by Donna Leon
“Certainly. I find myself with a great deal of time on my hands,” she said, leaving an opening wide enough for Brunetti to herd sheep through.
He gave in to the impulse and asked, “What’s happening?”
“They’re having dinner tonight. In Milano. He’s having himself driven out there this afternoon.”
“What do you think will happen?” Brunetti asked, although he knew he shouldn’t.
“Once Burrasca’s arrested, she’ll be on the first plane. Or perhaps he’ll offer to drive her back to Burrasca’s after dinner—he’d enjoy that, I think, driving up with her and finding the cars from the Finance Police. She’ll probably come back with him tonight if she sees them.”
“Why does he want her back?” Brunetti finally asked.
Signorina Elettra glanced up at him, puzzled by his density. “He loves her, Commissario. Surely you must realize that.”
23
The heat usually robbed Brunetti of all appetite, but tonight he found himself really hungry for the first time since he had eaten with Padovani. He stopped at the Rialto on the way home, surprised to find some of the fruit and vegetable stalls still open after eight. He bought a kilo of plum tomatoes so ripe the vendor warned him to carry them carefully and not put anything on top of them. At another stall, he bought a kilo of dark figs and got the same warning. Luckily, each warning had come with a plastic bag, so he arrived at home with a bag in each hand.
When he got inside, he opened all the windows in the apartment, changed into loose cotton pants and a T-shirt, and went into the kitchen. He chopped onions, dropped the tomatoes in boiling water, the more easily to peel them, and went out on the terrace to pick some leaves of fresh basil. Working automatically, not really paying attention to what he was doing, he prepared a simple sauce and then put water on to cook the pasta. When the salted water rose to a rolling boil, he threw half a package of penne rigate into the water and stirred them around.
As he did all of this, he kept thinking of the various people who had been involved in the events of the last ten days, not trying to make any sense of the jumble of names and faces. When the pasta was done, he drained it in a colander, tossed it into a serving bowl, then poured the sauce on top of it. With a large spoon, he swirled it around, then went out to the terrace, where he had already taken a fork, a glass, and a bottle of Cabernet. He ate from the bowl. Their terrace was so high up that the only people close enough to see what he was doing would have to be in the bell tower of the church of San Polo. He ate all of the pasta, wiping the remaining sauce up with a piece of bread, then took the bowl inside and came out with a plate of freshly washed figs.
Before he started on them, he went back inside and picked up his copy of Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome. Brunetti picked up where he had left off, with the account of the myriad horrors of the reign of Tiberius, an emperor for whom Tacitus seemed to have an especial distaste. These Romans murdered, betrayed, and did violence to honor and to one another; how like us they were, Brunetti reflected. He read on, learning nothing to change that conclusion, until the mosquitoes began to attack him, driving him inside. On the sofa, until well after midnight, he read on, not at all troubled by the knowledge that this catalogue of crimes and villainies committed almost two thousand years ago served to remove his mind from those that were being committed around him. His sleep was deep and dreamless, and he awoke refreshed, as if he believed that Tacitus’s fierce, uncompromising morality would somehow help him through the day.
When he got to the Questura that morning, he was surprised to discover that Patta had found time, before he left for Milano the previous day, to request of the instructing judge a court order that would provide them with the records of both the Lega della Moralità and the Banca di Verona. Not only that, but the order had been delivered to both institutions that morning, where the officials in charge had promised to comply. Both institutions insisted that it would take some time to prepare the necessary documents, and both had been imprecise about just how long that would be.
By eleven there was still no sign of Patta. Most of the people who worked in the Questura bought a newspaper that morning, but in none of them was there mention of Burrasca’s arrest. This fact came as no surprise, neither to Brunetti nor the rest of the staff, but it did a great deal to increase the eagerness, to make no mention of the speculation, about the results of the Vice-Questore’s trip to Milano the evening before. Rising above all of this, Brunetti contented himself with calling the Guardia di Finanza to ask if his request for the loan of personnel to check the financial records of both the bank and the Lega had been granted. Much to his surprise, he learned that the instructing judge, Luca Benedetti, had already called and suggested that the papers be examined by the Finanza as soon as they were produced.
When Vianello came into his office shortly before lunch, Brunetti was sure he had come to report that the papers had not arrived or, more likely, that some bureaucratic obstacle had suddenly been discovered by both the bank and the Lega, and delivery of the papers would be delayed, perhaps indefinitely.
“Buon giorno, Commissario,” Vianello said when he came in.
Brunetti looked up from the papers on his desk and asked, “What is it, Sergeant?”
“I’ve got some people here who want to talk to you.”
“Who?” Brunetti asked, placing his pen down on the papers in front of him.
“Professore Luigi Ratti and his wife,” Vianello answered, offering no explanation save the terse, “from Milano.”
“And who are the professore and his wife, if I might ask?”
“They’re the tenants in one of the apartments in the care of the Lega, have been for a little more than two years.”
“Go on, Vianello,” Brunetti said, interested.
“The professor’s apartment was on the part of the list I had, so I went to speak to him this morning. When I asked him how he had come by the apartment, he said that the decisions of the Lega were private. I asked him how he paid his rent, and he explained that he paid two hundred twenty thousand lire into the Lega’s account at the Banca di Verona every month. I asked him if I might take a look at his receipts, but he said he never kept them.”
“Really?” Brunetti asked, even more interested now. Because there was never any telling when some agency of the government would decide that a bill had not been paid, a tax not collected, a document not issued, no one in Italy threw out any official form, least of all proof that some sort of payment had been made. Brunetti and Paola, in fact, had two complete drawers filled with utility bills that went back a decade and at least three boxes filled with various documents stuffed away in the attic. For a person to say he had thrown away a rent receipt was either an act of sovereign madness or a lie. “Where is the professor’s apartment?”
“On the Zattere, with a view across to the Giudecca,” Vianello said, naming one of the most desirable areas in the city. Then he added, “I’d say it’s six rooms, the apartment, though I saw only the entrance hall.”
“Two hundred twenty thousand lire?” Brunetti asked, thinking that this was what Raffi had paid for a pair of Timberlands a month before.
“Yes, sir,” Vianello said.
“Why don’t you ask the professor and his wife to come in, then, Sergeant? By the way what is the professor a professor of?”
“I don’t think of anything, sir.”
“I see,” Brunetti said and screwed the cap back onto his pen.
Vianello went over to the door and opened it, then stepped back to allow Professor and Signora Ratti to come into the office.
Professor Ratti might have been in his early fifties, but he was keeping that fact at bay to the best of his ability. He was aided in the attempt by the ministrations of a barber who cut his hair so close to the scalp that the grey would be mistaken for blonde. A Gianni Versace suit in dove grey silk added to the youthful look, as did the burgundy silk shirt which he wore open at the throat. His shoes, which he wore without
socks, were the same color as the shirt, made of woven leather that could have come only from Bottega Veneta. Someone must once have warned him about the tendency of the skin under his chin to wattle, for he wore a knotted white silk cravat and held his chin artificially high, as if compensating for a careless optician who had put the lenses of his bifocals in the wrong places.
If the professor was fighting a holding action against his age, his wife was engaged in open combat. Her hair bore an uncanny resemblance to the color of her husband’s shirt, and her face had the tautness that came only from the vibrancy of youth or the skill of surgeons. Blade thin, she wore a white linen suit with a jacket left open to display an emerald green silk shirt. Seeing them, Brunetti wondered how they managed to walk around in this heat and still look fresh and cool. The coolest part of them was their eyes.
“You wanted to speak to me, Professore?” Brunetti asked, rising from his chair but making no attempt to shake hands.
“Yes, I did,” Ratti said, motioning to his wife to sit in the chair in front of Brunetti’s desk and then going, unasked, to pull a second from where it stood against the wall. When they were both comfortable, he continued, “I’ve come to tell you how much I dislike having the police invade the privacy of my home. Even more, I want to complain about the insinuations that have been made.” Ratti, like so many Milanesi, elided all of the r’s in his speech, ‘a sound which Brunetti could not help associating with actresses of the more pneumatic variety.
“And what insinuations are those, Professore?” Brunetti asked, resuming his seat and signaling to Vianello to stay where he was, just inside the door.
“That there is some irregularity pertaining to my tenancy.”
Brunetti glanced across at Vianello and saw the sergeant raise his eyes toward the ceiling. Not only the Milano accent but now big words to go with it.
“What makes you believe this insinuation has been made, Professore?” Brunetti asked.
“Well, why else would your police push their way into my apartment and demand that I produce rent receipts?” As the professor spoke, his wife was busy running her eyes around the office.
“’Push,’Professore?” Brunetti asked in a conversational voice. ‘"Demand?” Then, to Vianello, “Sergeant, how did you gain access to the property to which the professor has,” he paused, “tenancy?”
“The maid let me in, sir.”
“And what did you tell the maid who let you in, Sergeant?”
“That I wanted to speak to Professore Ratti.”
“I see,” Brunetti said and turned his attention back to Ratti. “And how was the ‘demand’ made, Professorel”
“Your Sergeant asked to see my rent receipts, as if I’d keep such things around.”
“You are not in the habit of keeping receipts, Professore?”
Ratti waved a hand, and his wife gave Brunetti a look of studied surprise, as if to suggest what an enormous waste of time it would be to keep a record of a sum so small.
“And what would you do if the owner of the apartment were ever to claim that you had not paid the rent? What proof would you offer?” Brunetti asked.
This time, Ratti’s gesture was meant to dismiss the possibility of that ever happening, while his wife’s look was meant to suggest that no one would ever think of questioning her husband’s word.
“Could you tell me just how you pay your rent, Professore?’
“I don’t see how that is any business of the police,” Ratti said belligerently. “I’m not used to being treated like this.”
“Like what, Professore?” Brunetti asked with real curiosity.
“Like a suspect.”
“Have you been treated like a suspect before, by other police, and would this have made you familiar with what it feels like?”
Ratti half rose in his seat and glanced over at his wife. “I don’t have to put up with this. A friend of mine is a city counsellor.” His wife made a slight gesture with her hand, and he slowly sat back down.
“Could you tell me how you pay your rent, Professore Ratti?”
Ratti looked directly at Brunetti. “I deposit the rent at the Banca di Verona.”
“At San Bartolomeo?”
“Yes.”
“And how much is that rent, Professore?”
“It’s nothing,” the professor said, dismissing the sum.
“Is two hundred twenty thousand lire the sum?”
“Yes.”
Brunetti nodded, “And the apartment, how many square meters is it?”
Signora Ratti interrupted here, as if driven past her power to put up with such idiocy. “We have no idea of that. It’s adequate for our needs.”
Brunetti pulled the list of the apartments held in trust by the Lega toward him and flipped to the third page, then ran his finger down the list until he came to Ratti’s name. “Three hundred and twelve square meters, I think. And six rooms. Yes, I suppose that would be adequate for most needs.”
Signora Ratti was on him in a flash. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Brunetti turned a level glance on her. “Just what I said, Signora, and no more. That six rooms ought to be adequate for two—there are only two of you, aren’t there?”
“And the maid,” she answered.
“Three, then,” Brunetti agreed. “Still adequate.” He turned away from her, face unchanged, and returned his attention to her husband. “How was it that you came to be given one of the apartments of the Lega, Professore?”
“It was very simple,” Ratti began, but it seemed to Brunetti that he had begun to bluster. “I applied for it in the normal fashion, and I was given it.”
“To whom did you apply?”
“To the Lega della Moralità, of course.”
“And how did you happen to learn that the Lega had apartments which it rented?”
“It’s common knowledge here in the city, isn’t it, Commissario?”
“If it is not now, then it soon will be, Professore.”
Neither of the Rattis said anything to this, but Signora Ratti glanced quickly at her husband and then back at Brunetti.
“Do you remember anyone in particular who told you about the apartments?”
Both of them answered instantly, “No.”
Brunetti allowed himself the bleakest of smiles. “You seem very sure of that.” He made a meaningless squiggle against their names on the list. “And did you have an interview in order to obtain this apartment?”
“No,” Ratti said. “We filled out the paperwork and sent it in. And then we were told that we had been selected.”
“Did you receive a letter, or perhaps a phone call?”
“It was so long ago I don’t remember,” Ratti said. He turned for confirmation to his wife, and she shook her head.
“And you’ve been in this apartment for two years now?”
Ratti nodded.
“And you haven’t saved any of the receipts for the rent you’ve paid?”
This time his wife shook her head.
“Tell me, Professore, how much time do you spend in the apartment each year?”
He thought about this for a moment. “We come for Carnevale.”
His wife finished his sentence with a firm, “Of course.”
Her husband continued, “Then we come for September, and sometimes for Christmas.”
His wife broke in here and added, “We come for the odd weekend during the rest of the year, of course.”
“Of course,” Brunetti repeated. “And the maid?”
“We bring her with us from Milano.”
“Of course,” Brunetti nodded and added another squiggle to the paper in front of him.
“May I ask you, Professore, if you are familiar with the purposes of the Lega? With its goals?”
“I know that it aims at moral improvement,” the professor answered in a tone that declared there could never be too much of that.
“Ah, yes,” Brunetti said, then asked, “but beyond that, to its purpos
e in renting apartments?”
This time, it was Ratti who glanced at his wife. “I think their purpose was to attempt to give the apartments to those they considered worthy of them.”
Brunetti continued, “Knowing this, Professore, did it at any time seem strange to you that the Lega, which is a Venetian organization, had given one of the apartments it controls to a person from Milano, a person who would, moreover, make use of the apartment only a few months of the year?” When Ratti said nothing, Brunetti urged him, “Surely you know how difficult it is to find an apartment in this city?”
Signora Ratti chose to answer this. “I suppose we believed that they wanted to give an apartment like this to people who would know how to appreciate it and care for it.”
“By that are you suggesting that you would be better able to care for a large and desirable apartment than would, for example, the family of a carpenter from Cannaregio?”
“I think that goes without saying,” she answered.
“And who, if I might ask, pays for repairs to the apartment?” Brunetti asked.
Signora Ratti smiled and answered, “So far, there has been no need to make any repairs.”
“But surely there must be a clause in your contract—if you were given a contract—which makes clear who is responsible for repairs.”
“They are,” Ratti answered.
“The Legal” Brunetti asked.
“Yes.”
“So then maintenance is not the responsibility of the people who rent?”
“No.”
“And you are there for,” Brunetti began and then glanced down at the paper in front of him, as though he had the number written there, “for about two months a year?” When Ratti said nothing, Brunetti asked, “Is that correct, Professorel”
His question was rewarded with a grudging “Yes.”
In a gesture he made consciously identical to the one used by the priest who taught catechism to his grammar school class, Brunetti folded his hands neatly in front of him, just short of the bottom of the sheet of paper on his desk, and said, “I think it is time to begin making choices, Professore.”