Friends in High Places

di Modena to suggest they meet for a coffee rather than attempt to make his request directly.

Because the bank was on the other side of Rialto, they agreed to have a drink before lunch in Campo San Luca and thus meet halfway. It was a long way for Brunetti to go just to ask a few questions, but a meeting was the only way he could get Franca to talk openly. Explaining nothing, telling no one, he left his office and walked out to the bacino and up towards San Marco.

As he walked along the Riva degli Schiavoni, he looked off to his left, expecting to see the tugboats, only to be caught up short by their absence and then by the immediate realization that they’d been gone for years but that he’d forgotten about it. How could he have forgotten something he knew so well? It was rather like not remembering his own phone number or the face of the baker. He didn’t know where the tugs had been sent, nor could he recall how many years it was since they’d disappeared, leaving the space along the riva clear for other boats, no doubt boats more useful to the tourist industry.

What wonderful Latin names they’d had, floating there red and proud and ready at an instant to chug off to help the ships up the Canale della Giudecca. The boats that sailed into the city now were probably too big for those brave little tugs to be of any help: monsters taller than the Basilica, filled with thousands of ant-like forms crowded to the railings, they sailed in and docked, hurled down their gangplanks and set free their passengers to wander into the city.

Brunetti turned his mind from this and headed up to the Piazza, then cut through it and to the right, back into the centre of the city, toward Campo San Luca. Franca was there when he arrived, talking to a man Brunetti recognized but didn’t know. As he approached, he saw them shake hands. The man turned toward Campo Manin, and Franca to look in the window of the bookstore.

‘Ciao, Franca,’ Brunetti said, coming to stand beside her. They’d been friends in high school, had for a time been more than friends, but then she had met her Mario, and Brunetti had gone off to university, where he met his Paola. She still had the same burnished blonde hair, a few shades lighter than Paola’s, and Brunetti knew enough about such things now to know that she had had assistance in maintaining that colour. But the rest was the same: the full figure she had been so awkward about twenty years ago was now graced by her maturity; she had the unwrinkled skin common to robust women, though there was no evidence of assistance there. The soft brown eyes were the same; so was the warmth in them at the sound of his voice.

‘Ciao, Guido,’ she said, and put back her head to receive his two quick kisses.

‘Let me offer you a drink,’ he said, taking her arm out of decades-old habit and leading her toward the bar.

Inside, they decided to have uno spritz and watched the barman mix the wine and mineral water and then tip in the merest suggestion of Campari before sticking a slice of lemon on the rim and sliding the glasses across the counter toward them.

‘Cin cin,’ they said together and took their first sips.

The barman placed a small dish of potato chips in front of them, but they ignored it. The press at the bar gradually drove them back until they were crushed up against the front windows, through which they could see the city passing by.

Franca knew that this was a business meeting. Had Brunetti wanted to chat about her family, he would have done it on the phone, not asked her to meet him in a bar guaranteed to be so crowded that no one could overhear what they said.

‘What is it, Guido?’ she asked but smiled to take any sting from her words.

‘Moneylenders,’ he answered.

She looked up at him, then away, then just as quickly back.

‘Who do you want to know it for?’

‘Me, of course.’

She smiled, but just barely. ‘I know it has to be for you, Guido, but is it for you as a policeman who is going to take a careful look at them or is it only the sort of question a friend asks?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because if it’s the first, I don’t think I have anything to say to you.’

‘And if it’s the second?’

‘Then I can talk.’

‘Why the difference?’ he asked, then stepped over to the bar and scooped up a few potato chips, more to give her time to think about her answer than because he actually wanted them.

She was ready when he returned. She shook her head at his offer of the chips, so he had to eat them. ‘If it’s the first, then anything I say to you I might have to repeat in court, or you might have to say where you got the information.’ Before he could ask, she continued, ‘If it’s just casual talk between friends, then I’ll tell you whatever I can, but I want you to know that I’ll never remember having said it, should I ever be asked.’ She didn’t smile when she said this, though Franca was usually a woman whose joy in life flowed from her like music from a carousel.

‘Are they that dangerous?’ Brunetti asked, taking her empty glass and reaching over to place it beside his own on the bar.

‘Let’s go outside,’ she said. Out in the campo, she moved over until she stood to the left of the flagpole, just in front of the windows of the bookstore. Whether by accident or design, Franca was at least two metres from the people nearest to her in the campo, two old women leaning toward one another, propped up by their canes.

Brunetti came up and stood beside her. The light rose over the tops of the buildings, making their reflections clearly visible in the window. Unclear and unfocused, the couple in the window could easily have been those teenagers who had, decades ago, often met here for a coffee with friends.

The question came unsummoned, ‘Are you really that frightened?’ Brunetti asked.

‘My son’s fifteen,’ she said by way of explanation. Her level tone might just as easily have been used to comment on the weather or, indeed, upon her son’s interest in soccer.

‘Why did you want to meet here, Guido?’ she asked.

He smiled, ‘I know you’re a busy woman, and I know where you live, so I thought this would be a convenient place: you’re almost home.’

‘That’s the only reason?’ she asked, looking away from the reflected Brunetti to the real one.

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘You really don’t know anything about them, do you?’ was the only answer she gave.

‘No. I know they exist, and I know they’re here in the city. They’d have to be. But we’ve never had any official complaints about them.’

‘And it’s usually the Finanza that deals with them, isn’t it?’

Brunetti shrugged. He had no idea just what the officers of the Guardia di Finanza did deal with: he often saw them, in their grey uniforms decorated with the bright flames of a presumed justice, but he saw little evidence that they did much other than encourage an oppressed people to new methods of tax evasion.

He nodded, not willing to commit his ignorance to words.

Franca looked away from him and around the small campo. Silently, she stood and looked around her. With her chin, she indicated the fast food restaurant that stood on the other side. ‘What do you see?’

He looked across at the glass facade taking up most of that side of the small square. Young people went in and out; many of them sat at small tables, clearly visible through the immense windows.

‘I see the destruction of two thousand years of culinary culture,’ he said, with a laugh.

‘And just outside, what do you see?’ she asked soberly.

He looked again, disappointed that she had not laughed at his joke. He saw two men in dark suits, each with a briefcase in his hand, talking to one another. To the left of them, a young woman stood, handbag clutched awkwardly under her arm as she looked through her address book and tried to punch in a number on her telefonino at the same time. Behind her, a shabbily dressed man, perhaps in his late sixties, tall and very thin, was leaning down to speak to an older woman dressed all in black. She was bent forward with age, her tiny hands grasped tightly around the handle of a large black handbag. She had a narrow face and a long, pointed nose, a combination which, when added to her hunched posture, gave the general impression of one of the smaller marsupials.