'Yes, Lieutenant?'
Without introduction, Scarpa asked, 'This Hungarian, Mary Dox, is she your doing?'
'I beg your pardon, Lieutenant?'
Scarpa held up a folder, as if the sight of it would make things clear to Brunetti. 'Is she yours?' the lieutenant asked again, his voice neutral.
'I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Lieutenant’ Brunetti said.
In an intentionally melodramatic gesture, Scarpa raised the hand with the folder in the air between them, as if he had suddenly decided to auction it off, and asked, 'You don't know what I'm talking about? You don't know anything about Mary Dox?'
'No.'
Just as Assunta De Cal had done when confronted with evidence of knuckle-headed masculinity, Scarpa threw his hands up in the air, then stepped to the right and continued on up the stairs without saying anything further.
Brunetti went to the officers' room in search of Vianello. He found, instead, Pucetti, hunched over his desk and deeply engrossed in what looked like the same report Brunetti had just finished. The young officer was so engrossed in what he was reading that he did not hear Brunetti approach.
'Pucetti’ Brunetti said as he reached the desk, 'have you seen Vianello?'
At the sound of his name, Pucetti looked up from the papers, but it took him a few seconds to tear his attention away from them; he pushed his chair back and got to his feet. 'Excuse me, Commissario, I didn't hear you,' he said. His right hand still grasped the papers, so he was prevented from saluting. To compensate, he stood as straight as he could.
'Vianello,' Brunetti said and smiled. 'I'm looking for him.'
He watched Pucetti's eyes and saw him force himself to recall who Vianello was. Then Pucetti said, 'He was here before.' He looked around the office, as if curious to discover where he found himself. 'But he must have gone out.'
Brunetti let almost a full minute pass, and during that time he watched Pucetti return from the land where interrogation techniques were discussed with cold dispassion—if, in fact, that was the subject that had so fully captured the attention of the young man.
When he had Pucetti's full attention, Brunetti said, 'Lieutenant Scarpa asked me about a folder he had, dealing with a Hungarian woman named Mary Dox. Do you have any idea what this is about?'
Pucetti's face registered comprehension and he said, 'He came in here this morning, sir, asking about the same woman. He wanted to know if any of us knew about her case.'
'And?'
'And no one did.'
Aware of the uniformed staff's opinion of the lieutenant, Brunetti asked, 'No one did or no one said they did?'
'No one did, sir. We talked about it after he left, and no one knew what he was talking about.'
'Is this where Vianello's gone?'
'I don't think so. He didn't know anything, either. My guess is that he's just gone down to get a coffee.'
Brunetti thanked him and told him to continue with his reading, to which Pucetti did not respond.
At the bar near Ponte dei Greci, Brunetti found Vianello at the counter, a glass of wine in front of him as he leafed through that day's paper.
'What did Scarpa want?' Brunetti asked as he came in. He asked the barman for a coffee.
Vianello folded the newspaper and moved it to one side of the bar. 'I've no idea,' he answered. 'Whatever it is, or whoever she is, it's trouble. I've never seen him so angry.'
'No idea?' Brunetti asked, nodding his thanks to the barman as he set down the coffee.
'None’ Vianello answered.
Brunetti stirred in sugar and drank half the coffee, then finished it. 'You read these regulations from the Ministry of the Interior?' he asked Vianello.
'I never read their directives,' Vianello said and took a sip of his wine. 'I used to, but I don't care about them any more.'
'Why?'
'They never say anything much: just words, words all tortured so as to sound good while justifying the fact that they really don't want to achieve anything.'
'Anything about what?' Brunetti asked.
'You ever been sent to ask one of the Chinese where the cash came from to buy his bar? You ever been asked to check the work permits of the people who work in those bars? You ever been sent out to close down a factory that got caught dumping its garbage in a national forest?'
What struck Brunetti was not the subject of Vianello's questions—questions that floated around the Questura like lint in a shirt factory— but the cool dispassion with which he asked them. 'You don't sound like you care much’ he observed.
'About this woman Scarpa wants to know about?' Vianello asked. 'No, I don't.'
That made quite a list of things Vianello didn't care much about this morning. 'I'll see you after lunch’ Brunetti said and left, heading home.
On the kitchen table, he found a note from Paola, saying she had to meet one of the students whose doctoral work she was overseeing but that there was lasagne in the oven. The kids would not be home, and a salad was in the refrigerator: all he had to do was add oil and vinegar. Just as Brunetti was preparing to start grumbling his way through lunch—having come halfway across the city, only to be deprived of the company of his family, forced to eat heated-up things from the oven, probably made with some sort of pre-packaged whatever and that disgusting orange American cheese for all he knew—he saw the last line of Paola's note: 'Stop sulking. It's your mother's recipe and you love it.'
Left to eat alone, Brunetti's first concern was to find the right thing to read. A magazine would be right, but he had already finished that week's Espresso. A newspaper took up too much space on the table. A paperback book could never be forced to stay open, not without breaking the binding completely, which would later cause the pages to fall out. Art books, which were surely big enough, suffered from oil stains. He compromised by going into the bedroom and taking from his bedside Gibbon, whose style forced him to read in translation.
He took out the lasagne, cut it and put a chunk on a plate. He poured a glass of pinot grigio then opened Gibbon to his place and propped it up against two books Paola had left on the table. He employed a cutting board and a serving spoon to hold the pages open on both sides. Satisfied with the arrangement, he sat down and started to eat.
Brunetti found himself back in the court of the Emperor Heliogabalus, one of his favorite monsters. Ah, the excess of it, the violence, the utter corruption of everything and everyone. The lasagne had layers of ham and thin slices of artichoke hearts interleaved with layers of pasta that he suspected might have been home made. He would have preferred more artichokes. He shared his table with decapitated senators, evil counsellors, barbarians bent on the destruction of the empire. He took a sip of wine and ate another bite of lasagne.
The Emperor appeared, arrayed like the sun itself. All hailed him, his glory, and his gracious-ness. The court was splendid and excessive, a place where, as Gibbon observed, 'a capricious prodigality supplied the want of taste and elegance'. Brunetti set his fork down, the better to savour both the lasagne and Gibbon's description.
He got up and took the salad, poured in oil and vinegar and sprinkled in some salt. He ate from the bowl, as Heliogabalus died under the swords of his guards.
On the way back to the Questura, Brunetti stopped for a coffee and pastry at Ballarin, then arrived just in time to meet Signorina Elettra at the front entrance.
After they exchanged greetings, Brunetti said, "There's something I'd like you to try and check for me, Signorina.'
'Of course’ she said encouragingly, 'if I can.'
'De Cal's medical records’ he said. 'His daughter said he had a doctor's appointment this afternoon, and a number of people have commented on his health. I wondered if there's reason for, well, for preoccupation.'