by Donna Leon
‘Yes, do come in, Dottor Brunetti,’ Patta said, extending a hand in a gesture that Brunetti found unsettlingly similar to that with which he imagined Clytemnestra had lured Agamemnon down from his chariot. He had time only to cast one last glance at Signorina Elettra before his arm was taken by Patta and he was pulled gently into the office.
Patta closed the door and walked across the room towards the two armchairs he’d had placed in front of the windows. He waited for Brunetti to join him. When he did, Patta gestured him to sit, then himself sat down; an interior decorator would have called the placement of the chairs a ‘conversation angle’.
‘I’m glad you could spare me the time, Commissario,’ Patta said. Hearing the tinge of angry sarcasm in the words, Brunetti felt himself on easier ground.
‘I had to go out,’ he explained.
‘I thought that was this morning,’ Patta said but then remembered to smile.
‘Yes, but then I had to go out this afternoon, too. It was so sudden I didn’t have time to get word to you.’
‘Don’t you have a telefonino, Dottore?’
Brunetti, who loathed them and refused to carry one out of what he realized was stupid, Luddite prejudice, said only, ‘I didn’t have it with me, sir.’
He wanted to ask Patta why he was there, but Signorina Elettra’s warning was enough to keep him silent, a neutral expression on his face, as though they were two strangers waiting for the same train.
‘I wanted to talk to you, Commissario,’ Patta began. He cleared his throat and continued, ‘It’s about something . . . well, it’s about something personal.’
Brunetti worked hard to keep his face motionless, with an expression of passive interest in what he was hearing.
Patta sat back in his chair, stretched his feet out in front of him, and crossed his ankles. For a moment, he contemplated the gleaming shine on his wingtips; then he uncrossed his feet, pulled them back, and leaned forward. In the few seconds it took him to do this, Brunetti was astonished to realize, Patta seemed to have aged years.
‘It’s my son,’ he said.
Brunetti knew that he had two, Roberto and Salvatore. ‘Which one, sir?’
‘Roberto, the baby.’
Roberto, Brunetti quickly calculated, must be at least twenty-three. Well, his own daughter Chiara, though she was fifteen, was still his baby and would surely always be. ‘Isn’t he studying at the university, sir?’
‘Yes, Economia Commerciale,’ Patta answered but then stopped and looked down at his feet. ‘He’s been there a few years,’ he explained as he lifted his gaze towards Brunetti.
Brunetti again worked hard at keeping his face absolutely immobile. He did not want to appear overly curious about what might be a family problem, nor did he want to seem uninterested in whatever Patta chose to tell him. He nodded in what he thought was an encouraging way, the same gesture he used with nervous witnesses.
‘Do you know anyone in Jesolo?’ Patta asked, confusing Brunetti.
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘In Jesolo, on the police there. Do you know anyone?’
Brunetti thought about it for a moment. He had contacts with some police on the mainland, but none out there on the Adriatic coast among the nightclubs, hotels, discos, and the scores of daytripping tourists who stayed in Jesolo and came across the Laguna by boat every morning. A woman he’d studied with at university was on the police in Grado, but he knew no one in the nearer city. ‘No, sir, I don’t.’
Patta failed to disguise his disappointment. ‘I had hoped you would,’ he said.
‘Sorry, sir.’ Brunetti considered his options, studying the motionless Patta, who had gone back to looking at his feet, and decided to risk it. ‘Why do you ask, sir?’
Patta looked up at him, away, and then back. Finally he said, ‘The police there called me last night. They have someone working for them, you know how it is.’ This must mean an informer of some sort. ‘This person told them a few weeks ago that Roberto was selling drugs.’ Patta stopped.
When it was obvious that the Vice-Questore was not going to say anything more, Brunetti asked, ‘Why did they call you, sir?’
Patta went on as though Brunetti had not asked the question. ‘I thought perhaps you might know someone there who could give us a clearer idea of what was happening, who this person is, how far along their investigation is.’ Again, the word ‘informer’ sprang to Brunetti’s mind, but he kept his own counsel. Responding to his silence, Patta added, ‘That sort of thing.’
‘No, sir, I’m sorry to tell you, but I really don’t know anyone there.’ After a pause, he volunteered, ‘I could ask Vianello, sir.’ Before Patta could respond, Brunetti added, ‘He’s discreet, sir. There’s nothing to worry about there.’
Still Patta just sat and looked away from Brunetti. Then he shook his head in a firm negative, dismissing the possibility of accepting help from a uniformed man.
‘Will that be all, sir?’ Brunetti said and put his hands on the arms of his chair to show his readiness to leave.
Seeing Brunetti’s gesture, Patta said, his voice now lower, ‘They arrested him.’ He glanced at Brunetti, but seeing that he had no questions, Patta continued: ‘Last night. They called me at about one. There was a fight at one of the discos, and when they got there to break it up, they stopped a couple of people and searched them. It must have been because of what this person had told them that they searched Roberto.’
Brunetti remained silent. Once witnesses had gone this far, he knew from long experience, there was no stopping them: it would all come out.
‘In the pocket of his jacket, they found a plastic envelope with Ecstasy in it.’ He bent towards Brunetti and asked, ‘You know what that is, don’t you, Commissario?’
Brunetti nodded, amazed that Patta could believe it possible for a policeman not to know. He knew that any word from him could break the momentum. He relaxed his posture as best he could, took one hand from the arm of the chair, and settled into what he hoped would appear to be a more comfortable position.
‘Roberto told them that someone must have put it into the pocket of his jacket when they saw the police arrive. That sort of thing often happens.’ Brunetti knew that. He also knew that, just as often, it didn’t happen.
‘They called me, and I went out there. They knew who Roberto was, so they suggested I go. When I got there, they gave him into my custody. On the way back, he told me about the envelope.’ Patta stopped, and it seemed a final stop.
‘Did they keep it as evidence?’
‘Yes, and they took his fingerprints to match against any they found on the envelope.’
‘If he took it out and gave it to them, then his fingerprints were bound to be on it,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes, I know,’ Patta said. ‘So I wasn’t worried about that. I didn’t even bother to call my lawyer. There was no proof, even if the prints were there. What Roberto said could have been true.’
Brunetti nodded in silent agreement, waiting to learn why Patta spoke of it as no more than a possibility.
Patta leaned back in the chair and gazed out the window. ‘They called me this morning, after you’d gone out.’
‘Is that why you wanted to see me, sir?’
‘No, this morning I wanted to ask you about something else. It isn’t important now.’
‘What did they tell you, sir?’ Brunetti finally asked.
Patta returned his gaze from whatever he could see beyond the window. ‘That inside the large envelope, they found forty-seven smaller ones, each of them with an Ecstasy tablet inside.’
Brunetti tried to calculate the weight and value of the drugs in order to work out the seriousness with which a judge was likely to view their possession. Well, it didn’t sound as if he had an enormous amount of the stuff, and if Roberto stuck to his story that someone else had put them into his jacket, he could see no serious legal danger for the boy.
‘His fingerprints were on the small envelopes, too,’ Patta
dropped into the silence. ‘On all of them.’
Brunetti resisted the impulse to reach across and place his hand on Patta’s arm. Instead, he waited a few moments and then said, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
Still not looking at him, Patta nodded, either in acknowledgement or thanks.
After a full minute had passed, Brunetti asked, ‘Was it in Jesolo itself or out on the Lido?’
Patta looked at Brunetti and shook his head, a fighter shaking off a soft blow. ‘What?’
‘Where it happened, sir. Was it Jesolo or Jesolo Lido?’
‘On the Lido.’
‘And where was he when he was . . .’ Brunetti began, intending to use the word ‘arrested’. Instead he said, ‘detained’?
‘I just told you,’ Patta snapped in a voice that showed how close he was to anger. ‘Lido di Jesolo.’
‘But in what place, sir? A bar? A disco?’
Patta closed his eyes, and Brunetti wondered how much time he must have spent thinking about all of this, recalling events in his son’s life.
‘At a place called Luxor, a disco,’ he finally said.
A small ‘Ah’ escaped Brunetti’s lips, but that was enough to force Patta to open his eyes. ‘What?’
Brunetti dismissed the question. ‘I knew someone once who used to go there,’ he said.
As his formless hope died, Patta turned his attention away.
‘Have you called a lawyer, sir?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. Donatini.’ Brunetti hid his surprise in a curt nod, as if the lawyer most often called upon to defend those accused of Mafia association was an obvious choice for Patta.
‘I’d be glad, Commissario...’ Patta began and stopped as he considered how best to put it.
‘I’ll give it some more thought, sir,’ Brunetti interrupted. ‘And I’ll say nothing about this to anyone, of course.’ Much as he despised many of the things Patta did, there was no way he could allow the man the embarrassment of having to ask him to keep silent about this.
Patta responded to the finality in Brunetti’s voice and pushed himself to his feet. He went with Brunetti to the door and opened it for him. He did not offer to shake hands, but he did utter a curt ‘Thank you’ before going back into his office and closing the door.
Brunetti saw that Signorina Elettra was at her desk, though the files and papers had been replaced by what looked suspiciously thick and glossy enough to be the spring fashion issue ofVogue.
‘His son?’ she asked, looking up from the magazine.
It escaped before he could stop himself. ‘Do you have his office wired?’ He had meant it as a joke, but when he heard himself asking the question, he wasn’t all that sure that he did.
‘No. He had a call from the boy this morning, sounding very nervous, then one from the Jesolo police. And as soon as he’d spoken to them, he asked me to get him Donatini’s number.’ Brunetti wondered if he could ask her to give up secretarial work and join the force. But he knew she’d die before she’d wear the uniform.
‘Do you know him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Who, Donatini or the boy?’
‘Either. Both.’
‘I know them both,’ she said, then added casually, ‘They’re both shits, but Donatini dresses better.’
‘Did he tell you what it’s about?’ he asked with a backward nod of his head towards Patta’s office.
‘No,’ she said with no trace of disappointment. ‘If it was rape, it would have been in the papers. So I guess it’s drugs. Donatini ought to be good enough to get him off.’
‘Do you think he’s capable of rape?’
‘Who, Roberto?’
‘Yes.’
She considered this for a second and then said, ‘No, I suppose not. He’s arrogant and self-important, but I don’t think he’s completely bad.’
Something led Brunetti to ask, ‘And Donatini?’
Without hesitation, she answered, ‘He’d do anything.’
‘I didn’t know you knew him.’
She glanced down at the magazine and turned a page, making it look like an idle gesture. ‘Yes.’ She turned another page.
‘He asked me to help him.’
‘The Vice-Questore?’ she asked, looking up in surprise.
‘Yes,’
‘And are you going to?’
‘If I can,’ Brunetti answered.
She looked at him for a long time, then turned her attention back to the page below her. ‘I don’t think grey is much longer for this world,’ she said. ‘We’re all tired of wearing it.’
She was wearing a peach-coloured silk blouse with a high-collared black jacket in what he thought he recognized as raw silk.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said, wished her a good evening, and went back up to his office.
* * * *
10
He had to call Information to get the number of Luxor, but when he dialled it, whoever answered the phone at the disco told him that Signor Bertocco was not there and refused to give his home number. Brunetti did not say it was the police calling. Instead, he called Information again and was given Luca’s home number without any difficulty at all.
‘Self-important fool,’ Brunetti muttered as he dialled the number.
It was picked up on the third ring and a deep voice with a rough edge said, ‘Bertocco.’
‘Ciao, Luca, it’s Guido Brunetti. How are you?’
The formality of the answering voice disappeared, replaced with real warmth. ‘Fine, Guido. I haven’t heard from you in ages. How are you, and Paola, and the kids?’
‘Everyone’s fine.’
‘You’ve finally decided to accept my offer and come out and dance till you drop?’
Brunetti laughed at this, a joke that had run for more than a decade. ‘No, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you again, Luca. Much as you know how I long to come and dance till dawn among people as young as my own children, Paola refuses to allow it.’
‘The smoke?’ Luca asked. ‘Thinks it’s bad for your health?’
‘No, the music, I think, but for the same reason.’
There was a brief pause, after which Luca said, ‘She’s probably right.’ When Brunetti said nothing more he asked, ‘Then why are you calling? About the boy who was arrested?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, not even pretending to be surprised that Luca knew about it already.
‘He’s your boss’s son, isn’t he?’
‘You seem to know everything.’
‘A man who runs five discos, three hotels, and six bars has to know everything, especially about the people who get themselves arrested in any of those places.’
‘What do you know about the boy?’
‘Only what the police tell me.’
‘Which police? The ones who arrested him or the ones who work for you?’
The silence that followed his question reminded Brunetti, not only that he had gone too far, but also that, however much Luca was a friend, he would always view Brunetti as a policeman.
‘I’m not sure how to answer that, Guido,’ Luca finally said. His voice was interrupted by the explosive bark of a heavy smoker.
The coughing went on for a long time. Brunetti waited for it to stop, and when it did, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Luca. It was a bad joke.’
‘It’s nothing, Guido. Believe me, anyone who’s involved with the public as much as I am needs all the help they can get from the police. And they’re glad to get all the help they can from me.’
Brunetti, thinking of small envelopes changing hands discreetly in city offices, asked, ‘What sort of help?’
‘I’ve got private guards who work the parking lots of the discos.’
‘What for?’ he asked, thinking of muggers and the vulnerability of the kids who staggered out at three in the morning.
‘To take their car keys away from them.’
‘And no one complains?’
‘Who’s to complain? Their parents, that I stop them from driving off dead drunk or
out of their minds on drugs? Or the police, because I stop them from slamming into the trees at the side of the highways?’
‘No, I suppose not. I didn’t think.’
‘It means they don’t get woken up at three to go out to watch bodies being cut out of cars. Believe me, the police are very happy to give me any help they can.’ He paused and Brunetti listened to the sharp snap of a match as Luca lit a cigarette and took the first deep breath. ‘What is it you’d like me to do - get this hushed up?’