Donna Leon - About Face

Brunetti smiled. ‘In this case, it means I assumed so.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he said he’d meet someone there one evening, and that’s what we do when people come to town: we meet them at the imbarcadero near where we live.’

‘Yes,’ Paola said, and then added, ‘Professor.’

‘Don’t fool around, Paola. It’s obvious.’

She leaned aside and took the point of his chin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Gently, she turned his head to face her. ‘It’s also obvious that the judgement that someone is well-dressed can mean different things.’

‘What?’ Brunetti asked, his hand arrested on its way to the bottle of grappa. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, he also said the way the man dressed was flashy, whatever that means.’

Paola studied his face as she would study that of a stranger. ‘What we consider “flashy”, even “well dressed”, depends on how we dress ourselves, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I still don’t understand,’ Brunetti said, picking up the bottle.

Paola waved away his offer of more grappa and said, ‘Do you remember that case — must be ten years ago — when you had to go out to Favaro every night for a week to question a witness?’

He thought for a while, remembered the case, the endless lies, the final failure. ‘Yes.’

‘Remember how the Carabinieri would bring you back and drop you at Piazzale Roma, and you’d take the Number One home?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, wondering where she was going with this. Would she suggest that this case, too, had the same feeling of failure about it, something he was beginning to feel himself?

‘And do you remember the people you told me you saw on the vaporetto every night? Those shifty-looking types, with the cheap blondes? The men with the leather jackets and the women with the leather mini-skirts?’

‘Oh, my God,’ Brunetti said, giving himself a slap on the forehead so strong it literally knocked him back into the sofa beside her. ‘Those who have eyes and see not,’ he said.

‘Please, Guido, don’t you start quoting the Bible.’

‘Sorry. The shock must have been too much for me,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘You’re a genius. But I’ve known that for years. Of course, of course. The Casinò. They’d meet at San Marcuola and go together, wouldn’t they? Of course. Genius, genius.’

Paola held up a hand in a patently false protestation of modesty. ‘Guido: it’s only a possibility.’

‘Yes, it’s only a possibility,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘But it makes sense and at least it lets me do something.’

‘Do something?’ Paola inquired.

‘Yes.’

‘As in letting us go to the Casinò?’ she asked.

‘Us?’

‘Us.’

‘Why us?’

She held up her glass to him, and he poured her another measure of grappa. She sipped it, nodded in appreciation as strong as his own had been, and then said, ‘Because nothing is more likely to call attention to itself than a single man at the Casinò.’

Brunetti started to protest, but she cut off his opposition by holding up her glass between them. ‘He can’t just walk around, staring at the people at the tables and never gambling, can he? What better way to make himself visible? And if he does start to play, what’s he going to do, spend the night losing our apartment?’ When she saw that his expression had begun to lighten, she asked, ‘After all, Signorina Elettra can’t be expected to put that on the office equipment bill, can she?’

‘I suppose not,’ Brunetti admitted, as clear an admission of surrender as a man had ever given.

‘I’m serious, Guido,’ she said, setting her glass on the table. ‘You need to look comfortable while you’re there, and if you go alone, you’re going to look like a policeman on the prowl, well, a man on the prowl, at any rate. If you go with me, we can at least talk and laugh and look like we’re having a good time.’

‘Does that mean we aren’t going to have a good time?’

‘Can you imagine having a good time watching people lose money gambling?’

‘They don’t all lose,’ he said.

‘And not everyone who jumps off a roof breaks a leg,’ she shot back.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that the Casinò makes money, and it makes money because people lose it. Gambling. Maybe they don’t lose every night, but they always lose in the end.’

Brunetti toyed with the idea of taking another small glass of grappa but put the idea behind him manfully and said, ‘All right. But can we still have a good time?’

‘Not until tomorrow night,’ she answered.

Brunetti had decided to trust to luck that someone at the Casinò would recognize or recall the young man in the photo Paola brought home from the university, though Fortuna was perhaps the wrong deity to invoke in these circumstances, she no doubt having to endure other, and more urgent, solicitations. He was also aware that, even if he did discover the young man’s identity, or even the man himself, the only thing he could do, after perhaps checking to see if the man had a criminal record, was to pass the information on to Guarino. Even with the Right returned to power in the government, it was still not a crime to have your photo taken.

However much Brunetti reminded himself that he was a private citizen, come to the Casinò in the company of his lady wife, he knew that as the person who had, in recent years, been in charge of two of the police investigations of the Casinò, he was unlikely to pass unremarked.

When they arrived, the man at reception recognized him immediately, but apparently the administration harboured no hard feelings towards him, and he was given VIP entrance, though he refused the complimentary fiche that were offered with it. He purchased fifty Euros in chips and gave half to Paola.

He had not been here in years, at least not since the last time he had arrested the Director. Not much had changed: he recognized some of the croupiers, two of whom had also been arrested the last time, charged with having organized the system by which the Casinò had been cheated out of an amount no one had ever been able to calculate, perhaps millions, certainly hundreds of thousands of Euros. Accused, convicted, sentenced, and now right back at their civil service jobs as croupiers. Regardless of Paola’s company at his side, Brunetti began to suspect he was not going to have a good time.

They moved towards the roulette tables, this being the only game Brunetti felt capable of playing: it demanded no skill in counting cards or calculating the odds of anything. Put your money down. Win. Lose.

As they approached, he studied the people grouped around one of the tables, looking for the face he had seen only in three-quarters profile. It had not been a particularly good photo that had come through that morning, without explanation of when, where, or by whom it had been taken. Perhaps taken by a telefonino , it showed a clean-shaven man who looked to be in his early thirties. He was standing at a bar, a cup of coffee in one hand as he spoke to someone not visible in the photo. He had short dark hair, brown or black: there was not enough definition in the photo to tell. Only one cheekbone was visible and one full eyebrow, cut at an angle so sharp it looked like the sort one saw on cartoon characters. It was impossible to be sure about his height, though he was of medium build. Nor could the quality of his clothing be distinguished: tie, jacket, light-coloured shirt.

Brunetti and Paola stood for a few minutes on the outskirts of the oval of people drawn by the magic power of the wheel, listening to the click, click, click as the ball swirled round. Then the muted clack as it slipped into place, and then silence: defeat never caused a sigh, and victory passed unremarked. How devoid of enthusiasm they were, Brunetti thought, how tasteless they found joy.