A Venetian Reckoning (3 page)

And so it was no surprise for Brunetti
to arrive at the Questura and be greeted by the guards at the front door with
the news, 'He wants to see you.’ If Vice-Questore Patta wanted to see him this
early, then perhaps Patta had been called last night and not one of the
commissari. And if Patta was sufficiently interested in the death to be here this
early, then Trevisan was more important or more powerfully connected than
Brunetti had realized.

He went up to his own office and hung
up his coat, then checked his desk. There was nothing on it that hadn't been there
when he left the night before, which meant that any papers already generated by
the case were down in Patta's office. He went down the back steps and into the
Vice-Questore's outer office. Behind her desk, looking as though she were there
only to meet the photographers from
Vogue,
sat
Signorina Elettra Zorzi, today arrayed as were the lilies of the field, in a
white crepe-de-Chine dress that fell in diagonal, but decidedly provocative,
folds across her bosom.

'Buon giomo, commissariat
she
said, looking up from the magazine open on her desk and smiling.

'Trevisan?' Brunetti asked.

She nodded. 'He's been on the phone
for the last ten minutes. The Mayor.' 'Who called whom?'

'The Mayor called him,' Signorina
Elettra answered. 'Why, does it matter?'

'Yes, it probably means we have
nothing to go on.' 'Why?'

'If he called the Mayor, it would
mean he was sure enough about something to assure him that we had a suspect or
would soon have a confession. That the Mayor called him means Trevisan was important
and they want it settled fast.'

Signorina Elettra closed her magazine
and moved it to the side of the desk. When she had first started working for
Patta, Brunetti remembered, she used to put them in the drawer when she wasn't
reading them; now she didn't even bother to torn them face down.

'What time did he get here?' Brunetti
asked.

'Eight-thirty.' Then, before Brunetti
asked, she told him, 'I was already here, and I told him you'd been in and had
gone out to see if you could talk to the Leonardis' maid.' He had spoken to the
woman the afternoon before as part of his investigation of the builder, spoken
to her and learned nothing.

'Grazie!’
he
said. Brunetti had more dun once reflected upon the strangeness of the fact
that a woman with Signorina Elettra's natural indention towards the duplicitous
should have chosen to work for the police.

She glanced down at her desk and saw
that a red light on her phone had ceased to bank. 'He's finished talking,' she
said.

Brunetti nodded and turned away. He
knocked on Patta's door, waited for the shouted Viwmtt", and went into the
office.

Though the Vice-Questore had arrived
early, he had apparently had ample time to perform his toilette: the scent of
some pungent aftershave hung in the air, and Patta's handsome face glowed. His
tie was wool, His suit silk; no slave to tradition, the Vice-Questore. 'Where have
you been?' was Patta's greeting

'At the Leonardis'. I thought I could
talk to their maid.' 'And?'

'She knows nothing.'

'That doesn't matter,' Patta said,
then gestured to the chair in front of his desk. 'Sit down, Brunetti.' When he
was seated, Patta asked, 'Have you heard about this?'

It was not necessary to ask him what
'this' was. 'Yes,' Brunetti answered. 'What happened?'

'Someone shot him on the train from Torino
last night. Twice, at very close range. Body shots. One must have severed an
artery, there was so much blood.' If Patta said 'must have', that meant the
autopsy hadn't been done yet, and he was only guessing.

'Where were you last night?' Patta
asked, almost as if he wanted to eliminate Brunetti as a suspect before going
any further.

'We went to dinner at a friend's
house.'

‘I was told they tried to reach you
at home.'

‘I was at a friend's house,' Brunetti
repeated.

'Why don't you have an answering machine?'

'I have two children.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

"That if I had an answering
machine, I'd spend my time listening to messages from their friends.' Or that
he'd spend it listening to his children's many prevarications as to their
lateness or absence. It also meant that Brunetti saw it as his children's
responsibility to take messages for their parents, but he didn't want to spend
his time with Patta discussing the issue.

'They had to call me,' Patta said,
making no attempt to disguise his indignation.

Brunetti suspected he was meant to
apologize. He said nothing.

'I went to the railway station. The
polizia
ferrovia
had made a mess of it, of course.'
Patta looked down at his desk and pushed a few photos towards Brunetti.

Brunetti leaned forward, picked up
the photos, and glanced at them while Patta continued to catalogue the many
incompetencies of the
polizia
ferrovia.
The first photo was taken from the
door of the train compartment and showed the body of a man lying on his back
between the facing seats. The angle made it impossible to see more than the
back of the man's head, but the dark red splotches on the upturned dome of his
paunch were unmistakable. The next photo showed the body from the other side of
the compartment and must have been taken through the window of the carriage. In
this one, Brunetti could see that the man's eyes were closed and that one of
his hands was closed tightly around a pen. The other photos revealed little
more, though they had been taken from inside the carriage. The man appeared to
be sleeping; death had wiped his face free of all expression and left what
seemed to be the sleep of the just.

'Was he robbed?' Brunetti asked,
cutting into Patta’s continuing complaint. ‘What?'

'Was he robbed?'

'It seems not. His wallet was still
in his pocket, and his briefcase, as you can see, is still on the seat opposite
where he was sitting’

'Mafia?' Brunetti asked, the way one
did, the way one had to.

Patta shrugged. 'He's a lawyer,' he
answered, leaving it to Brunetti to infer if this made him more or less likely
to merit execution by the Mafia.

'Wife?’ Brunetti asked, expressing
with the question the fact that he was bom an Italian and a married man.

'Not likely. She's the Secretary of
the Lions' Club,' Patta answered, and Brunetti, caught by the absurdity of his
remark, involuntarily guffawed, but when he caught the look Patta shot him, he
turned the noise into a cough, which turned into a real cough that left him red
faced and teary eyed.

When he had recovered enough to
breathe normally, Brunetti asked, 'Business partners? Anything there?'

'I don't know.' Patta tapped a finger
on his desk, calling for Brunetti's attention. 'I've been looking over the
case-load, and it seems like you're the one who's got the least to do.' One of
the things that most endeared Patta to Brunetti was his unfailing felicity of
phrase. 'I'd like to assign this case to you, but before I do, I want to be
certain that you'll handle it in the proper fashion.'

This meant, Brunetti was certain,
that Patta wanted to be sure he would defer to the social status implied by the
secretaryship of the Lions' Club. Because he knew he wouldn't be there if Patta
had not already decided to give him the case, Brunetti chose to ignore the
admonition implicit in these words and, instead, asked, 'What about the people
on the train?'

His talk with the Mayor must have
impressed on Patta that speed was more important here than making a point with
Brunetti, for he answered directly, The
polizia
ferrovia
got the names and addresses of all
the people who were on the train when it pulled into the station.' Brunetti
raised his chin in an inquisitive gesture, and Patta went on, 'One or two of
them said they saw people on the train. It's all in the file,' he said, tapping
at a manila folder that lay in front of him.

'What judge has been assigned to
this?' Brunetti asked. Once he knew this, Brunetti would know how much he'd
have to defer to the Lions' Club.

'Vantuno,' Patta answered, naming a
woman about Brunetti s own age, one with whom he had worked successfully in the
past. A Sicilian, as was Patta, Judge Vantuno knew that there were complexities
and nuances in the society of Venice that would be forever elusive to her, but
she was confident enough in the local commissari to give them great liberty in
the way they chose to conduct an investigation.

Brunetti nodded, unwilling to reveal
even this minimal satisfaction to Patta.

'But I'll expect a daily report from
you,' Patta went on. 'Trevisan was an important man. I've already had a call from
the Mayor's office about it, and I make no secret that he wants this settled as
quickly as possible.'

'Did he have any suggestions?'
Brunetti asked.

Accustomed to impertinence from his
inferior, Patta sat back in his chair and peered at Brunetti for a moment
before asking, 'About what?', putting sharp emphasis on the second word to
imply his disapproval
of
the
question.

'About
anything
Trevisan might have been involved in,' Brunetti replied blandly. He was quite
serious about this. The fact that a man was mayor did not exclude him from
knowledge
of
the
dirty secrets
of
his
friends; in fact, the opposite was more likely to be the case.

'That is not a question I thought fit
to ask the Mayor,' Patta answered

Then maybe I will,' Brunetti said
evenly.

'Brunetti, don't go stirring up
trouble with this.'

'I think that's already been done,'
Brunetti said, dropping the photos back into the file. 'Will there be anything
eke, sir?'

Patta paused a moment-before he
answered. 'No, not now.' He pushed the file towards Brunetti. 'You can have
this. And don't forget that I want a daily report.' When Brunetti made no
acknowledgement
of
this,
Patta added, 'Or give it to Lieutenant Scarpa,’ and kept his eyes on Brunetti
long enough to see what response he'd give to the name
of
Patta's universally despised assistant.

'Certainly, sir,' Brunetti said
neutrally, took the folder, and got to his feet. 'Where have they taken
Trevisan?'

'To the Ospedale Civile. I imagine
the autopsy will be done this morning. And remember, he was a friend
of
the Mayor's.'

'Of course, sir,' Brunetti said and
left the office.

6

Signorina Elettra looked up from her
magazine when Brunetti emerged fiom Patta's office and asked,
'Allora?'

'Trevisan. And I'm to hurry because
he was a friend of the Mayor's.'

'The wife's a tiger,' Signorina
Elettra said, then added by way of encouragement, 'She'll give you trouble.'

'Is there anyone in this city you
don't know?' Brunetti asked.

'This time I don't actually know her.
But she used to be one of my sister's patients.'

'Barbara,' Brunetti said
involuntarily, remembering where it was he had met her sister. 'The doctor.'

The very same, commissario,' she said
with a smile of real delight. 'I wondered how long it would take you to
remember.'

When Signorina Elettra had first
arrived, he remembered, he had thought her last name familiar; Zorzi wasn't at
all a common name, but he would never have thought to associate the
quick-witted, radiant - the other adjectives that presented themselves all
suggested light and visibility - Elettra with the calm, understated doctor who
numbered among her patients his father-in-law and now, it seemed, Signora
Trevisan.