Donna Leon - About Face

‘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.

He forced himself to read through the pages of financial information regarding Cataldo: the companies he had owned and managed, the boards on which he sat, the stocks and bonds that floated into and out of his various portfolios, all the while allowing the dreaming part of his mind to drift where it pleased, which decidedly was not anywhere inside this file. Addresses of properties bought and sold, official sale prices, mortgages given and paid off, bank and stock dividends: there were people, Brunetti knew, who found these details thrilling. That thought depressed him immeasurably.

He remembered playing tag when he was a kid, chasing after friends, keeping an eye on them as they turned into familiar and unfamiliar calli . No, it was more like trailing a suspect in the early days of his career: keep an eye on one person while appearing to be interested in everything else that passed by. So it was as he read more fiscal details: his counter’s mind registered and would recall some of the sums as they mounted towards Cataldo’s total worth, while his hunter’s ear, against his will, kept returning to Guarino and the story he had told. And to the things he had failed to tell.

He put the file aside and used his office phone to call Avisani in Rome. This time, he kept the exchange of pleasantries to a minimum, and after enough of them had been made, Brunetti said, his voice rich in simulated affability, ‘That friend of yours we spoke to yesterday, you think you could get in touch with him and ask him to give me a call?’

‘Ah, do I detect the first faint cracks in the sincerity of your devotion to one another?’ the journalist asked.

‘No,’ Brunetti answered, surprised into laughter, ‘but he asked me to do him a favour, and they tell me he won’t be in until the end of the week. I need to talk to him again before I can do what he asked me to do.’

‘He’s good at that,’ Avisani conceded.

‘At what?’

‘Giving too little information.’ When Brunetti did not rise to this, the journalist said, ‘I can probably get in touch with him. I’ll ask him to call you today.’ Brunetti said, ‘I’m waiting for you to lower your voice and add, mysteriously, “If he can.”’ ‘That goes without saying, doesn’t it?’ Avisani asked in quite a reasonable voice before hanging up.

Brunetti went down to the bar at Ponte dei Greci and had a coffee he did not much want; to ensure that he would not enjoy it, he put in too little sugar and drank it quickly. Then he asked for a glass of mineral water he did not want, either, because of the weather, and returned to his office disgruntled at not being able to contact Guarino.

The dead man — Ranzato — must have met this other man on more than one occasion, and yet Brunetti was supposed to believe that Guarino had never bothered to ask him to elaborate on the meaning of ‘well dressed’ and had never learned anything else about him? How did this man and Ranzato communicate to organize shipments? Telepathy? And payments?

And, finally, a great deal of attention was being paid to this one crime. ‘Any man’s death’, and all of that poetry that Paola was always talking about. Yes, that was true, at least in the abstract, poetic sense, but one man’s death, no matter how much it diminished us all, no longer really mattered very much to the world, nor to the authorities, not unless it was related to some more important matter or unless the press got it between their teeth and ran with it. Brunetti did not have the latest national statistics — he left statistics to Patta — but he knew that less than half of the murders committed were ever solved, and the number diminished in almost direct proportion to how long they went unsolved.

It had been a month, and Guarino was only now following up on the reference to the man living near San Marcuola. Brunetti set his pen down and reflected upon this fact. Either they did not care or someone had. .

The phone rang, and he chose to answer with ‘ Sì ’ rather than with his name.

‘Guido,’ Guarino said cheerfully. ‘Glad to catch you still there. I was told you wanted to talk to me.’

Even though Brunetti knew that Guarino was speaking for anyone who might be listening to his phone or to Brunetti’s, his chipper tone drove Brunetti past caring what he said. ‘We need to talk about this again. You never told me that. .’