A Venetian Reckoning

by Donna Leon

  'What about the fight, sergeant?'

  'I'm getting to that. After another quarter-hour or so, one of the other men left the table, and they asked me if I wanted to play some more. I told them I didn't, so the man at the bar with me went and played a few hands. Then the man who had left came back and had a drink at the bar. We started to talk, and he asked me if I wanted a woman.

  'I told him I didn't have to buy it, that there was plenty going around for free, and then he said that I'd never be able to get any of what he could get me.'

  'What was that?'

  'He said he could get me girls, young girls. I told him I wasn't interested in that, preferred women, and then he said something insulting.'

  'What did he say?'

  'He said he didn't think I was interested in women, either, and I told him I preferred women, real women, to what he had in mind. And then he started to laugh and shouted something, in Slav, I think, to some of the men who were playing cards. They laughed. That's when I hit him.'

  'We asked you to go there to try to get information, not to start a fight,' Brunetti said, making no attempt to disguise his irritation.

  'I won't have people laugh at me,' Topa said, voice mounting into the tight, angry tone that Brunetti remembered.

  'Do you think he meant it?'

  'Who?'

  'The man in the bar. Who offered you girls.'

  'I don't know. Could have. He didn't look like a pimp, but with Slavs it's hard to tell.'

  'Would you know him if you saw him again?'

  'He's got a broken nose, so he ought to be easy to spot.'

  'Are you sure?’ Brunetti asked. 'About what?' 'The nose.'

  'Of course I'm sure,' Topa said, holding up his right hand. 'I felt the cartilage break.'

  'Would you recognize him or a picture of him?' 'Yes.’

  'All right, sergeant. It's too late to do anything about this now. Come back in the morning and take a look at the photos, see if you spot him.'

  'I thought Alvise wanted to arrest me.'

  Brunetti waved his hand in front of his face, as if brushing at a fly. 'Forget about it.’

  'Nobody talks to me like that guy did,' Topa said, voice truculent.

  'In the morning, sergeant.' Brunetti told him.

  Topa shot him a glance, one that reminded Brunetti about the story of his last arrest, got to his feet, and left Brunetti's office, leaving the door open behind him. Brunetti waited a full ten minutes before he left his office. Outside, it had begun to rain, the first icy drizzle of winter, but its chill drift against his face was a welcome relief after the heat of his dislike for Topa's company.

  14

  Two days later, but not before Brunetti had been forced to request an order for the files from Judge Vantuno, the Venice office of SIP provided the police with a list of the local calls made from Trevisan's home and office during the six months prior to his death. As Brunetti had expected, some calls had been made to Pinetta's bar, though no pattern was evident. He checked the list of long-distance calls for the dates of the calls to the Padua, railway station, but there was no correspondence between the dates or times of those calls and the ones to the bar in Mestre.

  He placed both lists side by side on his desk and stared down at them. Unlike the long-distance calls, the local calls had the address of the phone, as well as the name of the person in whose name it was listed, in a long column that ran down the right of the more than thirty pages of numbers. He started to read down the column of names and addresses but gave it up after a few minutes.

  He took the paper, left his office, and went down the steps to Signorina Elettra's open cubicle. The table that stood in front of the window appeared to be a new one, but the same hand-blown Venini glass vase stood on it, today filled with nothing more elegant, though nothing could hope to be more happy, than a massive bouquet of black-eyed Susans.

  In complement to them, Signorina Elettra today wore a scarf the secret of whose colour had been stolen from canaries. 'Good morning, commissario,' she said as he came in, breaking into a smile quite as happy as that the flowers wore.

  'Good morning, signorina,' he said. 'I have a question for you,' he began, using the plural, and with a friendly nod indicating that the other half was her computer.

  'That?' she asked, looking at the SIP print-out in his hand.

  'Yes. It's the list of Trevisan s calls. Finally,' he added, unable to disguise the anger he felt at having wasted so much time waiting for official channels to divulge the information.

  'Oh, you should have let me know that you wanted them in a hurry, commissario.'

  'A friend at SIP?' he asked, no longer surprised by the extent of Signorina Elettra’s web.

  'Giorgio,' she said and left it at that. '

  Brunetti began, 'Do you think he could... ?'

  She smiled and held out her hand.

  He passed the papers to her. 'I need to have them arranged in order of the frequency he called them.'

  She looked down and made a note on the pad on her desk. She smiled, suggesting child's play. 'Anything eke?'

  'Yes, I'd like to. know how many of them are phones in public places: bars, restaurants, even phone booths.'

  She smiled again; more of the same. 'Is that all?’

  'No. I'd like to know which one is the number of the person who killed him.' If he expected her to make a note of this, he was disappointed. 'But I don't suppose you can get that.' Brunetti added this last with a smile, to show her he wasn't serious.

  'I don't think we can, sir, but perhaps it's in among these,' she suggested, flourishing the papers. Probably was, Brunetti thought.

  'How long will that take?' he asked, meaning how many days.

  Signorina Elettra glanced down at her watch and then flipped to the end of the papers to see how many pages there were. 'If Giorgio is in the office today, I should have it by the afternoon.'

  'How?' Brunetti blurted out before he had time to phrase a more nonchalant question.

  'I've had a modem installed on the Vice-Questore’s phone,' she said, pointing to a metal box that sat on the desk a few centimetres from the phone. Wires, Brunetti saw, led from the box to her computer. 'All Giorgio has got to do is bring up the information, program it to arrange the calls by frequency, and then send it directly through to my printer.' She paused a moment. 'It'll arrive listed by frequency, and then they'll give the date and time of the call. Would you like to know how long each call lasted?' She held her pen above her pad and waited for his answer.

  'Yes. And do you think he could get a list of calls from the public phone in the bar in Mestre?'

  She nodded but said nothing, busy writing.

  'By this afternoon?' Brunetd asked.

  'If Giorgio is there, certainly.'

  When Brunetti left her office, she was lifting her phone, no doubt to contact Giorgio and, together with him and through that rectangular thing attached to her computer, leap over whatever obstacles SIP might attempt to place in front of the information in its files as well as over any laws regarding what might be available without a court order.

  Back in his office, he wrote his brief report to Patta and took the trouble to sketch in his plans for the next few days. Much of the former was frustration, and the latter was made up of equal measures of invention and optimism, but he thought it would be enough to content Patta for awhile. That done, he took the phone and called Ubaldo Lotto and asked to see him that afternoon, explaining that he needed information about Trevisan's legal practice. After some initial hesitation and insisting that he knew nothing about the legal practice, only the financial dealings, Lotto reluctantly agreed and told Brunetti to come to his office at 5.30.

  That office, which turned out to be in the same building and on the same floor as Trevisan's legal studio, was on Via XXII Marzo, above the Banca Commerciale d'ltalia, about as good a business address as one could hope to have in Venice. Brunetti presented himself there a few minutes before 5.30 and was shown into an off
ice so conspicuous in its evidence of industry as to be almost predictable, the sort of place a bright young television director might select as the set for a scene that dealt with a bright young accountant. In an open area half the size of a tennis court sat eight separate desks, each holding a computer terminal and screen, each work area surrounded by waist-high folding screens covered in light green linen. Five young men and three young women sat at the terminals; Brunetti found it interesting that none of them bothered to glance at him when he walked past their desks, following in the footsteps of the male receptionist who had let him into the office.

  This young man stopped before a door, knocked twice, and men, without waiting for an answer, opened the door and held it open for Brunetti. When he entered, Brunetti noticed Lotto standing at the doors of a high cabinet placed against the far wall, leaning forward and reaching into it. Brunetti heard the door close behind him and glanced back over his shoulder to see if the young man had come into the room with him. He had not. When he turned back, Lotto stood a bit back from the cabinet, a bottle of sweet vermouth in his right hand, two short glasses cupped in his left.

  'Would you like a drink, commissario?’ he asked, ‘I usually have one at about this time.’

  'Thank you,' said Brunetti, who loathed sweet drinks. "That would be very welcome.’ He smiled and Lotto waved him to the other side of the office, where two chairs stood on opposite sides of a low, thin-legged table.

  Lotto poured two generous drinks and brought them across the room. Brunetti took one, thanked him, but waited until his host had put the bottle down on the table between them and taken his own seat before he raised his glass, smiled his friendliest smile, and said, 'Cut an.' The sweet liquid slithered over his tongue and down his throat, leaving a thick slime behind it The alcohol was overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness: it was like drinking aftershave sweetened with apricot nectar.

  Though all that could be seen from the windows of the room were those of the buildings across the street Brunetti said, 'Compliments on your office. It's very elegant’

  Lotto waved his glass in the air in front of him, pushing back the compliment 'Thank you, dottore. We try to give an appearance that will assure our clients that their affairs are safe with us and that we understand how to take care of them’

  That must be very difficult’ Brunetti suggested.

  A shadow crossed Lotto's face but disappeared immediately, taking part of his smile with it. 'I'm afraid I don't understand you, commissario.'

  Brunetti tried to look shamefaced, a man not at home with language who had expressed himself, yet once again, badly. 'I mean with the new laws, Signor Lotto. It must be very difficult to understand them or how they apply. Ever since the new government changed the rules, my own accountant has admitted he isn't sure what he has to do or even how to fill out the forms’ He sipped at his drink, but he took a very small sip, one might even have called it a humble little sip, and went on, 'Of course, my finances are hardly so complicated that they would create any confusion, but I imagine that you must have many clients whose finances deserve the attention of an expert.' Another little sip. 'I don't understand these things, of course,' he began and permitted himself a glance at Lotto, who appeared to be listening attentively. 'That's why I asked to see you, to see if you could give me any information you might think important about Avvocato Trevisan's finances. You were his accountant, weren't you? And his business manager?’

  'Yes,' Lotto answered briefly, then asked, voice neutral, 'What sort of information?'

  Brunetti smiled and made an open-handed gesture, as if trying to throw his fingers away. 'That's what I don't understand and why I came to see you. Since Avvocato Trevisan trusted you with his finances, I thought you might be able to tell us if there were any of his clients who might have been - I'm not sure of the right word to use here — might have been displeased with Signor Trevisan.’

  ' "Displeased", commissario?'

  Brunetti glanced down at his knees, a man caught again in the web of his own ineptitude with language, surely a man Lotto could safely believe to be equally inept as a policeman.

  Lotto broke the expanding silence. 'I'm afraid I still don't understand,' he said, pleasing Brunetti with the too-heavy sincerity of his confusion, for it suggested Lotto believed himself in the company of man unaccustomed to subtlety or complexity.

  'Well, Signor Lotto, since we don't have a motive for this killing...' Brunetti began.

  'Not robbery?' Lotto interrupted, raising his eyebrows in surprise as he spoke.

  'Nothing was taken, sir.'

  'Couldn't the thief have been disturbed? Surprise?'

  Brunetti gave this suggestion the consideration it would deserve if no one had ever mentioned it, as he so clearly wanted Lotto to believe no one had.

  1 suppose that's possible,' Brunetti said, speaking as to an equal. He nodded to himself, mulling over this new possibility. Then, with dog-like persistence, he returned to his first idea. 'But if that wasn't the case? If what we're dealing with here is a deliberate murder, then the motive might he in his professional life.' Brunetti wondered if Lotto would try to cut off the heavy-treaded progress of his thought before it arrived at the next likely possibility, that the motive might lie in Trevisan's personal life.

  'Are you suggesting that a client might have done this?' Lotto asked, voice rich with incredulity: clearly this policeman could never hope to understand the sort of clients a man like Trevisan dealt with.

  ‘I know how unlikely that is,' Brunetti said and smiled, he hoped, nervously. 'But it is possible that Signor Trevisan, in his capacity as lawyer, might have come into possession of information that it would be dangerous for him to have.'

  'About one of his clients? Are you suggesting this, cornmissario?' The shock Lotto pumped into his voice was an indication of how certain he was of his ability to dominate this policeman. •Yes.'

  impossible.'

  Brunetti gave another small smile, ‘I realize it is hard to believe, but soil we need to see, if only to help us exclude this possibility, a list of Signor Trevisan's clients, and I thought that you, as his business manager, might be able to provide us with one.'

  'And are you going to drag them into this?' Lotto asked, making sure that Brunetti heard his tone of precipitant indignation.

  ‘I assure you that we will do everything in our power to see that they never realize we are in possession of their names.'

  'And if you were not to be given these names?'

  'We would be forced to ask for a court order.'

  Lotto finished his drink and set the empty glass on the table to his left, ‘I suppose I could have one prepared for you.' His reluctance was audible. He was, after all, dealing with the police. 'But I want you to bear in mind that these are not the sort of people who are usually subject to police investigation.'

  In ordinary circumstances, Brunetti would have remarked that, for the last few years, the police had been investigating little except 'people like these', but he chose to keep his own counsel and, instead, answered, ‘I appreciate this, Signor Lotto.'

  The accountant cleared his throat, is that all?'

  'Yes,' Brunetti said, swirling the remaining liquid around in his glass, watching it as it slid up the sides and then back down again. "There was one other thing, but it hardly bears mention.' The viscous liquid slid from side to side in Brunetti's glass.

  'Yes?' Lotto asked, not really interested now that the main purpose of this policeman's visit was disposed of.

  'Rino Favero,' Brunetti said, letting the name drop into the room as lightly as a butterfly leaps, splashless, into streams of air.

  'What?' Lotto said with astonishment too strong to be contained. Content, Brunetti blinked in his most bovine manner and looked again at the liquid in his glass. Lotto changed his question to a neutral, 'Who?'

  'Favero. Rino. He was an accountant. In Padua, I think. I wondered if you knew him, Signor Lotto.'

  'I might have heard the name. Why
do you ask?'

  'He died recently. By his own hand.' To Brunetti that seemed just like the sort of euphemism a man in his social station would be expected to use in reference to the suicide of someone in Favero's. He paused, waiting to see how strong Lotto's curiosity would be.

  'Why do you ask?'

  'I thought that, if you knew him, it would be a difficult moment for you, losing two friends so closely together.'

  'No, I didn't know him. Not personally, at least.'

  Brunetti shook his head. 'A sad thing.'

  'Yes,' Lotto agreed dismissively and got to his feet 'Will there be anything else, commissario?'

  Brunetti stood, looked around awkwardly for somewhere to put his unfinished drink, allowed Lotto to take it from him and place it beside the other glass on the table. 'No. Just that list of clients.'

  Tomorrow. Or the day after,’ Lotto said, starting for the door.

  Brunetti suspected it would be the latter, but he didn't allow that to stop him from extending his hand and his effusive thanks to the accountant for his time and co-operation.

  Lotto saw Brunetti to the door of the office, shook his hand again, and then closed the door behind him. In the corridor, Brunetti paused for a moment and studied the discreet bronze plaque that stood to the right of the door across the hall: 'C. Trevisan Avvocato'. Brunetti had no doubt that the same atmosphere of efficient industry would prevail behind that door, as well, though he was now also convinced that the two offices were linked together by far more than their physical location, just as he was now certain they were both somehow linked to Rino Favero.

  15

  The following morning, Brunetti found on his desk, faxed to him by Capitano della Corte at the Padua police, a copy of the file on Rino Favero, whose death was still being reported, at least to the press and public, as a suicide. It told him little more about Favero's death than della Corte had told him on the phone; what Brunetti found interesting was what it revealed about Favero's apparent position in the society and the world of financial affairs in Padua, a sleepy, rich town about a half-hour to the west of Venice.