Friends in High Places (12 page)

‘No,’ she said with no trace of disappointment. ‘If it was rape, it would have been in the papers. So I guess it’s drugs. Donatini ought to be good enough to get him off.’

‘Do you think he’s capable of rape?’

‘Who, Roberto?’

‘Yes.’

She considered this for a second and then said, ‘No, I suppose not. He’s arrogant and self-important, but I don’t think he’s completely bad.’

Something led Brunetti to ask, ‘And Donatini?’

Without hesitation, she answered, ‘He’d do anything.’

‘I didn’t know you knew him.’

She glanced down at the magazine and turned a page, making it look like an idle gesture. ‘Yes.’ She turned another page.

‘He asked me to help him.’

‘The Vice-Questore?’ she asked, looking up in surprise.

‘Yes,’

‘And are you going to?’

‘If I can,’ Brunetti answered.

She looked at him for a long time, then turned her attention back to the page below her. ‘I don’t think grey is much longer for this world,’ she said. ‘We’re all tired of wearing it.’

She was wearing a peach-coloured silk blouse with a high-collared black jacket in what he thought he recognized as raw silk.

‘You’re probably right,’ he said, wished her a good evening, and went back up to his office.

* * * *

10

He had to call Information to get the number of Luxor, but when he dialled it, whoever answered the phone at the disco told him that Signor Bertocco was not there and refused to give his home number. Brunetti did not say it was the police calling. Instead, he called Information again and was given Luca’s home number without any difficulty at all.

‘Self-important fool,’ Brunetti muttered as he dialled the number.

It was picked up on the third ring and a deep voice with a rough edge said, ‘Bertocco.’

‘Ciao,
Luca, it’s Guido Brunetti. How are you?’

The formality of the answering voice disappeared, replaced with real warmth. ‘Fine, Guido. I haven’t heard from you in ages. How are you, and Paola, and the kids?’

‘Everyone’s fine.’

‘You’ve finally decided to accept my offer and come out and dance till you drop?’

Brunetti laughed at this, a joke that had run for more than a decade. ‘No, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you again, Luca. Much as you know how I long to come and dance till dawn among people as young as my own children, Paola refuses to allow it.’

‘The smoke?’ Luca asked. ‘Thinks it’s bad for your health?’

‘No, the music, I think, but for the same reason.’

There was a brief pause, after which Luca said, ‘She’s probably right.’ When Brunetti said nothing more he asked, ‘Then why are you calling? About the boy who was arrested?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, not even pretending to be surprised that Luca knew about it already.

‘He’s your boss’s son, isn’t he?’

‘You seem to know everything.’

‘A man who runs five discos, three hotels, and six bars has to know everything, especially about the people who get themselves arrested in any of those places.’

‘What do you know about the boy?’

‘Only what the police tell me.’

‘Which police? The ones who arrested him or the ones who work for you?’

The silence that followed his question reminded Brunetti, not only that he had gone too far, but also that, however much Luca was a friend, he would always view Brunetti as a policeman.

‘I’m not sure how to answer that, Guido,’ Luca finally said. His voice was interrupted by the explosive bark of a heavy smoker.

The coughing went on for a long time. Brunetti waited for it to stop, and when it did, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Luca. It was a bad joke.’

‘It’s nothing, Guido. Believe me, anyone who’s involved with the public as much as I am needs all the help they can get from the police. And they’re glad to get all the help they can from me.’

Brunetti, thinking of small envelopes changing hands discreetly in city offices, asked, ‘What sort of help?’

‘I’ve got private guards who work the parking lots of the discos.’

‘What for?’ he asked, thinking of muggers and the vulnerability of the kids who staggered out at three in the morning.

‘To take their car keys away from them.’

‘And no one complains?’

‘Who’s to complain? Their parents, that I stop them from driving off dead drunk or out of their minds on drugs? Or the police, because I stop them from slamming into the trees at the side of the highways?’

‘No, I suppose not. I didn’t think.’

‘It means they don’t get woken up at three to go out to watch bodies being cut out of cars. Believe me, the police are very happy to give me any help they can.’ He paused and Brunetti listened to the sharp snap of a match as Luca lit a cigarette and took the first deep breath. ‘What is it you’d like me to do - get this hushed up?’

‘Could you?’

If shrugs made sounds, Brunetti heard one on the phone. Finally Luca said, ‘I won’t answer that until I know whether you want me to or not.’

‘No, not hushed up in the sense that it disappears. But I would like you to keep it out of the papers if it’s possible.’

Luca paused before he answered this. ‘I spend a lot of money on advertising,’ he said at last.

‘Does that translate as yes?’

Luca laughed outright until the laugh turned into a deep, penetrating cough. When he could speak again, he said, ‘You always want things to be so clear, Guido. I don’t know how Paola stands it.’

‘It makes things easier for me when they are.’

‘As a policeman?’

‘As everything.’

‘All right, then. You can consider it as meaning yes. I can keep it out of the local papers, and I doubt that the big ones would be interested.’

‘He’s the Vice-Questore of Venice,’ Brunetti said in a perverse burst of local pride.

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t mean much to the guys in Rome,’ Luca answered.

Brunetti considered this. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Before Luca could agree, Brunetti asked, ‘What do they say about the boy?’

‘They’ve got him cold. His fingerprints were all over the small envelopes.’

‘Has he been charged yet?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so.’

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘They want him to tell them who he got the stuff from.’

‘Don’t they know?’

‘Of course they know. But knowing isn’t proving, as I’m sure you’re in a position to understand.’ This last was said not without irony. At times Brunetti thought Italy was a country where everyone knew everything while no one was willing to say anything. In private, everyone was eager to comment with absolute certainty on the secret doings of politicians, Mafia leaders, movie stars; put them into a situation where their remarks might have legal consequences, and Italy turned into the largest clam bed in the world.

‘Do you know who it is?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Would you give me his name?’

‘I’d rather not. It wouldn’t serve any purpose. There’s someone above him, and then someone else above him.’ Brunetti could hear him lighting another cigarette.

‘Will he tell them? The boy?’

‘Not if he values his life, he won’t,’ Luca said but immediately added, ‘No, that’s an exaggeration. Not if he wants to avoid being beat up pretty badly.’

‘Even in Jesolo?’ Brunetti asked. So big city crime had come to this sleepy Adriatic town.

‘Especially in Jesolo, Guido,’ Luca said but offered no explanation.

‘So what will happen to him?’ Brunetti asked.

‘You should be able to answer that better than I can,’ Luca said. ‘If it’s a first offence, they’ll slap his wrist and send him home.’

‘He’s already home.’

‘I know that. I was speaking figuratively. And the fact that his father is a policeman won’t hurt.’

‘Not unless the papers get it.’

‘I told you. You can be sure about that.’

‘I hope so,’ Brunetti said.

Luca failed to rise to this. Into the long, growing silence, Brunetti said, ‘And what about you? How are you, Luca?’

Luca cleared his throat, a wet sound that made Brunetti uncomfortable. ‘The same,’ he finally said and coughed again.

‘Maria?’

‘That cow,’ Luca said with real anger. ‘All she wants is my money. She’s lucky I let her stay in the house.’

‘Luca, she’s the mother of your children.’

Brunetti could hear Luca fighting the impulse to rage at Brunetti for daring to comment on his life. ‘I don’t want to talk about this with you, Guido.’

‘All right, Luca. You know I say it only because I’ve known you a long time.’ He stopped and then added, ‘Known you both.’

‘I know that, but things change.’ There was another silence, and then Luca said again, his voice sounding distant, ‘I don’t want to talk about this, Guido.’

‘All right,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called for so long.’

In the easy concession of long friendship, Luca said, ‘I haven’t called, either, have I?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Luca agreed with a laugh that brought back both his old voice and his old cough.

Encouraged, Brunetti asked, ‘If you hear anything else, will you let me know?’

‘Of course,’ Luca agreed.

Before the other man could hang up, Brunetti asked, ‘Do you know anything else about the men he got it from, and the ones they got it from?’

Caution returned to Luca’s voice as he asked, ‘What sort of things are you talking about?’

‘Whether they . . .’ he was not quite certain how to define what it was they did. ‘Whether they do business in Venice.’

‘Ah,’ Luca sighed. ‘From what I understand, there’s not a lot of business for them there. The population’s too old, and it’s too easy for the kids to come out to the mainland to find what they want.’

Brunetti realized it was nothing more than selfishness that made him so glad to hear this: any man with two teenaged children, no matter how certain he was of their characters and dispositions, would be glad to learn that there was little drug traffic in the city in which they lived.

Instinct told Brunetti that he had got as much as he was going to get from Luca. Knowing the names of the men who sold the drugs wouldn’t make any difference, anyway.

‘Thanks, Luca. Take care of yourself.’

‘You, too, Guido.’

* * * *

That night, talking to Paola after the kids had gone to bed, he told her about the conversation and about Luca’s outburst of rage at the mention of his wife’s name. ‘You’ve never liked him as much as I do,’ Brunetti said, as if that would somehow explain or excuse Luca’s behaviour.