About Face

20
The first thing Brunetti noticed when he entered his own office was the light streaming in through the window. Beyond it he saw the glistening roof of the church, tiny patches of snow still clinging to it and, beyond that, the burnished sky. Now that the snow had drawn the pollution from the atmosphere, the mountains would be visible from the kitchen, should he get home while there was still light enough to see them.
He went over to the window and studied the play of light on the roof while he waited for Signorina Elettra to arrive. She had caught Guarino’s interest, and he felt himself blush at the thought of how he had resented her response to it. There was no better word to describe it: resented. Each had tried to learn about the other, and Brunetti had stifled their attempts. He placed both hands flat on the windowsill and contemplated his fingers, but that did not help him feel any better about the way he had behaved. He distracted himself with the memory of Guarino’s wry acceptance of his own secretary’s resemblance to Signorina Elettra. Her name had been an exotic one, as well, something operatic: Leonora, Norma, Alcina? No, it had been one of those droopy, suffering ones: Lord, there were so many of those.
Gilda, that was it. Gilda Landi. Or had she been one of those false trails people were always laying in spy novels? No, Guarino had been caught entirely off guard and had spoken quite impulsively of the – what was the word – indomitable? No, formidable, Signora Landi. A civilian, then.
Brunetti heard Signorina Elettra come in and turned to see her sit down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. She glanced in his direction but, in truth, she was looking beyond him and at the roof and the patch of clear sky beyond.
He took his place behind his desk and asked, ‘What was it you wanted to tell me, Signorina?’
‘This Terrasini,’ she said. ‘Antonio. It seems to be his real name.’ She had a manila file with her but made no attempt to open it.
Brunetti nodded.
‘He’s a member of a branch of the Terrasini family in Aspromonte, a cousin of one of the bosses.’
The news set Brunetti’s imagination running, but however much he managed to make possible connections with Guarino’s death, he always ran into the blank fact that he had no reason to question the man, let alone to arrest him. Guarino had never explained the photograph to Brunetti, and now never would.
‘How did you find this out?’ he asked her.
‘He’s in the files, sir. He was arrested the first few times using that name, but he’s also been arrested using an assortment of aliases.’ She glanced at Brunetti and said, ‘What I don’t understand is why he’d use his real name to go to the Casinò.’
‘It might be that they take more care in examining documents than we do,’ he suggested. He had spoken ironically, but as soon as he heard himself, he realized he was probably telling the truth.
‘What sort of things has he been arrested for?’ he asked.
‘The usual,’ she answered. ‘Assault, extortion, selling drugs, rape – this in the early stages of his career.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, ‘Since then he’s moved on to association with the Camorra. And twice for murder. But neither of those cases made it to trial.’
‘Why?’
‘In one case, the chief witness disappeared, and in the other the chief witness retracted his testimony.’
Comment being superfluous, Brunetti asked, ‘Where is he now, in jail?’
‘He was, but he was released with the indulto, though he’d been inside only a few months.’
‘For what?’
‘Assault.’
‘When was he let out?’
‘Fifteen months ago.’
‘Any idea where he’s been since then?’
‘In Mestre.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Living with his uncle.’
‘And what does his uncle do?’
‘Among other things, he owns a few pizzerias: one in Treviso, one in Mestre, and one here, up near the train station.’
‘Among what other things?’
‘He has a shipping line – trucks that bring fruit and vegetables up from the South.’
‘And take back?’
‘I haven’t been able to find that out, sir.’
‘I see. Anything else?’
‘He has, in the past, rented trucks to Signor Cataldo.’ Her face was motionless when she said this, almost as though she had never heard the name before.
‘I see,’ Brunetti remarked, then asked, ‘and what else?’
‘The nephew, sir: Antonio. It would seem, but this is only at the level of rumour, that he is involved with Signora Cataldo.’ Her voice could not have been more level or dispassionate.
There were times when Signorina Elettra annoyed Brunetti almost past bearing, but he thought of the way he had behaved when caught in the crossfire of flirtation between her and Guarino and so said only, ‘The first wife or the second?’
‘The second.’ She paused, then added, ‘People couldn’t wait to tell me.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘That he’s taken her to dinner at least once; when the husband was away.’
‘That could be easily explained,’ Brunetti said.
‘I’m sure it could be, sir, especially if her husband and his uncle have common business interests.’
He knew she had more, and he knew it would be more damning, but he would not ask.
After it became apparent that Brunetti was not going to speak, she said, ‘He was also seen leaving their apartment – well, to be fair, the building in which they have an apartment, at two in the morning.’
‘Seen by whom?’
‘By people who live there.’
‘How did they know who he was?’ Brunetti asked.
‘At the time, they didn’t, but they paid attention to him, as would anyone meeting an unfamiliar man on the steps of their building at that time of night. Some weeks later, they met her in a restaurant, having dinner with the same man, and when they went over to say hello to her she had no choice but to introduce them. Antonio Terrasini.’
‘And how did you come to learn all of this?’ Brunetti inquired with false lightness.
‘When I asked about Cataldo, I got told this as an extra. Twice.’
‘Why is everyone so eager to repeat gossip about her?’ Brunetti asked in a neutral tone that allowed her to include herself in the category or not.
She looked away from him and out the window again before she answered. ‘It probably has nothing to do with her specifically, sir. There’s the trope of the older man who marries a much younger wife: folk wisdom says it’s only a matter of time before she betrays him. And there’s the fact that people just like to gossip, especially when it’s someone who keeps aloof from them.’
‘And she does?’
‘It would seem so, sir.’
Brunetti said only, ‘I see.’ The snow was entirely gone from the roof of the church by now; he thought he could see steam rising from the tiles.
‘Thank you, Signorina.’
Franca Marinello and Antonio Terrasini. A woman about whom he thought he knew something and a man about whom he wanted to know a great deal more. Who was it who said that she had been working to impress Brunetti? Paola?
Was it that easy, he wondered? Just talk to him about books and sound like you know what you’re talking about, and Brunetti falls into your hands like a ripe fig? Tell him you’re in love with Cicero and then go out to dinner with . . . with whom and to do what, Brunetti wondered? What was that expression the Americans were always using to describe men like Terrasini? Rough something. Rough time? Rough taste? Rough traffic? The expression would not come, no matter how many times he tried to summon it. Rough something. In the photo, Terrasini did not look rough: he looked slick.
Thinking back over the evening he had spent with Franca Marinello, Brunetti was forced to admit that her face, even after the hours opposite her, would still occasionally shock him. If she found something he said amusing, he could read it only in her eyes or in the tone of her response. Occasionally he had succeeded in making her laugh, but even then her face had remained as immobile as when she spoke of her loathing of Marc Antonio.
She was still in her thirties, and her husband was twice her age. Did she not want, at times, the company of a younger man, the feel of a stronger body? Had he been so concerned with her face that he had forgotten about the rest of her?
But still, why this thug? Brunetti kept coming back to this question. He and Paola knew enough about the workings of the city to have a good idea which of the wives of the powerful and wealthy sought the solace of arms other than their husbands’. But all of that was usually carried out among acquaintances and friends: discretion was thus assured.
Then what of all of her talk of being worried about kidnapping? Perhaps Brunetti had been too eager to dismiss her story of the computer intruder; and perhaps the signs of tampering had not been left by Signorina Elettra but by some other person curious to learn the extent of Cataldo’s wealth. Terrasini’s past certainly suggested that he would not mind having a try at kidnapping, but computer exploration hardly seemed the way he would begin things.
Years ago, Conte Falier had observed that he had never met anyone who could resist flattery. Brunetti had been younger then and had taken this as a comment on a technique of which the Conte approved, but as the years passed and he knew the man better, Brunetti realized that it was nothing more than another of the Conte’s merciless observations about the nature of human activity. ‘And Cataldo’s wife was working to impress you,’ he heard Paola’s voice again. If he eliminated all sympathy for the woman, how much of what she told him would he still believe? Was he to be seduced by the fact that she had read Ovid’s Fasti and he had not?