by Donna Leon
‘How much do you know about cows?’ he asked.
‘Oh, my God. Not another one,’ she said and sank down on the sofa, her hand pressed to her eyes.
11
‘WHAT DO YOU mean, “Another one”?’ he asked, though what he really wanted to know was whom she included among them.
‘As I have told you at least twelve thousand times in the last decades: don’t be smart with me, Guido Brunetti,’ she said with exaggerated severity. ‘You know exactly who they are: Chiara, Signorina Elettra, and Vianello. And from what you’ve said, I suspect those last two will soon have the Questura declared a no-meat zone.’
After what he had read that afternoon, Brunetti thought this might not be such a bad thing. ‘They’re just the lunatic fringe, though other people there are beginning to think about it, too,’ he offered.
‘If you ever set foot in a supermarket and saw what people are buying, you wouldn’t say that, believe me.’
The few times he had had that experience, Brunetti had – he confessed to himself – been fascinated by what he saw people buying, given the probability that they intended to eat those things. So rarely did he shop for groceries that Brunetti had been uncertain as to the nature of some of the products he saw and could not work out whether they were meant for consumption or for some other domestic purpose; scouring sinks, perhaps.
He remembered, as a boy, being sent to the store to get, for example, a half-kilo of limon beans. He had come home carrying them in the cylinder of newspaper in which the shopkeeper had wrapped them. But now they came in a clear plastic package bound with a bow of golden ribbon, and it was impossible to buy less than a kilo. His mother had lit the fire in the kitchen with the newspaper: the plastic and the bow went into the garbage after their fifteen minutes of freedom from the shelves.
‘We don’t eat as much meat as we used to,’ he said.
‘That’s only because Chiara’s too young to leave home.’
‘Is that what she’d do?’
‘Or stop eating,’ Paola declared.
‘She’s really that convinced?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about you?’ he asked. It was Paola, after all, who decided what they would eat every day.
She finished her champagne and twirled the glass between her palms, as though hoping to start a fire with it.
‘I like it less and less,’ she finally said.
‘Because of how it tastes or because of what you read about it?’
‘Both.’
‘You’re not going to stop cooking it, are you?’
‘Oh course not, silly.’ Then, reaching to hand him her glass, ‘Especially if you go and get us more champagne.’
Visions of lamb chops, veal cooked in marsala, and roast chicken dancing in his head, he went into the kitchen to obey her.
On the way to the Questura the following morning, Brunetti stopped in a bar for a coffee and read the Gazzettino’s account of the discovery of the body in the canal, followed by a brief description of the man and his probable age. In his office, he learned that there had been no report filed of a missing man, in the city or in the surrounding area. Within minutes of his arrival, Pucetti was at his door. Either the young man had managed to place a computer chip in Brunetti’s ear or, more likely, the man at the door had phoned Pucetti when his superior arrived.
When Brunetti signalled him to enter, Pucetti came in and placed a photo of the dead man on his desk. Brunetti had no idea how he had managed to isolate just one frame, but the photo was entirely natural and showed the man gazing ahead of him with a completely relaxed expression on his face. He appeared a different man from the one now lying in a cold room at the Ospedale Civile.
Brunetti gave a broad smile and nodded in approval. ‘Good work, Pucetti. It’s him, the man I saw.’
‘I’ve made copies, sir.’
‘Good. See that one’s scanned and sent to the Gazzettino. The other papers, too. And see if anyone downstairs recognizes him.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti said, left the photo on Brunetti’s desk, and was gone.
In her office, Signorina Elettra had today decided to wear yellow, a colour very few women could get away with. It was Tuesday, flower day at the market, and so her office – and presumably Patta’s – was filled with them, a civilizing touch she had brought to the Questura. ‘They’re lovely, the daffodils, aren’t they?’ she asked as Brunetti came in, waving in the direction of a quadruple bouquet on the windowsill.
The first stirrings of springtime would once have urged an unmarried Brunetti to say that they were not as lovely as the person who had brought them there, but this Brunetti limited himself to responding, ‘Yes, they are,’ and then asking, ‘And what excess of colour has transformed the Vice-Questore’s office?’
‘Pink. I love it and he dislikes it. But he’s afraid to complain.’ She looked away for a moment, back at Brunetti, and said, ‘I read once that pink is the navy blue of India.’
It took Brunetti a moment, and then he laughed out loud. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said, thinking how Paola would love it.
‘Are you here about the dead man?’ she asked, suddenly serious.
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing from my friend. Maybe Rizzardi will have better luck.’
‘He could be from some other province,’ Brunetti suggested.
‘Possible,’ she said. ‘I’ve sent out the usual request to hotels, asking if they have a guest who’s missing.’
‘No luck?’
‘Only a Hungarian who ended up in the hospital with a heart attack.’
Brunetti thought of the vast net of rental apartments and bed and breakfasts in which the city was enmeshed. Many of them operated beyond all official recognition or control, paying no taxes and making no report to the police of the people who stayed there. In the event of the non-return of a guest, how likely were the owners to report his absence to the police and bring their illegal operations to the attention of the authorities? How much easier simply to wait a few days and then claim whatever the decamping client might have left behind in lieu of unpaid rent, and that’s the end of it.
Earlier in his career, Brunetti would have assumed that any self-respecting, law-abiding citizen would contact the police, certainly as soon as they read of the discovery of a murdered man whose description sounded so very much like the man staying in room three, over the garden. But decades spent amidst the prevarications and half-truths to which law-abiding citizens were all too prone had cured him of such illusions.
‘Pucetti has a photo from one of the videos. He’s sending it to the papers, and he’s asking if anyone recognizes him,’ Brunetti said. ‘But I agree with you, Signorina: people don’t disappear.’
12
BRUNETTI FOUND VIANELLO in the officers’ room, speaking on the phone. When the Inspector saw him, a look of great relief crossed his face. He said a few words, shrugged, said a few more, and replaced the phone.
Approaching, Brunetti asked, ‘Who?’
‘Scarpa.’
‘What’s he want?’
‘Trouble. It’s all he ever wants, I think.’
Brunetti, who agreed, asked, ‘What sort of trouble this time?’
‘Something about the receipts for fuel and could Foa be using the police account to buy it for his own boat?’ Under his breath, Vianello muttered something Brunetti pretended not to have heard. ‘Isn’t there something in the Bible about seeing things against other people when you don’t see the same thing in your own eye?’
‘Something like,’ Brunetti admitted.
‘Patta has Foa pick him up and take him to dinner in Pellestrina, and if it’s not a nice day, take him home, and Scarpa’s worrying that Foa’s stealing fuel.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Everybody’s nuts.’
Brunetti, who agreed with this proposition as well, said, ‘Foa wouldn’t do it. I know his father.’ This assessment made sense to both of them and served as sufficient validation of Foa’s integrity. ‘But why’s he goi
ng after Foa now?’ Brunetti asked. Scarpa’s behaviour was often confusing, his motives always inexplicable.
‘Maybe he has some cousin from Palermo who knows how to pilot a boat and needs a job,’ Vianello suggested. ‘Fat chance he’d have navigating here.’
Brunetti was tempted to ask if Vianello’s last remark had a double meaning, but instead he asked him to come out and sit on the riva with him and talk while they watched the boats pass.
When they were seated on the bench, the new sun warming their faces and thighs, Brunetti gave Vianello the folder that contained the photos. ‘Pucetti show you this?’
Vianello nodded as he took the photo and looked at it. ‘I see what you mean about the neck,’ he said and handed it back, then returned to their previous subject and asked, ‘What do you think Scarpa’s really up to?’
Brunetti raised his palms in a gesture of helpless incomprehension. ‘In this case, I think he’s just trying to cause trouble for someone who’s popular, but I don’t think there’s ever any understanding of what people like Scarpa do.’ Then he added, ‘Paola’s teaching a class in the short story this year, and in one of them, the bad guy – all he’s called is The Misfit – after he wipes out a whole family, even the old grandmother, he sits there calmly and says something like, “There’s no pleasure except meanness.”’ As if to emphasize the truth of this, two seagulls farther up the riva began to fight over something, both tearing at it while managing to squawk and flail violently at the same time.
‘I tell you, when Paola read it to me,’ Brunetti went on, ‘I thought of Scarpa. He just likes meanness.’
‘You mean that literally – that he likes it?’ Vianello asked.
Before Brunetti could answer, they were disturbed by the appearance from the left of a enormous – did it have eight decks? Nine? Ten? – cruise ship. It trailed meekly behind a gallant tug, but the fact that the hawser connecting them dipped limply into the water gave the lie to the appearance of whose motors were being used to propel them and which boat decided the direction. What a perfect metaphor, Brunetti thought: it looked like the government was pulling the Mafia into port to decommission and destroy it, but the ship that appeared to be doing the pulling had by far the smaller motor, and any time the other one chose, it could give a yank on the hawser and remind the other boat of where the power lay.
When the boats were past, Vianello said, ‘Well?’
‘Yes, I think he does like it,’ Brunetti finally said. ‘Some people just do. No divine possession, no Satan, no unhappy childhood or chemical imbalance in the brain. For some people, there’s no pleasure except meanness.’
‘That’s why they keep doing it?’ Vianello asked.
‘Has to be, doesn’t it?’ Brunetti asked by way of answer.
‘Gesù,’ Vianello whispered. Then, after being interrupted by the continuing fight between the seagulls, he said, ‘I never wanted to believe that.’
‘Who would?’
‘And we’ve got him?’ Vianello asked.
‘Until he goes too far or gets sloppy.’
‘And then?’
‘And then we get rid of him,’ Brunetti said.
‘You make it sound simple.’
‘It might be.’
‘I hope so,’ Vianello said with the sincerity that most people reserved for prayer.
‘About this man – I still don’t understand why no one’s reported a missing person. People have families, for God’s sake.’
‘Maybe it’s too soon,’ Vianello said.
Brunetti, unconvinced, said, ‘The photo should be in the papers tomorrow. With any luck, someone will see it and call us.’ He didn’t tell Vianello he had resisted the idea because the dead man looked so much like a dead person and so little like a man. ‘Someone should react to Pucetti’s.’
‘And until then?’ the Inspector asked.
Brunetti reached over and took the folder, closed it, and said, getting to his feet, ‘Let’s go shoe shopping.’
The Fratelli Moretti shop in Venice is conveniently close to Campo San Luca. Brunetti had been an admirer of their shoes for a generation but for some reason had never bought a pair. It was not their price – everything in Venice had grown expensive – so much as … Brunetti was suddenly forced to realize that there was no reason whatsoever: he had simply never gone inside the shop, kept out by no reason he could name. Using this as justification, he led Vianello to the shop, where they paused outside to study the men’s shoes in the window. ‘I like those,’ Brunetti said, pointing to a pair of dark brown tasselled loafers.
‘If you bought them,’ Vianello said, having assessed the quality of the leather, ‘and things got tough, you could always boil them and live off the stock for a few days.’
‘Very funny,’ Brunetti said and went inside.
The robust woman in charge glanced at their identification and studied the photo of the dead man but shook her head. ‘Letizia might recognize him,’ she said and indicated the stairs that led to the floor above. ‘She’s with some customers but will be down in a minute.’ While waiting, Brunetti and Vianello busied themselves by trailing through the shop: Brunetti had another look at the loafers.
Letizia, younger and thinner than the other woman, came downstairs after a few minutes, preceded by a Japanese couple and holding four shoeboxes in her arms. She might have been in her late twenties, with boyishly short blonde hair combed up in whimsical spikes and a face that escaped from plainness by virtue of the intelligence evident in her gaze.
Brunetti waited while the sale was completed and the customers led to the door, where there followed an exchange of deep bows, seeming not at all forced on the part of the saleswoman.
When Letizia came across to them, the manager explained who they were and what they wanted her to do. Letizia’s smile was interested, even curious. Brunetti handed her the photo.
At the sight of the face of the dead man, she said, ‘The man from Mestre.’
‘From Mestre?’ Brunetti inquired.
‘Yes. He was in here – oh, it must have been two months ago – and tried to buy a pair of shoes. I think he said he wanted loafers.’
‘Is there any reason why you remember him, Signorina?’
‘Well,’ she began, then added, with a quick glance at the manager, who was listening to all of this, ‘I don’t want to talk badly about our customers, not at all, but it’s because he was so strange.’
‘His behaviour?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, not at all. He was very pleasant, very polite. It was the way he looked.’ Saying this, she glanced again at the other woman, as if asking permission to say such a thing. The manager pursed her lips and then nodded.
Visibly relieved, Letizia continued. ‘He was so big. No, not big the way Americans are big. You know, all over, and tall. It was only his torso and his neck that were so big. I remember wondering what size shirt he’d wear and how he’d find one with a neck big enough for him. But the rest of him was normal.’ She studied Brunetti’s face, and then Vianello’s. ‘He must have a terrible time buying a suit, too, now that I think about it: his shoulders and chest are enormous. The jacket would have to be two or three sizes bigger than the trousers.’
Before either of them could remark on this observation, she said, ‘He tried on a suede jacket, so I saw that his hips were like a regular man’s. And his feet were normal, too: size forty-three. But the rest of him was all … oh, I don’t know, all pumped up.’
‘You’re sure this is the man?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Absolutely,’ she said.
‘From Mestre?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.
‘Yes. He said he was in the city for the day and had tried to buy the shoes in our store in Mestre – but they didn’t have his size so he thought he’d look for them here.’
‘Did you have the shoes?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No,’ she said, her disappointment evident. ‘We had one size larger and one size smaller. We had his size only in brown, but
he didn’t want them – only black.’
‘Did he buy another style, instead?’ Brunetti asked, hoping that he had and hoping even more strongly that he had paid for them with a credit card.
‘No. That’s exactly what I suggested, but he said he wanted the black because he already had them in brown and he liked them.’ These must be the shoes he had been wearing when he was killed, Brunetti thought, smiling at the young woman to encourage her to keep speaking.
‘And the suede jacket?’ he asked when he realized she was finished.
‘It didn’t fit over his shoulders,’ she said. Then, in a softer voice, she added, ‘I felt sorry for him when he tried it on and he couldn’t even get his other arm into the sleeve.’ She shook her head, her sympathy obvious. Then she added, ‘We usually keep our eyes on people who try on the suede jackets so they don’t steal them. But I couldn’t. He seemed almost surprised by it, sort of, but sad, really sad that he couldn’t make it fit.’
‘Did he buy anything at all?’ Vianello asked.
‘No, he didn’t. I wish he could have found a jacket that fitted him, though.’ Then, so they wouldn’t misunderstand: ‘Not because I wanted the sale or anything, but just so that he could find one that would fit him. Poor man.’
Brunetti asked, ‘Did he actually say he lived in Mestre?’
She looked at her colleague, as if to ask her please to remind her what the man had said to make her believe he was from Mestre. She tilted her head to one side in a very birdlike way. ‘He said that he’d bought a few pairs there, and I just sort of assumed that he must live there. After all, you usually buy shoes where you live, don’t you?’
Brunetti nodded his agreement, thinking that you usually don’t have the good fortune to be served by such a kind person, no matter where you buy your shoes.
He thanked both her and her manager, gave Letizia his card and asked her to call him if she remembered anything else the man had said that might give further information about him.
As they turned towards the door, Letizia made a noise. It wasn’t a word, little more than a voiced aspirant. Brunetti turned back and she asked, ‘Was he the man in the water?’
