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‘In what way?’
‘There are a great number of lesbian singers,’ he explained. ‘Strangely enough, most of them seem to be mezzo-sopranos. But that’s neither here nor there. The difficulty is that they are far less tolerated than their male colleagues who also happen to be gay. So none of them dare to be open about their lives, and most of them are very discreet, choosing to disguise their lover as their secretary or their agent. But Flavia can hardly disguise Brett as anything. And so there is talk, and I’m sure there are looks and whispers when they come into a room together.’
Brunetti had only to remember the portiere’s tone to know how true this was. ‘Have you been to their apartment here?’
‘Those skylights,’ Padovani said, and they both laughed.
‘How did she manage that?’ asked Brunetti, who had been refused a permit to install thermal windows.
‘Her family is one of those old American ones, which stole its money more than a hundred years ago and is, therefore, respectable. An uncle of hers left her the apartment, which I think he won at cards about fifty years ago. As for the windows, the story goes that she tried to get someone to do them for her, but no one would lift a finger without a permit. So, finally, she simply went up on the roof, took off the tiles, cut holes in the roof, and built the frames.’
‘Didn’t anyone see her?’ In Venice, all a person had to do was lift a hammer to the outside of a building and phones would be lifted in every house in the area. ‘Didn’t anyone call the police?’
‘You’ve seen how high she is. No one who saw her up there could really tell what she was doing and would assume she was just checking the roof. Or fixing a tile.’
‘And then what?’
‘Once the windows were in, she called the office of the city planner and told them what she had done. She asked them to send someone around to figure out how much the fine would be.’
‘And?’ marveled Brunetti, amazed that a foreigner would come up with so perfectly Italianate a solution.
‘A few months later, that’s what they actually did. But when they got there and saw how well the work had been done, they wouldn’t believe her when she told them she had done the job herself and insisted that she give them the names of her “accomplices.” She repeated that she had done it herself, and they continued to refuse to believe her. Finally, she picked up the phone and dialed the mayor’s office and asked to speak to “Lucio.” This with two architects from the city planning office standing there with their rulers in their hands. She had a few words with “Lucio” handed the phone to one of them, and said that the mayor wanted to have a word with him.’ Padovani mimicked the whole thing, ending by passing an invisible phone across the table.
‘So the mayor had a few words with them, and they climbed out on the roof and measured the skylights, calculated the fine, and she sent them back to their office with a check in their hands.’ Brunetti threw back his head and laughed so loud that people sitting at other tables looked their way.
‘Wait, it gets better,’ Padovani said. ‘The check was made out to cash, and she never received an acknowledgment that the fine had been paid. And I’m told that the blueprints in the office of deeds at city hall have been changed, and the skylights are on them.’ They laughed together at this victory of ingenuity over authority.
‘Where does all this money come from?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, God, who knows? Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn’t matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you’re aristocrats.’
‘Is that so different from here?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Of course,’ Padovani explained, smiling. ‘Here we have to keep it five hundred years before we’re aristocrats. And there’s another difference. In Italy, you have to be well-dressed. In America, it’s difficult to tell which are the millionaires and which are the servants.’ Remembering Brett’s boots, Brunetti wanted to demur. But there was no stopping Padovani, who was off again. ‘They have a magazine there. I can’t remember which one it is, but each year they publish a list of the richest people in America. Only the names and where the money comes from. I think they must be afraid to publish all their pictures. The ones they do, it’s enough to make a person believe that money really is the root of all evil or, at the very least, bad taste. The women all look as though they’d been hung over open fires and dried. And the men, good God, the men. God, who dresses them? Do you think they eat plastic?’
Whatever answer Brunetti might have given was cut short by Antonia’s return. She asked if they wanted fruit or cake for dessert. Nervously, they both said they would forgo dessert and have coffee instead. She didn’t like it, but she cleared the table.
‘But to answer your question,’ Padovani said when she was gone, ‘I don’t know where the money comes from, but there seems to be no end to it. Her uncle was very generous to various hospitals and charities in the city, and she seems to be doing the same, though most of what she gives is specifically for restoration.’
‘Then that would explain the help from “Lucio.”‘
‘Certainly.’
‘What about her personal life?’
Padovani gave him a strange glance, having long since realized how little any of this had to do with the investigation of Wellauer’s death. But that could hardly be enough to stop him from telling what he knew. After all, gossip’s greatest charms was its utter superfluity. ‘Very little. I mean, there’s not much that anyone knows for sure. She seems always to have been of this persuasion, but almost nothing is known about her personal life before she came here.’
‘Which was when?’
‘About seven years ago. That is, that it became her permanent address. She spent years here, with her uncle, when she was a child.’
‘That explains the Veneziano, then.’
Padovani laughed. ‘It is strange to hear someone who isn’t one of us speak it, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
At this point, Antonia returned with the coffees, bringing with her two small glasses of grappa, which she told them were offered with the compliments of the restaurant. Though neither of them wanted the fiery liquid, they made a show of sipping at it and praising its quality. She moved off, suspicious, and Brunetti caught her looking back at them from the door of the kitchen, as if she expected them to pour the grappa into their shoes.
‘What else about her personal life?’ Brunetti asked, frankly curious.
‘She keeps it very personal, I think. I have a friend in New York who went to school with her. Harvard, of course. Then Yale. After which she went to Taiwan and then to the mainland. She was one of the first Western archaeologists to go there. In ‘83 or ‘84, I think. She’d written her first book by then, while she was in Taiwan.’
‘Isn’t she young to have done all this?’
‘Yes, I suppose she is. But she’s very, very good.’
Antonia sailed past them, carrying coffees to the next table, and Brunetti signaled to her, mimed writing the check. She nodded.
‘I hope some of this will be of help to you,’ said Padovani, meaning it.
‘So do I,’ replied Brunetti, unwilling to admit that it wouldn’t, equally unwilling to admit that he was simply interested in the two women.
‘If there’s any other way I can help you, please call,’ Padovani said, then added, ‘We could come here again. But if we do, I insist that you bring along two of your biggest policemen to protect me against . . . Ah, Signora Antonia,’ he said effortlessly as she came up to the table and placed the bill in front of Brunetti. ‘We have eaten superbly well and hope to return as soon as possible.’ The results of this flattery astonished Brunetti. For the first time that afternoon, Antonia smiled at them, a radiant blossoming of pure pleasure that revealed deep dimples at either side of her mouth and perfect, brilliant teeth. Brunetti envied Padovani his technique; it would prove invaluable in questioning sus
pects.
* * * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The intercity train made its way slowly across the causeway that joined Venice to the mainland and was soon passing to the right of the industrial horror of Marghera. Like a person who cannot keep from prodding an aching tooth with his tongue, Brunetti failed to look away from the forest of cranes and smokestacks and the miasma of filthy air that drifted back across the waters of the laguna toward the city from which he had come.
Soon after Mestre, barren winter fields replaced the industrial blight, but the general prospect was not much improved. After the devastating drought of the summer, most of the fields were covered with unharvested corn that had proved too expensive to irrigate and too parched to pick.
The train was only ten minutes late, so he was on time for his appointment with the doctor, whose office was in a modern building not far from the university. Because he was Venetian, Brunetti didn’t think to use the elevator and climbed the stairs to the third floor. When he opened the door to the office, he found the waiting room empty save for a white-uniformed woman who sat behind a desk. ‘The doctor will see you now,’ she said when he entered, not bothering to ask who he was. Did it show? Brunetti wondered yet again.
Dr. Treponti was a small, neat man with a short dark beard and brown eyes that were slightly magnified by the thick glasses he wore. His cheeks were as round and tight as a chipmunk’s, and he carried a small marsupial paunch in front of him. He didn’t smile when Brunetti came in, but he did offer his hand. Gesturing to a chair in front of his desk, he waited for Brunetti to sit down before resuming his own chair, and then he asked, ‘What is it you’d like to know?’
Brunetti took a small publicity still of the conductor from his inside pocket and held it out to the doctor. ‘Is this the man who came to you? The man you said was Austrian?’
The doctor took the photo, studied it briefly, and handed it back to Brunetti. ‘Yes, that’s the man.’
‘Why did he come to see you, Doctor?’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me who he is? If the police are involved in this and his name isn’t Hilmar Doerr?’
Brunetti was amazed that anyone could live in Italy and not know about the death of the conductor, but he simply said, ‘I’ll tell you that after you tell me what you can about him, Doctor.’ Before the other man could object, he added, ‘I don’t want anything you might tell me to be colored by that information.’
‘This isn’t political, is it?’ the doctor asked, with the deep distrust that only Italians can put into the question.
‘No, it has nothing to do with politics. I give you my word.’
However dubious the value of that commodity might have seemed to the doctor, he agreed. ‘Very well.’ He opened the manila folder on his desk and said, ‘I’ll have my nurse give you a copy of this later.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
‘As I said, he told me that his name was Hilmar Doerr, and he said he was an Austrian who lived in Venice. Because he was not part of the Italian health plan, he came to me as a private patient. I saw no reason not to believe him.’ As he spoke, the doctor studied the notes on the lined paper in front of him. Brunetti could see how neat they were, even upside down.
‘He said that he had suffered some loss of hearing during the last months and asked me to check it. This was,’ the doctor said, flipping the chart back to the front and checking the date there, ‘on the third of November.
‘I performed the usual tests and found that there had been, as he said, a significant hearing loss.’ He anticipated Brunetti’s question and answered it. ‘I estimated that he still had sixty to seventy percent of normal hearing.
‘What confused me was his saying that he had not had any hearing problems before; they had suddenly appeared in the last month or so.’
‘Would this sort of thing be common in a man of his age?’
‘He told me he was sixty-two. I assume that, too, is a lie? If you could give me his proper age, I might be better able to answer the question.’
‘He was seventy-four.’
Hearing this, Dr. Treponti turned the file back to the cover, crossed out something, and wrote a correction above it. ‘I don’t think that would change things,’ he said, ‘at least not substantially. The damage was sudden, and because it was to nerve tissue, it was irreversible.’
‘Are you sure about that, Doctor?’
He didn’t even bother to answer. ‘Because of the nature of the loss, I suggested he return in two weeks, when I repeated the tests and found that there had been even more loss, and more damage. Also irreversible.’
‘How much more?’
‘I would estimate,’ he said, glancing down again at the figures on the chart, ‘another ten percent. Perhaps a bit more.’
‘Was there anything you could do to help him?’
‘I suggested one of the new hearing aids. I hoped—I didn’t really believe—that it would help him.’
‘And did it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘He never returned to my office.’
Brunetti calculated for a moment. The second visit had taken place well into rehearsals for the opera. ‘Can you tell me more about this hearing aid?’
‘It’s very small, mounted on a pair of normal-looking glasses, with clear or prescription lenses. It works on the principle of—’ He broke off. ‘I’m not sure why this is important here.’
Instead of explaining, Brunetti asked, ‘Is it something that might have helped?’
‘That’s difficult to say. So much of what we hear, we don’t hear with our ears.’ Seeing Brunetti’s confusion, he explained. ‘We do a good deal of lip reading, we fill in missing words from the context of the others we do hear. When people wear these hearing aids, they’ve finally accepted the idea that something is wrong with their hearing. So all of their other senses begin to work overtime, trying to fill in the missing signals and messages, and because the only thing that’s been added is the hearing aid, they believe it’s the hearing aid that’s helping them, when the only thing that’s happened, really, is that their other senses are working to their maximum to. make up for the ears that can no longer hear as well.’
‘Was that the case here?’
‘As I told you, I can’t be sure. When I fitted him with the hearing aid, during the second appointment, he insisted that he could hear better. He responded more accurately to my questions, but they all do, no matter whether there’s any real physical improvement. I’m in front of them, asking questions directly to them, looking at them, seen by them. With the tests, where the voices come to them through earphones and there are no visual signals, there’s seldom any improvement, not in cases like his.’
Brunetti considered all this, then asked, ‘Doctor, you said that when he returned for the second examination, there had been even more loss of hearing. Have you any idea what could cause a loss like that, so sudden?’
It was clear from his smile that the doctor had been anticipating this question. He folded his hands in front of him, much in the fashion of a television doctor on a soap opera. ‘It could be age, but that really wouldn’t explain a loss as sudden as his. It could be a sudden infection of the ear, but then there would very likely be pain, and he complained of none, or loss of balance, and he said he had not experienced that. It could have been continued use of diuretics, but he said he was taking none.’
‘You discussed all this with him, Doctor?’
‘Of course I did. He was more concerned about it than I’ve ever seen a patient be, and as my patient, he had a right to know.’
‘Certainly.’
Placated, the doctor continued. ‘Another possibility I mentioned to him was antibiotics. He seemed interested in this possibility, so I explained that the dosage would have to have been very heavy.’
‘Antibiotics?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. One of the side effects, not at all common but possible,
is damage to the auditory nerve. But as I said, the dose would have to be massive. I asked him if he was taking any, but he said no. So with all the possibilities excluded, the only reasonable explanation would be his advanced age. As a doctor, I wasn’t satisfied with that, and I still am not.’ He glanced down at his calendar. ‘If I could see him now, enough time has passed so I could at least check the deterioration. If it continued at the same rate as I observed in the second examination, he would be almost entirely deaf by now. Unless, of course, I was mistaken and it was an infection I didn’t notice or that didn’t show up on the tests I conducted.’ He closed the file and asked, ‘Is there any chance that he will return for another examination?’