A Venetian Reckoning (6 page)

'Yes. Twice. One bullet must have
severed an artery, for he seems to have died very quickly.'

'Why do you want to know about his
family?' she asked, not, he noticed, asking which member of the family he might
be curious about.

'I want to know about his business,
his friendships, his family, anything I can that will allow me to begin to
understand what sort of a man he was.'

'You think that will help you learn
who killed him?'

'It's the only way to learn why
someone would want to kill him. After that, it's relatively easy to figure out
who did.'

'You sound very optimistic.'

'No, I'm not,' Brunetti said, shaking
his head. 'Not at all, and I won't be until I can begin to understand him.'

'And you think that by learning about
his wife and daughter, you will?'
'Yes:

The waiter reappeared at their left
and set two cups of espresso and a silver sugar bowl down on the table between
them. Each of them spooned two sugars into their small cups and stirred them
round, allowing this ceremony to serve as a natural pause in the conversation.

After she sipped at the coffee and
replaced the cup in her saucer, the doctor said, 'Signora Trevisan brought her
daughter, who was men about fourteen, to see me a little more than a year ago.
It was obvious that the girl didn't want her mother to know what was wrong with
her. Signora Trevisan insisted she come into the examining room with her
daughter, but I kept her out.' She nicked ash from her cigarette, smiled, and
added, 'Not without difficulty’ She sipped again at her coffee; Brunetti said
nothing to hasten her.

'The girl was suffering from a
flare-up of genital herpes. I asked her the usual questions: whether her partner
was using a prophylactic, whether she had other sexual partners, how long she
had had the symptoms. With herpes, it's usually the first outbreak of the symptoms
that's the worst, so I wanted to know if this was the first Knowing that would
help me assess the seriousness of the infection.’ She stopped talking and
crushed her cigarette into the ashtray on the table. When that was done, she
took the ashtray and, without explanation, leaned aside to move it to the next
table.

'And was it the first outbreak?’

'She said at first that it was, but
it seemed to me that she was lying. I spent a long time explaining to her why I
had to know, that I couldn't prescribe the right medicines unless I knew how
serious the infection was. It took a while, but she finally told me that this
was the second outbreak and that the first one had been much worse.'

'Why hadn't she gone to see you?'

'They were on vacation when it
happened, and she was afraid, if she went to a different doctor, he'd tell her
parents what was wrong with her.’

'How serious was that outbreak?'

'Fever, chills, genital pain.’ 'What
did she do?’

'She told her mother she had cramps
and went to bed for two days.’ 'And the mother?’ 'What about her?’ 'Did she
believe it?' 'Apparently so.’ 'And this time?'

'She told her mother that she had
very bad cramps again and wanted to see me. I've been her doctor for about seven
years, since she was a little girl.'

'Why did the mother come with her?'

She looked down into her empty coffee
cup as she answered, 'Signora Trevisan has always been overly protective of
her. When Francesca was smaller, her mother would call me if she had the least
sign of fever. Some winters, she'd call me at least twice a month and ask me to
go to the house to see her.'

'Did you?'

'In the beginning - I was new in my
practice — I did, but then I gradually learned who would call only when they
were really very sick and who would call
...
well, who would call for less than
that.'

'Did Signora Trevisan call you for
her own illnesses?'

'No, never. She'd come to the
office.'

'For what?'

"That doesn't seem relevant to
me, commissario,’ she said, surprising him by the use of his tide. He left it.
'What were the girl's answers to the other questions?’ 'She said that her
partner did not use prophylactics. He said it would interfere with their
pleasure.' She gave a crooked grimace, as if displeased to hear herself
repeating such a self-serving cliche.

"Partner", singular?'

'Yes, she said there was only one.'

'Did she tell you who he was?'

'I didn't ask. It's none of my
business.'

'Did you believe her? That there was
only one?'

'I saw no reason not to. As I told
you, I've known her since she was a child. It seemed, from what I know of her,
that she was telling me the truth.'

'And the magazine her mother threw at
you?' Brunetti asked.

She glanced across at him, clearly
surprised. 'Ah, my sister, when she tells a story, she tells it all, doesn't
she?' But there seemed to be no real anger in her voice, only the grudging
admiration that a lifetime with Elettra, Brunetti was sure, would command.

'That came later,' she began. 'When
we came out of the examining room, Signora Trevisan demanded to know what was
wrong with Franceses. I said it was a minor infection and would clear up soon.
She seemed content with that, and they left the office.'

'How'd she find out?' Brunetti asked.

'The medicine. Zovirax, it's specific
for herpes. There's no other reason she'd be taking it. Signora Trevisan has a
friend who's a pharmacist, and she asked him - I'm sure she did it very, very
casually - what the medicine was for. He told her. It isn't used for anything
else, or very rarely. The next day, she was back in my office, without
Francesca, and she made some offensive remarks.' She stopped. 'What sort of
remarks?'

'She accused me of having arranged an
abortion for Francesca. I told her to get out of the
ambulatorio,
and that was when she picked up the magazine and
threw it at me. Two of my patients, elderly men, took her by the arms and put
her out of the office. I haven't seen her since then.'

'And the girl?'

'As I told you’ I've seen her once or
twice on the street, but she's no longer my patient. I had a request from
another doctor to verify my diagnosis, which I did. I'd already sent both of
their records back to Signora Trevisan.'

'Have you any idea where or how she
might have got the idea you arranged an abortion?'

'No, none. I couldn't do it without
her parents' consent, anyway.'

Brunetti s own daughter, Chiara, was
the same age as Francesca had been: fourteen. He wondered how he or his wife
would respond to news that she had a venereal infection. He shied away from the
thought with something he realized was horror.

'Why are you reluctant to discuss
Signora Trevisan s medical history?'

'I told you, because I don't think
it's relevant'

'And I've told you that anything
might be relevant,' he said, trying to soften his tone, perhaps succeeding.

'If I told you she had a bad back?'

'If that were the case, men you
wouldn't have hesitated to tell me in the first place ‘

She said nothing for a moment and
then shook her head. 'No. She was my patient, so I can't discuss anything I
know.'

'Can't or won't?' Brunetti asked, all
attempt at humour gone from his voice.

Her look was direct and even.
'Can't,' she repeated and then broke away her glance to look down at her watch.
This time, it was Snoopy, he noticed. 'I've got one more house call to make
before lunch.'

Brunetti knew this was a decision
that could not be opposed. Thank you for your time and for what you've told me,’
he said, meaning it. On a more personal note, he added, 'I'm surprised I didn't
realize you and Elettra were sisters before this.'

'Well, she's five years younger than
I am.'

'I wasn't thinking about appearance,'
he said. In response to the inquisitive tilt of her chin, he added, 'Your
character. It's very similar.'

Her smile was swift and broad. 'Many
people have told us that'

'Yes, I imagine they would,' Brunetti
said.

For a moment, she said nothing, but
then she laughed with real delight Still laughing, she pushed back her chair
and reached for her coat He helped her with it glanced at the sum on the bill,
and dropped some money on to the table. She picked up her brown bag, and
together they went out into the Piazza, there to discover it had grown even
warmer.

'Most of my patients are sure this
means it will be a terrible winter,' she said, waving her arm to encompass both
the Piazza and the light that filled it They walked down the three low steps
and started across the Piazza.

'If it were unnaturally cold, what
would they say then?’ Brunetti asked.

'Oh, they'd say the same thing, that
it's a sure sign of a bad winter,' she answered casually, not at all troubled
by the contradiction. Venetians both, they understood.

'We are a pessimistic people, aren't
we?' Brunetti asked.

'We once had an empire. Now all we
have,' she said, repeating the same gesture, again encompassing the Basilica,
the
campanile
and,
below it, Sansovino's Loggetta, 'all we have is this Disneyland. I think that's
sufficient cause for pessimism.'

Brunetti nodded but said nothing. She
hadn't persuaded him. The moments came rarely, but for him the city's glory
still lived.

They parted at the foot of the
campanile,
she to see a patient who lived in Campo della
Guerra and he to walk towards Rialto and, from there, home for lunch.

8

The shops were still open when he
reached his neighbourhood, so he went into the corner grocery store and bought
four glass bottles of mineral water. In a weak moment of ecological
appeasement, Brunetti had agreed to take part in his family's boycott of
plastic bottles, and so he had, like the rest of them - he had to give them
that - developed the habit of stopping at the store each time he passed to pick
up a few bottles. He sometimes wondered if the rest of them bathed in the stuff
while he wasn't there, with such rapidity did it disappear.

At the top of the fifth flight, he
set the bag of bottles down on the final step and fished out his keys. From
inside, he heard the radio news, no doubt bringing an eager public up to date
on the Trevisan murder. He pushed open the door, set the bottles down inside,
and closed the door behind him. From the kitchen, he heard a voice intone, ‘
..
denies all
knowledge of the charges made against him and points to twenty years of
faithful service to the ex-Christian Democratic Party as proof of his
commitment to justice. From his cell in the Regina Coeli Prison, however,
Renato Mustacci, confessed Mafia killer, still maintains that he was following
the Senator's orders when he and two other men shot and killed Judge Filippo
Preside and his wife, Elvira, in Palermo in May of last year.'

The solemn voice of the announcer was
replaced by a song about soap powder, over which he could hear Paola talking
aloud to herself, often her preferred audience. 'Filthy, lying pig. Filthy
lying DC pig and all like him. "Commitment to justice. Commitment to
justice."' There followed one of the more scurrilous epithets to which his
wife was given, strangely enough, only when she spoke to herself.

She heard him coming down the hall
and turned to him. 'Did you hear that, Guido? Did you hear that? All three of
the killers have said he sent them to kill the judge, and he talks about his
commitment to justice. They ought to take him but and hang him. But he's a
Member of Parliament, so they can't touch him. Lock the whole lot of them up,
just put Parliament, every one of them, in prison and save us all a lot of time
and trouble.’

Brunetti walked across the kitchen
and stooped down to put the bottles in the low cabinet beside the refrigerator.
There was only one other bottle there, though he had carried five up the day
before. 'What's for lunch?' he asked.