by Donna Leon
He asked her how many there were in the Veneto area and, with a laugh, she told him that he didn’t know how to count that high. But then Carolina gave a bark so loud that even Brunetti could hear it, and Pia said she had to go.
“Who’s in charge, Pia?” he asked, hoping to get one more answer from her before she hung up.
“It’s big business, Dottore,” she said, using the English words. “You might as well ask who runs the banks or the stock market. It’s the same men with the good haircuts and the custom-made suits. Church on Sunday, go to the office every day, and when no one’s looking, count up how much they’ve made from the women who work on their backs. We’re just another commodity, Dottore. Wait long enough, we’ll be listed on the futures market.” Pia laughed, made a rude suggestion about what the futures could be named, Carolina howled, and Pia hung up.
On the same piece of paper, Brunetti began to do some simple sums. He decided to estimate the average price of a trick at fifty thousand lire, then had to admit that he had no idea how many a day there might be. He decided that selecting ten would simplify his multiplication, so he made it ten. Even with the weekend off, which he doubted was a luxury these women were permitted, it came to two and a half million lire a week, ten million lire a month. He decided to simplify things and settled on a hundred million lire a year, then cut it in half to make up, however roughly, for any errors he might have made in his previous calculations. After that, when he tried to multiply by half a million, he ceased having a name for the sum and had to settle for counting the zeroes: there were, he thought, fifteen of them. Pia was right: this was indeed big business.
Instinct and experience told him that there was no more information to be had from either Mara or her pimp. He called down to Vianello and asked whether they’d located the optician who had sold the glasses found in the Padua restaurant. Vianello covered the phone with his hand, sound disappeared, and then the sergeant’s voice came back, tight with what sounded like anger or even something stronger. “I’ll be up in a minute, Dottore,” he said and put the phone down.
When the sergeant came in, his face was still red with what Brunetti knew from long experience was the aftermath of rage. Vianello closed the door softly behind him, and came over to Brunetti’s desk. “Riverre,” he said by way of explanation, naming the black nemesis of his life, indeed, of the entire staff of the Questura.
“What’s he done?”
“He found the optician yesterday, made a note of it, but left it on his own desk until just now when I asked about it.” Had he been in a better mood, Brunetti would have quipped that at least Riverre had bothered to make a note this time, but he found himself without either patience or good humor. And long experience had taught them both that, on the issue of Riverre’s incompetence, comment was unnecessary.
“Which one?”
“Carraro, in Calle della Mandorla.”
“Did he get a name?”
Vianello bit at his lower lip, his hands tightened into involuntary fists. “No, he was content merely to discover that the glasses had been sold, with that prescription. That’s all he was told to do, he said, so that’s what he did.”
Brunetti pulled out the phone book and quickly found the number. The optician, when he answered, said that he had been expecting another call from the police and immediately gave Brunetti the name and address of the woman who had bought those glasses. From the way he spoke, it seemed that he believed the police were interested in no more than seeing that her glasses were returned to her. Brunetti did nothing to disabuse him of this idea.
“But I don’t think you’ll find her at home,” Dr. Carraro volunteered. “I think she’ll be at work.”
“And where is that, Dottore?” Brunetti asked, voice warm with concern.
“She has a travel agency over near the university, halfway between it and the shop that sells carpets.”
“Ah, yes, I know it,” Brunetti said, recalling a poster-filled window he had passed countless times. “Thank you, Dottore, I’ll see that the glasses are returned to her.”
Brunetti put down the phone, looked up at Vianello, and said, “Regina Ceroni. Name mean anything to you?”
Vianello shook his head.
“She runs that travel agency near the university.”
“Do you want me to come with you, sir?” Vianello asked.
“No, I think I’ll go over before lunch and return Signora Ceroni’s glasses to her.”
Brunetti stood in the late-afternoon drizzle of mid-November and looked at the sun-swept beach. A hammock stretched between two enormous palm trees, and in it lay a young woman wearing, so far as he could make out, only the bottom of her bikini. Beyond her, soft waves broke upon the sandy beach, while a lapis sea stretched out to the horizon. All this could be his for a week for a mere 1,800,000 lire, double occupancy, airfare included.
He pushed open the door to the agency and went in. An attractive young woman with dark hair sat at a computer. She glanced up at him and smiled pleasantly.
“Buon giorno,” he said, returning her smile. “Is Signora Ceroni here?”
“And who may I say is calling?”
“Signor Brunetti.”
She held up a hand in a waiting gesture, pushed a few more keys, and then stood up. To her left, the printer chattered into life, and what appeared to be an airline ticket began to emerge.
“I’ll tell her you’re here, Signor Brunetti,” she said, turning toward the back of the office where there was a single door, closed now. She knocked and entered without waiting. A few moments later, she came out and held the door for Brunetti, signaling for him to enter.
The inner office was far smaller than the outer, but what it lacked in space it more than made up for in style. The desk was, he thought, teak, polished to a glassy sheen, its absence of drawers proclaiming that it needed no excuse of utility to explain its presence. The carpet was a pale gold Isfahan silk, similar to one lying on the floor of Brunettis father-in-law’s study.
The woman who sat behind both of these had light hair pulled back on both sides and held in place by a carved ivory comb. The simplicity of the style contrasted with both the fabric and the cut of her suit, dark gray raw silk with heavily padded shoulders and very narrow sleeves. She appeared to be in her thirties, but because of her skill with makeup and the general elegance of her bearing, it was difficult to tell which end she was closer to. She wore a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. The left lens had a small semicircular chip, little wider than a pea, in the lower corner.
She looked up as he came in, smiled without opening her mouth, removed her glasses and placed them on the papers in front of her, but said nothing. The color of her eyes, he noticed, was so exactly that of her suit that it could not have been coincidental. Looking at her, Brunetti found himself thinking of the description Figaro gives of the woman with whom Count Almaviva is in love: light hair, rosy cheeks, eyes that speak.
“Si?” she asked.
“Signora Ceroni?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve brought you your glasses,” Brunetti said, taking them from his pocket but not looking away from her.
Her face filled with instant pleasure that made her even lovelier. “Oh, wonderful,” she said and got to her feet. “Wherever did you find them?” Brunetti heard a slight accent, perhaps Slavic, certainly Eastern European.
Without saying anything, he passed them across the desk to her. She accepted the leather case and set it on top of the desk without looking inside.
“Aren’t you going to check that they’re yours?” he asked.
“No, I recognize the case,” she said. Then, smiling again, “But how did you know they were mine?”
“We called the opticians in the city.”
“We?” she asked. But then she remembered her manners and said, “But please, sit down. I’m afraid I’m being very impolite.”
“Thank you,” Brunetti said and sat in one of the three chairs that stood in front of her desk.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but Roberta didn’t tell me your name.”
“Brunetti, Guido Brunetti.”
“Thank you, Signor Brunetti, for going to all of this trouble. You certainly could have called me, and I would have been very glad to go and pick them up. There’s no need for you to have come all the way across the city to give them to me.”
“Across the city?” Brunetti repeated.
His question surprised her, but for only a moment. She dismissed it, and her own surprise at it, with a wave of her hand. “Just an expression. The agency is sort of out of the way over here.”
“Yes, of course,” he said.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You could tell me where you lost them.”
She smiled again. “Why, if I knew where I lost them, then they wouldn’t have been lost, would they?”
She gazed across the desk at him, but he said nothing. She looked down at the glasses case and pulled it toward her. She took the glasses out and, just as Brunetti had done in the restaurant, bent one earpiece, then pulled them both sharply to the sides; again, the glasses bent but did not break.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” she asked without looking at him.
Brunetti remained silent.
In the same entirely casual voice, she said, “I didn’t want to get involved.”
“With us?” Brunetti asked, assuming that, if she knew that he had to cross the city to get to her, then she knew where he had come from.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He was a married man.”
“In a few years, we’ll be in the twenty-first century, Signora.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking up at him in real confusion.
“That married or not married hardly means much anymore.”
“It did to his wife,” she said fiercely. She folded the glasses and slipped them back in the leather case.
“Not even when he was found dead?”
“Especially not then. I didn’t want there to be any suspicion that I had anything to do with it.”
“Did you?”
“Commissario Brunetti,” she said, managing to surprise him by the use of his title, “it took me five years to become a citizen of this country, and even now I have no doubt that my citizenship could very easily be taken away from me at the first moment I came to the attention of the authorities. Because of that, I want to do nothing that will bring me to their attention.”
“You’re receiving our attention now.”
She pursed her lips in involuntary vexation. “I had hoped to avoid it.”
“Yet you knew you had left the glasses there?”
“I knew I lost them that day, but I hoped it was somewhere else.”
“Were you having an affair with him?”
He watched her weigh this, and then she nodded.
“How long had it gone on?”
“Three years.”
“Did you have any intention of changing things?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand your question.”
“Did you have hopes of marrying him?”
“No. The situation suited me as it was.”
“And what was that situation?”
“We saw one another every few weeks.”
“And did what?”
She looked up at him sharply. “Again, I don’t understand your question.”
“What did you do when you saw him?”
“What is it that lovers usually do, Dottor Brunetti?”
“They make love.”
“Very good, Dottore. Yes, they make love, which is what we did.” Brunetti sensed that she was angry, but it didn’t seem to him that her anger was directed at, or caused by, his questions.
“Where?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Where did you make love?”
Her lips tightened and her answer squeezed from between them. “In bed.”
“Where?”
Silence.
“Where was the bed? Here in Venice or in Padua?”
“In both places.”
“In an apartment or a hotel?”
Before she could answer, the phone on her desk gave a discreet buzz and she answered it. She listened for a moment, said, “I’ll give you a call this afternoon,” and hung up. The break in the rhythm of the questions had been minimal, but it had been enough to allow her to regain her composure.
“I’m sorry, Commissario, would you repeat your last question?” she asked.
He repeated it, knowing that the interruption provided by the phone call had given her enough time to think about the answer she’d given. But he wanted to hear her change it. “I asked you where you made love.”
“Here in my apartment.”
“And in Padua?”
She feigned confusion. “What?”
“In Padua, where did you meet?”
She gave him a small smile. “I’m afraid I misunderstood your question. We usually met here.”
“And how frequently were you able to see one another?”
Her manner warmed, as it always did just before people began to lie. “Actually, there really wasn’t very much of an affair left, but we liked one another and were still good friends. So we saw one another for dinner every so often, either here or in Padua.”
“Do you remember the last time you were together here in Venice?”
She turned aside and considered how to answer his question. “Why, no, I don’t. I think it must have been sometime during the summer.”
“Are you married, Signora?” he asked.
“I’m divorced,” she answered.
“Do you live alone?”
She nodded.
“How did you learn of Signor Favero’s death?”
“I read about it in the paper the morning after it happened.”
“And didn’t call us?”
“No.”
“Even though you’d seen him the night before?”
“Especially because of that. As I explained a moment ago, I have no reason to put my trust in the authorities.”
In his worst moments, Brunetti suspected that no one did, but that was perhaps an opinion best not revealed to Signora Ceroni.
“Where do you come from originally, Signora?”
“Yugoslavia. From Mostar.”
“And how long ago did you come to Italy?”
“Nine years.”
“Why did you come?”
“I came originally as a tourist, but then I found work and decided to stay.”
“In Venice?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of work did you do?” he asked, though he knew that this information would be available somewhere in the records of the Ufficio Stranieri.
“At first, I worked in a bar, but then I got a job in a travel agency. I knew several languages, and so it was easy for me to find work.”
“And now this?” he asked, waving his hand to encompass the small office in which they sat. “Is it yours?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you owned it?”
“Three years. It took me more than four years to save enough money to give a deposit to the old owners. But now it’s mine. That’s another reason I didn’t want any trouble.”
“Even if you have nothing to hide?”
“If I might be frank, Commissario, it has never been my experience that agencies of the state pay much attention to whether people have things to hide or not. Quite the contrary, in fact. And because I know nothing about the details of Signor Favero’s death, I made the judgment that there was no information I could provide to the police and so did not call you.”
“What did you talk about at dinner that night?”
She paused and looked aside, thinking back to the evening. “What friends talk about. His business. Mine. His children.”
“His wife?”
Again, she brought her lips together in e
vident disapproval. “No, we did not discuss his wife. Neither of us thought that in good taste.”
“What else did you talk about?”
“Nothing that I can remember. He talked about buying a new car and didn’t know what kind to get, but I couldn’t help him there.”
“Because you don’t drive?”
“No, there’s no need for it here, is there?” she asked with a smile. “And I know nothing about cars. Like most women.”
Brunetti wondered why she made this obvious appeal to his male sense of superiority; it seemed out of character in a woman who so easily established her own equality with a man.
“The waiter in the restaurant where you had dinner said that he showed you some papers during dinner.”
“Ah, yes. That’s when I took out the glasses. I need them for reading.”
“What were the papers?”
She paused, either in memory or invention. “It was the prospectus for a company he wanted me to invest in. Because the agency is making a profit, he wanted me to start to use the money I made—’Put it to work’—those were his words. But I wasn’t interested.”
“Do you remember what sort of company it was?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. I don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing.” Brunetti doubted this. “Is it important?” she asked.
“We found quite a number of files in the trunk of his car,” Brunetti lied, “and we’d like to get some idea as to whether any of them have special importance.”
He watched as she started to ask about the papers and then changed her mind.
“Can you remember anything in particular about that evening? Did he seem troubled or upset about anything?” It occurred to Brunetti that almost anyone would find it strange that it had taken him so long to get around to this question.
“He was quieter than usual, but that could have been because he was working so much. He said a number of times that he was very busy.”