Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(75)

He watched as Duso thought it through, ‘Then what?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. If he wears it, they’ll be able to track him, and the boat.’

Duso shifted around in his chair, as if suddenly aware of the drop in temperature. ‘If I give it to him, he’ll wear it.’ It was not a boast but a simple truth.

Suddenly, the younger man pulled his jacket tight over his chest and hugged himself with his arms. ‘It’s too cold here,’ he said. ‘Let’s move.’ He put the watch in the box and the box in the pocket of his jacket and got to his feet.

When the waiter brought the check, Duso slipped a bill under his saucer and stood. He started off in the direction of the calle where he lived.

Brunetti caught up with him and walked at the quick pace the younger man set. When they got to the place where Duso had turned off the last time, Brunetti slowed to a stop.

Duso faced him. His expression had tightened, and he seemed older than he had a few minutes before. ‘One condition before I agree about the watch,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Brunetti asked, his suspicion audible. When Duso didn’t speak, Brunetti insisted, ‘What do you want?’

‘When they go after him, I get to go with them.’

‘I can’t guarantee that,’ Brunetti said, meaning it.

Duso reached into his pocket and took out the box. ‘Then take this back,’ he said, holding it out to Brunetti.

Automatically, Brunetti put his hands behind his back. ‘I can’t.’

‘Then I won’t.’

Brunetti stood frozen. He wasn’t the one to decide this.

‘Ask them,’ Duso ordered.

There was no question about how serious he was. Brunetti stepped away, pulled out his phone and found Alaimo’s number.

The Captain answered on the second ring. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘He says he won’t do it unless he can go with us when it happens.’ Not until he heard himself say ‘us’ had Brunetti realized how fully he now felt himself involved in this.

There was a long silence before Alaimo asked, ‘Is he serious?’

‘Absolutely.’

The line went silent for some time, but then Alaimo said, ‘Then tell him yes.’

‘All right.’

Brunetti broke the connection and slipped the phone into his jacket pocket.

He took the two steps back to the now-shivering young man.

‘He agreed.’

‘Good,’ Duso answered and put the watch in his pocket. Suddenly his face loosened and changed back to the face that had sat across from Brunetti at the table. He put out his hand, and Brunetti shook it.

‘Thank you, Commissario,’ Duso said, his politeness restored, as well. He turned to walk away but stopped before Brunetti could call to him. He came back and asked, ‘What do I have to do?’

Slowly, thinking it through as he spoke, Brunetti said, ‘You have to convince Marcello to tell you when he’s going out with his uncle again.’ Duso started to speak, but Brunetti held up his hand. ‘He has to tell you when they’re going out at night. And give him the watch. That way, they’ll be able to trace Borgato’s boat without getting close to it.’

Duso rubbed at his face with both hands, as if trying to wake himself from a dream that had become unpleasant. ‘We message all the time, all day long,’ Duso said. ‘So he’ll tell me when he’s going.’ Duso nodded a few times, then looked at Brunetti. ‘He’ll tell me.’

Keeping his voice normal, Brunetti said, ‘Give me your number; I’ll send you mine.’ Duso recited the number while Brunetti entered it, then Brunetti sent his own number, which Duso locked into the memory of his phone.

‘You promise to let me come?’ Duso asked, placing his hand on Brunetti’s arm.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said.

‘You swear?’

‘By all that’s holy,’ Brunetti said, telling the truth.

By the time he got home, Brunetti was chilled straight through and found that the apartment was cold. The landlord had no legal obligation to turn the heat on in the building for another week and had chosen not to do so. A disgruntled Brunetti spent some time in the shower but realized he had been defeated by his children’s beliefs about the environment and was no longer capable of enjoying a shower that lasted more than – he was sufficiently grumpy to think, ‘than a heartbeat’ but changed it to ‘five minutes’.

Wrapped in a towel, he left a trail of damp footsteps back to the bedroom and pulled on a pair of brown woollen trousers and then, remembering he’d moved it to the back of the closet at the arrival of spring, a beige woollen shirt that Paola had given him for Christmas but that had always seemed too elegant to be worn and which, therefore, had spent almost a year by itself, unworn, abandoned and unadmired. His body still radiating the heat of the water, Brunetti pulled on a white T-shirt, then the woollen shirt. Soft first in his hands, it caressed his arms as he slid them into the sleeves and seemed almost to help him fit the buttons into the buttonholes. Leaving the top two unbuttoned, he found a patterned scarf, put it around his neck and tucked the ends inside the shirt.

He paused to look in the mirror, smiled at himself and said, in purest Veneziano, ‘Son figo, son beo, son fotomodeo.’ He might be too old to have any right to think of himself as ‘figo’, and there would certainly be some dispute as to the ‘beo’, and he certainly never would be a fashion model, but he looked good and knew it.