Authors: Donna Leon
Other qualities he had always admired in Paola were the fact that she was not a snoop and that jealousy was not part of her makeup. 'Are you jealous?' h
e asked before he had time to
think.
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him with eyes that might as well have been stuck out on stalks, so absolute was her attention. She turned away from him and said, addressing her remarks to the campanile of San Polo, 'He wants to know if I'm jealous.' When the campanile did not respond, she turned her eyes in the direction of San Marco.
As they sat, the silence lengthening between them, the tension of the scene drifted away as if the mere mention of the word 'jealousy' had sufficed to chase it off.
The half-hour struck, and Brunetti finally said, "There's no need for it, you know, Paola. There's nothing I want from her.'
'You want her safety.'
"That's for her, not from her,' he insisted.
She turned towards him then and asked, without any trace of her usual fierceness, 'You really believe this, don't you, that you don't want anything from her?'
'Of course,' he insisted.
She turned away from him again, studying the clouds, higher now and moving off towards the mainland.
'What's wrong?' he finally asked into her expanding silence.
'Nothing's really wrong. It's just that we're at one of those points where the difference between men and women becomes evident.'
'What difference?' he asked.
'The capacity of self-deceit,' she said, but corrected herself and said, 'Or rather, the things about which we choose to deceive ourselves.'
'Like what?' he asked, striving for neutrality.
'Men deceive themselves about what they do themselves, but women choose to deceive themselves about what other people do.'
'Men, presumably?' he asked.
'Yes.'
If she had been a chemist reading the periodic table of the elements, she could not have sounded more certain.
He finished his Calvados but did not pour any more. A long time passed in silence, during which he considered what she had said. 'Sounds like men get a better deal,' he finally replied.
'When don't they?'
By the next morning, Brunetti had transformed Paola's observation that he had thought about little except Signorina Elettra during the last week, which was true, into an assertion that she had reason for jealousy, which was hardly the same thing. Fully persuaded that Paola had no cause for jealousy, his concern for Signorina Elettra continued uppermost in his mind, blunting his ordinary instinct to be suspicious of and curious about everyone involved in a case. Odd tinglings, if they could be called that, thus went unanswered, and some of the finer threads leading out from the investigation remained unfollowed.
Marotta returned and took over the handling of the Questura. Because murder was such a rare occurrence in Venice, and because Marotta was an ambitious man, he asked for the files on the Bottin murders and, after having read them, said he would take charge of the case himself.
When he failed to find the number of Signorina Elettra's
telefonino,
Brunetti spent a half-hour at the computer, attempting to get into the records at TELECOM, only to give up and ask Vianello if he could obtain the number. When he had it, he thanked the sergeant and went up to his own office to make the call. It rang eight times, then a voice came on, telling him the user of the phone had turned it off but he could, if he chose, leave a voice message. He was about
to give his name when he remem
bered the look she'd given the young man for whom he now had a name and, instead, calling her Elettra and using the intimate
tu,
said it was Guido and asked her to call him at work.
He called down to Vianello and asked him to have another look with the computer, this time for anything he could find out about a certain Carlo Targhetta, perhaps resident on Pellestrina. Vianello's voice was a study in neutrality as he repeated the name, which made it clear to Brunetti that the sergeant had spoken to Pucetti and knew full well who the young man was.
He took a blank piece of paper from his drawer and wrote the name Bottin in the centre, then the name Follini off on the left. Spadini's name was next, at the bottom. He drew a line connecting Spadini and Follini. To the right of Spadini's name, he wrote that of Sandro Scarpa, the waiter's brother, said to have had a fight with Bottin, whose name he connected to Scarpa's. Below that he wrote the name of the missing waiter. And then he sat and looked at these names, as if waiting for them to move around on the paper or for new lines to point out interesting connections among them. Nothing appeared. He picked up the pen again and wrote Carlo Targhetta's name, sticking it into an inconspicuous corner and conscious that he wrote it in smaller letters than those he'd used for the other names.
Still nothing happened. He opened the front drawer, slipped the paper inside, and went downstairs to see what Vianello had discovered.
Vianello, in the meantime, had been larking around in the files of the various agencies of government in an attempt to see if Carlo
Targhetta had done his military service or if he had ever had any trouble with the police. Quite the opposite, it seemed, or so he told Brunetti when he came into Signorina Elettra's office, where the sergeant was using the computer.
'He was in the Guardia di Finanza,' Vianello said, surprised at the news.
'And now he's a fisherman,' Brunetti added.
'And probably earning a hell of a lot more doing that,' remarked Vianello.
Though this was hardly in question, it did seem a strange career change, and both of them wondered what could have prompted it. 'When did he stop?' Brunetti asked.
Vianello pressed a few keys, studied the screen, pressed some more, and then said, 'About two years ago.'
Both of them thought of it, but Brunetti was the first to mention the coincidence. 'About the same time that Spadini lost his boat.'
'Uh huh,' Vianello agreed and hit a key that wiped the screen clean. 'I'll see if I can find out why he left,' he said and summoned up a fresh screenful of information. For a number of seconds, new letters and numbers flashed across the screen, chasing one another into and out of existence. After what seemed like an inordinately long time, Vianello said, 'They're not saying, sir.'
Brunetti leaned down over the screen and started to read. Much of it was numbers and incomprehensible symbols, but near the bottom he read, 'Internal use only, see relevant file,' after which there followed a long string of numbers and letters, presumably the file in which the reason for Carlo Targhetta's departure was to be found.
Vianello tapped his finger on the final phrase and asked, 'You think this means something, sir?'
'Everything has to mean something, doesn't it, really?' Brunetti offered by way of response, though he was curious as to just what this might mean. 'You know anyone?' he asked Vianello, using the centuries-old Venetian shorthand: friend? relative? old classmate? someone who owes a favour?
'Nadia's godmother, sir,' Vianello said after a moment's reflection. 'She's married to a man who used to be a colonel.'
"They weren't invited to your anniversary dinner, were they?' Brunetti asked.
Vianello smiled at the reminder of the favour Brunetti now owed him. 'No, they weren't. He retired about three years ago, but he'd still have access to anything he wanted.'
'Is Nadia very close to them?' Brunetti asked.
Vianello's smile was sharklike. 'Like a daughter, sir.' He reached for the phone. 'I'll see what he can find out.'
Brunetti assumed from the brevity of Vianello's opening salvo that he had reached the retired Colonel directly. He heard him explain his request. When Vianello, after a short pause, said only 'June two years ago,' Brunetti assumed that the Colonel had not bothered to ask why the sergeant wanted the information. When Brunetti heard Vianello say, 'Good, then I'll call you tomorrow morning,' he left and went back to his own office.
22
The following morning, Brunetti left for work before Paola was awake, thus avoiding the need to answer any questions about the progress of the investigation. Because Signorina Elettra had not answered his call or at least had not phoned him at the Questura the day before, he could allow himself to think she had obeyed him and returned from Pellestrina. Consequently, he toyed with the idea, as he walked to work, that he might arrive at the Questura to find her at her. desk, dressed for spring, happy to be back and even happier to see him.
His thought, however, was not father to her deed, and there was no sign of her in her office. Her computer sat silent, its screen blank, but he went upstairs before that could be made to serve as an omen of any sort.
Stopping in the officers' room on the way up, he found Vianello at his desk, a disassembled pistol spread in a mess in front of him. The metal parts lay scattered on an open copy of
Gazzetta dello Sport,
their dull menace in sharp contrast to the pink paper, like a ballet dancer wearing brass knuckles.
'What's going on?' Brunetti asked.
The sergeant looked up and smiled. 'It's Alvise's, sir. He started to take it apart to clean it this morning, but he couldn't remember how to put it back together.'
'Where is he?' Brunetti asked, looking around.
'He went to get a coffee.'
'And left it here?'
'Yes.'
'What are you doing?'
'I thought I'd put it back together for him, sir, and just leave it on his desk.'
Brunetti gave this the thought it deserved and said, 'Yes, I think that's best.'
Ignoring the gun, Vianello said, 'The Colonel called back.'
'And?'
'And he's not saying.' 'Which means?'
'It probably means he'd say if they'd told him but they won't tell him.'
'Why do you say that?'
Vianello considered how best to begin, finally saying, 'He was a colonel, so he's used to being obeyed by almost everybody. I think what happened is that they refused to tell him why
Targhetta left, but he's ashamed to admit that, so he says that he's not allowed to reveal the information.' He paused, then added, 'It's his way of saving face, makes it sound like it's his decision.' 'You sure?'
'No,' the sergeant answered, 'but it's the explanation that makes most sense.' There was another long pause and he added, 'Besides, he owes me a number of favours. He'd do it if he could.'
Brunetti considered this for some time then, realizing that Vianello must have been thinking about it for even longer, asked, 'What do you think?'
'I'd guess they caught Targhetta at something but couldn't prove it or didn't want to risk the consequences of arresting him or charging him. So they just quietly let him go.'
'And put that in his file?'
'Uh huh,' Vianello agreed, turning his attention to the pistol. Quickly, with expert fingers, he began to pick up the scattered parts and slip them into place. Within seconds, the pistol was reassembled, returned to cold lethality.
Setting it aside, Vianello said, 'I wish she were here.'
'Who?'
'Signorina Elettra,' Vianello answered. For some reason, it pleased Brunetti that he did not speak of her familiarly.
'Yes, that would be useful, wouldn't it?' Stymied, suddenly aware of how practically dependent upon her he had become in recent years, Brunetti asked, 'Is there anyone else?'
'I've been thinking about that since he called,' Vianello said. "There's only one person I can think of who might be able to do it.'
'Who?'
'You're not going to like it, sir,' the sergeant said.
To Brunetti, that could mean only one thing; that is, one person. 'I told you I'd prefer not to have anything to do with Galardi,' Brunetti said. Stefano Galardi, the owner and president of a software company, had gone to school with Vianello, but he had long since left behind him all memory of having grown up in Castello in a house with no heat and no hot water and had soared off into the empyrean reaches of cyber-wealth. He had scaled the social and monetary ladder and was accepted, indeed welcomed, at every table in the city, except perhaps at the table of Guido Brunetti, where he had, six years before, made very obvious and very drunken advances to Paola until told to leave by her very angry and very sober husband.
Because Galardi was persuaded that Vianello had, almost twenty years ago, saved him from drowning after a particularly riotous Redentore party, he had served, before the advent of Signorina Elettra, as a means to obtain certain kinds of electronic information. Not the least of Brunetti's pleasures in Signorina Elettra's prowess was the fact that it freed him of any obligation to Galardi.
Neither of them said anything for a long time, until Brunetti said, 'All right. Call him.' He left the room, not wanting to be present when Vianello did.
His curiosity was satisfied two hours later, when Vianello came in and, unasked, took the seat opposite his superior. 'It took him this long to find the right way in,' he said.
'And?'