Friends in High Places - [Commissario Brunetti 09]

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti’s hand, still holding the letter, fell into his lap. ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ he asked.

  Paola nodded, without smiling or looking away.

  He searched for both wording and tone and, finding them, asked, ‘Could you perhaps be a bit more precise?’

  Her explanation came quickly. ‘From the way I read it, I’d say it means the matter’s closed, that they’ve found the necessary papers, and we will not be driven mad by this.’

  ‘Found?’ he repeated.

  ‘Found,’ she said.

  He looked down at the single page in his hand, the paper on which the word, ‘presented’ appeared, folded it, and slipped it inside the envelope, considering as he did so how to ask, whether to ask.

  He handed the envelope back to her. He asked, still in command of his tone but not of his words, ‘Does your father have anything to do with this?’

  He watched her and experience told him just how long she thought about lying to him; the same experience saw her abandon the idea. ‘Probably,’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We were talking about you,’ she began, and he disguised his surprise that Paola would discuss him with her father. ‘He asked me how you were, how your work was, and I told him you had more than the usual problems at the moment.’ Before he could accuse her of betraying the secrets of his work, she added, ‘You know I never tell him, or anyone, specific things, but I did tell him you were more burdened than usual.’

  ‘Burdened?’

  ‘Yes.’ Then, by way of explanation, she went on, ‘With Patta’s son and the way he’s going to get away with this,’ she said. ‘And those poor dead young people.’ When she saw his expression, she said, ‘No, I didn’t mention any of this to him, just tried to tell him how hard it’s been for you recently.’ Remember, I live and sleep with you, so you don’t have to give me daily reports on how much these things trouble you.’

  He saw her sit straighter in her chair, as if she thought the conversation finished and herself free to get up and get them a drink.

  ‘What else did you tell him, Paola?’ he asked before she could rise.

  Her answer took a while to come, but when it did, it was the truth. ‘I told him about this nonsense from the Ufficio Catasto, that though we hadn’t heard anything further, it still loomed over us like a kind of bureaucratic sword of Damocles.’ He knew the tactic: deflecting wit. He was not moved by it.

  ‘And what was his response?’

  ‘He asked if there was anything he could do.’

  Had Brunetti been less tired, less burdened by a day filled with thoughts of human corruption, he probably would have let it go at that and allowed events to take their course above his head, behind his back. But something, either Paola’s complacent duplicity or his own shame at it, drove him to say, ‘I told you not to do that.’ Quickly, he amended it to, ‘I asked you.’

  ‘I know you did. So I didn’t ask him to help.’

  ‘You didn’t have to ask him, did you?’ he said, voice beginning to rise.

  Her voice matched his. ‘I don’t know what he did. I don’t even know that he did anything.’

  Brunetti pointed to the envelope in her hand. ‘The answer’s not far to seek, is it? I asked you not to have him help us, not to make him use his system of friends and connections.’

  ‘But you saw nothing wrong in using ours,’ she shot back.

  ‘That’s different,’ he insisted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re little people. We don’t have his power. We can’t be sure that we’ll always get what we want, always be able to get around the laws.’

  ‘You really believe that makes a difference?’ she asked, in astonishment.

  He nodded.

  ‘Then which is Patta?’ she asked. ‘One of us or one of the powerful people?’

  ‘Patta?’

  ‘Yes, Patta. If you think it’s all right for small people to try to get around the system, but it’s wrong for big people to do it, which is Patta?’ When Brunetti hesitated, she said, ‘I ask because you certainly make no attempt to disguise your opinion of what he did to save his son.’

  Anger, instant and fierce, flooded him. ‘His son is a criminal.’

  ‘He’s still his son.’

  ‘And that’s why it’s all right for your father to corrupt the system, because he’s doing it for his daughter?’ The instant the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them, and the regret overwhelmed his anger, snuffing it entirely. Paola looked across at him, mouth open in a tiny o, as if he had leaned across and slapped her.

  At once he spoke: ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ He put his head back against the chair and shook it from side to side. He wanted to close his eyes and make all of this go away. Instead, he raised a hand, palm up, then let it fall to his lap. ‘I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ he said by way of apology.

  ‘No,’ she said, voice very calm. ‘I think that’s why you shouldn’t have said it. Because it is true. He did it because I’m his daughter.’

  Brunetti was about to say that the other part wasn’t true: Conte Falier couldn’t corrupt a system that was already corrupt, had probably been born corrupt. But all he said was, ‘I don’t want to do this, Paola.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Fight about this.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her voice was distant, disinterested, faintly imperious.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, angered again.

  Neither of them said anything for a long time. Finally Paola asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do.’ He waved a hand toward the letter. ‘Not after we’ve got that.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ she agreed. She held it up. ‘But beyond this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Then, in a softer voice, he said, ‘I suppose you can’t be asked to return to the ideals of your youth?’

  ‘Would you want me to?’ At once she added, ‘It’s impossible; I have to tell you that. So my question is entirely rhetorical. Would you want me to?’

  As he got to his feet, however, he realized that a return to the ideals of their youth was no guarantee of peace of mind.

  He went back into the apartment, then emerged a few minutes later with two glasses of Chardonnay. They sat together for half an hour, neither saying much of anything, until Paola glanced at her watch, got up, and said she would begin dinner. As she took his empty glass, she bent down and kissed his right ear, missing his cheek.

  After dinner, he lay on the sofa, caught up in the hope that he would somehow find the means to keep his family at peace and that the terrible events with which his days were filled would never lay siege to his home. He tried to continue with Xenophon, but even though the remaining Greeks were nearing home and safety, he found it difficult to concentrate on their story and impossible to concern himself with their two-thousand-year-old plight. Chiara, who came in at about ten to kiss him goodnight, said nothing about boats, little realizing that, if she had, Brunetti would have agreed to buy her the QE2.

  * * * *

  As he had hoped, when he bought the paper on his way to work the next morning he found his headline on the front page of the second section of Il Gazzettino and sat at his desk to read it through. It was all more horrible and more urgent than he had made it sound, and, like so many of the wild fancies that appeared in this particular publication, it sounded utterly convincing. Though the article stated clearly that this therapy functioned only against possible transmission by biting - how much nonsense would people believe? - he feared the hospital would be swamped with drug addicts and infected people, hoping for the magic cure said to be in the possession of the doctors of the Ospedale Civile and available on request at the Pronto Soccorso. On the way in, he had done something he seldom did, bought La Nuova, hoping that no one who knew him wou
ld see him with it. He found it on page twenty-seven: three columns, even a picture of Zecchino, apparently cropped from some larger group scene. If possible, the danger of the bite sounded infinitely graver, as did the hope offered by the cure to be had only at the Pronto Soccorso.

  He had been in his office no more than ten minutes when the door was thrown open and Brunetti looked up, first startled and then astonished to observe Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta standing in the doorway. But he didn’t stand there long: within seconds, he was across the room and directly in front of Brunetti’s desk. Brunetti started to get to his feet, but Patta raised a hand as if to push him back down, then clutched the hand into a fist and brought it crashing down on Brunetti’s desk.

  ‘Why have you done this?’ he shouted. ‘What have I ever done to you that you’d do this to us? They’ll kill him. You know that. You must have known that when you did it.’

  For a moment, Brunetti feared that his superior had gone mad or that the stresses of his job, perhaps the private stresses of his life, had driven him beyond the point where he could contain his feelings, and he had been forced across some invisible barrier into heedless rage. Brunetti placed his hands palm down on his desk and was very careful not to move or attempt to get up.

  ‘Well? Well?’ Patta shouted at him, placing his own palms flat on the desk and leaning across it until his face was very close to Brunetti’s. ‘I want to know why you did this to him. If anything happens to Roberto, I’ll destroy you.’ Patta stood upright, and Brunetti noticed that his hands were now clasped into tight fists at his side. The Vice-Questore swallowed and then demanded, ‘I asked you a question, Brunetti,’ in a voice filled with soft menace.

  Brunetti moved backward in his chair and grasped its arms. ‘I think you better sit down, Vice-Questore,’ he said, ‘and tell me what this is all about.’

  Any calm that might have settled on Patta’s features vanished, and he shouted again, ‘Don’t lie to me, Brunetti. I want to know why you did it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Brunetti said, letting some of his own anger slip into his voice.

  From the pocket of his jacket, Patta pulled out yesterday’s newspaper and smacked it down on Brunetti’s desk. ‘I’m talking about this,’ he said, jamming an angry finger at the page. ‘This story that says Roberto is about to be arrested and will surely testify against the people in control of the drug business in the Veneto.’ Before Brunetti could respond, Patta said, ‘I know how you work, you northerners, like a secret little club. All you have to do is call one of your friends on the paper, and he’ll print any shit you give him.’

  Suddenly exhausted, Patta sank down into a chair that stood in front of Brunetti’s desk. His face, still red, was covered with perspiration, and when he tried to wipe it away, Brunetti saw that his hand was shaking. ‘They’ll kill him,’ he said, almost inaudibly.

  Realization overcame Brunetti’s confusion and his sense of outrage at Patta’s behaviour. He waited a few moments until Patta’s breathing had grown more normal and said, ‘It’s not about Roberto,’ striving to keep his voice calm. ‘It’s about that boy who died of an overdose last week. His girlfriend came in and told me she knew who sold him the drugs, but she was afraid to tell me who it was. I thought this would encourage him to come in voluntarily to talk to us.’

  He saw that Patta was listening; whether he was believing was entirely a different matter. Or, if he believed, whether it made any difference.

  ‘It has nothing at all to do with Roberto,’ he said, his voice level and as calm as he could make it. Brunetti pushed away the urge to say that, as Patta had insisted Roberto had nothing to do with selling drugs, it was impossible that this article could put him in any danger. Not even Patta was worth a victory as cheap as that. He stopped and waited for Patta to answer.

  After a long time, the Vice-Questore said, ‘I don’t care who it’s about’, which suggested that he believed what Brunetti had said. He looked across at Brunetti, eyes direct and honest. ‘They called him last night. On his telefonino.’

  ‘What did they say?’ Brunetti asked, very much aware that Patta had just confessed that his son, the son of the Vice-Questore of Venice, was selling drugs.

  ‘They said they better not hear any more about this, that they better not hear that he’d talked to anyone or gone to the Questura.’ Patta stopped and closed his eyes, reluctant to continue.

  ‘Or what?’ Brunetti asked in a neutral voice.

  After a long time, the answer came. ‘They didn’t say. They didn’t have to.’ Brunetti had no doubt that this was true.

  He found himself suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to be anywhere but here. It would be better to be back in the room with Zecchino and the dead girl, for at least his emotion there had been a clean, profound pity; there had been none of this niggling sense of triumph at the sight of this man for whom he had so often felt such utter contempt reduced to this. He did not want to feel satisfaction at the sight of Patta’s fear and anger, but he could not succeed in repressing it.

  ‘Is he using anything or is he just selling?’ he asked.

  Patta sighed. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’ Brunetti gave him a moment to stop lying, and after a while, Patta said, ‘Yes. Cocaine, I think.’

  Years ago, when he was less experienced in the art of questioning, Brunetti would have asked for confirmation that the boy was also selling, but now he took it as given and moved on to his next question. ‘Have you talked to him?’

  Patta nodded. After a while, he said, ‘He’s terrified. He wants to go and stay with his grandparents, but he wouldn’t be safe there.’ He looked up at Brunetti. ‘These people have to believe he won’t talk. It’s the only way he’ll be safe.’

  Brunetti had already arrived at the same conclusion and was already calculating its cost. The only way to do it was to plant another story, this one saying that the police had begun to suspect they had been given false information and in fact had been unable to make a link between recent drug-related deaths and the person responsible for the sale of those drugs. This would most likely remove Roberto Patta from immediate danger, but it would also discourage Anna Maria Ratti’s brother, or cousin, or whoever he was, from coming in to name the people who had sold him the drugs that had killed Marco Landi.

  If he did nothing, Roberto’s life would be in danger, but if the story appeared, then Anna Maria would have to live with her secret grief that she had, however remotely, been responsible for Marco’s death.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said, and Patta’s head snapped up, his eyes staring across at Brunetti.

  ‘What?’ he demanded, then, ‘How?’

  ‘I said I’ll take care of it,’ he repeated, keeping his voice firm, hoping that Patta would believe him and take quickly from the room whatever show of gratitude he might be moved to. He went on, ‘Try to get him into a clinic of some sort, if you can.’

  He watched Patta’s eyes widen in outrage at this inferior who dared to give advice.

  Brunetti wanted it done quickly. ‘I’ll call them now,’ he said, looking in the direction of the door.

  Angered by this as well, Patta wheeled around, walked toward the door and let himself out.

  Feeling not a little bit the fool, Brunetti called his friend at the paper again and did it quickly, all the time conscious of how enormous a debt he was running up. When it came time to pay it back, and he did not for an instant doubt that this time would come, he knew it would be at the cost of some principle or the flouting of some law. Neither thought made him hesitate for an instant.

  * * * *

  He was about to leave for lunch when his phone rang. It was Carraro, saying that a man had phoned ten minutes before: he’d read the story in the paper that morning and wanted to know if it was really true. Carraro had assured him that, yes, it was: the therapy was absolutely revolutionary and the only hope for whoever it was that had been bitten.

  ‘Do you think he’s the one?’
Brunetti asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carraro said. ‘But he seemed very interested. He said he’d come in today. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m coming over right now.’

  ‘What do I do if he comes in?’

  ‘Keep him there. Keep talking to him. Invent some sort of screening process and keep him there,’ Brunetti said. On his way out, he put his head into the officers’ room and shouted a quick command that they get two men and a boat over to the entrance to the Pronto Soccorso immediately.

  It took him only ten minutes to walk to the hospital, and when he got there he told the portiere that he needed to be taken to the doctors’ entrance to Pronto Soccorso so that he would not be seen by any patients who were waiting. His sense of urgency must have been contagious because the man left his glass-enclosed office and led Brunetti down the main corridor, past the patient entrance to the Emergency Room, and then through an unmarked door and down a narrow corridor. He emerged into the nurses’ station at the Pronto Soccorso.