Friends in High Places Read Online Free PDF

‘I think that’s enough from the two of you. This isn’t a joke, and I don’t want to listen to you talk about it as though it were.’
     
    The children looked at her, and then, like a pair of baby owls perched on a limb, watching to see which of two nearby predators would strike first, swivelled their heads to look at their father. ‘You heard what your mother said,’ Brunetti told them, a sure sign that things were serious.
     
    ‘We’ll do the dishes,’ offered Chiara in a conciliatory way, knowing full well that it was her turn, anyway.
     
    Raffi pushed his chair back and got to his feet. He picked up his mother’s plate, then his father’s, then Chiara’s, stacked them on his own plate, and took them to the sink. More remarkably, he turned on the water and pushed up the sleeves of his sweater.
     
    Like superstitious peasants in the presence of the numinous, Paola and Brunetti fled into the living room, but not before he had grabbed a bottle of grappa and two small glasses.
     
    He poured the clear liquid out and handed a glass to Paola. ‘What are you going to do this afternoon?’ she asked after the first calming sip.
     
    ‘I’m going back to Persia,’ Brunetti answered. Kicking off his shoes, he lay back on the sofa.
     
    ‘Rather an excessive response to Signor Rossi’s news, I’d say.’ She took another sip. ‘This is that bottle we brought back from Belluno, isn’t it?’ They had a friend up there, who had worked with Brunetti for more than a decade but who had abandoned the police force after being wounded in a shootout and had gone back to take over his father’s farm. Every fall, he set up a still and made about fifty bottles of grappa, an entirely illegal operation. He gave the bottles to family and friends.
     
    Brunetti took another sip and sighed.
     
    ‘Persia?’ she finally asked.
     
    He set his glass on the low table and picked up the book he had abandoned on Signor Rossi’s arrival. ‘Xenophon,’ he explained, opening it to the marked page, back in that other part of his life.
     
    ‘They managed to save themselves, didn’t they, the Greeks? And get back home?’ she asked.
     
    ‘I haven’t got that far yet,’ Brunetti answered.
     
    Paola’s voice took on a faint edge. ‘Guido, you’ve read Xenophon at least twice since we’ve been married. If you don’t know whether or not they got back, then you weren’t paying attention, or you’ve got the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s.’
     
    ‘I’m pretending I don’t know what happens so I’ll enjoy it more,’ he explained and put on his glasses. He opened the book, found his place, and began reading.
     
    Paola stared across at him for quite a long time, poured herself another glass of grappa, and took it back with her to her study, abandoning her husband to the Persians.
     
    * * * *
     
    4
     
     
    As happens with these things, nothing happened. That is, no further communication arrived from the Ufficio Catasto, and nothing further was heard from Signor Rossi. In the face of this silence, and perhaps moved by superstition, Brunetti made no attempt to speak to the friends who might have helped him clarify the legal status of his home. Early spring passed into mid-spring and that in its turn passed. The weather became warm, and the Brunettis began to spend more and more time on their terrace. On the fifteenth of April, they ate lunch there for the first time, though by dinnertime it was again too cold to think about eating outside. The days lengthened, but still nothing further was heard about the dubious legality of the Brunettis’ home. Like farmers living beneath a volcano, the instant the earth ceased to rumble, they went back to tilling their fields, hoping that the gods who governed these things had forgotten about them.
     
    With the change in season, more and more tourists began to flood into the city. A large number of gypsies followed in their wake. The gypsies had been suspected of countless