The Girl Of His Dreams Part 5

This is a war situation: we must consider ourselves to be at war with the Mafia, which is to be treated as a separate state existing within other states.

All of our forces to be mobilized.

Inter-agency cooperation to be maximized.

Liaison officer to be named.

Ministry of the Interior, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza contacts to be created and maintained.

Application to be made for special funding under Legge 41 bis.

Inter-Cultural dynamics to be stressed.

Brunetti stopped reading here, perplexed by the precise meaning of 'Inter-Cultural dynamics'. He knew from long experience that the people of the Veneto viewed things differently from those of Sicily, but he did not believe it was a gulf that required bridging by 'inter-cultural' anything. But trust Patta to have already seen the advantage to be offered by the possibility of 'special funding'.

Brunetti turned his attention to the growing file of papers and witness statements that had acc.u.mulated about a knife-fight that had taken place the week before in front of a bar on the riva riva of the Giudecca. The fight had ended with two men in the hospital, one with a lung that had been punctured by a fish-scaling knife and the other with an eye he was likely to lose, the result of a wound caused by the same knife. of the Giudecca. The fight had ended with two men in the hospital, one with a lung that had been punctured by a fish-scaling knife and the other with an eye he was likely to lose, the result of a wound caused by the same knife.

The statements given by four witnesses explained that the knife had been drawn during an exchange of words, after which it had been thrust, then dropped, by one of the men, only to be picked up by the other and used again. Where the statements did not concur was in the attribution of ownership and original use of the knife, and in the chronology of the struggle. The brother and cousin of one man, who had been in the bar at the time the fight broke out, insisted that he had been a.s.saulted, while the brother-in-law and friend of the other said that he had been the victim of unprovoked aggression. On both sides thus was simple truth suppressed. Both men's fingerprints were on the handle, both men's blood on the blade. Six of the other people in the bar, all natives of the Giudecca, could not remember seeing or hearing anything, and two Albanian workers who had stopped for a beer disappeared after the original questioning but before being asked for ident.i.ty papers.

Brunetti looked up from reading the last papers in the file, struck by just how similar cultural dynamics on the Giudecca were to those said to be current in Sicily.

Vianello appeared at the door to Brunetti's office. 'You hear anything about this fight?' Brunetti asked, using the pages of the report to wave the Inspector to a seat.

'You mean those two idiots who ended up in hospital?'

'Yes.'

'One of them used to work in Porto Marghera, unloading boats, but I heard they had to get rid of him.' 'Why?' Brunetti asked.

'Usual stuff: too much alcohol and too few brains, and too much gone missing from what he was unloading.' 'Which one is he?'

'The one who lost an eye,' Vianello answered. 'Carlo Ruffo. I met him once.'

'You sure?' Brunetti asked. The medical report in the file had said only that the eye was in danger. 'About the eye, I mean.'

'It seems so. He picked up some sort of infection in the hospital, and the last I heard there was no hope they could save the eye. The infection seems to have spread to the other one.'

'So he'll be blind?' Brunetti asked.

'Perhaps. Blind and violent.'

'Odd combination.'

'Didn't stop Samson, did it?' Vianello asked, surprising Brunetti with the reference, before going on, 'I know this guy. Being blind and deaf and dumb wouldn't stop him from being violent.'

'You think he started it?'

Vianello's shrug was eloquent. 'If he didn't, then the other one did. In the end, it's the same thing.'

'Another violent man?'

'So I'm told, only he usually takes it out on his wife and kids.'

Brunetti paused then said, 'You make it sound like it's common knowledge.' 'On the Giudecca, it is.' 'And no one says anything?'

Again, that shrug. 'They figure it's none of their business, which is the way they think, and they also figure we wouldn't be able to do anything about it, and that's probably true.' Vianello crossed his legs and pushed himself back in the chair. 'If I ever raised a hand to Nadia, she'd have me pinned to the wall of the kitchen with the bread knife in two seconds.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'Maybe more women ought to respond like that.'

Brunetti was not in the mood for this sort of discussion and so he asked, 'You got a favourite for the owner of the knife?'

'My guess is that it was Ruffo's. He always carried one, at least that's what I was told.'

'The other one, Bormio?' Brunetti asked, recalling the name from the file.

'Just what people say.'

'Tell me.'

'That he's a troublemaker, especially with his family, as I told you, but that he'd never start anything with someone stronger than he is.' Vianello folded his arms across his chest and said, 'So my money's on Ruffo.'

'Why does it always seem to happen there?' Brunetti asked, not thinking it necessary to name the Giudecca.

Vianello raised his hands in a gesture of incomprehension then let them fall to his lap. 'Beats me. Maybe it's because they're workers, most of them. They do hard physical work, and that makes them less self-conscious about using their bodies to do violent things. Or maybe it's because that's the way things have always been settled: you hit someone or you pull a knife.'

There seemed nothing for Brunetti to add to this. 'You came up about the new orders?' he asked.

Vianello nodded but did not roll his eyes. 'Yes. I wondered what you thought would come of it?'

'You mean, other than finding a soft job for Scarpa?' Brunetti asked with a cynicism that surprised even himself. If Patta was going to take advantage of the current market flurry in the Mafia, then he was sure to see that his a.s.sistant and fellow Sicilian, Lieutenant Scarpa, got in on the ground floor.

'Something almost poetic in Scarpa's being a.s.signed to a special unit dealing with the Mafia, don't you think?' Vianello enquired with feigned innocence.

A sense of his position pulled Brunetti back. 'We can't be sure about that,' he answered. Though he was.

'No,' Vianello said, savouring the chance for comment. 'We can't be sure about him at all.' Then, more seriously, 'You think anything will come of this thing in the newspapers?'

'Paola commented on our "triumph",' Brunetti said.

'It is pathetic, isn't it?' Vianello admitted. 'Forty-three years to catch this guy. The papers said today that he went to France for surgery, even sent a claim for the bill to the ULSS office in Palermo.'

'And they paid it, didn't they?' Brunetti asked.

'What do you think he was doing for forty-three years?'

'Well' Brunetti said, his voice suddenly grown tight, almost as if it wanted to slip beyond his control, 'it seems he was running the Mafia in Sicily. And I a.s.sume he was leading a completely undisturbed life, surrounded by his wife and family; helping his kids with their homework, seeing that they received First Communion. And I have no doubt that, when he dies, he will be given a truly moving funeral, again surrounded by his family, and that some bishop, or even a cardinal, will come to say the Ma.s.s, and then he will be buried with great pomp and ceremony, and prayers will be said in perpetuity for the peace of his soul' By the end of his long answer, Brunetti's voice was shaking with something between disgust and despair.

Vianello, voice calm, asked, 'You think he got fingered by one of his own?'

Brunetti nodded. 'It makes sense. Some young boss - well, younger boss - decided he'd like to have a taste of it all - run the whole show - and the old man was an obstacle; inconvenient to have him there. They're running a multi-national corporation, using computers; their own lawyers and accountants. And they've got this old guy, living in what sounds like a glorified chicken coop, writing messages on sc.r.a.ps of paper. Sure, they want to get rid of him. All it would take is a phone call.'

'And now what?' Vianello asked, as if trying to plumb the depths of his superior's cynicism.

'Now, as Lampedusa told us, if we want things to stay as they are, then things will have to appear to change.'

'That's pretty much the history of everything in this country, isn't it?' Vianello asked.

Brunetti nodded, then slapped his palms down on the top of his desk. 'Come on, let's get a coffee.'

As they stood at the bar, drinking their coffee, Brunetti told Vianello about his conversations with the two priests.

When Brunetti had finished, Vianello asked,'You going to do it?'

'Do what? Try to find out about this Mutti guy?' 'Yes.' Vianello swirled the last of his coffee around and finished it. 'I suppose so.'

'It's interesting, the way you're approaching it,' Vianello observed. 'What do you mean?'

'That this Padre Antonin comes to ask you to find out about Mutti, and all you've done so far - or so it seems to me - is try to find out about Padre Antonin.'

'Why is that so strange?' asked Brunetti.

'Because you're a.s.suming there's something suspicious, or at least strange, in his request. Or in him.'

'Well, I think there is,' Brunetti insisted.

'What? Precisely, that is. Why is it so strange?'

It took Brunetti some time to find an answer to this. At last he said, 'I remember ...'

'From when you were a kid?' Vianello interrupted, then added, 'I'd hardly want anyone to make judgements about me from the way I was then. I was an idiot.'

The underlying seriousness of what Vianello was trying to tell him prevented Brunetti from making a joke about Vianello's choice of tense. Instead, he said, 'I know this sounds evasive, but it was the way he spoke, more than anything else.' Unsatisfied with that as soon as he said it, he added, 'No, it's more than that. I suppose it was his casual a.s.sumption that this other man had to be a thief or a swindler of some sort, but the only evidence he could give me was the fact that the young man was giving him money.'

'Why is that so strange?' Vianello asked.

'Because I had the feeling, all the time Antonin was talking, that if the young man had been giving him him the money, everything would have been all right' the money, everything would have been all right'

'I hope you aren't expecting me to be surprised by the presence of greed in a priest.'

Brunetti smiled and asked, setting down his cup, 'So you think I should be looking at the other one?'

Vianello's shrug was merely the ghost of a gesture. 'You've always told me to follow the money, and it seems that the money here is going in his direction.'

Brunetti reached into his pocket and set some coins on the counter. 'You could be right, Lorenzo' he said. 'Maybe we could have a look at what goes on at his meetings?'

'This Mutti guy?' asked Vianello in surprise.

'Yes.'

Vianello opened his mouth as if to protest, but then closed it and compressed his lips. 'You're talking about one of these religious meetings?'

'Yes' Brunetti answered. When Vianello did not respond, Brunetti prodded him, 'Well, what do you think?'

Vianello looked him in the eyes and said, 'If we go, we'd better take our wives.' Before Brunetti could object, the Inspector added, 'Men always look harmless when they're with women.'

Brunetti turned away so that Vianello would not see his smile. Outside the bar, he asked, 'You think you could talk Nadia into doing this?'

'If I hide the bread knife when I ask her.'

8.

Discovering information about the meetings of the religious group headed by Leonardo Mutti, however, proved more difficult than Brunetti had foreseen. He did not want Antonin to know what he was doing, there was no listing in the phone book, and his computer skills could find no website for the Children of Jesus Christ. When he asked among the uniformed staff, the best he came up with was Piantoni, who had a cousin who was a member of a different group.

That left Brunetti with no alternative but to go over to Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio and the reported meeting house of the group, a prospect which left him strangely disgruntled, as if the campo campo were located in some other city instead of only ten minutes from his home. How strange, the way some places in the city seemed so far away, while others, actually much farther, seemed but a moment's walk. Just the thought of going to the Giudecca exhausted Brunetti, yet San Pietro di Castello, which took almost half an hour to reach from his home, depending on the boats, seemed right around the corner. Perhaps it had to do with habit and the places he had gone as a boy, or where his friends had lived. With San Giacomo, the police officer in Brunetti had to accept that it could also have to do with the were located in some other city instead of only ten minutes from his home. How strange, the way some places in the city seemed so far away, while others, actually much farther, seemed but a moment's walk. Just the thought of going to the Giudecca exhausted Brunetti, yet San Pietro di Castello, which took almost half an hour to reach from his home, depending on the boats, seemed right around the corner. Perhaps it had to do with habit and the places he had gone as a boy, or where his friends had lived. With San Giacomo, the police officer in Brunetti had to accept that it could also have to do with the campo's campo's former reputation as a place where drugs were readily available or as a place where the residents had once been perceived as being not only poor but also more at variance with the law than those living in other parts of the city. former reputation as a place where drugs were readily available or as a place where the residents had once been perceived as being not only poor but also more at variance with the law than those living in other parts of the city.

The drugs were gone now, or so the police believed. Gone from the area with them, as well, were many of the former residents, replaced by people who were not only not poor, but not Venetian. For two days he delayed going over to have a look but finally decided to go, half amused and half embarra.s.sed at his own insistence on viewing the expedition as a major undertaking.

In Campo San Ca.s.siano, because he felt no need to hurry, he decided to have a look at the Tintoretto Crucifixion. Crucifixion. Brunetti had always been struck by how bored this Christ looked, stuck artfully up there on his cross, posed in front of the hedge of perpendicular spears that divided the painting in half. Christ seemed finally to have come to accept the truth of those warnings that all this business about becoming human would come to no good; He seemed eager to get back to the job of being G.o.d. Brunetti had always been struck by how bored this Christ looked, stuck artfully up there on his cross, posed in front of the hedge of perpendicular spears that divided the painting in half. Christ seemed finally to have come to accept the truth of those warnings that all this business about becoming human would come to no good; He seemed eager to get back to the job of being G.o.d.

Brunetti's eyes moved to the stations of the cross on the far wall, where the dead Christ in the Deposition gave every evidence of being a man pretending to be asleep who would soon jump up and shout, 'Surprise!' How few of these painters seem to have studied the dead carefully or to have seen their terrible vulnerability.

Brunetti had always been struck by the helplessness of the dead, their rigid limbs and stiff fingers no longer capable of defending themselves, not even of covering their nakedness.

After some time, he went back outside: the sun fell on his shoulders like a blessing. In Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini he glanced up at the stairway visible through a window and remembered the apartment they had looked at there, first married and frightened by all that s.p.a.ce, to say nothing of all that price. Instinct led him on.

Down Ponte del Forner, then past the one remaining place in the city where someone would bother to fix an iron, and then into Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio. He glanced at his watch and saw that he still had time to slip into the church, where he had not been for years.

Just inside the door, on the right, he found a wooden structure that looked very much like a toll booth in a children's book. Inside sat a young woman with dark hair, head bent over a book. There was a list of what appeared to be prices taped to the right of the window behind which she sat; a red velvet cord isolated the entrance from the rest of the church.

'Two-fifty, please,' she said, glancing up from her book.

'For residents, too?' Brunetti asked, failing to keep indignation from his voice. This was, after all, a church.

'For residents it's free,' she said. 'Can I see your carta d'ident.i.tal' carta d'ident.i.tal'

Making no attempt to disguise his mounting irritation, Brunetti took out his wallet, opened it, and reached for the doc.u.ment. But then he remembered that it was in the office, being photocopied so that it could be attached to the application for the renewal of his licence to carry a firearm.

He pulled his warrant card from his wallet and pa.s.sed it under the gla.s.s.

'What's this?' she asked. Her voice was neutral and her face was pleasant, even pretty.

'It's my identification as a policeman. A commissario.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, with what was probably meant to be a smile, 'but you have to have a carta d'ident.i.ta.' carta d'ident.i.ta.' She slid the warrant card back towards him, looked at him again, and added, 'A valid one.' She slid the warrant card back towards him, looked at him again, and added, 'A valid one.'