by Donna Leon
From the pocket of his jacket, Patta pulled out yesterday’s newspaper and smacked it down on Brunetti’s desk. ‘I’m talking about this,’ he said, jamming an angry finger at the page. ‘This story that says Roberto is about to be arrested and will surely testify against the people in control of the drug business in the Veneto.’ Before Brunetti could respond, Patta said, ‘I know how you work, you northerners, like a secret little club. All you have to do is call one of your friends on the paper, and he’ll print any shit you give him.’
Suddenly exhausted, Patta sank down into a chair that stood in front of Brunetti’s desk. His face, still red, was covered with perspiration, and when he tried to wipe it away, Brunetti saw that his hand was shaking. ‘They’ll kill him,’ he said, almost inaudibly.
Realization overcame Brunetti’s confusion and his sense of outrage at Patta’s behaviour. He waited a few moments until Patta’s breathing had grown more normal and said, ‘It’s not about Roberto,’ striving to keep his voice calm. ‘It’s about that boy who died of an overdose last week. His girlfriend came in and told me she knew who had sold him the drugs, but she was afraid to tell me who it was. I thought this would encourage him to come in voluntarily to talk to us.’
He saw that Patta was listening; whether he was believing was entirely a different matter. Or, if he believed, whether it made any difference.
‘It has nothing at all to do with Roberto,’ he said, his voice level and as calm as he could make it. Brunetti pushed away the urge to say that, as Patta had insisted Roberto had nothing to do with selling drugs, it was impossible that this article could put him in any danger. Not even Patta was worth a victory as cheap as that. He stopped and waited for Patta to answer.
After a long time, the Vice-Questore said, ‘I don’t care who it’s about,’ which suggested that he believed what Brunetti had said. He looked across at Brunetti, eyes direct and honest. ‘They called him last night. On his telefonino.’
‘What did they say?’ Brunetti asked, very much aware that Patta had just confessed that his son, the son of the Vice-Questore of Venice, was selling drugs.
‘They said they better not hear any more about this, that they better not hear that he’d talked to anyone or gone to the Questura.’ Patta stopped and closed his eyes, reluctant to continue.
‘Or what?’ Brunetti asked in a neutral voice.
After a long time, the answer came. ‘They didn’t say. They didn’t have to.’ Brunetti had no doubt that this was true.
He found himself suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to be anywhere but here. It would be better to be back in the room with Zecchino and the dead girl, for at least his emotion there had been a clean, profound pity; there had been none of this niggling sense of triumph at the sight of this man for whom he had so often felt such utter contempt reduced to this. He did not want to feel satisfaction at the sight of Patta’s fear and anger, but he could not succeed in repressing it.
‘Is he using anything or is he just selling?’ he asked.
Patta sighed. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’ Brunetti gave him a moment to stop lying, and after a while, Patta said, ‘Yes. Cocaine, I think.’
Years ago, when he was less experienced in the art of questioning, Brunetti would have asked for confirmation that the boy was also selling, but now he took it as given and moved on to his next question. ‘Have you talked to him?’
Patta nodded. After a while, he said, ‘He’s terrified. He wants to go and stay with his grandparents, but he wouldn’t be safe there.’ He looked up at Brunetti. ‘These people have to believe he won’t talk. It’s the only way he’ll be safe.’
Brunetti had already arrived at the same conclusion and was already calculating its cost. The only way to do it was to plant another story, this one saying that the police had begun to suspect they had been given false information and in fact had been unable to make a link between recent drug-related deaths and the person responsible for the sale of those drugs. This would most likely remove Roberto Patta from immediate danger, but it would also discourage Anna Maria Ratti’s brother, or cousin, or whoever he was, from coming in to name the people who had sold him the drugs that had killed Marco Landi.
If he did nothing, Roberto’s life would be in danger, but if the story appeared, then Anna Maria would have to live with her secret grief that she had, however remotely, been responsible for Marco’s death.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said, and Patta’s head snapped up, his eyes staring across at Brunetti.
‘What?’ he demanded, then, ‘How?’
‘I said I’ll take care of it,’ he repeated, keeping his voice firm, hoping that Patta would believe him and take quickly from the room whatever show of gratitude he might be moved to. He went on, ‘Try to get him into a clinic of some sort, if you can.’
He watched Patta’s eyes widen in outrage at this inferior who dared to give advice.
Brunetti wanted it done quickly. ‘I’ll call them now,’ he said, looking in the direction of the door.
Angered by this as well, Patta wheeled around, walked toward the door and let himself out.
Feeling not a little bit the fool, Brunetti called his friend at the paper again and did it quickly, all the time conscious of how enormous a debt he was running up. When it came time to pay it back, and he did not for an instant doubt that this time would come, he knew it would be at the cost of some principle or the flouting of some law. Neither thought made him hesitate for an instant.
He was about to leave for lunch when his phone rang. It was Carraro, saying that a man had phoned ten minutes before: he’d read the story in the paper that morning and wanted to know if it was really true. Carraro had assured him that, yes, it was: the therapy was absolutely revolutionary and the only hope for whoever it was that had been bitten.
‘Do you think he’s the one?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Carraro said. ‘But he seemed very interested. He said he’d come in today. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m coming over right now.’
‘What do I do if he comes in?’
‘Keep him there. Keep talking to him. Invent some sort of screening process and keep him there,’ Brunetti said. On his way out, he put his head into the officers’ room and shouted a quick command that they get two men and a boat over to the entrance to the Pronto Soccorso immediately.
It took him only ten minutes to walk to the hospital, and when he got there he told the portiere that he needed to be taken to the doctors’ entrance to Pronto Soccorso so that he would not be seen by any patients who were waiting. His sense of urgency must have been contagious because the man left his glass-enclosed office and led Brunetti down the main corridor, past the patient entrance to the Emergency Room, and then through an unmarked door and down a narrow corridor. He emerged into the nurses’ station at the Pronto Soccorso.
The nurse on duty looked up at him in surprise when he appeared on her left with no warning, but Carraro must have told her to expect someone, for she got to her feet, saying, ‘He’s with Dottore Carraro.’ She pointed to the door to the main treatment room. ‘In there.’
Without knocking, Brunetti opened the door and went in. A white-jacketed Carraro stood over a tall man lying on his back on the examining table. His shirt and sweater lay across the back of a chair, and Carraro was listening to his heart with his stethoscope. Because he had the earpieces in place, Carraro was not aware of Brunetti’s arrival. But the man on the table was, and when his heart quickened at the sight of Brunetti, Carraro looked up to see what had caused his patient’s reaction.
He saw Brunetti but said nothing.
The man on the table lay still, though Brunetti saw the stiffening of his body and the quick flush of emotion on his face. He also saw the inflamed mark on the outer edge of his right forearm: oval, its two edges stamped out with zipper-like precision.
He chose to say nothing. The man on the examining table closed his eyes and lay back, letting his arms fall limply to h
is sides. Brunetti noticed that Carraro was wearing a pair of transparent rubber gloves. If he’d come in now and seen the man lying like that, he would have thought him asleep. His own heartbeat quieted. Carraro moved away from the table and went over to his desk, laid the stethoscope down, and then left the room without speaking.
Brunetti moved a step closer to the table but was careful to stay more than an arm’s length away. He saw now just how strong the man must be: the muscles of his chest and shoulders were rounded and taut, the result of decades of heavy work. His hands were enormous; one hand lay palm up, and Brunetti was struck by the flatness of the tips of those broad, spatulate fingers.
In repose, the man’s face had a quality about it that spoke of absence. Even when he had first seen Brunetti and perhaps realized who he was, little expression had been visible on his features. His ears were very small; indeed, his curiously cylindrical head seemed a size or two too small for the rest of that heavy body.
‘Signore,’ Brunetti finally said.
The man’s eyes opened, and he looked up at Brunetti. His eyes were a deep brown and made Brunetti think of bears, but that might be because of his general thickness. ‘She told me not to come,’ he said. ‘She said it was a trap.’ He blinked, keeping his eyes closed for a long time, then opened them, and said, ‘But I was afraid. I heard people talking about the story, and I was afraid.’ Again, that long, timeless closing of the eyes, so long it seemed that during it the man went off to some other place while they were closed, like a diver beneath the waters of the sea, happier to remain amidst that greater beauty and reluctant to return.
His eyes opened. ‘But she was right. She always is.’ Saying that, he sat up. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Brunetti. ‘I won’t hurt you. I need the doctor to give me the cure, and then I’ll come with you. But first I have to have the cure.’
Brunetti nodded, understanding his need. ‘I’ll get the doctor,’ he said, and went out to the nurses’ station, where Carraro stood, talking on the phone. There was no sign of the nurse.
When he saw Brunetti, he hung up and turned to him. ‘Well?’ The anger was back, but Brunetti suspected it had nothing to do with any violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
‘I’d like you to give him a tetanus shot, and then I’ll take him to the Questura.’
‘You leave me alone in a room with a murderer, and now you expect me to go back in there and give him a tetanus shot? You’ve got to be out of your mind,’ Carraro said, crossing his arms in front of him as a visual sign of his refusal.
‘I don’t think there’s any risk, Dottore. He could need one, anyway, for that bite. It looks infected to me.’
‘Oh, so you’re a doctor now, too, huh?’
‘Dottore,’ Brunetti said, looking down at his shoes and taking a long breath, ‘I’m asking you to put your rubber gloves back on and come into the next room and give your patient a tetanus shot.’
‘And if I refuse?’ Carraro asked with empty belligerence, wafting a breath in Brunetti’s direction that smelled of mint and alcohol, the sort of thing real drinkers make their breakfast of.
‘If you refuse, Dottore,’ Brunetti said in a lethally calm voice and reaching toward him with one hand, ‘I will pull you back into that room and tell him you refuse to give him the injection that will cure him. And then I’ll leave you alone with him.’
He watched Carraro as he spoke, saw that the doctor believed him, which was enough for his purposes. Carraro’s arms fell to his side, though he muttered something under his breath, something that Brunetti pretended not to hear.
He held the door for Carraro and went back into the room. The man sat now on the side of the examining table, long legs dangling toward the floor, buttoning his shirt over his barrel-shaped chest.
Silently, Carraro went to a glass-doored cabinet at the far side of the room, opened it, and pulled out a syringe. He stooped down and searched noisily through the boxes of medicine stored there until he found the box he wanted. He took a small, rubber-capped glass vial from it and went back to his desk. Carefully, he pulled on a new pair of rubber gloves, opened the plastic package and took out the syringe, and stuck its point through the rubber seal on the top of the small bottle. He sucked all of the liquid up into the needle, and turned back to the man on the table, who sat, his shirt now tucked into his trousers, one sleeve rolled up almost to his shoulder.
As Brunetti watched, he held his arm out toward the doctor, turned his face away, and squeezed his eyes closed much in the way children do when they receive inoculations. With unnecessary force, Carraro jabbed the needle into the man’s muscle and plunged the liquid into his arm. He yanked the needle out, pushed the man’s arm roughly upright so the pressure would stop the bleeding, and went back to the desk.
‘Thank you, Dottore,’ the man said. ‘Is that the cure?’
Carraro refused to speak, so Brunetti said, ‘Yes, that’s it. You don’t have anything to worry about now.’
‘It didn’t even hurt. Much,’ the man said and looked toward Brunetti. ‘Do we have to go now?’
Brunetti nodded. The man lowered his arm and looked down at the place where Carraro had stuck the needle. Blood welled up from it.
‘I think your patient needs a bandage, Dottore,’ Brunetti said, though he knew Carraro would do nothing. The doctor pulled the gloves from his hands and tossed them toward a table, not at all troubled to see them land on the floor far short of it. Brunetti stepped over to the cabinet and looked at the boxes on the top shelf. One of them held standard-sized plasters. He took one and went back to the man. He unwrapped the sterile paper covering and was about to put the plaster on the bleeding spot when the man raised his other hand and made a gesture telling Brunetti to stop.
‘I might not be cured yet, Signore, so you better let me do that.’ He took the plaster and, left hand clumsy, placed it over the wound, then smoothed the sticky sides to his skin. He rolled down his sleeve, got to his feet, and leaned down to get his sweater.
When they got to the door of the examining room, the man stopped and looked down at Brunetti from his greater height. ‘It would be terrible if I got it, you see,’ he said, ‘terrible for the family.’ He nodded in silent affirmation of his own truth and stepped back to allow Brunetti to go through the door first. Behind them, Carraro slammed the door of the medicine cabinet shut, but government issue furniture is durable, and the glass did not break.
In the main corridor stood the two uniformed officers Brunetti had ordered to be sent to the hospital, and at the dock waited the police launch, the ever-taciturn Montisi at the tiller. They emerged from the side entrance and walked the few metres to the tethered boat, the man keeping his head lowered and his shoulders hunched, a posture he had adopted from the instant he saw the uniforms.
His walk was heavy and rough, absolutely lacking the fluid motion of a normal pace, as though there were static on the line between his brain and his feet. When they stepped on to the boat, one of the officers on either side, the man turned to Brunetti and asked, ‘Can I sit downstairs, Signore?’
Brunetti pointed to the four steps that led downwards and the man went and sat on one of the long padded seats that lined both sides of the cabin. He folded his hands between his knees and bent his head over them, staring at the floor.
When they pulled into the dock in front of the Questura, the officers jumped out and tied the boat to the dock, and Brunetti went to the stairs and called, ‘We’re there now.’
The man looked up and got to his feet.
On the trip back, Brunetti had considered taking the man to his office to question him, but he had decided against it, thinking that one of the windowless, ugly questioning rooms, with their scuffed walls and bright lighting, would be better suited to what he had to do.
With officers leading the way, they went to the first floor and down the corridor, stopping outside the third door on the right. Brunetti opened it and held it for the man, who walked silently inside and stopped, looking back
at Brunetti, who indicated one of the chairs that stood around a scarred table.
The man sat down. Brunetti closed the door and came to sit on the opposite side of the table.
‘My name is Guido Brunetti. I’m a commissario of police,’ he began, ‘and there is a microphone in this room that is recording everything we say.’ He gave the date and the time and then turned to the man.
‘I’ve brought you here to ask questions about three deaths: the death of a young man called Franco Rossi, the death of another young man called Gino Zecchino, and the death of a young woman whose name we don’t yet know. Two of them died in or near a building near Angelo Raffaele, and one died after a fall from the same building.’ He stopped here, then continued, ‘Before we go any further, I must ask you your name and ask you to give me some identification.’ When the man did not respond, Brunetti said, ‘Would you tell me your name, Signore?’
He looked up and asked with infinite sadness, ‘Do I have to?’
Brunetti said with resignation, ‘I’m afraid so.’
The man lowered his head and looked down at the table. ‘She’s going to be so angry,’ he whispered. He looked up at Brunetti and in the same soft voice said, ‘Giovanni Dolfin.’
24
BRUNETTI SEARCHED FOR some sort of familial resemblance between this awkward giant and the thin, hunched woman he had seen in dal Carlo’s office. Seeing none, he did not dare to ask how they were related, knowing it was better to let the man talk on, while he himself played the role of one who already knew everything that could be said and was there to do no more than ask questions about minor points and details of chronology.
Silence spread. Brunetti let it do so until the room was filled with it, the only sound Dolfin’s laboured breathing.
He finally turned toward Brunetti and gave him a pained look. ‘I’m a count, you see. We’re the last ones; there’s no one after us because Loredana, well, she never married, and . . .’ Again, he looked down at the surface of the table, but it still refused to tell him how to explain all of this. He sighed and started again, ‘I won’t marry. I’m not interested in all of, all of that,’ he said with a vague motion of his hand, as though pushing ‘all of that’ away.
