Dressed for Death (37 page)

At the top of the next flight of
steps, a young woman with a baby balanced on her hip stood at the door of an
apartment. When she saw him, she stepped back and reached for the door. ‘One
moment, Signora,’ Brunetti said, stopping where he was on the steps so as not
to frighten her. ‘I’m from the police.’

The woman’s glance, beyond him
and down the steps, to the source of the music that thundered up the stairs
behind him, suggested to Brunetti that she might not be surprised by his
arrival. ‘It’s about him, isn’t it?’ she asked, pointing with her chin towards
the source of the heavy bass that continued to flow up the stairs.

‘Signorina Vespa’s friend?’ he
asked.

^‘
Si.
Him,’ she said, spitting out the
syllables with such force that Brunetti wondered what else Malfatti had done in
the time he had been in the building.

‘How long has he been here?’
Brunetti asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, taking
another step back into her apartment. ‘The music’s been on all day, ever since
early morning. I can’t go down and complain.’

‘Why not?’

She pulled her baby closer to
her, as if to remind the man in front of her that she was a mother. ‘The last
time I did, he said terrible things to me.’

‘What about Signorina Vespa, can’t
you ask her?’

Her shrug dismissed the
usefulness of Signorina Vespa.

‘Isn’t she there with him?’

‘I don’t know who’s with him, and
I don’t care. I just want that music to stop so my baby can get to sleep.’ On
that cue, the baby, which had been heavily asleep in her arms, opened his eyes,
drooled, and went immediately back to sleep.

The music gave Brunetti the idea,
that and the fact that the woman had already complained to Malfatti about it.

‘Signora, go inside,’ he said. ‘I’m
going to slam your door and then go down and talk to him. I want you to stay
inside. Stay in the back of your apartment and don’t come out until one of my
men comes up and tells you that you can.’

She nodded and stepped back from
the door. Brunetti bent forward, reached into the apartment, and grabbed the
door by its handle. He pulled it towards him violently, crashing it shut with a
sound that rang out in the stairway like a shot.

He turned and slammed his way
down the steps, pounding his heels as hard as he could, creating a torrent of
noise that momentarily obscured the music. ‘
Basta con quella musica!’
’
he screamed in a wild voice, a man driven beyond the limits of patience. ‘Enough
of that music!’ he screamed again. When he got to the landing below, he pounded
on the door from behind which the music came, screaming as loud as he could, ‘Turn
that goddamned music down. My baby’s trying to sleep. Turn it down or I’ll call
the police.’ At the end of each sentence, he banged, then kicked, at the door.

He must have been at it for a
full minute before the volume of the music suddenly grew lower, though it was
still fully audible through the door. He forced his voice up into a higher
register, shouting now as though he had finally lost all control of himself, ‘Turn
the goddamned music oft Turn it off or I’ll come in there and turn it off for
you.’

He heard quick footsteps
approaching and braced himself. The door was pulled back suddenly, and a stocky
man filled the doorway, a short metal rod gripped in his hand. Brunetti had
only an instant, but in that instant he recognized Malfatti from his police
photos.

Holding the rod down at his side,
Malfatti took one step forward, bringing himself half-way through the door. ‘Who
the hell do you—’ he began but stopped when Brunetti lunged forward and grabbed
him, one hand on his right forearm and the other on the cloth of his shirt.
Brunetti swiveled, turned on his hip, and swung out with all his strength.
Caught completely off guard, Malfatti was pulled forward and off balance. For
an instant, he balked at the top of the stairs, trying vainly to shift his
weight and pull himself backwards, but then he lost his balance and toppled
forward down the steps. As he fell, he dropped the iron bar and wrapped both
arms around his head, turning himself into an acrobatic ball that tumbled down
the steps.

Brunetti scrambled down the
stairs after him, screaming Vianello’s name as loud as he could. Half-way down
the steps, Brunetti stepped on the iron bar and slipped to his side, crashing
against the wall of the stairway. When he looked up, he saw Vianello pushing
open the heavy door at the bottom of the steps. But by that time, Malfatti had
scrambled to his feet and was standing just behind the door. Before Brunetti
could shout a warning, Malfatti kicked the door, slamming it into Vianello’s
face, knocking the gun from his hand and him out into the narrow
calle.
Malfatti pulled the door open and disappeared into the sunlight beyond.

Brunetti got to his feet and ran
down the steps, drawing his pistol, but by the time he got to the street,
Malfatti had disappeared, and Vianello lay against the low wall of the canal,
blood streaming from his nose on to his white uniform shirt. Just as Brunetti
bent over him, the three other officers piled out of the bookstore,
machine-guns pointed in front of them but no one to point them at.

* * * *

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Vianello’s
nose was not broken, but he was badly shaken. With Brunetti’s help, he got to
his feet, weaved unsteadily for a moment, wiping at his nose with his hand.

People crowded around them, old
women demanding to know what was happening, the fruit vendors already
explaining to their newest customers what they had seen. Brunetti turned away
from Vianello and almost tripped over a metal grocery cart filled to the top
with vegetables. He kicked it angrily aside and turned to the two men who
worked on the nearest boat. They had a clear view of the door to the building
and must have seen everything.

‘Which way did he go?’

Both pointed down toward the
campo,
but then one pointed to the right, in the direction of the Accademia
bridge, while the other pointed to the left and towards Rialto.

Brunetti signalled to one of the
officers, who helped him lead Vianello towards the boat. Angrily, the sergeant
pushed their hands away, insisting he could walk by himself. From the deck of
the boat, Brunetti radioed the Questura with a description of Malfatti, asking
that copies of his photo be distributed to all the police in the city and that
his description be radioed to everyone on patrol.

When the officers were aboard,
the pilot backed the boat towards the Grand Canal, then swung it round and
headed towards the Questura. Vianello went down into the cabin and sat with his
head tilted back to stop the bleeding. Brunetti followed him. ‘Do you want to
go to the hospital?’

‘It’s only a bloody nose,’
Vianello said. ‘It’ll stop in a minute.’ He wiped at it with his handkerchief. ‘What
happened?’

‘I banged on his door,
complaining about his music, and he opened it. I pulled him out and threw him
down the stairs.’ Vianello looked surprised. ‘It was all I could think of,’
Brunetti explained. ‘But I didn’t think he’d recover so quickly.’

‘What now?’ Vianello asked. ‘What
do you think he’ll do?’

‘Try to get in touch with
Ravanello and Santomauro, I’d say.’

‘Do you want to warn them?’

‘No,’ Brunetti answered
immediately. ‘But I want to know where they are, and I want to see what they
do. I want them watched.’ The launch swung into the canal that led to the
Questura, and Brunetti climbed back on deck. When they pulled up to the small
dock, he jumped ashore and waited while Vianello followed him. As they passed
through the front door, the officers on guard stared at the sergeant’s bloody
shirt but said nothing. When the other officers came off the boat, the guards
crowded round and asked for an explanation.

At the second landing, Vianello
went off towards the bathroom at the end of the corridor, and Brunetti went up
to his own office. He called the Banca di Verona and, using a false name, asked
to speak to Signor Ravanello. When the man he spoke to asked him what this was
in regard to, Brunetti explained that it was about the estimate the banker had
asked for on a new computer. He was told that Signor Ravanello was not in that
morning but could be reached at home. Asked, the man supplied the banker’s home
number, and Brunetti dialled it immediately, only to find it busy.

He found the number of Santomauro’s
office, dialled it, and, giving the same false name, asked if he could speak to
Avvocato Santomauro. The lawyer, his secretary explained, was busy with another
client and could not be disturbed. Brunetti said he would call back and hung
up.

He dialled Ravanello’s number
again, but still it was busy. He pulled the phone book from his bottom drawer
and looked up Ravanello’s name, curious to find the address. From the listing,
he guessed that it would have to be in the vicinity of Campo San Stefano, not
far from Santomauro’s office. He considered how Malfatti would get there: the
obvious answer was the
traghetto,
the public gondola that plied the
waters back and forth between Ca’ Rezzonico and Campo San Samuele on the
opposite side of the Grand Canal. From there, it was only minutes to Campo San
Stefano.

He dialled the number again, but
still it was busy. He called the operator and asked her to check the line and,
after waiting less than a minute, was told that the line was open though not in
contact with any other number, which meant the phone was either out of order or
had been left off the hook. Even before he hung up, Brunetti was mapping out
the fastest way to get there: the launch was best. He went down the stairs and
into Vianello’s office. The sergeant, wearing a clean shirt, looked up when
Brunetti came in.

‘Ravanello’s phone is off the
hook.’

Vianello was out of his chair and
on the way to the door before Brunetti said anything else.

Together, they went downstairs
and out into the blanketing heat. The pilot was hosing down the deck of the
launch but, seeing the two men come running out the front door, he tossed the
hose to the sidewalk and jumped to the wheel.

‘Campo San Stefano,’ Brunetti
called to him. ‘Use the siren.’

Klaxon shouting out its
double-noted call, the boat pulled away from the dock and once again out into
the
bacino.
Boats and vaporetti slowed to allow it to speed past them;
only the elegant black gondolas paid it no heed: by law, all boats had to defer
to the slow passage of the gondola.

Neither of them spoke. Brunetti
went down into the cabin and consulted a city guide to see where the address
was located. He was right: the apartment was directly opposite the entrance to
the church that gave the
campo
its name.

As the boat neared the Accademia
bridge, Brunetti went back on deck and told the pilot to cut the siren. He had
no idea what they would find at San Stefano, but he would like their arrival
there to go unannounced. The pilot switched the siren off and pulled the boat
into the Rio del Orso and over to the landing stage on the left side. Brunetti
and Vianello climbed up on to the embankment and walked quickly through the
open
campo.
Lethargic couples sat at tables in front of a cafe, hunched
over pastel drinks; everyone walking in the
campo
looked to be carrying
the heat like a palpable yoke across their shoulders.

They quickly found the door,
between a restaurant and a shop that sold Venetian paper. Ravanello’s bell was
on the top right of the two rows of names. Brunetti rang the one below it then,
when there was no answer, the one under that. When a voice answered, asking who
it was, he declared,
‘Polizia,’
and the door snapped open immediately.

He and Vianello went into the
building, and, from above them, a high, querulous voice called out, ‘How did
you get here so fast?’

Brunetti started up the stairs,
Vianello close behind him. On the first floor, a grey-haired woman, little
taller than the banister over which she leaned, called down again, ‘How did you
get here so fast?’