by Donna Leon
Why bring a business lawyer to a meeting with the police? Why involve him in something that was or might become a criminal matter? Zambino had the reputation, he recalled, of being a forceful man, not without enemies, yet he hadn’t said a word during the entire time Brunetti was in Patta’s office.
He called down and asked Vianello to come up. When the sergeant came in some minutes later, Brunetti waved him to a seat. ‘What do you know about a certain Dottor Paolo Mitri and Avvocato Giuliano Zambino?’
Vianello must have learned their names in some other way, for his answer was immediate. ‘Zambino lives in Dorsoduro, not far from the Salute. Big place, must be three hundred metres. He specializes in corporate and business law. Most of his clients are out on the mainland: chemicals and petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and one factory that manufactures heavy earth-moving equipment. One of the chemical companies he works for was caught dumping arsenic into the laguna three years ago: he got them off with a fine of three million lire and the promise not to do it again.’
Brunetti listened until the sergeant had finished, wondering if Signorina Elettra had been the source of this information. ‘And Mitri?’
Brunetti sensed that Vianello was fighting hard to disguise his pride in having so swiftly gathered all of this information. He continued eagerly, ‘He got his start in one of the pharmaceutical companies, began there when he got out of university. He’s a chemist, but he doesn’t work at that any more, not after he took over the first factory, then two more. He’s branched out in the last few years and as well as a number of factories, he owns that travel agency, two estate agencies and is rumoured to be the major shareholder in the string of fast-food restaurants that opened last year.’
‘Any trouble, either of them?’
‘No,’ Vianello said. ‘Neither of them.’
‘Could that be negligence?’
‘On whose part?’
‘Ours.’
The sergeant considered this for a moment. ‘Possibly. There’s a lot of that around.’
‘We might take a look, eh?’
‘Signorina Elettra is already talking to their banks.’
‘Talking?’
Instead of answering, Vianello spread his hands flat on Brunetti’s desk and aped typing into a computer.
‘How long has he owned this travel agency?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Five or six years, I think.’
‘I wonder how long they’ve been arranging these tours.’ Brunetti said.
‘I can remember seeing the posters for them a few years ago, in the agency we use down in Castello,’ Vianello said. ‘I wondered how a week in Thailand could cost so little. I asked Nadia and she explained what it meant. So I’ve sort of kept an eye on the windows in travel agencies since then.’ Vianello did not explain the motive for his curiosity and Brunetti did not ask.
‘Where else do they go?’
‘The tours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Usually Thailand, I think, but there are lots of them to the Philippines. And Cuba. And in the last couple of years they’ve started them to Burma and Cambodia.’
‘What are the ads like?’ asked Brunetti, who had never paid any attention to them.
‘They used to say things overtly: “In the middle of the red light district, friendly companions, all dreams come true”, that sort of thing. But now that the law’s been changed, it’s all in a sort of code: “Hotel staff very open-minded, near the night spots, friendly hostesses.” It’s all the same sort of thing, though, lots of whores for men too lazy to go out on the road and look for them.’
Brunetti had no idea how Paola had learned about this or how much she knew concerning Mitri’s agency. ‘Has Mitri’s place got the same sort of ads?’
Vianello shrugged. ‘I suppose so. The ones who do it all seem to use a similar coded language. You learn to read it after a while. But most of them also do a lot of legitimate booking: the Maldives, the Seychelles, wherever there’s cheap fun and lots of sun.’
For a moment Brunetti feared that Vianello, who had had a pre-cancerous growth removed from his back some years ago and had militantly avoided the sun since then, would launch into his favourite topic, but instead Vianello said, ‘I’ve asked about him. Downstairs. Just checking to see if the boys know anything.’
‘And?’
Vianello shook his head. ‘Nothing. Might as well not exist.’
‘Well, it’s not illegal, what he’s doing,’ Brunetti said.
‘I know it’s not illegal,’ Vianello finally said. ‘But it should be.’ Then, before Brunetti could answer, he added, ‘I know it’s not our job to make the law. Probably not even our job to question it. But no one should be allowed to send grown men off to have sex with children.’
Put like that, Brunetti realized, there was little to be argued against it. But all the travel agency did, so far as the law was concerned, was arrange for the purchase of tickets so that people could travel to other places and arrange hotels for them when they arrived. What they did when they were there was entirely their own affair. Brunetti found himself remembering his university course in logic and how excited he had been by the all but mathematical simplicity of it. All men are mortal. Giovanni is a man. Therefore Giovanni is mortal. There had been rules, he remembered, for checking the validity of a syllogism, something about a major term and a middle term: they had to be in certain places and not too many of them could be negative.
The details seemed to have disappeared, flown off to join all those other facts, statistics, and first principles that had escaped his keeping in the decades since he had finished his exams and been accepted into the ranks of the doctors of law. He recalled, even at this remove, the tremendous sense of assurance that had come to him in learning that certain laws did apply and could be used to govern the validity of conclusions, that they could be demonstrated to be correct or arrived at truly.
The ensuing years had worn away that assurance. Now truth, seemed to reside in the possession of those who could shout the loudest or hire the best lawyers. And there was no syllogism that could resist the argument of a gun or a knife, or any of the other forms of argumentation with which his professional life was filled.
He pulled himself away from these reflections and returned his attention to Vianello, caught him in mid-sentence: ‘. . . a lawyer?’
‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti said. ‘I was thinking about something else.’
‘I wondered if you’d thought of getting a lawyer for this.’
Ever since he had walked down from Patta’s office, Brunetti had been thrusting away this idea. Just as he would not answer for his wife to the men in the upstairs office, he had not allowed himself to plan a strategy for dealing with the legal consequences of Paola’s behaviour. Though he was acquainted with most of the criminal lawyers in the city and was on reasonably good terms with many of them, he knew them only in the most strictly professional way. He found himself going through their names, trying to recall that of the man who had made a successful defence in a murder case two years ago. He pulled his mind away. ‘My wife will have to take care of that, I think.’
Vianello nodded and got to his feet. He didn’t say anything further and left the office.
When he was gone, Brunetti pushed himself up and began to pace back and forth between the wardrobe and the window. Signorina Elettra was checking out the bank records of two men who had done nothing more than report a crime and suggest it be settled in a way that would give least trouble to the person who all but boasted of having committed it. They had gone to the trouble of coming to the Questura, where they had offered a compromise, which would save the culprit from the legal consequences of her behaviour. And Brunetti was going to sit idly by as their finances were investigated in a manner that was probably as illegal as was the original crime of which one of them was the victim.
He had no doubts whatsoever about the illegality of what Paola had done. He stopped walking and considered that she had never denied
it was illegal. She simply didn’t care. He spent his days and his life in defence of the concept of the law, and she could spit on it as though it were some stupid convention that was in no way binding on her, just because she didn’t agree. He felt the pulse of his heart increase as his indignation mounted towards the anger that had lurked in his chest for days now. She answered a whim, following some self-constructed definition of right behaviour, and he was simply supposed to stand idly by, mouth agape at the nobility of her actions, while his career was destroyed.
Brunetti caught himself sinking into this mood and stopped himself before he began to lament the effect all this would have on his position among his peers at the Questura, the cost to his self-respect. So he was forced, here, to give himself much the same answer he had given Mitri: he was not responsible for his wife’s behaviour.
The explanation, however, did little to calm his anger. He resumed pacing, but when that proved fruitless, he went downstairs to Signorina Elettra’s office.
She smiled when he came in. ‘The Vice-Questore has gone to lunch,’ she offered but said nothing else, waiting to catch Brunetti’s mood.
‘Did they go with him?’
She nodded.
‘Signorina,’ he began, then paused as he thought how to phrase it. ‘I don’t think it’s necessary that you ask any further questions about those men.’
He saw her begin to protest, and he spoke before she could make any sort of objection. ‘There’s no suspicion that either one of them has committed a crime, and I think it would be impolitic to begin investigations about them. Especially in these circumstances.’ He left it to her imagination to supply just what those circumstances were.
She nodded. ‘I understand, sir.’
‘I didn’t ask if you understood, Signorina. I’m saying that you are not to initiate an investigation of their finances.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, turning from him and flipping on the screen of her computer.
‘Signorina,’ he repeated, his voice level. When she looked up from the screen, he said, ‘I’m serious about this, Signorina. I don’t want any questions asked about them.’
‘Then none will be asked, sir,’ she said and smiled with radiant falseness. Like a soubrette in a cheap film comedy, she put her elbows on the table, laced her fingers together and propped her chin on their linked surface. ‘Will that be all, Commissario, or do you have something you do want me to do?’
He turned away from her without answering, started towards the stairs, but instead turned and left the Questura. He walked up the embankment towards the Greek church, crossed the bridge, and went into the bar that stood facing him.
‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ the barman greeted him. ‘Cosa desidera?’
Before knowing what to order, Brunetti looked down at his watch. He’d lost all sense of time and was surprised to see that it was almost noon. ‘Un’ombra,’ he answered and, when it came, drank the small glass of white wine without bothering to sip or taste it. It didn’t help at all, and he had sense enough to know that another would help even less. He dropped a thousand lire on the counter and went back to the Questura. He spoke to no one, merely went up to his office and got his coat, then left again and went home.
At lunch, it was clear that Paola had told the children about what had happened. Chiara looked at her mother with obvious confusion, but it seemed that Raffi looked at her with interest, perhaps even curiosity. No one brought up the subject, so the meal passed in relative calm. Ordinarily, Brunetti would have rejoiced in the fresh tagliatelle and porcini, but today he barely tasted them. Nor did he much enjoy the spezzatini and fried melanzane which followed. When they had finished, Chiara went to her piano lesson and Raffi to a friend’s to study maths.
Alone, the table still littered with plates and serving bowls, Paola and Brunetti drank their coffee, his laced with grappa, hers black and sweet. ‘You going to get a lawyer?’ he asked.
‘I spoke to my father this morning,’ she said.
‘What did he say?’
‘Do you mean before or after he yelled at me?’
Brunetti was forced to smile. ‘Yell’ was not a verb he ever would, even in his wildest flights of imagination, have associated with his father-in-law. The incongruity amused him.
‘After, I think.’
‘He told me I was a fool.’
Brunetti recalled that this had been the Count’s response to Paola’s declaration, twenty years ago, that she was going to marry him. ‘And after that?’
‘He told me to hire Senno.’
Brunetti nodded at the name of the best criminal lawyer in the city. ‘Perhaps a bit excessive.’
‘Why?’
‘Senno’s good at defending rapists and murderers, rich kids who beat up their girlfriends, those same girlfriends caught selling heroin to pay for their habit. I hardly think you’re in that class.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.’
Brunetti shrugged. Neither was he.
When Paola volunteered nothing more, he asked, ‘Are you?’
‘I won’t hire a man like him.’
Brunetti pulled the grappa bottle towards him and poured a bit more into his empty coffee cup. He swirled it around and drank it down in a single mouthful. Leaving her last remark to hang between them, he asked, ‘Who are you going to hire?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ll wait to see what the charge is. Then I’ll decide.’
He thought for a moment about drinking another grappa, but realized he didn’t want it. Making no offer to help with the washing up or even with clearing the table, Brunetti stood and pushed his chair under the table. He glanced down at his watch, this time surprised to see that it was still so early, not yet two. ‘I think I’ll lie down for a while before I go back,’ he said.
She nodded, stood, and began stacking the plates one on top of the other.
He went down the corridor to their room, removed his shoes and sat on the side of the bed, aware of how tired he was. He lay back, latched his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. From the kitchen came the sound of running water, plates clicking against one another, the clang of a pan. He pulled one arm out from under his head and covered his eyes with his forearm. He thought about his schooldays, hiding in his room whenever he brought home a report card with bad marks, lying on his bed in fear of his father’s anger, his mother’s disappointment.
Memory sank its teeth into his spirit and took him away with it. At some point, at the same time that he became aware of motion beside him on the bed, he sensed pressure, then warmth across his chest. He smelled, then felt, her hair against his face, smelled that combination of soap and health that decades had seared into his memory. He lifted his arm from his eyes without bothering to open them. Moving it down across her shoulders, he brought the other arm out from under his head and latched his hands across her back.
After a while they both slept and, when they woke, nothing had changed.
* * * *
9
The next day passed quietly, things as normal as they ever were in the Questura. Patta demanded that Iacovantuono be brought to Venice and questioned about his refusal to testify, and that was done. Brunetti passed him on the steps as he was being led up to Patta’s office between two machine-gun carrying policemen. The pizzaiolo raised his eyes to Brunetti’s but gave no sign that he recognized him, his face frozen into that mask of ignorance Italians learn to adopt with officialdom.
At the sight of his sad eyes, Brunetti wondered if knowing the truth about what had happened would make any difference. Whether the Mafia had murdered his wife or Iacovantuono merely believed they had - in either case, he perceived the State and its agencies as helpless to protect him from the menace of a far greater power.
All these thoughts crowded into Brunetti’s mind as he saw the small man coming up the steps towards him, but they were too confused for him to be able to express them, even to himself, in words, so all he could do was nod in recognitio
n as they passed, the little man made even smaller by the two policemen who towered above him.
As he continued up the stairs, Brunetti found himself thinking of the myth of Orfeo and Eurydice, of the man who lost his wife by looking behind to assure himself that she was still there, disobeying the gods’ command not to do so and thus condemning her to remain forever in Hades. The gods that govern Italy had commanded Iacovantuono not to look at something and when he did not obey, his wife had been taken from him for ever.
Luckily, Vianello was waiting at the top of the stairs, and Brunetti’s reflections were driven from him. ‘Commissario,’ the sergeant began as he saw him arrive, ‘we’ve had a phone call from a woman in Treviso. She said she lives in the same house as the Iacovantuonos, but from the way she spoke, I think she might live in the same building.’
