The Golden Egg Read Free Page A

lack of patience. ‘They’re all Venetian, so you must know them.’ Though he had been working in Venice for more than a decade, Patta still thought of himself as a Sicilian, an opinion in which he was joined by everyone else at the Questura.
    â€˜I do know some of them, Dottore,’ Brunetti said and then, suddenly tired of the conversation, asked, ‘What would you like me to do?’
    Patta leaned forward and answered in a softer voice. ‘Speak to them.’
    Brunetti nodded, hoping that his silence would be answered with further information.
    Patta, perhaps realizing a certain lack of precision in his instructions said, ‘I’d like you to find out if the vigili involved are trustworthy.’
    â€˜Ah,’ Brunetti allowed himself to say, making no sign of the wild hilarity evoked in him by Patta’s choice of word. Trustworthy? Not to reveal that they had been accepting bribes from the business partner of the mayor’s future daughter-in-law? Trustworthy? Not to reveal that a request for information had come from a commissario of police? Trustworthy? Brunetti found it interesting that it seemed never to have occurred to Patta to wonder if the same thing could be said of the mayor, or his son, or his son’s fiancée.
    A long silence settled on the room. A minute passed, quite a long time when two men are seated facing one another. A sudden obstinacy overcame Brunetti: if Patta wanted something from him, then he would have to ask him for it directly.
    Some of this must have conveyed itself to Patta, for he finally said, ‘I want to know if there’s any danger this might become public, if this girl is going to cause him trouble.’ He shifted in his seat and added, ‘These are difficult times.’
    So there it was: the girl might cause the mayor – who was to run for re-election the following year – trouble. This was not about law: it was about reputation and probably about re-election. In a land where no one was without sin, everyone feared the first hand that reached for a rock, especially if the hand emerged from the cuff of a uniform. Once that started, there was no knowing when the next hand reaching for a rock might emerge from the pale grey uniform sleeve of the Guardia di Finanza.
    â€˜But how can I find out?’ Brunetti inquired politely, as if he were not already busy making a list of the various ways he could.
    â€˜You’re Venetian, for God’s sake. You can talk to these people: they trust you.’ Then, aside, to some invisible Recorder of Injustices, Patta said, ‘It’s a secret club you have, you Venetians. You do things among yourselves, in your own way.’
    This, Brunetti forbore to say, from a Sicilian.
    â€˜I’ll see what I can find out,’ was all he said. He got to his feet and left the office.
    When Brunetti stepped out of Patta’s office, Signorina Elettra glanced in his direction and raised one eyebrow. Brunetti doubled the gesture and made a circling gesture with one hand to tell her to come up to his office when she could. Face still bland, she turned back to the screen of her computer, and Brunetti left the room.
    He stopped in the officers’ squad room and asked Pucetti to come upstairs with him. Inside, when the young officer was seated, Brunetti said, ‘You have much to do with
the vigili?’
    He watched Pucetti try to figure out the reason for the question and liked him for that. ‘My cousin Sandro is one, sir. So was his father until he retired.’
    â€˜You close to them?’ Brunetti asked.
    â€˜They’re family, sir,’ Pucetti said.
    â€˜Close enough to ask them about bribes?’
    Pucetti weighed this up before he answered. ‘Sandro, yes; my uncle, no.’
    Curious, Brunetti asked, ‘Because you couldn’t ask him or because he wouldn’t tell you?’
    â€˜A little bit of both, I think, sir. But mostly because he