by Donna Leon
Favero specialized in corporate law, was the head of an office of seven accountants which enjoyed the highest reputation, not only in Padua but in the entire province. His clients included many of the major businessmen and industrialists of this factory-dense province as well as the chairmen of three different departments of the university, one of the best in Italy. Brunetti recognized the names of many of the companies whose finances Favero examined as well as the names of many of his private clients. There was no discernible pattern: chemicals, leather goods, travel and employment agencies, the Department of Political Science: Brunetti could see no way to connect them.
Nervous and eager for action, or even a change of location, he thought of going out to Padua to speak to della Corte, but after a moment's reflection decided to call him, instead. That thought brought to mind della Corte's admonition that he not speak to anyone else about Favero, a warning that suggested there was more to be known about Favero - perhaps about the Padua police, as well - than della Corte had at first been willing to reveal.
'Delia Corte,' the captain answered on the first ring.
'Good morning, capitano, it's Brunetti. In Venice.'
'Good morning, commissario.'
‘I called to ask if anything's new there,' Brunetti said.
'Yes.'
'About Favero?'
'Yes,’ della Corte answered briefly and then added, 'It seems you and I have some friends in common, dottore.'
"We do?’ Brunetti asked, surprised by the remark. 'After speaking to you yesterday, I called around to some people I know.’ Brunetti said nothing.
‘I mentioned your name,’ della Corte said. 'In passing:
Brunetti doubted that. "What people?’ he asked.
'Riccardo Fosco, for one. In Milano.'
‘Ah, and how is he?’ Brunetti asked, though his real curiosity concerned the reason deHa Corte would have called an investigative reporter to ask about Brunetti, for he was sure the call to Fosco had not been made in passing.
'He said a number of dungs about you,' della Corte began. 'All good.'
As little as two years ago, if Brunetti had learned that a policeman felt it necessary to call a reporter to learn if another policeman could be trusted, he would have been shocked, but now all he felt was grinding despair that they were reduced to this. 'How is Riccardo?' he asked blandly.
'Fine, fine. He asked to be remembered to you.'
'Did he get married?'
'Yes, last year.' •
'Are you part of the hunt?' Brunetti asked, referring to Fosco's friends on the police who, years after the shooting, still hoped to find the persons responsible for the attack that had partially crippled him.
‘Yes, but we never hear anything. You?’ della Corte asked, pleasing Brunetti by assuming that he, too, would still be looking for some trace, even though the trail was more than five years old.
'Not a thing. Did you call Riccardo for anything else?’
'I wanted to know if he could tell me anything about Favero, something we might be interested in knowing but might not be able to find out.’
'And did he?’ Brunetti asked.
'No, nothing.'
Following a sudden hunch, Brunetti asked, 'Did you call him from your office?'
The noise della Corte made might have been a laugh. 'No.’ Brunetti said nothing, and there ensued a long silence, at the end of which della Corte said, 'Do you have a direct line to your office?’
Brunetti gave him the number.
'I'll call you back in ten minutes.'
While he waited for della Corte to call, Brunetd toyed with the idea of calling Fosco to find out about the other policeman, but he didn't want to tie up his line, and he assumed that della Corte's having mentioned the journalist was sufficient recommendation.
A quarter of an hour later, della Corte called. As he listened, Brunetti could hear the sound of traffic, horns, and motors roaring over della Corte's voice.
‘I'm assuming your line is safe,' della Corte said by way of explanation that his own was not. Brunetti resisted the impulse to ask what the line was safe from.
'What's wrong there?' Brunetti asked.
'We've changed the cause of death. It's now suicide. Officially.'
'What do you mean?'
'The autopsy report now reads two milligrams.' 'Now?' Brunetti asked. 'Now,’ della Corte repeated. 'So Favero would have been able to drive?' Brunetti asked.
'Yes, and pull his car into the garage and close the door and, in short, commit suicide.' Della Corte's voice was tight with anger. ‘I can't find a judge who will issue an order to proceed with a murder investigation or to exhume the body for a second autopsy.'
'How did you get the original report you called me about?'
‘I spoke to the doctor who did the autopsy; he's one of the assistants at the hospital.' 'And?' Brunetti asked.
'When the official lab report came back - he had done a blood exam immediately after the autopsy, but he sent the samples up to the lab to have them confirmed - it said that the level of barbiturate was much lower than what he had found.'
'Did he check his notes? What about the samples?'
'Both are gone.'
'Gone?’
Delia Corte didn't bother to answer. 'Where were they?' 'In the pathology lab.' 'What usually happens to them?' 'After the official autopsy report is issued, they're kept for a year and then destroyed.’ 'And this time?’
'When the official report came down, he went to check his notes, to see if he'd been wrong. And then he called me.’ Della Corte paused for a moment and then continued. "That was two days ago. Since then he's called to tell me his original results must have been mistaken.'
'Someone got to him?'
'Of course,' della Corte answered sharply.
'Have you said anything?'
'No. I didn't like what I heard when he told me about the notes, the second time I talked to him. So I agreed with him that these things happen and pretended to be angry with him that he had made the mistake, warned him to be more careful the next time he did an autopsy’ 'Did he believe you?'
Delia Corte's shrug came right down the line. 'Who knows?’
'And so?' Brunetti asked.
'So I called Fosco to find out about you.' Brunetti heard strange noises on the line and immediately wondered if his own phone was tapped, but then the noises clarified themselves into the clinks and beeps that said della Corte was feeding more coins into the machine.
'Commissario,’ della Corte said, ‘I don't have much more change. Can we meet to talk about this?' 'Of course. Unofficially?' 'Absolutely.'
'Where?’ Brunetti asked.
'Split the distance?’ della Corte suggested. 'Mestre?’ 'Pinetta's bar?’ 'Tonight at ten?'
'How will I know you?’ Brunetti asked, hoping della Corte wouldn't be a cop who looked like a cop. 'I'm bald. How will I know you?' 'I look like a cop.'
16
Brunetti walked down the steps of Mestre railway station at ten minutes to ten that night and turned to his left, having located Via Fagare on the map in the front of the Venice phone book. The usual cluster of cars was parked illegally in front of the station, and light traffic flowed by in both directions. He crossed the road and started up to the left. At the second street, he turned right, walking towards the centre of the city. Both sides of the street were fined with the metal shutters of small shops, pulled down now like portcullises in the face of the possible invasions of the night Occasionally putts of wind swirled papers and leaves into lazy circles at his feet; the unaccustomed reverberation of traffic disturbed him, as it always did when he was out of Venice and exposed to it Everyone complained about Venice's climate, humid and unforgiving, but to Brunetti the numbing sound of traffic was far worse, and when to that was added the terrible smell of it he marvelled that people could live in its midst and accept it as part of the ordinary business of life. And yet, each year, more and more Venetians left the city and moved here, to this, forc
ed out by the general decline of business and the sky-rocketing rents. He
could understand that it happened, that economic moves could drive people from their city. But to exchange it for this? Surely, a sordid boon.
After another few minutes, a neon sign came into view at the end of the next block. The letters, running vertically from the top of the building to a distance about a man's height above the pavement, spelled out 'B r ine ta’. Keeping his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, he turned his shoulders sideways and slipped into the bar without having to open the door any wider.
The owner of the bar, apparently, had seen too many American films, for it tried to resemble the sort of place where Victor Mature had pushed his weight around. The wall behind the bar was mirrored, though so much dust and smoke had accumulated on it that no image could any longer be reflected with accuracy. Instead of the many rows of bottles so familiar in Italian bars, here there was only one row, all bourbon and Scotch. Instead of the straight counter and espresso machine, this bar curved in a horseshoe, at the centre of which stood a bartender with a once-white apron tied tight around his waist
Tables stood to both sides of the bar: those on the left held trios or quartets of card-playing men; those on the right held mixed duets who were clearly engaged in other games of chance. All of the walls held blown-up photos of American film stars, many of whom seemed to take a dim view of what circumstance had doomed them to observe.
Four men and two women stood at the bar. The first man, short and stocky, held both hands protectively around his drink and stared down into it. The second, taller and slighter, stood with his back to the bar, turning his head slowly from side to side as he studied, first the card-players, men the other bidders. The third was bald, obviously della Corte. The last man, thin to the point of emaciation, stood with one of the women on either side of him, turning his head nervously back and forth between them as they spoke to him in turn. He glanced up at Brunetti when he came in, and the women, seeing him look towards the door, turned to study Brunetti. The look in the eyes of the Three Fates as they snipped the thread of a mans life could be no bleaker.
Brunetti went up to della Corte, a thin man with a heavily lined face and a thick moustache, and slapped him on the shoulder Speaking in thick Veneziano and far more loudly than was necessary, he said, 'Ciao, Bepe, come stai?. Sorry I'm late, but my bitch of a wife.. .’ He let his voice trail off and waved his hand in the air in an angry gesture directed at all bitches, all wives. He turned to the bartender and said, voice even louder, 'Amico mia, give me a whisky', then, turning to della Corte, he asked, 'What are you drinking, Bepe? Have another one.' He was careful, when he turned towards the bartender, to turn his whole body, not just his head, and to be sure to turn it too far. To steady himself, he put one hand on the bar and muttered, 'Bitch,' again.
When the whisky came, he picked up the tall glass and tossed the drink down in one gulp, slammed the glass loudly down on the bar, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A second drink appeared in front of him, but before he could pick it up, he saw della Cortes hand reach out and take it.
'Cin cin, Guido,' della Corte said, lifting the glass and tilting it towards Brunetti in a gesture filled with old friendship. 'I'm glad you got away from her.' He sipped at the drink, sipped again. 'Are you going to come hunting with us this weekend?'
He and della Corte hadn't prepared a script for this meeting, but Brunetti assumed one topic was as good as another for two middle-aged drunks at a cheap bar in Mestre. He answered that he wanted to go, but his bitch of a wife wanted him to stay home that weekend because it was their anniversary, and she expected him to take her out to dinner. Why did they have a stove in the house if she wasn't going to use it to cook his dinner? After a few minutes of this, one of the couples got up from their table and left the bar. Della Corte, ordering two more drinks, pulled Brunetti by the sleeve over towards the empty table and helped him sit down in one of the chairs. After the drinks came, Brunetti propped his chin up on one palm and asked in a low voice, 'Have you been here long?'
'About a half-hour,' della Corte answered, his voice no longer thickened either by alcohol or the heavy Veneto accent he had used when speaking at the bar.
'And?' Brunetti asked.
'The man at the bar, the one with the women,' della Corte said and paused to sip at his drink. 'Every so often men come into the bar and talk to him. Twice, one of the women with him has gone to sit at the bar and have a drink with the man. Once, one of them left with the man, then came back alone about twenty minutes later’
'Fast work,’ Brunetti said, and della Corte nodded again, then took another sip of his drink.
'From the look of him,' della Corte continued, ‘I’d say he's on heroin.' He glanced over at the bar and grinned broadly when one of the women caught his eye.
'You sure?’ Brunetti asked.
'I worked drugs for six years. I’ve seen hundreds like him.'
'Anything else in Padua?’ Brunetti asked. During their conversation, they showed little apparent interest in the other people in the bar, but each of them was memorizing faces and keeping careful watch of what went on.
Delia Corte shook his head. ‘I’ve stopped talking about it, but I sent one of the men I trust down to the lab to see if anything else is missing.'
'And?'
'Whoever did it was very careful. All of the notes and samples for the autopsies done that day are missing.' 'How many were there?' 'Three.'
'In Padua?' Brunetti asked, unable to hide his surprise.
'Two old people died in the hospital after eating spoiled meat. Salmonella. The pathologist's notes and the samples from their autopsies were missing, too’
Brunetti nodded. 'Who could do it?’ he asked the captain. 'Or who would want to have it done?' 'Whoever gave him the barbiturates, I'd say.' Brunetti nodded.
The bartender made a sweep around the tables. Brunetti pulled his head up from his hand and signalled to him to bring two more drinks, though his second sat in front of him, almost untouched.
'With what people in the lab are paid, a couple of hundred thousand lire will buy a lot of co-operation,' della Corte said.
Two men came into the bar together, talking and laughing in loud voices, loud in the way men tend to make their voices when it's important that strangers notice them.
'Anything on Trevisan?’ della Corte asked.
Brunetti shook his head from side to side with the ponderous solemnity drunks give to trivial things.
'And so?’ della Corte asked.
‘I guess one of us is going to have to sample the merchandise,' Brunetti said as the bartender approached their table. He looked up, smiled at the bartender, nodded at him to set their drinks down on the table, and waved him closer. When he did, Brunetti looked up at him and said, 'Drinks for the signorina! waving an unsteady hand in the direction of the two women who stood at the bar, still on either side of the man.
The bartender nodded, went back behind the bar, and poured out two glasses of bubbling white wine. Brunetti was sure it was the worst sort of rotgut Prosecco and equally certain his bill would say it was
French champagne. The bartender moved down the bar to the place where the man and the two women were standing, leaned forward, placed the glasses on the bar, and said something to the man, who glanced in Brunetti's direction. The man turned and said something to the woman on his left, a short, dark woman with a broad mouth and reddish hair that cascaded down her shoulders. She looked at the man, then at the drinks, then across the room towards where Brunetti sat at the table. He smiled in her direction, half rose from his chair, and bowed clumsily towards her.
'Are you out of your mind?' della Corte asked, smiling broadly and reaching forward to pick up his drink.
Instead of answering, Brunetti waved towards the three at the bar and kicked back the empty chair that stood to his left. He smiled towards the woman and pointed at the chair beside him. The redheaded woman detached herself from
her friends, picked up her glass of wine, and started across the room in the direction of Brunetti's table. Seeing her approach, Brunetti smiled at her again and asked della Corte in a soft voice, 'Did you come by car?' The captain nodded.
'Good. When she comes over, leave. Wait for me in your car and follow us when we leave here.'
Just as the woman reached the table, della Corte pushed back his chair and got to his feet, almost bumping into the woman and seeming surprised at her arrival. He looked at her for a moment, then said,
'Good evening, signorina. Please have a seat,' slipping back into his broad Veneto accent and smiling broadly.
The woman gathered her skirt under her and sat beside Brunetti. She smiled at him, and he saw that, under the caked make-up, she was pretty: even teeth, dark eyes, and a short, happy nose. 'Buona sera? she said, almost whispering. 'Thanks for the champagne.'
Della Corte leaned across the table towards Brunetti and extended his hand. 'I've got to be going, Guido. I'll give you a call next week.'
Brunetti ignored his outstretched hand, all of his attention directed at the woman. Della Corte turned towards the men at the bar, smiled, shrugged, and left, closing the door behind him.
'Ti chiami Guido?’ the woman asked, using the informal ‘tu' and, by that, making clear just what all this was about.
'Yes, Guido Bassetti. What's your name, sweetheart?'
'Mara,' she said and laughed as though she'd said something clever. 'What do you do, Guido?' Underneath her words, Brunetti could detect two things: some sort of a foreign accent, definitely a Latin language, though he couldn't tell whether it was Spanish or Portuguese; even more audible was the bold double meaning of her question, which landed heavily on the last word.
'I'm a plumber,' Brunetti said, making himself sound very proud of it As he spoke, he made a vulgar gesture which made it clear he had understood the suggestion in her question.
'Oh, how interesting,' Mara said and laughed again, but couldn't think of anything eke to say.