About Face

Did she study his face before she answered? ‘Not much, sir, beyond what I’ve told you. She doesn’t play much of a part in society, though he’s certainly very well known.’ Then, as in afterthought, she added, ‘She was once thought to be very shy.’

Though curious about her phrasing, Brunetti said only, ‘I see.’ He glanced at the file again but did not open it. He heard Signorina Elettra get to her feet. He looked up and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘I hope you enjoy reading it, sir,’ she said, then added, ‘however much it might lack the intellectual rigour of the Il Gazzettino.’ And then she was gone.

9

He forced himself to read through the pages of financial information regarding Cataldo: the companies he had owned and managed, the boards on which he sat, the stocks and bonds that floated into and out of his various portfolios, all the while allowing the dreaming part of his mind to drift where it pleased, which decidedly was not anywhere inside this file. Addresses of properties bought and sold, official sale prices, mortgages given and paid off, bank and stock dividends: there were people, Brunetti knew, who found these details thrilling. That thought depressed him immeasurably.

He remembered playing tag when he was a kid, chasing after friends, keeping an eye on them as they turned into familiar and unfamiliar calli. No, it was more like trailing a suspect in the early days of his career: keep an eye on one person while appearing to be interested in everything else that passed by. So it was as he read more fiscal details: his counter’s mind registered and would recall some of the sums as they mounted towards Cataldo’s total worth, while his hunter’s ear, against his will, kept returning to Guarino and the story he had told. And to the things he had failed to tell.

He put the file aside and used his office phone to call Avisani in Rome. This time, he kept the exchange of pleasantries to a minimum, and after enough of them had been made, Brunetti said, his voice rich in simulated affability, ‘That friend of yours we spoke to yesterday, you think you could get in touch with him and ask him to give me a call?’

‘Ah, do I detect the first faint cracks in the sincerity of your devotion to one another?’ the journalist asked.

‘No,’ Brunetti answered, surprised into laughter, ‘but he asked me to do him a favour, and they tell me he won’t be in until the end of the week. I need to talk to him again before I can do what he asked me to do.’

‘He’s good at that,’ Avisani conceded.

‘At what?’

‘Giving too little information.’ When Brunetti did not rise to this, the journalist said, ‘I can probably get in touch with him. I’ll ask him to call you today.’ Brunetti said, ‘I’m waiting for you to lower your voice and add, mysteriously, “If he can.”’ ‘That goes without saying, doesn’t it?’ Avisani asked in quite a reasonable voice before hanging up.

Brunetti went down to the bar at Ponte dei Greci and had a coffee he did not much want; to ensure that he would not enjoy it, he put in too little sugar and drank it quickly. Then he asked for a glass of mineral water he did not want, either, because of the weather, and returned to his office disgruntled at not being able to contact Guarino.

The dead man — Ranzato — must have met this other man on more than one occasion, and yet Brunetti was supposed to believe that Guarino had never bothered to ask him to elaborate on the meaning of ‘well dressed’ and had never learned anything else about him? How did this man and Ranzato communicate to organize shipments? Telepathy? And payments?

And, finally, a great deal of attention was being paid to this one crime. ‘Any man’s death’, and all of that poetry that Paola was always talking about. Yes, that was true, at least in the abstract, poetic sense, but one man’s death, no matter how much it diminished us all, no longer really mattered very much to the world, nor to the authorities, not unless it was related to some more important matter or unless the press got it between their teeth and ran with it. Brunetti did not have the latest national statistics — he left statistics to Patta — but he knew that less than half of the murders committed were ever solved, and the number diminished in almost direct proportion to how long they went unsolved.

It had been a month, and Guarino was only now following up on the reference to the man living near San Marcuola. Brunetti set his pen down and reflected upon this fact. Either they did not care or someone had. .

The phone rang, and he chose to answer with ‘Si’ rather than with his name.

‘Guido,’ Guarino said cheerfully. ‘Glad to catch you still there. I was told you wanted to talk to me.’

Even though Brunetti knew that Guarino was speaking for anyone who might be listening to his phone or to Brunetti’s, his chipper tone drove Brunetti past caring what he said. ‘We need to talk about this again. You never told me that. .’

‘Look, Guido,’ Guarino said, speaking very quickly and with no diminution of jollity, ‘I’ve got someone waiting to talk to me, but it will only take a few minutes. How about we meet down at that bar you go to?’

‘Down at the. .’ Brunetti began to say, but Guarino cut him off. ‘You got it. I’ll meet you there in about fifteen minutes.’ The line went dead.

What was Guarino doing in Venice, and how did he know about the bar at the bridge? Brunetti did not want to return to the bar, he did not want another coffee, he did not want a sandwich, nor another glass of cold water, nor even a glass of wine. But then the idea of a glass of hot punch came to him, and he got his overcoat from the armadio and left.

Sergio was just sliding the glass of hot punch across the bar to Brunetti when the phone in the back room of the bar rang. Sergio excused himself, muttered something about his wife, and slipped through the door to the other room. He was back in less than a minute, as Brunetti was by then expecting, and said, ‘It’s for you, Commissario.’

Habit forced Brunetti to put on his brightest smile as the instinct of deceit prompted him to say, ‘I hope you don’t mind, Sergio. I was waiting for a call, but I needed something hot, so I asked them to tell him to call me here.’

‘Sure, Commissario. No trouble. Any time,’ the barman said and stepped behind the bar to let Brunetti pass into the small back room.

The receiver lay on its side, next to one of the heavy old SIP phones, the outmoded grey model with the round dial. He picked up the receiver, resisting the urge to fit his finger into the small hole and turn the dial.

‘Guido?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry for the melodrama. What is it?’

‘Your mystery man, the well-dressed one, the one who said he’d meet someone at that place you mentioned.’

‘Yes?’

‘How come all you told me was that he was well-dressed?’

‘That’s what I was told.’

‘How many months did you talk to the man who died?’

‘. . A long time.’

‘And all he told you was that the other guy was well-dressed?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you never thought to ask for anything more?’

‘I didn’t think it. .’

‘When you finish that sentence, I’m hanging up.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I thought I should warn you. You say that, and I’m hanging up.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t like being lied to.’

‘I’m not. .’