Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  'What's going on?' Brunetti asked.

  The sergeant looked up and smiled. 'It's Alvise's, sir. He started to take it apart to clean it this morning, but he couldn't remember how to put it back together.'

  'Where is he?' Brunetti asked, looking around.

  'He went to get a coffee.'

  'And left it here?'

  'Yes.'

  'What are you doing?'

  'I thought I'd put it back together for him, sir, and just leave it on his desk.'

  Brunetti gave this the thought it deserved and said, 'Yes, I think that's best.'

  Ignoring the gun, Vianello said, 'The Colonel called back.'

  'And?'

  'And he's not saying.' 'Which means?'

  'It probably means he'd say if they'd told him but they won't tell him.'

  'Why do you say that?'

  Vianello considered how best to begin, finally saying, 'He was a colonel, so he's used to being obeyed by almost everybody. I think what happened is that they refused to tell him why

  Targhetta left, but he's ashamed to admit that, so he says that he's not allowed to reveal the information.' He paused, then added, 'It's his way of saving face, makes it sound like it's his decision.' 'You sure?'

  'No,' the sergeant answered, 'but it's the explanation that makes most sense.' There was another long pause and he added, 'Besides, he owes me a number of favours. He'd do it if he could.'

  Brunetti considered this for some time then, realizing that Vianello must have been thinking about it for even longer, asked, 'What do you think?'

  'I'd guess they caught Targhetta at something but couldn't prove it or didn't want to risk the consequences of arresting him or charging him. So they just quietly let him go.'

  'And put that in his file?'

  'Uh huh,' Vianello agreed, turning his attention to the pistol. Quickly, with expert fingers, he began to pick up the scattered parts and slip them into place. Within seconds, the pistol was reassembled, returned to cold lethality.

  Setting it aside, Vianello said, 'I wish she were here.'

  'Who?'

  'Signorina Elettra,' Vianello answered. For some reason, it pleased Brunetti that he did not speak of her familiarly.

  'Yes, that would be useful, wouldn't it?' Stymied, suddenly aware of how practically dependent upon her he had become in recent years, Brunetti asked, 'Is there anyone else?'

  'I've been thinking about that since he called,' Vianello said. "There's only one person I can think of who might be able to do it.'

  'Who?'

  'You're not going to like it, sir,' the sergeant said.

  To Brunetti, that could mean only one thing; that is, one person. 'I told you I'd prefer not to have anything to do with Galardi,' Brunetti said. Stefano Galardi, the owner and president of a software company, had gone to school with Vianello, but he had long since left behind him all memory of having grown up in Castello in a house with no heat and no hot water and had soared off into the empyrean reaches of cyber-wealth. He had scaled the social and monetary ladder and was accepted, indeed welcomed, at every table in the city, except perhaps at the table of Guido Brunetti, where he had, six years before, made very obvious and very drunken advances to Paola until told to leave by her very angry and very sober husband.

  Because Galardi was persuaded that Vianello had, almost twenty years ago, saved him from drowning after a particularly riotous Redentore party, he had served, before the advent of Signorina Elettra, as a means to obtain certain kinds of electronic information. Not the least of Brunetti's pleasures in Signorina Elettra's prowess was the fact that it freed him of any obligation to Galardi.

  Neither of them said anything for a long time, until Brunetti said, 'All right. Call him.' He left the room, not wanting to be present when Vianello did.

  His curiosity was satisfied two hours later, when Vianello came in and, unasked, took the seat opposite his superior. 'It took him this long to find the right way in,' he said.

  'And?'

  'My guess was right. They caught him tampering with evidence in a case and threw him out.'

  'What evidence? And what case?'

  Vianello began with the first question. "The only thing he could give me was the translation of the code.' He saw Brunetti's confusion and said, 'Remember that list of numbers and letters at the bottom of the report?'

  'Yes.'

  'He found out what that means.' Vianello went ahead without forcing Brunetti to ask him. 'They use it, he told me, in any case where a member of the Finanza either overlooks or hides evidence or in some way attempts to affect the outcome of an investigation.'

  'By doing what?' Brunetti asked.

  'The same things we do,' answered a shameless Vianello. 'Look the other way when we see our grocer not giving a ricevuta fiscale. Not remember seeing the start of any fight between a police officer and a civilian. Things like that.'

  Ignoring Vianello's second example, Brunetti asked, 'In his case, what did he do? Specifically.'

  'He couldn't find out. It's not in the file.' Vianello allowed Brunetti a moment to digest the significance of this and then added, 'But the case was Spadini's. The name's not there, but the code number for one of the cases Targhetta was working on then is the same as the one listed for Spadini.'

  Brunetti considered this. Life had taught him to be profoundly suspicious of coincidence, and it had similarly taught him to view any seemingly random conjunction of events or persons as coincidence and thus be suspicious of that, as well. 'Pucetti?' Brunetti asked.

  Vianello shook his head. 'I asked him, sir, but he knows nothing at all about Targhetta, just saw him a few times in the bar.'

  'With Elettra?'

  'He didn't say, sir.' Brunetti didn't notice how evasive Vianello's answer was.

  Brunetti considered various possibilities, including going out to Pellestrina himself. After a time he asked Vianello, 'Do you think Bonsuan's friend would tell him anything if he called?'

  'Only way to know is to ask Bonsuan,' Vianello said with a smile. 'He's off duty today. You could call him at home.'

  This was quickly done, and Bonsuan agreed to speak to his friend. He called back ten minutes later to say his friend wasn't home and wouldn't be back until that evening.

  That left Brunetti and Vianello nothing to do but stew and worry. The sergeant, preferring to worry in his own office, went downstairs.

  Brunetti thought of the favours he owed and was owed in return as a pack of playing cards grown greasy and torn with much use. You tell me this, and I'll tell you that; you give me this, and I'll pay you back with that. You write a letter of recommendation for my cousin, and I'll see that your application for a mooring for your boat is put on the pile for consideration this week. Sitting at his desk, staring off into space, he mentally pulled out the deck and began to rifle through the cards. He found one, set it aside, and went on. He shuffled through some more, considered selecting another one, but put it back and continued through till the end. Then he went back to the original card and contemplated it, trying to remember when he had last touched it. He hadn't, but Paola had, devoting a few days to coaching the man's daughter before her final literature exams at the university. The girl had passed, with honours, certainly more than enough justification for Brunetti to play the card.

  Her father, Aurelio Costantini, had been quietly retired from the Guardia di Finanza a decade ago after being acquitted of charges of association with the Mafia. The charges were true, but the proofs were inadequate, and so the General had quietly been put out to pasture on full pension, there to reap the benefit of his many years of dutiful - and double - service.

  Brunetti called him at home and explained the situation. In a manner graceful yet direct, he added that it had nothing to do with the Mafia. The General, mindful perhaps that his daughter had applied to Ca' Foscari for a teaching position, could not have been more eager to help and said he'd call Brunetti before lunch.

  A man of his word, the General called back wel
l before noon, saying that he was on his way to meet a friend who still worked for the Finanza, and if Brunetti would meet him for a drink in about an hour, he'd give him a copy of Targhetta's entire internal dossier.

  Brunetti dialled his home number and, relieved to be able to speak to the answering machine, left a message saying he wouldn't be home for lunch but would return at the normal time that evening. The General was a courtly, white-haired man with the upright carriage of a cavalry officer and the elided R so common to the upper classes and those who aspired to them. He sipped at a prosecco while Brunetti, who had seen the size of the folder the General laid on the counter in front of them, quickly ate two sandwiches by way of lunch. They discussed, as people in the city had for the last three months, the weather, both expressing intense hope for rain; nothing else would dean the Augean stables that the narrowest calli had become.

  On his way back to the Questura, Brunetti mused upon the oddness of his own behaviour regarding the two men who had supplied him with the evidence he carried under his arm: Galardi had done nothing but behave in the way drunks are in the habit of behaving, and Brunetti would have nothing to do with him; General Costantini, about whose guilt no doubt existed, had corrupted the state by selling its secrets to the Mafia, yet Brunetti would meet him in public, smile, ask him for favours, and never think of questioning him about the ties he might still have to the Guardia di Finanza.

  The instant he was back in his office, opening the file, all such Jesuitical thoughts disappeared as he dedicated himself to an examination of the personnel file of Carlo Targhetta. Thirty-two, Targhetta had been a member of the Finanza for ten years before 'deciding to leave', as the file put it. Venetian.by birth, he had done service in Catania, Bari and Genoa before being stationed in Venice three years ago, a year before the incident that led to his departure. His file was full of praise from all of his commanding officers, who spoke of his 'devotion to duty' and 'intense loyalty'.

  From what Brunetti could make of the euphemistic language in the file, at the time of his resignation,Targhetta had been serving as an operator assigned to answering anonymous calls that came in to report cases of tax evasion. He had made an error in reporting one of the calls: the Finanza maintained it was one of commission, while Targhetta insisted it had been one of omission. The Guardia di Finanza had eliminated the necessity of deciding which by offering Targhetta the opportunity to leave the service, an offer he had accepted, though he left without a pension.

  Enclosed was a cassette tape, labelled with a date that Brunetti took to be the day of the call that had precipitated events. Stapled to the inside of the folder was a pile of papers headed with the same date: a glance suggested it was a transcript of the calls. He took the tape down to one of the rooms where recordings were made of interrogations. He slipped the tape into the recorder and pushed 'Play'. He opened the file.

  There followed a long call, transcribed on the first page, in which a woman said she wanted to report her husband, a butcher, for not fully declaring his income. Her accent was pure Giudecca, and the way she spoke of her husband suggested decades of resentment. All doubt of her motivation disappeared when she lost control and began screaming that this would settle him and 'quella puttana di Lucia Mazotti'. Some of her wilder accusations were noted only by a modest line of asterisks.

  The next calls were from old women who said they had not been given ricevute fiscali by their newsagents, only to be told, with great patience on Targhetta's part, Brunetti had to admit, that newsagents didn't have to give receipts. Targhetta was careful to thank both of them for doing their civic duty, though the weariness with which he did so was clear, at least to Brunetti.

  'Guardia di Finanza,' Brunetti listened to Targhetta's by now familiar voice say.

  'Is this the right number to call?' a man's voice asked in heavy Veneziano.

  Brunetti had noticed, in the previous calls, that Targhetta always answered in Italian, but if his caller spoke in Veneziano, he slipped into dialect to make them feel more comfortable. He did so now, asking, 'What did you want to call about, sir?'

  'About someone who isn't paying taxes.'

  'Yes, this is the right number.'

  'Good, then I want you to take his name.'

  'Yes, sir?' Targetta asked and paused for the response.

  'Spadini, Vittorio Spadini. From Burano.'

  There was a longer pause, then Targhetta said, without any trace of a Venetian accent, his voice far more formal and official, 'Could you tell me more about this, sir?'

  'That bastard Spadini's fishing up millions every day’ the man said, voice tight with malice or anger. 'And he never pays a lira in taxes. It's all black, so it's never taxed. Everything he earns is black.'

  In the past, Targhetta had asked for more information about the person being accused: where they lived, what sort of business they had. This time, instead, he asked, 'Could you give me your name, sir?' He had never done that before.

  ‘I thought this line was supposed to be anonymous?' the caller said, immediately suspicious.

  'It usually is, sir, but in a case of something like this - you did talk of millions, didn't you? -we prefer to be a bit more certain about just who is making the denuncia.'

  'Well, I'm not going to give you my name,' the man said hotly. 'But you better take down that bastard's name. All you've got to do is go to the fish warehouse in Chioggia when he unloads, and you'll see how much he's caught, and you'll see who's buying it.'

  'I'm afraid we can't do that unless I have your name, sir.'

  'You don't need my name, you bastard. It's Spadini you should be after.' With that, the man slammed down the phone.

  There was a brief silence, and then he heard Targhetta say, 'Guardia di Finanza'.

  Brunetti switched off the tape recorder and looked down at the transcript. There, clearly typed out in the manner of a play script, were all of the calls, the characters' names given as 'Finanziere Targhetta' and 'Cittadino.'

  He flipped through the remaining pages and saw that there were three more calls. He switched the tape back on and, following the script, listened to all of them, through to the end of both transcript and tape.

  He read the last page again and turned it over, expecting to find the blank inside cover of the file. Instead he found, written by hand, a small group of separate sheets held together by a paper clip. Each had spaces at the top for date, time, name of the accused, and at the bottom a small space for the initials of the officer taking the call. He counted them and found only six. He read the name of the butcher, of the two newsagents, and the names given during the three final calls, but there was no record of the call about Spadini. Seven calls on the tape and seven calls in the transcript, but only six calls listed on the separate invoices, each of them carefully initialled 'CF at the bottom.

  He pushed 'rewind' and, starting and stopping, eventually found the beginning of the call that did not appear on the transcript. He played it through, listening attentively to the voice of the caller. His mother would have identified the accent instantly; if it had been from anywhere on the main island, she probably could have told him which sestiere the man came from. The best Brunetti could determine was that it came from one of the islands, perhaps from Pellestrina. He played the tape again and listened to the surprise in Targhetta's voice when he heard Spadini's name. He had been unable to disguise it, and it was then that he had begun to discourage the caller: there was no other way to describe his manner on the tape. The more the caller attempted to provide information, the more insistently did Targhetta tell him that he was obliged to give his name, a demand that was sure to drive off any witness, especially one dealing with the Guardia di Finanza.

  He realized how wise the Finanza was to record the calls. So this was how the watchers were watched. Targhetta, unaware that the call was being recorded, would only have to neglect to fill out the form to believe that he had removed all trace of the call. When confronted with the recording of the missing call, if that was
the way the Finanza did things, all he would have to do is say the form must have been lost. Obviously, they had not believed him, for how else could his sudden departure from the service after ten years be explained?

  But could someone who had worked for the Finanza for a decade have been so stupid as not to realize that the calls were recorded? Brunetti knew, from long experience, that even when phone calls were recorded, they were not necessarily listened to again. Targhetta may well have put his trust in bureaucratic incompetence and hoped that his lapse would pass unnoticed, or, from the sound of his voice, he may have been so surprised that he had responded instinctively and tried to silence the caller without any thought of the consequences.

  There remained only one piece of the puzzle or, thought Brunetti as he pulled out the paper on which he'd drawn lines between the names of the people involved, only one line to draw: the one connecting Targhetta and Spadini. That was easy: geometry had long ago taught him that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points. But that did not get him any closer to understanding the connection: that would depend upon his penetrating the silence of the Pellestrinotti.

  23

  As soon as he decided that he needed to speak to Targhetta, Brunetti spent some time debating whether to call Paola and tell her he was going out to Pellestrina. He didn't want her to question his motives, nor was he much inclined to examine them himself. Better, then, just to have Bonsuan take him out and have done with it.

  He didn't want to take Vianello, though he did not bother to analyse his motives for that decision. He did, however, rewind the tape, stick it in his pocket, and stop in the officers' room to borrow a small battery-powered tape recorder, just on the off chance that he might find someone on Pellestrina who would be willing to listen to it and perhaps identify the voice of the caller.

  The day had turned cooler, and there were dark clouds to the north, enough to give him reason to hope that rain might finally be on the way. He remained below deck in the cabin on the way out, reading through yesterday's newspaper and a boating magazine one of the pilots had left behind. By the time they reached Pellestrina, he had learned a great deal about 55 horsepower motors, but nothing further about Carlo Targhetta or Vittorio Spadini.