About Face

by Donna Leon

  ‘No. His wife’s destroyed by this. The man who did speak to her said he was sure she wasn’t pretending. She had no idea what he was doing, neither did the son, and the daughter goes home only two or three times a year.’ He gave Brunetti a moment to assess this and then added, ‘Ranzato told me they didn’t know, and I believed him. I still do.’

  ‘When did you speak to him?’ Brunetti asked. ‘The last time, I mean.’

  Guarino looked at him directly. ‘The day before he died. Was murdered, that is.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he said he wanted to stop, that he’d already given us enough information and didn’t want to do it any more.’

  Dispassionately, Brunetti observed, ‘From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound as if he gave you much information at all.’ Guarino pretended not to have heard this, so Brunetti decided to give him a poke and said, ‘Just as you’re not giving me much.’

  Once more, his words bounced off Guarino. Brunetti asked, ‘Did he seem nervous?’

  ‘No more than he had ever been,’ Guarino answered calmly, adding, almost reluctantly, ‘He wasn’t a brave man.’

  ‘Few of us are.’

  Guarino glanced at him sharply and appeared to shrug the idea away. ‘I don’t know about that,’ the Maggiore said, ‘but Ranzato wasn’t.’

  ‘He had no reason to be, did he?’ Brunetti asked, defending the dead man as much as the principle. ‘He was in over his head: first he cheated on his taxes, which forced him into doing something illegal, then he got caught by the Finanza, who turned him over to the Carabinieri, and they forced him into doing something dangerous. If he had reason to be anything, it wasn’t brave.’

  ‘You seem awfully sympathetic,’ Guarino said, making it sound like a criticism.

  This time it was Brunetti who shrugged and said nothing.

  4

  In the face of Brunetti’s silence, Guarino chose to move away from the dead man’s character. ‘I told you. I’m not at liberty to provide you with full information about the cargoes,’ he said with more than a touch of asperity.

  Brunetti resisted the urge to observe that everything Guarino had said since they began to talk made that evident. He turned his gaze away from his visitor and stared out the window. For some time, Guarino allowed the joint silence to continue. Brunetti played the conversation back from the beginning, and liked very little of what he heard.

  The silence expanded, but Guarino gave no sign of being made nervous by it. After what seemed, even to himself, an inordinately long time, Brunetti removed his feet from the drawer and set them on the floor. He leaned towards the man on the other side of his desk. ‘Are you used to dealing with dull people, Filippo?’

  ‘Dull?’

  ‘Dull. Slow to understand.’

  Guarino glanced, almost against his will, at Brunetti, who smiled at him blandly and then turned his attention back to he contemplation of the view beyond the window.

  Eventually Guarino said, ‘I suppose I am.’

  Brunetti said, quite amiably, though without bothering to smile, ‘It must become a habit, after a while.’

  ‘Believing that everyone is dull?’

  ‘Something like that, yes, or at least behaving as if they were.’

  Guarino considered this. At last he said, ‘Yes, I see. And I’ve insulted you?’

  Brunetti’s eyebrows rose and fell as if by their own volition; his right hand sketched a short arc in the air.

  ‘Indeed,’ Guarino said and went silent.

  The two men sat in companionable silence for a number of minutes until Guarino broke it by saying, ‘I really do work for Patta.’ In the face of Brunetti’s failure to respond, Guarino added, ‘Well, my own Patta. And he hasn’t authorized me to tell anyone about what we’re doing.’

  Lack of authorization had never worked as a strong impediment to Brunetti’s professional behaviour, and so he said, in an entirely friendly voice, ‘Then you can leave.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can leave,’ Brunetti repeated, with a wave towards the door just as pleasant as his voice had been. ‘And I’ll go back to doing my job. Which, for the administrative reasons I’ve already explained to you, does not include the investigation of Signor Ranzato’s murder.’ Guarino remained in his chair, and Brunetti said, ‘It’s been very interesting, listening to you, but I don’t have any information to give you, and I don’t see any reason to help you find whatever it is you might really be after.’

  Had Brunetti slapped him, Guarino could have been no more astonished. And offended. He started to get to his feet, but then sank back on to the chair and stared at Brunetti. His face flushed a sudden red, either from embarrassment or anger: Brunetti neither knew nor cared. Finally Guarino said, ‘How about we think of someone we both know, and you call this person and I talk to him?’

  ‘Animal, vegetable, or mineral?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s a game my children used to play. What type of person should we call: a priest, a doctor, a social worker?’

  ‘A lawyer?’

  ‘That I trust?’ Brunetti asked, putting an end to that possibility.

  ‘A journalist?’

  After some consideration, Brunetti said, ‘There are a few.’

  ‘Good, then let’s see if we can find one we know in common.’

  ‘Who trusts us both?’

  ‘Yes,’ Guarino answered.

  ‘And you think that would be enough for me?’ Brunetti asked, injecting disbelief into his voice.

  ‘That would depend on which journalist, I suppose,’ Guarino said mildly.

  After running through a few names that were unknown to one or the other, they discovered that they both knew and trusted Beppe Avisani, an investigative journalist in Rome.

  ‘Let me call him,’ Guarino said, coming around to stand beside Brunetti.

  Brunetti got an outside line on his office phone and dialled Avisani’s number. He pushed the button for the speaker phone.

  The phone rang four times, and then the journalist answered with his name.

  ‘Beppe, ciao, it’s me, Filippo,’ Guarino said.

  ‘Good heavens. Is the Republic in peril and I have just one chance to save it by answering your questions?’ the journalist asked in a falsely ponderous voice. Then, with real warmth, ‘How are you, Filippo? I won’t ask what you’re doing, but how are you?’

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ Avisani said, his voice veering towards the despair that Brunetti had so often heard over the years. Then, brightening, he went on, ‘You never call without wanting something, so save us both time and tell me what it is.’ The words were harsh, but the tone was not.

  ‘I’m here with someone who knows you,’ Guarino said, ‘and I’d like you to tell him that I can be trusted.’

  ‘You do me too much honour, Filippo,’ Avisani said with arch humility. They heard the sound of paper rustling, and then the voice came through the speaker, saying, ‘Ciao, Guido. My phone told me the number was from Venice, and my notebook just told me it’s the Questura, and God knows you’re the only person there who would trust me.’

  Brunetti said, ‘Dare I hope you’ll say I’m the only person here you’d trust?’

  Avisani laughed. ‘You might not believe this, either of you, but I’ve had stranger calls.’

  ‘And so?’ Brunetti asked, trying to save time.

  ‘Trust him,’ the journalist answered without hesitation and without explanation. ‘I’ve known Filippo for a long time, and he’s to be trusted.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That’s enough,’ the journalist said and hung up. Guarino returned to his chair.

  ‘You realize what was also proven by that call?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Guarino said: ‘that I can trust you.’ He nodded, seemed to digest this new information, and then went on in a more sober voice, ‘My unit studies orga
nized crime, specifically its penetration north.’ Even though Guarino spoke earnestly and was perhaps finally telling the truth, Brunetti remained cautious. Guarino covered his face with his hands and made a washing gesture. Brunetti thought of racoons, always trying to clean things off. Elusive creatures, racoons.

  ‘Because the problem is so multifaceted, it’s been decided to try to approach it by applying new techniques.’

  Brunetti held up a monitory hand and said, ‘This isn’t a meeting, Filippo: you can use real language.’

  Guarino gave a short laugh, not a particularly pleasant sound. ‘After seven years working where I do, I’m not sure I still know how to use it.’

  ‘Try, Filippo, try. It might be good for your soul.’

  As if in an attempt to remove the memory of everything he had said so far, Guarino sat up straighter and began for the third time. ‘Some of us are trying to stop them coming north. There’s not much hope of that, I suppose.’ He shrugged, and went on. ‘My unit is trying to keep them from doing certain things after they get here.’

  The crux of this visit, Brunetti realized, lay in the nature of those still undisclosed ‘certain things’. ‘Like shipping things they should not?’ he asked.

  Brunetti watched the other man struggle with the habit of reticence, refusing to give him any encouragement. Then, as if he had suddenly tired of playing cat and mouse with Brunetti, Guarino added, ‘Shipping, but not contraband. Garbage.’

  Brunetti returned his feet to the top of the drawer and leaned back in his chair. He studied the doors to his armadio for some time and finally asked, ‘The Camorra runs it all, don’t they?’

  ‘In the South, certainly.’

  ‘And here?’

  ‘Not yet, but there’s more and more evidence of them. It’s not as bad as Naples, though, not yet.’

  Brunetti thought of the stories of that afflicted city that had filled the papers over the Christmas holidays and refused to go away, of the mountains of uncollected garbage, some of it rising to the first floor of the buildings. Who had not watched the desperate citizens burn not only the stinking heaps of uncollected rubbish but also their mayor in effigy? And who had not been appalled to see the Army sent in to restore order in time of peace?

  ‘What’s next?’ Brunetti asked. ‘UN peacekeepers?’ ‘They could have worse,’ Guarino said. Then, angrily, ‘They do have worse.’

  Because the investigation of the Ecomafia was in the hands of the Carabinieri, Brunetti had always responded to the situation as a citizen, one of helpless millions who watched the news as trash smouldered on the streets and the Minister of Ecology reprimanded the citizens of Naples for not separating their rubbish, while the mayor improved the ecological situation by banning smoking in public parks.

  ‘Is that how Ranzato was involved?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Guarino answered. ‘But not with the bags in the streets of Naples.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Guarino had grown still, as if his nervous motions hadbeen a physical manifestation of his evasiveness with Brunetti and there was no longer any need for them. ‘Some of Ranzato’s trucks went to Germany and France to pick up cargo, took it south, and then came back here with fruit and vegetables.’ A second later, the old Guarino said, ‘I shouldn’t have told you that.’

  Unperturbed, Brunetti said, ‘Presumably, they didn’t go to pick up bags of garbage from the streets of Paris and Berlin.’

  Guarino shook his head.

  ‘Industrial, chemical, or . . .’ Brunetti began.

  Guarino finished the list for him. ‘. . . or medical, often radiological.’

  ‘And took it where?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Some of it went to the ports, and from there to whatever Third World country would take it.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  Before answering, Guarino pushed himself upright in his chair. ‘The garbage gets left on the streets in Naples. There’s no more room for it in the landfills or the incinerators down there because they’re busy burning what comes down from the North. Not only from Lombardia and the Veneto, but from any factory that’s willing to pay to have it taken away and no questions asked.’

  ‘How many shipments like this did Ranzato make?’

  ‘I told you, he wasn’t very good at keeping records.’

  ‘And you couldn’t . . .’ Brunetti began. He shied away from using the word ‘force’ and settled for ‘. . . encourage him to tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  Brunetti remained silent. Guarino spoke again. ‘One of the last times I spoke to him, he said he almost wished I could arrest him so he could stop doing what he was doing.’

  ‘Stories were all over the papers by then, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’

  Guarino’s voice softened. ‘By then we’d become, well, not friends, not really, but something like friends, and he talked to me openly. In the beginning, he was afraid of me, but towards the end he was afraid of them and what they would do to him if they found out that he was talking to us.’

  ‘It seems they did.’

  Either his words or his tone stopped Guarino, who gave Brunetti a sharp look. ‘Unless it was a robbery,’ he said, dead level, signalling that the best measure of their friendship was in seeming trust.

  ‘Of course.’

  Brunetti, though by disposition a compassionate man, had little patience with retrospective protestations of remorse: most people – however much they might deny it – had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it. ‘He must have known from the beginning who, or at least what, they were,’ Brunetti said. ‘And what they wanted him to do for them.’ Despite all of Guarino’s assurances, Brunetti judged that Ranzato had known perfectly well what was being carried on his trucks. Besides, all this talk of regret was exactly what people wanted to hear. Brunetti had always been bemused by people’s willingness to be charmed by the penitent sinner.

  ‘That might be true, but he didn’t tell me that,’ the Maggiore answered, reminding Brunetti how protective he had himself become of some of the people he used as – and had forced into becoming – informants.

  Guarino continued. ‘He said he wanted to stop working for them. He didn’t tell me what made him decide, but whatever it was, it was clear – at least to me – that it disturbed him.’ He added, ‘That’s when he spoke about wanting to be arrested. So it could stop.’

  Brunetti forbore to suggest that it did stop. Nor did he bother to observe that the perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue. Only an anchorite could have remained ignorant of the ‘emergenza spazzatura’ that had captured the nation’s attention in the last weeks of Ranzato’s life.

  Did Guarino look embarrassed? Or was he perhaps irritated at Brunetti’s hard-heartedness? To keep the conversation going, Brunetti asked, ‘What was the date when you last spoke to him?’

  The Major shifted to one side, and took out a small black notebook. He opened it and licked his right forefinger, then flipped quickly through its pages. ‘It was the seventh of December. I remember because he said his wife wanted him to go to Mass with her the next day.’ Suddenly, Guarino’s hand fell away and the notebook slapped against his thigh. ‘Oddio,’ he whispered.

  Guarino suddenly grew pale. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. For an instant, Brunetti thought the man might faint. Or weep. ‘What is it, Filippo?’ he asked, pulling his feet back and putting them on the floor, leaning forward, one hand half-raised.

  Guarino closed the notebook. He rested it on his knees and kept his eyes on it. ‘I remember. He said his wife’s name was Immacolata, and she always went to Mass on the eighth, her name-day.’

  Brunetti had no idea why this information should prove so upsetting to Guarino until the other man said, ‘He told me it was the one day of the year she asked him to come to Mass with her, and receive Communion. So he was going to go to Confession the next morning, bef
ore the Mass.’ Guarino picked up the book and slipped it back into his pocket.

  ‘I hope he went,’ Brunetti said before he realized he had spoken.

  5

  Neither man knew what to say after that. Brunetti got up and went to stand by the window, as much to give himself a moment’s calm as to provide the same to Guarino. He would have to tell Paola what he had said, how it had slipped out without a conscious thought.

  He heard Guarino clear his throat and say, just as if he and Brunetti had come to some gentleman’s agreement no longer to discuss Ranzato or what he might have known, ‘I told you: because he was killed, and because the only link we have to the man he worked for is the link to San Marcuola, we need your help. You people here in Venice are the only ones who can tell us if there’s someone who lives there who might be involved in . . . well, in something like this.’ It did not sound like a finished statement, so Brunetti remained silent. After a moment, Guarino went on, ‘We don’t know who we’re looking for.’

  ‘Was it just the one man this Signor Ranzato worked for?’ Brunetti asked, turning back to face him. ‘He was the only one he told me about,’ Guarino answered.

  ‘That’s not the same thing, is it?’

  ‘I think it is, yes. Remember, I told you we’d become, if not friends, then at least close. We talked about things.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘I told him how lucky he was to be married to someone he loved so much,’ Guarino said in a voice that was steady except for the word ‘loved’.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I meant it, too,’ Guarino said with what Brunetti considered defensive self-revelation. ‘It wasn’t one of those things you tell them to get them to trust you.’ He waited to be sure that Brunetti understood the distinction, then went on, ‘Maybe that’s how things were at the beginning, but as time passed, well, they changed between us.’

  ‘Did you ever meet his wife? Or see her?’

  ‘No. But her photo was on his desk,’ Guarino said. ‘I’d like to talk to her, but we can’t contact her or give any sign that we were ever in touch with him.’