A Venetian Reckoning (26 page)

'That answer will do as well as
another, I suppose,’ Brunetti said, interested that Martucci could not easily
be baited. Must come of practising corporate law, Brunetti reflected, where
everyone's forced to be polite. Brunetti continued, 'What happens to the law
firm?'

'Signora Trevisan retains 60 per
cent'

Brunetti said nothing for so long
that Martucci was forced to add, 'And I retain 40.’

'May I ask when this will was drawn
up?'

'Two years ago,' Martucci answered
with no hesitation.

'And when did you join Signor
Trevisan's firm, Avvocato Martucci?'

Signora Trevisan turned her very pale
eyes on Brunetti and spoke for the first time since they came into the room.
'Commissario, before you become too exercised in pursuit of your own vulgar
curiosity, might I inquire as to the final goal of these questions?’

'If they have a goal, signora, it is
in gaining information to help in finding the person who murdered your
husband.'

'It would seem to me', she began,
propping her elbows on the arms of her chair and pressing her hands into a
steeple in front of her, 'that this would be true only if some connection
existed between the conditions of his will and his murder. Or am I being too
simple-minded for you?' When Brunetti felled to answer immediately, she graced
him with a sliver of a smile, it
is
possible
for things to be too simple-minded for you, isn't it, commissario?'

I'm certain it is, signora,' Brunetti
said, glad he had managed to provoke at least one of them 'Hence I like to ask
questions with simple answers. This one has a number, how long Signor Martucci
worked for your husband.'

Two years,' Martucci answered.

Brunetti turned his attention back to
the lawyer, intent on him now, and asked, 'And if I might ask about the other
dispositions of the will?'

Martucci started to answer, but
Signora Trevisan held up a hand to silence him. I’ll answer this, avvocato.'
Then, turning to Brunetti, she said, 'The bulk of Carlo's property, as is
entirely common under the law, is left to me, as his widow, and to his children
in equal shares. There are some other bequests to relatives and friends, but the
bulk comes to us. Does that satisfy your curiosity?'

'Yes, signora, it does.’

Martucci shifted in his seat,
preparing to rise, and said, if that's all you came for
..
.’

‘I have some other questions,'
Brunetti said, turning to Signora Trevisan, 'for you, signora.'

She nodded without bothering to
answer him and gave a calming glance in Martucci's direction.

'Do you have a car?'

‘I’m afraid I don't understand your
question,' she said after a short pause.

Brunetti repeated, 'Do you have a
car?' 'Yes.'

'What kind?'

'I don't see what sense this makes,’
Martucci interrupted.

Ignoring him, Signora Trevisan said,
'It's a BMW. Three years old. Green.'

'Thank you,' Brunetti said, face
impassive, and men asked, 'Your brother, signora, does he leave a family?'

'No. He and his wife never had
children.'

Martucci interrupted again. 'I'm sure
your records must tell you that.'

Ignoring him, Brunetti asked,
choosing his words carefully, 'Did your brother have anything to do with
prostitutes?'

Martucci jumped to his feet, but
Brunetti ignored him; his attention was riveted on Signora Trevisan. Her head
shot up when she heard the question, and then, almost as though listening to an
echo of it, she looked away from him for a moment, then brought her eyes back
to his. Two very slow beats passed before her face displayed any anger, and
then she said in a loud, declamatory voice, 'My brother had no need for
whores.'

Martucci caught the tail of her anger
and used it to swing his own towards Brunetti. ‘I will not permit you to insult
the memory of Signora Trevisan's brother. Your accusation is disgusting and
offensive. We don't have to listen to your insinuations.' He paused to gather
breath, and Brunetti could almost hear his lawyer's mind spring into action.
'Furthermore, your remark is slanderous, and I have Signora Trevisan as a
witness to what you've said.' He looked from one to the other for a response,
but neither had paid the least attention to his explosion.

Brunetti never glanced away from
Signora Trevisan, nor did she make any attempt to avoid his eyes. Martucci
started to speak again, but then stopped, confused at the attention they seemed
to be paying to one another, missing the fact that what engaged them was not
the slanderous potential of Brunetti "s last remark but, rather, its exact
phrasing.

Brunetti waited until the others
realized that he wanted an answer, not righteous indignation. He saw her
consider the question and how to answer it. He thought he saw some revelation
move from her eyes to her Hps, but just as she was about to speak, Martucci
started up again. ‘I demand an apology.' When Brunetti didn't bother to answer
him, Martucci took two steps towards Brunetti until he stood between him and
Signora Trevisan, blocking their view of one another. ‘I demand an apology,'
he repeated, looking down at Brunetti.

'Of course, of course,' Brunetti said
with singular lack of interest. ‘You can have as many apologies as you like.'
Brunetti got to his feet and stepped to Martucci's side, but Signora Trevisan
had looked away and didn't bother to look up at him. One glance told him that
Martucci's interruption had served to drive all urge towards confidence from
her; Brunetti saw there was no sense in repeating himself.

'Signora,' he said, 'if you decide to
answer my question, you'll find me at the Questura.' Saying nothing eke, he
stepped around Martucci and left the room, then let himself out of the house
without bothering to call the maid, who was nowhere to be seen.

As
he walked home, Brunetti thought about how dose
he had just come to that moment of contact that he sometimes managed to create
between himself and a witness or
a
suspect,
that delicate point of balance when some chance phrase or word would suddenly
spur
a
person to reveal something they had tried to keep
hidden. What had she been about to say, and what had Lotto had to do with
prostitutes? And the woman in the Mercedes? Wis she the woman who had dinner
with Favero the night he was killed? Brunetti asked himself what could happen
during dinner to make
a
woman
so nervous or forgetful that she would leave behind
a
pair of glasses worth more than a million fire.
And had it been something that happened during dinner or what she knew was
going to happen after dinner that made her nervous? The questions swirled
around Brunetti, Furies calling to him and mocking him because he didn't know
the answers and, worse, because he didn't even know which questions were
important.

When he left the Trevisan apartment,
Brunetti turned automatically toward the Accademia Bridge and home. He was so
preoccupied with his thoughts that it took him some time to notice that the
street seemed crowded. He glanced down at his watch, puzzled that there should
be so many people in this part of the city more than a half-hour before the
shops closed He looked at them more carefully and saw that they were Italians:
both men and women were too well dressed and groomed to be anything eke.

He abandoned any thought of hurrying
and allowed the flow to carry him towards Campo San Stefano. From the bottom of
the closest bridge, he heard amplified sound but could not distinguish it
clearly.

Down the narrow slot of the last
calle
they pulled him and men, suddenly, freed him into
the darkening
campo.
Directly in front of him was the statue Brunetti
had always thought of as the Meringue Man, so starkly white and porous was the
marble from which he was carved Other people, seeing the pile of books that
seemed to issue from beneath his coat, called him something more indelicate.

To Brunetti's right, a wooden
platform had been erected along the side of the church of San Stefano. A few
wooden chairs stood on it; the front corners held enormous speakers. From three
wooden poles at the back of the platform hung the limp flags bearing the Italian
tricolor, the lion of San Marco, and the newly minted symbol of what had once
been the Christian Democratic party.

Brunetti moved over closer to the
statue and stepped behind the low metal fence that encircled its base. About a
hundred people stood in front of the platform; from that group three men and a
woman broke away and walked up the steps of the platform. Loud music suddenly
blared forth. Brunetti thought it was the national anthem, but the volume and
the static made it difficult to tell.

A man in jeans and a bomber jacket
handed a microphone with a long hanging wire up to one of the men on the
platform. He held it at his side for a while, smiled at the crowd, shitted the
microphone to his left hand, and shook hands with the people on the platform.
From below, the man in the jacket lifted a hand and made a cutting gesture, but
the music didn't stop.

The man on the platform held the
microphone up to his mouth and said something, but the music rode above it and
made it incomprehensible. He held the microphone out at arm's length and tapped
at it with one hand, but this came through as six muffled pistol shots.

A pod of people broke away from the
crowd and went into a bar. Six more walked around towards the front of the
church and disappeared up Calle della Mandorla. The man in the bomber jacket
clambered up on to the platform and did something to the wires at the back of
one of the speakers. That speaker went suddenly dead, but music and static
continued to blare forth from the other. He walked hurriedly across the
platform and knelt behind the other speaker.

Some more people drifted away. The
woman on the platform walked down the steps and disappeared into the crowd,
quickly followed by two of the men. When the noise didn't stop, the man in the
jacket got to his feet and had a huddled conference with the man with the
microphone. By the time Brunetti turned his attention away from them, only a
handful of people remained in front of the platform.

He climbed back over the low fence
and headed towards the Accademia Bridge. Just as he was passing in front of the
small florist's kiosk at the end of the
campo
, the music and static came
to a sudden halt, and a man's voice, amplified by nothing more than anger,
called out,
'Cittadini, Italiani
’
 
but Brunetti didn't stop, nor did he bother to
turn around.

He realized that he wanted to talk to
Paola. He had, as always and as was against the regulations, kept her informed
about the progress of the investigation, had given her his impressions of the people
he questioned and the answers they gave him. This time, because there had been
no one standing naked in guilt's spotlight at the very beginning, Paola had
refrained from naming the person she believed to be the murderer, a habit
Brunetti had never been able to break her of. Devoid of that
a
priori
certainty,
she served as the perfect listener: prodding him with questions, forcing him to
explain things so clearly that she would understand. Often, forced to explain
some lingering uneasiness, he better understood it himself. This time, she had
suggested nothing, hinted nothing, displayed no suspicion of any of the people
he mentioned. She listened, interested, and that was all she did.

When he got home, he found that Paola
wasn't there yet, but Chiara was waiting for him. 'Papa,' she called from her
room when she heard him open the door. A second later, she appeared at the door
of her room, a magazine hanging open in her hand. He recognized the yellow bordered
cover of
Airone,
just as he recognized in its lavish photos,
glossy paper, and simple prose style more signs of the American magazine it so
closely imitated.

'What is it, sweetheart?' he asked,
bending down to kiss the top of her head and then turning to hang his coat in
the closet near the door.

'There's a competition. Papa, and if
you win it, you get a free subscription.'