Death in a Strange Country (39 page)

She smiled. ‘Strange, isn’t
it? I felt like it was the calm before the storm.’

‘Do you think we should lock
our door at night?’ he asked. They both laughed but neither was sure if it was
at the remark or at the possibility that it might be over. For them, as for the
parents of all adolescents, ‘it’ needed no clarification: that awful, brooding
cloud of resentment and righteous indignation that drifted into their lives
with certain hormonal levels and remained there until those levels changed.

‘He asked me if I’d read
over an essay he had to write for his English class,’ Paola said. Seeing his surprise,
she added, ‘Brace yourself. He also asked if he could have a new jacket for the
autumn.’

‘New, like you buy it in
a shop?’Brunetti asked, amazed. This from the boy who had, two weeks ago,
delivered a ringing condemnation of the capitalist system and its creation of
false consumer needs, that had invented the idea of fashion just to create the
unending demand for new clothing.

Paola nodded. ‘New. From
a shop.’

‘I don’t know if I’m ready
for this,’ Brunetti said. ‘Are we going to lose our rough-mannered anarchist?’

‘I think so, Guido. The
jacket he said he wanted is in the window of Duca d’Aosta and costs four
hundred thousand lire.’

‘Well, tell him Carl Marx
never went shopping at Duca D’Aosta. Let him go to Benetton with the rest of
the proletariat.’ Four hundred thousand lire; he’d won almost ten times that at
the Casinò. In a family of four, Raffi’s fair share? No, not for a jacket. This
must be it, the first crack in the ice, the beginning of the end of
adolescence. And adolescence over, that meant the next step his son would take
was into young manhood. Manhood.

‘Do you have any idea why
this is happening?’ he asked her. If it occurred to Paola to say that he would
be a better person to understand the phenomenon of male adolescence, she didn’t
say it, and instead, answered, ‘Signora Pizzutti spoke to me on the stairs
today.’

He gave her a puzzled
stare, and then it registered. ‘Sara’s mother.’

Paola nodded. ‘Sara’s
mother.’

‘Oh my God! No!’

‘Yes, Guido, and she’s a
nice girl.’

‘He’s only sixteen, Paola.’
He heard the bleat in his voice, but he couldn’t stop it.

Paola put her hand on his
arm, then up to her mouth, and then burst into loud peals of laughter. ‘Oh,
Guido, you should hear yourself. “He’s only sixteen.” No, I don’t believe it.’
She continued to laugh, had to lean back against the arm of the sofa, so
helpless did her mirth render her.

What was he supposed to
do, he wondered, grin and tell dirty jokes? Raffaele was his only son, and he
didn’t know anything about what was out there: AIDS, prostitutes, girls who got
pregnant and made you marry them. And then, suddenly, he saw it through Paola’s
eyes, and he laughed until tears came into his.

Raffaele came in then to
ask his mother to help him with his Greek homework and, finding them like that,
he wondered what all this talk about adulthood was.
         
       

* *
* *

23

Neither that night nor the following day did Ambrogiani
call, and Brunetti had to fight the constant temptation to call the American
base and try to get in touch with him. He called Fosco in Milan and got only
his answering machine. Peeling not a little foolish at being reduced to talking
to a machine, he told Riccardo what Ambrogiani had told him about Gamberetto,
asked him to see what else he could find out, and asked him to call. Beyond
this, he could mink of little to do, so he read and commented on reports, read
the newspapers, and found himself constantly distracted by the thought of that
night’s meeting with Ruffolo.

Just as he was preparing
to leave to go home for lunch, the intercom rang. ‘Yes, Vice-Questore,’ he answered
automatically, too preoccupied to be able to savour Patta’s inevitable moment
of unease when he was recognized before he identified himself.

‘Brunetti,’ he began, ‘I’d
like you to step down to my office for a moment.’

‘Immediately, sir,’
Brunetti answered, pulling yet another report towards him, opening it, and
beginning to read.

‘I’d like you to come
now, not “immediately”, Commissario,’ Patta said, so sternly that Brunetti
realized he must have someone, someone important, in his office with him.

‘Yes, sir. This instant,’
he answered and turned the page he was reading face down, the better to resume
his place when he came back. After lunch, he thought, and went to the window to
see if it still looked like rain. The sky above San Lorenzo was grey and
ominous, and the leaves of the trees Hi the small
campo
flipped over
with the force of the wind that swirled around them. He went over to the
cupboard to hunt for an umbrella: he hadn’t bothered to bring one with him this
morning. He pulled open the door and looked inside. There was the usual jumble
of abandoned objects: a single yellow boot, a shopping bag filled with old
newspapers, two large, padded envelopes, and a pink umbrella. Pink. Chiara’s, left
there months ago. If he remembered correctly, it had large, happy elephants on
it, but he didn’t want to open it to find out. Pink was bad enough. He looked
deeper, shifting things aside delicately with his toe, but there was no second
umbrella.

He took the umbrella from
the closet and went back to his desk. If he rolled
La Repubblica
the
long way, he could wrap it around most of the umbrella, leaving only the handle
exposed, the handle and a handsbreadth of pink. He did this to his
satisfaction, left his office, and took the steps down to Patta’s. He knocked,
waited until he was sure he heard his superior call
‘Avanti’,
and went
in.

Usually, when Brunetti
entered, he found Patta behind his desk - ‘enthroned’ was the word that sprang
most easily to mind - but today he was seated in one of the smaller chairs that
sat in front of the desk, seated to the right of a dark-haired man who sat
entirely at his ease, legs crossed at the knees, one hand dangling from the arm
of the chair, cigarette held between the first two fingers. Neither man
bothered to stand when Brunetti came in, though the visitor did uncross his
legs and lean forward to stab out his cigarette in the malachite ashtray.

‘Ah, Brunetti,’ Patta
said. Had he been expecting someone else? He gestured to the man beside him. ‘This
is Signor Viscardi. He’s in Venice for the day and stopped by to bring me an
invitation to the gala dinner at Palazzo Pisani Moretta next week, and I asked
him to stay. I thought he might like to have a word wife you.’

Viscardi got to his feet
then and approached Brunetti, hand extended. ‘I’d like to thank you,
Commissario, for your attention to this case.’ As Rossi had noted, the man
spoke wife the elided R of Milan, the consonant slithering unpronounced from
his tongue. He was a tall man with dark brown eyes, soft and peaceful eyes, and
an easy, relaxed smile. The skin under his left eye was slightly discoloured
and appeared to be covered with something, perhaps make-up.

Brunetti shook his hand
and returned his smile.

Patta interrupted here. ‘I’m
afraid there isn’t much progress, Augusto, but we hope to have some information
about your paintings soon.’ He used the familiar ‘tu’ with Viscardi, an
intimacy Brunetti assumed he was meant to register. And respect.

‘I certainly hope so. My
wife is very attached to those paintings, especially the Monet.’ He made it
sound like the enthusiasm children had for their toys. He turned his attention,
and his charm, to Brunetti. ‘Perhaps you could tell me if you have had any, I
think they’re called “leads”, Commissario. I’d like to be able to take good
news back to my wife.’

‘Unfortunately, we have
very little to report, Signor Viscardi. We’ve passed the descriptions you gave
us of the men you saw to our officers, and we’ve sent copies of your photos of
the paintings to the Art Fraud Police. But beyond that, nothing.’ Signor
Viscardi smiled when he heard this, and Brunetti knew he didn’t want him to
learn about Ruffolo’s attempt to speak to the police.

‘But haven’t you,’ Patta
interrupted, ‘got a suspect? I remember reading something in your report about
Vianello, that he was going to talk to him last weekend. What happened?’

‘A suspect?’ Viscardi
asked, eyes bright with interest.

‘It turned out to be
nothing, sir,’ Brunetti said, addressing Patta. ‘A false lead.’

‘I thought it was that
man in the photograph,’ Patta insisted. ‘I read his name in the report, but I
forget it.’

‘Would that be the same
man your sergeant showed me a picture of?’ Viscardi asked.

‘It seems it was a false
lead,’ Brunetti said, smiling apologetically. ‘It turns out he couldn’t have
had anything to do with it. At least we’re convinced that he couldn’t have.’

‘It seems you were right,
Augusto,’ Patta said, insistent upon the repetition of his first name. He turned
to Brunetti and made his voice firm. ‘What have you got on the two men whose
descriptions you do have?’

‘Unfortunately, nothing,
sir.’

‘Have you checked...’
Patta began, and Brunetti gave him his undivided attention, waiting to see what
concrete suggestions would follow. ‘Have you checked the usual sources?’
Underlings knew details.

‘Oh, yes, sir. It was the
first thing we did.’

Viscardi shot back his
starched cuff, glanced down at a gleaming fleck of gold, and said, turning to
Patta, ‘I don’t want to keep you from your lunch appointment, Pippo.’ As soon
as Brunetti heard the nickname, he found himself turning it in his mind like a
mantra: Pippo Patta, Pippo Patta, Pippo Patta.

‘Perhaps you’ll join us,
Augusto,’ he asked, ignoring Brunetti.

‘No, no, I’ve got to get
to the airport. My wife expects me for cocktails, and then, as I told you, we
have guests for dinner.’ He must have told Patta the names of these guests, as
well, for the mere reminder of their magic power was enough to cause Patta to
smile broadly and clasp his hands together, as if in vicarious enjoyment of
their presence, here in his office.

Patta glanced at his own
watch, and Brunetti was witness to his agony, having to leave one rich and
powerful man to go and dine with others. ‘Yes, I really must go. Can’t keep the
minister waiting,’ He didn’t bother to waste the minister’s name on Brunetti
and Brunetti wondered if it was because Patta assumed he wouldn’t be impressed
or because he wouldn’t recognize it. Little matter, he was not to learn it.

Patta went to the
fifteenth-century Tuscan
armadio
that stood beside the door and took his
Burberry from it. He slipped it on, then helped Viscardi into his coat. ‘Are
you leaving now?’ Viscardi asked Brunetti, who answered that he was. ‘The Vice-Questore
is going to Corte Sconta for lunch, but I’m going up towards San Marco, where I
can get a boat to the airport. Are you walking that way, by any chance?’

‘Why, yes, I am, Signer
Viscardi,’ Brunetti lied.

Patta walked ahead with
Viscardi until they got to the front door of the Questura. There, the two men
shook hands, and Patta said something about seeing Brunetti after lunch.
Outside, Patta turned up the collar of his raincoat and hurried off to the
left. Viscardi turned right, waited a moment for Brunetti to position himself
beside him, and started towards Ponte dei Greci and, beyond it, San Marco,

‘I certainly hope this
case can be quickly ended,’ Viscardi said by way of beginning.

‘Yes, so do I,’ Brunetti
agreed.

‘I had hoped to find a
safer city here, after Milan.’

‘It certainly was an
unusual crime.’ Brunetti offered.

Viscardi paused for a
moment, glanced sideways at Brunetti, then continued walking. ‘Before I moved
here, I had believed that all crime would be unusual in Venice.’