Friends in High Places - [Commissario Brunetti 09]

by Donna Leon

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti sighed. He looked up from the paper and asked, ‘Did you by any chance ... ?’

  Her smile was a benediction. ‘It’s all there: his tax records, a list of the houses he owns, his bank accounts, his wife’s, everything.’

  ‘And?’ he asked, resisting the impulse to look down at the paper and wanting her to have the pleasure of telling him.

  ‘Only a miracle could protect him from an audit,’ she said, tapping the papers with the fingers of her left hand.

  ‘Yet no one’s noticed,’ Brunetti said calmly, ‘all these years: not dal Carlo and not the Volpatos.’

  ‘That’s not likely to happen, not while prices like these,’ she said, turning back to the front page, ‘are available to city councillors.’ After a pause, she added, ‘And to colonels.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, closing the file with a tired sigh, ‘and to colonels.’ He tucked the folder under his arm. ‘What about their phone?’

  She came close to smiling. ‘They don’t have one.’

  ‘What?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Not that I can discover. Not in either of their names and not at the address where they live.’ Before Brunetti could ask, she supplied possible explanations. ‘Either it’s because they’re too cheap to pay a phone bill, or else they’ve got a telefonino listed in someone else’s name.’

  It was hard for Brunetti to imagine that anyone could, today, exist without a telephone, especially people who were involved in the purchase and sale of properties, the lending of money and all the contacts with lawyers, municipal offices, and notaries those things would entail. Besides, no one could be so pathologically frugal as not to have a phone.

  Seeing one avenue of possible investigation eliminated, Brunetti turned his attention back to the murdered couple. ‘If you can,’ he said, ‘see what there is to find out about Gino Zecchino, would you?’

  She nodded. She already knew the name.

  ‘We don’t know who the girl is yet,’ he began, and the possibility struck him that they might never know. He refused to give voice to this thought, however, and said only, ‘Let me know if you find anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, watching as he left the office.

  Upstairs, he decided to add to the scope of the disinformation that was to appear in the newspapers the next morning and spent the next hour and a half on the phone, often consulting the pages of his notebook or occasionally calling a friend for the phone numbers of men and women scattered on both sides of the law. With cajolery, the promise of some future favour, and sometimes with open menace, he convinced a number of people to speak loudly and speak widely of this strange case of the killer who had been doomed to a slow and horrible death by the bite of his victim. Generally there was no hope, usually no therapy, but sometimes, just sometimes, if the bite was treated in time by an experimental technique that was being perfected in the Immunology Laboratory of the Ospedale Civile and dispensed at the Emergency Room, then there was a chance that the infection could be stopped. Otherwise, there was no escape from death, the headline would quickly be proven true, and the victim would indeed Take Vengeance With a Fatal Bite.

  He had no idea if this would work, knew only that this was Venice, city of rumour, where an uncritical populace read and believed, listened and believed.

  He dialled the central number for the hospital and was about to ask for the office of the Director when he thought better of it and, instead, asked to speak to Dottor Carraro in Pronto Soccorso.

  The call was finally put through and Carraro all but barked his name into the receiver; a man too busy to be disturbed, the lives of his patients at risk if he lingered on the phone, kept there by whatever stupidity he was about to be asked.

  ‘Ah, Dottore,’ Brunetti began, ‘how nice to speak to you again.’

  ‘Who is this?’ asked the same rude, impulsive voice.

  ‘Commissario Brunetti,’ he said and waited for the name to register.

  ‘Ah, yes. Good afternoon, Commissario,’ the doctor said, a sea change audible.

  When the doctor seemed disposed to say no more, Brunetti said, ‘Dottore, it seems I might be able to be of some help to you.’ He stopped, giving Carraro the opportunity to enquire. When he failed to, Brunetti went on, ‘It seems we’ve got to decide whether to pass the results of our investigation on to the examining magistrate. Well, that is,’ he corrected himself with an officious little laugh, ‘we’ve got to give our recommendation, whether to continue and begin a criminal investigation. For culpable negligence.’

  He heard no more than Carraro’s breathing at the other end. ‘Of course, I’m persuaded that there’s no need of that. Accidents happen. The man would have died anyway. I don’t think there’s any need to cause you any trouble about this, to waste police time in investigating a situation where we’re going to find nothing.’

  Still silence. ‘Are you there, Dottore?’ he asked in a hearty voice.

  ‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Carraro said in his new, softer voice.

  ‘Good. I knew you’d be happy to hear my news.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘While I have you on the line,’ Brunetti said, managing to make it clear he had not just thought of it, ‘I wonder if I could ask you a favour.’

  ‘Of course, Commissario.’

  ‘In the next day or so, a man might come into the Emergency Room with a bite on his hand or his arm. He’ll probably say it’s a dog bite, or he might try to say his girlfriend did it to him.’ Carraro remained silent. ‘Are you listening, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked, voice suddenly much louder.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. The instant this man comes in, I want you to call the Questura, Dottore. The instant,’ he repeated, and gave Carraro the number. ‘If you’re not there, I expect you to leave word for whoever takes your place that he is to do the same thing.’

  ‘And what are we supposed to do with him while we wait for you to get here?’ Carraro asked with a return to his normal tone.

  ‘You are to keep him there, Dottore, lying to him and inventing some form of treatment that will take long enough for us to get to the hospital. And you are not to allow him to leave the hospital.’

  ‘And if we can’t stop him?’ Carraro demanded.

  Brunetti had little doubt that Carraro would obey him, but he thought it best to lie. ‘We’ve still got power to examine the hospital records, Dottore, and our investigation of the circumstances surrounding Rossi’s death isn’t over until I say so.’ He allowed steel to penetrate his voice with the last phrase, that hollow lie, paused a moment, and then said, ‘Good, then, I look forward to your cooperation.’

  After that, there was nothing for the men to do except exchange pleasantries and say goodbye.

  That left Brunetti at a loose end until the papers came out the next morning. But it also left him restless, something he always dreaded because the feeling spurred him to rashness. It was difficult for him to resist the urge to, as it were, put the cat among the pigeons and stir things up. He went downstairs, to Signorina Elettra’s office.

  The sight of her, elbows on her desk, chin propped up on her fists, head bent over a book, led him to ask as he came in, ‘Am I interrupting anything?’ She looked up, smiling, and shook away the very idea with a sideways motion of her head.

  ‘Do you own your apartment, Signorina?’

  Accustomed as she was to Brunetti’s sometimes odd behaviour, she displayed no curiosity and answered ‘Yes,’ leaving it to him, if he pleased, to explain the question.

  He’d had time to think about it, and so he added, ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter, though.’

  ‘It does to me, sir, quite a bit,’ she remarked.

  ‘Ah, yes, I’m sure it does,’ he said, realizing the confusion that would result from his remark. ‘Signorina, if you’re not busy, I’d like you to do something for me.’

  She reached for a pad and pencil, but he stopped her.

  ‘No,’ he said, when he saw what she was doin
g, ‘I want you to go and talk to someone.’

  * * * *

  He had to wait more than two hours for her to come back, and when she did, she came directly up to his office. She entered without knocking and approached his desk.

  ‘Ah, Signorina,’ he said, inviting her to take a seat. He sat next to her, eager, but silent.

  ‘You’re not in the habit of giving me a Christmas present, are you, Commissario?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Am I about to begin to do so?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’ll expect a dozen, no, two dozen white roses from Biancat and, I think, a case of prosecco.’

  ‘And when would you like this present to arrive, Signorina, if I might ask?’

  ‘To avoid the Christmas rush, sir, I think you might send them around next week.’

  ‘By all means. Consider it done.’

  ‘Too kind, Signore,’ she said with a gracious nod of acceptance.

  ‘No more than my pleasure,’ he answered. He allowed six beats to pass and then asked, ‘And?’

  ‘And I asked in the bookstore in the campo, and the owner told me where they lived, and I went and talked to them.’

  ‘And?’ he prodded.

  ‘They may be the most loathsome people I’ve ever met,’ she said in an uninterested, aloof tone. ‘Let’s see, I’ve worked here for more than four years, and I’ve come in contact with quite a few criminals, though the people in the bank where I used to work were probably worse, but these two were in a class by themselves,’ she said with what seemed like a real shudder of disgust.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the combination of greed and piety, I think.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘When I told them that I needed money to pay my brother’s gambling bills, they asked me what I had to put up as security, and I told them I had an apartment. I tried to sound a bit nervous about saying that, the way you told me. He asked me the address, and I gave it to him, then he went into the other room, and I heard him talking to someone.’

  She stopped here for a moment and then added, ‘It must have been a telefonino. There were no phone jacks in the two rooms I was in.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Brunetti asked.

  She tilted her chin and raised her eyes to the top of the armadio on the other side of the room. ‘When he came back, he smiled at his wife, and that’s when they began to talk about the possibility of their being able to help me. They asked how much I needed, and I said fifty million.’

  It was the sum they had agreed on: not too much and not too little, just the sort of sum a gambler might rack up in a night’s rash gambling and just the sort of sum he would believe he could easily win back, if only he could find the person to pay off the debt and thus get him back at the tables.

  She turned her eyes to Brunetti. ‘Do you know these people?’

  ‘No. All I know is what a friend told me.’

  ‘They’re terrible,’ she said, voice low.

  ‘What else?’

  She shrugged. ‘I suppose they did what they usually do. They told me that they needed to see the papers for the house, though I’m sure he was calling someone to make sure I really did own it or that it was listed in my name.’

  ‘Who could that be?’ he asked.

  She looked down at her watch before answering, ‘It’s not likely there was still anyone at the Ufficio Catasto, so it must be someone who has instant access to their records.’

  ‘You do, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it takes me a while to break... to get into their system. Whoever could give him that information immediately had to have direct access to the files.’

  ‘How were things left?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I’m to go back tomorrow with the papers. They’ll have the notary come to the house at five.’ She stopped and smiled across at him. ‘Imagine that: you can die before a doctor will make a house call, but they’ve got a notary on twenty-four-hour call.’ She raised her eyebrows at the very notion. ‘So I’m supposed to go back at five tomorrow, and we’ll sign all the papers, and they’ll give me the cash.’

  Even before she stopped speaking, Brunetti had raised one finger and was waving it back and forth in silent negation.

  There was no way he’d permit Signorina Elettra to get that close to these people again. She smiled in silent acknowledgement of his command and, he thought, relief.

  ‘And the interest? Did they say how much it would be?’

  ‘They said we’d talk about that tomorrow, that it would be on the papers.’ She crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. ‘So I guess that means we don’t get to talk about it,’ she said with finality.

  Brunetti waited a moment and then asked, ‘And piety?’

  She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a narrow rectangle of paper, slightly smaller than a playing card. She passed it to Brunetti, who looked at it. Stiff, a sort of fake parchment, it had a painting of a woman dressed as a nun with her hands and, it seemed, her eyes crossed in matching piety. Brunetti read the first few lines printed below - a prayer, the first letter an illuminated ‘O’.

  ‘Santa Rita,’ she said after he had studied the picture for a while. ‘It seems she’s another patron saint of Lost Causes, and Signora Volpato feels especially close to her because she believes she also helps people when all other help is closed to them. That’s the reason for her special devotion to Santa Rita.’ Signorina Elettra paused to reflect momentarily upon this wonder and then saw fit to add, ‘More than to the Madonna, she confided to me.’

  ‘How fortunate, the Madonna,’ Brunetti said, handing the small card back to Signorina Elettra.

  ‘Ah, keep it, sir,’ she said, waving it away with a dismissive hand.

  ‘Did they ask why you didn’t go to a bank, if you owned the house?’

  ‘Yes. I told them my father originally gave me the house, and I couldn’t risk his learning what I was doing. If I went to our bank, where they know us all, he’d find out about my brother. I tried to cry then, when I told her that.’ Signorina Elettra gave a small smile and went on: ‘Signora Volpato said she was very sorry about my brother; she said gambling is a terrible vice.’

  ‘And usury isn’t?’ Brunetti asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

  ‘Apparently not. She asked me how old he was.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ Brunetti asked, knowing she had no brother.

  ‘Thirty-seven, and that he’s been gambling for years.’ She stopped, reflected upon the events of the afternoon, and said, ‘Signora Volpato was very kind.’

  ‘Really? What did she do?’

  ‘She gave me another card of Santa Rita and said she’d pray for my brother.’

  * * * *

  23

  The only thing Brunetti did before going home that afternoon was sign the papers that would release the body of Marco Landi so that it could be sent to his parents. After he had done this, he called downstairs and asked Vianello if he would be willing to accompany the body back to the Trentino. Vianello agreed instantly, saying only that, as the next day was his day off, he didn’t know if he could wear his uniform.

  Brunetti had no idea if he had the authority to do so, but he said, ‘I’ll change the roster’, opening a drawer to start to look for it, buried among the papers that came to him every week to be ignored and eventually discarded unread. ‘Consider yourself on duty and wear your uniform.’

  ‘And if they ask about what’s happening here, if we’ve made any progress?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘They won’t ask, not yet,’ Brunetti answered, not at all sure why he knew, but sure he was right.

  When he got home, he found Paola on the terrace, her feet stretched out before her, resting on one of the cane chairs that had weathered yet another winter exposed to the elements.

  She smiled up at him and pulled her feet off the chair; he accepted her invitation and sat opposite her.

  �
��Should I ask how your day was?’ she asked.

  He sat lower in the chair, shook his head, but still managed to smile. ‘No. Just another day.’

  ‘Filled with?’

  ‘Usury, corruption, and human greed.’

  ‘Just another day.’ She took an envelope from the book in her lap and leaned forward to hand it across to him. ‘Maybe this will help,’ she said.

  He took it and looked at it. It came from the Ufficio Catasto; he was uncertain of how this could be of any help to him.

  He pulled out the letter and read it. ‘Is this a miracle?’ he asked. Then, looking down at it, he read the last sentence aloud, ’“Sufficient documentation having been presented, all former correspondence from our office is superseded by this decree of condono edilizio.” ‘