by Donna Leon
“Commissario Brunetti?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She pulled a few papers from one of the files and placed them on the desk in front of him. “The men downstairs said you might want to see these, Dottore.”
“Thank you, Signorina,” he said, pulling the papers across the desk toward him.
She remained standing in front of his desk, clearly waiting to be asked who she was, perhaps too shy to introduce herself. He looked up, saw large brown eyes in an appealing full face and an explosion of bright lipstick. “And you are?” he asked with a smile.
“Elettra Zorzi, sir. I started work last week as secretary to Vice-Questore Patta.” That would explain the new desk outside Patta’s office. Patta had been going on for months, insisting that he had too much paperwork to handle by himself. And so he had managed, like a particularly industrious truffle pig, to root around in the budget long enough to find the money for a secretary.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Signorina Zorzi,” Brunetti said. The name rang familiarly in his ear.
“I believe I’m to work for you, as well, Commissario,” she said, smiling.
Not if he knew Patta, she wouldn’t. But still he said, “That would certainly be very nice,” and glanced down at the papers she had placed on the desk.
He heard her move away from the desk and glanced up to follow her out the door. A skirt, neither short nor long, and very, very nice legs. She turned at the door, saw him looking at her, and smiled again. He looked down at the papers. Who would name a child Elettra? How long ago? Twenty-five years? And Zorzi; he knew lots of Zorzis, but none of them was capable of naming a daughter Elettra. The door closed behind her, and he returned his attention to the papers, but there was little of interest in them; crime seemed to be on holiday in Venice.
He went down to Patta’s office but stopped in amazement when he entered the anteroom. For years the room had held only a chipped porcelain umbrella stand and a desk covered with outdated copies of the sort of magazines generally found in dentists’ offices. Today, the magazines had vanished, replaced by a computer console attached to a printer that stood on a low metal table to the left of the desk. In front of the window, in place of the umbrella stand, stood a small table, this one of wood, and on it rested a glass vase holding an enormous bouquet of orange and yellow gladioli.
Either Patta had decided to give an interview to Architectural Digest or the new secretary had decided that the opulence Patta believed fitting for his office should trickle out to where the lower orders worked. As if summoned by Brunetti’s thoughts, she came into the office.
“It looks very nice,” he said, smiling and gesturing around the small area with a wave of his hand.
She crossed the room and set an armful of folders on her desk, then turned to face him. “I’m glad you like it, Commissario. It would have been impossible to work in here the way it was. Those magazines,” she added with a delicate shudder.
“The flowers are beautiful. Are they to celebrate your arrival?”
“Oh, no,” she replied blandly. “I’ve given a permanent order to Fantin; they’ll deliver fresh flowers every Monday and Thursday from now on.” Fantin, the most expensive florist in the city. Twice a week. A hundred times a year? She interrupted his calculations by explaining, “Since I’m also to prepare the Vice-Questore’s expense account, I thought I’d add them in as a necessary expense.”
“And will Fantin bring flowers for the Vice-Questore’s office, as well?”
Her surprise seemed genuine. “Good heavens, no. I’m certain the Vice-Questore could afford them himself. It wouldn’t be right to spend the taxpayers’ money like that.” She walked around the desk and flipped on the computer. “Is there anything I can do for you, Commissario?” she asked, the issue of the flowers apparently settled.
“Not at the moment, Signorina,” he said as she bent over the keys.
He knocked on Patta’s door and was told to enter. Although Patta sat where he always did, behind his desk, little else was the same. The surface of the desk, usually clear of anything that might suggest work, was covered with folders, reports, even a crumpled newspaper lay to one side. It was not Patta’s usual L’Osservatore Romano, Brunetti noticed, but the just-short-of-scurrilous La Nuova, a paper whose large readership numbers seemed to be based on the joint proposition that people not only would do base and ignoble things but that other people would want to read about them. Even the air-conditioning in this, one of the few offices to have it, seemed not to be working.
“Sit down, Brunetti,” the Vice-Questore commanded.
As if Brunetti’s glance were contagious, Patta looked at the papers on his desk and began to gather them up. He piled them one on top of the other, edges every which way, pushed them aside, and sat, his hand forgotten on top of them.
“What’s happening in Mestre?” he finally asked Brunetti.
“We haven’t identified the victim yet, sir. His picture has been shown to many of the transvestites who work there, but none of them has been able to recognize him.” Patta said nothing. “Two of the men I questioned said that the man looked familiar, but neither could give a definite identification, so it could mean anything. Or nothing. I think another one of the men I questioned recognized him, but he insisted that he didn’t. I’d like to talk to him again, but there might be problems in doing that.”
“Santomauro?” Patta asked and, for the first time in the years they had worked together, succeeded in surprising Brunetti.
“How do you know about Santomauro?” Brunetti blurted out and then added, as if to correct his sharp tone, “sir.”
“He’s called me three times,” Patta said, and then added in a voice he made lower but which was definitely intended for Brunetti to hear, “the bastard.”
Immediately on his guard at Patta’s unwonted, and carefully planned, indiscretion, Brunetti, like a spider weaving its web, began to run his memory over the various strands that might connect these two men. Santomauro was a famous lawyer, his clients the businessmen and politicians of the entire Veneto region. That, if nothing else, would ordinarily have Patta groveling at his feet. But then he remembered it: Holy Mother Church and Santomauro’s Lega della Moralità, the women’s branch of which was under the patronage and direction of none other than the absent Maria Lucrezia Patta. What sort of sermon about marriage, its sanctity, and its obligations had accompanied Santomauro’s phone calls to the Vice-Questore?
“That’s right,” Brunetti said, deciding to admit to half of what he knew, “he’s Crespo’s lawyer.” If Patta chose to believe that a commissario of police found nothing strange in the fact that a lawyer of the stature of Giancarlo Santomauro was the lawyer of a transvestite whore, then it was best to allow him that belief. “What has he told you, sir?”
“He said you harassed and terrified his client, that you were, to use his words, ‘unnecessarily brutal’ in trying to force him to divulge information.” Patta ran one hand down the side of his jaw, and Brunetti realized it looked as though the Vice-Questore had not shaved that day.
“I told him, of course, that I would not listen to this sort of criticism of a commissario of police, that he could come in and file an official complaint if he wanted to.” Ordinarily a complaint of this sort, from a man of Santomauro’s importance, would have Patta promising to have the offending officer disciplined, if not demoted and transferred to Palermo for three years. And Patta would usually have done this even before asking for details. Patta continued in his role as defender of the principle that all men are equal before the law. “I will not tolerate civilian interference with the workings of the agencies of the state.” That, Brunetti was sure, could loosely be translated to read that Patta had a private ax to grind with Santomauro and would be a willing partner in any attempt to see the other man lose face.
“Then do you think I ought to go ahead and question Crespo again, sir?”
No matter how great his immediate anger at Santomauro might b
e, it was too much to expect Patta to overcome the habit of decades and order a policeman to perform an action that opposed the will of a man with important political connections. “Do whatever you think is necessary, Brunetti.”
“Is there anything else, sir?”
Patta didn’t answer, so Brunetti got to his feet. “There is one other thing, Commissario,” Patta said before Brunetti had turned to walk away.
“Yes, sir?”
“You have friends in the publishing world, don’t you?” Oh, good lord, was Patta going to ask him to help? Brunetti looked past his superior’s head and nodded vaguely. “I wonder if you would mind getting in touch with them.” Brunetti cleared his throat and looked at his shoes. “I find myself in an embarrassing situation at the moment, Brunetti, and I would prefer that it go no farther than it has already.” Patta said no more than that.
“I’ll do what I can, sir,” Brunetti said lamely, thinking of his “friends in the publishing world,” two writers on financial affairs and one political columnist.
“Good,” Patta said and paused. “I’ve asked that new secretary to try to get some information on his taxes.” It was not necessary for Patta to explain whose taxes he meant. “I’ve asked her to give you anything she finds.” Brunetti was too surprised by this to do anything but nod.
Patta bent his head over the papers and Brunetti, reading this as a dismissal, left the office. Signorina Elettra was no longer at her desk, so Brunetti wrote a note and left it for her. “Could you see what your computer tells you about the dealings of Avvocato Giancarlo Santomauro?”
He went back upstairs to his office, conscious of the heat, which he felt expanding, seeking out every corner and crevice of the building, ignoring the thick walls and the marble floors, bringing thick humidity with it, the sort that caused sheets of paper to turn up at the corners and cling to any hand that touched them. His windows were open, and he went to stand by them, but they did no more than bring new heat and humidity into the room, and now that the tide was at its lowest, the stench of corruption that always lurked beneath the water penetrated even here, close to the broad expanse of open water in front of San Marco. He stood by the window, sweat soaking all the way through his slacks and shirt to his belt, and he thought of the mountains above Bolzano and of the thick down comforters under which they slept during August nights.
He went to his desk and called down to the main office, told the officer who answered to ask Vianello to come up. A few minutes later, the older man came into the office. Usually tanned by this time of year to the ruddy brown of bresaola, the air-dried beef fillet that Chiara loved so much, Vianello was still his normal pale, winter self. Like most Italians of his age and background, Vianello had always believed himself immune to statistical probability. Other people died from smoking, other people’s cholesterol rose from eating rich food, and it was only they who died of heart attacks because of it. He had, every Monday for years, read the “Health” section in the Corriere della Sera even though he knew that all those horrors were consequent upon the behavior only of other people.
This spring, however, five precancerous melanomas had been dug out of his back and shoulders, and he had been warned to stay out of the sun. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, Vianello had experienced conversion, and, like Paul, he had tried to spread his particular gospel. Vianello had not, however, counted on one of the qualities basic to the Italian character: omniscience. Everyone he spoke to knew more than he did about this issue, knew more about the ozone layer, about chlorofluorocarbons and their effects upon the atmosphere. What is more, all of them, and this to a man, knew that this talk of danger from the sun was just another bidonata, another swindle, another trick, although no one was quite certain just what this swindle was in aid of.
When Vianello, still filled with Pauline zeal, had attempted to argue from the scars on his back, he was told his particular case proved nothing, that all of the statistics were false; besides, it wouldn’t happen to them. And he had then come to realize that most remarkable of truths about Italians: no truth existed beyond personal experience, and all evidence that contradicted personal belief was to be dismissed. And so Vianello had, unlike Paul, abandoned his mission, and had, instead, bought a tube of Protection 30, which he wore on his face all year long.
“Yes, Dottore?” he asked when he came into the office. Vianello had left his tie and jacket downstairs and wore a short-sleeved white shirt and his dark blue uniform pants. He had lost weight since the birth of his third child last year and had told Brunetti that he was trying to lose more weight and get into better shape. A man in his late forties with a new baby, he explained, had to be careful, take better care of himself. In this heat and this humidity, with the memory of those down comforters fresh in his mind, Brunetti didn’t want to think about health in any way, not his own and not Vianello’s.
“Have a seat, Vianello.” The officer took his usual chair, and Brunetti went around to sit behind his desk.
“What do you know about this Lega della Moralità?” Brunetti asked.
Vianello looked up at Brunetti, narrowed his eyes in an inquisitive glance but, getting no further information, sat and thought about the question for a moment, then answered.
“I don’t know all that much about them. I think they meet at one of the churches—Santi Apostoli? No, that’s the catecumeni, those people who have guitars and too many babies. La Lega meets in private homes, I think, and in some of the parish houses and meeting rooms. They’re not political, so far as I’ve heard. I’m not sure what they do, but from their name, it sounds like they probably sit around and talk about how good they are and how bad everyone else is.” His tone was dismissive, indicative of the contempt he would have for such foolishness.
“Do you know anyone who’s a member, Vianello?”
“Me, sir? I should certainly hope not.” He smiled at this, then saw Brunetti’s face. “Oh, you’re serious, eh, sir? Well, then, let me think for a minute.” He did this for the minute he named, hands clasped around one knee and face raised toward the ceiling.
“There’s one person, sir, the woman in the bank. Nadia knows her better than I do. That is, she has more to do with her than I do since she takes care of the banking. But I remember one day Nadia said that she thought it was strange that such a nice woman would have anything to do with something like that.”
“Why do you think she said that?” Brunetti asked.
“What?”
“Assume that they weren’t good people?”
“Well, just think about the name, sir. Lega della Moralità, as if they’d invented the stuff. They’ve got to be a bunch of basibanchi if you ask me.” With that word, Veneziano at its most pure, scoffing at people who knelt in church, bowed so low as to kiss the pew in front of them, Vianello gave yet more proof of their dialect’s genius and his own good sense.
“Do you have any idea of how long she’s been a member or how she came to join?”
“No, sir, but I could ask Nadia to find out. Why?”
Brunetti quickly explained about Santomauro’s presence at Crespo’s apartment and his subsequent phone calls to Patta.
“Interesting, isn’t it, sir?” Vianello asked.
“Do you know him?”
“Santomauro?” Vianello asked, unnecessarily. Crespo was hardly someone he’d be likely to know.
Brunetti nodded.
“He used to be my cousin’s lawyer, before he became famous. And expensive.”
“What did your cousin say about him?”
“Not all that much. He was a good lawyer, but he was always willing to push the law, to make it do what he wanted it to do.” A common enough type in Italy, Brunetti thought, where law was often written but was seldom clear.
“Anything else?” Brunetti asked.
Vianello shook his head. “Nothing I can remember. It was years ago.” Before Brunetti could ask him to do it, Vianello said, “I’ll call my cousin and ask. He might know other people Santomauro wo
rked for.”
Brunetti nodded his thanks. “I’d also like to see what we can find out about this Lega—where they meet, how many of them there are, who they are, and what it is they do.” When he stopped to think about it, Brunetti found it strange that an organization so well known that it had become a common reference point for humor should, in truth, have managed to reveal so little about itself. People knew about the Lega, but if Brunetti’s own experience was anything to go by, no one had a clear idea of what the Lega did.
Vianello had his notebook in his hand now and took this all down. “Do you want me to ask questions about Signora Santomauro, as well?”
“Yes, anything you can find.”
“I think she’s from Verona originally. A banking family.” He looked across at Brunetti. “Anything else, sir?”
“Yes, that transvestite in Mestre, Francesco Crespo. I’d like you to put the word out here and see if anyone knows him or if the name means anything.”
“What has Mestre got on him, sir?”
“Nothing more than that he was arrested twice for drugs, trying to make a sale. The boys in Vice have him on their list, but he lives in an apartment on Viale Ronconi now, a very nice apartment, and I suppose that means he’s moved beyond Via Cappuccina and the public gardens. And see if Gallo has come up with names for the manufacturers of the dress and the shoes.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Vianello said, making notes for himself. “Anything else, sir?”
“Yes. I’d like you to keep an eye on any missing person reports that come in for a man in his early forties, same description as the dead man. It’s in the file. Maybe the new secretary can do something about it on her computer.”