A Venetian Reckoning Part 16

'Do you have any idea what the papers were?' della Corte asked.

'No. When I brought their pasta, she gave them back to him.'

'And what did he do with them?'

'He must have put them in his pocket. I didn't notice.' Brunetti glanced across at della Corte, who shook his head, signalling that no papers had been found on Favero.

'Could you tell us a bit more about what she looked like?' della Corte asked.

'Well, as I told you, she was somewhere in her thirties. Tall, light hair, but not natural. She had the colouring for it, light eyes, so maybe she was just helping it a little.'

'Anything else?' Brunetti asked, smiling and then sipping at his carvados to suggest that the question had no special importance.

'Well, now that I know he's dead, and by his own hand, I don't know whether I noticed it at the time. Or, I started to think it after I found out what happened to him.' Neither Brunetti nor della Corte asked anything. 'Well, something wasn't right between them.' He reached forward and brushed some crumbs from the table, caught them in his hand, and then, seeing no place to put them, slipped them into the pocket of his jacket I started to think it after I found out what happened to him.' Neither Brunetti nor della Corte asked anything. 'Well, something wasn't right between them.' He reached forward and brushed some crumbs from the table, caught them in his hand, and then, seeing no place to put them, slipped them into the pocket of his jacket In the face of the silence of the two policemen, he continued, speaking slowly, thinking this out for the first time. 'It was about halfway through the meal, when she was looking at the papers. She glanced up from them and gave him a look.'

'What kind of look?' della Corte finally asked after a long silence.

'I don't know. It wasn't angry or anything like that. She just looked at him like he was in a zoo or something, like she'd never seen anything like him. You know, like he was of a different species or had stepped out of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. I don't know if I'm making the idea clear,' he said, letting his voice trail off inconclusively.

'Did it seem like the look was threatening in any way?'

'Oh, no, not at all,' he shook his head in an effort to convince them. 'That's what was so strange about it, that there was no anger in it There was just nothing in it' He stuffed his hands in his pockets and gave an awkward grin. 'I'm sorry. I'm not explaining this well.'

'Did he notice it?' Brunetti asked.

'No, he was pouring some more wine. But I saw it.'

'What about the other times?' Brunetti asked. 'Did they get on well?'

'Oh, yes. They always got on well. I don't mean to suggest that they didn't get on well that night, either. They were always very friendly but in a sort of semi-formal way.'

'Were there any papers the other times?'

'No, nothing like that. They seemed like friends, no, like business a.s.sociates having a meal together. That's what it was like, the way two men who have to meet for business meet. Maybe that's why I always found it so strange, such an attractive woman, and he was a handsome man, but there was none of that tension that you like to see between a man and a woman, none of that at all. Yes, now that I think about it, that's what was so strange.' He smiled now, having finally figured it out.

'Do you remember what wine they drank?' Brunetti asked. Both the waiter and della Corte gave him puzzled glances.

The waiter thought about it for a while. 'Barolo,' he finally answered. 'A good, hearty red. Went well with the bistecche. And then Vin Santo with the dessert.'

'Did he leave the table at any time?' Brunetti asked, thinking about just how hearty those wines were and about how easy it is to drop something in a gla.s.s.

'I don't remember. He might have.'

'Do you remember if he paid with a credit card?' Brunetti asked.

'No, he paid with cash this time, and I have it in my mind that he paid with cash those other times, too.'

'Do you know if he's come other times? Other than when you saw them?'

'I asked the other waiters, but no one remembers them. But it's not likely. We're closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and I'm here all of the other days. Haven't missed a day of work in thirteen years. So if they came, I was here, and I don't remember seeing them except for last week and those two other times. She's a woman I'd remember.'

Delia Corte glanced across the table at Brunetti, but he shook his head. He had no more questions, not for now. Della Corte reached into his pocket and took out a small visiting card. 'If you think of anything else, you can reach me at the Questura,' della Corte said, handing him the card. Then, in a voice he made casually neutral, he added, 'Be sure to ask for me specifically.'

The waiter pocketed it, stood, and started to walk away from their table. Suddenly he stopped and came back towards them. 'Do you want her gla.s.ses?' he asked without preamble.

'Excuse me?' della Corte said.

'Her gla.s.ses. She left them here, on the chair beside her. She must have taken them off after she looked at the papers and then forgot to take them with her. We found them after they left. Do you want them?'

Delia Corte recovered himself immediately. 'Yes, of course.'

The waiter disappeared and was back in a few moments, carrying a pair of wire-framed gla.s.ses in one hand. He held them up and, with almost childlike delight, said, 'Look.' With that, he held them by the ends of the earpieces and twisted them round, as though the frame were made of rubber and this a very clever trick. Pretzel-like, they bent, and then, when he released the pressure, immediately sprang back to their original shape. 'Isn't that remarkable?' he asked.

The waiter handed the gla.s.ses to della Corte and went back across the restaurant, towards the door that led to the kitchen.

'Why don't they break?' della Corte asked, holding the gla.s.ses in one hand and twisting at them with the other, bending them just as the waiter had.

't.i.tanium,' Brunetti answered, though the question had been entirely rhetorical.

'What?' della Corte asked.

't.i.tanium,' Brunetti repeated. 'My wife bought a new pair of reading gla.s.ses last month, and she told me about these. May I?' he asked, reaching for them. Della Corte handed them over, and Brunetti brought them close to his eyes, searching for a manufacturer's sign. He found it, inside the right earpiece, up close to the hinge. 'See,' he said, extending them to della Corte.

'What is it?' della Corte asked. 'I don't have my own gla.s.ses with me.'

'It's j.a.panese,' Brunetti said. 'At least I think it is. It's only the j.a.panese who make these.'

'The j.a.panese?' della Corte asked. 'They make gla.s.ses?'

"They make the frames,' Brunetti explained. 'And these frames, I'd say, cost almost a million lire. At least that's what my wife told me. If they're t.i.tanium, and I think these are' he said, twisting them once more into a painful shape and then releasing them suddenly and watching them snap back into shape, 'men that's what they cost'

Brunetti's smile blossomed and he looked down at the gla.s.ses as though they had been transformed back into a million lire, and he'd been told to keep them 'What are you smiling at?' della Corte asked.

'Frames that cost a million lire' Brunetti explained, 'especially frames that are imported from j.a.pan, ought to be very easy to trace.'

The same million lire appeared, but this time they were in della Corte's smile.

21.

It was Brunetti's suggestion that they take the gla.s.ses to an optician and have the prescription of the lenses examined to make it even easier to identify them. Because the frames were not only expensive but imported, they should have been easy to trace, but this was to ignore the fact that della Corte, having been ordered to treat Favero's death as a suicide, had to use his own time to search for the optician who sold them, just as it was to ignore the possibility that they had been purchased in some city other than Padua.

Brunetti did what he could, a.s.signing one of his junior officers the task of phoning all of the opticians in the Mestre-Venice area to ask if they carried those particular frames and, if so, whether they had ever rilled them with that prescription. He then returned his attention to the Trevisan-Lotto-Martucci triangle, his interest centred on the survivors, both of whom would profit in some way from Trevisan's death. The widow would probably inherit, and Martucci might well inherit the widow. Lotto's murder, however, was difficult to fit into any pattern Brunetti envisioned that involved Martucci and Signora Trevisan. He did not for a moment question the fact that husbands and wives would want to, and often did, kill one another, but he found it difficult to believe that a sister would kill a brother. Husbands, even children, can be replaced, but one's aged parents can never produce another son. Antigone had sacrificed her life to this truth. Brunetti realized he needed to speak to both Signora Trevisan and Avvocato Martucci again, and he thought it would be interesting to speak to them together and see how things fell out.

Before he did anything about that, however, he turned his attention to the papers that had acc.u.mulated on his desk. There was, as promised, the list of Trevisan's clients, seven close-typed pages that held names and addresses in perfect and perfectly neutral alphabetical order. He glanced through it quickly, running his eyes down the column of names. At a few, he whistled under his breath: it appeared that Trevisan had planted his standard firmly among the ranks of the wealthiest citizens of the city as well as among those who pa.s.sed for its n.o.bility. Brunetti flipped back to the first page and began to read the names carefully. He realized that the attention he was giving them would, to a non-Venetian, pa.s.s for sober reflection; anyone bred on the incestuous rumours and cabals of the city would realize that he was doing no more than dredging up gossip, slur, and slander as he considered each name. There was Baggio, the Director of the port, a man accustomed to power and its ruthless employment. There was Seno, owner of the largest gla.s.s-making workshop on Murano, employer of more than three hundred people, a man whose compet.i.tors seemed to share the common misfortune of being hit by strikes and unexplained fires. And there was Brandoni, Conte Brandoni, the exact source of whose immense wealth was as obscure as the origin of bis tide.

Some of the people on the list did have the most blameless, even the highest, of reputations; what Brunetti found peculiar was the promiscuity of names, the revered rubbing elbows with the suspect, the most highly honoured mingling with the equivocal. He turned back to the Fs and searched for his father-in-law's name, but Conte Orazio Falier was not listed. Brunetti laid the list aside, knowing that they would have no choice but to question all of them, one by one, and reproving himself for his reluctance to call his father-in-law to ask what he knew about Trevisan. Or about his clients.

Below the list, there was a painfully typed and inordinately long message from Officer Gravini, explaining that the Brazilian wh.o.r.e and her pimp had appeared at Pinetta's bar the previous night and that he had 'initiated' an arrest, initiated?' Brunetti heard himself asking aloud. That's the sort of thing that came of allowing university graduates into the ranks. When Brunetti called downstairs and asked where they were, he learned that both had been brought over from the gaol that morning and were being kept in separate rooms on Officer Gravini's recommendation in case Brunetti wanted to question them.

Next was a fax from the police in Padua, reporting that the bullets recovered from Lotto's body came from a .22 calibre pistol, though no tests had yet been performed to determine whether it was the same pistol used on Trevisan. Brunetti knew that any tests would do no more than confirm what he already knew in his blood.

Below that were more sheets of fax papers, these bearing the SIP letterhead and containing the phone records he had asked Signorina Elettra to obtain from Giorgio. At the thought of Rondini and the many lists he had provided, Brunetti remembered the letter he had to write and the fact that he had not yet bothered to do so. The fact that Rondini felt he needed such a letter to give to his fiancee left Brunetti bemused that he would want to marry her, but he had long ago abandoned the idea that he understood marriage.

Brunetti admitted to himself that he also had no idea of what he hoped to learn from either Mara or her pimp, but he decided to go and speak to them anyway. He walked down to the first floor, which contained three separate cell-like rooms in which the police routinely interviewed suspects and others brought in for questioning.

Outside one of the rooms stood Gravini, a handsome young man who had joined the force a year ago, having spent the previous two trying to find someone who would give a job to a twenty-seven-year-old university graduate with a degree in philosophy and no previous work experience. Brunetti often wondered what had impelled Gravini to that decision, which philosopher's precepts had moved him to take on the jacket, pistol, and cap of the forces of order. Or, the thought sneaked out from nowhere and leaped into Brunetti's mind, perhaps Gravini had found in Vice-Questore Patta the living manifestation of Plato's philosopher king.

'Good morning, sir,' Gravini said, snapping out a quick salute and demonstrating no surprise at the fact that his superior arrived laughing to himself. Philosophers, it is rumoured, bear with these things.

'Which of them's in here?' Brunetti asked, nodding his head at the door behind Gravini.

The woman, sir.' Saying this, Gravini handed Brunetti a dark-blue file. The man's record's in here, sir. Nothing on her.'

Brunetti took the file and glanced at the two pages stapled to the inside cover. There was the usual: a.s.sault, selling drugs, living off the earnings of a prost.i.tute. Franco Silvestri was one of thousands. After reading through it carefully, he handed the file back to Gravini.

'Did you have any trouble bringing them in?'

'Not her, sir. It was almost as if she was expecting it. But the man tried to make a run for it. Ruffo and Vallot were with me, outside, and they grabbed him.'

'Well done, Gravini. Whose idea was it to take them along?'

'Well, sir,' Gravini said, with a low cough. 'I told them what I was going to do, and they offered to come along. On their own time, you understand'

'You get along well with them, don't you, Gravini?'

'Yes, sir, I do'

'Good, good Well, let's have a look at her.' Brunetti let himself into the grim little room. The only light came from a small, dirty window high on one wall, far higher than a person could hope to jump, and from a single 60-watt bulb in a wire-covered fixture in the centre of the ceiling.

Mara sat on the edge of one of the three chairs. There was no other furniture, no table, no sink, nothing but three straight-backed chairs and, on the floor, a scattering of cigarette b.u.t.ts. She looked up when Brunetti came in, recognized him, and said, 'Good morning' in a relaxed voice. She looked tired, as if she'd not slept well the night before, but she didn't look particularly disturbed to find herself here. On the back of a chair hung the same leopard-skin jacket she had worn the other night, but her blouse and skirt were new, though they both looked as though she had slept in them. Her make-up had worn off' or she had washed it off; either way, its absence made her look younger, little more than an adolescent, 'You've done this before, I imagine?' Brunetti asked, sitting in the third chair.

'More times than I can count,' she said, and then asked, 'Do you have any cigarettes? I've finished mine, and the cop out there won't open the door.'

Brunetti stepped over to the door and tapped on it three times. When Gravini opened it, Brunetti asked him if he had some cigarettes, then took the pack the officer handed him and brought it back to Mara.

Thank you,' she said, pulled a plastic lighter from the pocket of her skirt and lit one. 'My mother died of these,' she said, holding it up and waving it back and forth in front of her, studying the trail of smoke it left. 'I wanted to put that on her death certificate, but the doctors wouldn't do it. They put "cancer", but it should have been "Marlboro".1 She begged me never to start smoking, and I promised her I never would.' She begged me never to start smoking, and I promised her I never would.'

'Did she find out that you smoked?'

Mara shook her head. 'No, she never found out, not about the cigarettes and not about a lot of things.'

'Like what?' Brunetti asked.

'Like I was pregnant when she died. Only four months, but it was the first time and I was young, so it didn't show.'

'She might have been happy to know,' suggested Brunetti. 'Especially if she knew she was dying.'

'I was fifteen,' Mara said.

'Oh,' Brunetti said and looked away. 'Did you have others?'

'Other what?' she asked, confused.

'Other children. You said it was the first.'

'No, I meant it was the first time I was pregnant. I had the baby, but then I had a miscarriage with the second and since men I've been careful.'

'Where is your child?'

'In Brazil, with my mother's sister.'

'Is it a boy or a girl?'

'A girl.'

'How old is she now?'

'Six.' She smiled at the thought of the child. She looked down at her feet and men up at Brunetti, began to speak, stopped, and said, 'I have a picture of her if you'd like to see it.'

'Yes, I would,' he said, pulling his chair closer.

She tossed the cigarette on to the floor and reached into her blouse to pull out a gold-plated locket the size of a 100-lire coin. Pressing a tab on the top, she sprang it open and held it out to Brunetti, who bent forward to examine it. On one side, he saw a round-faced baby swaddled to within an inch of its life and on the other a little girl with long dark braids, standing stiff and formal, wearing what looked like a school uniform. 'She goes to school with the sisters,' Mara explained, bending her head down awkwardly to look at the photo. 'I think it's better for them.'

'Yes, I think so, too,' Brunetd agreed 'We sent our daughter to the sisters until she finished middle school'

'How old is she?' Mara asked, closing the locket and putting it back inside her blouse.

'Fourteen.' Brunetti sighed. 'It's a difficult age,' he said before he remembered what Mara had told him only moments before.

She, luckily, seemed to have forgotten it, too, and said only, 'Yes, it's hard. I hope she's a good girl.'

Brunetti smiled, proud to say it. 'Yes, she is. Very good.'

'Do you have other children?' 'A son, he's seventeen.'

She nodded, as if she knew more than she wanted to know about seventeen-year-old boys.

A long moment pa.s.sed. Brunetti waved a hand around the room. 'Why this?' he asked.

Mara shrugged. 'Why not?'