The Girl of his Dreams

by Donna Leon

  'My guess is that it was Ruffo's. He always carried one, at least that's what I was told.'

  'The other one, Bormio?' Brunetti asked, recalling the name from the file.

  'Just what people say.'

  'Tell me.'

  'That he's a troublemaker, especially with his family, as I told you, but that he'd never start anything with someone stronger than he is.' Vianello folded his arms across his chest and said, 'So my money's on Ruffo.'

  'Why does it always seem to happen there?' Brunetti asked, not thinking it necessary to name the Giudecca.

  Vianello raised his hands in a gesture of incomprehension then let them fall to his lap. 'Beats me. Maybe it's because they're workers, most of them. They do hard physical work, and that makes them less self-conscious about using their bodies to do violent things. Or maybe it's because that's the way things have always been settled: you hit someone or you pull a knife.'

  There seemed nothing for Brunetti to add to this. 'You came up about the new orders?' he asked.

  Vianello nodded but did not roll his eyes. 'Yes. I wondered what you thought would come of it?'

  'You mean, other than finding a soft job for Scarpa?' Brunetti asked with a cynicism that surprised even himself. If Patta was going to take advantage of the current market flurry in the Mafia, then he was sure to see that his assistant and fellow Sicilian, Lieutenant Scarpa, got in on the ground floor.

  'Something almost poetic in Scarpa's being assigned to a special unit dealing with the Mafia, don't you think?' Vianello enquired with feigned innocence.

  A sense of his position pulled Brunetti back. 'We can't be sure about that,' he answered. Though he was.

  'No,' Vianello said, savouring the chance for comment. 'We can't be sure about him at all.' Then, more seriously, 'You think anything will come of this thing in the newspapers?'

  'Paola commented on our "triumph",' Brunetti said.

  'It is pathetic, isn't it?' Vianello admitted. 'Forty-three years to catch this guy. The papers said today that he went to France for surgery, even sent a claim for the bill to the ULSS office in Palermo.'

  'And they paid it, didn't they?' Brunetti asked.

  'What do you think he was doing for forty-three years?'

  'Well’ Brunetti said, his voice suddenly grown tight, almost as if it wanted to slip beyond his control, 'it seems he was running the Mafia in Sicily. And I assume he was leading a completely undisturbed life, surrounded by his wife and family; helping his kids with their homework, seeing that they received First Communion. And I have no doubt that, when he dies, he will be given a truly moving funeral, again surrounded by his family, and that some bishop, or even a cardinal, will come to say the Mass, and then he will be buried with great pomp and ceremony, and prayers will be said in perpetuity for the peace of his soul’ By the end of his long answer, Brunetti's voice was shaking with something between disgust and despair.

  Vianello, voice calm, asked, 'You think he got fingered by one of his own?'

  Brunetti nodded. 'It makes sense. Some young boss - well, younger boss - decided he'd like to have a taste of it all - run the whole show - and the old man was an obstacle; inconvenient to have him there. They're running a multi-national corporation, using computers; their own lawyers and accountants. And they've got this old guy, living in what sounds like a glorified chicken coop, writing messages on scraps of paper. Sure, they want to get rid of him. All it would take is a phone call.'

  'And now what?' Vianello asked, as if trying to plumb the depths of his superior's cynicism.

  'Now, as Lampedusa told us, if we want things to stay as they are, then things will have to appear to change.'

  'That's pretty much the history of everything in this country, isn't it?' Vianello asked.

  Brunetti nodded, then slapped his palms down on the top of his desk. 'Come on, let's get a coffee.'

  As they stood at the bar, drinking their coffee, Brunetti told Vianello about his conversations with the two priests.

  When Brunetti had finished, Vianello asked,'You going to do it?'

  'Do what? Try to find out about this Mutti guy?' 'Yes.' Vianello swirled the last of his coffee around and finished it. ‘I suppose so.'

  'It's interesting, the way you're approaching it,' Vianello observed. 'What do you mean?'

  'That this Padre Antonin comes to ask you to find out about Mutti, and all you've done so far - or so it seems to me - is try to find out about Padre Antonin.'

  'Why is that so strange?' asked Brunetti.

  'Because you're assuming there's something suspicious, or at least strange, in his request. Or in him.'

  'Well, I think there is,' Brunetti insisted.

  'What? Precisely, that is. Why is it so strange?'

  It took Brunetti some time to find an answer to this. At last he said, ‘I remember ...'

  'From when you were a kid?' Vianello interrupted, then added, 'I'd hardly want anyone to make judgements about me from the way I was then. I was an idiot.'

  The underlying seriousness of what Vianello was trying to tell him prevented Brunetti from making a joke about Vianello's choice of tense. Instead, he said, ‘I know this sounds evasive, but it was the way he spoke, more than anything else.' Unsatisfied with that as soon as he said it, he added, 'No, it's more than that. I suppose it was his casual assumption that this other man had to be a thief or a swindler of some sort, but the only evidence he could give me was the fact that the young man was giving him money.'

  'Why is that so strange?' Vianello asked.

  'Because I had the feeling, all the time Antonin was talking, that if the young man had been giving him the money, everything would have been all right’

  ‘I hope you aren't expecting me to be surprised by the presence of greed in a priest.'

  Brunetti smiled and asked, setting down his cup, 'So you think I should be looking at the other one?'

  Vianello's shrug was merely the ghost of a gesture. 'You've always told me to follow the money, and it seems that the money here is going in his direction.'

  Brunetti reached into his pocket and set some coins on the counter. 'You could be right, Lorenzo’ he said. 'Maybe we could have a look at what goes on at his meetings?'

  'This Mutti guy?' asked Vianello in surprise.

  'Yes.'

  Vianello opened his mouth as if to protest, but then closed it and compressed his lips. 'You're talking about one of these religious meetings?'

  'Yes’ Brunetti answered. When Vianello did not respond, Brunetti prodded him, 'Well, what do you think?'

  Vianello looked him in the eyes and said, 'If we go, we'd better take our wives.' Before Brunetti could object, the Inspector added, 'Men always look harmless when they're with women.'

  Brunetti turned away so that Vianello would not see his smile. Outside the bar, he asked, 'You think you could talk Nadia into doing this?'

  'If I hide the bread knife when I ask her.'

  8

  Discovering information about the meetings of the religious group headed by Leonardo Mutti, however, proved more difficult than Brunetti had foreseen. He did not want Antonin to know what he was doing, there was no listing in the phone book, and his computer skills could find no website for the Children of Jesus Christ. When he asked among the uniformed staff, the best he came up with was Piantoni, who had a cousin who was a member of a different group.

  That left Brunetti with no alternative but to go over to Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio and the reported meeting house of the group, a prospect which left him strangely disgruntled, as if the campo were located in some other city instead of only ten minutes from his home. How strange, the way some places in the city seemed so far away, while others, actually much farther, seemed but a moment's walk. Just the thought of going to the Giudecca exhausted Brunetti, yet San Pietro di Castello, which took almost half an hour to reach from his home, depending on the boats, seemed right around the corner. Perhaps it had to do with habit and the places he had gone as a boy, or where hi
s friends had lived. With San Giacomo, the police officer in Brunetti had to accept that it could also have to do with the campo's former reputation as a place where drugs were readily available or as a place where the residents had once been perceived as being not only poor but also more at variance with the law than those living in other parts of the city.

  The drugs were gone now, or so the police believed. Gone from the area with them, as well, were many of the former residents, replaced by people who were not only not poor, but not Venetian. For two days he delayed going over to have a look but finally decided to go, half amused and half embarrassed at his own insistence on viewing the expedition as a major undertaking.

  In Campo San Cassiano, because he felt no need to hurry, he decided to have a look at the Tintoretto Crucifixion. Brunetti had always been struck by how bored this Christ looked, stuck artfully up there on his cross, posed in front of the hedge of perpendicular spears that divided the painting in half. Christ seemed finally to have come to accept the truth of those warnings that all this business about becoming human would come to no good; He seemed eager to get back to the job of being God.

  Brunetti's eyes moved to the stations of the cross on the far wall, where the dead Christ in the Deposition gave every evidence of being a man pretending to be asleep who would soon jump up and shout, 'Surprise!' How few of these painters seem to have studied the dead carefully or to have seen their terrible vulnerability.

  Brunetti had always been struck by the helplessness of the dead, their rigid limbs and stiff fingers no longer capable of defending themselves, not even of covering their nakedness.

  After some time, he went back outside: the sun fell on his shoulders like a blessing. In Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini he glanced up at the stairway visible through a window and remembered the apartment they had looked at there, first married and frightened by all that space, to say nothing of all that price. Instinct led him on.

  Down Ponte del Forner, then past the one remaining place in the city where someone would bother to fix an iron, and then into Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio. He glanced at his watch and saw that he still had time to slip into the church, where he had not been for years.

  Just inside the door, on the right, he found a wooden structure that looked very much like a toll booth in a children's book. Inside sat a young woman with dark hair, head bent over a book. There was a list of what appeared to be prices taped to the right of the window behind which she sat; a red velvet cord isolated the entrance from the rest of the church.

  'Two-fifty, please,' she said, glancing up from her book.

  'For residents, too?' Brunetti asked, failing to keep indignation from his voice. This was, after all, a church.

  'For residents it's free,' she said. 'Can I see your carta d'identital'

  Making no attempt to disguise his mounting irritation, Brunetti took out his wallet, opened it, and reached for the document. But then he remembered that it was in the office, being photocopied so that it could be attached to the application for the renewal of his licence to carry a firearm.

  He pulled his warrant card from his wallet and passed it under the glass.

  'What's this?' she asked. Her voice was neutral and her face was pleasant, even pretty.

  'It's my identification as a policeman. A commissario.'

  'I'm sorry,' she said, with what was probably meant to be a smile, 'but you have to have a carta d'identita.' She slid the warrant card back towards him, looked at him again, and added, 'A valid one.'

  Years of standing in front of Patta's desk had trained Brunetti in the art of reading upside down, so he saw from the title at the top of the page that she was reading Washington Square. 'Are you reading that for school?' he asked.

  Utterly confused, she glanced at his warrant card, then at the book and, understanding, said, 'Yes. For a class in the American Novel.'

  'Ah,' Brunetti said, realizing that she must be one of Paola's students. He picked up the warrant card, slid it back into his wallet, and returned it to his back pocket. A student in his wife's class.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. He sorted through it until he found the right coins and placed them on the counter. She pulled them towards her, peeled off a ticket, and slipped it under the glass.

  'Grazie,' she said and returned to her book.

  'Prego’ he answered and walked through the opening in the scarlet cord and into the nave of the church.

  He emerged twenty minutes later and walked back around the church to the restaurant. Following Antonin's description, he entered the calle to the left and studied the names beside the first door on the left. And there it was: 'Sambo', the second bell from the bottom.

  Brunetti hesitated and checked his watch, then he rang the bell. After a moment, a woman's voice answered, 'Si?'

  Brunetti spoke in Veneziano. 'Signora, could you tell me if this is the place where the friends of Brother Leonardo meet?' There was no disguising the eagerness in his voice, but eagerness could have many causes.

  'Yes, it is,' she answered. 'Are you interested in joining us?'

  'Very much so, Signora,' he answered.

  'We meet on Tuesday’ she said, then quickly added, 'I'm sorry if I don't let you in, but it's time for the children to eat.'

  'I'm the one who's sorry, Signora’ he said. ‘I know what it's like, so go and feed them. But could you tell me what time the meeting begins?'

  'Seven-thirty’ she said. 'That way people can be home for dinner.'

  1 understand. Good,' Brunetti answered. 'Go and feed your children now, Signora. Please. I'll see you on Tuesday, then’ he said in his kindest voice.

  Brunetti turned away. From behind him, he heard a tinny voice ask, 'What's your name, Signore?'

  He made an indecipherable noise, then added '-etti' to the end of it, not wanting to lie. There'd be time enough for that on Tuesday.

  9

  Vianello and Brunetti met below the clock in front of the Banca di Roma at seven-fifteen on Tuesday evening, accompanied by their wives, who had been, if not delighted, at least curious enough to come along.

  After the women exchanged kisses, they turned away from Rialto and started towards San Giacomo dell'Orio. The women lagged behind Vianello and Brunetti, looking into windows and commenting on what they saw and, as all Venetians did, on how the nature of the shops had changed in recent years to suit the tastes of the tourists. 'At least they're still here,' Paola said, stopping to admire the dried fruit in Mascari's window.

  Nadia, at least a head shorter than Paola and significantly rounder, said, 'My mother still talks about the way they used to wrap everything up in newspaper when they sold it. She's living with my brother in Dolo now, but she still wants figs from Mascari; won't eat them unless she recognizes the paper.' With a resigned shake of her head, Nadia started off after the men, who had disappeared ahead of them.

  As they emerged into Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio, the men paused to await the women then rearranged themselves into couples. Brunetti led them down the narrow calle and stopped before the door of the building. He rang the bell for Sambo, and with no questions asked about who they might be, they were buzzed into the building. There was nothing unusual about the entrance: orange and white patterned marble floor, dark wooden panelling a bit the worse for damp, and insufficient lighting.

  At the top of the second flight of stairs, the murmur of voices seeped out on to the landing. Uncertain whether to knock on the open door, Brunetti stuck his head inside and called, 'Signora Sambo?' When no one came, he took one step into the apartment and repeated, 'Signora Sambo?'

  A short woman with light brown hair appeared through a doorway on the right. She smiled and extended her hand to each of them in turn, encircling their hands with both of hers and leaning forward to kiss them on both cheeks, saying, very formally, 'Welcome to our home.' She made it sound as though her home were somehow theirs, as well.

  She had dark brown eyes the outer folds of which tilted sharply dow
n, giving her face a decidedly Oriental cast; her thin nose and fair skin, however, could only be European. 'Come and meet the others.' She smiled again before turning away to lead them into another room, a smile that spoke of her enormous pleasure at their presence.

  On the walk over, Brunetti and Vianello had decided it would be best - since they did not know what the legal consequences of their presence here might be - to use their real names, but this woman's unquestioning hospitality had made that decision redundant.

  The room into which she led them had a long row of windows that gave out, unfortunately, on to the windows opposite. About twenty people were standing around. On a table against one wall were glasses and a row of bottles of mineral water and fruit juice. A few rows of folding chairs faced away from the windows and towards a single straight-backed chair that stood in front of the far wall. No one smoked.

  'May I get you something to drink?' their hostess asked. In response to their replies, she brought juice for the women and mineral water for the men. As Brunetti glanced around the room, he saw that this was the standard choice.

  The men, as did he and Vianello, all wore suits and ties; the women tended to wear trousers or skirts that fell below the knee. No beards, not a tattoo in sight, and no piercing, though some of the people seemed to be still in their twenties. What makeup the women wore was subdued and none of them wore any kind of low-cut blouse or sweater.

  Brunetti looked at Paola and found that she was already talking to a middle-aged man and woman. Not far from her, Vianello stood, holding his glass in one hand, while Nadia smiled as she listened to a white-haired woman who had placed one hand familiarly on her arm.

  The room was decorated with ceramic plates bearing the names of restaurants and pizzerias. The one closest to him had a folkloristic painting of a man and woman in some sort of traditional costume: long skirt and high shoes for the woman, baggy trousers and broad-brimmed hat for the man. Not far from it was a fuming volcano with Pizzeria Vesuvio' arching over it in pink letters.

  On the far wall, above the chair, hung a large crucifix with crossed olive branches wedged behind it. Through the door at one side of the room, he could see a kitchen where the counter held tall glass jars of pasta, rice, and sugar and more paper containers of fruit juice.