Donna Leon - About Face

He felt the pressure of Paola’s arm around his waist. ‘How much more of this do we have to do?’ she asked. He looked at his watch and saw that it was already after midnight. ‘Maybe he came only that one night,’ she suggested, then tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn.

Brunetti looked out over the heads of the people surrounding the tables. These people could be in bed, reading: they could be in bed, doing other things. But they were here, watching little balls and pieces of paper and little white cubes carry away what they had worked weeks, perhaps years, to earn. ‘You’re right,’ he said, bending to kiss the top of her head. ‘I promised you a good time, and here we are, doing this.’

He felt, rather than saw, her shrug.

‘I want to find the Director, show him the picture, see if he recognizes the man. Want to come with me or do you want to wait here?’

Rather than answer, she turned and started towards the door that led to the stairs. He followed. Downstairs, she sat on a bench opposite the door of the Director’s office, opened her bag, pulled out a book and her glasses, and began to read.

Brunetti knocked on the door, but no one responded. He went back to the reception desk and asked to speak to the man in charge of security, who arrived a minute later in response to a discreet phone call. Claudio Vasco was a tall man a few years younger than Brunetti who wore a dinner jacket so elegant he might well have shared a tailor with Commissaria Griffoni. Hired to replace one of the men who had been arrested, he shook hands and smiled when Brunetti gave his name.

Vasco led him down the hall, past Paola, who did not bother to look up from her book, and into the Director’s office. Not bothering to sit down, he studied the photo, and Brunetti, watching him, could all but see his mental fingers flicking through a file of faces. Vasco let the hand holding the photo fall to his side and looked at Brunetti. ‘Is it true you’re the one who arrested those two up there?’ he asked, raising his eyes towards the ceiling and the floor above, where the two croupiers were at work.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered.

Vasco smiled and handed the photo back to Brunetti. ‘Then I owe you a favour. I just hope you frightened those two bastards enough to keep them honest for a while.’

‘Not permanently?’

Vasco looked at Brunetti as though he had started speaking the language of the birds. ‘Them? It’s just a matter of time until they think of some new system, or one of them wants to go to the Seychelles for vacation. We spend more time watching them than we do the clients,’ he said tiredly. He nodded at the photo and said, ‘He’s been here a few times, once with another guy. Your man’s maybe thirty, a bit shorter han you, and thinner.’

‘And the other?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I don’t remember him well,’ Vasco said. ‘All my attention went to this one,’ he said, giving the photo a backward flick with the fingers of his left hand.

Brunetti raised an eyebrow but Vasco said only, ‘I’ll tell you about it after I find the registration.’ Brunetti knew records were kept of everyone who came to the Casinò, but he had no idea how long they had to be kept on file.

‘As I said, I owe you a favour, Commissario.’ He headed towards the door, turned and added, ‘Even if I didn’t, I’d be happy to help you find this bastard, especially if I knew it would get him into trouble.’ Vasco gave a smile that made him ten years younger and was gone, leaving the office door open.

Through the opening Brunetti could see Paola, who had not looked up either at their approach or Vasco’s departure. He went into the corridor and sat down next to her. ‘What are you reading, sweetie?’ he asked in a deep voice.

Ignoring him, she turned a page.

He moved closer and stuck his head between her and the page. ‘What’s that, Princess who?’

‘Casamassima,’ she said and slid away from him.

‘Is it good?’ he asked, sliding up against her.

‘Riveting,’ she answered, and, seeing that she had run out of bench, turned away from him.

‘You read a lot of books, angel?’ he persisted in the same intrusive, raspy voice, the voice of every crazy talker who comes to sit next to a person on the vaporetto.

‘I read a lot of books, yes,’ she said, then politely, ‘My husband is a policeman, so maybe you better leave me alone.’

‘You don’t have to be unfriendly, angel,’ he whined.

‘I know. But I have his gun in my purse, and I’m going to shoot you with it if you don’t leave me alone.’

‘Oh,’ Brunetti said and moved away from her. Sliding back to the other end of the bench, he crossed his legs and looked at the print of the Rialto Bridge on the wall opposite them. Paola turned a page and returned to London.

He shifted lower and rested his head against the wall. He considered whether Guarino might deliberately have misled him into thinking that the man lived near here. Perhaps Guarino feared that Brunetti’s participation would compromise the Carabinieris’ control of the investigation. Perhaps he was uncertain where his colleague’s real allegiance lay. And who could fault him for that? Brunetti had but to think of Lieutenant Scarpa to recall that safety’s best part was in seeming trust. And poor Alvise, six months working with Scarpa, learning to seek his praise. And so now Alvise was not to be trusted, not only because of his innate stupidity but because his silly little head had been turned by the attentions of the Lieutenant and he was now sure to rush to him with anything he learned.

He was dimly conscious of a hand being placed on his left shoulder; thinking it was Paola, coming back to him from Henry James, he placed his own on top of it and gave it a small squeeze. The hand was pulled roughly from under his, and he opened his eyes to see Vasco in front of him, face blank with shock.

‘I thought you were my wife,’ was all Brunetti could think to say, turning his head to where Paola sat, observing the two men without appearing to find them more interesting than her book.

‘We were talking before he fell asleep,’ she told Vasco, who blinked while he processed this and then smiled and leaned down to clap Brunetti on the shoulder.

‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen in this place,’ he said. He held up some sheets of paper, saying, ‘I’ve got copies of their passports.’ He went into the Director’s office.

Brunetti got to his feet and followed him.

Two papers lay on the desk, and two men looked up at him, the one in the photo and a younger man with hair that came to his collar and little evidence of a neck. ‘They came in together,’ Vasco said.

Brunetti picked up the first: ‘Antonio Terrasini,’ he read, ‘born in Plati.’ He looked at Vasco. ‘Where’s that?’

‘I thought you might want to know,’ he answered, smiling. ‘I had the girls check. Aspromonte, just above the National Park.’

‘What’s a Calabrian doing here?’

‘I’m Pugliese,’ Vasco said neutrally. ‘Might as well ask me the same question.’

‘Sorry,’ Brunetti said, setting the first paper down and picking up the other. ‘Giuseppe Strega,’ he read. ‘Born in the same town, but eight years later.’

Vasco said, ‘I noticed. The girls at the front desk share your curiosity about the first one, though I suspect for different reasons: they think he’s handsome. Both of them, in fact.’ Vasco took the papers back and studied the faces, Terrasini with the angled eyebrows over almond-shaped eyes and the other with wings of poet’s hair sweeping in from both sides of his face. ‘I don’t see it, myself,’ Vasco said and let the papers fall to the desk.

Neither did Brunetti, who said, ‘Strange creatures, women.’ Then he finally asked, ‘Why’s he a bastard?’