‘Please, have a seat,’ Ravanello offered and came around the desk to turn one of the two straight-backed chairs that stood there so that it was more directly facing his own. When Brunetti was seated, Ravanello went back to his own chair and sat down. ‘This is terrible, terrible. I’ve been speaking to the directors of the bank in Verona, None of us has the least idea what to do about this.’
‘About replacing Mascari? He was the director here, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he was. But, no, our problem isn’t about who will replace him. That’s been taken care of.’
Though Ravanello clearly meant this as a pause before he got to the real business of the bank’s concern, Brunetti asked, ‘And who replaced him?’
Ravanello looked up, surprised by the question. ‘I have, as I was Assistant Director. But, as I said, this is not the reason for the bank’s concern.’
To the best of Brunetti’s knowledge – and experience had never interfered to prove him wrong – the only reason for a bank’s concern about anything was how much money it made or lost. He smiled a curious smile and asked, ‘And what is that, Signor Ravanello?’
‘The scandal. The awful scandal. You know how discreet we have to be, bankers, you know how careful.’
Brunetti knew they couldn’t be seen in a casino, couldn’t write a bad cheque, or they could be fired, but these hardly seemed onerous demands to place upon someone who, after all, had in trust the money of other people.
‘Which scandal are you talking about, Signor Ravanello?’
‘If you’re a police commissario, then you know the circumstances in which Leonardo’s body was found.’
Brunetti nodded.
‘That, unfortunately, has become common knowledge here, and in Verona. We have already had a number of calls from our clients, from people who dealt with Leonardo for a number of years. Three of them have asked to transfer their funds from this bank. Two of those represent substantial losses for the bank. And today is only the first day.’
‘And you believe these decisions are the result of the circumstances in which Signor Mascari’s body was found?’
‘Obviously. I should think that would be self-evident,’ Ravanello said, but he sounded worried, not angry.
‘Do you have reason to believe that there will be more withdrawals as a result of this?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. In those cases, the real losses, we can trace them directly to Leonardo’s death. But we are far more worried about the immeasurable loss to the bank.’
‘Which would be?’
‘People who choose not to invest with us. People who hear about this or read about this and, as a result, choose to entrust their finances to another bank.’
Brunetti thought about this for a while, and he also thought about the way bankers always avoided the use of the word ‘money’, thought of the broad panoply of words they’d invented to replace that crasser term: funds, finances, investments, liquidity, assets. Euphemism was usually devoted to crasser things: death and bodily functions. Did that mean there was something fundamentally sordid about money and that the language of bankers attempted to disguise or deny this fact? He pulled his attention back to Ravanello.
‘Have you any idea of how much this might be?’
‘No,’ Ravanello said, shaking his head as at the mention of death or serious illness. ‘There’s no way to calculate it.’
‘And what you call the real losses, how great have they been?’
Ravanello’s look became more guarded. ‘Could you tell me why you want that information, Commissario?’
‘It’s not a case of my wanting that information, Signor Ravanello, not specifically. We are still in the opening stages of this investigation, and so I want to acquire as much information as possible, from as many sources as possible. I’m not sure which of it will prove important, but we won’t be able to make that determination until we have acquired all of the information there is to be had regarding Signor Mascari.’
‘I see, I see,’ Ravanello said. He reached out and pulled a folder towards him. ‘I have those figures here, Commissario. I was just looking at them.’ He opened the folder and ran his finger down a computer printout of names and numbers. ‘The combined worth of the liquidated assets, just from the two depositors I mentioned – the third hardly matters – is roughly eight billion lire.’
‘Because he was wearing a dress?’ Brunetti said, intentionally exaggerating his response.
Ravanello disguised his distaste at such levity, but just barely. ‘No, Commissario, not because he was wearing a dress. But because that sort of behaviour is suggestive of a profound lack of responsibility, and our investors, perhaps rightly, are concerned that this same lack of responsibility might have characterized his professional as well as his personal life.’
‘So people are bailing out before it’s discovered that he’s bankrupted the bank by spending it all on stockings and lace underwear?’
‘I see no reason to treat this as a joke, Commissario,’ Ravanello said in a voice that must have brought countless creditors to their knees.
‘I am merely attempting to suggest that this is an excessive response to the man’s death.’
‘But his death is very compromising.’
‘For whom?’
‘For the bank, certainly. But far more so for Leonardo himself.’
‘Signor Ravanello, however compromising Signor Mascari’s death may seem to be, we have no definite facts regarding the circumstances of that death.’
‘Is that supposed to mean that he was not found wearing a woman’s dress?’
‘Signor Ravanello, if I dress you in a monkey suit, that does not mean you are a monkey.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Ravanello asked, no longer attempting to disguise his anger.
‘It’s supposed to mean exactly what it does mean: the fact that Signor Mascari was wearing a dress at the time of his death does not necessitate the fact that he was a transvestite. In fact, it does not necessitate the fact that there was the least irregularity in his life.’
‘I find that impossible to believe,’ Ravanello said.
‘Apparently so do your investors.’
‘I find it impossible to believe for other reasons, Commissario,’ Ravanello said and looked down at the folder, closed it, and set it to the side of the desk.
‘Yes?’
‘This is very difficult to talk about,’ he said, took the folder and shifted it to the other side of the desk.
When he said nothing more, Brunetti urged in a softer voice, ‘Go on, Signor Ravanello.’
‘I was a friend of Leonardo’s. Perhaps his only close friend.’ He looked up at Brunetti, then down again at his hands. ‘I knew about him,’ he said in a soft voice.
‘Knew what, Signor Ravanello?’
‘About the dressing-up. And about the boys.’ His colour rose as he said this, but he kept his eyes steadily on his hands.
‘How did you know it?’
‘Leonardo told me.’ He paused here and took a deep breath. ‘We’ve worked together for ten years. Our families know each other. Leonardo is my son’s godfather. I don’t think he had other friends, not close ones.’ Ravanello stopped talking, as if this was all he could say.
Brunetti allowed a moment to pass and then asked, ‘How did he tell you? And what did he tell you?’
‘We were here, working on a Sunday, just the two of us. The computers had been down on Friday and Saturday, and we couldn’t begin to work on them until Sunday. We were sitting at the terminals in the main office, and he just turned to me and told me.’
‘What did he say?’
‘It was very strange, Commissario. He just looked over at me. I saw that he had stopped working, thought he wanted to tell me something or ask me something about the transaction he was recording, so I stopped and looked at him.’ Ravanello paused, conjuring up the scene. ‘He said, “You know, Marco, I like boys.” Then he bent down over the computer and continued to work, just as if he’d given me a transaction number or the price of a stock. It was very strange.’