CB14 Blood From A Stone (2005) (8 page)

‘There’s nothing I can do about them, Guido. The only thing I can hope is that they don’t lay
down their sheets in front of one of my shops, the way they do in front of Max Mara, because if they do, the only thing that will happen is that I’ll lose more money. The politicians don’t want to hear about them, and you guys can’t – or won’t – do anything.’

Brunetti again thought it expedient not to express an opinion. He persisted, ‘But what do you know about them?’

‘Probably not much more than anyone else in the city,’ Erizzo said. ‘That they’re from Senegal, they’re Muslims, they mostly live in Padova, some of them here, they don’t cause much trouble, and the bags are of good quality and the prices are right.’

‘How do you know about the quality of the bags?’ Brunetti asked, hoping to divert his friend from his anger.

‘Because I’ve stopped on the street and looked at them,’ he said. ‘Believe me, Guido, even Louis Vuitton himself, if there is such a person, couldn’t tell the difference between the real ones and the ones these guys are selling. Same leather, same stitching, same logo all over the place.’

‘Do they sell imitations of your bags?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Of course,’ Erizzo snapped.

Brunetti chose to ignore the warning in his friend’s tone and went on, ‘Someone told me that the factories are in Puglia. Do you know anything about that?’

Voice no warmer, Erizzo said, ‘That’s what
I’ve been told. The factories are the same. They work for the legitimate companies during the day, then they turn the fake ones out at night.’

‘“Fake” doesn’t have much meaning any more, not if it’s the same factories, I’d say,’ Brunetti observed, trying to lighten the mood that had come over their conversation.

There was to be no jollying Marco. ‘I suppose so,’ was his only comment.

‘Do you have any idea of who’s behind it?’ Brunetti persisted.

‘Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to figure that out, it’s so big and so well organized.’ Then, in a voice grown minimally less cool, Erizzo added, ‘They’ve got only one problem.’

‘What?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Distribution,’ Erizzo surprised him by answering.

‘Huh?’

‘Think about it, Guido. Anyone can produce. That’s the easy part: all you need is raw materials, a place to assemble them, and enough people who are willing to work for what you pay them. The real problem is finding a place to sell whatever it is you’ve made.’ Brunetti remained silent, so he proceeded, ‘If you sell it in a shop, you’ve got all sorts of expenses: rent, heat, light, a bookkeeper, salespeople. Worst of all, you’ve got to pay taxes.’ Brunetti wondered when he had ever had a conversation with Marco in which the subject of taxes had not been mentioned.

‘That’s what I do, Guido,’ his friend went on,
voice veering back towards anger. ‘I pay taxes. I pay them on my shops, and for my employees, and on what I sell, and on what I manage to keep. And my employees pay taxes on what they earn. And some of it stays here, in Venice, Guido, and what they earn they spend here.’ The warmth in Marco’s voice was not that of friendship or returning intimacy.

‘You tell me how the city profits from what the
vu cumprà
earn,’ Marco demanded. ‘You think any of that money stays here?’ Even though it was a rhetorical question, Erizzo paused, as if daring Brunetti to answer. When he did not, Erizzo said, ‘It all goes south, Guido.’ There was no need for him to say more about the destination of this money.

‘How do you know that?’ Brunetti demanded.

Brunetti heard him take a deep breath. ‘Because no one bothers them, that’s why. Not the Guardia di Finanza, and not the
Carabinieri
, and not you people, and because they seem to come into this country pretty much as they please, and no one bothers to stop them at the borders. That means that no one wants to be bothered or that someone doesn’t want them to be bothered.’ The pause after this last sentence was so long that Brunetti thought Marco had finished, but his voice came back, ‘And if I thought you had the stomach to listen to any more of this, I’d add that they also enjoy the protection of everyone who refuses to see them as illegal immigrants who spend their days
breaking the law while the police stroll back and forth in front of them.’

Brunetti was at a loss about how to deal with his friend’s rage, so he let a long time pass before he said, voice calm, ‘Longest definition I’ve ever heard of “distribution”.’ Before Marco could react, he added, ‘Also the most illuminating.’

Marco paused for an equally long time, and Brunetti could almost hear the wheels of friendship spinning about in search of the road they had left. ‘Good,’ Marco finally said, and Brunetti thought he heard in that monosyllable the same relief that they had come back to firm ground. ‘I’m not sure all of this is true, but at least it makes sense.’

Was this the historian’s plight, Brunetti wondered, never to know what was true but only what made sense? Or the policeman’s? He drew himself away from these reflections and started to thank Marco, but before he could say more than the other man’s name, Marco said, ‘I’ve got another call. I’ve got to go.’ And then silence.

The call had gained Brunetti no new information, but it had strengthened his belief that the
ambulanti
enjoyed the protection of – for a moment, he was at a loss how best to express this, even to himself – the protection of ‘forces that function at variance with those of the state’ was the euphemism he finally summoned.

He took a notebook and opened it to the centre page, where he found the phone number he wanted. Adding one to each of the digits in it
and embarrassed at this simple code, he dialled. When a man answered on the fifth ring, Brunetti said only, ‘Good morning, I’d like to speak to Signor Ducatti.’ When the man told him he must have dialled a wrong number, Brunetti apologized for disturbing him and hung up.

Immediately Brunetti regretted that he had not gone down to the bar at the bridge for a coffee before phoning: now he was trapped in his office until Sandrini called him back. To pass the time, he took some papers from his in tray and began to read through them.

It was more than half an hour before his phone rang. He answered with his name, and the same voice that had told him he had dialled a wrong number said, ‘What is it?’

‘I’m very well, Renato,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Thanks for asking.’

‘Tell me what you want, Brunetti, and let me get back to the office.’

‘Just stepped out to make a phone call, did you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Tell me what you want,’ the man said with badly suppressed anger.

‘I want to know if your father-in-law’s – what shall I call them – if his business associates had anything to do with last night?’

‘You mean the dead nigger?’

‘I mean the dead African,’ Brunetti corrected him.

‘That all?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll call you,’ he said and hung up.

If Renato Sandrini were better behaved, perhaps Brunetti’s conscience would have troubled him about blackmailing and intimidating him. As it was, the man’s consistent rudeness, as well as the arrogance that characterized his public behaviour, made it almost pleasant for Brunetti to exercise his power over him. Twenty years ago, Sandrini, a criminal lawyer in Padova, had married the only daughter of a local Mafia boss. Children followed, as did an enormous amount of very well-paid defence work. The repeated success of Sandrini’s defences had turned him into something of a local legend. As the size of his legal practice increased, so too did that of his wife, Julia, until, at forty, she had come to resemble a barrel, though a barrel with very expensive taste in jewellery and an alarmingly possessive love for her husband.

None of this would have worked to Sandrini’s disadvantage, nor to Brunetti’s advantage, were it not for a fire in a hotel on the Lido that had filled some of the rooms with smoke and caused four people to be taken to the hospital, unconscious. There, it was discovered that the man in room 307, who had given his name as Franco Rossi, carried the c
arta d’identità
, as well as the credit cards, of Renato Sandrini. Luckily, he had regained consciousness in time to prevent the hospital from calling his wife to alert her to his condition, but not before the police had been called to report the disparity in names that appeared on the
documents. All of this would have passed as an easily overlooked clerical error were it not for two things: the other person in the room with Sandrini was a fifteen-year-old Albanian prostitute, and the police report containing this information landed the following morning on the desk of Guido Brunetti.

Caution prevented him from approaching Sandrini until he had spoken at some length with the prostitute and her pimp and had obtained both videotaped and written statements from them. They were willing to talk only because they believed the man in question to be Franco Rossi, a wholesaler of fitted carpets from Padova. Had they had the least idea of who Sandrini was – more importantly, had they had any idea of the identity of his father-in-law – both would surely have preferred prison to having had the long conversations with the pleasant commissario from Venice.

It had taken only one meeting with Sandrini for Brunetti to persuade the lawyer that it might be wiser, given the rather Victorian ideas of some members of the Mafia as to the sanctity of the marriage vows, to give the occasional piece of information to the pleasant commissario from Venice. To date, Brunetti had maintained his promise never to ask Sandrini to compromise his professional relationship with his clients, but he knew the promise was a false one and that he would grind information out of Sandrini mercilessly should it serve his own purposes.

Brunetti placed the files into his out tray and, strangely cheered by the consideration of his own perfidy, went home for lunch.

If he had thought to leave uncertainty and unease behind him at the Questura, he was much mistaken, for he found both within the walls of his home. Here they manifested themselves in the aura of moral outrage which both Paola and Chiara carried about with them, much in the fashion of Dante’s usurers, passing through eternity with their money bags hung round their necks. He assumed that both his wife and his daughter believed themselves in the right. When, after all, had a person involved in an argument believed themselves to be in the wrong?

He found his family at table. He kissed Paola’s cheek and ruffled Chiara’s hair, but she pulled her head quickly aside, as if unwilling to
be touched by a hand that had rested on her opponent’s shoulder. Pretending not to have noticed, he took his place and asked Raffi how school was. His son, in a manifestation of male solidarity in the face of female moodiness, said things were fine, then began a long explanation of the arcana of a computer program he was using in his chemistry class. Brunetti, far more interested in his linguine with scampi than in anything to do with computers, smiled and asked what he did his best to make sound like relevant questions.

Conversation chugged along through a plate of sole fried with artichoke bottoms and a rucola salad. Chiara pushed her food around on her plate, leaving much of it uneaten, an unmistakable sign that this situation was affecting her deeply.

Upon learning that there was no dessert, she and Raffi evaporated; Brunetti set his empty glass down and said, ‘I have the feeling I ought to have one of those blue helmets the UN peacekeepers wear when there’s danger they might be caught in crossfire.’

Paola poured them both a bit more wine, the Loredan Gasparini his father-in-law had sent him as a birthday present, one he would like to be able to drink in happier circumstances. ‘She’ll get over it,’ Paola said and set the bottle on the table with an authoritative clunk.

‘I have no doubt of that,’ Brunetti answered calmly. ‘I just don’t want to have to eat my lunch in this atmosphere until that happens.’

‘Oh, come on, Guido. It’s not that bad,’ Paola said in a voice that suggested she would be quite happy, if given sufficient provocation, to divert her irritation towards him. ‘She’ll realize what she’s done in a few days.’

‘And then?’ he asked. ‘Apologize?’

‘For starters,’ Paola said.

‘And then what?’

‘Think about what she said and what that says about her as a person.’

‘It’s been a day,’ he said. ‘And she’s not over it.’

Paola allowed a long time to pass before she asked, ‘What does that mean?’

He tried to find a way of saying what he wanted to say without angering her. ‘That I think you’ve offended her,’ he finally offered.

‘Her?’ Paola said with false incredulity. ‘How?’

He poured some more wine into his glass but left it on the table. ‘By assaulting her without giving her a chance to explain.’

Her look was long and level. ‘“Assaulting?”’ she repeated. ‘Does that mean there’s some explanation or justification for ideas like hers, that the death of a man can be dismissed with a cavalier “only”, and that her listener is somehow obliged to let the remark pass unobserved? Or that to object to it is to “assault” the person who made it?’

‘Of course not,’ he said, trained by Paola herself to recognize and dismiss the
argumentun ad absurdum.
‘I’m not saying that.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘That you might have been better advised to see where she got these ideas and try to reason with her.’

‘Rather than assaulting her, as you put it?’ she asked, beginning to show her anger.

‘Yes,’ he answered calmly.

‘I’m not in the habit of attempting to reason with racial prejudice,’ she said.

‘Then what do you want to do with it, beat it with a stick?’

He saw her start to answer, then bite it back. She took a sip of her wine, then another, then set the glass down. ‘All right,’ she finally said. ‘Perhaps I was a little too severe with her. But it was so embarrassing, to hear her say those things and to think I might have been responsible, in some way, for her having said them.’

‘Are we talking about Chiara here, or about you?’ he surprised her by asking.

She pursed her lips, glanced across at the window that looked off to the north, nodded in acknowledgement of the accuracy of his question, and said, ‘You’re right.’