A Venetian Reckoning

by Donna Leon

  'Excuse me?' della Corte said.

  'Her glasses. 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 glasses 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 glasses 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 glasses in one hand and twisting at them with the other, bending them just as the waiter had.

  'Titanium,' Brunetti answered, though the question had been entirely rhetorical.

  'What?' della Corte asked.

  'Titanium,' Brunetti repeated. 'My wife bought a new pair of reading glasses 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 glasses with me.'

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

  'The Japanese?' della Corte asked. 'They make glasses?'

  "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 titanium, 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 glasses 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 Japan, 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 glasses 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, assigning 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 accumulated 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 passed for its nobility. 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, pass 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 glass-making workshop on Murano, employer of more than three hundred people, a man whose competitors 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 whore 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 Gravi
ni 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: assault, selling drugs, living off the earnings of a prostitute. 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 butts. 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.'

  '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 passed. Brunetti waved a hand around the room. 'Why this?' he asked.

  Mara shrugged. 'Why not?'

  'If you've got a child in Brazil, this is a long way to come to work,' He smiled when he said it, and she took no offence.

  ‘I make enough money to send to my aunt, enough to pay for the school, and good food, and new uniforms whenever she needs them.’ Her voice was tight with pride or anger, Brunetti couldn't tell which.

  'And in Sao Paulo, couldn't you make money there? So that you wouldn't have to be away from her?'

  ‘I left school when I was nine because someone had to take care of the other children. My mother was sick for a long time, and I was the only girl. Then, after my daughter was born, I got a job in a bar.’ She saw his look and answered, 'No, it wasn't that kind of place. All I did was serve drinks.’

  When it seemed she was going to say nothing else, Brunetti asked, 'How long did you keep that job?'

  'Three years. It paid our rent and for our food, for me and Ana and for my aunt, who took care of her. But it didn't pay for much else.' She stopped again, but, to Brunetti, her voice had taken on the rhythms of story-telling.

  'And then what?'

  'And then Eduardo, my Latin Lover,’ she said bitterly and crushed at one of the butts on the floor with her toe, reducing it to fragments of paper and tobacco.

  'Eduardo?’

  'Eduardo Alfieri. At least that's what he told me his name was. He saw me in the bar one night, and he stayed after closing and asked me if I wanted to go for a coffee. Not a drink, mind you, for coffee, like I was a respectable girl he was asking for a date.’

  'And what happened?'

  'What do you think happened?' she asked, voice bitter for the first time. 'We had that coffee, and then he came back to the bar every night, always asking me out for coffee when it closed, always respectful, always polite. My grandmother would have approved of him, he was so respectful. It was the first time a man had ever treated me as something other than something to fuck, so I did what any girl would do, I fell in love with him.’

  'Yes,’ Brunetti said. 'Yes.'

  'And he said he wanted to marry me, but I would have to come to Italy for that and meet his family. He told me he would arrange everything, a visa and a job when I got here. He told me it would be no trouble to learn Italian.’ She gave a rueful grin then. "That's probably the only true thing he told me, the bastard.’

  'What happened?'
<
br />   'I came to Italy. I signed all the papers and I got on Alitalia and, the first thing you know, I was in Milan, and Eduardo was there to meet me at the airport' The look she gave Brunetti was level and open. 'You've heard this a thousand times, I suppose?'

  'Something like it yes. Trouble with the papers?'

  She smiled, almost with humour, at the memory of her former self, her former innocence. 'Exactly. Trouble with the papers. Bureaucracy. But he was going to take me to his apartment and everything would be all right I was in love, so I believed him. That night he asked me to give him my passport so he could take it the next day, when he went to get the papers for the marriage.' She reached for a cigarette but then put it back in the pack. 'Do you think I could have a coffee?' she asked.

  Again Brunetti went to the door and tapped on it, this time asking Gravini to bring some coffee and sandwiches.

  When he went back to his seat, she was smoking again, ‘I saw him once more, only once. He came back that night and told me that there was serious trouble with my visa, and he couldn't marry me until it was sealed. 1 don't know when I stopped believing him and realized what was going on.'

  ‘Why didn't you go to the police?' Brunetti asked.

  Her astonishment was unfeigned. "The police? He had my passport, and then he showed me that one of the papers I'd signed - he'd even gone to the trouble to have my signature notarized, said we'd have less trouble in Italy if I did — it said that he'd lent me 50 million lire.'

  'And then?' Brunetti asked.

  'He told me that he'd found me a job in a bar, and all I had to do was work there until the money was paid back’

  'And?'

  'Eduardo took me to see the man who owned the bar, and the man said I could have a job. It paid, I think, a million lire a month, but then the man explained that he would have to take money out for the room where I could live over the bar. I couldn't live anywhere else because I didn't have a passport or a visa. And he said he'd have to take out for the food and for the clothing he'd give me. Eduardo never brought my suitcases, so all I had was the clothes I was wearing. It worked out that I would be making about 50,000 lire a month.