A Venetian Reckoning (19 page)

Not for a moment did it occur to
Brunetti to question the truth of anything Judge Beniamin had told him nor to
spend any time attempting to confirm it. Given, then, Trevisan's probable
involvement with the Mafia, his death began to look even more like an
execution: as sudden and anonymous as a bolt of lightning. From his name,
Martucci would probably turn out to be a Southerner: Brunetti warned himself
against the prejudice that would carry that fact towards certain assumptions,
especially should Martucci turn out to be Sicilian.

That left the daughter, Francesca,
and her story of her parents' fear of kidnapping. Before he left the house that
morning, Brunetti had told Chiara that the police had straightened out the
kidnapping story and didn't need any more help from her. Even the most remote
possibility that someone might learn of Chiara's interest in a matter that had
to do with the Mafia caused Brunetti profound uneasiness, and he knew that a
display of casual uninterest was the best way to dissuade her from asking more
questions.

He was brought back from these
thoughts by a knock at his door.
'Avanti?
he
called and raised his eyes to see Signora Elettra pushing open the door to
allow a man to enter. 'Cornmissario,' she said as she came in, ‘I'd like you to
meet Signor Giorgio Rondini. He'd like to have a few words with you.'

The man she ushered in towered at
least a head above her, though it was unlikely that he weighed much more than
she. As gaunt as the subject of an El Greco portrait, Signor Rondini added to
that resemblance with a pointed dark beard and black eyes that looked out at
the world from beneath thick brows.

'Please have a seat, Signor Rondini,’
Brunetti said, getting to his feet. 'How may I be of service to you?'

While Rondini was lowering himself
into a chair, Signorina Elettra went back to the door she had left open and
paused there for a moment, She stood immobile until Brunetti glanced across at
her, when she pointed a finger at the now-seated man and mouthed, as if dealing
with the newly deaf, 'Gi-or-gio.' Brunetd gave her the slightest of nods and
said,
'Grazie,
signor-ina,' as she left, closing the door behind
her.

For a time, neither man spoke.
Rondini looked around the office, and Brunetti looked down at the list on his desk.
Finally Rondini spoke: 'Commissario, I've come to ask your advice.'

'Yes, Signor Rondini?' Brunetd asked,
looking up.

'It's about the conviction,' he said
and stopped.

The conviction. Signer Rondini?'
Brunetti asked.

'Yes, because of that day on the beach.'
He gave Brunetti a small smile of encouragement, prodding Brunetti to remember
something he must have known about.

'I'm sorry, Signor Rondini, but I'm
not familiar with the conviction. Could you tell me something more about it?'

Rondini's smile disappeared, replaced
by a pained, embarrassed look.

'Elettra didn't tell you?'

'No, I'm afraid she hasn't spoken to
me about it.' When Rondini's expression became even more grim at hearing this,
Brunetti added, smiling, 'Other than to explain to me what a great help you've
been to us, of course. It's because of your help that we've made the progress
we have.' The fact that there was no real progress in the case didn't make the
remark necessarily a lie, not that this would have stopped Brunetti from saying
it.

When Rondini didn't say anything,
Brunetti prodded him: 'Perhaps you could tell me a little bit about it, and
then I can see how I can help you.'

Rondini's hands came together in his
lap, the fingers of the right gently massaging those of the left 'As I said,
it's about the conviction.' He looked up and Brunetti smiled, nodding his head
encouragingly. 'For indecent exposure.' Brunetti's smile didn't change; Rondini
seemed encouraged by that.

'You see, commissario, 1 was on the
beach two summers ago, at the Alberoni.' Brunetti's smile didn't change, even
at the name of the beach out at the end of the Lido so popular with gays that
it had come to be known as 'Sin Beach'. The smile didn't change, but his eyes
studied Rondini, and his hands, with sharpened attention.

'No, no, commissario,' Rondini said
with a shake of his head, it's not me. It's my brother’ He stopped and shook
his head again in mingled embarrassment and confusion. I'm just making it
worse.' Again, he smiled, even more nervously, and sighed once. 'Let me start
again.' Brunetti greeted this idea with a nod. 'My brother's a journalist. That
summer he was doing an article about the beach, and he asked me to go out there
with him. He thought that way we'd look like a couple and people would leave us
alone. That is, leave us alone but talk to him.' Again, Rondini stopped and
glanced down at his hands, now floundering about in his bp.

When he said nothing and gave no
indication that he would speak again, Brunetti asked, 'Is that where it
happened?' When Rondini neither looked up nor answered, Brunetti prodded. 'The
incident?'

Rondini took a deep breath and
started talking again. 'I went for a swim, but then it began to get cold, so I
decided to change back into my clothes. My brother was way down the beach,
talking to someone, and I thought I was alone. Well, there was no one within
about twenty metres of the blanket. So I sat down and took off my swimming
trunks, and just as I was pulling my trousers on, two policemen came up to me
and told me to stand up. I tried to pull my trousers on, but one of the
policemen stepped on them, so I couldn't.' As he spoke, Rondini s voice grew
tighter, Brunetti couldn't tell whether with embarrassment or anger.

One of Rondini's hands moved up to his
chin and began to rub absently at his beard. 'So I tried to put my swimming
trunks back on, but one of them picked them up and held them.' Rondini stopped.

'Then what happened, Signor Rondini?'

‘I stood up.'

'And?'

'And they wrote up a summons against
me, accusing me of public indecency.' 'Did you explain to them?' 'Yes.' 'And?'

They didn't believe me.'

'What about your brother? Did he come
back?'

'No, it all happened in about five
minutes. By the time he got back, they'd written out the summons and they were
gone.'

'What did you do about it?'

'Nothing,' Rondini said and looked
Brunetti in the eye. 'My brother told me not to worry, that they had to inform
me if they were going to do anything about it.'

'And did they?'

'No. Or at least I never heard
anything. Then, two months later, a friend called and told me he'd seen my name
in that day's
Gazzettino.
There'd been some sort of legal process, but I
was never notified. No fine, nothing. I never heard anything, not until they
sent me a letter saying that I'd been convicted.'

Brunetti considered this for a
moment, not finding it at all strange. A misdemeanour like this could very
easily slip through the cracks of the justice system, and a man could find
himself convicted without ever having been formally accused. What he did not
understand was why Rondini was coming to him about it.

'Have you tried to get the decision
changed?'

'Yes. But they told me that it was
too late, that I had to do something about it before the proceedings. It wasn't
a trial or anything like that’ Brunetti nodded, familiar with this system of
ruling on misdemeanours. 'But it means I've been convicted of a crime.'

'A misdemeanour,’ Brunetti corrected
him

'But still convicted,' Rondini
insisted.

Brunetti tilted his head to one side
and raised his eyebrows in a gesture he hoped was both sceptical and
dismissive. 'I don't think you have anything to worry about, Signor Rondini.'

'I'm getting married’ Rondini said,
an answer that baffled Brunetti completely.

'I'm afraid I don't follow you.'

Rondini's voice grew tight as he
said, 'My fiancee. I don't want her family to learn that I was convicted of
indecent exposure on a homosexual beach.'

'Does she know about it?' Brunetti
asked.

He saw Rondini begin to give one
answer, then change it 'No. I didn't know her when it happened, and since then
there's never been a time when it seemed right to tell her. Or a way. With my
brother and my friends, it's just a funny story now, but I don't think she'd
like it' Rondini shrugged away any uneasiness he might have with this fact and
added, 'And her family would like it even less.'

'And you've come to me to see if I
can do anything about it?'

‘Yes. Elettra has talked about you a
lot, said you were very powerful here at the Questura.' Rondini's voice was
rich with deference when he said this; worse, it was equally filled with hope.

Brunetti shrugged this compliment
away. 'What sort of thing did you have in mind?'

‘I need two things,' Rondini began.
'I'd like you to change my record,' he began, but as soon as he saw Brunetti
begin to object he added, 'I'm sure you can do something as simple as that'

'It means altering an official
government document,' Brunetti said in a voice he hoped he managed to make
sound severe.

'But Elettra says that's...' Rondini
began but stopped immediately.

Brunetti was afraid of how that
sentence might have ended, so he said, 'This might be something that sounds a
great deal easier than it is.'

Rondini looked up at him then, his
gaze bold, his objection evident but unspoken. 'May I tell you the second
thing?'

'Of course.'

'I need a letter explaining that the
original complaint was mistaken and that I was absolved in court. In fact, it
would help if the letter apologized for my trouble.'

He was tempted to dismiss the idea as
impossible, but instead Brunetti asked, 'Why do you need this?'

'For my fiancee. And for her family.
If they should ever learn about it,'

'But if the record is changed, why
would you need the letter?' Brunetti asked but immediately corrected himself,
adding, 'If the record can be changed, that is.'

'Don't worry about the record,
dottore.' Rondini spoke with such absolute authority that Brunetti was forced
to recall that he worked in the computer office of SIP, and then he remembered
the small rectangular box on Signorina Elettra's desk.

'And from whom should this letter
come?'

'I'd like it to come from the Questore,'
Rondini began but quickly added, 'but I know that's impossible.' Brunetti
noticed that, at the first sign they had apparently struck a bargain and had
only to haggle about the details, Rondini's hands had ceased to move and lay
quiet in his lap; he seemed even to relax in his chair.

'Would a letter from a commissario
suffice?'

‘Yes, I think so’ Rondini said.

'And what about cancelling the report
in our files?'

Rondini waved a hand. ‘A day. Two.'

Brunetti didn't want to know which of
them, Rondini or Elettra, would do it, so he didn't ask. 'Later in the week, I’ll
run a check on your name and see if there's a file on you.'

"There won't be,' Rondini
assured him, but there was no arrogance in the claim, nothing more than simple
certainty.

'When I know that, I'll write the
letter.'

Rondini got to his feet. He extended
his hand across Brunetti's desk. As the two men shook hands, Rondini said, 'If
I can ever do you a favour, commissario, anything at all, just remember where
I work.' Brunetti saw him to the door and, when he was gone, went down to speak
to Signorina Elettra.

‘You spoke to him?' she asked when
Brunetti went in.

Brunetti wasn't sure whether to be
offended by her assumption that he would so casually discuss the altering of
official state documents and the writing of entirely fraudulent letters.

He opted for irony. 'I'm surprised
you bothered to have him speak to me at all. That you didn't just take care of
it all yourself?-

Her smile blossomed. 'Well, of
course, I thought of doing that, but I thought it would be helpful if you spoke
to him.'