Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

He saw that Patta was listening; whether he was believing was entirely a different matter. Or, if he believed, whether it made any difference.

‘It has nothing at all to do with Roberto,’ he said, his voice level and as calm as he could make it. Brunetti pushed away the urge to say that, as Patta had insisted Roberto had nothing to do with selling drugs, it was impossible that this article could put him in any danger. Not even Patta was worth a victory as cheap as that. He stopped and waited for Patta to answer.

After a long time, the Vice-Questore said, ‘I don’t care who it’s about’, which suggested that he believed what Brunetti had said. He looked across at Brunetti, eyes direct and honest. ‘They called him last night. On his telefonino.’

‘What did they say?’ Brunetti asked, very much aware that Patta had just confessed that his son, the son of the Vice-Questore of Venice, was selling drugs.

‘They said they better not hear any more about this, that they better not hear that he’d talked to anyone or gone to the Questura.’ Patta stopped and closed his eyes, reluctant to continue.

‘Or what?’ Brunetti asked in a neutral voice.

After a long time, the answer came. ‘They didn’t say. They didn’t have to.’ Brunetti had no doubt that this was true.

He found himself suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to be anywhere but here. It would be better to be back in the room with Zecchino and the dead girl, for at least his emotion there had been a clean, profound pity; there had been none of this niggling sense of triumph at the sight of this man for whom he had so often felt such utter contempt reduced to this. He did not want to feel satisfaction at the sight of Patta’s fear and anger, but he could not succeed in repressing it.

‘Is he using anything or is he just selling?’ he asked.

Patta sighed. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’ Brunetti gave him a moment to stop lying, and after a while, Patta said, ‘Yes. Cocaine, I think.’

Years ago, when he was less experienced in the art of questioning, Brunetti would have asked for confirmation that the boy was also selling, but now he took it as given and moved on to his next question. ‘Have you talked to him?’

Patta nodded. After a while, he said, ‘He’s terrified. He wants to go and stay with his grandparents, but he wouldn’t be safe there.’ He looked up at Brunetti. ‘These people have to believe he won’t talk. It’s the only way he’ll be safe.’

Brunetti had already arrived at the same conclusion and was already calculating its cost. The only way to do it was to plant another story, this one saying that the police had begun to suspect they had been given false information and in fact had been unable to make a link between recent drug-related deaths and the person responsible for the sale of those drugs. This would most likely remove Roberto Patta from immediate danger, but it would also discourage Anna Maria Ratti’s brother, or cousin, or whoever he was, from coming in to name the people who had sold him the drugs that had killed Marco Landi.

If he did nothing, Roberto’s life would be in danger, but if the story appeared, then Anna Maria would have to live with her secret grief that she had, however remotely, been responsible for Marco’s death.

‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said, and Patta’s head snapped up, his eyes staring across at Brunetti.

‘What?’ he demanded, then, ‘How?’

‘I said I’ll take care of it,’ he repeated, keeping his voice firm, hoping that Patta would believe him and take quickly from the room whatever show of gratitude he might be moved to. He went on, ‘Try to get him into a clinic of some sort, if you can.’

He watched Patta’s eyes widen in outrage at this inferior who dared to give advice.

Brunetti wanted it done quickly. ‘I’ll call them now,’ he said, looking in the direction of the door.

Angered by this as well, Patta wheeled around, walked toward the door and let himself out.

Feeling not a little bit the fool, Brunetti called his friend at the paper again and did it quickly, all the time conscious of how enormous a debt he was running up. When it came time to pay it back, and he did not for an instant doubt that this time would come, he knew it would be at the cost of some principle or the flouting of some law. Neither thought made him hesitate for an instant.

He was about to leave for lunch when his phone rang. It was Carraro, saying that a man had phoned ten minutes before: he’d read the story in the paper that morning and wanted to know if it was really true. Carraro had assured him that, yes, it was: the therapy was absolutely revolutionary and the only hope for whoever it was that had been bitten.

‘Do you think he’s the one?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Carraro said. ‘But he seemed very interested. He said he’d come in today. What are you going to do?’

‘I’m coming over right now.’

‘What do I do if he comes in?’

‘Keep him there. Keep talking to him. Invent some sort of screening process and keep him there,’ Brunetti said. On his way out, he put his head into the officers’ room and shouted a quick command that they get two men and a boat over to the entrance to the Pronto Soccorso immediately.

It took him only ten minutes to walk to the hospital, and when he got there he told the portiere that he needed to be taken to the doctors’ entrance to Pronto Soccorso so that he would not be seen by any patients who were waiting. His sense of urgency must have been contagious because the man left his glass-enclosed office and led Brunetti down the main corridor, past the patient entrance to the Emergency Room, and then through an unmarked door and down a narrow corridor. He emerged into the nurses’ station at the Pronto Soccorso.

The nurse on duty looked up at him in surprise when he appeared on her left with no warning, but Carraro must have told her to expect someone, for she got to her feet, saying, ‘He’s with Dottore Carraro.’ She pointed to the door to the main treatment room. ‘In there.’

Without knocking, Brunetti opened the door and went in. A white-jacketed Carraro stood over a tall man lying on his back on the examining table. His shirt and sweater lay across the back of a chair, and Carraro was listening to his heart with his stethoscope. Because he had the earpieces in place, Carraro was not aware of Brunetti’s arrival. But the man on the table was, and when his heart quickened at the sight of Brunetti, Carraro looked up to see what had caused his patient’s reaction.

He saw Brunetti but said nothing.

The man on the table lay still, though Brunetti saw the stiffening of his body and the quick flush of emotion on his face. He also saw the inflamed mark on the outer edge of his right forearm: oval, its two edges stamped out with zipperlike precision.

He chose to say nothing. The man on the examining table closed his eyes and lay back, letting his arms fall limply to his sides. Brunetti noticed that Carraro was wearing a pair of transparent rubber gloves. If he’d come in now and seen the man lying like that, he would have thought him asleep. His own heartbeat quieted. Carraro moved away from the table and went over to his desk, laid the stethoscope down, and then left the room without speaking.

Brunetti moved a step closer to the table but was careful to stay more than an arm’s length away. He saw now just how strong the man must be: the muscles of his chest and shoulders were rounded and taut, the result of decades of heavy work. His hands were enormous; one hand lay palm up, and Brunetti was struck by the flatness of the tips of those broad, spatulate fingers.

In repose, the man’s face had a quality about it that spoke of absence. Even when he had first seen Brunetti and perhaps realized who he was, little expression had been visible on his features. His ears were very small; indeed, his curiously cylindrical head seemed a size or two too small for the rest of that heavy body.