A Venetian Reckoning (17 page)

Without turning to him, Mara took off
her jacket and hung it carefully over the back of one of the chairs. She sat on
the edge of the bed, bent down and unstrapped her shoes. Brunetti heard her
sigh with relief as she kicked them off. Still not looking at him, she stood,
unbuttoned her skirt, removed it, and folded it carefully over the jacket.
Beneath it, she wore nothing. She sat, then lay, on the divan, still not bothering
to look at him.

'It's extra if you want to touch my
breasts,' she said, then turned to one side to straighten out the cover, which
was bunched up under her shoulder.

Brunetti walked across the room and
sat on the other chair, not the one holding her clothing. 'Where are you from,
Mara?' he asked in his normal voice, speaking Italian, not dialect.

She looked up at him, surprised
either by the question or by the completely normal conversational tone in
which it was asked. 'Look, Mr Plumber,' she said, voice tired rather than
sharp, 'you didn't come here to talk, and neither did I, so let's do this and I
can get back to work, all right?' She turned fully on to her back and opened
her legs wide.

Brunetti looked away. 'Where do you
come from, Mara?' he asked again.

She pulled her legs together and put
them over the side of the bed, sitting up to face him. 'Look, you, if you want
to fuck, then let's do it, all right? I haven't got all night to sit here and
talk. And it's none of your god-damned business where I come from.'

'Brazil?' he asked, taking a stab at
the accent.

She made an angry, disgusted noise,
pushed herself to her feet, and reached for her skirt. She held it low and
stepped into it, pulled it up, and yanked angrily at the zip. With one foot,
she began to feel under the bed for her shoes, which she had shoved under there
after she took them off. She sat back down on the edge of the bed and began to
strap her shoes back on.

'He can be arrested, you know’
Brunetti said in the same calm tone. 'He let me give him the money. That's good
for at least a couple of months inside.'

The bands that held her shoes to her
ankles were both securely buckled, but she didn't look up at Brunetti, nor did
she make any move to get up from the bed. She sat with her head lowered,
listening.

'I don't think you'd want that to
happen to him, would you?' Brunetti asked.

She gave a disgusted, unbelieving
snort

'Then think about what he'd be likely
to do when he got out, Mara. You didn't spot me. He's bound to blame you for
that'

She looked up at him and put out her
hand. 'Let me see some identification.'

Brunetti gave it to her.

‘What do you want?' she said when she
handed the warrant card back to him.

'I'd like you to tell me where you
come from.'

'Why, so you can send me back?' she
asked, meeting his eyes.

'I'm not from the immigration police,
Mara; I don't care whether you're here legally or illegally.'

Then what do you want?' she asked,
voice sparked with anger.

‘I told you. I want to know where
you're from.'

She hesitated only a moment,
examining the question for peril and, seeing none, answered him. 'Sao Paula'
He was right; the faint accent was Brazilian.

'How long have you been here?'

Two years,'she said.

'Working as a prostitute?' he asked,
trying to pronounce the word as definition, not condemnation. ‘Yes.'

'Have you always worked for that
man?' She looked up at him. ‘I won't tell you his name,' she said.

'I don't want to know his name, Mara.
I want to know if you've always worked for him.'

She said something, but her voice was
so low he couldn't hear her.

'Excuse me?' he said.

'No.'

'Always in that bar?' 'No.'

'Where did you work before?'
'Somewhere else,' she said evasively. 'How long have you worked in the bar?'
'Since September.' 'Why?' 'Why what?'

'Why did you move to the bar?'

'The cold weather. I'm not used to
it, and I got sick last winter, working outside. So he told me I could work in
the bar this winter.'

'I see,' Brunetti said. 'How many
other girls are there?'

‘In the bar?'

'Yes.'

'Three.'

'And on the street?'

'I don't know how many there are.
Four? Six? I don't know.'

'Are any of the others Brazilian?'

'Two of them are.' -   'And the rest,
where are they from?'

'I don't know.'

'What about the telephone?'

'What?' she asked, looking up at him,
eyes narrowed in what might be honest confusion.

'The telephone. In the bar. Who gets
calls there? Does he?'

The question clearly puzzled her. ‘I
don't know,' she said. 'Everybody uses the phone.'

'But who gets calls on it?'

She thought for a moment. 'I don't
know'

'Does he?' Brunetti insisted.

She shrugged, tried to glance away,
but Brunetti snapped his fingers in her face, and she looked back at him.

'Does he get calls?'

'Sometimes,' she said, then glanced
down at her watch and up at him. 'You should be finished by now.'

He glanced at his own watch; fifteen
minutes had passed.

'How much time does he let you take?'

'Usually a quarter of an hour. He
lets the old ones take longer if they're regulars. But if I'm not back soon, he’ll
ask questions, make me tell him why it took so long.'

From the way she spoke, it was
evident to Brunetti that any question the man asked, the woman would answer.
For a moment, he debated whether it would be better to let the man realize the
police were asking questions about him. He studied the woman's lowered face,
trying to determine how old she was. Twenty-five? Twenty?

'All right,
^’
he said,
getting to his feet.

At his sudden motion, she flinched away
and looked up at him. 'That's all?' she asked.

'Yes, that's all.’

'No quickie?'

'What?' he asked, lost.

'A quickie. Usually, when the cops
pull us in for questioning, that's what we have to do.' Her voice was neutral,
non-judgemental, tired.

'No, nothing like that,' he said,
moving towards the door.

Behind him, she got to her feet and
stuffed one arm, then the other, into the sleeves of her jacket. He held the
door open while she left the room and then followed her out into the hall. She
turned and locked the door, started down the single flight of steps. She shoved
open the front door of the building, turned to the right, and was gone, back in
the direction of the bar. Brunetti turned the opposite way and walked to the
end of the street, crossed it, and stood under a street tight until, a moment
later, della Corte’s black car pulled up beside him.

17