A Venetian Reckoning

by Donna Leon

  'Work,' Vianello repeated but said no more. He got to his feet. 'Will there be anything else, sir?' Brunetti remembered that Topa had been Vianello s partner for more than seven years and that the sergeant had wanted to quit when Topa was forced into retirement, persuaded away from that idea only by Brunetti's fierce opposition. Topa had never seemed to Brunetti the sort of man over whom a high moral position could be taken.

  'No, nothing else. On your way down, would you ask Signorina Elettra to get on to the people at SIP and see if she can get the list of Trevisan's local calls from them?'

  'Pinetta's isn't the sort of place an international lawyer would call,' Vianello said.

  It didn't sound like the sort of place a successful accountant would call, either, but Brunetti chose not to volunteer this. "The records will tell us’ he said blandly.

  Vianello waited, but when Brunetti said nothing further, he went down to his office, leaving Brunetti to speculate on the reasons wealthy and successful men might have for making calls to public telephones, especially in a place as squalid as Pinetta's.

  13

  Dinner that night for the three of them was enlivened — Brunetti could think of no kinder word — by a heated confrontation between Chiara and her mother which blew up when Chiara told her father that, after school, she had gone back to do her maths homework at the home of the girl who was Francesca Trevisan's best friend.

  Before Chiara could say any more than that, Paola slammed her hand down on the table. 'I will not live in the same house as a spy,' she shouted at her daughter.

  'I'm not a spy,' Chiara answered sharply. ‘I’m working for the police.' Then, turning to Brunetti, she asked, 'Aren't I, Papa?'

  Ignoring her, Brunetti reached across the table and picked up the nearly empty bottle of Pinot noir.

  'Well, aren't I?' Chiara insisted.

  'It doesn't matter', her mother began, 'if you're working for the police or not. You can't go around trying to get information from your friends.'

  'But Papas always getting information from his friends, too. Does that mean he's a spy?'

  Brunetti sipped at his wine and peered across the top of his glass at his wife, curious how she would answer this.

  Paola looked at him but spoke to Chiara. 'It's not that he gets information mom his friends, it's that when he does it, they know who he is and why he's doing it.'

  'Well, my friends know who I am and they ought to be able to figure out why I'm doing it,' Chiara insisted, her cheeks slowly suffusing with red.

  'It's not the same thing, and you know it,' Paola answered.

  Chiara muttered something that, to Brunetti, sounded like, 'Is so,' but her head was lowered over her empty plate, and so he wasn't sure.

  Paola turned to Brunetti. 'Guido, would you please try to explain the difference to your daughter?' As ever, in the heat of argument, Paola, like some sort of negligent rodent, had sloughed off all claim to motherhood and abandoned the young thing to its father.

  'Your mother's right,' he said. 'When I question people, they know I'm a policeman, and so they tell me things in knowledge of that fact. And they know that they can be held liable for what they say, so that allows them the chance to be cautious, if they want to be.'

  'But don't you ever trick anyone?' Chiara asked. 'Or try to?' she added before he could answer.

  'I'm sure I've done both,' he admitted. 'But remember, nothing that anyone says to you has any legal weight. They can always deny they said it, and then it would just be your word against theirs.'

  'But why would I lie?'

  'Why would they?' Brunetti returned.

  'Who cares if what people say is legally binding or not?' Paola asked, jumping back into the fray. "We're not talking about what's legally binding; we're talking about betrayal. And, if the people at this table will permit me the use of the word,' she said, looking at the two of them in turn, 'honour.'

  Chiara, Brunetti observed, got one of those, 'Oh, here she goes again' looks on her face and turned to him for moral support, but he gave her none.

  'Honour?' Chiara asked.

  'Yes, honour,' Paola said, suddenly calm, but no less dangerous for that. 'You can't get information from your friends. You can't take what they say and make use of it against them.'

  Chiara interrupted her here. 'But nothing Susanna said can be used against her.'

  Paola closed her eyes for a moment, then picked up a piece of bread and began to crumble it into small pieces, something she often did when she was upset 'Chiara, it doesn't matter what use ever gets made or doesn't get made of anything she told you. What cannot be done,' she began and then repeated the entire phrase, 'what cannot be done is to lead our friends on to say things to us when we are alone with them and then turn around and repeat that information or make some use of it that they didn't know we had in mind when they were talking to us. That's to betray a confidence.'

  'You make it sound like a crime,' Chiara said.

  it's worse than a crime,' Paola shot back, it's wrong.'

  'And crime isn't?' Brunetti asked from the sidelines.

  She pounced. 'Guido, unless I invented them, we had three plumbers in the house last week, for two days. Can you produce a ricevuto fiscale for that work? Do you have some proof that the money we paid them will be reported to the government and taxes be paid on it?' When he said nothing, she insisted, 'Do you?' His silence continued. 'That's a crime, Guido, a crime, but I defy you or anyone in this stinking government of pigs and thieves we have to tell me that it's wrong.'

  He reached for the bottle but it was empty.

  'You want more?' Paola asked, and he knew she wasn't talking about the wine. He didn't particularly, but Paola was up on her soapbox now, and long experience told him that there was no getting her down until she had finished. He regretted only that he had finished the wine.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Chiara get out of her chair and go over to the cabinet. In a moment she was back with two small glasses and a bottle of grappa, which she slid silently across the table towards him. Her mother could call her whatever she pleased - traitor, spy, monster - to him, the child was an angel.

  He saw Paola give Chiara a long look and was glad to see her eyes soften, however momentarily. He poured himself a small glass of grappa, sipped at it and sighed.

  Paola reached across the table and picked up the bottle. She poured herself some and took a sip. The truce was held.

  'Chiara,' Paola said, 'I don't mean to yell at you about this.’

  'But you just did,’ her ever-literal daughter replied.

  'I know I did, and I'm sorry.' Paola took another sip. 'You know I feel strongly about this.'

  'You get it from those books, don't you?' Chiara asked simply, managing to suggest that her mother's career as a professor of English Literature had somehow exerted a pernicious influence on her moral development.

  Both of her parents sought sarcasm or disdain in her tone, but neither was there, nothing more than the desire for information.

  'I suppose I do,' Paola admitted. 'They knew about honour, the people who wrote those books, and it was important to them.' She paused here and considered what she had just said. 'But it wasn't important just to them, the writers; their whole society thought some things were important: honour, a person's good name, one's word.'

  'I think those things are important, Mamma,' Chiara said, sounding, as she spoke, far younger than she was.

  'I know you do. And I do, and Raffi does, and your father does, too. But our world doesn't, not any more.'

  'Is that why you like those books so much, Mamma?'

  Paola smiled and, Brunetti thought, clambered down from her soapbox before she answered, ‘I suppose so, cara. Besides, knowing about them gives me a job at the university.'

  Brunetti's pragmatism had been butting itself against the various forms of Paola's idealism for more than two decades, so he believed that she looked to 'those books' for considerably more than a job.

  'D
o you have much homework tonight, Chiara?'

  Brunetti asked, knowing that he could ask her later, or tomorrow morning, to tell him whatever she had learned fiom Francesca's friend. Seeing this as the dismissal it was, Chiara said that she had and went back to her own room to begin it, leaving her parents alone to continue to discuss, if they chose, honour.

  'I didn't know she'd take my offer so seriously, Paola, and go out and start asking people questions,' Brunetti said by way of explanation and, at least partly, apology.

  ‘I don't mind her getting the information,' Paola said. 'But I don't like the way she got it.' She took another sip of her grappa. 'Do you think she understood what I was trying to say?'

  'I think she understands everything we say,' Brunetti answered. 'I'm not sure she agrees with a lot of it, but she certainly understands.' Then, going back to what she had said earlier, he asked, 'What other examples did you have of things that are criminal but not wrong?’

  She rolled her small glass between her palms. ‘I think that's too easy,' she said, 'especially given the insane laws in this country. The harder one to figure out is the things that are wrong but not criminal.’

  'Like what?' he asked.

  'Like letting your children watch television,' she said with a laugh, apparently tired of the subject.

  'No, tell me, Paola,' he said, interested now. 'I'd like you to give me an example.'

  Before she spoke, she pinged a fingernail against the glass bottle of mineral water that stood on the table. 'I know you're tired of hearing me say this, Guido, but I think plastic bottles are wrong, but they're certainly not criminal. Though', she quickly added, 1 think they will be within a few years. If we have any sense, that is.'

  1 was hoping for a larger example,' Brunetti said.

  She thought for a while and then answered. 'If we were to have raised the children to believe that my family's wealth gave them special privileges, that would be wrong.’

  It surprised Brunetti that Paola would use this example: over the years, she had seldom alluded to her parents' wealth save, at those times when political discussion escalated into argument, to point to it as an example of social injustice.

  They exchanged a look, but before Brunetti could say anything, Paola continued, 'I'm not sure it's all that much larger an issue, but I think if I were to speak slightingly of you, it would be wrong.'

  'You always speak slightingly of me,' Brunetti said, forcing himself to smile.

  'No, Guido, I speak slightingly to you. That's different. I would never say any of those things about you.'

  'Because that's dishonourable?'

  'Precisely,' she said, smiling.

  'But it's not dishonourable to say them to me?'

  'Of course not, especially if they're true. Because that's between us, Guido, and that doesn't belong, in any sense, to the world.'

  He reached over and took back the grappa bottle. it seems to me it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference,' he said.

  'Between what?'

  The criminal and the wrong.'

  'Why do you chink that is, Guido?'

  'I'm not sure. Perhaps because, as you said, before, we don't believe in the old things any more, and we haven't found anything new, anything else, to believe in.’

  She nodded, considering this.

  'And all the old rules have been broken,' he continued. 'For fifty years, ever since the end of the war, all we've ever been is lied to. By the government, the Church, the political parties, by industry and business and the military.'

  'And the police?' she asked.

  'Yes,' he agreed with no hesitation whatsoever. 'And the police.'

  'But you want to stay with them?' she asked.

  He shrugged and poured some more grappa. She waited. Finally he said, 'Someone's got to try.'

  Paola leaned across the table and placed the palm of her hand against his cheek, tilting his face towards her. 'If I ever try to lecture you about honour again, Guido, hit me with a bottle, all right?'

  He turned his head and kissed her palm. 'Not until you let me buy some plastic ones’

  Two hours later, as Brunetti sat yawning over Procopius’ Secret History, the phone rang.

  'Brunetti,’ he answered and glanced down at his watch.

  'Commissario, this is Alvise. He said to call you.’ 'Who said to call me, Officer Alvise?' Brunetti asked, fishing a used vaporetto ticket from his pocket and sticking it in the page to keep his place. Calk with Alvise had a tendency to be either long or confusing. Or both.

  The sergeant, sir.'

  'Which sergeant, Officer Alvise?' Brunetti closed his book and set it aside. 'Sergeant Topa, sir.'

  Alert now, Brunetti asked, 'Why did he tell you to call me?'

  'Because he wants to talk to you.'

  'Why didn't he call me himself, officer? My name is in the phone book.'

  'Because he can't, sir.'

  'And why can't he?'

  'Because the rules say he can't.'

  'What rules?' Brunetti asked, his growing impatience audible in his tone.

  'The rules down here, sir.'

  'Down here, where, officer?'

  'At the Questura, sir. I'm on night duty.'

  'What is Sergeant Topa doing there, officer?'

  'He's been arrested, sir. The Mestre boys picked him up, but then they found out who he was, well, found out what he was. Or what he used to be. I mean a sergeant. Then they sent him back here, but they told him he could come in by himself. They called to tell us he was coming, but they let him get here by himself.'

  'So Sergeant Topa has arrested himself?'

  Alvise considered this for a moment and then answered, 'It would seem that way, sir. I don't know how to fill out the report, where it says, "arresting officer"‘

  Brunetti held the phone away from his ear for a moment then brought it back and asked, 'What has he been arrested for?'

  'He got into a fight, sir.'

  'Where?' Brunetti asked, though he knew the answer even before he asked. 'In Mestre.'

  'Who did he have the fight with?'

  'Some foreigner.'

  'And where's the foreigner?'

  'He got away, sir. They had a fight, but then the foreigner gpt away.'

  'How do you know he was a foreigner?'

  'Sergeant Topa told me. He said the man had an accent.'

  'If the foreigner ran away, who's filing the complaint against Sergeant Topa, officer?'

  'I figured that's why the boys in Mestre sent him back to us, sir. They must have thought we'd know what to do.'

  'Did the people in Mestre tell you to make out an arrest report?'

  'Well, no, sir,' Alvise said after a particularly long pause. 'They told Topa to come back here and make a report about what happened. The only form I saw on the desk was an arrest report, so I thought I should use that.'

  'Why didn't you let him call me, officer?'

  'Oh, he'd already called his wife, and I know they're just supposed to get one phone call.'

  'That's on television, officer, on American television,' Brunetti said, straining towards patience. 'Where is Sergeant Topa now?'

  'He's gone out to get a coffee.'

  'While you fill out the arrest report?'

  'Yes, sir. It didn't seem right to have him here while I did that'

  'When Sergeant Topa gets back - he is coming back, isn't he?'

  'Oh yes, sir, I told him to come back. That is, I asked him to, and he said he would.'

  'When he comes back, tell him to wait. I'm on my way down there.' Knowing himself able to endure no more, Brunetti hung up without waiting for Alvise's reply.

  Twenty minutes later, having told Paola that he had to go to the Questura to straighten something out, he arrived and went directly up to the uniformed officers' room. Alvise sat at a desk, and across from him sat Sergeant Topa, looking no different from the way he had looked a year ago when he left the Questura.

  The former sergeant was short,
barrel-shaped; the light from the overhead fixture gleamed on his almost bald head. He had tipped his chair back on its rear legs and sat with his arms folded over his chest. He looked up when Brunetti came in, studied him for a moment with dark eyes hidden under thick white eyebrows, and let his chair fall to the floor with a heavy thud. He got to his feet and held out his hand to Brunetti, no longer the sergeant and hence able to shake hands as an equal with the commissario, and, at that gesture, Brunetti found himself suffused with the dislike he had always felt for the sergeant, a man in whom violence boiled below the surface in much the same way that fresh-poured polenta waited the chance to burn the mouth of anyone who tried to eat it.

  'Good evening, sergeant,' Brunetti said, shaking his hand.

  'Commissario,' he answered but no more than that.

  Alvise stood and glanced back and forth between the other men, but he said nothing.

  'Perhaps we could go up to my office to talk,' Brunetti suggested.

  'Yes,' Topa agreed.

  Brunetti switched on the light when they went in, didn't bother to remove his coat, hoping that way to make it clear that he didn't have much time to spend on this, and went to sit behind his desk.

  Topa sat in a chair to the left of the desk.

  'Well?' Brunetti asked.

  'Vianello called and asked me to go and have a look at this place, Pinetta's. I'd heard about it, but I'd never gone in. Didn't like what I heard about it.'

  'What had you heard?'

  'Lots of blacks. And Slavs. They're worse, Slavs..' Brunetti, who tended to agree with this notion, said nothing.

  Seeing that he was not going to be prodded into telling his story, Topa abandoned his comments on national and racial differences and continued. 'I went in and had a glass of wine. A couple of guys were playing cards at a table, so I went and looked over their shoulders. No one seemed to mind. I had some more wine and started to talk to another man at the bar. One of the card-players left, so I took his place and played a few hands. I lost about 10,000 lire, and men the man who was playing came back, so I stopped playing and went back to the bar and had another glass of wine’ It sounded to Brunetti that Topa could have had a more exciting evening staying home and watching television.