Dressed for Death (14 page)

He went to his desk and called
down to the main office, told the officer who answered to ask Vianello to come
up. A few minutes later, the older man came into the office. Usually tanned by
this time of year to the ruddy brown of
bresaola,
the air-dried beef
fillet that Chiara loved so much, Vianello was still his normal pale, winter
self. Like most Italians of his age and background, Vianello had always
believed himself immune to statistical probability. Other people died from
smoking, other people’s cholesterol rose from eating rich food, and it was only
they who died of heart attacks because of it. He had, every Monday for years,
read the ‘Health’ section in the
Corriere della Sera,
even though he
knew that all those horrors were consequent upon the behaviour of other people
only.

This spring, however, five
precancerous melanomas had been dug out from his back and shoulders, and he had
been warned to stay out of the sun. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, Vianello
had experienced conversion, and, like Paul, he had tried to spread his
particular gospel. Vianello had not, however, counted on one of the qualities
basic to the Italian character: omniscience. Everyone he spoke to knew more
than he did about this issue, knew more about the ozone layer, about
chlorofluorocarbons and their effects upon the atmosphere. What is more, all of
them, and this to a man, knew that this talk of danger from the sun was just
another
bidonata,
another swindle, another trick, though no one was
quite certain just what this swindle was in aid of.

When Vianello, still filled with
Pauline zeal, had attempted to argue from the scars on his back, he was told
his particular case proved nothing, that all of the statistics were false;
besides, it wouldn’t happen to them. And he had then come to realize that most
remarkable of truths about Italians: no truth existed beyond personal
experience, and all evidence that contradicted personal belief was to be
dismissed. And so Vianello had, unlike Paul, abandoned his mission, and had,
instead, bought a tube of Protection 30, which he wore on his face all year
long.

‘Yes, Dottore?’ he asked when he
came into the office. Vianello had left his tie and jacket downstairs and wore
a short-sleeved white shirt and his dark blue uniform pants. He had lost weight
since the birth of his third child last year and had told Brunetti that he was
trying to lose more weight and get into better shape. A man in his late forties
with a new baby, he explained, had to be careful, take better care of himself.
In this heat and this humidity, with the memory of those down comforters fresh
in his mind, Brunetti didn’t want to think about health in any way, not his own
and not Vianello’s.

‘Have a seat, Vianello.’ The
officer took his usual chair, and Brunetti went around to sit behind his desk.

‘What do you know about this Lega
della Moralità?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello looked up at Brunetti,
narrowed his eyes in an inquisitive glance but, getting no further information,
sat and thought about the question for a moment, then answered.

‘I don’t know all that much about
them. I think they meet at one of the churches: Santi Apostoli? No, that’s the
catecumeni,
those people who have guitars and too many babies. La Lega
meets in private homes, I think, and in some of the parish houses and meeting
rooms. They’re not political, so far as I’ve heard. I’m not sure what they do,
but from their name, it sounds like they probably sit around and talk about how
good they are and how bad everyone else is.’ His tone was dismissive,
indicative of the contempt he would have for such foolishness.

‘Do you know anyone who’s a
member, Vianello?’

‘Me, sir? I should certainly hope
not.’ He smiled at this, then saw Brunetti’s face. ‘Oh, you’re serious, eh,
sir? Well, then, let me think for a minute.’ He did this for the minute he
named, hands clasped around one knee and face raised towards the ceiling.

‘There’s one person, sir, a woman
in the bank. Nadia knows her better than I do. That is, she has more to do with
her than I do since she takes care of the banking. But I remember one day Nadia
said that she thought it was strange that such a nice woman would have anything
to do with something like that.’

‘Why do you think she said that?’
Brunetti asked.

‘What?’

‘Assume that they weren’t good
people?’

‘Well, just think about the name,
sir. Lega della Moralità, as if they’d invented the stuff. They’ve got to be a
bunch of
basibanchi
if you ask me.’ With that word, Veneziano at its
most pure, scoffing at people who knelt in church, bowed so low as to kiss the
pew in front of them, Vianello gave yet more proof of their dialect’s genius
and his own good sense.

‘Do you have any idea of how long
she’s been a member or how she came to join?’

‘No, sir, but I could ask Nadia
to find out. Why?’

Brunetti quickly explained about
Santomauro’s presence at Crespo’s apartment and his subsequent phone calls to
Patta.

‘Interesting, isn’t it, sir?’
Vianello asked.

‘Do you know him?’

‘Santomauro?’ Vianello asked,
unnecessarily. Crespo was hardly someone he’d be likely to know.

Brunetti nodded.

‘He used to be my cousin’s
lawyer, before he became famous. And expensive.’

‘What did your cousin say about
him?’

‘Not all that much. He was a good
lawyer, but he was always willing to push the law, to make it do what he wanted
it to do.’ A common enough type in Italy, Brunetti thought, where law was often
written but was seldom clear.

‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello shook his head. ‘Nothing
I can remember. It was years ago.’ Before Brunetti could ask him to do it,
Vianello said, ‘I’ll call my cousin and ask. He might know other people
Santomauro worked for.’

Brunetti nodded his thanks. ‘I’d
also like to see what we can find out about this Lega: where they meet, how
many of them there are, who they are, and what it is they do.’ When he stopped
to think about it, Brunetti found it strange that an organization so well known
that it had become a common reference point for humour should, in truth, have
managed to reveal so little about itself. People knew about the Lega, but if
Brunetti’s own experience was anything to go by, no one had a clear idea what
the Lega did.

Vianello had his notebook in his
hand now and took this all down. ‘Do you want me to ask questions about Signora
Santomauro, as well?’

‘Yes, anything you can find.’

‘I think she’s from Verona originally.
A banking family.’ He looked across at Brunetti. ‘Anything else, sir?’

‘Yes, that transvestite in
Mestre, Francesco Crespo. I’d like you to put the word out here and see if
anyone knows him or if the name means anything.’

‘What has Mestre got on him, sir?’

‘Nothing more than that he was
arrested twice for drugs, trying to make a sale. The boys in Vice have him on
their list, but he lives in an apartment on Viale Ronconi now, a very nice
apartment, and I suppose that means he’s moved beyond Via Cappuccina and the
public gardens. And see if Gallo has come up with names for the manufacturers
of the dress and the shoes.’

‘I’ll see what I can find out,’
Vianello said, making notes for himself. ‘Anything else, sir?’

‘Yes. I’d like you to keep an eye
on any missing person reports that come in for a man in his early forties, same
description as the dead man. It’s in the file. Maybe the new secretary can do
something about it on her computer.’

‘From what region, sir?’ Vianello
asked, pen poised over the page. The fact that he didn’t ask about the
secretary was enough to tell Brunetti that word of her arrival had already
spread.

‘If she can do it, for the entire
country. Also missing tourists.’

‘You don’t like the idea of a
prostitute, sir?’

Brunetti remembered that naked
body, so terribly like his own. ‘No, it’s not a body anyone would pay to use.’

* * * *

Chapter Twelve

On
Saturday morning, Brunetti accompanied his family to the train station, but it
was a subdued group that got on to the Number One vaporetto at the San
Silvestro stop: Paola was angry that Brunetti would not leave what she had
taken to calling ‘his transvestite’ to come up to Bolzano at least for the
first weekend of the vacation; Brunetti was angry that she wouldn’t understand;
Raffaele regretted leaving the virginal charms of Sara Paganuzzi behind, though
he took some comfort from the fact that they would be reunited in one week’s
time - besides, until then, there would be fresh mushrooms to hunt for in the
woods; Chiara, as was so often the case, was entirely unselfish in her regret,
for she wished that her father, who always worked too hard, could get away and
have a real vacation.

Family etiquette dictated that
everyone carry their own bag, but since Brunetti would be going only as far as
Mestre, and hence had no bag, Paola took advantage of him to carry her large
suitcase while she carried only her handbag and
The Collected Letters of
Henry James,
a volume so formidable in size as to convince Brunetti that
she wouldn’t have had time for him, anyway. Because Brunetti carried Paola’s
suitcase, the domino theory was immediately made manifest, and Chiara stuffed
some of her books into her mother’s suitcase, thus leaving space in her own for
Raffi’s second pair of mountain boots. Whereupon his mother insisted that he
use that space to carry her copy of
The Sacred Fount,
having decided
that this was the year she would finally have enough time to read it.

They all climbed into the same
compartment of the 8.35, a train that would get Brunetti to Mestre in ten
minutes and themselves to Bolzano in time for lunch. No one had much to say
during the short trip across the
laguna:
Paola made sure he had the
phone number of the hotel in his wallet, and Raffaele reminded him that this
was the same train Sara was to take next Saturday, leaving Brunetti to wonder
if he was supposed to carry her bag, too.

At Mestre, he kissed the
children, and Paola walked down the corridor to the door with him. ‘I hope you
can come up next weekend, Guido. Even better, that you get this settled and can
come up even sooner.’

He smiled, but he didn’t want to
tell her how unlikely that was: after all, they didn’t even know who the dead
man was yet. He kissed her on both cheeks, got down from the train, and walked
back towards the compartment where the children were. Chiara was already eating
a peach. As he stood on the platform, gazing at them through the window, he saw
Paola come back into the compartment and, almost without glancing at her, pull
out a handkerchief and hand it to Chiara. The train began to move just as
Chiara turned to wipe her mouth and, turning, saw him on the platform. Her
face, half of it still gleaming with peach juice, lit up with pure delight and
she leaped to the window.
‘Ciao,
Papà,
ciao, ciao,’
she shouted
over the sound of the engine. She stood on the seat of the train and leaned
out, waving Paola’s handkerchief at him madly. He stood on the platform and
waved until the tiny white flag of love disappeared in the distance.

When he got to Gallo’s office at
the Mestre Questura, the sergeant met him at the door. ‘We’ve got someone
coming out to take a look at the body,’ he said with no prelude.

‘Who? Why?’

‘Your people had a call this
morning. From a,’ and here he looked down at a piece of paper in his hand, ‘from
a Signora Mascari. Her husband is the director of the Venice office of the Bank
of Verona. He’s been gone since Saturday.’

‘That’s a week ago,’ Brunetti
said. ‘What’s taken her this long to notice he’s missing?’

‘He was supposed to go on a
business trip. To Messina. He left Sunday afternoon, and that’s the last she
heard of him.’