processes by which money flowed into and out of the hands of its citizens.
Like most citizens, he knew that the records of sales and transfers of property titles were kept at the Ufficio Catasto. Beyond that, his understanding of just what it was they did was vague. He remembered Rossi’s enthusiasm that several offices were uniting their files in an attempt to save time and make information more simple to recover. He wished now that he had taken the trouble to ask Rossi more about this.
He grabbed the phone book from his bottom drawer, flipped it open to the Bs, and hunted for a number. When he found it, he dialled and waited until a female voice answered, ‘Bucintoro Real Estate, good afternoon.’
‘What’s the matter, Guido?’ she asked, startling him with the question and making him wonder what had been audible in his voice.
‘I need some information,’ he answered just as directly.
‘Why else would you call me?’ she said without the flirtatiousness that usually filled her voice when she spoke to him.
He chose to ignore both the silent criticism of her tone and the overt criticism of her question. ‘I need to know about the Ufficio Catasto.’
‘The what?’ she said in a loud, artificially confused voice.
‘Ufficio Catasto. I need to know what it is exactly they do, who works there, and who is to be trusted among them.’
‘That’s a big order,’ she said.
‘That’s why I called you.’
Suddenly the flirtatiousness was back. ‘And I, sitting here every day, hoping you’ll call wanting something else.’
‘What, my treasure? Just name it,’ he offered in his Rodolfo Valentino voice. Stefania was joyously married and the mother of twins.
‘An apartment to buy, of course.’
‘I might have to do that,’ he said, voice suddenly serious.
‘Why?’
‘I’ve been told that our home is going to be condemned.’
‘What does that mean, condemned?’
‘That we might have to pull it down.’
A second after he said this, he heard Stefania’s sharp peal of laughter, but he wasn’t sure if the target was the patent absurdity of the situation or her surprise that he might find this in any way unusual. After a few more small noises of mirth, she said, ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘That’s exactly how I feel about it. But I had someone from the Ufficio Catasto tell me exactly that. They couldn’t find any record either that it had been built or that permits to do so had ever been given, so they might decide it has to be pulled down.’
‘You must have misunderstood,’ she said.
‘He sounded serious.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘A few months ago.’
‘Have you heard anything else?’
‘No. That’s why I’m calling you.’
‘Why don’t you call them?’
‘I wanted to talk to you first, before I did.’
‘Why?’
‘To know what my rights are. And to know who they are, the people who make the decisions in the office.’
Stefania didn’t respond, and so he asked, ‘Do you know them, the people who are in charge there?’
‘No more than anyone else in the business does.’
‘Who are they?’
‘The important one is Fabrizio dal Carlo; he’s the boss of the entire Ufficio.’ With dismissive scorn, she added, ‘An arrogant shit. He has an assistant, Esposito, but he’s a nonentity because dal Carlo keeps all the power in his own hands. And then there’s Signorina Dolfin, Loredana, whose existence, or at least so I’ve been told, is entirely based on two pillars: the first is not letting anyone forget that, even though she might be no more than a secretary in the Ufficio Catasto, she is a descendant of Doge Giovanni Dolfin,’ she said, then added, as if it mattered, ‘I forget his dates.’
‘He was Doge from 1356 to 1361, when he died of the plague,’ Brunetti supplied seamlessly. To prompt her back into speech, he asked, ‘And the second?’
‘Disguising her adoration of Fabrizio dal Carlo.’ She let that register and then added, ‘I’m told she’s much better at the first than the second. Dal Carlo makes her work like a dog, but that’s probably what she wants, though how anyone could feel anything toward him except contempt is a mystery to me.’
‘Is there anything there?’
Stefania’s laugh exploded down the line. ‘God, no, she’s old enough to be his mother. Besides, he’s got a wife and at least one other woman, so there’d be little enough time for her anyway, even if she weren’t as ugly as sin.’ Steffi considered all of this for a moment and then added, ‘It’s pathetic, really. She’s given up years of her life being the loyal servant to this third-rate Romeo, probably hoping that he’ll some day realize how much she loves him and fall into a dead faint at the thought that it is a Dolfin who’s in love with him. God, what a waste: if it weren’t so sad, it would be funny.’
‘You make it sound as if all of this were common knowledge.’
‘It is. At least to anyone who works with them.’
‘Even that he has other women?’
‘Well, that’s meant to be a secret, I suppose.’
‘But isn’t?’
‘No. Nothing ever is, is it? Here, I mean.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Brunetti admitted, giving silent thanks that this was so.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘No, nothing that springs to mind. No more gossip. But I think you should call them and ask about this business with your apartment. From what I’ve heard, the whole idea of putting all the records together was just a smokescreen, anyway. It’ll never happen.’
‘A smokescreen for what?’
‘What I heard was that someone in the city administration decided that so much of the restoration done in the last couple of years was illegal – well, that a large part of the actual work done was so much at variance with the designs submitted in the original plans – that it would be better if the permits and the requests for them were made to disappear. That way, no one could ever check the plans against what was actually done. So they set up this project to join everything together.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you, Stefania.’
‘It’s simple, Guido,’ Stefania chided him. ‘With all these papers being shifted from one office to another, being sent from one side of the city to another, it’s inevitable that some of them will be lost.’
Brunetti found this both inventive and efficient. He stored it away as an explanation he might try to use for the nonexistence of the plans for his own house, should notice ever be given that he had to produce them. ‘And so,’ he continued for her, ‘if questions were ever asked about the placement of a wall or the presence of a window, the owner would just have to produce their own plans and…’
Stefania cut him off: ‘Which would of course correspond perfectly with the actual structure of the house.’
‘And in the absence of the official plans, conveniently lost during the reorganization of the files,’ Brunetti began, to an accompanying murmur of approval from Stefania, pleased that he had begun to understand, ‘there would be no way for any city inspector or future buyer ever to be sure that the restorations that had in fact been made were different from the ones that had been requested and approved on the missing plans.’ He finished saying this and, as it were, stepped silently back in order to admire what he had discovered. Ever since he was a child, he’d often heard people say of Venice,
