"Blood from a stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leon Donna)7Brunetti had not read the Rubini’s files produced much the same sense of literary As the Arabs were supplanted by Africans from further south, the frequency of crimes lessened: though immigration violations and selling without a licence remained, petty theft and crimes of violence virtually disappeared from the arrest records of the men who had inherited the name of The Arabs, he knew, had passed on to more lucrative employment, many of them migrating north to countries with no choice but to accept the residence permits so easily granted by an accommodating Italian bureaucracy. The He searched, but searched in vain, for any arrests during the last few years for crimes other than violations of visa regulations or selling without a licence. There had been one rape, six years ago, but the attacker turned out to be a Moroccan, not a Senegalese. In the only arrest involving violence, a Senegalese had chased an Albanian pickpocket halfway up Lista di Spagna before bringing him to the ground with a running tackle. The African had sat on the pickpocket’s back until the police responded to the call one of his friends made on his The last file contained a speculative report on numbers: there had been days during the previous summer when an estimated three to five hundred When he finished the report, Brunetti glanced at his watch and reached for the phone. From memory, he dialled the number of Marco Erizzo, who answered on the second ring. ‘What now, Guido?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘I hate those phones,’ Brunetti said. ‘I can’t sneak up on anyone any more.’ ‘Very James Bond, I know,’ Erizzo admitted, ‘but it lets me do a lot of filtering.’ ‘But you didn’t filter me,’ Brunetti said, ‘even though you knew I’d be likely to ask a favour.’ Brunetti made no attempt at small talk about Marco’s family, nor did he expect such questions: long friendship would already have alerted Marco that Brunetti’s voice was not the one he used for a social call. ‘I’m always interested in knowing what the forces of order are up to,’ Erizzo said with mock solemnity. ‘In case I can be of service to them in any way, of course.’ ‘I’m not the Finanza, Marco,’ Brunetti said. ‘No jokes about them, Guido, please,’ Erizzo said in a decidedly cooler tone. ‘And try to remember never to use their name when you’re talking to me, especially if you call me on the Unwilling to address himself to Marco’s unshakeable conviction that all phone calls, to make no mention of emails and faxes, were recorded, especially by the Finance Police, Brunetti instead asked, ‘It’s not as if you ever use any other telephone, is it?’ ‘Not one I answer. Tell me what it is, Guido.’ ‘The Marco wasted no time by asking the obvious question of whether this were related to last night’s killing and said instead, ‘Never been anything like it here in the city, has there, at least not since they shot that ‘Something like that,’ Brunetti agreed, aware of how long ago those awful years seemed now. ‘You know anything about them?’ ‘That they take nine and a half per cent of my business away from me,’ Erizzo said with sudden heat. ‘Why so exact?’ ‘I’ve calculated what I sold in bags before their arrival and after, and the difference is nine and a half per cent.’ He cut off the last syllable with his teeth. ‘Why don’t you do something about it?’ Erizzo laughed again, a sound utterly lacking in humour. ‘What do you suggest, Guido? A letter of complaint to your superiors, asking them to concern themselves with the welfare of their citizens? Next you’ll be asking me to send a postcard to the Vatican to ask them to concern themselves with my spiritual welfare.’ Bitter resignation had joined anger in Erizzo’s voice. ‘You people,’ Erizzo went on, presumably referring to the police, ‘you can’t do anything except shake them up for a day or so and let them out again. You don’t even bother to slap their wrists any more, do you?’ He paused, but Brunetti refused to venture a response into that silence. ‘There’s nothing I can do about them, Guido. The only thing I can hope is that they don’t lay down their sheets in front of one of my shops, the way they do in front of Max Mara, because if they do, the only thing that will happen is that I’ll lose more money. The politicians don’t want to hear about them, and you guys can’t — or won’t — do anything.’ Brunetti again thought it expedient not to express an opinion. He persisted, ‘But what do you know about them?’ ‘Probably not much more than anyone else in the city,’ Erizzo said. ‘That they’re from Senegal, they’re Muslims, they mostly live in Padova, some of them here, they don’t cause much trouble, and the bags are of good quality and the prices are right.’ ‘How do you know about the quality of the bags?’ Brunetti asked, hoping to divert his friend from his anger. ‘Because I’ve stopped on the street and looked at them,’ he said. ‘Believe me, Guido, even Louis Vuitton himself, if there is such a person, couldn’t tell the difference between the real ones and the ones these guys are selling. Same leather, same stitching, same logo all over the place.’ ‘Do they sell imitations of your bags?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Of course,’ Erizzo snapped. Brunetti chose to ignore the warning in his friend’s tone and went on, ‘Someone told me that the factories are in Puglia. Do you know anything about that?’ Voice no warmer, Erizzo said, ‘That’s what I’ve been told. The factories are the same. They work for the legitimate companies during the day, then they turn the fake ones out at night.’ ‘“Fake” doesn’t have much meaning any more, not if it’s the same factories, I’d say,’ Brunetti observed, trying to lighten the mood that had come over their conversation. There was to be no jollying Marco. ‘I suppose so,’ was his only comment. ‘Do you have any idea of who’s behind it?’ Brunetti persisted. ‘Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to figure that out, it’s so big and so well organized.’ Then, in a voice grown minimally less cool, Erizzo added, ‘They’ve got only one problem.’ ‘What?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Distribution,’ Erizzo surprised him by answering. ‘Huh?’ ‘Think about it, Guido. Anyone can produce. That’s the easy part: all you need is raw materials, a place to assemble them, and enough people who are willing to work for what you pay them. The real problem is finding a place to sell whatever it is you’ve made.’ Brunetti remained silent, so he proceeded, ‘If you sell it in a shop, you’ve got all sorts of expenses: rent, heat, light, a bookkeeper, salespeople. Worst of all, you’ve got to pay taxes.’ Brunetti wondered when he had ever had a conversation with Marco in which the subject of taxes had not been mentioned. ‘That’s what I do, Guido,’ his friend went on, voice veering back towards anger. ‘I pay taxes. I pay them on my shops, and for my employees, and on what I sell, and on what I manage to keep. And my employees pay taxes on what they earn. And some of it stays here, in Venice, Guido, and what they earn they spend here.’ The warmth in Marco’s voice was not that of friendship or returning intimacy. ‘You tell me how the city profits from what the ‘How do you know that?’ Brunetti demanded. Brunetti heard him take a deep breath. ‘Because no one bothers them, that’s why. Not the Guardia di Finanza, and not the Brunetti was at a loss about how to deal with his friend’s rage, so he let a long time pass before he said, voice calm, ‘Longest definition I’ve ever heard of “distribution”.’ Before Marco could react, he added, ‘Also the most illuminating.’ Marco paused for an equally long time, and Brunetti could almost hear the wheels of friendship spinning about in search of the road they had left. ‘Good,’ Marco finally said, and Brunetti thought he heard in that monosyllable the same relief that they had come back to firm ground. ‘I’m not sure all of this is true, but at least it makes sense.’ Was this the historian’s plight, Brunetti wondered, never to know what was true but only what made sense? Or the policeman’s? He drew himself away from these reflections and started to thank Marco, but before he could say more than the other man’s name, Marco said, ‘I’ve got another call. I’ve got to go.’ And then silence. The call had gained Brunetti no new information, but it had strengthened his belief that the He took a notebook and opened it to the centre page, where he found the phone number he wanted. Adding one to each of the digits in it and embarrassed at this simple code, he dialled. When a man answered on the fifth ring, Brunetti said only, ‘Good morning, I’d like to speak to Signor Ducatti.’ When the man told him he must have dialled a wrong number, Brunetti apologized for disturbing him and hung up. Immediately Brunetti regretted that he had not gone down to the bar at the bridge for a coffee before phoning: now he was trapped in his office until Sandrini called him back. To pass the time, he took some papers from his in tray and began to read through them. It was more than half an hour before his phone rang. He answered with his name, and the same voice that had told him he had dialled a wrong number said, ‘What is it?’ ‘I’m very well, Renato,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Thanks for asking.’ ‘Tell me what you want, Brunetti, and let me get back to the office.’ ‘Just stepped out to make a phone call, did you?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Tell me what you want,’ the man said with badly suppressed anger. ‘I want to know if your father-in-law’s — what shall I call them — if his business associates had anything to do with last night?’ ‘You mean the dead nigger?’ ‘I mean the dead African,’ Brunetti corrected him. ‘That all?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I’ll call you,’ he said and hung up. If Renato Sandrini were better behaved, perhaps Brunetti’s conscience would have troubled him about blackmailing and intimidating him. As it was, the man’s consistent rudeness, as well as the arrogance that characterized his public behaviour, made it almost pleasant for Brunetti to exercise his power over him. Twenty years ago, Sandrini, a criminal lawyer in Padova, had married the only daughter of a local Mafia boss. Children followed, as did an enormous amount of very well-paid defence work. The repeated success of Sandrini’s defences had turned him into something of a local legend. As the size of his legal practice increased, so too did that of his wife, Julia, until, at forty, she had come to resemble a barrel, though a barrel with very expensive taste in jewellery and an alarmingly possessive love for her husband. None of this would have worked to Sandrini’s disadvantage, nor to Brunetti’s advantage, were it not for a fire in a hotel on the Lido that had filled some of the rooms with smoke and caused four people to be taken to the hospital, unconscious. There, it was discovered that the man in room 307, who had given his name as Franco Rossi, carried the c Caution prevented him from approaching Sandrini until he had spoken at some length with the prostitute and her pimp and had obtained both videotaped and written statements from them. They were willing to talk only because they believed the man in question to be Franco Rossi, a wholesaler of fitted carpets from Padova. Had they had the least idea of who Sandrini was — more importantly, had they had any idea of the identity of his father-in-law — both would surely have preferred prison to having had the long conversations with the pleasant commissario from Venice. It had taken only one meeting with Sandrini for Brunetti to persuade the lawyer that it might be wiser, given the rather Victorian ideas of some members of the Mafia as to the sanctity of the marriage vows, to give the occasional piece of information to the pleasant commissario from Venice. To date, Brunetti had maintained his promise never to ask Sandrini to compromise his professional relationship with his clients, but he knew the promise was a false one and that he would grind information out of Sandrini mercilessly should it serve his own purposes. Brunetti placed the files into his out tray and, strangely cheered by the consideration of his own perfidy, went home for lunch. |
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