Friends In High Places

by Donna Leon

  ‘Of course not,’ the lawyer all but spat down the line. ‘They sent someone, paid someone and sent him to do it. It was a contract killing: the shot came from the roof of a building on the opposite side of the street. Even the police here said it had to be a contract killing; who else would want to murder him?’

  Brunetti had too little information to be able to answer questions about Cappelli’s death, even rhetorical ones, and so he said, ‘I ask you to excuse my ignorance about your partner’s death and the people responsible, Signor Gavini. I was calling you about something entirely different, but after what you’ve said, I wonder if it is so different.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gavini asked. Though the words were abrupt, his voice was curious, interested.

  ‘I’m calling about a death we’ve had here in Venice, a death that looks accidental but might not be.’ He waited for Gavini’s questions, but none came, and so he continued. ‘A man fell from scaffolding here, and died. He worked in the Ufficio Catasto and had a phone number in his wallet when he died, but without any city code. This is one of the numbers it might have been.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Gavini asked.

  ‘Franco Rossi.’ Brunetti allowed him a moment for reflection or memory, then asked, ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘Is there any way you could find out if it meant something to your colleague?’

  Gavini was a long time in answering. ‘Do you have his number? I could check the phone logs,’ he suggested.

  ‘One moment,’ Brunetti said and bent to pull open his bottom drawer. From it, he took the phone book and checked through the listings for Rossi: there were seven columns of them, and about a dozen of those were Francos. He found the address and read the phone number to Gavini, then asked him to wait while he flipped to the pages for the Comune of Venice and found the number for the Ufficio Catasto. If Rossi had been rash enough to call the police from his telefonino, he might easily have called the lawyer from his office or received calls there.

  ‘It will take me a while to check the logs,’ Gavini said. ‘I’ve got someone waiting to see me. But as soon as he’s gone, I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Perhaps you could ask your secretary to do it for you.’

  Gavini’s voice suddenly took on an odd note of excessive formality, almost of caution. ‘No, I think I’d prefer to do this myself.’

  Brunetti said that he’d wait for Gavini’s call, gave his direct number, and the two men hung up.

  A phone that had been disconnected months ago, an old woman who knew no one named Franco Rossi, a car rental agency with no such client, but now the partner of a lawyer whose death had been as violent as Rossi’s: Brunetti well knew the time that could be wasted in following false scents and chasing down misleading trails, but this had the right feel to it, however uncertain he might be of what it was or where it might be leading.

  Like the plagues inflicted upon the children of Egypt, moneylenders afflicted the children of Italy and caused them to suffer. Banks extended credit reluctantly and generally only with the guarantee of the sort of financial security that would obviate the need to borrow. Short-term credit for the businessman who had little cash at the end of the month or the salesman whose clients were slow in paying was virtually non-existent. And all of this was compounded by a habitual sloth in the paying of bills which could be said to characterize the entire nation.

  Into this breach stepped, as everyone knew but few would say, the moneylenders, gli strozzini, those shadowy persons who were willing and able to lend at short notice and with little security from the borrowers. Their rates of interest more than compensated for any risk they might incur. And, in a sense, the idea of risk was academic at best, for the strozzini had methods which greatly reduced the possibility that their clients – if that is the right name for them – would fail to repay the money they had borrowed. Men had children, and children could disappear; men had daughters, and young girls might be raped; men had their lives, and these had been known to be lost. Occasionally the press carried stories which, without being entirely clear, managed nevertheless to suggest that certain actions, often unpleasant or violent, had resulted from the failure to repay borrowed money. But seldom did the people involved in these stories end up under prosecution or close police examination: a wall of silence hedged them safely round. Brunetti had to struggle to recall a case where enough evidence had been gathered to lead to a conviction for moneylending, a crime with a place in the statutes, however infrequently it appeared in the courtroom.

  Brunetti sat at his desk and allowed his imagination and his memory to consider the many possibilities offered by the fact that Franco Rossi might have been carrying Sandro Cappelli’s office phone number in his wallet when he died. He tried to recall Rossi’s visit and to reconstruct his sense of the man. Rossi had been serious about his work: that was perhaps the most lasting impression he had left with Brunetti. A bit humourless, more earnest than seemed possible in a man so young, Rossi had still been likeable and eager to provide what help he could.

  All of this thinking, in the absence of any clear idea of what was going on, got Brunetti nowhere, but it did manage to pass the time until Gavini called.

  Brunetti answered on the first ring. ‘Brunetti.’

  ‘Commissario,’ Gavini said and identified himself. ‘I’ve been through both the client files and the phone logs.’ Brunetti waited for more. ‘No client named Franco Rossi is listed, but Sandro called Rossi’s number three times during the month before he died.’

  ‘Which one? At home or at work?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘Everything might make a difference.’

  ‘At his office,’ Gavini offered.

  ‘How long did the calls last?’

  The other man must have had the paper under his hand because he said, without hesitation, ‘Twelve minutes, then six, then eight.’ Gavini waited for Brunetti to respond, and when he didn’t, asked, ‘What about Rossi? Do you know if he called Sandro?’

  ‘I haven’t checked his phone records yet,’ Brunetti admitted, feeling not a little embarrassed. Gavini said nothing, and Brunetti went on: ‘I’ll have them by tomorrow.’ Suddenly he remembered that this man was a lawyer, not a fellow officer, which meant he had no responsibility to him and no need to share information with him.

  ‘What’s the name of the magistrate handling the case there?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to him,’ Brunetti said.

  A long silence greeted this.

  ‘Do you have his name?’ Brunetti prodded.

  ‘Righetto, Angelo Righetto,’ came the terse reply. Brunetti decided to ask nothing at this point. He thanked Gavini, made no promise to phone him about any numbers Rossi might have called, and hung up, wondering about the chill in Gavini’s voice as he pronounced the name of the man in charge of the investigation of his partner’s murder.

  He immediately called down to Signorina Elettra and asked her to get copies of all of the calls made from Rossi’s home number during the last three months. When he asked her if it would be possible to find out the number of Rossi’s extension at the Ufficio Catasto and check that, she asked if he wanted the last three months of calls.

  While he had her on the line, he asked her if she could call Magistrato Angelo Righetto in Ferrara and connect him as soon as she did.

  Brunetti pulled a piece of paper toward him and started making a list of the names of people he thought might be able to give him information about moneylenders in the city. He knew nothing about the usurers, at least nothing more real than his vague certainty that they were there, burrowed into the social fabric as deeply as maggots into dead meat. Like certain forms of bacteria, they needed the security of an airless, dark place in which to thrive, and certainly the fearful state into which their debtors were intimidated provided neither light nor air. In secrecy, and
with the unspoken threat of the consequences of late payment or default ever present in the minds of their debtors, they prospered and grew fat. The wonder of it, to Brunetti, was his ignorance of their names, faces, and histories as well as, he realized as he looked down at the still blank piece of paper, any idea of who to ask for help about how he might try to drive them out into the light.

  A name came to him, and he pulled out the phone book to find the number of the bank where she worked. As he looked, his phone rang. He answered it with his name.

  ‘Dottore,’ Signorina Elettra said, ‘I have Magistrato Righetto on the line, if you’d like to speak to him.’

  ‘Yes, Signorina, I would. Please put him through.’ Brunetti put down his pen and moved the paper to the side of his desk.

  ‘Righetto,’ a deep voice said.

  ‘Magistrato, this is Commissario Guido Brunetti, from Venice. I’m calling to ask what you can tell me about the murder of Alessandro Cappelli.’

  ‘Why are you interested in it?’ Righetto asked, no sign of great curiosity audible in the question. He spoke with an accent Brunetti thought might be from the Sud Tirol; definitely a northerner, at any rate.

  ‘I have a case here,’ Brunetti explained, ‘another death, that might be related to his, and I wonder what you’ve managed to discover about Cappelli.’

  There was a long pause, and then Righetto said, ‘I’d be surprised if any other death was related to it.’ He allowed a brief pause for Brunetti to question him, but as Brunetti said nothing he went on, ‘It looks like we’re dealing with a case of mistaken identity here, not murder.’ Righetto halted for an instant and then corrected himself. ‘Well, murder, of course it’s that. But it wasn’t Cappelli they were trying to kill, and we’re not even sure they were trying to kill the other man so much as frighten him.’

  Sensing that it was time he displayed an interest, Brunetti asked, ‘What happened, then?’

  ‘It was his partner, Gavini, they were after,’ the magistrate explained. ‘At least that’s what our investigation suggests.’

  ‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, openly curious.

  ‘It made no sense from the beginning that anyone would want to kill Cappelli,’ Righetto began, making it sound as though no importance whatsoever was to be given to Cappelli’s position as a declared enemy of usurers. We’ve looked into his past, even checked the current cases he was working on, but there’s no indication at all of an involvement with anyone who would want to do something like this.’

  Brunetti made a little noise, one that could be interpreted as a sigh of mingled understanding and agreement.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Righetto continued, ‘there’s his partner.’

  ‘Gavini,’ Brunetti supplied unnecessarily.

  ‘Yes, Gavini,’ Righetto said with a dismissive laugh. ‘He’s well known in the area, has the reputation as quite a ladies’ man. Unfortunately, he has the habit of getting himself involved with married women.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti said with a worldly sigh which he managed to infuse with the appropriate level of manly tolerance. ‘So that was it?’ he asked with bland acceptance.

  ‘It would seem so. In the last few years, he’s been involved with four different women, all of them married.’

  Brunetti said, ‘Poor devil.’ He waited long enough to allow himself to consider the comic implications of what he’d just said and then added with a quick laugh, ‘Maybe he should have limited himself to only one of them.’

  ‘Yes, but how’s a man to decide?’ the magistrate shot back, and Brunetti rewarded his wit with another hearty laugh.

  ‘Do you have any idea which one it was?’ Brunetti asked, interested in how Righetto would handle the question, which in its turn would suggest how he was going to handle the investigation.

  Righetto allowed himself a pause, no doubt he wanted it to seem like a thoughtful pause, and then said, ‘No. We’ve questioned the women, and their husbands, but all of them can prove they were somewhere else when it happened.’

  ‘I thought the papers said it was a professional hit,’ Brunetti said, sounding confused.

  The temperature of Righetto’s voice dropped. ‘If you’re a policeman, you should know better than to believe what you read in the papers.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, making himself laugh genially, as at a well-earned reproach from a colleague with greater experience and wisdom. ‘You think maybe there was still another woman?’

  ‘That’s the trail we’re following,’ Righetto said.

  ‘It happened at their offices, didn’t it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Righetto answered, willing now, after Brunetti’s hint at another woman, to give further information. ‘The two men look alike: they’re both short and have dark hair. It happened on a rainy day; the killer was on the roof of a building across the street. So there’s little question he mistook Cappelli for Gavini.’

  ‘But what about all this talk that Cappelli was killed because of his investigation of moneylenders?’ Brunetti asked, putting enough scepticism into his voice to make it clear to Righetto that he wouldn’t believe such nonsense for a minute but perhaps wanted to have the right answer in case someone else, more innocent than he and thus willing to believe everything he read in the papers, should ask him about it.

  ‘We started by examining that possibility, but there’s nothing there, just nothing. So we’ve excluded it from our investigation.’

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ Brunetti said, intentionally mispronouncing the French and adding another laugh.

  Righetto rewarded him with his own broad laugh and then asked, quite casually, ‘You said you had another death there. A murder?’

  ‘No, no, after what you’ve told me, Magistrato,’ Brunetti said, attempting to sound as dull and ploddish as he could, ‘I’m sure there’s no connection. What we’re dealing with here has got to be an accident.’

  16

  LIKE MOST ITALIANS, Brunetti believed that records were kept of all phone calls made anywhere in the country and copies made of all faxes; like very few Italians, he had reason to know this was true. Belief or certainty, however, made little difference to behaviour: nothing of substance and nothing that could in any way be incriminating to either of the speakers or interesting to any of the agencies of government which chose to eavesdrop was ever discussed on the phone. People spoke in code where ‘money’ became ‘vases’ or ‘flowers’ and investments or bank accounts were referred to as ‘friends’ in foreign countries. Brunetti had no idea of how widespread the belief and the resultant caution were, but he knew enough when he called his friend at the Banca di Modena to suggest they meet for a coffee rather than attempt to make his request directly.

  Because the bank was on the other side of Rialto, they agreed to have a drink before lunch in Campo San Luca and thus meet halfway. It was a long way for Brunetti to go just to ask a few questions, but a meeting was the only way he could get Franca to talk openly. Explaining nothing, telling no one, he left his office and walked out to the bacino and up towards San Marco.

  As he walked along the Riva degli Schiavoni, he looked off to his left, expecting to see the tugboats, only to be caught up short by their absence and then by the immediate realization that they’d been gone for years but that he’d forgotten about it. How could he have forgotten something he knew so well? It was rather like not remembering his own phone number or the face of the baker. He didn’t know where the tugs had been sent, nor could he recall how many years it was since they’d disappeared, leaving the space along the riva clear for other boats, no doubt boats more useful to the tourist industry.

  What wonderful Latin names they’d had, floating there red and proud and ready at an instant to chug off to help the ships up the Canale della Giudecca. The boats that sailed into the city now were probably too big for those brave little tugs to be of any help: monsters taller than the Basilica, filled with thousands of ant-like forms crowded to the railings, they sailed in and docked, hur
led down their gangplanks and set free their passengers to wander into the city.

  Brunetti turned his mind from this and headed up to the Piazza, then cut through it and to the right, back into the centre of the city, toward Campo San Luca. Franca was there when he arrived, talking to a man Brunetti recognized but didn’t know. As he approached, he saw them shake hands. The man turned toward Campo Manin, and Franca to look in the window of the bookstore.

  ‘Ciao, Franca,’ Brunetti said, coming to stand beside her. They’d been friends in high school, had for a time been more than friends, but then she had met her Mario, and Brunetti had gone off to university, where he met his Paola. She still had the same burnished blonde hair, a few shades lighter than Paola’s, and Brunetti knew enough about such things now to know that she had had assistance in maintaining that colour. But the rest was the same: the full figure she had been so awkward about twenty years ago was now graced by her maturity; she had the unwrinkled skin common to robust women, though there was no evidence of assistance there. The soft brown eyes were the same; so was the warmth in them at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Ciao, Guido,’ she said, and put back her head to receive his two quick kisses.

  ‘Let me offer you a drink,’ he said, taking her arm out of decades-old habit and leading her toward the bar.

  Inside, they decided to have uno spritz and watched the barman mix the wine and mineral water and then tip in the merest suggestion of Campari before sticking a slice of lemon on the rim and sliding the glasses across the counter toward them.

  ‘Cin cin,’ they said together and took their first sips.

  The barman placed a small dish of potato chips in front of them, but they ignored it. The press at the bar gradually drove them back until they were crushed up against the front windows, through which they could see the city passing by.

  Franca knew that this was a business meeting. Had Brunetti wanted to chat about her family, he would have done it on the phone, not asked her to meet him in a bar guaranteed to be so crowded that no one could overhear what they said.