Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

‘He offered to give five back,’ she said in the voice of careful honesty.

Brunetti pushed his chair at a slant and balanced it on its back legs. He latched his fingers together behind his head. ‘I was in a bar last week, and two people in front of me were talking about just that: the thirteen million. And one of them – she was a woman at least a decade older than I am – she put her coffee cup down on the saucer and said only one word. “Bombs”.’

He saw that he had caught Griffoni’s attention, but he kept his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling as he spoke. ‘The woman with her asked what she meant, and she said that the only way to get rid of them was to bomb Montecitorio and kill them all.’

He lowered his head to see that she was paying attention. ‘The woman with her was the same age, carrying her shopping bag and on the way to Rialto. She looked surprised and said, “But that would damage the building, and it’s so beautiful.”

He took his hands from behind his head and let his chair fall to the ground. ‘So that, Claudia, is what the middle class thinks of our Parliament.’

She shrugged, as if to dismiss the woman’s comment or the importance Brunetti saw in it, but after a moment’s reflection said, ‘I like her concern for the building.’ Then, back to business, she asked, ‘What can we do about Foa?’

‘Patta’s asked me to do him a favour. If I can manage it, I’ll make the price of it that Foa be assigned to this.’

‘You don’t want to use it for yourself?’

‘You sound as if I’m a squirrel burying a nut for the winter,’ he said with a laugh.

His laughter proved contagious. When they stopped, Griffoni said, ‘We trade them back and forth: I do this for you; you do that for me.’

‘And we all have a list, accurate to the centesimo , stored away in our memories.’

‘Like the squirrels,’ she said, thanked him for his time, and left his office.

13

Though it was just quarter to eleven, Brunetti decided to go down to the bar and wait for Bianchini. He looked out the window and saw that it was still raining, so he took the umbrella. The bar was only down at the bridge, so he didn’t bother with his raincoat.

Inside, he said hello and exchanged a few words with Bambola, the tall Senegalese who ran the place most days. Brunetti studied the pastries and, seeing that there was only one of its kind left, told Bambola he’d like the apple and ricotta, but not until the man he was meeting there arrived. Bambola took a pair of metal tongs and placed the pastry on a small plate that he set to the left of the coffee machine. The door was pushed open and smacked against the wall. Two straw-hatted gondolieri, who worked at the boat station on the corner, came in and walked to the bar.

They were, unsurprisingly, loud and vulgar, in the middle of a conversation that consisted of boasts about their sexual conquests of clients. Bambola served them with a kind of exalted deference behind which they were unable to see a contempt so palpable as almost to scream its presence in the room. He never failed to call each of them, ‘Signore’, and insisted upon using the formal ‘ Lei ’ with them, though they called him, unasked, ‘ tu ’. Each man had a glass of white wine and a tramezzino and Brunetti was astonished when each of them paid for his own separately. The experience of life had taught him to believe there was a genetic peculiarity in Italian men that prevented them, ever, from letting someone else pay for his drink. But then he remembered that they were gondolieri and thus had an entirely different genetic structure. They remained at the bar, leaning back against it, from which position they could see down the canal to the gondola stop, and they continued their conversation, which he sensed was aimed, somehow, at Bambola.

He moved away from the bar, taking the newspaper with him. He sat at his usual table at the back and opened the paper, looked at the headlines, and thought about what Bianchini might have to tell him.

A man came in, very tall, thin, about Brunetti’s age but almost entirely bald. What hair remained was cut short and encircled the back of his head, as if he scorned any attempt to disguise his baldness. Brunetti saw the look he gave the gondolieri but they, eyes alert for business at the dock at the end of the canal, did not. He approached Bambola, nodded to him. The African made a graceful gesture towards Brunetti; the man nodded again in thanks and turned away.

‘One of them was a Black American, ass as big as a horse,’ Brunetti overheard. ‘But hot; this one was hot, the way the Blacks are.’

Bianchini stopped and stood perfectly still for a slow count of five, then turned back towards them. With a motion neither of the gondolieri missed, he unbuttoned his jacket and planted his feet solidly. ‘Excuse me,’ he said in a normal speaking voice, and then after a pause, ‘Signori.’ They turned to look at him, and Brunetti could read the astonishment in their faces.

‘I think it might be time you went back to your boats.’ His voice was very deep, calm, utterly devoid of emotion.

The taller of the two gondolieri lifted a foot as if to take a step towards the stranger, but his companion – older, wiser, quicker – placed a hand on his arm and swung him around until they were facing one another. Keeping his hand on his companion’s arm, he gave a small shake of his head and turned towards the door. He had to pull at the other’s arm, then he lowered his head and said something to him. The younger one turned his head to look at Bianchini and then followed his companion out of the bar.

Bianchini looked at the barman, who met his gaze with a smile. ‘Would you like your coffee now, Commissario?’ he called to Brunetti.

‘Yes, please,’ Brunetti said, face blank as though he had just dragged his attention away from the newspaper.

The man walked over to him, and Brunetti slipped his legs from under the table to stand. ‘Bianchini, Sandro,’ the man said as he extended his hand. His grasp was firm, but it was only a handshake, not a test of male dominance.

Bianchini was taller than Brunetti, though much thinner, wiry. The skin on his forehead showed the old scars of acne; his light beard was perhaps an attempt to disguise the same marks on his cheeks. His dark eyes were set deep below heavy brows, but his full-lipped mouth and easy smile countered any suggestion of roughness one might see in them.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Brunetti said and sat. Bianchini sat opposite.

Bambola was suddenly there. He set the plate and pastry before Brunetti and a coffee in front of each man. There were also two small glasses of water, which he put down silently before he went back to his place behind the bar.

‘My cousin said you were curious about the vigili,’ Bianchini said, wasting no time. Then, after a pause, ‘He’s a good man, Roberto.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Brunetti agreed. He poured an envelope of sugar into his coffee and swirled it around, then used his spoon to cut the pastry in half.

‘Did he tell you what it was about?’ Brunetti asked.

‘That mask shop in San Barnaba.’

Brunetti nodded. He picked up a piece of pastry with one of the napkins on the plate and took a bite. ‘Would you like the other half?’ he asked.

‘No, thanks,’ Bianchini said with an easy smile. ‘I can’t eat things like that.’ In response to Brunetti’s furrowed brow, he added, ‘Diabetes.’ Saying that, he took a tube of artificial sweetener from the inside pocket of his jacket and dropped two tiny white pills into his coffee.

Brunetti took a sip of coffee, then said, having decided this was not a man with whom one wasted time, ‘I’ve been told that the vigili are being paid to ignore the tables in front of the shop.’ Hearing himself say this filled Brunetti with sudden embarrassment. Was he, like Scarpa, Patta’s creature, obliged to do his bidding at every turn? ‘The licence holder is the fiancée of the mayor’s son, so there’s a possibility of scandal if this becomes public. The Vice-Questore wants to avoid that.’ He stopped speaking and finished his coffee. He no longer wanted the rest of the pastry and pushed the plate aside.