Anonymous Venetian

by Donna Leon

  * * * *

  Dinner was far more peaceful than he had thought it would be, given the abruptness with which Paola had departed to prepare it. She had made a sauce with fresh tuna fish, tomatoes, and peppers, something he was sure she had never made before, and had used the thick Martelli spaghetti he liked so much. After that, there was salad, a piece of pecorino that Raffi’s girlfriend’s parents had brought back from Sardinia, and then fresh peaches. Responding to his fantasy, the children offered to do the dishes, no doubt in preparation for their planned depredations upon his wallet before their departure for the mountains.

  He retreated to the terrace, a small glass of chilled vodka in his hand, and resumed his seat. In the air above and all around him, bats swirled, cutting the sky with their jagged flight. Brunetti liked bats: they gobbled up mosquitoes. After a few minutes, Paola joined him. He offered her the glass and she took a small sip. ‘Is that the bottle in the freezer?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘I suppose you could call it a bribe.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Donzelli. He asked me if I could arrange the vacation schedule so that he could go to Russia - ex-Russia - on leave. He brought me a bottle when he came back.’

  ‘It’s still Russia.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘It’s the ex-Soviet Union, but it’s still plain old Russia.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you.’

  She nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘Do you think they eat anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’ Paola asked, for once at a loss.

  ‘The bats.’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask Chiara. She generally knows things like that.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what I said before dinner,’ he said, sipping again at his glass.

  He expected a sharp retort from her, but all she said was, ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you might be right.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That he might be a client and not one of the whores. I saw his body. I don’t think it’s a body that a man would want to pay to use.’

  ‘What sort of body was it?’

  He took another sip. ‘This is going to sound strange, but when I saw him, I thought how much he looked like me. We’re about the same height, same general build, probably the same age. It was very strange, Paola, to see him lying there, dead.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been,’ she said, but she didn’t say any more than that.

  ‘Are those boys good friends of Raffi’s?’

  ‘One of them is. He helps him with his Italian homework.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good what, that he helps him with his homework?’

  ‘No, good that he’s Raffi’s friend, or that Raffi’s his.’

  She laughed out loud and shook her head. ‘I will never figure you out, Guido. Never.’ She placed a hand on the back of his neck, leaned forward, and took the drink from his hand. She took another sip and then handed it back to him. ‘You think when you’re finished with this, you could think about letting me pay to use your body?’

  * * * *

  Chapter Ten

  The next two days were much the same, only hotter. Four of the men on Brunetti’s list were still not at the addresses listed for them, nor did the neighbours of either have any idea of where they might be or when they might return. Two knew nothing. Gallo and Scarpa had as little luck, though one of the men on Scarpa’s list did say that the man in the drawing looked faintly familiar, only he wasn’t sure why or where he might have seen him.

  The three men had lunch together in a trattoria near the Questura and discussed what they did and didn’t know.

  ‘Well, he didn’t know how to shave his legs,’ Gallo said, when they seemed to have run out of things to list. Brunetti didn’t know if the sergeant was attempting humour or grasping at straws.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Brunetti asked, finishing his wine and looking around for the waiter so he could ask for the bill.

  ‘His corpse. There were lots of little nicks on his legs, as if he wasn’t too accustomed to shaving them.’

  ‘Would any of us be?’ Brunetti asked, and then clarified the pronoun, ‘Men, I mean.’

  Scarpa smiled into his glass. ‘I’d probably cut my kneecap off. I don’t know how they do it,’ he said, and shook his head at yet another of the wonders of women.

  The waiter came up then with the bill. Sergeant Gallo took it before Brunetti could, pulled out his wallet, and laid some money on top of the bill. Before Brunetti could object, he explained, ‘We’ve been told you’re a guest of the city.’ Brunetti wondered how Patta would feel about such a thing, aside from believing that he didn’t deserve it.

  ‘We’ve exhausted the names on the list,’ Brunetti said. ‘I think that means we’ve got to talk to the ones who aren’t on the list.’

  ‘Do you want me to bring some of them in, sir?’ Gallo asked.

  Brunetti shook his head: that was hardly the best way to encourage them to co-operate. ‘No, I think the best thing is to go and talk to them—’

  Scarpa interrupted. ‘But we haven’t got names and addresses for most of them.’

  ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to go visit them where they work,’ Brunetti explained.

  * * * *

  Via Cappuccina is a broad, tree-lined street that runs from a few blocks to the right of the Mestre train station into the commercial heart of the city. It is lined with shops and small stores, offices and some blocks of apartment buildings; by day, it is a normal street in an entirely normal small Italian city. Children play under the trees and in the small parks that are to be found along its length. Their mothers are generally with them, to warn them about the cars and the traffic, but they are also there to warn them about and keep them safe from some of the other people who gravitate towards Via Cappuccina. The shops close at twelve-thirty, and Via Cappuccina rests for a few hours in the early afternoon. Traffic decreases, the children go home for lunch and a nap; businesses close, and the adults go home to eat and rest. There are fewer children playing in the afternoon, though the traffic returns, and Via Cappuccina fills up with life and motion, as shops and offices reopen.

  Between seven-thirty and eight o’clock in the evening, the shops, offices, and stores close down; the merchants and owners pull down metal shutters, lock them securely, and go home for their evening meal, leaving Via Cappuccina to those who work along it after they leave.

  During the evening, there is still traffic on Via Cappuccina, but no one seems any longer to be in much of a hurry. Cars move along slowly, but parking is no longer a problem, for it is not parking spaces that the drivers are seeking. Italy has become a wealthy nation, so most of the cars are air-conditioned. Because of this, the traffic is even slower, for the windows must now be lowered before a price can be called out or heard, and thus things take more time.

  Some of the cars are new and slick: BMWs, Mercedes, the occasional Ferrari, though they are oddities on Via Cappuccina. Most of the cars are sedate, well-fed sedans, cars for families, the car that takes the children to school in the morning, the car that takes the family to church on Sunday and then out to the grandparents’ house for dinner. They are generally driven by men who feel more comfortable wearing a suit and tie than anything else, men who have done well as a result of the economic boom that has been so generous to Italy during the last decades.

  With increasing frequency, doctors who deliver babies in the private wards and clinics of Italy, those used by people wealthy enough to avail themselves of private medical care, have had to tell new mothers that both they and their babies are infected with the AIDS virus. Most of these women respond with stupefaction, for these are women faithful to their marriage vows. The answer, they believe, must he in some hideous error in the medical treatment they have received. But perhaps the answer is more easily to be found on Via Cappuccina and the dealings that take place between the drivers of thos
e sober cars and the men and women who crowd the sidewalks.

  Brunetti turned into Via Cappuccina at eleven-thirty that night, walking down from the train station, where he had arrived a few minutes before. He had gone home for dinner, slept for an hour, then dressed himself in what he thought would make him look like something other than a policeman. Scarpa had had smaller copies made of both the drawing and the photographs of the dead man, and Brunetti carried some of these in the inner pocket of his blue linen jacket.

  From behind him and off to his right, he could hear the faint hum of traffic as cars continued to stream past on the tangenziale of the autostrada. Though he knew it was unlikely, Brunetti felt as though their fumes were all being blown down here, so dense and tight was the breezeless air. He crossed a street, another, and then another, and then he began to notice the traffic. There were the cars, gliding along slowly, windows raised, heads turned to the kerb as the drivers inspected the other traffic.

  Brunetti saw that he was not the only pedestrian here, but he was one of very few wearing a shirt and tie, and he seemed to be the only one not standing still.

  ‘Ciao, bello.’

  ‘Cosa vuoi, amore?’

  ‘Ti factio tutto che vuoi, caro.’

  The offers came at him from almost every form he passed, offers of delight, joy, bliss. The voices suggested undreamed of pleasures, promised him the realization of every fantasy. He paused under a street light and was immediately approached by a tall blonde in a white miniskirt and very little else.

  ‘Fifty thousand,’ she said. She smiled, as if that would serve as greater inducement. The smile showed her teeth.

  ‘I want a man,’ Brunetti said.

  She turned away without a word and walked towards the kerb. She leaned towards a passing Audi and called out the same price. The car kept moving. Brunetti stayed where he was, and she turned back towards him. ‘Forty,’ she said.

  ‘I want a man.’

  ‘They cost a lot more, and there’s nothing they can do for you that I can’t, bello.’ She showed him her teeth again.

  ‘I want them to look at a picture,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Gesù Bambino ,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘not one of those.’ Then, louder, ‘It’ll cost you extra. With them. I do everything for one price.’

  ‘I want them to look at the picture of a man and tell me if they recognize him.’

  ‘Police?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘They’re up the street, the boys, on the other side of Piazzale Leonardo da Vinci.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Brunetti said and continued walking up the street. At the next kerb, he looked back and saw the blonde climbing into the passenger seat of a dark blue Volvo.

  Another few minutes brought him to the open Piazzale. He crossed it, having no trouble making his way between the crawling cars, and saw a cluster of forms leaning up against a low wall on the other side.

  As he drew near, he heard more voices, tenor voices, call out the same offers and promise the same pleasures. So much bliss to be had here.

  He approached the group and saw much that he had seen while walking from the station: mouths made larger by red lipstick and all turned up in smiles meant to be inviting; clouds of bleached hair; legs, thighs, and bosoms which looked every bit as real as those he had seen before.

  Two of them came and fluttered around him, moths to the flame of his power to pay.

  ‘Anything you want, sweetie. No rubbers. Just the real thing.’

  ‘My car’s around the corner,caro. You name it, I’ll do it.’

  From the pack leaning against the low wall that ran along one side of the Piazzale, a voice called out to the second one, ‘Ask him if he’d like you both, Paolina.’ Then, to Brunetti directly, ‘They’re fabulous if you take them together, amore; make you a sandwich you’ll never forget.’ That was enough to set the others off into peals of laughter, laughter that was deep and had nothing of the feminine in it.

  Brunetti spoke to the one called Paolina. ‘I’d like you to look at a picture of a man and tell me if you recognize him.’

  Paolina turned back to the group and shouted, ‘It’s a cop, little girls. And he wants me to look at some pictures.’

  A chorus of shouts came back: ‘Tell him the real thing’s better than dirty pictures, Paolina.’ ‘Cops don’t even know the difference.’ ‘A cop? Make him pay double.’

  Brunetti waited until they had run out of things to say and asked, ‘Will you look at the picture?’

  ‘What’s in it for me if I do?’ Paolina asked, and his companion laughed to see his friend being so tough with a policeman.

  ‘It’s a picture of the man we found out in the field on Monday.’ Before Paolina could pretend ignorance, Brunetti added, ‘I’m sure you all know about him and what happened to him. We’d like to identify him so we can find the person who killed him. I think you men can understand why that’s important.’

  He noticed that Paolina and his friend were dressed almost identically, each in tight tube tops and short skirts that showed sleek, muscular legs. Both wore high-heeled shoes with needle toes; neither could ever hope to outrun an assailant.

  Paolina’s friend, whose daffodil-yellow wig cascaded to his shoulders, said, ‘All right, let’s see it,’ and held out his hand. Though the man’s feet were disguised in those shoes, nothing could disguise the breadth and thickness of his hand.

  Brunetti pulled the drawing from his pocket and handed it to him. ‘Thank you, Signore,’ Brunetti said. The man gave him an uncomprehending look, as though Brunetti had begun to speak in tongues. The two men bent over the drawing, talking together in what Brunetti thought might be Sardinian dialect.

  The blonde held the drawing out towards Brunetti. ‘No, I don’t recognize him. This the only picture you’ve got of him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, then asked, ‘Would you mind asking your friends if they recognize him?’ He nodded towards the group that still hung back against the wall, tossing occasional remarks at passing cars but keeping their eyes on Brunetti and the two men.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’ Paolina’s friend turned back towards the group. Paolina followed him, perhaps nervous at the risk of spending time alone in the company of a policeman.

  The group peeled itself away from the wall to walk towards them. The one with the drawing stumbled and caught himself from falling only by clutching on to Paolina’s shoulder. He swore viciously. The group of bright-coloured men crowded round them, and Brunetti watched as they handed the drawing round. One of them, a tall, gangly boy in a red wig, let the picture go, then suddenly grabbed it back and looked at it again. He pulled at another man, pointed down towards the picture, and said something to him. The second one shook his head, and the redhead jabbed at the picture again. The other one still did not agree, and the redhead dismissed him with an angry flip of his hand. The picture was passed around to a few more of them, and then Paolina’s friend came back to Brunetti with the redhead walking at his side.

  ‘Buona sera ,’ Brunetti said as the redhead came up. He held out his hand and said, ‘Guido Brunetti.’

  The two men stood as if rooted to the spot by their high heels. Paolina’s friend glanced down at his skirt and wiped his hand nervously across its front. The redhead put his hand to his mouth for a moment and then extended it to Brunetti. ‘Roberto Canale,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ His grip was firm, his hand warm.

  Brunetti held out his hand to the other, who glanced nervously back to the group and, hearing nothing, took Brunetti’s hand and shook it. ‘Paolo Mazza.’

  Brunetti turned back to the redhead. ‘Do you recognize the man in the photo, Signor Canale?’ Brunetti asked.

  The redhead looked off to the side until Mazza said, ‘He’s talking to you, Roberta, don’t you even remember your name?’

  ‘Of course I remember my name,’ the redhead said, turning angrily to Mazza. Then, to Brunetti, ‘Yes, I recognize th
e man, but I can’t tell you who he is. I can’t even tell you why I recognize him. He just looks like someone I know.’

  Realizing how inadequate this must sound, Canale explained, ‘You know how it is when you see the man from the cheese store on the street, and he’s not wearing his apron: you know him but you don’t know how you know him, and you can’t remember who he is. You know that you know him, but he’s out of place, so you can’t remember who he is. That’s how it is with the man in the drawing. I know I know him, or I’ve seen him, the same way you see the man in the cheese store, but I can’t remember where he’s supposed to be.’