crime.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘Yes, after we’d been speaking a while and I assured him that I had every confidence in him.’
‘What did he say, exactly, about the photo?’
‘That the second policeman had shown him a photo of a young criminal and had seemed not to believe him when he said he didn’t recognize the man.’
‘How did he know the man in the photo was a criminal?’
‘What?’
Brunetti repeated himself. ‘How did he know that the photo of the man he was shown was the photo of a criminal? It could have been a photo of anyone, the policeman’s son, anyone.’
‘Commissario, who else would they show him a picture of if not of a criminal?’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, Patta repeated his exasperated sigh. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Brunetti.’ Brunetti started to speak but Patta cut him off. ‘And don’t try to stick up for your men when you know they’re in the wrong.’ At Patta’s insistence that the offending police were ‘his’, there slipped into Brunetti’s mind a vision of what it must be like when Patta and his wife tried to portion out responsibility for the failures and achievements of their two sons. ‘My’ son would win a prize at school, while ‘yours’ would be disrespectful to teachers or fail an exam.
‘Have you anything to say?’ Patta finally asked.
‘He couldn’t describe the men who attacked him, but he knew which pictures they were carrying.’
Once again, Brunetti’s insistence did no more than display to Patta the poverty of the background from which he came. ‘Obviously, you’re not accustomed to living with precious objects, Brunetti. If a person lives for years with objects of great value, and here I mean aesthetic value, not just material price’ - his voice urged Brunetti to stretch his imagination to encompass the concept – ‘then they come to recognize them, just as they would members of their own family. So, even in a flashing moment, even under stress such as Signor Viscardi experienced, he would recognize those paintings, just as he would recognize his wife.’ From what Fosco had said, Brunetti suspected Viscardi would have less trouble recognizing the paintings.
Patta leaned forward, paternally, and asked, ‘Are you capable of understanding any of this?’
‘I’ll understand a lot more when we speak to Ruffolo.’
‘Ruffolo? Who’s he?’
‘The young criminal in the photo.’
Patta said no more than Brunetti’s name, but he said it so softly that it called for an explanation.
‘Two tourists were sitting on a bridge and saw three men leave the house with a suitcase. Both of them identified the photo of Ruffolo.’
Because he had not bothered to read the report on the case, Patta didn’t ask why this information wasn’t contained in it. ‘He could have been hiding outside,’ he suggested.
‘That’s entirely possible,’ Brunetti agreed, though it was far more likely to him that Ruffolo had been inside, and not hiding.
‘And what about this Fosco person? What about his phone calls?’
‘All I know about Fosco is that he’s the Financial Editor of one of the most important magazines in the country. I called him to get an idea of how important Signor Viscardi was. So we’d know how to treat him.’ This so precisely mirrored Patta’s thinking that he was incapable of questioning Brunetti’s sincerity. Brunetti hardly thought it necessary to make an excuse for the seriousness with which the policemen had seen fit to question Viscardi. Instead, he said, ‘All we’ve got to do is get our hands on this Ruffolo, and everything will be straightened out. Signor Viscardi will get his paintings back, the insurance company will thank us, and I imagine the
Patta’s smile was as broad as it was genuine. Could it be that Brunetti was finally beginning to have some sense, to take some heed of political realities? If so, then Patta believed that the credit for this might not unjustly be laid at his own door. They were a headstrong people, these Venetians, clinging to their own ways, outdated ways. Lucky for them that his appointment as Vice-Questore had brought them some exposure to the larger, more modern world, the world of tomorrow. Brunetti was right. All they had to do was find this Ruffolo character, get the paintings back, and Viscardi would be firmly behind him.
‘Right,’ he said, speaking crisply, the way policemen in American films spoke, ‘let me know as soon as this Ruffolo is in custody. Do you need any more men assigned to this?’
‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said after a reflective pause. ‘I think we’ve got enough on it right now. It’s just a question of waiting until he makes a false step. That’s bound to happen soon enough.’
Patta was completely uninterested in what it was or was not a question of. He wanted an arrest, the return of the paintings, and Viscardi’s support should he decide to run for city councillor. ‘Fine, let me know when you have something,’ he said, dismissing Brunetti with the tone, if not with the words. Patta reached for another cigarette and Brunetti, unwilling to wait and watch the ceremony, excused himself and went down to speak to Vianello.
‘Any word on Ruffolo?’Brunetti asked when he went into the office.
‘There is and there isn’t,’ Vianello answered, rising minimally from his chair in deference to his superior, then lowering himself back into it.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that the word is that he’d like to talk.’
‘Where’d the word come from?’
‘From someone who knows someone who knows him.’
‘And who spoke to this someone?’
‘I did. It’s one of those kids out on Burano. You know, the ones who stole the fishing boat last year. Ever
