A Venetian Reckoning

by Donna Leon

  'May I ask when this will was drawn up?'

  'Two years ago,' Martucci answered with no hesitation.

  'And when did you join Signor Trevisan's firm, Avvocato Martucci?'

  Signora Trevisan turned her very pale eyes on Brunetti and spoke for the first time since they came into the room. 'Commissario, before you become too exercised in pursuit of your own vulgar curiosity, might I inquire as to the final goal of these questions?’

  'If they have a goal, signora, it is in gaining information to help in finding the person who murdered your husband.'

  'It would seem to me', she began, propping her elbows on the arms of her chair and pressing her hands into a steeple in front of her, 'that this would be true only if some connection existed between the conditions of his will and his murder. Or am I being too simple-minded for you?' When Brunetti felled to answer immediately, she graced him with a sliver of a smile, it is possible for things to be too simple-minded for you, isn't it, commissario?'

  I'm certain it is, signora,' Brunetti said, glad he had managed to provoke at least one of them 'Hence I like to ask questions with simple answers. This one has a number, how long Signor Martucci worked for your husband.'

  Two years,' Martucci answered.

  Brunetti turned his attention back to the lawyer, intent on him now, and asked, 'And if I might ask about the other dispositions of the will?'

  Martucci started to answer, but Signora Trevisan held up a hand to silence him. I’ll answer this, avvocato.' Then, turning to Brunetti, she said, 'The bulk of Carlo's property, as is entirely common under the law, is left to me, as his widow, and to his children in equal shares. There are some other bequests to relatives and friends, but the bulk comes to us. Does that satisfy your curiosity?'

  'Yes, signora, it does.’

  Martucci shifted in his seat, preparing to rise, and said, if that's all you came for.. .’

  ‘I have some other questions,' Brunetti said, turning to Signora Trevisan, 'for you, signora.'

  She nodded without bothering to answer him and gave a calming glance in Martucci's direction.

  'Do you have a car?'

  ‘I’m afraid I don't understand your question,' she said after a short pause.

  Brunetti repeated, 'Do you have a car?' 'Yes.'

  'What kind?'

  'I don't see what sense this makes,’ Martucci interrupted.

  Ignoring him, Signora Trevisan said, 'It's a BMW. Three years old. Green.'

  'Thank you,' Brunetti said, face impassive, and men asked, 'Your brother, signora, does he leave a family?'

  'No. He and his wife never had children.'

  Martucci interrupted again. 'I'm sure your records must tell you that.'

  Ignoring him, Brunetti asked, choosing his words carefully, 'Did your brother have anything to do with prostitutes?'

  Martucci jumped to his feet, but Brunetti ignored him; his attention was riveted on Signora Trevisan. Her head shot up when she heard the question, and then, almost as though listening to an echo of it, she looked away from him for a moment, then brought her eyes back to his. Two very slow beats passed before her face displayed any anger, and then she said in a loud, declamatory voice, 'My brother had no need for whores.'

  Martucci caught the tail of her anger and used it to swing his own towards Brunetti. ‘I will not permit you to insult the memory of Signora Trevisan's brother. Your accusation is disgusting and offensive. We don't have to listen to your insinuations.' He paused to gather breath, and Brunetti could almost hear his lawyer's mind spring into action. 'Furthermore, your remark is slanderous, and I have Signora Trevisan as a witness to what you've said.' He looked from one to the other for a response, but neither had paid the least attention to his explosion.

  Brunetti never glanced away from Signora Trevisan, nor did she make any attempt to avoid his eyes. Martucci started to speak again, but then stopped, confused at the attention they seemed to be paying to one another, missing the fact that what engaged them was not the slanderous potential of Brunetti "s last remark but, rather, its exact phrasing.

  Brunetti waited until the others realized that he wanted an answer, not righteous indignation. He saw her consider the question and how to answer it. He thought he saw some revelation move from her eyes to her Hps, but just as she was about to speak, Martucci started up again. ‘I demand an apology.' When Brunetti didn't bother to answer him, Martucci took two steps towards Brunetti until he stood between him and Signora Trevisan, blocking their view of one another. ‘I demand an apology,' he repeated, looking down at Brunetti.

  'Of course, of course,' Brunetti said with singular lack of interest. ‘You can have as many apologies as you like.' Brunetti got to his feet and stepped to Martucci's side, but Signora Trevisan had looked away and didn't bother to look up at him. One glance told him that Martucci's interruption had served to drive all urge towards confidence from her; Brunetti saw there was no sense in repeating himself.

  'Signora,' he said, 'if you decide to answer my question, you'll find me at the Questura.' Saying nothing eke, he stepped around Martucci and left the room, then let himself out of the house without bothering to call the maid, who was nowhere to be seen.

  As he walked home, Brunetti thought about how dose he had just come to that moment of contact that he sometimes managed to create between himself and a witness or a suspect, that delicate point of balance when some chance phrase or word would suddenly spur a person to reveal something they had tried to keep hidden. What had she been about to say, and what had Lotto had to do with prostitutes? And the woman in the Mercedes? Wis she the woman who had dinner with Favero the night he was killed? Brunetti asked himself what could happen during dinner to make a woman so nervous or forgetful that she would leave behind a pair of glasses worth more than a million fire. And had it been something that happened during dinner or what she knew was going to happen after dinner that made her nervous? The questions swirled around Brunetti, Furies calling to him and mocking him because he didn't know the answers and, worse, because he didn't even know which questions were important.

  When he left the Trevisan apartment, Brunetti turned automatically toward the Accademia Bridge and home. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that it took him some time to notice that the street seemed crowded. He glanced down at his watch, puzzled that there should be so many people in this part of the city more than a half-hour before the shops closed He looked at them more carefully and saw that they were Italians: both men and women were too well dressed and groomed to be anything eke.

  He abandoned any thought of hurrying and allowed the flow to carry him towards Campo San Stefano. From the bottom of the closest bridge, he heard amplified sound but could not distinguish it clearly.

  Down the narrow slot of the last calle they pulled him and men, suddenly, freed him into the darkening campo. Directly in front of him was the statue Brunetti had always thought of as the Meringue Man, so starkly white and porous was the marble from which he was carved Other people, seeing the pile of books that seemed to issue from beneath his coat, called him something more indelicate.

  To Brunetti's right, a wooden platform had been erected along the side of the church of San Stefano. A few wooden chairs stood on it; the front corners held enormous speakers. From three wooden poles at the back of the platform hung the limp flags bearing the Italian tricolor, the lion of San Marco, and the newly minted symbol of what had once been the Christian Democratic party.

  Brunetti moved over closer to the statue and stepped behind the low metal fence that encircled its base. About a hundred people stood in front of the platform; from that group three men and a woman broke away and walked up the steps of the platform. Loud music suddenly blared forth. Brunetti thought it was the national anthem, but the volume and the static made it difficult to tell.

  A man in jeans and a bomber jacket handed a microphone with a long hanging wire up to one of the men on the platform. He held it at his side for a while, smiled at the crowd, shitt
ed the microphone to his left hand, and shook hands with the people on the platform. From below, the man in the jacket lifted a hand and made a cutting gesture, but the music didn't stop.

  The man on the platform held the microphone up to his mouth and said something, but the music rode above it and made it incomprehensible. He held the microphone out at arm's length and tapped at it with one hand, but this came through as six muffled pistol shots.

  A pod of people broke away from the crowd and went into a bar. Six more walked around towards the front of the church and disappeared up Calle della Mandorla. The man in the bomber jacket clambered up on to the platform and did something to the wires at the back of one of the speakers. That speaker went suddenly dead, but music and static continued to blare forth from the other. He walked hurriedly across the platform and knelt behind the other speaker.

  Some more people drifted away. The woman on the platform walked down the steps and disappeared into the crowd, quickly followed by two of the men. When the noise didn't stop, the man in the jacket got to his feet and had a huddled conference with the man with the microphone. By the time Brunetti turned his attention away from them, only a handful of people remained in front of the platform.

  He climbed back over the low fence and headed towards the Accademia Bridge. Just as he was passing in front of the small florist's kiosk at the end of the campo, the music and static came to a sudden halt, and a man's voice, amplified by nothing more than anger, called out, 'Cittadini, Italiani’ but Brunetti didn't stop, nor did he bother to turn around.

  He realized that he wanted to talk to Paola. He had, as always and as was against the regulations, kept her informed about the progress of the investigation, had given her his impressions of the people he questioned and the answers they gave him. This time, because there had been no one standing naked in guilt's spotlight at the very beginning, Paola had refrained from naming the person she believed to be the murderer, a habit Brunetti had never been able to break her of. Devoid of that a priori certainty, she served as the perfect listener: prodding him with questions, forcing him to explain things so clearly that she would understand. Often, forced to explain some lingering uneasiness, he better understood it himself. This time, she had suggested nothing, hinted nothing, displayed no suspicion of any of the people he mentioned. She listened, interested, and that was all she did.

  When he got home, he found that Paola wasn't there yet, but Chiara was waiting for him. 'Papa,' she called from her room when she heard him open the door. A second later, she appeared at the door of her room, a magazine hanging open in her hand. He recognized the yellow bordered cover of Airone, just as he recognized in its lavish photos, glossy paper, and simple prose style more signs of the American magazine it so closely imitated.

  'What is it, sweetheart?' he asked, bending down to kiss the top of her head and then turning to hang his coat in the closet near the door.

  'There's a competition. Papa, and if you win it, you get a free subscription.'

  'But don't you already have a subscription?' he asked, having given it to her for Christmas.

  'That's not the point, Papa.'

  'What is the point, then?' he asked, making his way down the hallway towards the kitchen. He flipped on the light and went over to the refrigerator.

  The point is winning,' she said, following him down the hall and making Brunetti wonder if the magazine might be a bit too American for his daughter.

  He found a bottle of Orvieto, checked the label, put it back, and pulled out the bottle of Soave they had begun with dinner the night before. He took down a glass, filled it, and took a sip. 'All right, Chiara, what's the contest?'

  'You have to name a penguin.'

  'Name a penguin?' Brunetti repeated stupidly.

  'Yes, look here,' she said, holding the magazine out towards him with one hand and pointing down towards a photo with the other. As she did, he saw a picture of what looked to be the fuzzy mass that Paola sometimes emptied from the vacuum cleaner. 'What's that?' he asked, taking the magazine and turning it towards the light

  its the baby penguin. Papa. It was born last month at the Rome Zoo, and it doesn't have a name yet So they're offering a prize to whoever comes up with the best name for it’

  Brunetti pulled open the magazine and looked more closely at the photo. Sure enough, he saw a beak and two round black eyes. Two yellow flippers. On the opposite page was a full-grown penguin, but Brunetti looked in vain for some familial resemblance between the two.

  ‘What name?' he asked, flipping through the magazine and watching hyenas, ibis, and elephants stream past him.

  'Spot,' she said.

  'What?’

  'Spot’ she repeated.

  'For a penguin?' he asked, flipping back to the original article and staring at the photos of the adult birds. Spot?

  'Sure. Everyone else is going to call him "Flipper’’ or ‘Waiter’’.' No one else will think of calling him Spot'

  That, Brunetti allowed, was probably true. 'You could always save the name,' he suggested, putting the bottle back in the refrigerator.

  'What for?' she asked and took the magazine back.

  ‘In case there's a contest for a zebra,' he said.

  'Oh, Papa, you're so silly sometimes,' she said and went back towards her room, little aware of how much her judgement pleased him.

  In the living room, he picked up his book, left ace down when he went to bed the night before. While waiting for Paola, he might as well fight the Peloponnesian War again.

  She came home an hour later, let herself into the apartment, and came into the living room. She tossed her coat over the back of the sofa and flopped down next to him, her scarf still around her neck. 'Guido, you ever consider the possibility that I'm insane?'

  'Often,' he said and turned a page.

  'No, really. I've got to be, working for those cretins.'

  'Which cretins?' he asked, still not bothering to look up from the book.

  The ones who run the university.'

  'What now?'

  'They asked me, three months ago, to give a lecture in Padua, to the English Faculty. They said it would be on the British novel Why do you think I was reading all those books for the last two months?'

  'Because you like them. That's why you've read them for the last twenty yean.'

  'Oh, stop it, Guido,' she said, digging a gentle elbow into his ribs.

  'So what happened?'

  'I went into the office today to pick up my mail, and they told me that they'd got it all wrong, that I was supposed to be lecturing on American poetry, but no one thought to tell me about the change.'

  'And so, which is it?'

  'I won't know until tomorrow. They'll go ahead and tell Padua about the new topic if Il Magnifico approves it’ Both of them had always taken delight in this most wonderful of holdovers from the academic Stone Age, the fact that the Rector of the university was addressed as 'Il Magnifico Rettore', the only thing Brunetti had learned in twenty years on the fringes of the university that had managed to make academic life sound interesting to him.

  'What's he likely to do?' Brunetti asked.

  Toss a coin, probably.'

  'Good luck,' Brunetti said, putting down his book. 'You don't like the American stuff, do you?'

  'Holy heavens, no,' she explained, burying her face in her hands. 'Puritans, cowboys, and strident women. I'd rather teach the Silver Fork Novel,' she said, using the English words.

  The what?’ Brunetti asked.

  'Silver Fork Novel,’ she repeated. 'Books with simple plots written to explain to people who made a lot of money how to behave in polite company.'

  'For yuppies?' Brunetti asked, honesdy interested.

  Paola erupted in laughter. 'No, Guido, not for yuppies. They were written in the eighteenth century, when all the money poured into England from the colonies, and the fat wives of Yorkshire weavers had to be taught which fork to use.’ She was quiet for a few minutes, considering what he said. 'Bu
t if I think about it for a minute, with a little updating, there's no reason the same couldn't be said of Bret Easton Ellis.' She put her face in his shoulder and gave herself up to giggles, laughing herself weak at a joke Brunetti didn't understand.

  When she stopped laughing, she took the scarf from her neck and tossed it on the table. 'And you?’ she asked.

  He put his book face down on his knees and faced her. ‘I talked to the whore and her pimp and then to Signora Trevisan and her lawyer.' Slowly, attentive to his story and careful to get the details right, he told her everything that had happened that day, finishing with Signora Trevisan's reaction to his question about the prostitutes.

  'Did her brother have anything to do with prostitutes?' Paola repeated, careful to duplicate Brunetti's exact phrasing. 'And you think she understood what you meant?'

  Brunetti nodded.

  'But the lawyer misunderstood?'

  'Yes, but I don't think it was deliberate. He just didn't get it, that the question was ambiguous and didn't mean that he had sex with them.'

  'She did, though?'

  Brunetti nodded again. 'She's much brighter than he is.'

  'Women usually are,' Paola said and then asked, 'What do you think he might have had to do with them?'

  ‘I don't know, Paola, but her reaction tells me that, whatever it was, she knew about it.'

  Paola said nothing, waiting for him to think it through. He took one of her hands in his, kissed the palm, and let it fall to his bp, where she left it, waiting still.

  'It's the only common thread,' he began, talking more to himself than to her. 'Both of them, Trevisan and Favero, had the number of the bar in Mestre, and that's the place where a pimp is running a string of girls, and there's always a supply of new ones. I don't know about Lotto, except that he ran Trevisan's business for him.'

  He turned Paola's hand over and ran his forefinger across the faint blue veins visible on the back. 'Not a lot, is it?' Paola finally asked. He shook his head.

  The one you talked to, Mara, what did she ask you about the others?'

  'She wanted to know if I knew anything about a girl who died in Treviso, and she said something about girls in a truck. I don't know what she meant.'