Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

‘Who’s to complain? Their parents, that I stop them from driving off dead drunk or out of their minds on drugs? Or the police, because I stop them from slamming into the trees at the side of the highways?’

‘No, I suppose not. I didn’t think.’

‘It means they don’t get woken up at three to go out to watch bodies being cut out of cars. Believe me, the police are very happy to give me any help they can.’ He paused and Brunetti listened to the sharp snap of a match as Luca lit a cigarette and took the first deep breath. ‘What is it you’d like me to do – get this hushed up?’

‘Could you?’

If shrugs made sounds, Brunetti heard one on the phone. Finally Luca said, ‘I won’t answer that until I know whether you want me to or not.’

‘No, not hushed up in the sense that it disappears. But I would like you to keep it out of the papers if it’s possible.’

Luca paused before he answered this. ‘I spend a lot of money on advertising,’ he said at last.

‘Does that translate as yes?’

Luca laughed outright until the laugh turned into a deep, penetrating cough. When he could speak again, he said, ‘You always want things to be so clear, Guido. I don’t know how Paola stands it.’

‘It makes things easier for me when they are.’

‘As a policeman?’

‘As everything.’

‘All right, then. You can consider it as meaning yes. I can keep it out of the local papers, and I doubt that the big ones would be interested.’

‘He’s the Vice-Questore of Venice,’ Brunetti said in a perverse burst of local pride.

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t mean much to the guys in Rome,’ Luca answered.

Brunetti considered this. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Before Luca could agree, Brunetti asked, ‘What do they say about the boy?’

‘They’ve got him cold. His fingerprints were all over the small envelopes.’

‘Has he been charged yet?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so.’

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘They want him to tell them who he got the stuff from.’

‘Don’t they know?’

‘Of course they know. But knowing isn’t proving, as I’m sure you’re in a position to understand.’ This last was said not without irony. At times Brunetti thought Italy was a country where everyone knew everything while no one was willing to say anything. In private, everyone was eager to comment with absolute certainty on the secret doings of politicians, Mafia leaders, movie stars; put them into a situation where their remarks might have legal consequences, and Italy turned into the largest clam bed in the world.

‘Do you know who it is?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Would you give me his name?’

‘I’d rather not. It wouldn’t serve any purpose. There’s someone above him, and then someone else above him.’ Brunetti could hear him lighting another cigarette.

‘Will he tell them? The boy?’

‘Not if he values his life, he won’t,’ Luca said but immediately added, ‘No, that’s an exaggeration. Not if he wants to avoid being beat up pretty badly.’

‘Even in Jesolo?’ Brunetti asked. So big city crime had come to this sleepy Adriatic town.

‘Especially in Jesolo, Guido,’ Luca said but offered no explanation.

‘So what will happen to him?’ Brunetti asked.

‘You should be able to answer that better than I can,’ Luca said. ‘If it’s a first offence, they’ll slap his wrist and send him home.’

‘He’s already home.’

‘I know that. I was speaking figuratively. And the fact that his father is a policeman won’t hurt.’

‘Not unless the papers get it.’

‘I told you. You can be sure about that.’

‘I hope so,’ Brunetti said.

Luca failed to rise to this. Into the long, growing silence, Brunetti said, ‘And what about you? How are you, Luca?’

Luca cleared his throat, a wet sound that made Brunetti uncomfortable. ‘The same,’ he finally said and coughed again.

‘Maria?’

‘That cow,’ Luca said with real anger. ‘All she wants is my money. She’s lucky I let her stay in the house.’

‘Luca, she’s the mother of your children.’

Brunetti could hear Luca fighting the impulse to rage at Brunetti for daring to comment on his life. ‘I don’t want to talk about this with you, Guido.’

‘All right, Luca. You know I say it only because I’ve known you a long time.’ He stopped and then added, ‘Known you both.’

‘I know that, but things change.’ There was another silence, and then Luca said again, his voice sounding distant, ‘I don’t want to talk about this, Guido.’

‘All right,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called for so long.’

In the easy concession of long friendship, Luca said, ‘I haven’t called, either, have I?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Luca agreed with a laugh that brought back both his old voice and his old cough.

Encouraged, Brunetti asked, ‘If you hear anything else, will you let me know?’

‘Of course,’ Luca agreed.

Before the other man could hang up, Brunetti asked, ‘Do you know anything else about the men he got it from, and the ones they got it from?’

Caution returned to Luca’s voice as he asked, ‘What sort of things are you talking about?’

‘Whether they…’ he was not quite certain how to define what it was they did. ‘Whether they do business in Venice.’

‘Ah,’ Luca sighed. ‘From what I understand, there’s not a lot of business for them there. The population’s too old, and it’s too easy for the kids to come out to the mainland to find what they want.’

Brunetti realized it was nothing more than selfishness that made him so glad to hear this: any man with two teenaged children, no matter how certain he was of their characters and dispositions, would be glad to learn that there was little drug traffic in the city in which they lived.

Instinct told Brunetti that he had got as much as he was going to get from Luca. Knowing the names of the men who sold the drugs wouldn’t make any difference, anyway.

‘Thanks, Luca. Take care of yourself.’

‘You, too, Guido.’

That night, talking to Paola after the kids had gone to bed, he told her about the conversation and about Luca’s outburst of rage at the mention of his wife’s name. ‘You’ve never liked him as much as I do,’ Brunetti said, as if that would somehow explain or excuse Luca’s behaviour.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Paola asked, but without rancour.

They were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa and had put down their books when they began to talk. Brunetti thought about her question for a long time before he answered, ‘I guess it’s supposed to mean that you’d have to be more sympathetic to Maria than to him.’

‘But Luca’s right,’ Paola said, turning her head and then her entire body to face him. ‘She is a cow.’

‘But I thought you liked her.’

‘I do like her,’ Paola insisted. ‘Still, that doesn’t stop Luca from being right in saying she’s a cow. But it was he who turned her into one. When they got married, she was a dentist, but he asked her to stop working. And then after Paolo was born, he told her she didn’t have to go back to work, that he was making enough money with the clubs to support them all well. So she stopped working.’

‘So?’ Brunetti interrupted. ‘How does that make him responsible if she’s become a cow?’ Even as he asked the question, he was conscious of both how insulting and how absurd the very word was.

‘Because he moved them all out to Jesolo where it would be more convenient for him to oversee the clubs. And she went,’ Her voice grew truculent, reciting the beads of a very old rosary.