Friends in High Places (8 page)

‘Thank you, Dottore,’ Brunetti said with a finality the other man clearly found surprising. ‘I’d like to see him.’

‘Rossi?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s in the morgue,’ Carraro explained, his voice as cool as the place itself. ‘Do you know the way?’

‘Yes.’

* * * *

7

Mercifully, Brunetti’s path took him outside and along the main courtyard of the hospital, and so he had a brief glimpse of sky and blossoming trees; he wished he could somehow store up the beauty of the plump clouds glimpsed through the pink blossoms and take it with him. He turned into the narrow passageway that led to the
obitorio,
vaguely troubled to realize how familiar he was with the way to death.

At the door, the attendant recognized him and greeted him with a nod. He was a man who, through decades of dealing with the dead, had taken on their silence.

‘Franco Rossi,’ Brunetti said by way of explanation.

Another nod and the man turned away from the door, leading Brunetti into the room where a number of white-sheeted forms lay on hip-high tables. The attendant led Brunetti to the far side of the room and stopped by one of the tables, but he made no effort to remove the cloth. Brunetti looked down: the raised pyramid of the nose, a dropping off at the chin, and then an uneven surface broken by two horizontal lumps that must be the plaster-cast arms, and then two horizontal tubes that ended where the feet jutted off to the sides.

‘He was my friend,’ Brunetti said, perhaps to himself, and pulled the cloth back from the face.

The indentation above the left eye was blue and destroyed the symmetry of the forehead, which was strangely flattened, as if it had been pushed in by an enormous palm. For the rest, it was the same face, plain and unremarkable. Paola had once told him that her hero, Henry James, had referred to death as ‘the distinguished thing’, but there was nothing distinguished about what lay under Brunetti’s gaze: it was flat, anonymous, cold.

He pulled the cloth back over Rossi’s face, distracted by the desire to know how much of what lay there was Rossi; and if Rossi was no longer there, why what was left deserved so much respect. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the attendant and left the room. His response to the greater warmth of the courtyard was completely animal: he could almost feel the hair on the back of his neck smooth itself down. He thought about going to Orthopaedia to see what sort of justification they might engage in, but the sight of Rossi’s battered face lingered, and he wanted nothing so much as to get out of the confines of the hospital. He gave in to this desire and left. He paused again at the desk, this time showing his warrant card, and asked for Rossi’s address.

The porter found it quickly and added the phone number. It was a low number in Castello, and when Brunetti asked the porter if he knew where it was, he said he thought it must be down by Santa Giustina, near the shop that used to be the Doll Hospital.

‘Has anyone been here to ask for him?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No one while I’ve been here, Commissario. But his family will have been called by the hospital, so they’ll know where to go.’

Brunetti looked at his watch. It was almost one, but he doubted that the usual summons to lunch would be heeded by Franco Rossi’s family, if he had one, that day. He knew that the dead man worked in the Ufficio Catasto and had died after a fall. Beyond that, he knew only what little he had inferred from their one brief meeting and even briefer phone conversation. Rossi was dutiful, timid, almost a cliché of the punctilious bureaucrat. And, like Lot’s wife, he had turned solid when Brunetti suggested he step out on to the terrace.

He started down Barbaria delle Tolle, heading in the direction of San Francesco della Vigna. On his right, the fruit vendor, the one with the wig, was just closing, draping a green cloth over the open boxes of fruit and vegetables in a gesture Brunetti found disturbingly reminiscent of the way he had pulled the cloth over Rossi’s face. Around him, things went on as normal: people hurried home to lunch and life went on.

The address was easy to find, on the right side of the
campo,
two doors beyond what had now become yet another real estate agency,
rossi, franco
, was engraved on a narrow brass plaque next to the doorbell for the second floor. He pressed the bell, waited, then pressed it again, but there was no answer. He pressed the one above but got the same result, and so he tried the one below it.

After a moment, a man’s voice answered through the speakerphone, ‘Yes, who is it?’

‘Police.’

There was the usual pause, then the voice said, ‘All right.’

Brunetti waited for the click that would open the large outer door to the building, but instead he heard the sound of footsteps, and then the door was pulled open from within. A short man stood in front of him, his size not immediately apparent because he stood at the top of the high step the residents no doubt hoped would raise their front hall above the level of
acqua alta.
The man still held his napkin in his right hand and looked down at Brunetti with the initial suspicion he was long accustomed to encountering. The man wore thick glasses, and Brunetti noticed a red stain, probably tomato sauce, to the left of his tie.

‘Yes?’ he asked without smiling.

‘I’ve come about Signor Rossi,’ Brunetti said.

At Rossi’s name, the man’s expression softened and he leaned down to open the door more fully. ‘Excuse me. I should have asked you to come in. Please, please.’ He moved aside and made room for Brunetti on the small landing then extended his hand as if to take Brunetti’s. When he noticed that he still held his napkin, he quickly hid it behind his back. He leaned down and pushed the door closed with his other hand then turned back to Brunetti.

‘Please, come with me,’ he said, turning back toward a door that stood open halfway down the corridor, just opposite the stairs that led to the upper floors of the building.

Brunetti paused at the door to allow the man to enter before him, then followed him in. There was a small entrance, little more than a metre wide, up from which rose two steps, further evidence of the Venetians’ eternal confidence that they could outwit the tides that gnawed away perpetually at the foundations of the city. The room to which the steps led was clean and neat and surprisingly well lit for an apartment located on a
piano rialzato.
Brunetti noticed that at the back of the apartment a row of four tall windows looked across to a large garden on the other side of a wide canal.

‘I’m sorry. I was eating,’ the man said, tossing his napkin on to the table.

‘Don’t let me stop you,’ Brunetti insisted.

‘No, I was just finishing,’ the man said. A large helping of pasta still lay on his plate, an open newspaper spread out to its left. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he insisted and gestured Brunetti into the centre of the room, to a sofa that stood facing the windows. He asked, ‘May I offer you something?
Un’ ombra?’

There was nothing Brunetti would have liked better than a small glass of wine, but he refused. Instead, he put out his hand and introduced himself.

‘Marco Caberlotto,’ the man answered, taking his hand.

Brunetti sat on the sofa, and Caberlotto sat opposite him. ‘What about Franco?’ he asked.

‘You know he was in the hospital?’ Brunetti asked by way of answer.

‘Yes. I read the article in the
Gazzettino
this morning. I’m going to see him as soon as I finish,’ he said, waving toward the table, where his lunch sat, slowly growing cold. ‘How is he?’

‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you,’ Brunetti began, using the formulaic introduction he’d become so familiar with in the last decades. When he saw that Caberlotto understood, he continued, ‘He never came out of the coma and died this morning.’

Caberlotto murmured something and put one hand to his mouth, pressing his fingers against his lips. ‘I didn’t know. The poor boy.’

Brunetti paused for a moment, then asked softly, ‘Did you know him well?’

Ignoring the question, Caberlotto asked, ‘Is it true that he fell? That he fell and hit his head?’

Brunetti nodded.

‘He fell?’ Caberlotto insisted.

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

Again, Caberlotto did not respond directly. ‘Ah, the poor boy,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘I never would have believed something like this could have happened. He was always so cautious.’

‘On the job, do you mean?’

Caberlotto looked across at Brunetti and said, ‘No, about everything. He was just... well, he was just like that: cautious. He worked in that office, and part of their job means they have to go out and keep an eye on what’s being done, but he preferred to stay in the office and work with the plans and projects, seeing how buildings were put together, or how they would be when they were put back together after a restoration. It’s what he loved, that part of the job. He said that.’

Remembering the visit Rossi had made to his own home, Brunetti said, ‘But I thought part of his job was to visit sites, to inspect houses that had building violations.’

Caber lotto shrugged. ‘I know he had to go to houses sometimes, but the impression I got was that he did that only to be able to explain things to the owners so that they’d understand what was happening.’ Caberlotto paused, perhaps trying to recall conversations with Rossi, but then went on. ‘I didn’t know him all that well. We were neighbours, so we’d talk on the street sometimes or have a drink together. That was when he told me about liking to study the plans.’

‘You said he was always so cautious,’ Brunetti prompted.

‘About everything,’ Caberlotto said and seemed almost to smile at the memory. ‘I used to joke with him about it. He’d never carry a box downstairs. He said he needed to see both feet when he walked.’ He paused, as though considering whether to continue, and then did. ‘One time he had a light bulb blow up on him, and he called me to get the name of an electrician. I asked him what it was, and when he told me, I told him to change the bulb himself. All you’ve got to do is wrap some tape backwards around a piece of cardboard and stick it in the base of the bulb and unscrew it. But he said he was afraid to touch it.’ Caberlotto stopped.

‘What happened?’ Brunetti prodded.

‘It was a Sunday, so it would have been impossible to get someone, anyway. So I went up and did it for him. I just turned off the current and took the broken bulb out.’ He looked across at Brunetti and made a turning gesture with his right hand. ‘I did it just like I’d told him, with the tape, and it came right out. It took about five seconds, but there was no way he could have done it himself. He wouldn’t have used that room until he could find an electrician, just would have let it stay dark.’ He smiled and glanced across at Brunetti. ‘It’s not really that he was afraid, you see. It’s just the way he was.’

‘Was he married?’ Brunetti asked.

Caberlotto shook his head.

‘A girlfriend?’

‘No, not that either.’

Had he known Caberlotto better, Brunetti would have asked about a boyfriend. ‘Parents?’

‘I don’t know. If he still has them, I don’t think they’re in Venice. He never spoke of them, and he was always here on holidays.’

‘Friends?’

Caberlotto gave this some thought and then said, ‘I’d see him on the street with people occasionally. Or having a drink. You know the way it is. But I don’t remember anyone in particular or seeing him with the same person.’ Brunetti made no answer to this, so Caberlotto tried to explain. ‘We weren’t really friends, you know, so I guess I would see him and not really pay much attention, just recognize him.’

Brunetti asked, ‘Did people come here?’

‘I suppose so. I don’t have much of an idea of who comes in and out. I hear people going up and down, but I never know who they are.’ Suddenly he asked, ‘But why are you here?’