Death in a Strange Country (4 page)

He realized that, until
he heard from the lab about the ticket in the man’s pocket or until he got the
report on the autopsy, there was very little he
could do. The men in
the lower offices would be calling the hotels now, and they would inform him if
they turned up something. Consequently, there was nothing for him to do but
continue to read and sign the personnel reports.

An hour later, just
before eleven, the buzzer on his intercom sounded. He picked up the receiver,
knowing too well who it would be. ‘Yes, Vice-Questore?’

Momentarily surprised at
being directly addressed, having hoped, perhaps, to have found Brunetti absent
or asleep, his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, took a moment to respond. ‘What’s
all this about the dead American, Brunetti? Why wasn’t I called? Have you any
idea of what this will do to tourism?’ Brunetti suspected that the third
question was the only one in which Patta took any real interest

‘What American, sir?’
Brunetti asked, voice filled with feigned curiosity.

‘The American you pulled
out of the water this morning.’

‘Oh,’ Brunetti said, this
time with polite surprise. ‘Is the report back so soon? He
was
American,
then?’

‘Don’t be cute with me,
Brunetti,’ Patta said angrily. ‘The report isn’t back yet, but he had American
coins in his pocket, so he’s got to be an American.’

‘Or a numismatist,’
Brunetti suggested amiably.

There followed a long
pause which told Brunetti the Vice-Questore didn’t know the meaning of the
word.

‘I
told you not to be smart,
Brunetti. We’re going to work on the assumption that he’s an American. We can’t
have Americans being murdered in this city, not with the state of tourism this
year. Do you understand that?’

Brunetti fought back the
impulse to ask if it would be all right to kill people of other nationalities -
Albanians, perhaps? - but, instead, said only, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what, sir?’

‘What have you done?’

‘Divers are searching the
canal where he was found. When we find out when he died, we’ll have them search
the places from where he might have drifted, assuming he was killed somewhere
else. Vianello is checking for drug use or dealing in the neighbourhood, and
the lab is working on the things we found in his pockets.’

‘Those coins?’

‘I’m not sure we need the
lab to tell us they’re American, sir.’

After a long silence that
said it would not be wise to bait Patta any further, his superior asked, ‘What
about Rizzardi?’

‘He said he’d have the
report to me this afternoon.’

‘See that I’m sent a copy
of it,’ he ordered.

‘Yes, sir. Will there be
anything else?’

‘No, that’s all.’ Patta
replaced his phone without saying anything else, and Brunetti went back to
reading the reports.

When he finished with
them, it was after one. Because he didn’t know when Rizzardi would call, and
because he wanted to get the report as quickly as possible, he decided not to
go home for lunch, nor spend the time going to a restaurant, though he was
hungry after the long morning. He decided to go down to the bar at the foot of
Ponte dei Greci and make do with a few
tramezzini.

When he walked in,
Arianna, the owner, greeted him by name and automatically placed a wine glass
on the counter in front of him. Orso, her ancient German shepherd, who had
developed a special fondness for Brunetti over the course of the years, hauled
himself arthritically to his feet from his regular place beside the ice-cream
cooler and tottered over to him. He waited long enough for Brunetti to pat him
on the head and pull gently at his ears and then collapsed in a heap at his
feet. The many regulars in the bar were accustomed to stepping over Orso and
tossing him bits of crusts and sandwiches. He was especially fond of asparagus.

‘What would you like,
Guido?’ Arianna asked, meaning
tramezzini
and automatically pouring him
a glass of red wine.

‘Give me a ham and
artichoke, and one with shrimp.’ Fan-like, Orso’s tail began to beat softly
against his ankle. ‘And one asparagus.’ When the sandwiches came, he asked for
another glass of wine and drank it slowly, thinking of the way things would be
complicated if the dead man did turn out to be American. He didn’t know if
there would be questions of jurisdiction, decided not to think about that.

As if to prevent him,
Arianna said, ‘Too bad about the American.’

‘We’re not sure that he
is, not yet.’

‘Well, if he is, then
someone is going to start crying “terrorism”, and that’s not going to do anyone
any good.’ Though she was Yugoslavian by birth, her thinking was entirely
Venetian: business first and above all.

‘There are lots of drugs
in that neighbourhood,’ she added, as if talking about it could make drugs be
the cause. He remembered that she also owned a hotel, so the very thought of
the mere rumour of terrorism was bound to fill her with righteous panic.

‘Yes, we’re checking
that, Arianna. Thanks.’ As he spoke, a stalk of asparagus worked itself loose
from his sandwich and fell to the floor at Orso’s nose. And, when that one was
gone, another. It was difficult for Orso to get to his feet, so why not let him
eat takeaway?

He placed a
ten-thousand-lire note on the counter and pocketed his change when she handed
it to him. She hadn’t bothered to ring it up on the cash register, so the sum
would go unreported and, therefore, untaxed. He had, years ago, ceased caring
about this perpetual fraud committed against the State. Let the boys from the
Finance Police worry about that. The law said she had to ring it up and give
him a receipt; if he left the bar without it, both of them were liable to fines
of as much as hundreds of thousands of lire. The boys from Finance often waited
outside bars, shops, and restaurants, watching through the windows as business
took place, then stopped emerging clients and demanded to be shown their
receipts. But Venice was a small town, and all the men from Finance knew him,
so he’d never be stopped, not unless they brought in extra police from outside
the city and had what the Press had taken to calling a ‘blitz’, staking out the
entire commercial centre of the city and, in a day, taking in millions of lire
in fines. And if they stopped him? He’d show them his warrant card and say he’d
stopped to use the toilet. Those same taxes paid for his salary; this was true.
But that no longer made any difference to him, nor, he suspected, to the majority
of his fellow citizens. In a country where the Mafia was free to murder when
and whom it pleased, the failure to produce a receipt for a cup of coffee was
not a crime that interested Brunetti.

Back at his desk, he
found a note telling him to call Doctor Rizzardi. When Brunetti did, he found
the Coroner still at his office on the cemetery island.

‘Ciao,
Ettore. It’s Guido. What
have you got?’

‘I took a look at his
teeth. All the work is American. He has six fillings and one root canal. The
work stretches back over years, and there’s no doubt about the technique. It’s
all American.’

Brunetti knew better than
to ask him if he was sure.

‘What else?’

‘The blade was four
centimetres wide and at least fifteen long. The tip penetrated the heart, just as
I thought. It slipped right between the ribs, didn’t even scrape them, so
whoever did it knew enough to hold the blade horizontally. And the angle was
perfect.’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘Since it was on the left side, I’d
say that whoever did it was right-handed or at least used his right hand.’
     
                     

‘What about his height?
Can you tell anything?’

‘No, nothing definite;
But he had to be close to the dead man, standing face to face.’

‘Signs of a struggle?
Anything under his nails?’

‘No. Nothing. But he’d
been in the water about five or six hours, so if there was anything to begin
with, it’s likely it would have been washed away.’

‘Five or six hours?’

‘Yes. I’d say he died
about midnight, one o’clock.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nothing particular. He
was in very good shape, very muscular.’

‘What about food?’

‘He ate something a few
hours before he died. Probably a sandwich. Ham and tomato. But he didn’t drink
anything, at least not anything alcoholic. There was none in his blood, and
from the look of his liver, I’d say he drank very little, if at all.’

‘Scars? Operations?’

‘He had a small scar,’
Rizzardi began, then paused and Brunetti heard the rustle of papers. ‘On his
left wrist, half-moon shaped. Could have been anything. Never been operated on
for anything. Had his tonsils, his appendix. Perfect health.’ Brunetti could tell
from his voice that this was all Rizzardi had to give him.

‘Thanks, Ettore. Will you
send a written report?’

‘Does His Superiorship
want to see it?’

Brunetti grinned at
Rizzardi’s title for Patta. ‘He wants to have it. I’m not sure he’s going to
read it.’

‘Well, if he does, it’s
going to be so filled with medical school jargon that he’ll have to call me to
interpret it for him.’ Three years ago, Patta had opposed Rizzardi’s
appointment as Coroner because the nephew of a friend of his was just then
finishing medical school and was in search of a government job. But Rizzardi,
with fifteen years’ experience as a pathologist, had been appointed instead,
and ever since then he and Patta had conducted guerrilla warfare against one
another.

‘I’ll look forward to
reading it, then,’ Brunetti said.

‘Oh, you won’t be able to
understand a word of it. Don’t even try, Guido. If you have any questions, call
me and I’ll explain it to you.’

‘What about his clothing?’
Brunetti asked, though he knew this was none of Rizzardi’s responsibility.

‘He was wearing jeans,
Levi’s. And he had one Reebok, size eleven.’ Before Brunetti could say
anything, Rizzardi continued, ‘I know, I know. That doesn’t mean he’s American.
You can buy Levi’s and Reeboks anywhere today. But his underwear was. I’ve sent
it over to the lab boys, and they can tell you more, but the labels were in
English and said “Made in USA”.’ The doctor’s voice changed, and he displayed a
curiosity that was unusual for him. ‘Have your boys heard anything from the
hotels? Any idea of who he was?’

‘I haven’t heard
anything, so I guess they’re still calling.’

‘I hope you find out who
he is so you can send him home. It’s no good thing, to die in a strange
country.’
     
                     
           

‘Thanks, Ettore. I’ll do
my best to find out who he is. And send him home.’
         
       

He set the phone down. An
American; He had carried no wallet, no passport, no identification, no money
aside from those few coins. All of that pointed to a street crime, one that had
gone horribly wrong and ended in death instead of robbery. And the thief had a
knife and had used it with either luck or skill. Street criminals in Venice had
some luck, but they seldom had any skill. They grabbed and ran. In any other
city, this might be taken for a mugging that had gone wrongs but here in Venice
this sort of thing simply didn’t happen. Skill or luck? And if it was skill, whose
skill was it and why was it necessary that skill be employed?

He called down to the
main office and asked if they had had any luck with the hotels. The first-and
second-class hotels had only one missing guest, a man in his fifties who had
not returned to the Gabriele Sandwirth the previous night. The men had begun to
check the smaller hotels, one of which had an American man who had checked out
the previous night but whose description didn’t fit.