Something else, then. Brunetti lowered his head and stared at the copy of the message formed by cut-out letters. Something else. ‘Sex or money,’ he said out loud and heard Signorina Elettra’s startled gasp. She had come in unnoticed and stood in front of his desk, a folder in her right hand.
He looked up at her and smiled.
‘I beg your pardon, Commissario?’
‘That’s why he was killed, Signorina. Sex or money.’
She understood instantly. ‘Always in good taste, those two,’ she said and placed the file on his desk. ‘This one is about the second.’
‘Whose?’
‘Both of theirs.’ A look of dissatisfaction crossed her face. ‘I can’t make any sense out of the numbers there, those for Dottor Mitri.’
‘In what way?’ Brunetti asked, knowing that if Signorina Elettra found numbers confusing there was little chance that he would have any idea what they meant.
‘He was very rich.’
Brunetti, who had been inside his home, nodded.
‘But the factories and businesses he owned don’t make very much money.’
This was a common enough phenomenon, Brunetti knew. To go by their tax returns, no one in Italy made enough to live on; they were a nation of paupers, scraping by only by turning collars, wearing shoes until they could be worn no more and, for all he knew, surviving on chaff and nettles. And yet the restaurants were full of well-dressed people, everyone seemed to have a new car, and the airports never ceased sending off planeloads of happy tourists. Go figure, as an American friend of his was much in the habit of saying.
‘I can’t imagine you’d be surprised by that,’ Brunetti said.
‘No, I’m not. We all cheat on our taxes. But I’ve studied all the records for his companies, and it looks like they’re correct. That is, none of them makes him much more than twenty million or so a year.’
‘For a total of what?’
‘About two hundred million a year.’
‘Profit?’
‘That’s what he declared,’ she answered. ‘After his taxes he was left with less than half of that.’
It was considerably more than Brunetti earned per year and hardly meant a life of poverty. ‘But why are you so sure?’ he asked.
‘Because I’ve also checked his credit card expenses.’ She nodded down at the folder. ‘And they are not the expenses of a man who earns that little.’
Not at all sure how to react to that dismissive ‘little’, Brunetti said, ‘How much did he spend?’ He waved her to a seat.
She tucked her long skirt under her and sat on the front of the chair, her spine not even flirting with its back, and waved her right hand in front of her. ‘I don’t remember the exact sum. More than fifty million, I think. So if you add to that the costs of running his home, just running his life, there’s no way to explain how he could have almost a billion lire in savings and stocks.’
‘Maybe he won the lottery,’ Brunetti suggested with a smile.
‘No one wins the lottery,’ Signorina Elettra answered without one.
‘Why would he keep so much money in the bank?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No one expects to die, I suppose. But he’s been moving it around. During the last year, quite a bit of it disappeared.’
‘Where?’
She shrugged. ‘To the places money disappears to, I suppose: Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Channel Islands.’
‘How much?’
‘About half a billion.’
Brunetti gazed down at the folder, but didn’t open it. He glanced up. ‘Can you find out?’
‘I haven’t really begun to look, Commissario. That is, I’ve begun, but I’ve just been glancing around, as it were. I haven’t really started to pry open drawers or rifle through his private papers.’
‘Do you think you could find time to do that?’
Brunetti could not remember the last time he had offered candy to a baby, but he had a vague memory of a smile much like the one Signorina Elettra gave him. ‘There’s nothing that would give me greater joy,’ she said, surprising him only by her rhetoric, not by her response. She got to her feet, eager to be off.
‘And Zambino?’
‘Nothing at all. I’ve never found anyone whose records are so clear and so…’ She paused here, seeking the proper term. ‘So clear and so honest,’ she said, unable to restrain her wonder at the sound of the last word. ‘Never.’
‘Do you know anything about him?’
‘Personally?’ Brunetti nodded, but instead of answering she enquired, ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘No reason,’ he answered and then, made curious by her apparent reluctance, asked, ‘Do you?’
‘He’s a patient of Barbara’s.’
He considered this. He knew Signorina Elettra well enough to be aware that she would never reveal something she thought came under the seal of family, and her sister to realize she would always be bound by her oath as a doctor. He let it drop. ‘Professionally?’
‘Friends of mine have used him.’
‘As a lawyer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? I mean for what sort of cases?’
‘Remember when Lily was attacked?’ she asked.
Brunetti recalled the case, one that had reduced him to speechless rage. Three years ago, Lily Vitale, an architect, had been attacked on her way home from the opera, in what might have begun as a mugging, but which ended in a much more violent attack, when her face had been repeatedly punched and her nose broken. No attempt had been made to rob her; her bag was found, untouched, beside her by the people who came out from their homes in answer to her screams.
Her attacker was arrested that night and quickly identified as the same man who had attempted to rape at least three other women in the city. But he had never stolen anything and he was actually incapable of rape, so he was given three months of house arrest, but not before his mother and girlfriend had stepped forward at the trial to praise his virtue, loyalty, and integrity.
‘Lily brought a civil suit against him for damages. Zambino was her lawyer.’
Brunetti knew nothing of this. ‘And?’
‘She lost.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he never tried to rob her. All he did was break her nose, and the judge didn’t think that was as serious as stealing her purse. So he didn’t even award damages. He said that the house arrest was sufficient punishment.’
‘And Lily?’
Signorina Elettra shrugged. ‘She doesn’t go out alone any more, so she gets around less.’
The young man was currently in jail for having stabbed his girlfriend, but Brunetti didn’t think that would matter to Lily, nor would it change anything.
‘How did he react to losing the case?’
‘I don’t know. Lily never said.’ She didn’t offer anything after this and got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and have a look,’ she said, reminding him that they were here about Mitri and not about a woman whose courage had been broken.
‘Yes, thank you. I think I’ll have a word with Awocato Zambino.’
‘As you will, Commissario.’ She turned to the door. ‘But, believe me, if anyone is clean, he is.’ As the person named was a lawyer, Brunetti gave this the attention he devoted to the mutterings of the lunatics in front of Palazzo Boldù.
17
He decided not to take Vianello with him, hoping that his visit to the lawyer would thus appear a more casual thing, though he hardly believed a man as exposed to the law in all its workings as Zambino would be much affected by the sight of a uniform. A quotation Paola often used slipped into his mind, the description of one of Chaucer’s pilgrims, the Man of Law: ‘He seemed busier than he was.’ Brunetti thus thought it might be wise to call ahead and let the avvocato know that he was coming and thus avoid being kept waiting while he did lawyerly things. His secretary, or whoever it was that answered the phone, said that he would be free in about half an hour and would be able then to speak to the commissario.