Friends In High Places

by Donna Leon

  ‘What is it, Guido?’ she asked but smiled to take any sting from her words.

  ‘Moneylenders,’ he answered.

  She looked up at him, then away, then just as quickly back.

  ‘Who do you want to know it for?’

  ‘Me, of course.’

  She smiled, but just barely. ‘I know it has to be for you, Guido, but is it for you as a policeman who is going to take a careful look at them or is it only the sort of question a friend asks?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because if it’s the first, I don’t think I have anything to say to you.’

  ‘And if it’s the second?’

  ‘Then I can talk.’

  ‘Why the difference?’ he asked, then stepped over to the bar and scooped up a few potato chips, more to give her time to think about her answer than because he actually wanted them.

  She was ready when he returned. She shook her head at his offer of the chips, so he had to eat them. ‘If it’s the first, then anything I say to you I might have to repeat in court, or you might have to say where you got the information.’ Before he could ask, she continued, ‘If it’s just casual talk between friends, then I’ll tell you whatever I can, but I want you to know that I’ll never remember having said it, should I ever be asked.’ She didn’t smile when she said this, though Franca was usually a woman whose joy in life flowed from her like music from a carousel.

  ‘Are they that dangerous?’ Brunetti asked, taking her empty glass and reaching over to place it beside his own on the bar.

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ she said. Out in the campo, she moved over until she stood to the left of the flagpole, just in front of the windows of the bookstore. Whether by accident or design, Franca was at least two metres from the people nearest to her in the campo, two old women leaning toward one another, propped up by their canes.

  Brunetti came up and stood beside her. The light rose over the tops of the buildings, making their reflections clearly visible in the window. Unclear and unfocused, the couple in the window could easily have been those teenagers who had, decades ago, often met here for a coffee with friends.

  The question came unsummoned, ‘Are you really that frightened?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘My son’s fifteen,’ she said by way of explanation. Her level tone might just as easily have been used to comment on the weather or, indeed, upon her son’s interest in soccer.

  ‘Why did you want to meet here, Guido?’ she asked.

  He smiled, ‘I know you’re a busy woman, and I know where you live, so I thought this would be a convenient place: you’re almost home.’

  ‘That’s the only reason?’ she asked, looking away from the reflected Brunetti to the real one.

  ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You really don’t know anything about them, do you?’ was the only answer she gave.

  ‘No. I know they exist, and I know they’re here in the city. They’d have to be. But we’ve never had any official complaints about them.’

  ‘And it’s usually the Finanza that deals with them, isn’t it?’

  Brunetti shrugged. He had no idea just what the officers of the Guardia di Finanza did deal with: he often saw them, in their grey uniforms decorated with the bright flames of a presumed justice, but he saw little evidence that they did much other than encourage an oppressed people to new methods of tax evasion.

  He nodded, not willing to commit his ignorance to words.

  Franca looked away from him and around the small campo. Silently, she stood and looked around her. With her chin, she indicated the fast food restaurant that stood on the other side. ‘What do you see?’

  He looked across at the glass façade taking up most of that side of the small square. Young people went in and out; many of them sat at small tables, clearly visible through the immense windows.

  ‘I see the destruction of two thousand years of culinary culture,’ he said, with a laugh.

  ‘And just outside, what do you see?’ she asked soberly.

  He looked again, disappointed that she had not laughed at his joke. He saw two men in dark suits, each with a briefcase in his hand, talking to one another. To the left of them, a young woman stood, handbag clutched awkwardly under her arm as she looked through her address book and tried to punch in a number on her telefonino at the same time. Behind her, a shabbily dressed man, perhaps in his late sixties, tall and very thin, was leaning down to speak to an older woman dressed all in black. She was bent forward with age, her tiny hands grasped tightly around the handle of a large black handbag. She had a narrow face and a long, pointed nose, a combination which, when added to her hunched posture, gave the general impression of one of the smaller marsupials.

  ‘I see a number of people doing what people do in Campo San Luca.’

  ‘Which is?’ she asked, looking up at him, eyes sharp now.

  ‘Meeting by chance or arrangement and talking, then going to have a drink, the way we did, and then going home to lunch, the way we will.’

  ‘And those two?’ she asked, tilting her chin toward the thin man and the old woman.

  ‘She looks like she’s on her way home to lunch, just back from a long mass at one of the smaller churches.’

  ‘And he?’

  Brunetti looked over toward them again. They were still deep in conversation. ‘It looks like she’s trying to save his soul and he doesn’t want any part of it,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘He has none to save,’ Franca said, surprising him that such a judgement should come from a woman he’d never heard speak badly of anyone. ‘Nor does she,’ she added in a cool, unforgiving voice.

  She turned a half-step back toward the bookstore and looked into the window again. Keeping her back to Brunetti, she said, ‘That’s Angelina Volpato, and her husband, Massimo. They’re two of the worst moneylenders in the city. No one has any idea when they started, but for the last ten years, they’ve been the ones most people have used.’

  Brunetti sensed a presence at their side: a woman had come up to look into the window. Franca said nothing. When she moved off, Franca continued, ‘People know about them and know they’re here most mornings. So they come and talk to them, and then Angelina invites them to their home.’ She paused and then added, ‘She’s the real vampire,’ then paused again. When she had grown calm, she went on. ‘It’s there that she calls in the notary and they make up the papers. She gives them the money, and they give her their houses or their businesses or their furniture.’

  ‘And the sum?’

  ‘That depends on how much they need and how long they need it for. If it’s only a few million, then they agree to give her their furniture. But if it’s a significant sum, fifty million or more, then she works out the interest – people have told me she can calculate interest in an instant, though the same people have told me she’s illiterate; so’s her husband.’ She stopped here, lost in her own account, then resumed, ‘If it’s a large sum, then they agree to give her title to their house if they haven’t paid her a certain sum by a certain date.’

  ‘And if they don’t pay?’

  ‘Then her lawyer takes them to court, and she’s got the paper, signed in front of a notary.’

  As she spoke, always keeping her eyes on the covers of the books in the window, Brunetti examined his memory, and his conscience, and was forced to admit that none of this was news to him. The precise details were unknown, perhaps, but not the fact that this sort of thing went on. But it belonged to the Guardia di Finanza, or it had until now, until circumstance and dumb chance had called his attention to Angelina Volpato and her husband, still standing there, across from him, deep in conversation on a bright spring day in Venice.

  ‘How much do they charge?’

  ‘It depends on how desperate people are,’ Franca answered.

  ‘How do they know that?’

  She took her eyes away from the little piggies driving fire engines and looked up at him. ‘You know as well as I do: everyone k
nows everything. All you have to do is try to borrow money from a bank, and everyone in the bank knows it by the end of the day, their families by the morning, and the whole city by the afternoon.’

  Brunetti had to admit the truth of this. Whether because people in Venice were all related to one another by blood or friendship, or simply because the city was in reality nothing more than a tiny town, no secret could survive long in this intense, incestuous world. It made perfect sense to him that financial need would quickly become public information.

  ‘What sort of interest do they charge?’ he asked again.

  She started to answer, stopped herself, then continued, ‘I’ve heard people talk of twenty per cent a month. But I’ve also heard them talk of fifty.’

  The Venetian in Brunetti had it worked out in an instant. ‘That’s six hundred per cent a year,’ he said, unable to disguise his indignation.

  ‘Much more if it’s compound interest,’ Franca corrected, demonstrating that her family’s roots in the city extended deeper than Brunetti’s.

  Brunetti turned his attention back to the two people on the other side of the campo. As he watched, their conversation finished and the woman moved away, turning towards Rialto, while the man headed in their direction.

  As he drew near, Brunetti saw the bulbous forehead, the skin rough and dangling in flakes as from some untreated disease, the full lips and heavy-lidded eyes. The man had a strange, birdlike walk and with each step lightly placed each foot down flat, as if concerned about wearing down the heels of his much-repaired shoes. His face bore the burdens of age and sickness, but the gangling walk, especially as Brunetti saw it from behind as the man turned into the calle that led toward the city hall, gave a strange sense of youthful awkwardness.

  When he looked back, the old woman had disappeared, but the image of a marsupial, or some sort of upright rat, remained in Brunetti’s memory. ‘How do you know about all of this?’ he asked Franca.

  ‘I work in a bank, remember,’ she answered.

  ‘And those two are the court of last resort for the people who can’t get anything from you?’ She nodded. ‘But how do people find out about them?’ he asked.

  She studied him, as if considering how much she could trust him, then said, ‘I’ve been told that sometimes people in the bank recommend them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That when people try to borrow money from a bank and are refused, occasionally one of the employees will suggest they try talking to the Volpatos. Or to whichever moneylender is paying them a percentage.’

  ‘How much of a percentage?’ Brunetti asked in a level voice.

  She shrugged. ‘I’m told that depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how much they finally borrow. Or on the sort of deal the banker has with the usurers.’ Before Brunetti could ask anything else, she added, ‘If people need money, they’ll get it somewhere. If not from friends or family, and if not from a bank, then from people like the Volpatos.’

  The only way Brunetti could ask the next question was to be direct, and so he asked, ‘Is this connected with the Mafia?’

  ‘What isn’t?’ Franca asked in return, but when she saw his irritated response to this, she added, ‘Sorry, that was just a wisecrack. I’ve no direct knowledge that they are. But if you think about it for a while, you’ll realize how good a way it would be to launder money.’

  Brunetti nodded. Only Mafia protection could allow something as profitable as this to go on unquestioned, unexamined by the authorities.

  ‘Have I ruined your lunch?’ she asked, suddenly smiling, her mood changing in a way he remembered.

  ‘No, not at all, Franca.’

  ‘Why are you asking about this?’ she finally asked.

  ‘It might be connected with something else.’

  ‘Most things are,’ she added but asked him nothing, another quality he had always prized in her. ‘I’ll get home, then,’ she said, and leaned up to kiss him on both cheeks.

  ‘Thanks, Franca,’ he answered, pulling her a bit closer to him, comforted by the feel of her strong body and even stronger will. ‘It’s always a joy to see you.’ Even as she patted his arm and turned away, he realized that he had not asked her about the other moneylenders, but he couldn’t call her back now and ask. All he could think of was to go home.

  17

  AS HE WALKED, Brunetti let his memory slip back to the time he had spent with Franca, more than two decades ago. He was conscious of how much he had enjoyed again putting his arms around that comfortable figure, once so familiar to him. He remembered a long walk they had taken on the beach of the Lido the night of Redentore; it must have been when he was seventeen. Fireworks long finished, they’d walked along, hand in hand, waiting for dawn, reluctant to let the night end.

  But it had, as had many things between them, and now she had her Mario, and he had his Paola. He stopped at Biancat and bought a dozen irises for his Paola, happy to be able to do so, happy at the thought that she would be upstairs, waiting for him.

  She was in the kitchen when he came in, seated at the table, shelling peas.

  ‘Risi e bisi,’ he said by way of greeting when he saw the peas, the irises held out in front of him.

  Smiling at the sight of the flowers, she said, ‘It’s the best thing to do with new peas, isn’t it, make risotto?’ and raised her cheek to receive his kiss.

  Kiss given, he answered, for no real reason, ‘Unless you’re a princess and you need them to put under your mattress.’

  ‘I think the risotto’s a better idea,’ she answered. ‘Would you put them in a vase while I finish these?’ she asked, gesturing with one hand to the full paper bag on the table beside her.

  He pulled a chair over to the cabinets, took a piece of newspaper from the table and spread it on the seat, then stepped up to reach for one of the tall vases that stood on top of one of the cabinets.

  ‘The blue one, I think,’ she said, looking up and watching him.

  He stepped down, put the chair back in place, and took the vase over to the sink. ‘How full?’ he asked.

  ‘About halfway. What would you like after?’

  ‘What is there?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got that roast beef from Sunday. If you sliced it very thin, we could have that and then maybe a salad.’

  ‘Is Chiara eating meat this week?’ Spurred to it by an article about the treatment of calves, Chiara had a week ago declared that she would be a vegetarian for the rest of her life.

  ‘You saw her eat the roast beef on Sunday, didn’t you?’ Paola asked.

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ he answered, turning to the flowers and tearing the paper from them.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘The usual things,’ he answered, holding the vase under the tap and turning on the cold water. ‘We live in a fallen universe.’

  She returned to her peas. ‘Anyone who does either of our jobs should know that,’ she answered.

  Curious, he asked, ‘How does it come from yours?’ A policeman for twenty years, he needed no one to tell him that mankind had fallen from grace.

  ‘You deal with moral decline. I deal with that of the mind.’ She spoke in the elevated, self-mocking tone she often used when she caught herself taking her work seriously. Then she asked, ‘Specifically, what’s done this to you?’

  ‘I had a drink with Franca this afternoon.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine. Her son’s growing up, and I don’t think she much likes working in a bank.’

  ‘Who could?’ Paola asked, but it was more a ritual response than a serious question. She returned to his original unexplained statement and asked, ‘How does seeing Franca suggest it’s a post-lapsarian universe? It usually has the opposite effect, on all of us.’

  Slowly slipping the flowers one by one into the vase, Brunetti played back her comment a few times, searching for some hidden and possibly rancorous meaning and finding none at all. She observed his pleas
ure in meeting this old, dear friend, and she shared the joy he took in her company. At that realization, his heart gripped tight for an instant, and he felt a sudden flush of heat in his face. One of the irises fell to the counter. He picked it up, put it in with the others, and set the vase carefully aside, safely back from the edge.

  ‘She said something about being afraid for Pietro if she talked to me about moneylenders.’

  Paola stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him. ‘Moneylenders?’ she asked. ‘What have they got to do with anything?’

  ‘Rossi, that man from the Ufficio Catasto who died, he had the phone number of a lawyer in his wallet, a lawyer who had taken on a number of cases against them.’

  ‘A lawyer where?’

  ‘In Ferrara.’

  ‘Not that one they murdered?’ she asked, looking up at him.

  Brunetti nodded, interested that Paola would so casually assume that Cappelli had been murdered by ‘them’, and then added, ‘The magistrate in charge of the investigation excluded moneylenders and seemed very interested in persuading me that the killer actually got the wrong man.’

  After a long pause, during which Brunetti watched the play of thought reflect itself in her face, she asked, ‘Is that why he had his number, because of moneylenders?’

  ‘I’ve no proof. But it’s coincidental.’

  ‘Life’s coincidental.’

  ‘Murder’s not.’

  She folded her hands on top of the pile of discarded pea pods. ‘Since when is this murder? Rossi, I mean.’

  ‘Since I don’t know when. Maybe since never. I just want to find out about this and see why Rossi called him, if I can.’

  ‘And Franca?’

  ‘I thought, because she works in a bank, she might know about moneylenders.’

  ‘I thought that’s what banks are supposed to do, lend money.’

  ‘They often don’t, at least not on short notice and not to people who might not pay it back.’

  ‘Then why ask her?’ From the immobility of her posture, Paola might have been an examining magistrate.

  ‘I thought she might know something.’