Death in a Strange Country

by Donna Leon

  Soon after Rossi left, Fosco called back. ‘Guido, I spoke to a few people here. The word is that he lost a fortune in the Gulf business. A ship that was carrying an entire cargo – and no one knew what was in the cargo – disappeared, probably taken by pirates. Because the boycott was in effect, he couldn’t get insurance.’

  ‘So he lost the whole lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any idea how much?’

  ‘No one’s sure. I’ve heard estimates that range from five to fifteen billion, but no one could give me an exact amount. In any case, the word is that he managed to hold things together for a while, but now he’s got serious cash-flow problems. One friend of mine at Corriere said Viscardi’s really got nothing to worry about because he’s tied into some sort of government contract. And he’s got holdings in other countries. My contact wasn’t certain where. Do you want me to try to find out more?’

  Signor Viscardi was beginning to sound to Brunetti like any one of the rising generation of businessmen, those who had replaced hard work with boldness, and honesty with connections. ‘No, I don’t think so, Riccardo. I just wanted to get an idea of whether he’d try something like this.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, it looks like he might be in a position to want to give it a try, doesn’t it?’

  Fosco offered a bit more information. ‘The word is that he’s very well connected, but the person I spoke to wasn’t sure just how. Do you want me to ask around some more?’

  ‘Did it sound like it might be Mafia?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘It looks that way.’ Fosco gave a resigned laugh. ‘But when doesn’t it? It seems, though, that he’s also connected to people in the government.’

  Brunetti resisted, in his turn, the temptation to ask when didn’t it sound that way and, instead, asked, ‘What about his personal life?’

  ‘He’s got a wife and a couple of kids here. She’s some sort of den mother for the Knights of Malta – you know, charity balls and visits to hospitals. And a mistress in Verona; I think it’s Verona. Some place out your way.’

  ‘You said he’s arrogant.’

  ‘Yes. A few people I spoke to say he’s more than that.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Two said he could be dangerous.’

  ‘Personally?’

  ‘You mean, will he pull a knife?’ Fosco asked with a laugh.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘No, that’s not the impression I got. Not personally, at any rate. But he likes to take chances; at least that’s the reputation he has here. And, as I said, he’s a very well-protected man, and he has no hesitation about asking his friends to help him.’ Fosco paused for a moment and then added, ‘One person I spoke to was even more outspoken, but he wouldn’t tell me anything exact. He just said that anyone who dealt with Viscardi should be very careful.’

  Brunetti decided to treat this last lightly and said, ‘I’m not afraid of knives.’

  Fosco’s response was immediate. ‘I used not to be afraid of machine guns, Guido.’ Then, embarrassed at the remark, he added, ‘I mean it, Guido, be careful with him.

  ‘All right, I will. And thanks,’ he said, then added, ‘I still haven’t heard anything, but when I do, I’ll let you know.’ Most of the police who knew Fosco had put out the word that they were interested in knowing who had done the shooting and who had done the sending, but whoever it was had been very cautious, knowing how well-liked Fosco was with the police, and years had passed in silence. Brunetti believed it was hopeless, but he still asked the occasional question, dropped a hint here and there, spoke vaguely to suspects about the chance of a trade-off in exchange for the information he wanted. But, in all these years, he had never got close.

  ‘I appreciate it, Guido. But I’m not so sure it’s all that important any more.’ Was this wisdom or resignation he was hearing.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m getting married.’ Love, then, better than either.

  ‘Congratulations, Riccardo. Who?’

  ‘I don’t think you know her, Guido. She works on the magazine, but she’s just been here a year or so.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘Next month.’

  Brunetti didn’t bother with false promises to try to attend, but he spoke from the heart when he said, ‘I hope you’ll both be happy, Riccardo.’

  ‘Thanks, Guido. Look, if I hear anything more about this guy, I’ll call, all right?’

  ‘I’d appreciate it.’ With more good wishes for the future, Brunetti said goodbye and hung up. Could it be this simple? Could his business losses have driven Viscardi to organize something as rash as a fake robbery? Only a stranger to Venice could have chosen Ruffolo, a young man infinitely better at being caught than at being criminal. But perhaps the fact that he was so recently out of prison had served as sufficient recommendation.

  There was nothing more he could do here today, and Patta would be the first to scream police brutality if a millionaire was questioned on the same day by three different policemen, especially if the questioning took place while the man was still in hospital. There was no sense in going to Vicenza on a day when the American offices would be closed, though it might be easier to defy Patta’s order if he went in his own time. No, let the doctor swim towards the bait until next week, when he could easily give another gentle tug on the line. For today, he would drop his line in Venetian waters and go after different prey.

  Signora Concetta Ruffolo lived, her son Giuseppe sharing it with her during those brief periods when he was not incarcerated, in a two-room apartment near Campo San Boldo, an area of the city characterized by proximity to the severed tower of that church, to no convenient vaporetto stop, and, if one is but willing to expand the definition of the word ‘proximity’, to the church of San Simeone Piccolo, where Sunday Mass is still said, in open protest to concepts such as modernity or relevance, in Latin. The widow lived in an apartment owned by a public foundation, IRE, which rents its many apartments to those people judged sufficiently needy to be awarded them. Often, they were given to Venetians; how Signora Ruffolo had been given one remained a mystery, though no mystery surrounded the reality of her need.

  Brunetti crossed the Rialto Bridge and went down past San Cassiano, then cut to his left, soon to find the squat tower of San Boldo on his right. He turned into a narrow calle and stopped in front of a low building. The name ‘Ruffolo’ was engraved in delicate script on a metal nameplate to the right of the bell; rust streaked down from both and discoloured the plaster that slowly peeled from the front wall of the building. He rang the bell, waited a moment, rang it again, waited, and rang it a third time.

  A full two minutes after his last ring, he heard a voice ask from inside, ‘Si, chi è?’

  ‘It’s me, Signora Concetta. Brunetti.’

  The door was quickly pulled open and, looking into the dark hall, he had his usual sensation that he was looking at a barrel and not a woman. Signora Concetta, her family history recounted, had forty years ago been the reigning beauty of Caltanisetta. Young men, it was maintained, would spend hours walking up and down Corso Vittorio Emmanuele in the hope of no more than a glimpse of the fair Concetta. She could have had her pick of them, from the mayor’s son to the doctor’s younger brother, but instead she had chosen the third son of the family which had once ruled the entire province with an iron fist. She had become a Ruffolo by marriage, and when Annuziato’s debts had driven them from Sicily, she had become an alien in this cold and inhospitable city. And, in quick succession, she had become a widow, living on a pension paid by the State and the charity of her husband’s family, and, even before Giuseppe could finish school, she had become the mother of a felon.

  From the day of her husband’s death, to which event her emotional response was unfathomable, even to her son, perhaps even to her herself – she had clothed herself solidly in black: dress, shoes, stockings, even a scarf for those times she left the house. Though she grew stout
er with the years, her face more lined with the grief of her son’s life, the black remained unchanged: she would wear it to her grave, perhaps beyond.

  ‘Buon giorno, Signora Concetta,’ Brunetti said, smiling and offering her his hand.

  He watched her face, read her expression as a child would the quickly-turning pages of a comic book. There was the instant recognition, the instinctive chill of disgust at what he represented, but then he saw her remember the kindness he had shown to her son, her star, her sun, and with that her face softened and her mouth turned up in a smile of real pleasure. ‘Ah, Dottore, you’ve come to visit me again. How nice, how nice. But you should have called so that I could give the house a real cleaning, make you some fresh pastries.’ He understood ‘called’, ‘house’, ‘cleaning’, and ‘pastries’, so he constructed her speech to mean that.

  ‘Signora, a cup of your good coffee is more than I could hope to have.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she said, putting her hand under his arm and pulling him towards her. She backed through the open door of her apartment, keeping her hold on his arm, as if she were afraid he would try to escape her.

  When they were inside the apartment, she closed the door with one hand and continued to pull him forward with the other. The apartment was so small that no one could be lost in it, and yet she kept her hand on his arm and led him into the small living room. ‘Take this chair, Dottore,’ she said, leading him to an overstuffed armchair covered in shiny orange cloth, where she finally released him. When he hesitated, she insisted, ‘Sit, sit. I’ll make us some coffee.’

  He did as she commanded, sinking down until his knees were on a level almost with his chin. She switched on the light that stood beside his chair; the Ruffolos lived in the endless twilight of ground-floor apartments, but even lights at midday could do nothing to work against the damp.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she commanded and went to the other side of the room, where she pushed aside a flowered curtain, behind which lay a sink and stove. From his side of the room, he could see that the taps gleamed and the surface of the stove was almost radiant in its whiteness. She opened a cabinet and pulled down the straight cylindrical espresso pot he always associated with the South, he didn’t know why. She unscrewed it, rinsed it carefully, rinsed it again, filled it with water, and then reached down a glass canister filled with coffee. With gestures grown rhythmic with decades of repetition, she filled the pot, lit the stove, and placed the pot over the flame.

  The room was unchanged from the last time he was there. Yellow plastic flowers stood in front of the plaster statue of the Madonna; embroidered lace ovals, rectangles, and circles covered every surface; on top of them stood ranks of family photos, in all of which appeared Peppino: Peppino dressed as a tiny sailor, Peppino in the brilliant white of his First Communion, Peppino held on the back of a donkey, grinning through his fear. In all of the photos, the child’s outsized ears were visible, making him look almost like a cartoon figure. In one corner stood what could only be described as a shrine to her late husband: their wedding photo, in which Brunetti could see her long-gone beauty; her husband’s walking stick propped in a corner, ivory knob aglow even in this dim light; his lupara, its deadly short barrels kept polished and oiled, more than a decade after his death, as if even death had not freed him from the need to live up to the cliché of the Sicilian male, ever ready to defend with his shotgun any offence to his honour or his family.

  He continued to watch as, seeming to ignore him, she pulled down a tray, plates, and, from another cabinet, a metal tin that she prised open with a knife. From it, she removed pastries, and then more pastries, piling them high on one of the plates. From another tin, she took sweets wrapped in violent-coloured foil and stacked them on another plate. The coffee boiled up, and she quickly grabbed the pot, flipped it upside down in one swift motion, and carried the tray to the large table that took up most of one side of the room. Like a dealer, she passed out plates and saucers, spoons and cups, setting them carefully on the plastic tablecloth, and then went back to bring the coffee to the table. When everything was done, she turned to him and waved her hand towards the table.

  Brunetti had to push himself up out of the low chair, both hands pressing firmly down upon the arms. When he was at the table, she pulled his chair out for him and then, when he was seated, sat opposite him. The Capodimonte saucers both had hairline cracks in them, radiating from the edges to the centres like the papery wrinkles he remembered in his grandmother’s cheeks. The spoons gleamed, and beside his plate lay a linen napkin ironed into a state of rectangular submission.

  Signora Ruffolo poured two cups of coffee, placed one in front of Brunetti, and then put the silver sugar bowl beside his plate. Using silver tongs, she piled six pastries, each the size of an apricot, on his plate, and then used the same tongs to set four of the foil-wrapped sweets beside it.

  He added sugar to his coffee and sipped at it. ‘It’s the best coffee in Venice, Signora. You still won’t tell me your secret?’

  She smiled at that, and Brunetti saw that she had lost another tooth, this the right front one. He bit into a pastry, felt the sugar surge out into his mouth. Ground almonds, sugar, the finest of pastry dough, and yet more sugar. The next had ground pistachios. The third was chocolate, and the fourth exploded with pastry creme. He took a bite of the fifth and set half of it down on his plate.

  ‘Eat. You’re too thin, Dottore. Eat. Sugar gives energy. And it’s good for your blood.’ The nouns conveyed the message.

  ‘They’re wonderful, Signora Concetta. But I just had lunch, and if I eat too many of them, I won’t eat my dinner, and then my wife will be angry with me.’

  She nodded. She understood the anger of wives.

  He finished his coffee and set the cup down on the saucer. Not three seconds passed before she was up, across the room, and back with a carved glass decanter and two glasses no bigger than olives. ‘Marsala. From home,’ she said, pouring him a thimbleful. He took the glass from her, waited while she poured no more than a few drops into her own glass, tapped his glass to hers, and sipped at it. It tasted of sun, and the sea, and songs that told of love and death.

  He set his glass down, looked across the table at her, and said, ‘Signora Concetta, I think you know why I’ve come.’

  She nodded. ‘Peppino?’

  ‘Yes, Signora.’

  She held her hand up, palm towards him, as if to ward off his words or perhaps to protect herself from the malocchio.

  ‘Signora, I think Peppino is involved in something very bad.’

  ‘But this time …’ she began, but then she remembered who Brunetti was, and she said only, ‘he is not a bad boy.’

  Brunetti waited until he was sure she was not going to say anything else, and then he continued. ‘Signora, I spoke to a friend of mine today. He tells me that a man I think Peppino might be involved with is a very bad man. Do you know anything about this? About what Peppino is doing, about the people he’s been seeing since …’ He wasn’t sure how to phrase it. ‘Since he came home?’

  She considered this for a long time before she answered. ‘Peppino was with very bad people when he was in that place.’ Even now, after all these years, she could not bring herself to name that place. ‘He talked about those people.’

  ‘What did he say about them, Signora?’

  ‘He said that they were important, that his luck was going to change.’ Yes, Brunetti remembered this about Peppino: his luck was always going to change.

  ‘Did he tell you anything more, Signora?’

  She shook her head. It was a negation, but he wasn’t sure what she was denying. Brunetti had never been sure in the past just how much Signora Concetta knew of what her son actually did. He imagined she knew far more than she indicated, but he feared she probably kept that knowledge hidden even from herself. There is only so much truth a mother can permit herself.

  ‘Did you meet any of them, Signora?’

  She shook her head fiercely.
‘He will not bring them here, not to my home.’ This, beyond question, was the truth.

  ‘Signora, we are looking for Peppino now.’

  She closed her eyes and bowed her head. He had been out of that place for only two weeks, and already the police were looking for him.

  ‘What did he do, Dottore?’

  ‘We’re not sure, Signora. We want to talk to him. Some people say they saw him where a crime took place. But all they saw is a photo of Peppino.’

  ‘So maybe it wasn’t my son?’

  ‘We don’t know, Signora. That’s why we want to talk to him. Do you know where he is?’

  She shook her head, but, again, Brunetti didn’t know if that meant she didn’t know or she didn’t want to say.

  ‘Signora, if you talk to Peppino, will you tell him two things for me?’

  ‘Yes, Dottore.’

  ‘Please tell him that we need to talk to him. And tell him that these people are bad people, and they might be dangerous.’

  ‘Dottore, you’re a guest in my house, so I shouldn’t ask you this.’

  ‘What, Signora?’

  ‘Is this the truth or is this a trick?’

  ‘Signora, you tell me something to swear on, and I’ll swear this is the truth.’

  With no hesitation, she demanded, ‘Will you swear on your mother’s heart?’

  ‘Signora, I swear on my mother’s heart that this is the truth. Peppino should come and talk to us. And he should be very careful with these people.’

  She set her glass down, untasted. ‘I’ll try to talk to him, Dottore. But maybe it will be different this time?’ She couldn’t keep the hope from her voice. Brunetti realized that Peppino must have told his mother a great deal about his important friends, about this new chance, when everything would be different, and they would finally be rich.

  ‘I’m sorry, Signora,’ he said, meaning it. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for the coffee, and for the pastries. No one in Venice knows how to make them like you do.’

  She pushed herself to her feet and grabbed a handful of the sweets. She slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. ‘For your children. They’re growing. Sugar’s good for them.’