CB18 About Face (2009)

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti choked, spitting the whisky back into the glass. He set the glass on the bar, took out his handkerchief, and wiped at his lips. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean it, Guido,’ she said quite amiably. ‘I’ve never been to one, and I wonder if there, at least, anyone manages to have any fun.’

  ‘And you ask me?’ he asked, not sure which tone to use and ending up with something between amusement and indignation.

  Paola said nothing, sipped at her grappa, and Brunetti finally said, ‘I’ve been in two, no, three.’ He waved to the barman and when he came, shoved the glass towards him and signalled for a fresh drink.

  When it arrived, Brunetti said, ‘The first time was when I was working in Naples. I had to arrest the son of the madame: he lived there while studying at the university.’

  ‘What was he studying?’ she inquired, as he knew she would.

  ‘Business management.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said and smiled. ‘Was anyone having fun?’

  ‘I didn’t consider that at the time. I went in with three other men, and we arrested him.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Homicide.’

  ‘And the other times?’

  ‘Once in Udine. I had to question one of the women who worked there.’

  ‘Did you go during working hours?’ she asked, a phrase that conjured up an imaginary picture of the women coming in and punching their time cards, pulling their net stockings and high heels out of a locker, having regular coffee breaks, and sitting around a table, smoking, chatting, and eating.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, as if three in the morning were a regular working hour.

  ‘Anyone having fun?’

  ‘It was probably too late to tell,’ he said. ‘Almost everyone was asleep.’

  ‘Even the woman you went to question.’

  ‘She turned out to be the wrong woman.’

  ‘And the third time?’

  ‘That was a case in Pordenone,’ he said in his most distant voice. ‘But someone called them, and the place was empty when we got there.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said with winsome longing. ‘I did want to know.’

  ‘Sorry I can’t help,’ he said.

  She set her empty glass on the bar and rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek. ‘All things considered, I’m rather glad you can’t,’ she said, then, ‘Shall we go back and lose the rest of our money?’

  12

  They went back inside, content to remain behind the groups crowding around tables, both of them paying more attention to the people playing than to what they won or lost. Like Santa Caterina di Alessandria, the young man was still bound to his wheel: Brunetti found him so immeasurably sad that he could no longer bear to watch him. He should be out chasing girls, cheering on some stupid soccer team or wild rock band, mountain climbing, doing something – anything – excessive and rash and foolish that would consume his youthful energy and leave joyful memories.

  He grabbed Paola’s elbow and all but pulled her into the next room, where people sat around an oval table, tipping up the corners of cards to take a furtive glance. Brunetti remembered the bars of his youth, where rough-looking workers congregated after work to play endless hands of scopa. He recalled the tiny flare-topped glasses of red wine, so dark it appeared black, that each man kept to his right and at which he sipped between hands. The level of liquid seemed never to decrease, and Brunetti could not remember that any of them ever ordered more than one glass a night. They played with exuberance, slapping winning cards down with a mighty thump that made the legs of the table tremble, sometimes leaning forward with a joyous hoot to pull towards them the evening’s winnings. What had that been then, a hundred lire, enough to pay for the wine of the other players?

  He remembered the shouts of encouragement from the men standing at the bar, the billiard players resting on their cues while they gazed at the men who were enjoying a different game, often commenting on its progress. Some of the men at the table had washed their faces and put on their good jackets before they came; others arrived straight from work still in their dark blue boiler suits and heavy boots. Where had those clothes and those boots gone? What, in fact, had happened to all the men who worked with their bodies and their hands? Had they been replaced by the smooth types who kept the exclusive shops and boutiques and who looked as though they would collapse under a heavy weight or before a heavy wind?

  He felt the pressure of Paola’s arm around his waist. ‘How much more of this do we have to do?’ she asked. He looked at his watch and saw that it was already after midnight. ‘Maybe he came only that one night,’ she suggested, then tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn.

  Brunetti looked out over the heads of the people surrounding the tables. These people could be in bed, reading: they could be in bed, doing other things. But they were here, watching little balls and pieces of paper and little white cubes carry away what they had worked weeks, perhaps years, to earn. ‘You’re right,’ he said, bending to kiss the top of her head. ‘I promised you a good time, and here we are, doing this.’

  He felt, rather than saw, her shrug.

  ‘I want to find the Director, show him the picture, see if he recognizes the man. Want to come with me or do you want to wait here?’

  Rather than answer, she turned and started towards the door that led to the stairs. He followed. Downstairs, she sat on a bench opposite the door of the Director’s office, opened her bag, pulled out a book and her glasses, and began to read.

  Brunetti knocked on the door, but no one responded. He went back to the reception desk and asked to speak to the man in charge of security, who arrived a minute later in response to a discreet phone call. Claudio Vasco was a tall man a few years younger than Brunetti who wore a dinner jacket so elegant he might well have shared a tailor with Commissaria Griffoni. Hired to replace one of the men who had been arrested, he shook hands and smiled when Brunetti gave his name.

  Vasco led him down the hall, past Paola, who did not bother to look up from her book, and into the Director’s office. Not bothering to sit down, he studied the photo, and Brunetti, watching him, could all but see his mental fingers flicking through a file of faces. Vasco let the hand holding the photo fall to his side and looked at Brunetti. ‘Is it true you’re the one who arrested those two up there?’ he asked, raising his eyes towards the ceiling and the floor above, where the two croupiers were at work.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered.

  Vasco smiled and handed the photo back to Brunetti. ‘Then I owe you a favour. I just hope you frightened those two bastards enough to keep them honest for a while.’

  ‘Not permanently?’

  Vasco looked at Brunetti as though he had started speaking the language of the birds. ‘Them? It’s just a matter of time until they think of some new system, or one of them wants to go to the Seychelles for vacation. We spend more time watching them than we do the clients,’ he said tiredly. He nodded at the photo and said, ‘He’s been here a few times, once with another guy. Your man’s maybe thirty, a bit shorter han you, and thinner.’

  ‘And the other?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I don’t remember him well,’ Vasco said. ‘All my attention went to this one,’ he said, giving the photo a backward flick with the fingers of his left hand.

  Brunetti raised an eyebrow but Vasco said only, ‘I’ll tell you about it after I find the registration.’ Brunetti knew records were kept of everyone who came to the Casinò, but he had no idea how long they had to be kept on file.

  ‘As I said, I owe you a favour, Commissario.’ He headed towards the door, turned and added, ‘Even if I didn’t, I’d be happy to help you find this bastard, especially if I knew it would get him into trouble.’ Vasco gave a smile that made him ten years younger and was gone, leaving the office door open.

  Through the opening Brunetti could see Paola, who had not looked up either at their approach or Vasco’s departure. He went into the corridor and sat down next to her. ‘What ar
e you reading, sweetie?’ he asked in a deep voice.

  Ignoring him, she turned a page.

  He moved closer and stuck his head between her and the page. ‘What’s that, Princess who?’

  ‘Casamassima,’ she said and slid away from him.

  ‘Is it good?’ he asked, sliding up against her.

  ‘Riveting,’ she answered, and, seeing that she had run out of bench, turned away from him.

  ‘You read a lot of books, angel?’ he persisted in the same intrusive, raspy voice, the voice of every crazy talker who comes to sit next to a person on the vaporetto.

  ‘I read a lot of books, yes,’ she said, then politely, ‘My husband is a policeman, so maybe you better leave me alone.’

  ‘You don’t have to be unfriendly, angel,’ he whined.

  ‘I know. But I have his gun in my purse, and I’m going to shoot you with it if you don’t leave me alone.’

  ‘Oh,’ Brunetti said and moved away from her. Sliding back to the other end of the bench, he crossed his legs and looked at the print of the Rialto Bridge on the wall opposite them. Paola turned a page and returned to London.

  He shifted lower and rested his head against the wall. He considered whether Guarino might deliberately have misled him into thinking that the man lived near here. Perhaps Guarino feared that Brunetti’s participation would compromise the Carabinieris’ control of the investigation. Perhaps he was uncertain where his colleague’s real allegiance lay. And who could fault him for that? Brunetti had but to think of Lieutenant Scarpa to recall that safety’s best part was in seeming trust. And poor Alvise, six months working with Scarpa, learning to seek his praise. And so now Alvise was not to be trusted, not only because of his innate stupidity but because his silly little head had been turned by the attentions of the Lieutenant and he was now sure to rush to him with anything he learned.

  He was dimly conscious of a hand being placed on his left shoulder; thinking it was Paola, coming back to him from Henry James, he placed his own on top of it and gave it a small squeeze. The hand was pulled roughly from under his, and he opened his eyes to see Vasco in front of him, face blank with shock.

  ‘I thought you were my wife,’ was all Brunetti could think to say, turning his head to where Paola sat, observing the two men without appearing to find them more interesting than her book.

  ‘We were talking before he fell asleep,’ she told Vasco, who blinked while he processed this and then smiled and leaned down to clap Brunetti on the shoulder.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen in this place,’ he said. He held up some sheets of paper, saying, ‘I’ve got copies of their passports.’ He went into the Director’s office.

  Brunetti got to his feet and followed him.

  Two papers lay on the desk, and two men looked up at him, the one in the photo and a younger man with hair that came to his collar and little evidence of a neck. ‘They came in together,’ Vasco said.

  Brunetti picked up the first: ‘Antonio Terrasini,’ he read, ‘born in Plati.’ He looked at Vasco. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘I thought you might want to know,’ he answered, smiling. ‘I had the girls check. Aspromonte, just above the National Park.’

  ‘What’s a Calabrian doing here?’

  ‘I’m Pugliese,’ Vasco said neutrally. ‘Might as well ask me the same question.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Brunetti said, setting the first paper down and picking up the other. ‘Giuseppe Strega,’ he read. ‘Born in the same town, but eight years later.’

  Vasco said, ‘I noticed. The girls at the front desk share your curiosity about the first one, though I suspect for different reasons: they think he’s handsome. Both of them, in fact.’ Vasco took the papers back and studied the faces, Terrasini with the angled eyebrows over almond-shaped eyes and the other with wings of poet’s hair sweeping in from both sides of his face. ‘I don’t see it, myself,’ Vasco said and let the papers fall to the desk.

  Neither did Brunetti, who said, ‘Strange creatures, women.’ Then he finally asked, ‘Why’s he a bastard?’

  ‘Because he’s a bad loser,’ Vasco answered. ‘None of them likes to lose. Though I think some of them don’t really care one way or the other, only they can’t let themselves know they think that.’ He looked at Brunetti to see whether he was following, and at his nod continued.

  ‘One night he lost, must have been close to fifty thousand Euros. I’m not sure exactly how much, but the other man on security called me and told me there was a heavy loser at one of the blackjack tables and he was afraid there was going to be trouble. That’s where the ones who think they’re smart always believe they’re going to win: counting cards, this system, that system. They’re all crazy: we always win.’ He saw Brunetti’s expression and said, ‘Sorry, doesn’t matter, does it? Anyway, when I got there I spotted him right away: guy looked like a ticking bomb. You could feel the energy coming from him, like from a furnace.

  ‘I saw there weren’t many chips in front of him, so I figured I’d stay around and be there when he finally lost it all. Took him two hands to do that, and as soon as the croupier raked them in, he started shouting, saying the deck was stacked, that he’d see the croupier never dealt another hand.’

  Vasco gave a shrug that indicated irritation and resignation. ‘Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, they always say the same things. Make the same threats.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Giulio – the guy who called me – was on the other side of him by then, so we came up to him together and . . . well, we helped him from the table and to the stairs. And then downstairs. He quietened down some on the way, but we still thought we should get rid of him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. We waited while he got his coat, and then we walked – escorted – him to the front door.’

  ‘He say anything? Threaten you?’

  ‘No, but you should have felt him,’ Vasco began and then, as if he recalled the way Brunetti had touched his hand, said, ‘I mean, you should have seen him. It’s like electricity was going through him. So we took him to the door, calling him “Signore” and being extra-polite to him, the way we have to be, and then we waited until he walked away.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we went back and put him on the list.’

  ‘The list?’

  ‘The list of people who can’t come back. If they behave like that, or if someone in their family calls up and gives their name and tells us not to let them in, then we bar them.’ Again, that shrug. ‘Not that it makes any difference. They can go to Campione, to Jesolo, or there’s plenty of houses here in the city where they can gamble, especially since the Chinese got here. But at least we got rid of him.’

  ‘How long ago did this happen?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I don’t remember exactly: the date should be there,’ he said, pointing to the paper on the desk: ‘Yes, the twentieth of November.’

  ‘What about the one who was with him?’

  ‘I didn’t know at the time that they had come in together. I was told, later, when I went down to bar him. I don’t remember seeing the other guy.’

  ‘Is he barred, too?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No reason to do it,’ Vasco said.

  ‘May I take these?’ Brunetti asked, indicating the photocopies.

  ‘Of course. I told you I owed you a favour.’

  ‘Would you do me another one?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘Lift the ban on him and call me if he comes in.’

  ‘If you give me your phone number, I will,’ Vasco replied. ‘I’ll tell the girls at the desk to call you if I’m not here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said and then thought to ask, ‘You think they can be trusted? If they think the guy is so attractive?’

  Vasco’s smile bloomed. ‘I told them it was you who arrested those two shits upstairs. You can trust them with anything now.’

  ‘Thanks.’


  ‘Besides,’ Vasco said, picking up the papers and handing them to Brunetti, ‘they’re gamblers: none of the girls would touch either of them with a boathook.’

  13

  The next morning, Brunetti went into Signorina Elettra’s office carrying the photocopies. As if in visual harmony with the papers, she was wearing black and white, a pair of what looked like black Levi’s – though black Levi’s that had spent some time in a tailor’s hands – and a turtleneck so white it made him nervous that there might be some latent smudge on the documents. She studied the copies of the passport photos of the two men, looking back and forth from one to the other, and finally said, ‘Handsome devils, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, wondering why it seemed to be every woman’s first reaction to these men. Perhaps they were good looking, but one of them was suspected of being involved in a murder, and the only thing women had to say about them was that they were good looking. It was enough to make a man question his belief in the basic good sense of women. His better self prevented him from adding to the list of charges the fact that they were from the South and one of them, at least, had the surname of a well-known Camorra family.

  ‘I wondered if you had access, or could have access, to the files of the Ministry of the Interior,’ Brunetti said with the calm of the habitual criminal. ‘The passport files.’

  Signorina Elettra held the photos to the light, glancing more closely at them. ‘It’s hard to tell from a copy if the passports are real or not,’ she said with the calm of someone familiar with the work of habitual criminals.

  ‘No hotline to the Minister’s office?’ he asked with false jocularity.

  ‘Unfortunately, no,’ she answered, straight faced. Absently, she picked up a pencil and put its point on the desk, ran her fingers down the sides, flipped it over, and repeated the motion a few times, then let it fall to her desk. ‘I’ll start with the Passport Office,’ she said, just as if their files stood to her left, and all she had to do was leaf through them. Her hand reached out, as if by its own will, to the pencil, and this time she tapped the eraser against the photos and said, ‘If they are real, I’ll check our files to see what we have on them.’ As an afterthought, she asked, ‘When would you like to have this, Dottore?’