Community Library Notes: Transient Desires by Donna Leon
“Transient Desires” by Donna Leon, the thirtieth in her series, is another of Commmisario Brunetti’s mysteries cleverly solved by him and his colleagues in Venice, Italy. Although Leon now lives in Switzerland, the setting is definitely Venice and well-described by the author. This morning he wakes late and must invent excuses for his superior. That’s easy because most things at headquarters don’t function well: surges of electric current, the roof leaks, and most of the windows are rusted shut or opened.
At noon, he runs downstairs to the bar and has a tomato sandwich and water, then meets with two of his informers and pays them their salary. He goes home for dinner and sits with a glass of grappa on the terrace. He tells his wife, Paola, he’s going to bed at ten. Thus a typical day for Brunetti, according to author Leon.
The next day his secretary Signorina Elettra gives him papers about two young women who’d been found outside the hospital on the wooden dock, unconscious. He’d read about them in the morning paper. Commissario Griffoni had been alerted and had rushed to the hospital. She spoke to a doctor there. Brunetti later watches on her computer how the two women were on the dock and carried to safety by two men after only two minutes. Brunetti goes home to a snack of olives and a bit of wine. He recalls evenings at Campo Santa Margharita when there were hundreds of students chatting and drinking with friends. The two women had been seen chatting with two men, who later dumped them on the dock. Had they known English? Who were they? Why were they in a boat at three A.M.? Brunetti talks to Griffoni at the hospital, and the female patient recalls one man with whom they went for a ride in his boat in the dark, away from city lights. One man had a tattoo on his wrist like a bracelet.
He sees the two men identified on his computer, Marcello Vio and Duso. He calls the website and speaks to Laura, and they agree to go to the Guidecea to talk in person. Her uniform shows her to be a primo Capitano, outranking most men there. She gives Brunetti photos and information on the two men. They are inseparable, best friends, and always looking for adventure. Vio and his uncle Pietro Borgato are both persons of interest. It could be only gossip, but the Captain thinks there might be truth to the rumors of sexual behavior. Brunetti says he won’t repeat anything about Vio or his uncle.
He phones Signorina Elettra from the vaporetta to tell her to bring in the two persons of interest, separately, for questioning. Each does not know the other is coming in. Brunetti goes into the interrogation room, and Griffoni joins them. Vio says he works for his uncle. He tells them he met his uncle’s secretary, and they took a boat to the next Piazza. He looks trapped. Vio stands but his shoe catches, and he falls to the ground. He moans and coughs up blood, and Brunetti calls the hospital and requests an ambulance and a doctor. They put Vio on a stretcher and took him to the hospital. They think his rib has punctured his lung, and moving will be painful. Duso arrives on a police launch and takes Vio’s hand in sympathy. Brunetti takes Duso to another interrogation room; he is handsome and says it’s a pleasure to help the police. When he was a younger student, he says, he’d go to Santa Margherita but no longer goes as there are too many drugs there now. Duso asks to make a phone call, and Brunetti hears him say in a child’s voice, “Papa, I’m in trouble.” There was fear, respect, and shame hidden in the voice. Duso tells Brunetti they had been looking for girls at the Piazza and found the two American girls who wanted to see the canals at night. If they are with girls, they appear normal.
Duso says they had a picnic, then a loud sound happened, and their boat stopped, and in a dense fog, one girl fell against the side of the boat, and the other fell into the bottom. That’s how they were hurt. Duso assures them he rang the alarm bell, but Griffoni says the alarm bell was removed six months before. At Brunetti’s office, he asks
Duso who Vio is afraid of and tells Vio he’s failed to offer help to an injured person. Their duty as boatman is, and Duso says Vio fears his uncle, Pietro Borgato. Borgato has been involved in several fights before becoming a successful businessman with several boats and the transport business. The three of them discuss how to get Vio to betray his uncle. Vio hadn’t told Duso about the women, only saying repeatedly, “We killed them, we killed them.” Brunetti asks Duso if he’ll help the man he’s in love with.
Does Duso help Vio to do the right thing? Do the authorities catch Borgato in a trap they set for him? Find out in this exciting final chapter of Leon’s latest book on the new mystery shelf of your local library.