A Venetian Reckoning (25 page)

'Should I get some more cigarettes,
sir? Or coffee?' Gravini asked.

'No, I don't think so. Not until I
get my 50,000 lire from Franco,' Brunetti said and let himself into the room.

One glance was enough to tell
Brunetti all he needed to know about Franco: Franco was a tough guy, Franco ate
nails, Franco wasn't afraid of cops. But from the papers in his hand and from
what della Corte had said, Brunetti knew that Franco was a heroin addict who
had been in police custody for more than ten hours.

'Good morning, Signor Silvestri,’
Brunetti said pleasantly, quite as though he'd come to talk of the weekend soccer
results.

Silvestri unfolded his arms and
looked at Brunetti, recognizing him immediately. 'Plumber,’ he said and spat on
the floor.

'Please, Signor Silvestri,' Brunetti
said padendy as he pulled out one of the two empty chairs and sat. He opened
the file again and looked down at the papers, flipped the top sheet over and
looked at the one beneath it. 'Assault, and living off the earnings of a whore,
and I notice here that you were arrested for selling drugs in, let me see', he
said, flipping back to the first page and reading the date, 'January of last
year. Now, two charges of accepting money offered to a prostitute will cause
you a certain amount of trouble, but I suspect that...'

Silvestri cut him off. 'Look, let's
get on with it, all right, Mr Plumber? Charge me, and I'll call my lawyer, and
then he'll come down here and get me out.' Brunetti glanced idly in his
direction and noticed the way Silvestri held his hands clenched together at his
sides, saw the thin film of perspiration on his brow.

'I'd certainly be more than happy to
do that, Signor Silvestri, but I'm afraid what we have here is a far more
serious matter than any of the charges in your file.' Brunetti closed the file
and tapped it against his knee. 'In fact, it's something far beyond the
competence of the city police force.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' As
Brunetti watched, the other man forced himself to relax his hands, open them,
and place them casually, palms down, on his lap.

'It means that, for some time, the
bar you frequent with your, ah, with your colleagues has been under
surveillance, and they've had a tap on the phone.'

They?' Silvestri asked.

'SISMI,' Brunetti explained.
'Specifically the antiterrorism squad.'

'Anti-terrorism?' Silvestri repeated
stupidly.

'Yes, it seems that the bar was used
by some of the people involved in the bombing of the museum in Florence’
Brunetti said, inventing as he went along, ‘I suppose I shouldn't tell you
this, but as you seem to be caught up in it, I don't see why we shouldn't speak
of it'

'Florence?' Silvestri could do no
more than repeat what he heard.

'Yes, from what little I've been
told, the phone in the bar has been used to pass on messages. Those boys have
had a tap on it for a month or so. Everything according to the rules - orders
from a judge.' Brunetti waved the folder in the air. 'When my men arrested you
last night I tried to tell those others that you were just a little fish, one
of ours, but they won't listen to me.'

'What does that mean?' Silvestri
asked in a voice from which all anger had disappeared.

'It means they're going to hold you
under the antiterrorism law.' Brunetti closed the file and got to his feet
'It's just a misunderstanding between services, you understand, Signor
Silvestri. They'll hold you for forty-eight hours.'

'But my lawyer?'

'You can call him then, Signor
Silvestri. It'll only be forty-eight hours and-you've already passed', Brunetti
began, pushing back his cuff to look at his watch, 'ten of them. So you just
have to wait a day and a half, and you'll be free to call your lawyer, and I'm
sure he’ll have you out of here in no time at all.' Brunetti smiled.

'Why are you here?' Silvestri asked,
suspicious.

'Since it was one of my men who
arrested you, I felt that, well, I frit that I was the one, you might say, to
get you into this, so I thought the least I could do was come by and explain it
to you. I've dealt with the fellows from SISMI before,' Brunetti said wearily,
'and there's no talking sense to them. The law says they can keep you for
forty-eight hours without notifying anyone, and I guess we'll just have to live
with it.' He looked down at his watch again. 'It'll pass like nothing, Signor
Silvestri, I'm sure. If you'd like any magazines, just let my man outside know,
all right?' Saying that, Brunetti got to his feet and started towards the door.

'Please,' Silvestri said, certainly
the first time in his life he'd addressed that word to a policeman. 'Please
don't go.'

Brunetti turned round and tilted his
head to one side in open curiosity. 'Have you thought of some magazines you'd
like?
Panorama?
Architectural
Digest? Famiglia
Christiana?

'What do you want?' Silvestri said,
voice harsh but not with anger. The film of sweat on his brow stood out in
thick beads.

Brunetti saw that there was no
further necessity to play with him. So much for tough Franco, hard as nails.

Voice severe and level, Brunetti
demanded, 'Who calls you on the phone in that bar and who do you call?'

Silvestri ran both hands up across
his face and through his thick hair, plastering his forelock to his skull. He
rubbed his mouth with one hand, pulling repeatedly at the edge, as if
attempting to remove a stain. "There's a man who calls and tells me when
new girls will arrive.'

Brunetti said nothing.

‘I don't know who he is or where he
calls from. But he calls me every month or so and tells me where to pick them
up. They're already broken in. I just have to get them and set them to work.'

'And the money?'

Silvestri said nothing. Brunetti
turned and headed towards the door.

'I give it to a woman. Every month.
When he calls me, he tells me where to meet the woman, and when, and I give her
the money.'

'How much?’

‘All of it.'

'All of what?'

'Everything that's left after I pay
for the rooms and pay the girls.'

'How much is that?'

'It depends,' he said evasively.

'You're wasting my time, Silvestri,'
Brunetti said,
unleashing his
anger.

'Some months it's 40 or 50 million.
Some months it's less.' Which, to Brunetti, meant that some months it was more.

'Who's the woman?'

‘I don't know. I've never seen her.'

'What do you mean?'

'He tells me where her car will be
parked. It's a white Mercedes. I have to come at it from behind, open the back
door, and put the money on the back seat. Then she drives away.'

'And you've never seen her?'

'She wears a scarf. And sunglasses.'

is she tall? Thin? White?
Black?-Blonde? Old? Come on, Silvestri, you don't have to see a woman's face to
know this.'

'She's not short, but I don't know
what colour hair she has. I've never seen her face, but I don't think she's
old.'

'What licence plates does the car
have?' ‘I don't know.' 'Didn't you see it?'

'No. I always do it at night, and the
lights in the car are off.' He was sure Silvestri was lying, but Brunetti could
also sense that he was near the end of what he would tell.

'Where do you meet her?'

'On the street. Mestre. Once in
Treviso. Different places. He tells me where to go when he calls.'

'And the girls. How do you pick them
up?'

'Same way. He tells me a street
corner and how many there'll be, and I meet them with my car.'

'Who brings them?'

'No one. I get there, and they're
waiting.' 'Just like that? Like sheep?'

'They know better than to try
anything,' Silvestri said, voice suddenly savage. 'Where do they come from?'

‘All over.’

'What does that them?' 'Lots of
cities. Different countries.' 'How do they get here?' 'What do you mean?'

'How do they come to be part of your
...
part of your
delivery?'

'They're just whores. How do you
expect me to know? For Christ's sake, I don't talk to them.' Suddenly Silvestri
jammed his hands into his pockets and demanded, 'When are you going to get me
out of here?'

'How many have there been?'

'No more,' Silvestri shouted, getting
up from the chair and moving towards Brunetti. 'No more. Get me out of here.’

Brunetti didn't move and Silvestri
backed off a few steps. Brunetti tapped on the door, which was quickly opened
by Gravini. Stepping out in the hall, Brunetti waited while the officer closed
the door, then said, '"wait an hour and a half, men let him go.'

'Yes, sir,' Gravini said and saluted
the back of his superior as Brunetti walked away.

22

His session with Mara and her pimp
hadn't put Brunetti in the most favourable of moods for dealing with Signora
Trevisan and her late husband's business partner, to call Martucci by but one
of the offices he filled, but he made the necessary phone call to the widow,
insisting that it was imperative to the progress of his investigation that he
have a few words with her and, if possible, with Signor Martucci. Their
separate accounts of where they had been the night Trevisan was murdered had
been checked: Signora Trevisan s maid confirmed that her mistress had not gone
out that evening, and a friend of Martucci s had phoned him at 9.30 and found
him at home.

Long experience had told Brunetti
that it was always best to allow people to select the place in which they were
to be interviewed: they invariably selected the place in which they felt most
comfortable, and thus they enjoyed the erroneous belief that control of
location equalled control of content. Predictably, Signora Trevisan selected
her home, where Brunetti arrived at the precise hour, 5.30. His spirit still
roughened from his encounter with Franco Silvestri, Brunetti was predisposed
to disapprove of whatever hospitality might be offered him: a cocktail would be
too cosmopolitan, tea too pretentious.

But after Signora Trevisan, today
dressed in sober navy blue, led him into a sitting room that contained too few
chairs and too much taste, Brunetti realized he had presumed too much upon his
sense of his own importance and that he was to be treated as an intruder, not a
representative of the state. The widow offered him her hand, and Martucci stood
when she led Brunetti into the room, but neither bothered to rise above the
bare requirement of civility. Their solemn manner and long faces, Brunetti
suspected, were meant to demonstrate the grief he was intruding upon, shared
grief at the departure of a beloved husband and friend. But Brunetti had been
rendered sceptical of both by his conversation with Judge Beniamin, and perhaps
he had been rendered sceptical of humanity in general by his brief conversation
with Franco Silvestri.

Quickly, Brunetti reeled off his
formulaic thanks for their having agreed to talk to him. Martucci nodded;
Signora Trevisan gave no sign of having heard him.

'Signora Trevisan,' Brunetti began, ‘I
would like to obtain some information about your husband's finances.' She said
nothing, asked for no explanation. 'Could you tell me what becomes of your
husband's law practice?'

‘You can ask me about that,' Martucci
interrupted.

‘I did, two days ago,' Brunetti said.
'You told me very little.'

'We've had more information since
then,' Martucci said.

'Does that mean you've read the will?'
Brunetti asked, quiedy pleased to see how much his tastelessness surprised them
both.

Martucci's voice remained calm and
polite. ‘Signora Trevisan has asked me to serve as her lawyer in the settling
of her husband's estate, if that's what you mean.’