A Venetian Reckoning (14 page)

'That?' she asked, looking at the SIP
print-out in his hand.

'Yes. It's the list of Trevisan s
calls. Finally,' he added, unable to disguise the anger he felt at having
wasted so much time waiting for official channels to divulge the information.

'Oh, you should have let me know that
you wanted them in a hurry, commissario.'

'A friend at SIP?' he asked, no
longer surprised by the extent of Signorina Elettra’s web.

'Giorgio,' she said and left it at
that. '

Brunetti began, 'Do you think he
could
...
?'

She smiled and held out her hand.

He passed the papers to her. 'I need
to have them arranged in order of the frequency he called them.'

She looked down and made a note on
the pad on her desk. She smiled, suggesting child's play. 'Anything eke?'

'Yes, I'd like to. know how many of
them are phones in public places: bars, restaurants, even phone booths.'

She smiled again; more of the same.
'Is that all?’

'No. I'd like to know which one is
the number of the person who killed him.' If he expected her to make a note of
this, he was disappointed. 'But I don't suppose you can get that.' Brunetti
added this last with a smile, to show her he wasn't serious.

'I don't think we can, sir, but
perhaps it's in among these,' she suggested, flourishing the papers. Probably
was, Brunetti thought.

'How long will that take?' he asked,
meaning how many days.

Signorina Elettra glanced down at her
watch and then flipped to the end of the papers to see how many pages there
were. 'If Giorgio is in the office today, I should have it by the afternoon.'

'How?' Brunetti blurted out before he
had time to phrase a more nonchalant question.

'I've had a modem installed on the
Vice-Questore’s phone,' she said, pointing to a metal box that sat on the desk
a few centimetres from the phone. Wires, Brunetti saw, led from the box to her
computer. 'All Giorgio has got to do is bring up the information, program it to
arrange the calls by frequency, and then send it directly through to my
printer.' She paused a moment. 'It'll arrive listed by frequency, and then
they'll give the date and time of the call. Would you like to know how long
each call lasted?' She held her pen above her pad and waited for his answer.

'Yes. And do you think he could get a
list of calls from the public phone in the bar in Mestre?'

She nodded but said nothing, busy
writing.

'By this afternoon?' Brunetd asked.

'If Giorgio is there, certainly.'

When Brunetti left her office, she
was lifting her phone, no doubt to contact Giorgio and, together with him and
through that rectangular thing attached to her computer, leap over whatever
obstacles SIP might attempt to place in front of the information in its files
as well as over any laws regarding what might be available without a court
order.

Back in his office, he wrote his
brief report to Patta and took the trouble to sketch in his plans for the next
few days. Much of the former was frustration, and the latter was made up of
equal measures of invention and optimism, but he thought it would be enough to
content Patta for awhile. That done, he took the phone and called Ubaldo Lotto
and asked to see him that afternoon, explaining that he needed information
about Trevisan's legal practice. After some initial hesitation and insisting
that he knew nothing about the legal practice, only the financial dealings,
Lotto reluctantly agreed and told Brunetti to come to his office at 5.30.

That office, which turned out to be
in the same building and on the same floor as Trevisan's legal studio, was on
Via XXII Marzo, above the Banca Commerciale d'ltalia, about as good a business
address as one could hope to have in Venice. Brunetti presented himself there a
few minutes before 5.30 and was shown into an office so conspicuous in its
evidence of industry as to be almost predictable, the sort of place a bright
young television director might select as the set for a scene that dealt with a
bright young accountant. In an open area half the size of a tennis court sat
eight separate desks, each holding a computer terminal and screen, each work
area surrounded by waist-high folding screens covered in light green linen.
Five young men and three young women sat at the terminals; Brunetti found it
interesting that none of them bothered to glance at him when he walked past
their desks, following in the footsteps of the male receptionist who had let
him into the office.

This young man stopped before a door,
knocked twice, and men, without waiting for an answer, opened the door and held
it open for Brunetti. When he entered, Brunetti noticed Lotto standing at the
doors of a high cabinet placed against the far wall, leaning forward and
reaching into it. Brunetti heard the door close behind him and glanced back
over his shoulder to see if the young man had come into the room with him. He
had not. When he turned back, Lotto stood a bit back from the cabinet, a bottle
of sweet vermouth in his right hand, two short glasses cupped in his left.

'Would you like a drink, commissario?’
he asked, ‘I usually have one at about this time.’

'Thank you,' said Brunetti, who
loathed sweet drinks. "That would be very welcome.’ He smiled and Lotto
waved him to the other side of the office, where two chairs stood on opposite
sides of a low, thin-legged table.

Lotto poured two generous drinks and
brought them across the room. Brunetti took one, thanked him, but waited until
his host had put the bottle down on the table between them and taken his own
seat before he raised his glass, smiled his friendliest smile, and said, 'Cut
an.' The sweet liquid slithered over his tongue and down his throat, leaving a
thick slime behind it The alcohol was overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness: it
was like drinking aftershave sweetened with apricot nectar.

Though all that could be seen from
the windows of the room were those of the buildings across the street Brunetti
said, 'Compliments on your office. It's very elegant’

Lotto waved his glass in the air in
front of him, pushing back the compliment 'Thank you, dottore. We try to give
an appearance that will assure our clients that their affairs are safe with us
and that we understand how to take care of them’

That must be very difficult’ Brunetti
suggested.

A shadow crossed Lotto's face but
disappeared immediately, taking part of his smile with it. 'I'm afraid I don't
understand you, commissario.'

Brunetti tried to look shamefaced, a
man not at home with language who had expressed himself, yet once again, badly.
'I mean with the new laws, Signor Lotto. It must be very difficult to
understand them or how they apply. Ever since the new government changed the
rules, my own accountant has admitted he isn't sure what he has to do or even
how to fill out the forms’ He sipped at his drink, but he took a very small
sip, one might even have called it a humble little sip, and went on, 'Of
course, my finances are hardly so complicated that they would create any
confusion, but I imagine that you must have many clients whose finances deserve
the attention of an expert.' Another little sip. 'I don't understand these
things, of course,' he began and permitted himself a glance at Lotto, who
appeared to be listening attentively. 'That's why I asked to see you, to see if
you could give me any information you might think important about Avvocato
Trevisan's finances. You were his accountant, weren't you? And his business
manager?’

'Yes,' Lotto answered briefly, then
asked, voice neutral, 'What sort of information?'

Brunetti smiled and made an
open-handed gesture, as if trying to throw his fingers away. 'That's what I
don't understand and why I came to see you. Since Avvocato Trevisan trusted you
with his finances, I thought you might be able to tell us if there were any of
his clients who might have been - I'm not sure of the right word to use here —
might have been displeased with Signor Trevisan.’

' "Displeased",
commissario?'

Brunetti glanced down at his knees, a
man caught again in the web of his own ineptitude with language, surely a man
Lotto could safely believe to be equally inept as a policeman.

Lotto broke the expanding silence.
'I'm afraid I still don't understand,' he said, pleasing Brunetti with the
too-heavy sincerity of his confusion, for it suggested Lotto believed himself
in the company of man unaccustomed to subtlety or complexity.

'Well, Signor Lotto, since we don't
have a motive for this killing...' Brunetti began.

'Not robbery?' Lotto interrupted,
raising his eyebrows in surprise as he spoke.

'Nothing was taken, sir.'

'Couldn't the thief have been
disturbed? Surprise?'

Brunetti gave this suggestion the
consideration it would deserve if no one had ever mentioned it, as he so
clearly wanted Lotto to believe no one had.

1 suppose that's possible,' Brunetti
said, speaking as to an equal. He nodded to himself, mulling over this new
possibility. Then, with dog-like persistence, he returned to his first idea.
'But if that wasn't the case? If what we're dealing with here is a deliberate
murder, then the motive might he in his professional life.' Brunetti wondered
if Lotto would try to cut off the heavy-treaded progress of his thought before
it arrived at the next likely possibility, that the motive might lie in
Trevisan's personal life.

'Are you suggesting that a client
might have done this?' Lotto asked, voice rich with incredulity: clearly this
policeman could never hope to understand the sort of clients a man like
Trevisan dealt with.

‘I know how unlikely that is,'
Brunetti said and smiled, he hoped, nervously. 'But it is possible that Signor
Trevisan, in his capacity as lawyer, might have come into possession of
information that it would be dangerous for him to have.'

'About one of his clients? Are you
suggesting this, cornmissario?' The shock Lotto pumped into his voice was an
indication of how certain he was of his ability to dominate this policeman.
•Yes.'

impossible.'

Brunetti gave another small smile, ‘I
realize it is hard to believe, but soil we need to see, if only to help us
exclude this possibility, a list of Signor Trevisan's clients, and I thought
that you, as his business manager, might be able to provide us with one.'

'And are you going to drag them into
this?' Lotto asked, making sure that Brunetti heard his tone of precipitant
indignation.

‘I assure you that we will do
everything in our power to see that they never realize we are in possession of
their names.'

'And if you were not to be given
these names?'

'We would be forced to ask for a
court order.'

Lotto finished his drink and set the
empty glass on the table to his left, ‘I suppose I could have one prepared for
you.' His reluctance was audible. He was, after all, dealing with the police.
'But I want you to bear in mind that these are not the sort of people who are
usually subject to police investigation.'

In ordinary circumstances, Brunetti
would have remarked that, for the last few years, the police had been
investigating little except 'people like these', but he chose to keep his own
counsel and, instead, answered, ‘I appreciate this, Signor Lotto.'

The accountant cleared his throat, is
that all?'

'Yes,' Brunetti said, swirling the
remaining liquid around in his glass, watching it as it slid up the sides and
then back down again. "There was one other thing, but it hardly bears
mention.' The viscous liquid slid from side to side in Brunetti's glass.

'Yes?' Lotto asked, not really
interested now that the main purpose of this policeman's visit was disposed of.

'Rino Favero,' Brunetti said, letting
the name drop into the room as lightly as a butterfly leaps, splashless, into
streams of air.

'What?' Lotto said with astonishment
too strong to be contained. Content, Brunetti blinked in his most bovine manner
and looked again at the liquid in his glass. Lotto changed his question to a
neutral, 'Who?'

'Favero. Rino. He was an accountant.
In Padua, I think. I wondered if you knew him, Signor Lotto.'

'I might have heard the name. Why do
you ask?'

'He died recently. By his own hand.'
To Brunetti that seemed just like the sort of euphemism a man in his social
station would be expected to use in reference to the suicide of someone in
Favero's. He paused, waiting to see how strong Lotto's curiosity would be.