by Donna Leon
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
She waved at him and Vianello, as though their presence, or their appearance, were sufficient answer, but then said, ‘Because he seemed troubled, not only sad.’ Before Brunetti could point out that she had said nothing about this, she went on. ‘I know, I know, I said he was pleasant and friendly. But under it, he was troubled by something. I thought it was the jacket, or that we didn’t have the shoes he wanted, but it was more than that.’
Someone as observant as she didn’t need to be nudged, and so Brunetti and Vianello remained silent, waiting.
‘Usually, when people are waiting for me to bring them something – a different size or a different colour – they look around at different shoes or get up and walk around, go and look at the belts. But he just sat there, staring at his feet.’
‘Did he seem unhappy?’ Brunetti asked.
This time, it took her a moment to answer. ‘No, now that you ask me about it, I’d say he looked worried.’
13
BRUNETTI AND VIANELLO decided to have lunch together, but both cringed at the idea of eating anywhere within a radius of ten minutes of San Marco.
‘How’d this happen?’ Vianello asked. ‘We used to be able to eat well anywhere in the city, well, just about anywhere. And it was usually good and didn’t cost an eye from your head.’
‘How long ago was “used to”, Lorenzo?’ Brunetti asked.
Vianello slowed to consider this. ‘About ten years.’ But then he added, his surprise audible, ‘No, it’s a lot more than that, isn’t it?’
They were passing in front of the place where the Mondadori bookstore used to be, only a few hundred metres from the arched entrance to Piazza San Marco, still undecided where to go for lunch. A sudden surge in the wave of milling tourists engulfed them, forcing them against the windows of the shop. Ahead of them, near the Piazza, the pastel wave defied tidal patterns and flowed both ways. Blind, slowly urgent towards no goal, it appeared to have no beginning and no end as it seeped from and into the Piazza.
Vianello turned to Brunetti and placed a hand on his forearm. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t go across the Piazza. Let’s take the boat.’ They took the right turn and struggled down towards the embarcadero. Long lines snaked away from the ticket office, and the floating docks lay low in the water from the weight of the people standing on them, waiting for the arriving vaporetti.
A Number One approached from the right, and the line moved forward a step or two, though there was nowhere for it to go, save into the water. Brunetti took his warrant card from his wallet and slipped around the bar that blocked the entrance to the passageway reserved for disembarking passengers. Vianello followed. They hadn’t gone four steps when a marinaio shouted at them from the landing ahead of them, waving them back and away.
Ignoring him, the two men approached, Brunetti holding out his card. ‘Scusi, Signori,’ the workman said when he saw it, stepping back to allow them on to the floating dock. He was young, like most of them these days, short and dark but speaking Veneziano. ‘They all try to sneak in this way, and I have to shout them back. Some day I’m probably going to hit one of them.’ The smile with which he said this belied the possibility.
‘The tourists?’ Brunetti asked, surprised that they would show such initiative.
‘No, it’s us, Signore,’ the man said, obviously meaning Venetians. ‘The tourists are like sheep, really: very gentle, and all you have to do is tell them where to go. The bad ones, really the worst, are the old ladies: they complain about the tourists, but most of them are riding for free, if they’re old enough, or not paying for a ticket anyway, if they’re younger.’ As if to prove him right, an old woman appeared behind Brunetti and Vianello and, ignoring all three of them, pushed past them and planted herself directly in front of the point where passengers would disembark.
The sailor who worked on the boat tied it to the bollard then waited with his hand on the sliding gate while he asked the old woman to step aside to let the passengers off; she ignored him. He asked her again, and still she stood there. Finally, giving in to the pressure and muttering of the people blocked behind him, he slid the gate open, and the mass surged forward. The old woman, like a piece of flotsam, was moved to one side by pressure and blows from shoulders, arms, and backpacks.
She responded in kind, though verbally, letting fly a long stream of abuse in Veneziano that had the accent of Castello, towards which the boat was headed. She condemned the ancestry of tourists, their sexual habits and state of personal hygiene, until finally the path was free, the deck clear, and she could walk into the cabin and take a seat, surrounding herself with a cloud of muttered complaints against the bad manners of these foreigners who came to ruin the lives of decent Venetian folk.
When the boat had left the dock, Brunetti slipped the doors to the cabin closed, cutting off the sound of her voice. Finally Vianello said, ‘She’s a nasty old cow, but she has a point.’
It wasn’t a point Brunetti could bear talking about or listening to, so fundamental had it become as a subject of small talk in the city. ‘You decide where we can go?’ he asked, quite as if Vianello’s response to the tourist mass had not interrupted their conversation.
‘Let’s go out to the Lido and eat fish,’ the Inspector said with all the enthusiasm of a boy playing hooky.
Andri was only a ten-minute walk from the landing at Santa Maria Elisabetta, and the owner, a schoolmate of Vianello’s, found them a table in the crowded restaurant. Without being asked, he brought them a half-litre of white wine and a litre of mineral water, and told Vianello he should have the salad with shrimp, raw artichoke and ginger and then the zuppe di pesche. Vianello nodded; Brunetti nodded.
‘So, Mestre,’ Brunetti said.
Before Vianello could speak, the owner was back with some bread. He set it on the table, asked if they’d like some artichoke bottoms, and was gone as soon as they said yes.
‘I don’t want to get into some territorial squabble about this,’ Vianello finally said. ‘You know the rules better than I do.’
Brunetti nodded. ‘I think I’ll use Patta’s tactic of simply assuming that because I want to do something, I have the right to do it.’ He poured them each some wine and some water and took a long drink of water. He opened a package of grissini and ate one of them, then another, suddenly aware of how hungry he was. ‘But for the sake of correctness, I’ll call them and say we’re coming out to ask if anyone in the shoe shop recognizes the man in the photo.’
Vianello helped himself to a package of breadsticks.
The owner came back with the artichokes, set them down, and hurried away. It was one o’clock, and the place was full. Both men were happy to see that it seemed to be full of local people: three tables were crowded with dust-covered workmen with thick clothing and heavy boots.
‘You think there are places where everyone cooperates?’ Vianello asked.
Brunetti finished his first artichoke and set his fork down. ‘Is that a rhetorical question, Lorenzo?’ he asked, sipping at his wine.
The Inspector tore off some bread and wiped up the olive oil from his plate. ‘These are good. I like them without garlic.’ Apparently, it had been a rhetorical question.
‘We go out in a car, be back in no time.’
The owner replaced their empty plates with the salad: slivers of artichoke, quite a large number of tiny shrimp, sprinkled with slivers of ginger.
‘If no one at the shop recognizes him, then we ask the guys there to give us a hand,’ Brunetti said.
Vianello nodded and speared a few shrimp.
‘I’ll call Vezzani and tell him we’ll stop by after we go to the shop,’ Brunetti said and pulled out his phone.
If Mestre had not had its city centre, small but attractive, any Venetian forced to move there would have seen his fate as tragic, or so Brunetti had always thought. ‘To fall from high to low estate,’ Aristotle had written, establishing the rules. Kings crashed down to becom
e blind beggars; queens murdered their children; the powerful died for hopeless causes or went to live in abject misery. Had Mestre been a slum, had it contained only skyscrapers separated by bleak desolation; had it resembled Milano more and Venice less, then to be forced, or to choose, to move there from Venice would indeed have been the stuff of tragedy. The city centre, however, though it still allowed the move to be painful, even laceratingly sad, prevented it from being wholly tragic.
The shoe shop was as tasteful as its sister shop in Venice, and the shoes on display looked the same. So did the two women working there: an older one who was obviously in charge and a younger one who viewed their arrival with a smile. Brunetti, wise to the rules of precedence, approached the woman he took to be the manager and introduced himself. She seemed unsurprised by his arrival and had apparently received a call from Venice.
‘I’d like to ask you, and your colleague, to look at the photo of a man and tell me if you recognize him.’
‘You the men who went to the other shop?’ the younger one asked as she came across the store, a remark that earned her a sharp look from her superior.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘The woman we spoke to there said the man tried to buy the shoes here, but you didn’t have his size.’ He knew that they knew the man was the dead man in the canal, and they knew he knew, so none of them said anything.
The older woman, thin to the point of emaciation and with a bosom perhaps not placed there by the hand of nature, asked to see the photo. Brunetti gave it to her to acknowledge that she was in charge. ‘Yes,’ she said when she saw the photo of the dead man. She passed it to the younger woman and folded her arms under that bosom.
At the sight of the dead man, the young woman said, ‘Yes, he’s been here a few times. The last time was about two months ago.’
‘Did you serve him, Signorina?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, I did. But we didn’t have his size, and he didn’t want anything else.’
Turning to the other woman, Brunetti inquired, ‘Do you remember him, Signora?’
‘No, I don’t. We get so many clients in here,’ she said, and indeed just then two women, their arms laden with bags, entered the shop. Without bothering to excuse herself, the manager went over and asked if she could help them.
Brunetti asked the young woman – really little more than a girl – ‘Do you remember anything about him, Signorina? You said he’d been in before?’
Brunetti’s hopes were still set on a credit card purchase. The young woman thought for a moment and then said, ‘A few times. In fact, once he came in wearing a pair of shoes and bought the same ones.’
Brunetti glanced at Vianello, whose manner was often better at encouraging responses. ‘Do you remember anything special about him, Signorina? Or did he strike you in a particular way?’ the Inspector asked.
‘You mean that he had got so big and was so sad?’
‘Was he?’ Vianello asked with every appearance of deep concern.
Before answering, she seemed to think back to the man’s time in the shop. ‘Well, he’d gained weight: I noticed that, even under his winter jacket, and he didn’t really say anything that would make me think he was lonely or sad or anything. But he seemed it; sort of quiet and not paying much attention to things.’ Then, to make things clear to both of them, she said, ‘He tried on about eight pairs of shoes, and the boxes were lying all around him on the floor and on the chair next to him. When he was finished, and he still couldn’t find the ones he wanted, he said – I guess he felt guilty about making me go and get so many of them. Maybe that’s why I remember him – he said that he’d help me put them back in the boxes. But he put a black one in with a brown one, and then when there was only one shoe left, a black one, and the only box left had a brown shoe in it, we had to open them all up again and put the right shoes in.
‘He was very embarrassed and apologized for it.’ She thought about this for some time and said, ‘No one ever bothers with that, you know. They try on ten, fifteen pairs of shoes, and then they walk out without even saying thank you. So to have somebody who treated me like a real person, well, it was very nice.’
‘Did he give you his name?’
‘No.’
‘Or say anything about himself that you remember?’
She smiled at this. ‘He said he liked animals.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes, that’s what he said. When I was helping him, a woman came in, one of our regulars. She’s very rich: you can tell it by looking at her – the way she dresses and all, and the way she talks. But she has this really sweet old dog that she got from the shelter. I asked her about it once, and she said she always gets her dogs from the shelter, and she asks for old ones. You’d expect a woman like that to have an, oh, I don’t know, one of those disgusting little things that sits on your lap, or a poodle or something. But she’s got this silly little mutt; maybe it’s part beagle, but you’d never know what the other part is. And she adores it, and the dog loves her. So I guess it’s all right that she’s so rich,’ she said, causing Brunetti to wonder if the revolution was closer to hand than he thought.
‘And why did he say he likes animals?’ Vianello asked.
‘Because when he saw the dog, he asked the woman how old it was, and when she said it was eleven, he asked her if she’d had it checked for arthritis.
‘She said she hadn’t, and he said that, from the way the dog walked, he’d guess it had it. Arthritis.’
‘What did the woman say?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Oh, she thanked him. I told you: she’s very nice. And then, after she left, I asked him, and he said he liked animals, especially dogs, and knew a bit about them.’
‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked, realizing that this was precious little to be going ahead with.
‘No, only that he was a nice man. People who like animals usually are, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Vianello said. Brunetti limited himself to a nod.
The manager was still busy with the two women, the three of them surrounded by expanding waves of boxes, shoes littering the floor in front of them. ‘Did your colleague speak to him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, no. She took care of Signora Persilli.’ At their blank looks, she said, ‘The lady with the dog.’
Brunetti took out his wallet and gave her his card. ‘If you think of anything else, Signorina, please call me.’
They turned towards the door, but she called from behind them. ‘Is he really the dead man? In Venice?’
Surprising himself with his frankness, Brunetti turned back and said, ‘I think so.’ Her mouth contracted in a small grimace and she shook her head at the news. ‘So if you think of anything, please call us; it might help,’ he said, not specifying how this might be possible.
‘I’d like to help,’ she said.
Brunetti thanked her again, and he and Vianello left the shop.
14
‘A MAN WITH Madelung who likes animals and knows something about dogs,’ Vianello said as they walked towards the car.
More practically, Brunetti said, ‘We’ll talk to Vezzani. He should be back from Treviso by now.’ He had gone to the shoe shop in the full hope, even expectation, of discovering the man’s name and identity. He felt not a little embarrassed, now, at how he had looked forward to being able to walk into Vezzani’s office with the dead man’s name in his possession. Now, that possibility gone, he accepted the fact that there was nothing to do save what both of them now knew they should have done before: go to the Mestre Questura and ask for their cooperation.
He got into the front seat of the car and asked the driver to take him to the Questura. The driver reminded him about the seat belt, and Brunetti, thinking it foolish to use it for what would prove such a short trip, put it on nevertheless. It was well past four, and the traffic seemed heavy, though Brunetti was hardly an expert on traffic.
Inside the building, he showed his warrant card an
d said he had an appointment with Commissario Vezzani. They had worked as part of the team investigating the baggage handlers at the airport some years ago – the investigation Pucetti was still involved with – had passed through those fires together and emerged, both of them wiser and more pessimistic, but with a far clearer understanding of the limits to which a clever lawyer could push the rights of the accused.
The officer on duty pointed to the elevator and told them the Commissario’s office was on the third floor. Vezzani was from Livorno originally, but he had lived in the Veneto so long that his speech had taken on the sing-song cadence, and he had once told Brunetti, during a break in the endless interrogation of two men accused of armed robbery, that his children spoke to their friends in the Mestre version of Veneziano.
He rose when they entered, a tall, thin man with prematurely grey hair, cut close to his skull in a vain attempt, perhaps, to disguise the colour. He shook hands with Brunetti, clapped him on the arm in greeting, and extended his hand to Vianello, with whom he had also worked.
‘You find out who he is?’ he asked when they were seated.
‘No. We spoke to the women in the shoe shop, but they couldn’t tell us who he was. All one of them said was that he liked dogs and knew something about animals.’
If Vezzani found this an odd piece of information to divulge during the purchase of a pair of shoes, he did not remark on it and merely asked, ‘And this disease you say he had?’
‘Madelung. It happens to alcoholics or addicts, but Rizzardi said there were no signs this guy was a drinker or used drugs.’
‘So it just happened to him?’
Brunetti nodded, recalling the thick neck and the arching torso of the dead man.
‘Could I see the photo?’ Vezzani asked.
Brunetti gave it to him.
‘You said Pucetti did this?’ Vezzani asked, picking up the photo to take a closer look.