by Donna Leon
Ignoring the question, Brunetti picked up the handkerchief by the four corners and jiggled it until he created a chute that would allow it to pour easily. The salt and stones hung heavily, a fat lump at the bottom of a not entirely clean white handkerchief. Vianello held the first mitten under it, and Brunetti poured until they came within a few centimetres of the top. Vianello shook the stones until the thumb stood out rigid from the side. He set it on the bed while he slipped his watch off and tried to wrap the expandable band around the stuffed mitten, but it did not work, so he replaced the watch and contented himself with giving the mitten a few more shakes. He slipped it into the right pocket of his jacket and zipped the pocket closed.
They did the same with the second mitten, which went into Vianello’s left hand pocket. That left Brunetti with a pile the size of an orange at the bottom of his handkerchief. He tied the corners together, then slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket and buttoned the pocket.
Careful of the box now that it might carry fingerprints, he used the keys to slit open the bottom flap, then pressed the box flat and slid it into the outside pocket of his jacket. When that was done, he took out his telefonino and called the number of the technical squad at the Questura. He told them where the apartment was, said it might be the home of the man who was murdered, and asked them to send someone over to fingerprint the room. He was not to be in uniform and was to ring the top bell in front of the house. Yes, he and Vianello would wait.
When he hung up, Vianello said, ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Which one?’ asked a distracted Brunetti.
‘Who you’ll trust, once you find out if they’re real?’
For the first time since they had entered the building, Brunetti smiled. ‘No one.’
The technician took almost an hour to get there, which left Brunetti and Vianello to sit side by side on the bed in the freezing room and discuss possibilities. When the cold became too intense, they went down one floor to the other apartment and let themselves in again. There, at least, it was minimally warmer, and one of them could stand at the partially open door to see that no one went past it and up to the next floor.
Brunetti went into the kitchen and came out with two plastic bags. At his request, Vianello unzipped his pockets and put both mittens in one of the bags. Brunetti tied the neck of the bag closed and slipped it into the other. While they did all this, they talked about what they had found, but neither of them could come up with a satisfactory explanation, though Brunetti did think of someone whom he could ask about the stones. While Vianello stood at the door, he called Claudio Stein and asked if he could come and talk to him the following morning.
Claudio, like most people Brunetti knew, believed that a telephone was an open conduit to various offices of the government, and so he asked no questions and said that he would be in his office after nine and would, of course, be delighted to see Brunetti. When Brunetti hung up, Vianello asked, ‘Who is he?’
‘A friend of my father’s. They were in the war together.’
‘How old is he, then?’
‘Past eighty, I’d say,’ Brunetti answered, then, ‘I don’t really know.’ He had no idea if Claudio was older or younger than his father, only that he had been one of the few men his father trusted and one of the even fewer who had remained a friend all during the long twilight of his father’s last years.
The sound of the doorbell announced the arrival of the man from the technical squad. When he got to the second floor, Brunetti explained that he wanted prints from the room on the floor above. He pulled the salt box from his pocket and, holding it by a corner, waited for the technician to take an evidence bag out of his briefcase. ‘The prints on this should match the dead man’s; the others should be mine,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’d like to know if there are any others.’ He told the man that the door upstairs was open and added that he’d like Bocchese to get on to this as quickly as he could. As the man turned towards the stairs, Brunetti said, as an afterthought, ‘When you’re finished, wipe off any sign that you’ve been up there, all right? And then do this place here.’
The man waved a hand over his head in acknowledgement and started up the steps. There was no reason for them to remain, and so they went downstairs. Brunetti stopped at the doorway to the first floor apartment and knocked, but no one answered the door.
‘You think they’re gone?’ Vianello asked.
Brunetti looked down at his watch, surprised to see that it was after seven, which meant they had spent more than two hours inside the building. ‘If nothing else, they’ve gone to work.’ Both of them knew that, to avoid direct competition with shop owners, the vu cumprà worked primarily when the shops were closed for lunchtime or after they closed in the evening. ‘There’s no way they’ll be back here before midnight,’ Brunetti said.
‘And so?’
‘So we go home for dinner, and then tomorrow I’ll go and see Claudio.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Vianello asked.
‘To protect me again?’ Brunetti joked, pointing to the door behind which the black men lived.
‘If he’s in the business I think he’s in, perhaps it’s Signor Claudio who could use a bit of protecting,’ Vianello answered, but he smiled when he said it.
‘Claudio and my father walked back from Berlin in 1946. I don’t think danger has any real meaning for a person who did that,’ Brunetti said, thanked Vianello nonetheless for his offer, and went home to his pork with olives and tomato sauce.
13
Claudio Stein ran his business from a small apartment over near Piazzale Roma, at the end of a blind calle near the prison. Brunetti had been there many times. In his youth, he had gone with his father and had listened while the two men spoke of their shared past, both as young men in Venice before the war and then as young soldiers in Greece and in Russia. Over the course of the years spanned by the friendship of the two men, Brunetti had come to know all their stories: the priest in Castello who told them it was a sin not to join the Fascist party, the woman in Thessaloniki who gave them a bottle of ouzo, the wild artillery captain who had tried to kidnap them into his unit and had been turned away only by the sight of a pistol. In all of their stories, the two men emerged victorious: but then the fact that they had survived the war at all was, all things considered, sufficient sign of victory.
After years of listening to their stories, Brunetti eventually realized that the hero of all of the adventures that took place before the war was his father: extroverted, generous, clever, a natural leader of the neighbourhood boys. After the war, however, command passed to the far less volatile Claudio: cautious, honest, reliable and, in his relationship with his friend, protective and loyal. Claudio had learned how to deflect the retelling of stories when they veered towards subjects that might bring on one of the elder Brunetti’s cataclysmic rages: he always turned the conversation away from politicians, officers, or equipment and back to their repeated triumphs in the search for food and amusement. How many of these stories were true? Brunetti had no idea, nor did he care. He loved them and had always loved hearing them because of the pictures they gave him, however out of sequence or distorted by the lens of the teller, of the man his father had been before the war had had its way with him.
Claudio opened the door soon after his first ring, and the first thing Brunetti thought was that the old man had forgotten to put his shoes on. They embraced, and Brunetti took the opportunity to look down the back of the old man’s legs, but there indeed were the heels of his shoes. He stepped back and took another look and saw that it was nothing more than the inevitable betrayal of age that had slipped in and stolen five or more centimetres from Claudio since the last time they met.
‘How good to see you, Guido,’ the old man said in the same deep voice that had been a beacon of calm to Brunetti during most of his youth. He led Brunetti into the apartment, saying, ‘Here, give me your coat.’ Brunetti set his briefcase on the floor and removed his co
at, waiting as Claudio hung it up. It had been Claudio, he remembered, who had given him a thousand lire for his sixteenth birthday, a fortune then, money he had taken to the neighbourhood bar and spent in a single night on buying drinks for his friends. Such were the times that most of the money had been spent on Coca-Cola and limonata: after all, wine was available at home, so why celebrate with that?
Claudio led them down the corridor and into the room he always referred to as his office, though it was simply a room in an apartment with a large desk, three chairs, and an enormous safe as tall as a man. In all the years Brunetti had come here, the surface of the desk had always been empty. Only once, and that was six years ago when he had come to interview Claudio in his official capacity as a policeman, had anything appeared on the desk. Then it had been nothing more than the soft suede jeweller’s case that had been left by a pair of swindlers who had somehow substituted it for the one Claudio had himself filled with the stones they claimed they were going to buy.
The case was a classic, a well-prepared sting that had probably taken the pair more than a year to set up. They had studied Claudio’s behaviour, befriended members of his family, and in the process had learned enough about his private life and his business to persuade him that they were old clients of his father, who had run the business before leaving it to Claudio.
On the day of sale, they had come to this same office, and Claudio had given them the pride of his collections, gems to a value so large that he had begun to sob after confessing everything to Brunetti. Carefully they had selected the stones, letting Claudio place them, one by one, in the suede case. At the very last, the one who subseuently turned out to be the leader had selected an enormous diamond solitaire ring and had placed it in the centre of the case, then watched as Claudio folded it closed and secured it with its bands of black elastic. ‘That way,’ the man had said, pointing at the little leather bump that indicated the ring, ‘you’ll be sure which case is ours.’
And it had happened then, in the half-second between the time Claudio finished securing the package and the moment when he inserted it on the top shelf of the safe. Had one of them asked him a question, pulled out a cigarette case? Later, when he discovered the substitution, Claudio could not remember anything about that crucial moment when the two cases had been switched. He realized what had happened only two days later, when the men did not come back to pay him and collect their stones. Later, he said he knew already when he opened the safe and took the case, knew it though he could never believe that it was possible, that they could have managed to switch the cases, not with him there, not with him paying attention. But they had.
He had made Brunetti, after telling him how much the stones were worth, promise to tell no one: he knew he would not be able to endure the shame, were his wife to learn how great had been his carelessness, nor could he bear hers if she learned that the men she had so proudly spoken to about her husband one day on the train were the very men who had come back to cheat him.
That the men were subsequently arrested and jailed made no difference to Claudio, for the money had long since been lost in the casinos of Europe, and his insurance company had declared the claim unpayable because he had not submitted to them, when he applied for his policy, a complete list of the stones in his possession, their origin, price, weight, and cut. That Claudio was a wholesaler and thus had thousands of stones and would have had to spend months preparing the inventory was judged irrelevant in their decision to disallow the claim.
This stew of memories filled Brunetti’s mind as Claudio led him down the corridor towards his office. ‘Can’t I offer you something to drink, Guido?’ the old man asked as they entered the office.
‘No, nothing, Claudio. I just had a coffee. Perhaps when we’re finished.’ From long experience, he knew that Claudio would not take his place behind the desk until his guest was seated, so Brunetti pulled out a chair and sat, placing his briefcase between his feet.
Claudio walked behind the desk and sat. He folded his hands and leaned forward in a familiar gesture. ‘Paola and the kids?’ he asked.
‘Fine. Everyone,’ Brunetti said, part of the familiar ritual. ‘They’re all doing well at school. Even Paola,’ he added with a laugh. Then he asked, ‘And Elsa?’
Claudio tilted his head to one side and grimaced. ‘The arthritis is getting worse. It’s in her hands now. But she never complains. Someone told us about a doctor in Padova, and she’s been going to him for a month. He’s giving her some medicine from America, and it seems to help.’
‘Let’s hope it does,’ Brunetti said. ‘And Riccardo?’
‘Happy, working, and going to make me a grandfather for the third time in June.’
‘He or Evvie?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Together, I think,’ Claudio said.
Formalities disposed of, Claudio asked, ‘What is it you wanted to see me about?’ From force of habit, he wasted no time, even though life had slowed for him in the last few years, and he found himself with so much time that he would like to be able to waste some.
‘I’ve found some stones,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I’d like you to tell me whatever you can about them.’
‘What kind of stones?’ Claudio asked.
‘Let me show you,’ Brunetti said and reached for his briefcase. He opened it, pulled out the plastic bag that contained Vianello’s two mittens, and set it on the desk. Then he removed his handkerchief and placed it next to the bag. He glanced across at Claudio and saw both confusion and interest.
He started with the handkerchief, pulling at the first knot with his fingernails and then, when that was untied, the second. He let the corners fall to the surface of the desk and pushed the handkerchief closer to Claudio. Then he opened the plastic bag, removed the mittens and poured their contents on to the pile at the centre of the handkerchief. A few wayward stones rolled free across the surface of the desk; Brunetti picked them up and placed them on the pile, saying, ‘I’d like you to tell me about these.’
Claudio, who had probably seen more precious stones in his life than anyone else in the city, looked at them soberly, making no motion towards them. After more than a minute had passed, he licked the tip of his forefinger and placed it on one of the small pieces, picked it up and licked it. ‘Why are they mixed with salt?’ he asked.
‘They were hidden in a box of it,’ Brunetti explained.
Claudio nodded, approving of the idea.
‘Do you need them?’ he asked Brunetti.
‘Need them how? As evidence?’
‘No. Need them now, to keep with you, to take back with you.’
‘No,’ Brunetti, who had not thought of this, answered. ‘I don’t think so. Why? What do you want to do with them?’
‘First, I have to put them in hot water for half an hour or so and get rid of the salt,’ Claudio said. ‘That will make it easier to see how many there are and how much they weigh.’
‘Weigh?’ Brunetti asked, ‘as in grams and kilos?’
Returning his attention to the stones, Claudio said, ‘They’re not measured in kilos: you should know at least that much, Guido.’ There was no reproach in his voice, nor disappointment.
‘When you do that,’ Brunetti said, ‘will you be able to tell me what they’re worth? Or where they come from?’
Claudio pulled his own handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and wiped his forefinger clean with it. Then, using the same finger, he poked and prodded at the pile, smoothing out the hill Brunetti had created and moving the stones around until there was one level surface. He switched on a segmented desk lamp and angled the head until the light fell on the area directly in front of him. He opened the centre drawer in his desk and took out a pair of jeweller’s tweezers. With them, he selected three of the bigger stones, each slightly smaller than a pea, and set them on the desk in front of him. Idly, not bothering to look at Brunetti, he said, ‘The first thing I can tell you is that someone has selected these stones carefully.’ To Brunetti,
they still looked like pebbles, but he said nothing.
From the same drawer Claudio took a jeweller’s loupe and a set of balance scales, then pulled out a small box. When he opened it, Brunetti saw a series of tiny cylindrical brass weights. Claudio looked down at the things on his desk, shook his head, and smiled at Brunetti, saying, ‘Force of habit, these scales.’ He opened a side drawer and pulled out a small electronic scale and switched it on. As the light flashed, revealing a window in which a large zero could be seen, he said, ‘This is faster and more accurate.’
Using the tweezers, he picked up one of the stones he had set aside. He placed the stone on the scale, turned it so that he could read the weight, added the second stone, and then the third. He reached into the drawer again and pulled out a black velvet pad about half the size of a magazine, which he placed to the left of the scale. With the tweezers, he set the three stones on the pad. He picked up the loupe and, as Brunetti watched the crown of his head move from left to right, examined the three stones in turn.
He set the loupe on the desk and looked across at Brunetti. ‘Are they African?’ Claudio asked.
‘I think so.’
The older man nodded in evident satisfaction. He picked up the tweezers and gently poked at the pile, pushing stones to one side or another until three more, each larger than the first three, lay in the middle of the small circles he had created. Claudio picked them up with the tweezers and set them on the velvet cloth, to the left of the others; with the loupe, he examined each of them thoroughly.
When he was finished, he removed the loupe and set it beside the handkerchief, then lined up the long tweezers parallel to the border of the smoothed-out cloth. ‘I won’t know for sure until tomorrow, when I can count them and weigh them, but I’d say you’ve somehow managed to acquire a fortune, Guido.’
Ignoring the verb and the question implicit in it, Brunetti asked, ‘How much of a fortune?’
‘It will depend on how much salt there is and whether the smaller ones are as good as I think those ones are,’ the jeweller said, pointing at the six stones he had examined.