About Face

8
The next morning, Brunetti used his office phone to call the Carabinieri in Marghera, only to be told that Maggior Guarino was not there and was not expected until the end of the week. Brunetti pushed aside the thought of Guarino and returned to the idea of getting his own computer. If he did get it, could he continue to expect Signorina Elettra to find the unfindable? Would she then expect him to do basic things, like . . . like find telephone numbers and check vaporetto timetables? Once he could do that, she would probably assume he could easily find the health records of suspects or trace bank transfers into and out of numbered accounts. Still, once he had it, as well as begin to search for information, he would be able more easily to read newspapers on line: current issues, back issues, any issues he chose. But then what of the feel of the Gazzettino in his hand, that dry smell, the black streaks it left against the right-hand pocket of all of his jackets?
And what, his conscience forced him to confess, of that gentle surge of pride when he opened his copy on the vaporetto and thus declared his citizenship in this quiet city world? Who in their right mind but a Venetian would read the Gazzettino?‘I l Giornale delle Serve’. All right, so it was the newspaper of the servant girls. So what? The national papers were often just as badly written, filled with inaccuracies and sentence fragments and wrongly captioned photos.
Signorina Elettra chose this moment to appear at the door of his office. He looked across at her and said, ‘I love the Gazzettino.’
‘There’s always Palazzo Boldù, Dottore,’ she said, naming the local psychiatric centre. ‘And perhaps some rest, and certainly no reading.’
‘Thank you, Signorina,’ he said politely, and then to business, having had the night to think about it – ‘I would like to have a computer here in the office.’
This time she made no attempt to disguise her reaction. ‘You?’ she asked. ‘Sir,’ she thought to add.
‘Yes. One of those flat ones like the one you have.’
This explanation gave her some time to consider the request. ‘I’m afraid they’re terribly expensive, sir,’ she protested.
‘I’m sure they are,’ he answered. ‘But I’m sure there is some way it could be paid for out of the budget for office supplies.’ The more he talked and thought about it, the more he wanted a computer, and one like hers, not that decrepit thing that the officers downstairs had to make do with.
‘If you don’t mind, Commissario, I’d like to have a few days to consider this. And see if I can find a way to arrange it.’
Brunetti sensed victory in her accommodating tone.
‘Of course,’ he said, smiling, expansive now. ‘What was it you wanted?’
‘It’s about Signor Cataldo,’ she said, holding up a blue manila folder.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, waving her forward and half rising in his chair. ‘What have you found?’ He said nothing about his own attempts at research.
‘Well, sir,’ she said, approaching the chair. With a practised gesture, she swept her skirt to one side as she sat. She placed the unopened file on his desk and said, ‘He’s very wealthy, but you must know that already.’ Brunetti suspected everyone in the city knew it, but he nodded to encourage her to continue. ‘He inherited a fortune from his father, who died before Cataldo was forty. That’s more than thirty years ago, just in the middle of the boom. He used it to invest and expand.’
‘In what?’ he asked.
She slid the file back towards her and opened it. ‘He has a factory up near Longarone that makes wooden panels. There are only two in Europe, apparently, that make these things. And a cement factory in the same area. They’re gradually chipping away at a mountain and turning it into cement. In Trieste he’s got a fleet of cargo ships; and a trucking line that does national and international shipping. An agency that sells bulldozers and heavy moving equipment, also dredges. Cranes.’ When Brunetti said nothing, she added, ‘All I’ve got, really, is a list of the companies he owns: I haven’t begun to take a closer look at their finances.’
Brunetti held up his right hand. ‘Only if its not too difficult, Signorina.’ When she grinned at the unlikelyhood of this, he went on, ‘And here in the city?‘
She turned over a page, then said, ‘He owns four shops in Calle dei Fabbri and two buildings on Strada Nuova. Those are rented to two restaurants, and there are four apartments above them.’
‘Is everything rented?’
‘Indeed. One of the shops changed hands a year ago, and the rumour is that the new owner had to pay a buonuscita of a quarter of a million Euros.’
‘Just to get the keys?’
‘Yes. And the rent is ten thousand.’
‘A month?’ Brunetti demanded.
‘It’s in the Calle dei Fabbri, sir, and it’s on two floors,’ she said, managing to sound faintly offended that he should question the price – or her accuracy. She closed the file and sat back in her chair.
If he read her expression correctly, she had something else to tell him, and so he asked, ‘And?’
‘There are voices, sir.’
‘Voices?’
‘About her.’
‘His wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of voices?’
She crossed her legs. ‘Perhaps I’ve exaggerated, sir, and it’s more that there are certain suggestions or silences when her name is mentioned.’
‘I dare say that’s true for many people in the city,’ Brunetti said, trying not to sound prim.
‘I’m sure it is, sir,’ she said.
Brunetti decided to rise above mere gossip, so he pulled the file towards him and hefted it, asking, ‘Have you had enough time to get any idea of what his total worth is?’
Instead of answering, she sat back in her chair, studying his face as though he had just presented her with an interesting conundrum.
‘Yes, Signorina?’ Brunetti prodded. When she failed to answer, he asked, ‘What is it?’
‘The phrase, sir.’
‘Which phrase?’
‘“Total worth.”’
Confused, Brunetti could say only, ‘It’s the total of his various assets, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir, in the fiscal sense, I suppose it is.’
‘Is there some other sense?’ Brunetti asked in honest confusion.
‘Well, there’s his “total worth” as a man, a husband, an employer, a friend.’ Seeing Brunetti’s expression, she said, ‘Yes, I know it’s not what you meant, but it’s interesting, the way we all use that term to indicate only the monetary wealth of a person.’ She gave Brunetti the chance to comment or question, and when he did not, she added, ‘It’s so reductive, as if the only thing about us that has value is how much money we have.’
In a person of lesser imagination than Signorina Elettra, this speculation might have been an elaborate admission of the failure to discover Cataldo’s total assets. Brunetti, however, well familiar with the byways of her mind, said only, ‘My wife spoke of someone who had the “ichor of capitalism” running in his veins. Perhaps we all do.’ He set the file down and pushed it away from him.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, sounding as though she did not like to have to say it, ‘we all do.’
‘What else did you learn?’ Brunetti asked, summoning her back to business.
‘That he was married to Giulia Vasari for more than thirty years and then divorced her,’ she said, bringing them back to the world of the personal.
Brunetti decided to wait to see what she had to tell him, thinking it unseemly to appear either too interested in Franca Marinello or already to have learned anything about her.
‘She’s much younger, as you know; more than thirty years. Rumour has it that they met when he took his wife to a fashion show, and Franca Marinello modelled the furs.’ She glanced at him but Brunetti made no response.
‘However they met, he appears to have lost his head over her,’ she continued. ‘Within a month, he had left his wife and moved into his own apartment.’ She paused here and explained, ‘My father knew him, and so I got some of this from him.’
‘Knew or knows?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Knows, I think. But he’s not really a friend: one of those people one is acquainted with.’
‘What else did your father tell you?’
‘That the divorce was not pleasant.’
‘They seldom are.’
She nodded in agreement and said, ‘He heard that Cataldo fired his lawyer because he had met with his wife’s.’
‘I thought that was the way these things were done,’ Brunetti said. ‘Lawyers talking to lawyers.’
‘Usually, yes. All he said was that Cataldo behaved badly, but he didn’t tell me what that means.’
‘I see.’
He noticed that she was about to get to her feet and asked, ‘Did you learn anything else about his wife?’
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.