his bottom drawer, and took out the phone book. He flipped it open to
the Ps and kept turning pages until he found Perulli, Augusto. He
tossed the book back into the drawer and dialled the number.
After the third ring a man's voice answered. 'Perulli.'
This is Brunetti. I need to speak to you.'
After a long pause, the man said, 'I wondered when you'd call.'
'Yes,' was Brunetti's only response.
'I can see you in half an hour. For an hour. Then not until
tomorrow
'I'll come now Brunetti said.
He kicked the drawer shut and left his office, then the Questura.
Because he had half an hour, he chose to walk to Campo San Maurizio,
and because he was early, he chose to stop and say hello to a friend in
her workshop. But his mind was on things other than jewellery, so he
did little more than exchange a kiss and promise to bring Paola to
dinner some time soon; then he crossed the campo and headed up towards
the Grand Canal.
5'
He had last been to the apartment six years ago, near the end of a long
investigation of a trail of drug money that led from the noses of
adolescents in New York to a discreet account in Geneva, a trail that
paused long enough in Venice to invest in a couple of paintings meant
to join the money in the vault of that eminently discreet bank. The
money had made its way safely through the empyrean realms of
cyberspace, but the paintings, made of less celestial matter, had been
stopped at Geneva airport. One by Palma il Vecchio and the other by
Marieschi and thus both part of the artistic heritage of the country,
neither could be exported, at least not legally, from Italy.
A mere four hours after the discovery of the paintings, Augusto Perulli
had called the Cambinieri to report their theft. No proof could be
found that Perulli had been informed of their discovery a possibility
that would raise the unthinkable idea of police corruption and so it
was decided that Brunetti, who had gone to school with Perulli and had
remained on friendly terms with him for decades, should be sent to talk
to him. That decision had not been taken until the day after the
paintings were found, by which time the man who was transporting them
had somehow been released from police custody, though the precise
nature of the bureaucratic oversight permitting that error had never
been explained to the satisfaction of the Italian police.
When Brunetti finally did talk to his old schoolfriend, Perulli said
that he had become aware of the paintings' disappearance only the day
before but had no idea how it could have happened. When Brunetti asked
how it could be that only two paintings had been taken, Perulli
prevented all further questioning by giving Brunetti his word of honour
that he knew nothing about it, and Brunetti believed him.
Two years later, the man who had been detained with the paintings was
again arrested by the Swiss, this time for trafficking in illegal
aliens, and this time in Zurich. In the
5i hope of making a deal with the police, he admitted that he had
indeed been given those paintings by Perulli, and asked to take them
across the border to their new owner, but by then Perulli had been
elected to Parliament and was thus exempt from arrest or prosecution.
'Ciao, Guido Perulli said when he opened the door to Brunetti,
extending his hand.
Brunetti was conscious of how theatrical was his own hesitation before
he took Perulli's hand: Perulli was equally conscious of it. Neither
pretended to be anything but wary of the other, and both were open in
studying the other for signs of the years that had passed since their
last meeting.
'It's been a long time, hasn't it?' Perulli said, turning away and
leading Brunetti into the apartment. Tall and slender, Perulli still
moved with the grace and fluidity of the youth he had shared with
Brunetti and their classmates. His hair was still thick, though longer
than he had worn it in the past, his skin smooth and taut, rich with
the afterglow of a summer spent in the sun. When was it that he had
begun searching the faces of the acquaintances of his youth for the
telltale signs of age? Brunetti wondered.
The apartment was much as Brunetti remembered it: high ceilinged and
well-proportioned, sofas and chairs inviting people to sit at their
ease and speak openly, perhaps indiscreetly. Portraits of men and
women from former eras hung on the walls: Perulli, he knew, spoke of
them casually, suggesting that they were ancestors, when in reality his
family had for generations lived in Castello and dealt in sausage and
preserved meat.
New were the ranks of silver-framed photos that stood on a not
particularly distinguished copy of a sixteenth-century Florentine
credenza. Brunetti paused to examine them and saw reflected in them
the trajectory of Perulli's career: the young man with his friends; the
university graduate posed with one of the leaders of the political
party to which Perulli
