Suffer the Little Children

face Brunetti. 'What can I do for you, Commissario?' Marcolini asked. Behind him was a wooden desk, the surface covered with files, papers, a telephone, and a number of photographs in silver frames, their backs to Brunetti.

'Find a doctor to look at my hand’ Brunetti said with a chuckle he made sound very hearty while he waved his hand in the air between them.

Marcolini laughed out loud. ‘I like to get the sense of a man when I meet him’ he said. 'That's one way to do it.'

Brunetti kept to himself the suggestion that smiling politely and introducing himself might perhaps serve as well and would certainly be less painful. 'And?' Brunetti asked. 'What do you think?' He spoke dialect and put a rough edge on his voice.

'I think maybe we can talk to one another.'

Brunetti leaned towards him, started to speak, and then consciously stopped, as if he had thought better of it.

'What?' Marcolini asked.

Brunetti said, *My job seldom lets me speak like a real man. Openly, that is. We're in the habit of being careful about what we say. Have to be. Part of the job.'

'Careful what you say about what?' Marcolini asked.

'Oh, you know. I wouldn't want to express an opinion that would offend anyone or that would sound aggressive or offensive in any way.' Brunetti spoke in a sort of patter, as though these were things he had been forced by rote, and against his will, to learn to say.

'To be politically correct?' Marcolini asked, pronouncing the foreign words with a thick accent.

Brunetti made no effort to disguise the scorn in his laughter. 'Yes, to be politically correct,' he answered, pronouncing the words with an accent just as strong as Marcolini's.

'Who do you have to be careful about?' Marcolini asked as though he were genuinely interested.

'Oh, you know. Colleagues, the press, the people we arrest.'

‘You have to treat them all the same way, even the people you arrest?' Marcolini asked with manufactured surprise.

Brunetti answered with a smile he tried to make as sly as possible. 'Of course. Everyone's equal, Signor Marcolini.'

'Even extracomunitaria?' Marcolini asked with ham-fisted sarcasm.

Brunetti confined himself to a puffing noise rich with disgust. He was a man who could not yet trust himself with words, but who wanted mis fellow spirit to know how he felt about foreigners.

'My father called them niggers,' Marcolini volunteered. 'He fought in Ethiopia.'

'Mine was there, too,' Brunetti, whose father had fought in Russia, lied.

'It started so well. My father told me they lived like princes. But then it all fell apart.' Marcolini could not have sounded more cheated if all those things had been taken away from him, as well.

'And now they're all here,' Brunetti said with fierce disgust, oh, so slowly lowering the cards from in front of his chest. He threw up his hands in a gesture redolent of helpless outrage.

'You're not a member, are you?' Marcolini asked, apparently not thinking it necessary to be more specific.

'Of the Lega?' Brunetti asked. 'No.' He allowed a short pause and then added, though it was by now clearly no more necessary than

Marcolini's identifying of the Lega, 'Not a formal member, at any rate.'

'What does that mean?' Marcolini surprised him by asking.

That I mink it's wisest to keep my political ideas to myself’ Brunetti said, a man refreshed at finally being able to speak the truth. But then, to avoid any possible confusion, he added, 'At least it's best to do so while I'm at work or working’

‘I see, I see’ Marcolini said. 'But what brings you here, Commissario? Conte Falier called and asked if I'd meet you. You're his son-in-law, aren't you?'

'Yes’ Brunetti agreed in a neutral voice. 'As a matter of fact, it's about your son-in- law that I'd like to speak to you’

'What about him?' Marcolini asked instantly, with some curiosity but little enthusiasm.

'My department got drawn into his trouble with the Carabinieri,' Brunetti said, his voice suggesting displeasure at the memory.

'How?'

The night of the raid, I was called to the hospital to see him.'

'I thought that was the Carabinieri’ Marcolini said.

'Yes, it was, but our office never processed the notice from the Carabinieri, so when it happened, we were called.' Affecting the voice of an irritated bureaucrat, Brunetti added, 'It wasn't our case, but I was told a citizen had been attacked.'

'So you went?'

'Of course. When they call you, you have to go’ Brunetti said, pleased with how much he sounded like the little drummer boy.

'Right. But you still haven't told me why you're here.'

'I'd like, first, to be completely frank with you, Signore’ Brunetti said.

Marcolini's nod was surprisingly gracious.

'My superior doesn't like it that we've been mixed up in Carabinieri business, so he's asked me to look into it.' Brunetii paused, as if to check that Marcolini was following him, and at the older man's nod, he went on. 'We've been given different stories about the child. One version says it's Pedrolli's child by some extracomunitaria woman he met in the South’ he said, managing to put as much contempt as he dared into the words, 'extracomunitaria' and 'South'. He saw this register with Marcolini and went on, 'Then there's the other story that says it was this woman's child by her husband.' He paused to let Marcolini speak.

'Why do you want to know about this, Commissario?'

'As I told you, Signore, if it's not Pedrolli's child, then we think we should leave it to the Carabinieri.' He smiled, then went on. 'But if the child is his, then some intervention from my superiors, as well as from you, might make enough difference to help.'

'Intervention?' Marcolini asked. 'Help? I don't know what you're talking about’

Brunetti put on an expression of limpid good will. 'With the social services, Signore. The child will probably end up in an orphanage.' This was fact, leaving Brunetti to continue with the fiction. ‘It might be possible, in the end - and for the child's good - for him to be returned to his parents.'

'His parents,' Marcolini exploded, his voice stripped of all affability,'... are a pair of Albanians who sneaked into this country illegally.' He paused for effect and then repeated, 'Albanians, for the love of God.'

Rather than respond to this, Brunetti changed his expression to one of the most intense interest, and Marcolini went on, 'The mother is probably some sort of whore; whatever she is, she was willing enough to sell the baby for ten thousand Euros. So if he's put in an orphanage and kept away from her, it's all the better for him.'

‘I didn't know that, Signore,' Brunetti said, sounding disapproving.

'I'm sure there's a lot about this you don't know and that the Carabinieri don't know’ Marcolini said with mounting anger. 'That his story about his affair in Cosenza is a lie. He went down there for some sort of medical conference, and while he was there, he made a deal to buy the baby’ Brunetti managed to express surprise at hearing this, as if he were hearing about it for the first time.

Marcolini got to his feet and walked behind his desk. ‘I could understand if it really happened the way he said in the beginning. A man has needs, and he was away for a week, so I'd understand if he'd knocked her up. And then at least it would be his son. But Gustavo's never been the type who knows how to have a good time, and all this was was some little Albanian bastard his mother brought to market, and my son-in-law was stupid enough to buy it and bring it home.'

Marcolini picked up one of the photos on his desk and brought it back with him. Standing over Brunetti, he pressed the frame into his hand. 'Look, look at him, the little Albanian.'

Brunetti looked at the photo and saw Pedrolli, his wife and, between them, a tow-headed infant with a round face and dark eyes.