Friends in High Places

She reached for a pad and pencil, but he stopped her.

‘No,’ he said, when he saw what she was doing, ‘I want you to go and talk to someone.’

* * * *

He had to wait more than two hours for her to come back, and when she did, she came directly up to his office. She entered without knocking and approached his desk.

‘Ah, Signorina,’ he said, inviting her to take a seat. He sat next to her, eager, but silent.

‘You’re not in the habit of giving me a Christmas present, are you, Commissario?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Am I about to begin to do so?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’ll expect a dozen, no, two dozen white roses from Biancat and, I think, a case of prosecco.’

‘And when would you like this present to arrive, Signorina, if I might ask?’

‘To avoid the Christmas rush, sir, I think you might send them around next week.’

‘By all means. Consider it done.’

‘Too kind, Signore,’ she said with a gracious nod of acceptance.

‘No more than my pleasure,’ he answered. He allowed six beats to pass and then asked, ‘And?’

‘And I asked in the bookstore in the campo, and the owner told me where they lived, and I went and talked to them.’

‘And?’ he prodded.

‘They may be the most loathsome people I’ve ever met,’ she said in an uninterested, aloof tone. ‘Let’s see, I’ve worked here for more than four years, and I’ve come in contact with quite a few criminals, though the people in the bank where I used to work were probably worse, but these two were in a class by themselves,’ she said with what seemed like a real shudder of disgust.

‘Why?’

‘Because of the combination of greed and piety, I think.’

‘In what way?’

‘When I told them that I needed money to pay my brother’s gambling bills, they asked me what I had to put up as security, and I told them I had an apartment. I tried to sound a bit nervous about saying that, the way you told me. He asked me the address, and I gave it to him, then he went into the other room, and I heard him talking to someone.’

She stopped here for a moment and then added, ‘It must have been a telefonino. There were no phone jacks in the two rooms I was in.’

‘What happened then?’ Brunetti asked.

She tilted her chin and raised her eyes to the top of the armadio on the other side of the room. ‘When he came back, he smiled at his wife, and that’s when they began to talk about the possibility of their being able to help me. They asked how much I needed, and I said fifty million.’

It was the sum they had agreed on: not too much and not too little, just the sort of sum a gambler might rack up in a night’s rash gambling and just the sort of sum he would believe he could easily win back, if only he could find the person to pay off the debt and thus get him back at the tables.

She turned her eyes to Brunetti. ‘Do you know these people?’

‘No. All I know is what a friend told me.’

‘They’re terrible,’ she said, voice low.

‘What else?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose they did what they usually do. They told me that they needed to see the papers for the house, though I’m sure he was calling someone to make sure I really did own it or that it was listed in my name.’

‘Who could that be?’ he asked.

She looked down at her watch before answering, ‘It’s not likely there was still anyone at the Ufficio Catasto, so it must be someone who has instant access to their records.’

‘You do, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘No, it takes me a while to break… to get into their system. Whoever could give him that information immediately had to have direct access to the files.’

‘How were things left?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I’m to go back tomorrow with the papers. They’ll have the notary come to the house at five.’ She stopped and smiled across at him. ‘Imagine that: you can die before a doctor will make a house call, but they’ve got a notary on twenty-four-hour call.’ She raised her eyebrows at the very notion. ‘So I’m supposed to go back at five tomorrow, and we’ll sign all the papers, and they’ll give me the cash.’

Even before she stopped speaking, Brunetti had raised one finger and was waving it back and forth in silent negation.

There was no way he’d permit Signorina Elettra to get that close to these people again. She smiled in silent acknowledgement of his command and, he thought, relief.

‘And the interest? Did they say how much it would be?’

‘They said we’d talk about that tomorrow, that it would be on the papers.’ She crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. ‘So I guess that means we don’t get to talk about it,’ she said with finality.

Brunetti waited a moment and then asked, ‘And piety?’

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a narrow rectangle of paper, slightly smaller than a playing card. She passed it to Brunetti, who looked at it. Stiff, a sort of fake parchment, it had a painting of a woman dressed as a nun with her hands and, it seemed, her eyes crossed in matching piety. Brunetti read the first few lines printed below – a prayer, the first letter an illuminated ‘O’.

‘Santa Rita,’ she said after he had studied the picture for a while. ‘It seems she’s another patron saint of Lost Causes, and Signora Volpato feels especially close to her because she believes she also helps people when all other help is closed to them. That’s the reason for her special devotion to Santa Rita.’ Signorina Elettra paused to reflect momentarily upon this wonder and then saw fit to add, ‘More than to the Madonna, she confided to me.’

‘How fortunate, the Madonna,’ Brunetti said, handing the small card back to Signorina Elettra.

‘Ah, keep it, sir,’ she said, waving it away with a dismissive hand.

‘Did they ask why you didn’t go to a bank, if you owned the house?’

‘Yes. I told them my father originally gave me the house, and I couldn’t risk his learning what I was doing. If I went to our bank, where they know us all, he’d find out about my brother. I tried to cry then, when I told her that.’ Signorina Elettra gave a small smile and went on: ‘Signora Volpato said she was very sorry about my brother; she said gambling is a terrible vice.’

‘And usury isn’t?’ Brunetti asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

‘Apparently not. She asked me how old he was.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Brunetti asked, knowing she had no brother.

‘Thirty-seven, and that he’s been gambling for years.’ She stopped, reflected upon the events of the afternoon, and said, ‘Signora Volpato was very kind.’

‘Really? What did she do?’

‘She gave me another card of Santa Rita and said she’d pray for my brother.’

23

The only thing Brunetti did before going home that afternoon was sign the papers that would release the body of Marco Landi so that it could be sent to his parents. After he had done this, he called downstairs and asked Vianello if he would be willing to accompany the body back to the Trentino. Vianello agreed instantly, saying only that, as the next day was his day off, he didn’t know if he could wear his uniform.

Brunetti had no idea if he had the authority to do so, but he said, ‘I’ll change the roster’, opening a drawer to