment.
Her look was level. “You’re not pompous, Guido. At times you’re difficult, and sometimes you’re impossible, but you are not pompous.” No compliments here.
He pushed himself back from the table, feeling that it was perhaps time to go to the Questura.
When he got to his office, he looked through the papers waiting for him on his desk, disappointed to find nothing about the dead man in Mestre. He was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Avanti,” he called, thinking it might be Vianello with something from Mestre. Instead of the sergeant, a dark-haired young woman walked in, a sheaf of files in her right hand. She smiled across the room at him and approached his desk, looking down at the papers in her hand and paging through them.