Brunetti sipped at his wine to hide his smile. 'I'm not sure it's the same thing, Marco. They weren't allowed to tell, no matter what we told them, no matter how bad it was. But if you tell me about a crime, I'll probably have to do something about it.'
'What sort of crime?' When Brunetti didn't answer, Marco went on, I mean, how big a crime would it have to be before you had to tell?'
The urgency in Marco's voice showed this was not some sort of parlour game, and so Brunetti considered the question before he answered, ‘I can't say. That is, I can't give you a list of things I'd have to report. Anything serious or anything violent, I suppose.'
'And if nothing's happened yet?' Marco asked.
Brunetti was surprised by this question from Marco, a man who had always lived in the real, the concrete. It was very strange to hear him posing a hypothetical question; Brunetti wondered if he'd even ever heard Marco use a complex grammatical structure, so accustomed was he to his use of the simple declarative.
'Marco’ he said, 'why don't you just trust me and tell me what it is and then let me think about how to handle it?'
'It's not that I don't trust you, Guido. God knows I do; that’ s why I came to talk to you. If s just that I don't want to get you into any sort of trouble by telling you something you might not want to know about.' He looked in the direction of the bar, and Brunetti thought he was going to call for more wine, but then he looked back, and Brunetti realized Marco was checking to see if anyone could hear what they were saying. But the other men at the bar seemed busy with their own conversation.
'All right, I'll tell you,' Marco said. 'And then you can decide what to do with it.'
Brunetti was struck by how similar Marco's behaviour, even the rhythm of his speech, was to that of so many suspects he had questioned over the years. There always came a point where they gave in and stopped resisting their desire to make it clear just how it was or had been or what had driven them to do what they had done. He waited.
'No, I didn't.' Brunetti knew better than to give anything but a simple answer. Never ask for more, never request clarification. Just let them talk until they run themselves out and have nothing else to say: that was when you began to ask questions.
'If s that cheese shop that belonged to the balding guy who always wore' a hat. Nice guy; my mother used to go to his father when we lived over there. Anyway, last year they tripled his rent so he decided to retire, and I paid the
Neither he nor Brunetti needed to comment upon the folly of this, nor on the fact that so much of what would be sold in his shop as 'original Venetian handcrafts' was made in third world countries where the closest the workers ever came to a canal was the one behind their houses that served as a sewer.
'Anyway, I took over the lease and my architect drew up the plans. That is, he drew them up a long time ago, as soon as the guy agreed I could take over, but he couldn't present them in the Comune until the lease was in my name.' Again he looked at Brunetti. 'That was in March.' Marco raised his right hand in a fist, shot up his thumb, repeated 'March,' and then counted out the months. That's seven months, Guido. Seven months those bastards have made me wait. I'm paying the rent, my architect goes into the planning office once a week to ask where the permits are, and every time he goes, they tell him that the papers aren't ready or something has to be checked before I can be given the permissions.'
Marco opened his fist and laid his hand flat on the table, then put the other beside it, fingers splayed open. 'You know whaf s going on, don't you?' he asked.
'Yes’ Brunetti said.
'So last week I told my architect to ask them how much they wanted’ He looked across, as if curious to see if Brunetti would register surprise, perhaps shock, at what he was telling him, but Brunetti's face remained impassive.
Thirty million’ Marco paused for a long time, but Brunetti said nothing. 'If I give them thirty million, then I'll have the permissions next week and the workers can go in and start the restorations’
'And if you don't?' Brunetti asked.
'God knows’ Marco said with a shake of his head. 'They can keep me waiting another seven months, I suppose’
'Why haven't you paid them before this?' Brunetti asked.
'My architect keeps saying it isn't necessary, that he knows the men on the planning commission and if s just a question of lots of requests before mine. And I've got problems with other things.' Brunetti thought for a moment that Marco would tell him about them, too, but all he said was, 'No, all you need to know about is this one’
Brunetti remembered the time, a few years ago, when a chain of fast food restaurants had done extensive restorations in four separate locations, keeping their crews working day and night. Almost before anyone knew it, certainly before anyone had any idea that they were going to open, there they were, in business, the odour of their various beef products filling the air like summer in a Sumatran slaughterhouse.
Have you decided to pay them?'
1 don't have much of a choice, do I?' Marco asked tiredly. ‘I already spend more than a hundred million lire a year for a lawyer as it is, just keeping ahead of the lawsuits people bring against me in the other businesses and trying to resolve them. If I bring a civil suit against people who work for the city for wilfully preventing me from running my business or whatever crime my lawyer can think of to charge them with, it would just cost me more and drag on for years, and in the end nothing would happen anyway’
'Why did you come to me, then?' Brunetti asked.
‘I wondered if there was anything you could do? I mean, if I marked the money or something.. ‘ Marco's voice petered out and he tightened his fists. 'It's really not the money, Guido. I'll make that back in a couple of months; so many people want to buy that junk. But I'm just sick to death of having to do business this way. I've got shops in Paris and Zurich, and none of this shit goes on there. You apply for building permission, they process your papers, and when they're ready they give you the permissions and you begin the work. No one's there, sucking at your tit’ His fist smashed down on the table. 'No wonder this place is such a mess’ His voice rose, suddenly high-pitched and sharp as, for a moment that frightened Brunetti, Marco seemed to lose all control. 'No one can run a business here. All these bastards want to do is suck us dry’ Again, his hand came smashing down on the table. The two men and the bartender looked over at them, but none of this was new in Italy, so they nodded in silent agreement and went back to their own conversation.
Brunetti had no idea whether Marco's condemnation was of Venice in particular or Italy in general. It hardly mattered: he was right either way.
'What are you going to do?' Brunetti asked.
Implicit in his question, and both men knew it, was the acknowledgement that there was no way Brunetti could help. As a friend he could commiserate and share Marco's anger, but as a policeman he was impotent. The bribe would be paid in cash and so, as is the way with cash, it would leave no traces. If Marco made an official complaint against someone working in the planning commission, he might just as well close up his shops and go out of business, for he would never obtain another permit, no matter how minor, no matter how urgent.
Marco smiled and shifted to the end of the bench. ‘I just wanted to let off steam, I guess. Or maybe I wanted to push your nose in it, Guido, since you work for them, sort of, and if that was the reason, then I'm sorry and I apologize’ His voice sounded normal, but Brunetti watched his fingers, this time folding the four corners of a paper napkin into neat triangles.
Brunetti was surprised at how deeply he was offended that any friend of his should consider him as working for 'them'. But, if he didn't work for 'them', then whom did he work for?
'No, I don't think that was why,' he finally said. 'Or at least I hope it wasn't. And I'm sorry, too, because there's nothing I can do. I could tell you to make
