Friends In High Places by Donna Leon
‘To avoid the Christmas rush, sir, I think you might send them around next week.’
‘By all means. Consider it done.’
‘Too kind, Signore,’ she said with a gracious nod of acceptance.
‘No more than my pleasure,’ he answered. He allowed six beats to pass and then asked, ‘And?’
‘And I asked in the bookstore in the campo, and the owner told me where they lived, and I went and talked to them.’
‘And?’ he prodded.
‘They may be the most loathsome people I’ve ever met,’ she said in an uninterested, aloof tone. ‘Let’s see, I’ve worked here for more than four years, and I’ve come in contact with quite a few criminals, though the people in the bank where I used to work were probably worse, but these two were in a class by themselves,’ she said with what seemed like a real shudder of disgust.
‘Why?’
‘Because of the combination of greed and piety, I think.’
‘In what way?’
‘When I told them that I needed money to pay my brother’s gambling bills, they asked me what I had to put up as security, and I told them I had an apartment. I tried to sound a bit nervous about saying that, the way you told me. He asked me the address, and I gave it to him, then he went into the other room, and I heard him talking to someone.’
She stopped here for a moment and then added, ‘It must have been a telefonino. There were no phone jacks in the two rooms I was in.’
‘What happened then?’ Brunetti asked.
She tilted her chin and raised her eyes to the top of the armadio on the other side of the room. ‘When he came back, he smiled at his wife, and that’s when they began to talk about the possibility of their being able to help me. They asked how much I needed, and I said fifty million.’
It was the sum they had agreed on: not too much and not too little, just the sort of sum a gambler might rack up in a night’s rash gambling and just the sort of sum he would believe he could easily win back, if only he could find the person to pay off the debt and thus get him back at the tables.
She turned her eyes to Brunetti. ‘Do you know these people?’
‘No. All I know is what a friend told me.’
‘They’re terrible,’ she said, voice low.
‘What else?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose they did what they usually do. They told me that they needed to see the papers for the house, though I’m sure he was calling someone to make sure I really did own it or that it was listed in my name.’
‘Who could that be?’ he asked.
She looked down at her watch before answering, ‘It’s not likely there was still anyone at the Ufficio Catasto, so it must be someone who has instant access to their records.’
‘You do, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘No, it takes me a while to break . . . to get into their system. Whoever could give him that information immediately had to have direct access to the files.’
‘How were things left?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I’m to go back tomorrow with the papers. They’ll have the notary come to the house at five.’ She stopped and smiled across at him. ‘Imagine that: you can die before a doctor will make a house call, but they’ve got a notary on twenty-four-hour call.’ She raised her eyebrows at the very notion. ‘So I’m supposed to go back at five tomorrow, and we’ll sign all the papers, and they’ll give me the cash.’
Even before she stopped speaking, Brunetti had raised one finger and was waving it back and forth in silent negation. There was no way he’d permit Signorina Elettra to get that close to these people again. She smiled in silent acknowledgement of his command and, he thought, relief.
‘And the interest? Did they say how much it would be?’
‘They said we’d talk about that tomorrow, that it would be on the papers.’ She crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. ‘So I guess that means we don’t get to talk about it,’ she said with finality.
Brunetti waited a moment and then asked, ‘And piety?’
She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a narrow rectangle of paper, slightly smaller than a playing card. She passed it to Brunetti, who looked at it. Stiff, a sort of fake parchment, it had a painting of a woman dressed as a nun with her hands and, it seemed, her eyes crossed in matching piety. Brunetti read the first few lines printed below – a prayer, the first letter an illuminated ‘O’.
‘Santa Rita,’ she said after he had studied the picture for a while. ‘It seems she’s another patron saint of Lost Causes, and Signora Volpato feels especially close to her because she believes she also helps people when all other help is closed to them. That’s the reason for her special devotion to Santa Rita.’ Signorina Elettra paused to reflect momentarily upon this wonder and then saw fit to add, ‘More than to the Madonna, she confided to me.’
‘How fortunate, the Madonna,’ Brunetti said, handing the small card back to Signorina Elettra.
‘Ah, keep it, sir,’ she said, waving it away with a dismissive hand.
‘Did they ask why you didn’t go to a bank, if you owned the house?’
‘Yes. I told them my father originally gave me the house, and I couldn’t risk his learning what I was doing. If I went to our bank, where they know us all, he’d find out about my brother. I tried to cry then, when I told her that.’ Signorina Elettra gave a small smile and went on: ‘Signora Volpato said she was very sorry about my brother; she said gambling is a terrible vice.’
‘And usury isn’t?’ Brunetti asked, but it wasn’t really a question.
‘Apparently not. She asked me how old he was.’
‘What did you tell her?’ Brunetti asked, knowing she had no brother.
‘Thirty-seven, and that he’s been gambling for years.’ She stopped, reflected upon the events of the afternoon, and said, ‘Signora Volpato was very kind.’
‘Really? What did she do?’
‘She gave me another card of Santa Rita and said she’d pray for my brother.’
23
THE ONLY THING Brunetti did before going home that afternoon was sign the papers that would release the body of Marco Landi so that it could be sent to his parents. After he had done this, he called downstairs and asked Vianello if he would be willing to accompany the body back to the Trentino. Vianello agreed instantly, saying only that, as the next day was his day off, he didn’t know if he could wear his uniform.
Brunetti had no idea if he had the authority to do so, but he said, ‘I’ll change the roster,’ opening a drawer to start to look for it, buried among the papers that came to him every week to be ignored and eventually discarded unread. ‘Consider yourself on duty and wear your uniform.’
‘And if they ask about what’s happening here, if we’ve made any progress?’ Vianello asked.
‘They won’t ask, not yet,’ Brunetti answered, not at all sure why he knew, but sure he was right.
When he got home, he found Paola on the terrace, her feet stretched out before her, resting on one of the cane chairs that had weathered yet another winter exposed to the elements. She smiled up at him and pulled her feet off the chair; he accepted her invitation and sat opposite her.
‘Should I ask how your day was?’ she asked.
He sat lower in the chair, shook his head, but still managed to smile. ‘No. Just another day.’
‘Filled with?’
‘Usury, corruption, and human greed.’
‘Just another day.’ She took an envelope from the book in her lap and leaned forward to hand it across to him. ‘Maybe this will help,’ she said.
He took it and looked at it. It came from the Ufficio Catasto; he was uncertain of how this could be of any help to him.
He pulled out the letter and read it. ‘Is this a miracle?’ he asked. Then, looking down at it, he read the last sentence aloud, ‘“Sufficient documentation having been presented, all former correspondence from our office is superseded by this decree of condono edilizio.’’ ’
Paola nodded, without smiling or looking away.
He searched for both wording and tone and, finding them, asked, ‘Could you perhaps be a bit more precise?’
Her explanation came quickly. ‘From the way I read it, I’d say it means the matter’s closed, that they’ve found the necessary papers, and we will not be driven mad by this.’
‘Found?’ he repeated.
‘Found,’ she said.
He looked down at the single page in his hand, the paper on which the word ‘presented’ appeared, folded it, and slipped it inside the envelope, considering as he did so how to ask, whether to ask.
He handed the envelope back to her. He asked, still in command of his tone but not of his words, ‘Does your father have anything to do with this?’
He watched her and experience told him just how long she thought about lying to him; the same experience saw her abandon the idea. ‘Probably.’
‘How?’
‘We were talking about you,’ she began, and he disguised his surprise that Paola would discuss him with her father. ‘He asked me how you were, how your work was, and I told him you had more than the usual problems at the moment.’ Before he could accuse her of betraying the secrets of his work, she added, ‘You know I never tell him, or anyone, specific things, but I did tell him you were more burdened than usual.’
‘Burdened?’
‘Yes.’ Then, by way of explanation, she went on, ‘With Patta’s son and the way he’s going to get away with this,’ she said. ‘And those poor dead young people.’ When she saw his expression, she said, ‘No, I didn’t mention any of this to him, just tried to tell him how hard it’s been for you recently. Remember, I live and sleep with you, so you don’t have to give me daily reports on how much these things trouble you.’
He saw her sit straighter in her chair, as if she thought the conversation finished and herself free to get up and get them a drink.
‘What else did you tell him, Paola?’ he asked before she could rise.
Her answer took a while to come, but when it did, it was the truth. ‘I told him about this nonsense from the Ufficio Catasto, that though we hadn’t heard anything further, it still loomed over us like a kind of bureaucratic sword of Damocles.’ He knew the tactic: deflecting wit. He was not moved by it.
‘And what was his response?’
‘He asked if there was anything he could do.’
Had Brunetti been less tired, less burdened by a day filled with thoughts of human corruption, he probably would have let it go at that and allowed events to take their course above his head, behind his back. But something, either Paola’s complacent duplicity or his own shame at it, drove him to say, ‘I told you not to do that.’ Quickly, he amended it to, ‘I asked you.’
‘I know you did. So I didn’t ask him to help.’
‘You didn’t have to ask him, did you?’ he said, voice beginning to rise.
Her voice matched his. ‘I don’t know what he did. I don’t even know that he did anything.’
Brunetti pointed to the envelope in her hand. ‘The answer’s not far to seek, is it? I asked you not to have him help us, not to make him use his system of friends and connections.’
‘But you saw nothing wrong in using ours,’ she shot back.
‘That’s different,’ he insisted.
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re little people. We don’t have his power. We can’t be sure that we’ll always get what we want, always be able to get around the laws.’
‘You really believe that makes a difference?’ she asked, in astonishment.
He nodded.
‘Then which is Patta?’ she asked. ‘One of us or one of the powerful people?’
‘Patta?’
‘Yes, Patta. If you think it’s all right for small people to try to get around the system, but it’s wrong for big people to do it, which is Patta?’ When Brunetti hesitated, she said, ‘I ask because you certainly make no attempt to disguise your opinion of what he did to save his son.’
Anger, instant and fierce, flooded him. ‘His son is a criminal.’
‘He’s still his son.’
‘And that’s why it’s all right for your father to corrupt the system, because he’s doing it for his daughter?’ The instant the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them, and the regret overwhelmed his anger, snuffing it entirely. Paola looked across at him, mouth open in a tiny o, as if he had leaned across and slapped her.
At once he spoke: ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ He put his head back against the chair and shook it from side to side. He wanted to close his eyes and make all of this go away. Instead, he raised a hand, palm up, then let it fall to his lap. ‘I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No, you shouldn’t have.’
‘It’s not true,’ he said by way of apology.
‘No,’ she said, voice very calm. ‘I think that’s why you shouldn’t have said it. Because it is true. He did it because I’m his daughter.’
Brunetti was about to say that the other part wasn’t true: Conte Falier couldn’t corrupt a system that was already corrupt, had probably been born corrupt. But all he said was, ‘I don’t want to do this, Paola.’
‘Do what?’
‘Fight about this.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her voice was distant, disinterested, faintly imperious.
‘Oh, come on,’ he said, angered again.
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Finally Paola asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do.’ He waved a hand toward the letter. ‘Not after we’ve got that.’
‘I suppose not,’ she agreed. She held it up. ‘But beyond this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Then, in a softer voice, he said, ‘I suppose you can’t be asked to return to the ideals of your youth?’
‘Would you want me to?’ At once she added, ‘It’s impossible; I have to tell you that. So my question is entirely rhetorical. Would you want me to?’
As he got to his feet, however, he realized that a return to the ideals of their youth was no guarantee of peace of mind.
He went back into the apartment, then emerged a few minutes later with two glasses of Chardonnay. They sat together for half an hour, neither saying much of anything, until Paola glanced at her watch, got up, and said she would begin dinner. As she took his empty glass, she bent down and kissed his right ear, missing his cheek.
After dinner, he lay on the sofa, caught up in the hope that he would somehow find the means to keep his family at peace and that the terrible events with which his days were filled would never lay siege to his home. He tried to continue with Xenophon, but even though the remaining Greeks were nearing home and safety, he found it difficult to concentrate on their story and impossible to concern himself with their two-thousand-year-old plight. Chiara, who came in at about ten to kiss him goodnight, said nothing about boats, little realizing that, if she had, Brunetti would have agreed to buy her the QE2.
As he had hoped, when he bought the paper on his way to work the next morning he found his headline on the front page of the second section of Il Gazzettino and sat at his desk to read it through. It was all more horrible and more urgent than he had made it sound, and, like so many of the wild fancies that appeared in this particular publication, it sounded utterly convincing. Though the article stated clearly that this therapy functioned only against possible transmission by biting – how much nonsense would people believe? – he feared the hospital would be swamped with drug addicts and infected people, hoping for the magic cure said to be in the possession of the doctors of the Ospedale Civile and available on request at the Pronto Soccorso. On the way in, he had done something he seldom did, bought La Nuova, hoping that no one who knew him would see him with it. He found it on
He had been in his office no more than ten minutes when the door was thrown open and Brunetti looked up, first startled and then astonished to observe Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta standing in the doorway. But he didn’t stand there long: within seconds, he was across the room and directly in front of Brunetti’s desk. Brunetti started to get to his feet, but Patta raised a hand as if to push him back down, then clutched the hand into a fist and brought it crashing down on Brunetti’s desk.
‘Why have you done this?’ he shouted. ‘What have I ever done to you that you’d do this to us? They’ll kill him. You know that. You must have known that when you did it.’
For a moment, Brunetti feared that his superior had gone mad or that the stresses of his job, perhaps the private stresses of his life, had driven him beyond the point where he could contain his feelings, and he had been forced across some invisible barrier into heedless rage. Brunetti placed his hands palm down on his desk and was very careful not to move or attempt to get up.
‘Well? Well?’ Patta shouted at him, placing his own palms flat on the desk and leaning across it until his face was very close to Brunetti’s. ‘I want to know why you did this to him. If anything happens to Roberto, I’ll destroy you.’ Patta stood upright, and Brunetti noticed that his hands were now clasped into tight fists at his side. The Vice-Questore swallowed and then demanded, ‘I asked you a question, Brunetti,’ in a voice filled with soft menace.
Brunetti moved backward in his chair and grasped its arms. ‘I think you’d better sit down, Vice-Questore,’ he said, ‘and tell me what this is all about.’
Any calm that might have settled on Patta’s features vanished, and he shouted again, ‘Don’t lie to me, Brunetti. I want to know why you did it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Brunetti said, letting some of his own anger slip into his voice.