by Donna Leon
“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.
Della 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 signaled 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 hundred thousand lire will buy a lot of cooperation,” 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 signorine,” 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 toward where Brunetti sat at the table. He smiled in her direction, half rose from his chair, and bowed clumsily toward 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 toward the three at the bar and kicked back the empty chair that stood to his left. He smiled toward 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 exaggerated 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 makeup, 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 toward 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 toward 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 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 that 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 else to say.
Brunetti saw that a good deal of liquor still remained in his second drink, and his third was untouched. He drank some of the second, pushed it aside, and picked up the third glass.
“You’re a very pretty girl, Mara,” he said, making no attempt to disguise the fact that this was entirely irrelevant to the business at hand. She didn’t seem to care.
“Is that your friend at the bar?” Brunetti asked, nodding his chin toward the place where the man still stood, though the other woman was gone now.
“Yes,” Mara answered.
“You live near here?” Brunetti asked, a man no longer interested in wasting time.
“Yes.”
“Can we go there?”
“Yes.” She smiled again, and he watched her force warmth and interest into her eyes.
He allowed all the good humor to flow out of him. “How much?”
“A hundred thousand,” she answered with the alacrity of a woman who had heard this question too many times.
Brunetti laughed, took another sip of his drink, and got to his feet, careful to push his chair back so quickly that it fell over behind him. “You’re crazy, little Mara. I’ve got a wife at home. She’ll give it to me for nothing.”
She shrugged and glanced at her watch. It was eleven, and no one had come into the bar in the last twenty minutes. He could see her calculating time and opportunity.
“Fifty,” she said, apparently willing to save time and energy.
Brunetti put his drink, still unfinished, down on the table and reached for her arm. “All right, little Mara, let me show you what a real man can do for you.”
She offered no resistance and got to her feet. Brunetti, pulling at her arm, went over to the bar. “How much do I owe you?” he asked the bartender.
With no hesitation, the bartender answered, “Sixty-three thousand lire.”
“Are you crazy?” Brunetti asked angrily. “For three drinks, and lousy whiskey, too?”
“And two for your friend, and champagne for the ladies,” the bartender said.
“Ladies,” Brunetti repeated sarcastically, but he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took a fifty, a ten, and three thousand-lire notes and tossed them onto the counter. Before he could put his wallet back, Mara reached up and grabbed at his arm.
“You can give the money to my friend,” she said, gesturing with her chin
to the thin man at the bar, who looked at Brunetti without smiling. Brunetti looked around him, face flushed with confusion, a man seeking someone to help him understand this. No one did. He took a fifty-thousand-lire bill from his wallet and tossed it onto the counter, not looking at the man, who didn’t bother to glance at the money. Then, in an attempt to restore his damaged pride, Brunetti grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her toward the door. She paused only long enough to take a fake leopard-skin jacket from a hook by the door, and then she went out into the street with Brunetti, who slammed the door violently behind them.
Outside, Mara turned to the left and started to walk away from Brunetti. She took quick steps, but they were shortened by the tightness of her skirt and the height of her heels, so Brunetti had no trouble keeping up with her. At the first corner, she turned to the left and then, three doors down, stopped in front of a doorway. Her key was ready in her hand. She opened the door and stepped inside, not bothering to look back for Brunetti, who paused for a moment at the door, just long enough to see a car turn into the narrow street. It blinked its lights twice, and he followed the woman inside the building.
At the top of a single flight of stairs, she opened the door on the right, again leaving it open behind her for Brunetti. When he walked in, he saw that the room contained a low divan covered with a brightly striped bedspread, a desk and two chairs, and one window, closed and shuttered. She switched on a light, a naked, low-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling at the end of a short piece of wire.
Without turning to him, Mara took off her jacket and hung it carefully over the back of one of the chairs. She sat on the edge of the bed, bent down and unstrapped her shoes. Brunetti heard her sigh with relief as she kicked them off. Still not looking at him, she stood, unbuttoned her skirt, removed it, and folded it carefully over the jacket. Beneath it, she wore nothing. She sat, then lay, on the divan, still not bothering to look at him.
“It’s extra if you want to touch my breasts,” she said, then turned to one side to straighten out the cover, which was bunched up under her shoulder.
Brunetti walked across the room and sat on the other chair, not the one holding her clothing. “Where are you from, Mara?” he asked in his normal voice, speaking Italian, not dialect.
She looked up at him, surprised either by the question or by the completely normal conversational tone in which it was asked. “Look, Mister Plumber,” she said, voice tired rather than sharp, “you didn’t come here to talk, and neither did I, so let’s do this and then I can get back to work, all right?” She turned fully onto her back and opened her legs wide.
Brunetti looked away. “Where do you come from, Mara?” he asked again.
She pulled her legs together and put them over the side of the bed, sitting up to face him. “Look, you, if you want to fuck, then let’s do it, all right? I haven’t got all night to sit here and talk. And it’s none of your goddamned business where I come from.”
“Brazil?” he asked, taking a stab at the accent.
She made an angry, disgusted noise, pushed herself to her feet, and reached for her skirt. She held it low and stepped into it, pulled it up, and yanked angrily at the zipper. With one foot, she began to feel under the bed for her shoes, which she had shoved under there after she had taken them off. She sat back down on the edge of the bed and began to strap her shoes back on.
“He can be arrested, you know,” Brunetti said in the same calm tone. “He let me give him the money. That’s good for at least a couple of months inside.”
The bands that held her shoes to her ankles were both securely buckled, but she didn’t look up at Brunetti, nor did she make any move to get up from the bed. She sat with her head lowered, listening.
“I don’t think you’d want that to happen to him, would you?” Brunetti asked.
She gave a disgusted, unbelieving snort.
“Then think about what he’d be likely to do when he got out, Mara. You didn’t spot me. He’s bound to blame you for that.”
She looked up at him and put out her hand. “Let me see some identification.”
Brunetti gave it to her.
“What do you want?” she said when she handed the warrant card back to him.
“I’d like you to tell me where you come from.”
“Why, so you can send me back?” she asked, meeting his eyes.
“I’m not from the immigration police, Mara. I don’t care whether you’re here legally or illegally.”
“Then what do you want?” she asked, her voice sparked with anger.
“I told you. I want to know where you’re from.”
She hesitated only a moment, examining the question for peril and, seeing none, answered him. “Sāo Paulo.” He was right; the faint accent was Brazilian.
“How long have you been here?”
“Two years,” she said.
“Working as a prostitute?” he asked, trying to pronounce the word as definition, not condemnation.
“Yes.”
“Have you always worked for that man?”
She looked up at him. “I won’t tell you his name,” she said.
“I don’t want to know his name, Mara. I want to know if you’ve always worked for him.”
She said something, but her voice was so low he couldn’t hear her.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“No.”
“Always in that bar?”
“No.”
“Where did you work before?”
“Somewhere else,” she said evasively.
“How long have you worked in the bar?”
“Since September.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you move to the bar?”
“The cold weather. I’m not used to it, and I got sick last winter, working outside. So he told me I could work in the bar this winter.”
“I see,” Brunetti said. “How many other girls are there?”
“In the bar?”
“Yes.”
“Three.”
“And on the street?”
“I don’t know how many there are. Four? Six? I don’t know.”
“Are any of the others Brazilian?”
“Two of them are.”
“And the rest, where are they from?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the telephone?”
“What?” she asked, looking up at him, eyes narrowed in what might be honest confusion.
“The telephone. In the bar. Who gets calls there? Does he?”
The question clearly puzzled her. “I don’t know,” she said. “Everybody uses the phone.”
“But who gets calls on it?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Does he?” Brunetti insisted.
She shrugged, tried to glance away, but Brunetti snapped his fingers in her face, and she looked back at him.
“Does he get calls?”
“Sometimes,” she said, then glanced down at her watch and up at him. “You should be finished by now.”
He glanced at his own watch; fifteen minutes had passed.
“How much time does he let you take?”
“Usually a quarter of an hour. He lets the old ones take longer if they’re regulars. But if I’m not back soon, he’ll ask questions, make me tell him why it took so long.”
From the way she spoke, it was evident to Brunetti that any question the man asked, the woman would answer. For a moment, he debated whether it would be better to let the man realize the police were asking questions about him. He studied the woman’s lowered face, trying to determine how old she was. Twenty-five? Twenty?
“All right,” he said, getting to his feet.
At his sudden motion, she flinched away and looked up at him. “That’s all?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s all.”
“No quickie?”
“What?” he asked, lost.
“A quickie. Usually, when the
cops pull us in for questioning, that’s what we have to do.” Her voice was neutral, nonjudgmental, tired.
“No, nothing like that,” he said, moving toward the door.
Behind him, she got to her feet and stuffed one arm, then the other, into the sleeves of her jacket. He held the door open while she left the room and then followed her out into the hall. She turned and locked the door, started down the single flight of steps. She shoved open the front door of the building, turned to the right, and was gone, back in the direction of the bar. Brunetti turned the opposite way and walked to the end of the street, crossed it, and stood under a streetlight until, a moment later, della Corte’s black car pulled up beside him.
17
“Well?” della Corte asked as Brunetti slid into the front seat of the car. Brunetti liked the fact that there was no suggestion of a leer in the question.
“She’s Brazilian, works for the man who was with her in the bar. She says he’s received calls on the phone.”
“And?” della Corte asked, slipping the car into gear and heading slowly back toward the train station.
“And that’s all,” Brunetti answered. “That’s all she told me, but I think we can infer a lot more from that.”
“Such as?”
“Such as she’s illegal, has no residence permit, and so doesn’t have much of a say in what she does for a living.”
“She might do it because she likes it,” della Corte suggested.
“You ever know a whore who did?” Brunetti asked.
Ignoring the question, della Corte turned a corner and slowed to a stop in front of the train station. He set the brake but left the motor running. “Now what?”
“I think we’ve got to get the man with her arrested. At least that way we can find out who he is. And maybe talk to the woman again while we’ve got him.”
“You think she’ll talk?”
Brunetti shrugged. “Maybe, if she’s not afraid that she’ll be sent back to Brazil if she does.”
“How likely is that?”
“Depends on who talks to her.”
“A woman?” della Corte asked.
“Probably be better.”
“You got one?”