by Donna Leon
The officer stood to attention and snapped out a salute. ‘Thank you, sir. It’s good to be back.’
11
The Questura and the thought of the murdered man he had never met went home to dinner with Brunetti. Paola noticed their presence during the meal, when her husband failed to praise, and then to finish, the coda di rospo with scampi and tomatoes, and left a third of a bottle of Graminé undrunk when he went into the living room to read.
The dishes took a long time to wash, and when Paola joined him, he was standing at the windows, looking off towards the angel atop the campanile di San Marco, visible to the south-east. She set their coffee on the table in front of the sofa. ‘Would you like grappa with this, Guido?’ she asked.
He shook his head but said nothing. She went and stood beside him, and when he failed to put his arm around her, she nudged him gently with her hip. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘It doesn’t feel right to bring you into this,’ he finally said.
She turned away from him and went to sit on the sofa. She sipped at her coffee. ‘I could have refused, you know.’
‘But you didn’t,’ he said before coming to sit beside her.
‘What’s it all about?’
‘This man in Tessera who was murdered.’
‘The newspapers told me that much, Guido.’
Brunetti picked up his coffee. ‘You know,’ he said after the first sip. ‘Maybe I would like a grappa. There any of that Gaja left? The Barolo?’
‘Yes,’ she said, settling herself more comfortably on the sofa. ‘Get me a glass, too, would you?’
He was quickly back, with the bottle and two glasses, and as they drank it, Brunetti repeated most of what Guarino had told him, ending up with the reason for the arrival of the photo in her email the next day. He also tried to explain his own contradictory feelings about having been drawn into Guarino’s investigation. It was none of his business: the investigation belonged to the Carabinieri. Perhaps he was flattered by being asked to help, his vanity no different from Patta’s at being considered ‘the man in charge’. Or perhaps it was the desire to show that he could do something the Carabinieri could not.
‘A photo’s not going to make it any easier for Signorina Elettra to find him,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘But I wanted to make Guarino do something, even if it was only to make him admit that he’d been lying to me.’
‘Well, withholding information, at any rate,’ Paola corrected him.
‘All right, if you insist,’ Brunetti admitted with a smile.
‘And he wants you to help him learn if anyone who lives near San Marcuola is capable of. . of what?’
‘I suppose he’s interested in violent crime. After all, it’s likely Guarino thinks the man in the photo is the killer. Or at any rate is mixed up in it.’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know enough about it to think anything. All I know is that this man had Ranzato do some illegal shipping for him and that he dresses well and arranged to meet someone at the San Marcuola stop.’
‘I thought you said that’s where he lives.’
‘Well, not exactly.’
Paola closed her eyes with a great display of much-put-upon patience and said, ‘I never know whether that means yes or no.’
Brunetti smiled. ‘In this case, it means I assumed so.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he said he’d meet someone there one evening, and that’s what we do when people come to town: we meet them at the imbarcadero near where we live.’
‘Yes,’ Paola said, and then added, ‘Professor.’
‘Don’t fool around, Paola. It’s obvious.’
She leaned aside and took the point of his chin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Gently, she turned his head to face her. ‘It’s also obvious that the judgement that someone is well-dressed can mean different things.’
‘What?’ Brunetti asked, his hand arrested on its way to the bottle of grappa. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, he also said the way the man dressed was flashy, whatever that means.’
Paola studied his face as she would study that of a stranger. ‘What we consider “flashy”, even “well dressed”, depends on how we dress ourselves, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Brunetti said, picking up the bottle.
Paola waved away his offer of more grappa and said, ‘Do you remember that case — must be ten years ago — when you had to go out to Favaro every night for a week to question a witness?’
He thought for a while, remembered the case, the endless lies, the final failure. ‘Yes.’
‘Remember how the Carabinieri would bring you back and drop you at Piazzale Roma, and you’d take the Number One home?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, wondering where she was going with this. Would she suggest that this case, too, had the same feeling of failure about it, something he was beginning to feel himself?
‘And do you remember the people you told me you saw on the vaporetto every night? Those shifty-looking types, with the cheap blondes? The men with the leather jackets and the women with the leather mini-skirts?’
‘Oh, my God,’ Brunetti said, giving himself a slap on the forehead so strong it literally knocked him back into the sofa beside her. ‘Those who have eyes and see not,’ he said.
‘Please, Guido, don’t you start quoting the Bible.’
‘Sorry. The shock must have been too much for me,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘You’re a genius. But I’ve known that for years. Of course, of course. The Casinò. They’d meet at San Marcuola and go together, wouldn’t they? Of course. Genius, genius.’
Paola held up a hand in a patently false protestation of modesty. ‘Guido: it’s only a possibility.’
‘Yes, it’s only a possibility,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘But it makes sense and at least it lets me do something.’
‘Do something?’ Paola inquired.
‘Yes.’
‘As in letting us go to the Casinò?’ she asked.
‘Us?’
‘Us.’
‘Why us?’
She held up her glass to him, and he poured her another measure of grappa. She sipped it, nodded in appreciation as strong as his own had been, and then said, ‘Because nothing is more likely to call attention to itself than a single man at the Casinò.’
Brunetti started to protest, but she cut off his opposition by holding up her glass between them. ‘He can’t just walk around, staring at the people at the tables and never gambling, can he? What better way to make himself visible? And if he does start to play, what’s he going to do, spend the night losing our apartment?’ When she saw that his expression had begun to lighten, she asked, ‘After all, Signorina Elettra can’t be expected to put that on the office equipment bill, can she?’
‘I suppose not,’ Brunetti admitted, as clear an admission of surrender as a man had ever given.
‘I’m serious, Guido,’ she said, setting her glass on the table. ‘You need to look comfortable while you’re there, and if you go alone, you’re going to look like a policeman on the prowl, well, a man on the prowl, at any rate. If you go with me, we can at least talk and laugh and look like we’re having a good time.’
‘Does that mean we aren’t going to have a good time?’
‘Can you imagine having a good time watching people lose money gambling?’
‘They don’t all lose,’ he said.
‘And not everyone who jumps off a roof breaks a leg,’ she shot back.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that the Casinò makes money, and it makes money because people lose it. Gambling. Maybe they don’t lose every night, but they always lose in the end.’
Brunetti toyed with the idea of taking another small glass of grappa but put the idea behind him manfully and said, ‘All right. But can we still have a good time?’
‘Not until tomorrow night,’ she answered.
&n
bsp; Brunetti had decided to trust to luck that someone at the Casinò would recognize or recall the young man in the photo Paola brought home from the university, though Fortuna was perhaps the wrong deity to invoke in these circumstances, she no doubt having to endure other, and more urgent, solicitations. He was also aware that, even if he did discover the young man’s identity, or even the man himself, the only thing he could do, after perhaps checking to see if the man had a criminal record, was to pass the information on to Guarino. Even with the Right returned to power in the government, it was still not a crime to have your photo taken.
However much Brunetti reminded himself that he was a private citizen, come to the Casinò in the company of his lady wife, he knew that as the person who had, in recent years, been in charge of two of the police investigations of the Casinò, he was unlikely to pass unremarked.
When they arrived, the man at reception recognized him immediately, but apparently the administration harboured no hard feelings towards him, and he was given VIP entrance, though he refused the complimentary fiche that were offered with it. He purchased fifty Euros in chips and gave half to Paola.
He had not been here in years, at least not since the last time he had arrested the Director. Not much had changed: he recognized some of the croupiers, two of whom had also been arrested the last time, charged with having organized the system by which the Casinò had been cheated out of an amount no one had ever been able to calculate, perhaps millions, certainly hundreds of thousands of Euros. Accused, convicted, sentenced, and now right back at their civil service jobs as croupiers. Regardless of Paola’s company at his side, Brunetti began to suspect he was not going to have a good time.
They moved towards the roulette tables, this being the only game Brunetti felt capable of playing: it demanded no skill in counting cards or calculating the odds of anything. Put your money down. Win. Lose.
As they approached, he studied the people grouped around one of the tables, looking for the face he had seen only in three-quarters profile. It had not been a particularly good photo that had come through that morning, without explanation of when, where, or by whom it had been taken. Perhaps taken by a telefonino, it showed a clean-shaven man who looked to be in his early thirties. He was standing at a bar, a cup of coffee in one hand as he spoke to someone not visible in the photo. He had short dark hair, brown or black: there was not enough definition in the photo to tell. Only one cheekbone was visible and one full eyebrow, cut at an angle so sharp it looked like the sort one saw on cartoon characters. It was impossible to be sure about his height, though he was of medium build. Nor could the quality of his clothing be distinguished: tie, jacket, light-coloured shirt.
Brunetti and Paola stood for a few minutes on the outskirts of the oval of people drawn by the magic power of the wheel, listening to the click, click, click as the ball swirled round. Then the muted clack as it slipped into place, and then silence: defeat never caused a sigh, and victory passed unremarked. How devoid of enthusiasm they were, Brunetti thought, how tasteless they found joy.
Caught in the implacable tide of the game, a few losers were sucked away from the table and out of the oval; others swept in to fill their places, among them Brunetti and Paola. Without bothering to look where he put the chip, Brunetti set one down on the table. He waited, watching the faces on the opposite side, though they were all intent on the croupier and then, as soon as the ball left his hand, on the wheel.
Paola stood at his side, hugging his arm as the ball slipped into number seven and his chip followed many others into the narrow slit of oblivion, she as cast down as if it had been ten thousand Euros and not ten that he lost. They stood there for a few more spins, then were driven away by the bovine prodding of those behind them, eager with the anticipation of loss.
They drifted over to another table and stood on the outskirts for a quarter of an hour, watching the tides drift in and out. Brunetti’s attention was caught by a very young man — he could not have been much older than Raffi — standing directly across the table from them. Each time, just as the croupier called for last bets, he pushed a pile of chips on to number twelve, and each time they were swept away.
Brunetti studied his face, still soft with youth. His lips were full and gleaming, like the lips of one of Caravaggio’s feral saints. His eyes, however, which should have glistened, if only with the pain of repeated loss, were as distant and opaque as those of a statue. Nor did the eyes deign to glance at his pile of chips, which he chose at random: red, yellow, blue. Thus no bet he placed was for the same amount, though the pile of chips was generally about the same height: ten chips, give or take.
He lost repeatedly, and when the chips in front of him were gone, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out another fistful, which he scattered randomly on the table in front of him, not looking at them and thus making no attempt to sort them by value.
It suddenly came to Brunetti to wonder if the boy were blind and could play only by touch and by sound. He watched him for a while with this possibility in mind, but then the boy glanced across at him, a look of such bleak dislike that Brunetti was forced to turn his eyes away as though he had caught someone engaged in an obscene act.
‘Come away from here,’ he heard Paola say, and he felt her grip on his elbow, not at all gentle, as she pulled him out into the empty space between the tables. ‘I can’t stand to look at that boy,’ she said, voicing his thoughts.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Big spender,’ she gushed, but she allowed herself to be led to the bar, where Brunetti talked her into having a whisky, something she seldom drank and never liked. He passed her the heavy square glass, touched hers with his own, and watched as she took her first sip. Her mouth screwed up, perhaps more than a bit melodramatically, and she said, gasping, ‘I don’t know why I always let you talk me into drinking this stuff.’
‘You’ve been saying the same thing to me, if memory serves, for nineteen years, since we went to London for the first time.’
‘But you’re still trying to convert me,’ she replied, taking another sip.
‘You drink grappa now, don’t you?’ he asked mildly.
‘Yes, but I like grappa. With this,’ she said, flourishing the glass, ‘I might as well be drinking paint thinner.’
Brunetti finished his whisky and set the glass on the bar; he ordered a grappa di moscato and took Paola’s glass from her.
If he expected her to object, she surprised him by saying, ‘Thanks’ and taking the grappa from the barman. Turning back towards the room they had just left, she said, ‘It’s depressing, watching them in there. Dante writes about souls like this.’ She sipped at the grappa and asked, ‘Are brothels more fun?’
Brunetti choked, spitting the whisky back into the glass. He set the glass on the bar, took out his handkerchief, and wiped at his lips. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I mean it, Guido,’ she said quite amiably. ‘I’ve never been to one, and I wonder if there, at least, anyone manages to have any fun.’
‘And you ask me?’ he asked, not sure which tone to use and ending up with something between amusement and indignation.
Paola said nothing, sipped at her grappa, and Brunetti finally said, ‘I’ve been in two, no, three.’ He waved to the barman and when he came, shoved the glass towards him and signalled for a fresh drink.
When it arrived, Brunetti said, ‘The first time was when I was working in Naples. I had to arrest the son of the madame: he lived there while studying at the university.’
‘What was he studying?’ she inquired, as he knew she would.
‘Business management.’
‘Of course,’ she said and smiled. ‘Was anyone having fun?’
‘I didn’t consider that at the time. I went in with three other men, and we arrested him.’
‘For what?’
‘Homicide.’
‘And the other times?’
‘Once in Udine. I had to q
uestion one of the women who worked there.’
‘Did you go during working hours?’ she asked, a phrase that conjured up an imaginary picture of the women coming in and punching their time cards, pulling their net stockings and high heels out of a locker, having regular coffee breaks, and sitting around a table, smoking, chatting, and eating.
‘Yes,’ he said, as if three in the morning were a regular working hour.
‘Anyone having fun?’
‘It was probably too late to tell,’ he said. ‘Almost everyone was asleep.’
‘Even the woman you went to question.’
‘She turned out to be the wrong woman.’
‘And the third time?’
‘That was a case in Pordenone,’ he said in his most distant voice. ‘But someone called them, and the place was empty when we got there.’
‘Ah,’ she said with winsome longing. ‘I did want to know.’
‘Sorry I can’t help,’ he said.
She set her empty glass on the bar and rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek. ‘All things considered, I’m rather glad you can’t,’ she said, then, ‘Shall we go back and lose the rest of our money?’
12
They went back inside, content to remain behind the groups crowding around tables, both of them paying more attention to the people playing than to what they won or lost. Like Santa Caterina di Alessandria, the young man was still bound to his wheel: Brunetti found him so immeasurably sad that he could no longer bear to watch him. He should be out chasing girls, cheering on some stupid soccer team or wild rock band, mountain climbing, doing something — anything — excessive and rash and foolish that would consume his youthful energy and leave joyful memories.
He grabbed Paola’s elbow and all but pulled her into the next room, where people sat around an oval table, tipping up the corners of cards to take a furtive glance. Brunetti remembered the bars of his youth, where rough-looking workers congregated after work to play endless hands of scopa. He recalled the tiny flare-topped glasses of red wine, so dark it appeared black, that each man kept to his right and at which he sipped between hands. The level of liquid seemed never to decrease, and Brunetti could not remember that any of them ever ordered more than one glass a night. They played with exuberance, slapping winning cards down with a mighty thump that made the legs of the table tremble, sometimes leaning forward with a joyous hoot to pull towards them the evening’s winnings. What had that been then, a hundred lire, enough to pay for the wine of the other players?