Beastly Things

‘No luck?’

‘Only a Hungarian who ended up in the hospital with a heart attack.’

Brunetti thought of the vast net of rental apartments and bed and breakfasts in which the city was enmeshed. Many of them operated beyond all official recognition or control, paying no taxes and making no report to the police of the people who stayed there. In the event of the non-return of a guest, how likely were the owners to report his absence to the police and bring their illegal operations to the attention of the authorities? How much easier simply to wait a few days and then claim whatever the decamping client might have left behind in lieu of unpaid rent, and that’s the end of it.

Earlier in his career, Brunetti would have assumed that any self-respecting, law-abiding citizen would contact the police, certainly as soon as they read of the discovery of a murdered man whose description sounded so very much like the man staying in room three, over the garden. But decades spent amidst the prevarications and half- truths to which law-abiding citizens were all too prone had cured him of such illusions.

‘Pucetti has a photo from one of the videos. He’s sending it to the papers, and he’s asking if anyone recognizes him,’ Brunetti said. ‘But I agree with you, Signorina: people don’t disappear.’

12

BRUNETTI FOUND VIANELLO in the officers’ room, speaking on the phone. When the Inspector saw him, a look of great relief crossed his face. He said a few words, shrugged, said a few more, and replaced the phone.

Approaching, Brunetti asked, ‘Who?’

‘Scarpa.’

‘What’s he want?’

‘Trouble. It’s all he ever wants, I think.’

Brunetti, who agreed, asked, ‘What sort of trouble this time?’

‘Something about the receipts for fuel and could Foa be using the police account to buy it for his own boat?’ Under his breath, Vianello muttered something Brunetti pretended not to have heard. ‘Isn’t there something in the Bible about seeing things against other people when you don’t see the same thing in your own eye?’

‘Something like,’ Brunetti admitted.

‘Patta has Foa pick him up and take him to dinner in Pellestrina, and if it’s not a nice day, take him home, and Scarpa’s worrying that Foa’s stealing fuel.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Everybody’s nuts.’

Brunetti, who agreed with this proposition as well, said, ‘Foa wouldn’t do it. I know his father.’ This assessment made sense to both of them and served as sufficient validation of Foa’s integrity. ‘But why’s he going after Foa now?’ Brunetti asked. Scarpa’s behaviour was often confusing, his motives always inexplicable.

‘Maybe he has some cousin from Palermo who knows how to pilot a boat and needs a job,’ Vianello suggested. ‘Fat chance he’d have navigating here.’

Brunetti was tempted to ask if Vianello’s last remark had a double meaning, but instead he asked him to come out and sit on the riva with him and talk while they watched the boats pass.

When they were seated on the bench, the new sun warming their faces and thighs, Brunetti gave Vianello the folder that contained the photos. ‘Pucetti show you this?’

Vianello nodded as he took the photo and looked at it. ‘I see what you mean about the neck,’ he said and handed it back, then returned to their previous subject and asked, ‘What do you think Scarpa’s really up to?’

Brunetti raised his palms in a gesture of helpless incomprehension. ‘In this case, I think he’s just trying to cause trouble for someone who’s popular, but I don’t think there’s ever any understanding of what people like Scarpa do.’ Then he added, ‘Paola’s teaching a class in the short story this year, and in one of them, the bad guy – all he’s called is The Misfit – after he wipes out a whole family, even the old grandmother, he sits there calmly and says something like, “There’s no pleasure except meanness.”’ As if to emphasize the truth of this, two seagulls farther up the riva began to fight over something, both tearing at it while managing to squawk and flail violently at the same time.

‘I tell you, when Paola read it to me,’ Brunetti went on, ‘I thought of Scarpa. He just likes meanness.’

‘You mean that literally – that he likes it?’ Vianello asked.

Before Brunetti could answer, they were disturbed by the appearance from the left of a enormous – did it have eight decks? Nine? Ten? – cruise ship. It trailed meekly behind a gallant tug, but the fact that the hawser connecting them dipped limply into the water gave the lie to the appearance of whose motors were being used to propel them and which boat decided the direction. What a perfect metaphor, Brunetti thought: it looked like the government was pulling the Mafia into port to decommission and destroy it, but the ship that appeared to be doing the pulling had by far the smaller motor, and any time the other one chose, it could give a yank on the hawser and remind the other boat of where the power lay.

When the boats were past, Vianello said, ‘Well?’

‘Yes, I think he does like it,’ Brunetti finally said. ‘Some people just do. No divine possession, no Satan, no unhappy childhood or chemical imbalance in the brain. For some people, there’s no pleasure except meanness.’

‘That’s why they keep doing it?’ Vianello asked.

‘Has to be, doesn’t it?’ Brunetti asked by way of answer.

‘Gesu,’ Vianello whispered. Then, after being interrupted by the continuing fight between the seagulls, he said, ‘I never wanted to believe that.’

‘Who would?’

‘And we’ve got him?’ Vianello asked.

‘Until he goes too far or gets sloppy.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we get rid of him,’ Brunetti said.

‘You make it sound simple.’

‘It might be.’

‘I hope so,’ Vianello said with the sincerity that most people reserved for prayer.

‘About this man – I still don’t understand why no one’s reported a missing person. People have families, for God’s sake.’

‘Maybe it’s too soon,’ Vianello said.

Brunetti, unconvinced, said, ‘The photo should be in the papers tomorrow. With any luck, someone will see it and call us.’ He didn’t tell Vianello he had resisted the idea because the dead man looked so much like a dead person and so little like a man. ‘Someone should react to Pucetti’s.’

‘And until then?’ the Inspector asked.

Brunetti reached over and took the folder, closed it, and said, getting to his feet, ‘Let’s go shoe shopping.’

The Fratelli Moretti shop in Venice is conveniently close to Campo San Luca. Brunetti had been an admirer of their shoes for a generation but for some reason had never bought a pair. It was not their price – everything in Venice had grown expensive – so much as… Brunetti was suddenly forced to realize that there was no reason whatsoever: he had simply never gone inside the shop, kept out by no reason he could name. Using this as justification, he led Vianello to the shop, where they paused outside to study the men’s shoes in the window. ‘I like those,’ Brunetti said, pointing to a pair of dark brown tasselled loafers.

‘If you bought them,’ Vianello said, having assessed the quality of the leather, ‘and things got tough, you could always boil them and live off the stock for a few days.’

‘Very funny,’ Brunetti said and went inside.

The robust woman in charge glanced at their identification and studied the photo of the dead man but shook her head. ‘Letizia might recognize him,’ she said and indicated the stairs that led to the floor above. ‘She’s with some customers but will be down in a minute.’ While waiting, Brunetti and Vianello busied themselves by trailing through the shop: Brunetti had another look at the loafers.

Letizia, younger and thinner than the other woman, came downstairs after a few minutes, preceded by a Japanese couple and holding four shoeboxes in her arms. She might have been in her late twenties, with boyishly short blonde hair combed up in whimsical spikes and a face that escaped from plainness by virtue of the intelligence