Friends in High Places

15

The next morning, and with considerable reluctance, Brunetti did something he seldom did: he involved one of his children in his work. Raffi didn’t have to get to school until eleven and had a date to meet Sara Paganuzzi before then, so he appeared at breakfast looking bright and cheerful, qualities which seldom accompanied him at that hour. Paola was still asleep, and Chiara was in the bathroom, so they sat alone in the kitchen, eating the fresh brioche that Raffi had gone downstairs to get at the local pastry shop.

‘Raffi,’ Brunetti began, as they ate their first brioche, ‘do you know anything about who sells drugs here?’

Raffi paused with the remaining piece of brioche halfway to his mouth. ‘Here?’

‘In Venice.’

‘Drugs like hard drugs or light stuff like marijuana?’

Though he was faintly troubled by the distinction Raffi made and would have liked to know more about the reason for Raffi’s casual dismissal of ‘light stuff like marijuana’, he didn’t ask. ‘Hard drugs: heroin specifically.’

‘Is this about that student who OD’d?’ he asked, and when Brunetti looked surprised his son opened the Gazzettino and showed him the article. A postage-stamp-sized photo of a young man looked up at him: it could have been any young man with dark hair and two eyes. It could easily have been Raffi.

‘Yes.’

Raffi broke the remainder of his brioche in two pieces and dipped one into his coffee. After some time he said, ‘There’s talk that there are people at the university who can get it for you.’

‘People?’

‘Students. At least I think so. Well,’ he said after a moment’s reflection, ‘people who are enrolled for classes there.’ He picked up his cup and sat with his elbows propped on the table, the cup encircled in both hands, a gesture he must surely have picked up from Paola. ‘You want me to ask around?’

‘No.’ Brunetti’s answer was immediate. Before his son could respond to the sharpness of his voice, Brunetti added, ‘I’m just curious in general, wondered what people were saying.’ He finished his brioche and sipped at his coffee.

‘Sara’s brother’s there, in the Department of Economics. I could ask him what he knows.’

The temptation was strong, but Brunetti dismissed it with a bored, ‘No, don’t bother. It was just an idea.’

Raffi lowered his cup to the table. ‘I’m not interested in them, you know, Papà.’

Brunetti was struck by how deep his voice had become. Soon he’d be a man. Or maybe his need to comfort his father meant that he already was one.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Brunetti said. He reached across the table and patted his son’s arm. Once, twice, and then he got up and went over to the stove. ‘Shall I make some more?’ he asked, carrying the coffee pot to the sink and opening it.

Raffi glanced down at his watch. ‘No. Thanks, Papà, but I’ve got to go.’ He pushed back his chair, got to his feet, and left the kitchen. A few minutes later, as Brunetti waited for the coffee, he heard the front door close. He listened to Raffi’s footsteps thundering down the first flight, but the sudden eruption of coffee wiped them out.

Because it was still early enough for the boats not to be crowded, Brunetti took the 82 and got off at San Zaccaria. He bought two newspapers there and took them to his office. No further mention was made of Rossi’s death, and the article about Marco Landi gave little more than his name and age. Above it there was the by now routine story about a car full of young people that had splattered itself, and their lives, against a plane tree at the side of one of the state highways leading to Treviso.

He’d read the same grim story so many times during the last few years that he hardly had to bother to look at this one to know what had happened. The youths – in this case, two boys and two girls – had left a disco after three in the morning and had driven off in a car belonging to the father of the driver. Some time later, the driver had been struck by what the newspapers ritually referred to as, un colpo di sonno, and the car had gone off the road and into a tree. It was still too early to know the cause of the attack of sleepiness, but it generally turned out to be alcohol or drugs. Usually, though, that wasn’t determined until the autopsy was performed on the driver and on however many others he had killed along with himself. And by that time the story had dropped off the front pages and been forgotten, replaced by the photos of other young people, victims of their youth and its many desires.

He left the newspaper on the desk and went down to Patta’s office. Signorina Elettra was nowhere in sight, so he knocked at the door and, when he heard Patta’s shouted response, went in.

It was a different man who sat behind the desk, at least different from the one who had sat behind it the last time Brunetti was there. Patta was back: tall, handsome, dressed in a lightweight suit that caressed his broad shoulders with respectful, gossamer fingers. His skin glowed with health, his eyes with serenity.

‘Yes, what is it, Commissario?’ he asked, looking up from the single sheet of paper which lay on the desk in front of him.

‘I’d like a word with you, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, coming to stand next to the chair in front of Patta’s desk, waiting to be told to sit down.

Patta flicked back a starched cuff and glanced down at the golden wafer on his wrist. ‘I have a few minutes. What is it?’

‘It’s about Jesolo, sir. And your son. I wondered if you’d come to any decision.’

Patta pushed himself back in his chair. Seeing that Brunetti could easily look down at the paper in front of him, he turned it over and folded his hands on its blank back. ‘I’m not sure that there’s any decision to be made, Commissario,’ he said, sounding puzzled that Brunetti should think of asking such a question.

‘I wanted to know if your son was willing to talk about the people from whom he got the drugs.’ With habitual caution, Brunetti restrained himself from saying, bought the drugs.

‘If he knew who they were, I’m sure he would be more than willing to tell the police whatever he could.’ In Patta’s voice he heard the same injured confusion he’d heard in the voice of a generation of unwilling witnesses and suspects, and on his face he saw that same patently innocent, faintly bewildered, smile. His tone invited no contradiction.

‘If he knew who they were?’ Brunetti repeated, turning it into a question.

‘Exactly. As you know, he has no idea of how these drugs came into his possession, nor of who might have planted them.’ Patta’s voice was as calm as his eyes were steady.

Ah, that’s how it’s going to be played, Brunetti thought. ‘And his fingerprints, sir?’

Patta’s smile was broad, and it appeared to be genuine. ‘I know. I know how that must have appeared when he was first questioned. But he told me, and he’s told the police, that he found the envelope in his pocket when he came back from dancing and reached into his pocket to get a cigarette. He had no idea of what it was, so, as anyone would do, he opened the envelope to see what was inside, and when he did that, he must have touched some of the packages.’

‘Some?’ Brunetti asked, his voice deliberately free of all scepticism.

‘Some,’ Patta repeated with a finality that put an end to discussion.

‘Have you seen today’s paper, sir?’ Brunetti asked, surprising himself as much as his superior with the question.

‘No,’ Patta answered, then added, Brunetti thought gratuitously, ‘I’ve been too busy since I got here to have time to read the paper.’

‘Four teenagers were involved in an accident near Treviso last night. Coming back from a disco, their car went off the road and into a tree. One boy’s dead, a university student, and the others are badly injured.’ Brunetti stopped, an entirely diplomatic pause.

‘No, I haven’t seen it.’ Patta said. He too paused for a moment, but this was the pause of an artillery commander, deciding how heavy to make the next salvo. ‘Why do you mention it?’

‘He’s dead, sir, one of the passengers. The paper said their car was going about a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour when they hit the tree.’

‘That’s certainly unfortunate, Commissario,’ Patta observed with much the same involvement one might devote to a remark about the decline of the banded nuthatch. He returned his attention to his desk, turned the paper over and studied it, then glanced up at Brunetti. ‘If it happened in Treviso, then I imagine the case belongs to them, not to us.’ He looked studiedly down at the paper, read a few lines, then looked back up at Brunetti, as if surprised to see him still there. ‘Was that all, Commissario?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir. That’s all.’

Outside the office, Brunetti found that his heart was pounding so hard he had to lean against the wall, glad that Signorina Elettra was not at her desk. He stood still until his breathing quieted, and when he was again in control of himself, he went back up to his office.

He did what he knew he had to do: routine would direct his mind away from the rage he felt toward Patta. He pushed papers around on his desk until he found the number that had been in Rossi’s wallet. He dialled the Ferrara number. This time, the phone was picked up on the third ring. ‘Gavini and Cappelli,’ a woman’s voice answered.

‘Good morning, Signora. This is Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police.’

‘One moment, please,’ she said, as though she’d been waiting for his call. ‘I’ll put you through.’

The line went dead as she transferred the call, then a man’s voice said, ‘Gavini. I’m glad someone finally answered our call. I hope you can tell us something.’ The voice was deep and rich and gave every sign of eagerness to hear Brunetti’s news, whatever it should be.

It took a moment for Brunetti to respond. ‘I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, Signor Gavini. I haven’t received any message from you.’ When Gavini said nothing, he added, ‘But I’d like to know what you’re expecting the Venice police to call you about.’

‘About Sandro,’ Gavini said. ‘I called there after his death. His wife told me he’d said he’d found someone in Venice who might be willing to talk.’

Brunetti was on the point of interrupting him when Gavini paused and asked, ‘Are you sure no one there got my message?’

‘I don’t know, Signore. Whom did you speak to?’

‘I spoke to one of the officers; I don’t remember his name.’

‘And could you repeat to me what you told him?’ Brunetti asked, pulling a sheet of paper towards him.

‘I told you: I called after Sandro’s death,’ Gavini said, and then asked, ‘Do you know about that?’

‘No.’

‘Sandro Cappelli,’ Gavini said, as if the name would explain everything. It did strike a faint chord in Brunetti’s memory: he couldn’t remember why he knew the name, but he was sure that whatever he knew of it was bad. ‘He was my partner in the practice here,’ Gavini added.

‘What sort of practice, Signor Gavini?’

‘Legal. We’re lawyers. Don’t you know anything about this?’ For the first time, a note of exasperation slipped into his voice, the note that inevitably came into the voice of anyone who spent enough time dealing on the phone with an unresponsive bureaucracy.

Gavini’s saying that they were lawyers jogged Brunetti’s memory. He remembered Cappelli’s murder, almost a month ago. ‘Yes, I know the name. He was shot, wasn’t he?’

‘Standing at the window of his office, a client sitting behind him, at eleven in the morning. Someone shot him through the window with a hunting rifle.’ As he rapped out the details of his partner’s death, Gavini’s voice took on the staccato rhythm of real anger.

Brunetti had read the newspaper accounts of the murder, but he knew no facts. ‘Is there a suspect?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ Gavini shot back, making no attempt to stop his anger from boiling over. ‘But we all know who did it.’

Brunetti waited for Gavini to spell it out for him. ‘The moneylenders. Sandro’d been after them for years. He had four cases running against them when he died.’

The policeman in Brunetti caused him to ask, ‘Is there any evidence of this, Signor Gavini?’

‘Of course not,’ the lawyer all but spat down the line. ‘They sent someone, paid someone and sent him to do it. It was a contract killing: the shot came from the roof of a building on the opposite side of the street. Even the police here said it had to be a contract killing; who else would want to murder him?’

Brunetti had too little information to be able to answer questions about Cappelli’s death, even rhetorical ones, and so he said, ‘I ask you to excuse my ignorance about your partner’s death and the people responsible, Signor Gavini. I was calling you about something entirely different, but after what you’ve said, I wonder if it is so different.’

‘What do you mean?’ Gavini asked. Though the words were abrupt, his voice was curious, interested.

‘I’m calling about a death we’ve had here in Venice, a death that looks accidental but might not be.’ He waited for Gavini’s questions, but none came, and so he continued. ‘A man fell from scaffolding here, and died. He worked in the Ufficio Catasto and had a phone number in his wallet when he died, but without any city code. This is one of the numbers it might have been.’

‘What was his name?’ Gavini asked.

‘Franco Rossi.’ Brunetti allowed him a moment for reflection or memory, then asked, ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘Is there any way you could find out if it meant something to your colleague?’

Gavini was a long time in answering. ‘Do you have his number? I could check the phone logs,’ he suggested.

‘One moment,’ Brunetti said and bent to pull open his bottom drawer. From it, he took the phone book and checked through the listings for Rossi: there were seven columns of them, and about a dozen of those were Francos. He found the address and read the phone number to Gavini, then asked him to wait while he flipped to the pages for the Comune of Venice and found the number for the Ufficio Catasto. If Rossi had been rash enough to call the police from his telefonino, he might easily have called the lawyer from his office or received calls there.

‘It will take me a while to check the logs,’ Gavini said. ‘I’ve got someone waiting to see me. But as soon as he’s gone, I’ll call you back.’

‘Perhaps you could ask your secretary to do it for you.’

Gavini’s voice suddenly took on an odd note of excessive formality, almost of caution. ‘No, I think I’d prefer to do this myself.’

Brunetti said that he’d wait for Gavini’s call, gave his direct number, and the two men hung up.

A phone that had been disconnected months ago, an old woman who knew no one named Franco Rossi, a car rental agency with no such client, but now the partner of a lawyer whose death had been as violent as Rossi’s: Brunetti well knew the time that could be wasted in following false scents and chasing down misleading trails, but this had the right feel to it, however uncertain he might be of what it was or where it might be leading.

Like the plagues inflicted upon the children of Egypt, moneylenders afflicted the children of Italy and caused them to suffer. Banks extended credit reluctantly and generally only with the guarantee of the sort of financial security that would obviate the need to borrow. Short-term credit for the businessman who had little cash at the end of the month or the salesman whose clients were slow in paying was virtually non-existent. And all of this was compounded by a habitual sloth in the paying of bills which could be said to characterize the entire nation.

Into this breach stepped, as everyone knew but few would say, the moneylenders, gli strozzini, those shadowy persons who were willing and able to lend at short notice and with little security from the borrowers. Their rates of interest more than compensated for any risk they might incur. And, in a sense, the idea of risk was academic at best, for the strozzini had methods which greatly reduced the possibility that their clients – if that is the right name for them – would fail to repay the money they had borrowed. Men had children, and children could disappear; men had daughters, and young girls might be raped; men had their lives, and these had been known to be lost. Occasionally the press carried stories which, without being entirely clear, managed nevertheless to suggest that certain actions, often unpleasant or violent, had resulted from the failure to repay borrowed money. But seldom did the people involved in these stories end up under prosecution or close police examination: a wall of silence hedged them safely round. Brunetti had to struggle to recall a case where enough evidence had been gathered to lead to a conviction for moneylending, a crime with a place in the statutes, however infrequently it appeared in the courtroom.

Brunetti sat at his desk and allowed his imagination and his memory to consider the many possibilities offered by the fact that Franco Rossi might have been carrying Sandro Cappelli’s office phone number in his wallet when he died. He tried to recall Rossi’s visit and to reconstruct his sense of the man. Rossi had been serious about his work: that was perhaps the most lasting impression he had left with Brunetti. A bit humourless, more earnest than seemed possible in a man so young, Rossi had still been likeable and eager to provide what help he could.

All of this thinking, in the absence of any clear idea of what was going on, got Brunetti nowhere, but it did manage to pass the time until Gavini called.

Brunetti answered on the first ring. ‘Brunetti.’

‘Commissario,’ Gavini said and identified himself. ‘I’ve been through both the client files and the phone logs.’ Brunetti waited for more. ‘No client named Franco Rossi is listed, but Sandro called Rossi’s number three times during the month before he died.’

‘Which one? At home or at work?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Does it make a difference?’

‘Everything might make a difference.’

‘At his office,’ Gavini offered.

‘How long did the calls last?’

The other man must have had the paper under his hand because he said, without hesitation, ‘Twelve minutes, then six, then eight.’ Gavini waited for Brunetti to respond, and when he didn’t, asked, ‘What about Rossi? Do you know if he called Sandro?’

‘I haven’t checked his phone records yet,’ Brunetti admitted, feeling not a little embarrassed. Gavini said nothing, and Brunetti went on: ‘I’ll have them by tomorrow.’ Suddenly he remembered that this man was a lawyer, not a fellow officer, which meant he had no responsibility to him and no need to share information with him.

‘What’s the name of the magistrate handling the case there?’ he asked.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’d like to talk to him,’ Brunetti said.

A long silence greeted this.

‘Do you have his name?’ Brunetti prodded.

‘Righetto, Angelo Righetto,’ came the terse reply. Brunetti decided to ask nothing at this point. He thanked Gavini, made no promise to phone him about any numbers Rossi might have called, and hung up, wondering about the chill in Gavini’s voice as he pronounced the name of the man in charge of the investigation of his partner’s murder.

He immediately called down to Signorina Elettra and asked her to get copies of all of the calls made from Rossi’s home number during the last three months. When he asked her if it would be possible to find out the number of Rossi’s extension at the Ufficio Catasto and check that, she asked if he wanted the last three months of calls.

While he had her on the line, he asked her if she could call Magistrato Angelo Righetto in Ferrara and connect him as soon as she did.

Brunetti pulled a piece of paper toward him and started making a list of the names of people he thought might be able to give him information about moneylenders in the city. He knew nothing about the usurers, at least nothing more real than his vague certainty that they were there, burrowed into the social fabric as deeply as maggots into dead meat. Like certain forms of bacteria, they needed the security of an airless, dark place in which to thrive, and certainly the fearful state into which their debtors were intimidated provided neither light nor air. In secrecy, and with the unspoken threat of the consequences of late payment or default ever present in the minds of their debtors, they prospered and grew fat. The wonder of it, to Brunetti, was his ignorance of their names, faces, and histories as well as, he realized as he looked down at the still blank piece of paper, any idea of who to ask for help about how he might try to drive them out into the light.

A name came to him, and he pulled out the phone book to find the number of the bank where she worked. As he looked, his phone rang. He answered it with his name.

‘Dottore,’ Signorina Elettra said, ‘I have Magistrato Righetto on the line, if you’d like to speak to him.’

‘Yes, Signorina, I would. Please put him through.’ Brunetti put down his pen and moved the paper to the side of his desk.

‘Righetto,’ a deep voice said.

‘Magistrato, this is Commissario Guido Brunetti, from Venice. I’m calling to ask what you can tell me about the murder of Alessandro Cappelli.’

‘Why are you interested in it?’ Righetto asked, no sign of great curiosity audible in the question. He spoke with an accent Brunetti thought might be from the Sud Tirol; definitely a northerner, at any rate.

‘I have a case here,’ Brunetti explained, ‘another death, that might be related to his, and I wonder what you’ve managed to discover about Cappelli.’

There was a long pause, and then Righetto said, ‘I’d be surprised if any other death was related to it.’ He allowed a brief pause for Brunetti to question him, but as Brunetti said nothing he went on, ‘It looks like we’re dealing with a case of mistaken identity here, not murder.’ Righetto halted for an instant and then corrected himself. ‘Well, murder, of course it’s that. But it wasn’t Cappelli they were trying to kill, and we’re not even sure they were trying to kill the other man so much as frighten him.’

Sensing that it was time he displayed an interest, Brunetti asked, ‘What happened, then?’

‘It was his partner, Gavini, they were after,’ the magistrate explained. ‘At least that’s what our investigation suggests.’

‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, openly curious.

‘It made no sense from the beginning that anyone would want to kill Cappelli,’ Righetto began, making it sound as though no importance whatsoever was to be given to Cappelli’s position as a declared enemy of usurers. ‘We’ve looked into his past, even checked the current cases he was working on, but there’s no indication at all of an involvement with anyone who would want to do something like this.’

Brunetti made a little noise, one that could be interpreted as a sigh of mingled understanding and agreement.

‘On the other hand,’ Righetto continued, ‘there’s his partner.’

‘Gavini,’ Brunetti supplied unnecessarily.

‘Yes, Gavini,’ Righetto said with a dismissive laugh. ‘He’s well known in the area, has the reputation as quite a ladies’ man. Unfortunately, he has the habit of getting himself involved with married women.’

‘Ah,’ Brunetti said with a worldly sigh which he managed to infuse with the appropriate level of manly tolerance. ‘So that was it?’ he asked with bland acceptance.

‘It would seem so. In the last few years, he’s been involved with four different women, all of them married.’

Brunetti said, ‘Poor devil.’ He waited long enough to allow himself to consider the comic implications of what he’d just said and then added with a quick laugh, ‘Maybe he should have limited himself to only one of them.’

‘Yes, but how’s a man to decide?’ the magistrate shot back, and Brunetti rewarded his wit with another hearty laugh.

‘Do you have any idea which one it was?’ Brunetti asked, interested in how Righetto would handle the question, which in its turn would suggest how he was going to handle the investigation.

Righetto allowed himself a pause, no doubt he wanted it to seem like a thoughtful pause, and then said, ‘No. We’ve questioned the women, and their husbands, but all of them can prove they were somewhere else when it happened.’

‘I thought the papers said it was a professional hit,’ Brunetti said, sounding confused.

The temperature of Righetto’s voice dropped. ‘If you’re a policeman, you should know better than to believe what you read in the papers.’

‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, making himself laugh genially, as at a well-earned reproach from a colleague with greater experience and wisdom. ‘You think maybe there was still another woman?’

‘That’s the trail we’re following,’ Righetto said.

‘It happened at their offices, didn’t it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes,’ Righetto answered, willing now, after Brunetti’s hint at another woman, to give further information. ‘The two men look alike: they’re both short and have dark hair. It happened on a rainy day; the killer was on the roof of a building across the street. So there’s little question he mistook Cappelli for Gavini.’

‘But what about all this talk that Cappelli was killed because of his investigation of moneylenders?’ Brunetti asked, putting enough scepticism into his voice to make it clear to Righetto that he wouldn’t believe such nonsense for a minute but perhaps wanted to have the right answer in case someone else, more innocent than he and thus willing to believe everything he read in the papers, should ask him about it.

‘We started by examining that possibility, but there’s nothing there, just nothing. So we’ve excluded it from our investigation.’

‘Cherchez la femme,’ Brunetti said, intentionally mispronouncing the French and adding another laugh.

Righetto rewarded him with his own broad laugh and then asked, quite casually, ‘You said you had another death there. A murder?’

‘No, no, after what you’ve told me, Magistrato,’ Brunetti said, attempting to sound as dull and ploddish as he could, ‘I’m sure there’s no connection. What we’re dealing with here has got to be an accident.’