Friends In High Places

by Donna Leon

  A decade ago, a conversation like this would have launched Brunetti into incandescent rage; now, however, it did nothing more than gently confirm his grim assessment of his fellow officers. In his blackest moments, he wondered if most of them were in the pay of the Mafia, but he knew this incident was nothing more than another example of endemic incompetence and lack of interest. Or perhaps it was a manifestation of what he felt himself: a growing sense that any attempt to obstruct, prevent, or punish crime was doomed to failure.

  Rather than remain here, on his private Dunkirk, he locked the papers about the Volpatos in his drawer and left the office. The day attempted to lure him with the wiles of its beauty: birds sang brightly, the wisteria sent a special thread of sweetness across the canal toward him, and a stray cat came and wound itself around his legs. Brunetti bent and scratched the cat behind the ears, deciding what to do.

  Out on the riva, he boarded the vaporetto that was heading toward the station and got off at San Basilio, then cut back toward Angelo Raffaele and the narrow calle where Rossi had lain. As he turned into the narrow street, he saw the building up ahead, but no sign of activity of any sort. No workers climbed on the scaffolding, and the shutters on the windows were pulled closed. He approached the building and had a closer look at the door. The padlock still held the metal chain in place, but the screws that fixed the metal flange to the frame of the door were loose, and the whole thing could easily be pulled out. He did this, and the door swung back on its hinges.

  He stepped inside. Curious, he turned to see if he could do it, and yes, the screws holding the flange could be stuck back into the holes: the chain was long enough to allow the door to remain open a hand’s breadth while he did this. That done, he pulled the door closed and was safely inside: from outside, the house appeared securely locked.

  He turned and found himself in a corridor. Stairs stood at the end, and he walked quickly toward them. Stone, they made no sound under his footsteps as he climbed up to the third floor.

  He stopped for a moment at the top to orient himself, confused by having turned so many times on the stairs. Light filtered in from his left, so he assumed that must be the front of the house and turned toward it.

  A sound came from above him, muffled and soft, but definitely a sound. He froze and wondered where he’d left his pistol this time: locked in the metal box at home, in his locker at the shooting range, or in the pocket of the jacket he’d left hanging in the closet of his office. Futile to think about where it might be when he was certain about where it was not.

  He waited, breathing through his mouth, and had the distinct sensation that there was some sort of presence above him. Stepping over an empty plastic bottle, he moved into a doorway on his right and stood just inside. He glanced at his watch: six twenty. Soon it would begin to grow dark outside: it was already dark inside, save for the light that filtered through from the front of the house.

  He waited: Brunetti was good at waiting. When he looked at his watch again, it was six thirty-five. Again, the sound from above, somewhat closer and more distinct. A long pause, and then the soft sound came down the stairs towards him, this time the unmistakable noise of a footfall on the wooden steps coming down from the attic.

  He waited. The little light that filtered in turned the staircase into a hazy mist where Brunetti could perceive only the absence of being. He shifted his eyes to the left of the sound and perceived the grey ghost of a descending presence. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. At the next sound, which seemed to come from the landing just in front of him, he opened his eyes, perceived the vaguest of forms, and stepped suddenly forward, shouting as loudly as he could, ‘Stop! Police!’

  There was a scream of pure, animal terror, and then whatever it was fell to the floor at Brunetti’s feet and continued to emit a piercing, high-pitched noise that caused the short hair on the back of Brunetti’s neck to bristle.

  He stumbled toward the front of the house and pulled open a window, then pushed open the wooden shutters to let the failing light of the day enter the room. Momentarily blinded, he turned and made his way back toward the doorway, from which the noise still came, lower now, less terrified, and more identifiably human.

  The instant Brunetti saw him there, cowering full length on the ground, his arms wrapped around his thin body to protect it from the expected kicks or blows and his neck pulled down into his shoulders, he recognized the young man. He was one of a trio of drug addicts, all in their early twenties, who had for years spent their days near or in Campo San Bortolo, going from bar to bar, growing more out of touch with reality as day passed into night and year into year. This was the tallest of them, Gino Zecchino, frequently arrested for drug dealing and often for assault or making threats to strangers. Brunetti hadn’t seen him in almost a year and was struck by his physical deterioration. His dark hair was long and greasy, no doubt disgusting to the touch, and his front teeth were long gone. Deep hollows were visible above and below his jawbone, and he looked as though he hadn’t eaten for days. From Treviso, he had no family in the city and lived with his two friends in an apartment behind Campo San Polo with which the police were long familiar.

  ‘You’ve done it this time, Gino,’ Brunetti shouted at him. ‘Get up, get on your feet.’

  Zecchino recognized his name but not the voice. He stopped whimpering and turned his face toward the sound. But he didn’t move.

  ‘I said get up!’ Brunetti shouted, in Veneziano, forcing as much anger as he could into his voice. He looked down at Zecchino; even this dim light showed the scabs on the back of his hands where he’d tried to find the veins. ‘Get up before I kick your ass down the stairs.’ Brunetti was using language he’d spent his life listening to in bars and police cells, anything to keep the adrenalin of fear pumping in Zecchino’s veins.

  The young man rolled on to his back and, body still protected by his arms, turned his head, eyes shut, toward the voice.

  ‘Look at me when I talk to you,’ Brunetti ordered.

  Zecchino pushed himself back against the wall and looked up through slitted eyes at Brunetti, who towered in the shadows above him. With a single, fluid gesture, Brunetti leaned down over the young man, grabbed two handfuls of the front of his jacket, and pulled him to his feet, surprised at how easy it was.

  When he got close enough to Brunetti to recognize him, Zecchino’s eyes opened wide in terror and he began to chant, ‘I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see anything.’

  Roughly, Brunetti pulled the young man toward him, all the time shouting into his face, ‘What happened?’

  The words came bubbling out of Zecchino, pumped out by fear. ‘I heard voices downstairs. It was an argument. They were inside. Then they stopped for a while, then they started again, but I didn’t see them. I was up there,’ he said, waving a hand toward the stairs that led to the attic.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard them come up here and I heard them shouting. But then my girlfriend offered me some more stuff, and I don’t know what happened after that.’ He looked up at Brunetti, curious to see how much of his story Brunetti believed.

  ‘I want more, Zecchino,’ Brunetti said, putting his face directly in front of Zecchino’s and breathing in the foul breath that spoke of dead teeth and years of bad food. ‘I want to know who they were.’

  Zecchino started to speak and then stopped himself and looked down at the floor. When he finally looked up at Brunetti, the fear had gone and his eyes had a different expression. Some secret calculation had filled them with feral cunning.

  ‘He was outside when I left, on the ground,’ he said at last.

  ‘Was he moving?’

  ‘Yes, he was pushing himself with his feet. But he didn’t have a . . .’ Zecchino began but the new cunning made him stop.

  He had said enough. ‘Didn’t have what?’ Brunetti demanded. When Zecchino didn’t answer, he shook him again, and Zecchino gave a quick, broken sob. His nose
began to run on to the sleeve of Brunetti’s jacket. He whipped his hands free, and Zecchino fell back against the wall.

  ‘Who was with you?’ he demanded.

  ‘My girlfriend.’

  ‘Why were you here?’

  ‘To fuck,’ Zecchino said. ‘This is where we always come.’ The thought filled Brunetti with revulsion.

  ‘Who were they?’ Brunetti asked, moving a half-step towards him.

  The instinct of survival had overcome Zecchino’s panic, and Brunetti’s advantage was gone, evaporated as quickly as a drug-induced phantom. He was left standing in front of this human wreck, only a few years older than his son, and he knew that any chance of getting the truth from Zecchino was gone. Brunetti found the idea of breathing the same air or being in the same space as Zecchino insupportable, but he forced himself to go back to the window. He looked down, and saw below him the pavement where Rossi had been thrown and across which he had tried to propel himself. The area for at least two metres in circumference around the window had been swept clean. There were no bags of cement, nor were there any in the room. Like the supposed workmen seen at this window, they had disappeared, leaving no trace.

  20

  LEAVING ZECCHINO IN front of the house, Brunetti started toward home, but he found no consolation in the soft spring evening, nor in the long walk along the water he permitted himself. His route would take him far out of his way, but he wanted the long views, the smell of the water, and the comfort of a glass of wine at a small place he knew near the Accademia to cleanse him of the memory of Zecchino, especially of the way he had grown furtive and feral at the end of their meeting. He thought of what Paola had said, that she was glad never to have found drugs attractive for fear of what might have happened; he lacked her openness of mind and had never tried them, not even as a student when everyone around him was smoking something or other and assuring him that it was the perfect way to liberate his mind from his choking middle-class prejudices. Little did they imagine how he, then, aspired to middle-class prejudice; middle-class anything, for that matter.

  The memory of Zecchino kept breaking into his reflections, blotting out thought. At the foot of the Accademia Bridge he hesitated for a moment but decided to make a wide circle and pass through Campo San Luca. He started over the bridge, eyes on his feet, and noticed how many of the strips of white facing were broken or torn off the front edge of the steps. When had it been rebuilt, the bridge? Three years ago? Two? And already many of the steps were in need of repair. His mind veered away from contemplation of how that contract must have been awarded and returned to what Zecchino had told him before he began to lie. An argument. Rossi injured and trying to escape. And a girl willing to go up into the lair Zecchino had in that attic, there to engage in whatever it was the combination of drugs and Gino Zecchino would lead her to.

  At the sight of the broad horror of the Cassa di Risparmio, he veered to the left, past the bookstore, and then into Campo San Luca. He went into Bar Torino and ordered a spritz, then took it and stood at the window, studying the figures who still congregated in the campo.

  There was no sign of either Signora Volpato or her husband. He finished his drink, put the glass on the counter, and offered some bills to the barman.

  ‘I don’t see Signora Volpato,’ he said casually, tilting his head toward the campo.

  Handing him his receipt and change, the barman said, ‘No, they’re usually here in the morning. After ten.’

  ‘I have to see her about something,’ Brunetti said, sounding nervous but smiling awkwardly at the barman, as if in search of his understanding of human need.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the barman said and turned to another customer.

  Outside, Brunetti turned left, and left again, and went into the pharmacy, just closing now.

  ‘Ciao, Guido,’ his friend Danilo the pharmacist said, locking the door behind them. ‘Let me finish and we’ll go have a drink.’ Quickly, with the ease of long practice, the bearded man emptied the cash register, counted the money, and took it into the back of the pharmacy, where Brunetti could hear him moving around. A few minutes later he came out, wearing his leather jacket.

  Brunetti felt the scrutiny of those soft brown eyes, saw the beginning of a smile. ‘You look like you’re in search of information,’ Danilo said.

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  Danilo shrugged. ‘Sometimes you stop for medicine, and you look worried; sometimes you stop for a drink, and you look relaxed; but when you come looking for information, you look like this,’ he said, beetling his brows together and staring at Brunetti with what appeared to be the first signs of incipient madness.

  ‘Va là,’ Brunetti said, smiling in spite of himself.

  ‘What is it?’ Danilo asked. ‘Or who is it?’

  Brunetti made no move toward the door, thinking it might be better to have this conversation inside the closed pharmacy than in one of the three bars in the campo. ‘Angelina and Massimo Volpato,’ he said.

  ‘Madre di Dio,’ Danilo exclaimed. ‘You’d be better taking the money from me. Come on,’ he said, grabbing Brunetti’s arm and pulling him toward the back room of the pharmacy, ‘I’ll open the safe and then say the thief wore a ski mask, I promise.’ Brunetti thought it was a joke until Danilo continued, ‘You aren’t thinking of going to them, are you, Guido? Really, I’ve got money in the bank you can have, and I’m sure Mauro could let you have more,’ he said, including his boss in his offer.

  ‘No, no,’ Brunetti said, laying a quieting hand on Danilo’s arm. ‘I just need to know about them.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they’ve finally made a mistake, and someone’s filed a complaint against them?’ Danilo said with the beginnings of a smile. ‘Ah, what joy.’

  ‘You know them that well?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I’ve known them for years,’ he said, almost spitting out his disgust. ‘Especially her. She’s in here once a week, with her little pictures of her saints, and her rosary in her hands.’ He hunched over and brought his hands together under his chin. He tilted his head to one side and looked up at Brunetti, his mouth pulled together in a purse-lipped smile. Turning his usual Trentino dialect into purest Veneziano and pitching his voice into a high squeal, he said, ‘Oh, Dottor Danilo, you don’t know how much good I’ve done to the people in this city. You don’t know how many people are grateful to me for what I’ve done for them and how they should pray for me. No, you have no idea.’ Though Brunetti had never heard Signora Volpato speak, he heard in Danilo’s savage parody the echo of every hypocrite he’d ever known.

  Suddenly Danilo stood upright, and the old woman he had become disappeared. ‘How does she do it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘People know her. And him. They’re always in the campo, one of them, in the morning, and people know where to find them.’

  ‘How do they know?’

  ‘How do people ever know anything?’ Danilo asked by way of response. ‘Word gets around. People who need enough to pay their taxes, or who gamble, or who can’t meet the expenses for their business until the end of the month. They sign a paper saying they’ll pay them back in a month, and the interest has always been added to the sum. But these are people who will have to borrow more money to pay that money back. Gamblers don’t win; people never get any better at running their businesses.’

  ‘What amazes me,’ Brunetti said after a moment’s reflection, ‘is that all of this is legal.’

  ‘If they’ve got the paper, drawn up by a notary and signed by both parties, nothing is more legal.’

  ‘Who are the notaries?’

  Danilo named three of them, respectable men with wide practices in the city. One of them worked for Brunetti’s father-in-law.

  ‘All three?’ Brunetti asked, unable to hide his astonishment.

  ‘You think the Volpatos declare what they pay them? You think they pay taxes on what they earn from the Volpatos?’

  Brunetti was not in the least surprised that notaries would sink
to being part of something as squalid as this; his surprise was only at the names of the three men involved, one of them a member of the Knights of Malta and another a former city councillor.

  ‘Come on,’ Danilo encouraged him, ‘let’s have a drink, and you can tell me why you want to know all this.’ Seeing Brunetti’s expression, he amended this to, ‘Or don’t tell me.’

  Across the calle at Rosa Salva, Brunetti told him no more than that he was interested in the moneylenders in the city and their twilight existence between the legal and the criminal. Many of Danilo’s clients were old women, and most of them were in love with him, so he was often the recipient of their endless streams of gossip. Amiable and patient, always willing to listen to them as they talked, he had over the years accumulated an Eldorado of gossip and innuendo and in the past had proven an invaluable source of information for Brunetti. Danilo named a few of the most famous moneylenders to Brunetti, describing them and cataloguing the wealth they had managed to accumulate.

  Sensitive to both Brunetti’s mood and his sense of professional discretion, Danilo kept up his stream of gossip, aware that Brunetti would ask him no more questions. Then, with a quick glance at his watch, Danilo said, ‘I’ve got to go. Dinner’s at eight.’

  Together they left the bar and walked as far as Rialto, chatting idly about ordinary things. At the bridge they separated, both hurrying home for dinner.

  The scattered pieces of information had been rattling about in Brunetti’s mind for days now, and he’d been prodding them and toying with them, trying to work them into some sort of coherent pattern. People at the Ufficio Catasto, he realized, would know who was going to have to do restorations or would have to pay fines for work done illegally in the past. They’d know how much the fines were. They might even have had some say in deciding how much the fines should be. Then all they’d have to do would be find out what sort of financial shape the owners were in – there was never any trouble in finding that out. Surely, he reflected, Signorina Elettra was not the only genius in the city. Then to anyone who complained that they didn’t have enough money to pay the fine, all they had to do was suggest they go and have a talk with the Volpatos.