A Venetian Reckoning (16 page)

Brunetti went up to della Corte, a
thin man with a heavily lined face and a thick moustache, and slapped him on the
shoulder Speaking in thick Veneziano and far more loudly than was necessary, he
said, '
Ciao
, Bepe,
come
stai?.
Sorry
I'm late, but my bitch of a wife
..
.’ He let his voice trail off and
waved his hand in the air in an angry gesture directed at all bitches, all
wives. He turned to the bartender and said, voice even louder,
'Amico
mia,
give
me a whisky', then, turning to della Corte, he asked, 'What are you drinking,
Bepe? Have another one.' He was careful, when he turned towards the bartender,
to turn his whole body, not just his head, and to be sure to turn it too far.
To steady himself, he put one hand on the bar and muttered, 'Bitch,' again.

When the whisky came, he picked up
the tall glass and tossed the drink down in one gulp, slammed the glass loudly
down on the bar, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A second drink
appeared in front of him, but before he could pick it up, he saw della Cortes
hand reach out and take it.

'Cin cin, Guido,' della Corte said,
lifting the glass and tilting it towards Brunetti in a gesture filled with old
friendship. 'I'm glad you got away from her.' He sipped at the drink, sipped
again. 'Are you going to come hunting with us this weekend?'

He and della Corte hadn't prepared a
script for this meeting, but Brunetti assumed one topic was as good as another
for two middle-aged drunks at a cheap bar in Mestre. He answered that he wanted
to go, but his bitch of a wife wanted him to stay home that weekend because it
was their anniversary, and she expected him to take her out to dinner. Why did
they have a stove in the house if she wasn't going to use it to cook his
dinner? After a few minutes of this, one of the couples got up from their table
and left the bar. Della Corte, ordering two more drinks, pulled Brunetti by the
sleeve over towards the empty table and helped him sit down in one of the
chairs. After the drinks came, Brunetti propped his chin up on one palm and
asked in a low voice, 'Have you been here long?'

'About a half-hour,' della Corte
answered, his voice no longer thickened either by alcohol or the heavy Veneto
accent he had used when speaking at the bar.

'And?' Brunetti asked.

'The man at the bar, the one with the
women,' della Corte said and paused to sip at his drink. 'Every so often men
come into the bar and talk to him. Twice, one of the women with him has gone to
sit at the bar and have a drink with the man. Once, one of them left with the
man, then came back alone about twenty minutes later’

'Fast work,’ Brunetti said, and della
Corte nodded again, then took another sip of his drink.

'From the look of him,' della Corte
continued, ‘I’d say he's on heroin.' He glanced over at the bar and grinned
broadly when one of the women caught his eye.

'You sure?’ Brunetti asked.

'I worked drugs for six years. I’ve
seen hundreds like him.'

'Anything else in Padua?’ Brunetti
asked. During their conversation, they showed little apparent interest in the
other people in the bar, but each of them was memorizing faces and keeping
careful watch of what went on.

Delia Corte shook his head. ‘I’ve
stopped talking about it, but I sent one of the men I trust down to the lab to
see if anything else is missing.'

'And?'

'Whoever did it was very careful. All
of the notes and samples for the autopsies done that day are missing.' 'How
many were there?' 'Three.'

'In Padua?' Brunetti asked, unable to
hide his surprise.

'Two old people died in the hospital
after eating spoiled meat. Salmonella. The pathologist's notes and the samples
from their autopsies were missing, too’

Brunetti nodded. 'Who could do it?’
he asked the captain. 'Or who would want to have it done?' 'Whoever gave him
the barbiturates, I'd say.' Brunetti nodded.

The bartender made a sweep around the
tables. Brunetti pulled his head up from his hand and signalled to him to
bring two more drinks, though his second sat in front of him, almost untouched.

'With what people in the lab are
paid, a couple of hundred thousand lire will buy a lot of co-operation,' della
Corte said.

Two men came into the bar together,
talking and laughing in loud voices, loud in the way men tend to make their
voices when it's important that strangers notice them.

'Anything on Trevisan?’ della Corte
asked.

Brunetti shook his head from side to
side with the ponderous solemnity drunks give to trivial things.

'And so?’ della Corte asked.

‘I guess one of us is going to have
to sample the merchandise,' Brunetti said as the bartender approached their
table. He looked up, smiled at the bartender, nodded at him to set their drinks
down on the table, and waved him closer. When he did, Brunetti looked up at him
and said, 'Drinks for the
signorina!
waving
an unsteady hand in the direction of the two women who stood at the bar, still
on either side of the man.

The bartender nodded, went back
behind the bar, and poured out two glasses of bubbling white wine. Brunetti was
sure it was the worst sort of rotgut Prosecco and equally certain his bill
would say it was

French champagne. The bartender moved
down the bar to the place where the man and the two women were standing, leaned
forward, placed the glasses on the bar, and said something to the man, who
glanced in Brunetti's direction. The man turned and said something to the
woman on his left, a short, dark woman with a broad mouth and reddish hair that
cascaded down her shoulders. She looked at the man, then at the drinks, then
across the room towards where Brunetti sat at the table. He smiled in her
direction, half rose from his chair, and bowed clumsily towards her.

'Are you out of your mind?' della Corte
asked, smiling broadly and reaching forward to pick up his drink.

Instead of answering, Brunetti waved
towards the three at the bar and kicked back the empty chair that stood to his
left. He smiled towards the woman and pointed at the chair beside him. The
redheaded woman detached herself from her friends, picked up her glass of wine,
and started across the room in the direction of Brunetti's table. Seeing her
approach, Brunetti smiled at her again and asked della Corte in a soft voice,
'Did you come by car?' The captain nodded.

'Good. When she comes over, leave.
Wait for me in your car and follow us when we leave here.'

Just as the woman reached the table,
della Corte pushed back his chair and got to his feet, almost bumping into the
woman and seeming surprised at her arrival. He looked at her for a moment, then
said,

'Good evening, signorina. Please have
a seat,' slipping back into his broad Veneto accent and smiling broadly.

The woman gathered her skirt under
her and sat beside Brunetti. She smiled at him, and he saw that, under the
caked make-up, she was pretty: even teeth, dark eyes, and a short, happy nose.
'Buona
sera?
she
said, almost whispering. 'Thanks for the champagne.'

Della Corte leaned across the table
towards Brunetti and extended his hand. 'I've got to be going, Guido. I'll give
you a call next week.'

Brunetti ignored his outstretched
hand, all of his attention directed at the woman. Della Corte turned towards the
men at the bar, smiled, shrugged, and left, closing the door behind him.

'
Ti
chiami
Guido?’
the
woman asked, using the informal ‘tu' and, by that, making clear just what all
this was about.

'Yes, Guido Bassetti. What's your
name, sweetheart?'

'Mara,' she said and laughed as
though she'd said something clever. 'What do you do, Guido?' Underneath her
words, Brunetti could detect two things: some sort of a foreign accent,
definitely a Latin language, though he couldn't tell whether it was Spanish or
Portuguese; even more audible was the bold double meaning of her question,
which landed heavily on the last word.

'I'm a plumber,' Brunetti said,
making himself sound very proud of it As he spoke, he made a vulgar gesture
which made it clear he had understood the suggestion in her question.

'Oh, how interesting,' Mara said and
laughed again, but couldn't think of anything eke to say.

Brunetti saw that a good deal of
liquor still remained in his second drink, and his third was untouched. He
drank some of the second, pushed it aside, and picked up the third glass.

'You're a very pretty girl, Mara,' he
said, making no attempt to disguise the fact that this was entirely irrelevant
to the business at hand. She didn't seem to care.

'Is that your friend at the bar?'
Brunetti asked, nodding his chin towards the place where the man still stood,
though the other woman was gone now.

'Yes,' Mara answered.

'You live near here?' Brunetti asked,
a man no longer interested in wasting time. ‘Yes.'

'Can we go there?'

'Yes.' She smiled again, and he
watched her force warmth and interest into her eyes.

He allowed all the good humour to
flow out of him. 'How much?'

'A hundred thousand,' she answered
with the alacrity of a woman who had heard this question too many times.

Brunetti laughed, took another sip of
his drink, and got to his feet, careful to push his chair back so quickly that
it fell over behind him. 'You're crazy, little Mara. I've got a wife at home.
She'll give it to me for nothing.’

She shrugged and glanced at her
watch. It was eleven, and no one had come into the bar in the last twenty
minutes. He could see her calculating time and opportunity.

'Fifty’ she said, apparently willing
to save time and energy.

Brunetti put his drink, still
unfinished, down on the table and reached for her arm. 'All right, little Mara,
let me show you what a real man can do for you.'

She offered no resistance and got to
her feet. Brunetti, pulling at her arm, went over to the bar. 'How much do I
owe you?’ he asked the bartender.

With no hesitation, the bartender
answered, 'Sixty-three thousand lire.’

'Are you crazy?' Brunetti asked
angrily. 'For three drinks, and lousy whisky, too?’

'And two for your friend, and
champagne for the ladies,' the bartender said.

'Ladies,’ Brunetti repeated
sarcastically, but he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He
took a fifty, a ten, and three 1000-lire notes and tossed them on to the
counter. Before he could put his wallet back, Mara reached up and grabbed at
his arm.

'You can give the money to my friend,’
she said, gesturing with her chin to the dun man at the bar, who looked at
Brunetti without smiling. Brunetti looked around him, face flushed with
confusion, a man seeking someone to help him understand this. No one did. He
took a 50,000-lire note from his wallet and tossed it on to the counter, not
looking at the man, who didn't bother to glance at the money. Then, in an
attempt to restore his damaged pride, Brunetti grabbed the woman's arm and
pulled her towards the door. She paused only long enough to take a fake
leopard-skin jacket from a hook by the door, and then she went out into the
street with Brunetti, who slammed the door violently behind them.

Outside, Mara turned to the left and
started to walk away from Brunetti. She took quick steps, but they were
shortened by the tightness of her skirt and the height of her heels, so
Brunetti had no trouble in keeping up with her. At the first corner, she turned
to the left and then, three doors down, stopped in front of a doorway. Her key
was ready in her hand. She opened the door and stepped inside, not bothering to
look back for Brunetti, who paused for a moment at the door, just long enough
to see a car turn into the narrow street. It blinked its lights twice, and he
followed the woman inside the building.

At the top of a single flight of
stain, she opened the door on the right, again leaving it open behind her for
Brunetti. When he walked in, he saw that the room contained a low divan,
covered with a brightly striped bedspread, a desk and two chairs, and one
window, closed and shuttered. She switched on a light, a naked, low-watt bulb
that hung from the ceiling at the end of a short piece of wire.