by Donna Leon
Mara sat on the edge of one of three chairs. There was no other furniture, no table, no sink, nothing but three straightbacked chairs and, on the floor, a scattering of cigarette butts. She looked up when Brunetti came in, recognized him, and in a relaxed voice said, “Good morning.” 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 makeup 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.’ She begged me never to start smoking, and I promised her that 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 other 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 then 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 then 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 onto the floor and reached into her blouse to pull out a gold-plated locket the size of a hundred-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,” Brunetti agreed. “We sent our daughter to the sisters until she finished grammar 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 offense.
“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 Sāo 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 that 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 storytelling.
“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?”
“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 humor, 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 that he couldn’t marry me until it was settled. I 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 h
e 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 fifty 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 that 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 over the bar where I could live. 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 fifty thousand lire a month. I couldn’t speak the language, but I could count; I knew that when that got sent back to my aunt, it would be less than thirty dollars. That’s not a lot for an old woman and a baby to live on, not even in Brazil.”
There was a knock, and then the door opened. Brunetti went over and took a tin tray from Gravini. As he went back to Mara, she pulled the third chair between them and motioned to Brunetti to set the tray down there. They both stirred sugar into their coffee. He nodded down at the sandwiches that lay on the plate, but she shook her head.
“Not until I finish,” she said, and sipped at her coffee. “I wasn’t stupid; I knew the choices I had. So I went to work at the bar. It was hard the first couple of times, but then I got used to it. That was two years ago.”
“What happened between then and now? To bring you to Mestre?” Brunetti asked.
“I got sick. Pneumonia, I think. I hate this cold weather,” she said, shivering unconsciously at the mere thought of it. “While I was in the hospital, the bar burned down. Someone said it was arson. I don’t know. I hope it was. But when it was time for me to get out, Franco,” she said, nodding off to her left, as if she knew Franco was in the next cell, “came and paid the bill and brought me back here. I’ve been working for him ever since.” She finished her coffee and set the cup back on the tray.
This was a story Brunetti had heard more times than he cared to remember, but this was the first time he’d heard it told with not even a trace of self-pity, with no attempt to turn the teller into an unwilling victim of overwhelming forces.
“Did he,” Brunetti asked, nodding his head toward the same wall, though Franco, as it happened, was lodged behind the opposite one, “have anything to do with the bar in Milan or the one where you work now? Or with Eduardo?”
She stared down at the floor. “I don’t know.” Brunetti said nothing, and she finally added, “I think he bought me. Or bought my contract.” She looked up then and asked, “Why do you want to know?”
Brunetti saw no reason to lie to her. “We found the phone number of the bar where you’re working now in the course of another investigation. We’re trying to find out how they’re related.”
“What’s the other investigation?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” Brunetti said. “But, so far, it has nothing to do with you or Eduardo or anything about that.”
“Can I ask you a question?” she said.
Whenever Chiara asked him that, Brunetti was in the habit of telling her that she couldn’t very well ask him an answer, but, instead, he said, “Of course.”
“Does it have anything to do with …,” she began and then paused, looking for the right word. “Well, with some of us who have died?”
“I don’t know who you mean by ‘us,’” Brunetti said.
“Whores,” she explained.
“No.” His answer was instant and she believed him. “Why do you ask?”
“No special reason. We hear things.” She reached out and picked up a sandwich, bit delicately at one end, and then brushed absently at the crumbs that cascaded down the front of her blouse.
“What sort of things do you hear?”
“Just things,” she said, taking another bite.
“Mara,” he began, not certain what tone to use. “If there’s something you’d like to tell me, or ask me, it will rest between us.” Then, before she could speak, he added, “Not if it’s about a crime. But if you just want to tell me something or find out about something, it’s between us.”
“Not official?”
“No, not official.”
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Guido,” he answered.
She smiled at the thought that he had used his own name. “Guido the Plumber?”
He nodded.
She took another bite and, still chewing, said, “We hear things,” then looked down and brushed at the new crumbs. “You know, word travels when things happen. So we hear things, but it’s hard, ever, to be sure where we heard it or who said it.”
“What is it you heard, Mara?”
“That someone has been killing us.” As soon as she said it, she shook her head. “No, that’s wrong. Not killing us. But we’ve been dying.”
“I don’t understand the difference,” Brunetti said.
“There was that young one. I can’t remember her name, the little Yugoslavian. She killed herself in the summer, and then Anja, the one from Bulgaria, she got it out in the field. I didn’t know the little one, but I did know Anja. She’d go with anyone.” Brunetti remembered these crimes and remembered that the police had never even discovered the victims’ names. “And then that truck that went off the road.” She paused and looked at him. The conjunction of nouns struck a chord, but Brunetti could produce no clear memory.
When he said nothing, she continued, “One of the girls said she’d heard—she couldn’t remember where—that the girls were coming down here. I forget from where.”
“To work as prostitutes?” he asked and immediately regretted the question.
She pulled back from him and stopped speaking. The expression in her eyes changed as veils were lowered. “I don’t remember.”
Her voice told Brunetti that he had lost her, that his question had severed the fine thread that had momentarily held them together.
“Did you ever say anything about this?” he asked.
“To the police?” She finished the question for him with a snort of disbelief. She tossed the remnant of sandwich she still held down onto the tray. “Are you going to charge me with anything?” she asked.
“No,” Brunetti said.
“Then, can I go?” The woman he’d spoken to was gone, replaced by the whore who had taken him back to her room.
“Yes, you’re free to go whenever you want.” Before she could get to her feet, Brunetti asked, “Is it safe for you to leave before he does?” again nodding toward the wall behind which Franco was not.
“Him,” she said, puffing out her cheeks with contempt.
Brunetti went over to the door and tapped on it. “The signorina is leaving now,” he said when Gravini opened the door.
She picked up her jacket, passed in front of Brunetti, and left without saying a word. When she was gone, Brunetti looked at Gravini. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said, taking back the file, which Gravini was still holding.
“It’s nothing, Dottore.”
“If you’ll get the tray, I’ll talk to the man now.”
“Should I get some more cigarettes, sir? Or coffee?” Gravini asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Not until I get my fifty thousand lire back from Franco,” Brunetti said and let himself into the room.
One glance was enough to tell Brunetti all he needed to know about Franco: Franco was a tough guy, Franco ate nails, Franco wasn’t afraid of cops. But from the papers in his hand and from what della Corte had said, Brunetti knew that Franco was a heroin addict who had been in police custody for more than ten hours.
“Good morning, Signor Silvestri,” Brunetti said pleasantly, quite as though he’d come to talk o
f the weekend soccer results.
Silvestri unfolded his arms and looked at Brunetti, recognizing him immediately. “Plumber,” he said and spat on the floor.
“Please, Signor Silvestri,” Brunetti said patiently as he pulled out one of the two empty chairs and sat. He opened the file again and looked down at the papers, flipped the top sheet over and looked at the one beneath it. “Assault, and living off the earnings of a whore, and I notice here that you were arrested for selling drugs in, let me see,” he said, flipping back to the first page and reading the date, “January of last year. Now, two charges of accepting money offered to a prostitute will cause you a certain amount of trouble, but I suspect that—”
Silvestri cut him off. “Look, let’s get on with it, all right, Mr. Plumber? Charge me, and I’ll call my lawyer, and then he’ll come down here and get me out.” Brunetti glanced idly in his direction and noticed the way Silvestri held his hands clenched together at his sides, saw the thin film of perspiration on his brow.
“I’d certainly be more than happy to do that, Signor Silvestri, but I’m afraid that what we have here is a far more serious matter than any of the charges in your file.” Brunetti closed the file and tapped it against his knee. “In fact, it’s something far beyond the competence of the city police force.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” As Brunetti watched, the other man forced himself to relax his hands, open them, and place them casually, palms down, on his lap.
“It means that, for some time, the bar you frequent with your, ah, with your colleagues has been under surveillance, and they’ve had a tap on the phone.”
“They?” Silvestri asked.
“SISMI,” Brunetti explained. “Specifically, the antiterrorism squad.”
“Antiterrorism?” Silvestri repeated stupidly.
“Yes, it seems that the bar was used by some of the people involved in the bombing of the museum in Florence,” Brunetti said, inventing as he went along. “I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this, but as you seem to be caught up in it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t speak of it.”
