Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(32)
12
These thoughts did not encumber Brunetti the next morning when, accompanied by Griffoni, he was taken to the Capitaneria on a police launch, piloted by Foa, both he and the launch gleaming in the sun.
A uniformed sailor saluted their boat as it arrived and helped Griffoni and Brunetti step up to the dock in front of the bright orange Capitaneria building, which stood on the Zattere, that long, straight promenade that looked across to the Giudecca and was graced by having very few private enterprises in evidence: even the supermarket at the bottom end near San Basilio, large as it was, had only one inconspicuous door and was thus difficult to find. Brunetti told Foa he could go back to the Questura: they would take the vaporetto back.
The sailor in the white jacket slipped around them and hurried across the broad riva to the front door and pulled it open then waited for them to enter. He joined them, saying, ‘I’ll take you to Capitano Alaimo.’
Neither of them had ever been inside and so they were busy looking about them, if only to see how the other half lived. There was no question that the view from the front door was far better: the Questura had a canal and a church, but those things were to be seen from almost every street corner in Venice. Here, instead, anyone leaving the building was treated to a panorama of the entire Giudecca, from the Molino Stucky down to the other end, where some of the more menacing combat and pursuit boats of the Guardia Costiera were moored.
They continued into the palazzo, drawn by the glimmering white jacket of the sailor. They ascended a broad marble staircase; the wall they approached as they climbed the first ramp held a vast painting of what must be the battle of Lepanto. Galleons and galeasses, flying either the crescent moon of the Turks or the cross of the Europeans, filled the entire Gulf of Patras, sailing at one another in straight lines, their cannons puffing out tiny white clouds while the Madonna looked on approvingly from above at what was to ensue.
‘And we have a black and white photo of the President of the Republic,’ Griffoni said.
Brunetti thought it wiser not to comment.
At the top of the stairs, the sailor led them to the second door on the right. He knocked, waited, entered, and stood to attention just inside the door while they both entered the room. Two men in uniform sat at facing desks, busy with their computers. Behind the man on the right a map of the Laguna Nord covered most of the wall. On the left was the Southern part, showing the laguna all the way down to Chioggia.
When Brunetti withdrew his attention from the maps, he saw the sailor now standing in front of a door at the far end of the office, Griffoni beside him. He walked over to join them. The sailor looked at Griffoni, then at Brunetti, as if his gaze would suffice to keep them immobile, and leaned forward to knock.
‘Avanti,’ a male voice called from inside.
The sailor opened the door, let them pass in front of him, slapped his heels together and saluted, then closed the door behind him as he left.
A small man, almost a statue of a man in miniature, got to his feet and came around the desk. He walked quickly towards them, took Griffoni’s hand and bent to kiss it, then shook Brunetti’s, saying, ‘Please, please, come over here where we can talk.’ Because he was perfectly proportioned and had such self-assurance, Alaimo seemed no less notable than other men. He had very thick, curly dark hair clinging closely to his head. His skin showed how many years he had spent on the decks of ships: lines fanned out from the corners of both eyes, and two vertical lines cut down either side of his mouth. His eyes were pale grey and seemed out of place on his face.
Looking away from the Captain, Brunetti realized how large the office was, big enough for the Captain’s desk and, to its right, a four-person divan and three matching chairs separated from it by a low table. In answer to Alaimo’s wave, Griffoni chose a seat on the divan, which gave her a view out of the windows; Brunetti took the chair facing her but slightly to her left. Captain Alaimo ignored the other chair facing her and sat on the one at the end of the table, thus placing himself equidistant from the two police officers in a kind of human isosceles triangle. Brunetti noticed that the chair Alaimo chose was lower than his and thus allowed the Captain’s feet to touch the floor.
Brunetti glanced around the room and saw a line of gouaches showing scenes from the various eruptions of Vesuvio. One was painted from the perspective of the sea, another from a distant point that must have been to the north. Two showed giant plumes of white smoke and flame rising high above the dome of the volcano, one with a flood of magma burning its way down the slope; another showed three cane-carrying gentlemen standing on a high slope, backs to the viewer, staring off at the flames of the eruption in the distance; the last looked across a calm sea on which white-sailed vessels went about their quiet business while, in the background, a tunnel of white smoke rose up, ten times higher than the volcano itself.
Seeing that his guest was interested in the paintings, Alaimo said, ‘An ancestor of mine painted the one in the middle.’
Brunetti got immediately to his feet and, sure enough, found the name, ‘Giuseppe Alaimo’ painted at the bottom.
‘Was he a painter by profession?’ Brunetti asked. ‘It’s very fine work.’
‘No,’ Alaimo said and laughed a bit. ‘He was a doctor.’
‘Which eruption was this?’ Brunetti asked, still looking closely at the painting. ‘Do you know?’