One had disappeared into private law practice, another had retired, and
a third currently held a minor portfolio in the new government: in
charge of transportation safety or relief efforts for natural
disasters; Brunetti couldn't recall which. He did remember that, even
in the face of the scandal and indignation at the gross pilfering from
the public purse revealed by the report, the government's response had
proceeded with the stateliness of the Dead March from Saul. Years had
passed: the hospitals remained unbuilt, the official statistics
remained unchanged, and the men responsible for the deceit had moved on
quite undisturbed.
Brunetti realized that, in Italy, scandal had the same shelf life as
fresh fish: by the third day, both were worthless; one because it had
begun to stink, the other because it no longer did. Any punishment or
revenge that 'they' might have inflicted upon the author of the report
would have been exacted years ago: punishment that was delayed six
years would not dissuade other honest officials from calling attention
to the irregularities of government.
That possibility dismissed, Brunetti turned his thoughts to Moro's
medical career and tried to see the attacks on his family as the work
of a vengeful patient, only to dismiss that immediately. Brunetti
didn't believe that the purpose of what had happened to Moro was
punishment, otherwise he would have been attacked personally: it was
threat. The origin of the attacks against his family must lie in what
Moro was doing or had learned at the time his wife was shot. The
attacks, then, could make sense as a repeated and violent attempt to
prevent the publication of a second Moro Report. What struck Brunetti
as strange, when he reconsidered Moro's reaction the night before, was
not that the doctor had made no attempt to deny that 'they' existed so
much as his insistence that 'they' were not responsible for the
attacks.
Brunetti took a sip of his coffee but found it was cold; and it was
only then that he heard the phone ringing. He set the cup down and
went into the hall to answer it.
'Brunetti/ he said.
'It's me Paola said. 'Are you still in bed?'
'No, I've been up a long time.' I've called you three times in the
last half-hour. Where were you, in the shower?'
'Yes/ Brunetti lied.
'Are you lying?'
'Yes.'
'What have you been doing?' Paola asked with real concern.
'Sitting and looking out the window.'
'Well, it's good to know your day has started out as a productive one.
Sitting and looking or sitting and looking and thinking?'
'And thinking.'
'What about.'
'Moro.'
'And?'
'And I think I see something I didn't see before.'
'Do you want to tell me?' she asked, but he could hear the haste in
her voice.
'No. I need to think about it a little more.'
Tonight, then?'
'Yes.'
She paused a moment and then said, using a voice straight
out of Brazilian soap opera, 'We've got unfinished business from last
night, big boy.'
With a jolt, his body remembered that unfinished business, but before
he could speak, she laughed and hung up.
He left the apartment half an hour later, wearing a pair of
rubber-soled brogues and sheltered under a dark umbrella. His pace was
slowed by the umbrella, which caused him to duck and bob his way
between the other people on the street. The rain appeared to have
lessened, not eliminated, the streams of tourists. How he wished there
were some other way he could get to work, some means to avoid being
trapped in the narrow zigs and zags of Ruga Rialto. He cut right just
after Sant' Aponal and walked down to the Canal Grande. As he emerged
from the underpass, a traghetto pulled up to the Riva. After the
passengers had got off, he stepped aboard, handing the gondoliere one
of the Euro coins he still found unfamiliar, hoping it would be
sufficient. The young man handed him back a few coins, and Brunetti
moved to the rear of the gondola, allowing his knees to turn to rubber
and thus help maintain his balance as the boat bobbed around on the
water.
