Dressed for Death (31 page)

‘And the transvestite?’ she
asked. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘Too late. He’s been killed.’

‘Same person?’ she asked in that
telegraphic style they’d had two decades to develop.

‘Yes. Has to be.’

‘And the first one? The one in
the field?’

‘It’s all the same thing.’

He heard her say something to
someone else, then her voice came back, and she said, ‘Guido, Chiara’s here and
wants to say hello.’

‘
Ciao
, Papà, how have you
been? Do you miss me?’

‘I’ve been fine, angel, and I
miss you terribly. I miss you all.’

‘But do you miss me most?’

‘I miss you all the same.’

‘That’s impossible. You can’t
miss Raffi because he’s never home anyway. And Mamma just sits and reads that
book all day, so who’d miss her? That means you’ve got to miss me most, doesn’t
it?’

‘I guess that’s right, angel.’

‘See, I knew it. You just had to
think about it a little bit, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. I’m glad you reminded me.’

He heard noises on Chiara’s end
of the phone, then she said, ‘Papa, I’ve got to give you back to Mamma. You
tell her, will you, to come for a walk with me? She just sits here on the
terrace all day and reads. What sort of vacation is that?’ With that complaint,
she was gone, replaced by Paola.

‘Guido, if you’d like me to come
back, I can.’

He heard Chiara’s howl of protest
at the suggestion and answered, ‘No, Paola, it’s not necessary. Really. I’ll
try to get up there this weekend.’

She had heard similar promises
many times before, so she didn’t ask him to swear to it. ‘Can you tell me more
about it, Guido?’

‘No, Paola, I’ll tell you when I
see you.’

‘Here?’

‘I hope so. If not, then I’ll
call you. Look, I’ll call you either way, whether I’m coming or not. All right?’

‘All right, Guido. For God’s
sake, please be careful.’

‘I will, Paola. I will. You be
careful, too?’

‘Careful? Careful of what, up
here in the middle of paradise?’

‘Careful you don’t finish your
book, the way you did in Cortina that time.’ Both laughed at the memory. She
had taken
The Golden Bowl
with her but finished it in the first week,
leaving her with nothing to read and, consequently, nothing to do for the
second week except walk in the mountains, swim, loaf in the sun, and chat with
her husband. She had loathed every minute of it.

‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m
already eager to finish it so that I can begin it all over again immediately.’
For a moment, Brunetti pondered the possibility that his failure to be promoted
to vice-questore might be accountable to the fact that it was common knowledge
he was married to a madwoman. No, probably not.

With mutual abjurations towards
caution, they took their leave of one another.

* * * *

Chapter Twenty-Two

He
called down to Signorina Elettra, but she was not at her desk, and her phone
rang unanswered. He dialled Vianello’s extension and asked him to come up to
his office. After a few minutes, the sergeant came in, looking much as he had
two mornings ago, when he walked away from Brunetti in front of the Questura.

‘Buon di
, Dottore,’ he said as he took
his usual place in the chair facing Brunetti’s desk.

‘Good morning, Vianello.’ To
avoid a return to their discussion of the other morning, Brunetti asked, ‘How many
men have we got free today?’

Vianello gave this a moment’s
thought, then answered, ‘Four, if we count Riverre and Alvise.’

Nor did Brunetti want to discuss
them, so he said, passing Vianello the first list from the file on the Lega, ‘This
is a list of names of people who rent apartments from the Lega della Moralità.
I’d like you to select the addresses here in Venice and divide it up among the
four of them.’

Vianello, glancing down the names
and addresses on the list, asked, ‘What for, sir?’

‘I want to find out who they pay
their rent to, and how.’ Vianello gave him a glance replete with curiosity, and
Brunetti explained what Canale had told him about paying the rent in cash and
about his friends who did the same. ‘I’d like to know how many of the people on
this list pay their rent in the same way and how much they pay. More
importantly, I want to know if any of them know the person or persons to whom
they actually give the money.’

‘So that’s it?’ Vianello asked,
understanding at once. He paged through the list. ‘How many are there, sir? Far
more than a hundred, I’d say.’

‘One hundred and sixty-two.’

Vianello whistled. ‘And you say
this Canale’s paying a million and a half a month?’

‘Yes.’

Brunetti watched Vianello repeat
the same calculation he had made when he first saw the list. ‘Even if it’s only
a third of them, it would be well over half a billion a year, wouldn’t it?’
Vianello asked, shaking his head, and again Brunetti couldn’t tell if his
response was astonishment or admiration for the enormity of the thing.

‘Do you recognize any of the
names on the list?’ Brunetti asked.

‘One of them sounds like the man
who owns the bar on the corner near my mother’s house: same name, but I’m not
sure if it’s the right address.’

‘If it is, then perhaps you could
talk to him casually.’

‘Not wearing my uniform, you
mean?’ Vianello asked with a smile that seemed more like his old self.

‘Or send Nadia,’ Brunetti joked,
but as soon as he said it, he realized this might not be a bad idea. The
appearance of uniformed policemen to question people who were, in some degree,
in illegal possession of apartments was sure to affect any answers they gave.
Brunetti was certain that all of the accounts would be in order, sure that
proof would exist that the rents had been paid into the proper bank account
each month, and he had no doubt that proper receipts would exist. If Italy was
nothing else, it was a place where documented evidence always existed, and that
in abundance; what was often illusory was the reality it was meant to reflect.

Vianello saw it as quickly as he
did, and said, ‘I think there might be a more casual way to do this.’

‘Asking neighbours, you mean?’

‘Yes, sir. I think people would
be reluctant to tell us if they were involved in anything like this. It could
mean they’d lose their apartments, and anyone would lie to avoid that.’
Vianello, he had no doubt, would lie to save his apartment. After sober
reflection, Brunetti realized he would, too, as any Venetian would.

‘Then I suppose it’s better to ask
around in the neighbourhoods. Send women officers to do it, Vianello.’

Vianello’s smile was one of pure
delight.

‘And take this. It should be
easier to check,’ Brunetti said, pulling the second list from the file and
handing it to him. ‘These are people who are receiving monthly payments from
the Lega. See if you can find out how many of them live at the addresses listed
for them, and then see if you can find out if they’re among what used to be
called the deserving poor.’

‘If I were a betting man,’ Vianello,
who was, said, ‘I’d bet ten thousand lire that most of them don’t live at the
addresses given here.’ He paused a moment, flipped at the list with the tips of
his fingers, and added, ‘And I’d make another one that many of them are neither
deserving nor poor.’

‘No bet, Vianello.’

‘I didn’t think there would be.
What about Santomauro?’

‘According to everything
Signorina Elettra could find, he’s clean.’

‘No one’s clean,’ Vianello shot
back.

‘Careful, then.’

‘That’s better.’

‘There’s something else. Gallo
spoke to the manufacturer of the shoes that were found with Mascari, and he
gave him a list of the stores in the area where the shoes were sold. I’d like
you to get someone going round the stores on the list and see if they can find
anyone who remembers selling them. They’re size forty-one, so it’s possible
that whoever sold them might remember who they sold them to.’

‘What about the dress?’ Vianello
asked.

Brunetti had received the report
two days ago, and the results were just as he had feared. ‘It’s one of those
cheap things you can buy at the open-air markets anywhere. Red, some sort of
cheap synthetic material. Couldn’t have cost more than forty thousand lire. The
tag’s been ripped out of it, but Gallo’s trying to trace it back to the manufacturer.’

‘Any chance of that?’

Brunetti shrugged. ‘There’s a
much better chance with the shoes. At least we know the manufacturer and the
stores where they were sold.’

Vianello nodded. ‘Anything else,
sir?’

‘Yes. Call the Finance Police and
tell them we’re going to need one of their best people, more than that if they’ll
let us have them, to take a look at whatever papers we get from the Banca di
Verona and from the Lega.’

Surprised, Vianello asked, ‘You
actually got Patta to ask for a court order? To make a bank give up papers?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, managing
neither to smile nor to preen.

‘This business must have upset
him more than I thought. A court order.’ Vianello shook his head at the marvel
of it.

‘And could you ask Signorina
Elettra to come up here?’

‘Of course,’ Vianello said,
getting to his feet. He held up the lists. ‘I’ll divide up the names and get to
work.’ He walked over to the door, but before he left, he asked the same
question Brunetti had been asking himself all morning, ‘How could they risk
something like this? All it needs is one person, one leak, and the whole thing
would come tumbling down.’

‘I have no idea; well, none that
makes sense.’ To himself, he reflected that it might be no more than yet
another manifestation of a kind of group madness, a frenzy of risk-taking that
had abandoned all sane limits. In recent years, the country had been shaken by
arrests and convictions for bribery at all levels, from industrialists and
builders to cabinet ministers. Billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions
of lire had been paid out in bribes, and so Italians had come to believe that
corruption was the normal business of government. Hence the behaviour of the
Lega della Moralità and the men who ran it could be seen as absolutely normal
in a country run mad with venality.

Brunetti shook himself free from
this speculation, looked towards the door, and saw that Vianello was gone.

He was quickly replaced by
Signorina Elettra, who came through the door that Vianello had left open. ‘You
wanted to see me, Commissario?’

‘Yes, Signorina,’ he said, waving
her to the seat beside his desk. ‘Vianello just went downstairs with the lists
you gave me. It seems a number of the people on one of them are paying far more
in rent than what the Lega is declaring, so I want to know if the people on the
second list are really getting the money the Vega says it’s giving them.’

As he spoke, Signorina Elettra
wrote quickly, head bent down over her notebook.

‘I’d like to ask you, if you aren’t
busy with anything else - what is it you’re working on down in the Archives
this week?’ he asked.