A Venetian Reckoning (28 page)

The report went on to state that,
transportation costs being what they are, a new market opportunity was seen
opening up in the East as thousands of blonde, blue-eyed women lost their jobs
or saw their savings gobbled up by inflation. Seventy years of the physical
privations of Communism had prepared them to rail easy prey to the
blandishments of the West, and so they migrated in cars and trucks, on foot,
and sometimes even on sleds, all seeking the great El Dorado that was their
Western neighbour, but finding, instead, when they arrived, that they were
without papers, without rights, and without hope.

Brunetti believed it all and was
staggered by the final number: half a million. He flipped to the back pages and
read through the names of the people and organizations that had compiled the
report; they were enough to persuade him to believe the number, though it still
remained intolerable. There were entire provinces of Italy that didn't have
half a million women living in them. Their numbers could populate whole cities.

When he finished it, he set the
report in the centre of his desk, then pushed it farther away from him, as
if fearing its power of contamination. He opened his drawer and pulled
out a pencil, took a piece of paper, and quickly made a list of three names:
one was a Brazilian police major whom he had met while on
a
police seminar in Paris some years ago; one was
the owner of an import-export firm with offices in Bangkok; and the third was
Pia, a prostitute. All of them, for one reason or another, were in Brunetti's
debt, and he could think of no better way of calling in those debts than by
asking them for information.

He spent the next two hours on the
phone, running up
a
bill
that was later made to evaporate by a few key strokes on the central computer
at the SIP offices. At the end of that time, he knew little more than he had
already read in the report, but he knew it more fully, more personally.

Major de Vedia in Rio was unable to
share Brunetti's concern and incapable of understanding his indignation. After
all, seven of his officers had that week been arrested for working as an
execution squad for Rio merchants, who paid them to kill the street children
who blocked access to their shops. 'The lucky ones are the ones who go to
Europe, Guido,' he said before he hung up. His contact in Bangkok was just as
uncomprehending. 'Commissario, more than half of the whores here have Aids. The
girls who get out of Thailand are the lucky ones.'

The most valuable source was Pia,
whom he found at home, kept there by her golden retriever, Luna, who was about
to give birth to her first Utter. She knew all about the business, was
surprised that the police were bothering with it. When she learned that
Brunetti's interest had been provoked by the death of three businessmen, she
laughed long and loud. The girls, she explained after she caught her breath,
came in from all over; some worked the streets, but many were kept in houses,
where better control could be kept over them. Yes, they got banged around a
fair bit, if not by the men who ran them, then by some of the men who used
them. Complain? To whom? They had no papers, they were persuaded that their there
presence in Italy was a crime; some never even learned to speak Italian. After
all, it's not as if they were engaged in a profession where sparkling
conversation counted for very much.

Pia felt no particular animus towards
them, though she didn't hide the fact that she minded the competition. She and
her friends, none of whom had a pimp, at least had some sort of economic
stability — an apartment, a car, some even had their own homes— but these
foreign women had none, and so they could not afford to reject a client, no
matter what he demanded. They and the women who were addicts were the worst
off, would accept anything, could be forced to do anything. Powerless, they
became the targets of brutality and, worse, the vectors of disease.

He asked her how many there were in
the Veneto area and, with a laugh, she told him he didn't know how to count
that high. But then Luna gave a bark so loud that even Brunetti could hear it,
and Pia said she had to go.

'Who's in charge, Pia?' he asked,
hoping to get one more answer from her before she hung up.

'It's big business, dottore,' she
said, using the English words. 'You might as well ask who runs the banks or the
stock market. It's the same men with the good haircuts and the custom-made
suits. Church on Sunday, go to the office every day, and when no one's looking,
count up how much they've made from the women who work on their backs. We're
just another commodity, dottore. Writ long enough, well be listed on the
futures market.' Pia laughed, made a rude suggestion about what the futures
could be named, Luna howled, and Pia hung up.

On the same piece of paper, Brunetti
began to do some simple sums. He decided to estimate the average price of a
trick at 50,000 lire, then had to admit that he had no idea how many a day there
might be. He decided that selecting ten would simplify his multiplication, so
he made it ten. Even with the weekend off, which he doubted was a luxury these
women were permitted, it came to 2.5 million lire a week, 10 million lire a
month. He decided to simplify things and settled on 100 million lire a year,
then cut it in half to make up, however roughly, for any errors he might have
made in his previous calculations. After that, when he tried to multiply by
half a million, he ceased having a name for the sum and had to settle for
counting the zeros: there were, he thought, fifteen of them. Pia was right:
this was indeed big business.

Instinct and experience told him that
there was no more information to be had from either Mara or her pimp. He called
down to Vianello and asked whether they'd located the optician who had sold the
glasses found in the Padua restaurant. Vianello covered the phone with his
hand, sound disappeared, and then the sergeant's voice came back, tight with
what sounded like anger or even something stronger. 'I'll be up in a minute,
dottore,' he said and put the phone down.

When the sergeant came in, his face
was still red with what Brunetti knew from long experience was the aftermath of
rage. Vianello closed the door softly behind him, and came over to Brunetti's
desk. 'Riverre,' he said by way of explanation, naming the black nemesis of
his life, indeed, of the entire staff of the Questura.

'What's he done?'

'He found the optician yesterday,
made a note of it, but left it on his own desk until just now when I asked
about it' Had he been in a better mood, Brunetti would have quipped that at
least Riverre had bothered to make a note this time, but he found himself
without either patience or good humour. And long experience had taught them
both that, in the issue of Riverre's incompetence, comment was unnecessary. ‘Which
one?'

'Carraro, in Calle della Mandora.'
'Did he get a name?'

Vianello bit at his lower lip, his
hands tightened into involuntary fists. 'No, he was content merely to discover
that the glasses had been sold, with that prescription. That's all he was told
to do, he said, so that's what he did'

Brunetti pulled out the phone book,
and quickly found the number. The optician, when he answered, said that he had
been expecting another call from the police and immediately gave Brunetti the
name and address of the woman who had bought those glasses. From the way he
spoke, it seemed that he believed the police were interested in no more than
seeing that her glasses were returned to her. Brunetti did nothing to disabuse
him of this idea.

'But I don't think you'll find her at
home,' Dr Carraro volunteered. 'I think she’ll be at work.'

'And where is that dottore?' Brunetti
asked, voice warm with concern.

‘She has a travel agency over near
the university, halfway between it and the shop that sells carpets.’

'Ah, yes, I know it,' Brunetti said,
recalling a poster-filled window he had passed countless times. Thank you,
dottore, I’ll see that the glasses are returned to her.'

Brunetti put down the phone, looked
up at Vianello, and said, 'Regina Ceroni. Name mean anything to you?'

Vianello shook his head.

'She runs that travel agency over by
the university: 'Do you want me to come with you, sir?' Vianello asked.

'No, I mink I’ll go over before lunch
and return Signora Ceroni's glasses to her.'

Brunetti stood in the late-afternoon
drizzle of mid-November and looked at the sun-swept beach. A hammock stretched
between two enormous palm trees, and in it lay a young woman wearing, so far as
he could make out, only the bottom of her bikini. Beyond her, soft waves broke
on the sandy beach, while a lapis sea stretched out to the horizon. All this
could be his for a week for a there 1,800,000 lire, double occupancy, air fare
included.

He pushed open the door to the agency
and went in. An attractive young woman with dark hair sat at a computer. She
glanced up at him and smiled pleasandy.

'Buon
giorno!’
he said, returning her smile. 'Is Signora Ceroni
here?'

'And who may I say is calling?'

'Signor Brunetti.'

She held up a hand in a waiting
gesture, pushed a few more keys, and men stood up. To her left, the printer
chattered into life, and what appeared to be an airline ticket began to emerge.

‘I’ll tell her you're here, Signor Brunetti,'
she said, turning towards the back of the office, where there was a single
door, closed now. She knocked and entered without waiting. A few moments later,
she came out and held the door for Brunetti, signalling him to enter.

The inner office was far smaller than
the outer, but what it lacked in space it more than made up for in style. The
desk was, he thought, teak, polished to a glassy sheen, its absence of drawers
proclaiming that it needed no excuse of utility to explain its presence. The carpet
was a pale gold Isfahan silk, similar to one lying on the floor of Brunetti's
father-in-law's study.

The
woman
who
sat behind both of these had light hair pulled back on bom sides and held in
place by a carved ivory comb. The simplicity of the style contrasted with both
the fabric and the cut of her suit, dark-grey raw silk with heavily padded
shoulders and very narrow sleeves. She appeared to be in her thirties, but
because of her skill with make-up and
the
general
elegance of her bearing, it was difficult to tell which end she was closer to.
She wore a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. The left lens had a small
semi-circular chip in the lower corner, little wider than a pea.

She looked up as he came in, smiled
without opening her mouth, removed her glasses and placed them on the papers
in front of her, but said nothing. The colour of her eyes, he noticed,, was so
exactly that of her suit that it could not have been coincidental. Looking at
her, Brunetti found himself thinking of the description

Figaro gives of the woman with whom
Count Almaviva is in love: light hair, rosy cheeks, eyes that speak.

'Si?' she asked.

‘Signora Ceroni?'

‘Yes.'

‘I’ve brought you your glasses,’ Brunetti
said, taking them from his pocket but not looking away from her.

Her face filled with instant pleasure
that made her even lovelier. 'Oh, wonderful,' she said and got to her feet.
"Wherever did you find them?’ Brunetti heard a slight accent, perhaps
Slavic, certainly Eastern European.

Without saying anything, he passed
them across the desk to her. She accepted the leather case and set it on top of
the desk without looking inside.

'Aren't you going to check that
they're yours?’ he asked.

'No, I recognize the case,' she said.
Then, smiling again, 'But how did you know they were mine?’

‘We called the opticians in the
city.'

‘We?' she asked. But then she
remembered her manners and said, 'But please, sit down. I'm afraid I'm being
very impolite.’

'Thank you,' Brunetti said and sat in
one of the three chairs that stood in front of her desk.

‘I'm sorry’ she said, 'but Roberta
didn't tell me your name.’

'Brunetti, Guido Brunetti.’

Thank you, Signor Brunetti, for going
to all of this trouble. You certainly could have called me, and I would have
been very glad to go and pick them up.

There's no need for you to have come
all the way across the city to give them to me.'