Anonymous Venetian

by Donna Leon

  No one was in the living-room. The kitchen glistened, fastidiously clean. He found Crespo in the bedroom, on the bed, dressed in yellow silk pyjamas. A piece of telephone wire was knotted around his neck, his face a horrible, stuffed parody of its former beauty.

  Brunetti didn’t bother to look around or examine the room; he went to the apartment next door and knocked on the door until a sleepy, angry man opened it, shouting at him. By the time the laboratory crew arrived from the Mestre Questura, Brunetti had also had time to call Maria Nardi’s husband in Milano and tell him what had happened. Unlike the man at the door, Franco Nardi didn’t shout; Brunetti had no idea if this was better or worse.

  Back at the Questura in Mestre, Brunetti told a just-arrived Gallo what had happened and turned the examination of Crespo’s apartment and body over to him, explaining that he had to go back to Venice that morning. He did not tell Gallo that he was returning in order to attend Mascari’s funeral; already the atmosphere swirled with too much death.

  Even though he came back to the city from a place of violent death, came back in order to be present at the consequences of another, he could not stop his heart from contracting at the sight of the bell towers and pastel facades that swept into view as the police car crossed the causeway. Beauty changed nothing, he knew, and perhaps the comfort it offered was no more than illusion, but still he welcomed that illusion.

  The funeral was a miserable thing: empty words were spoken by people who were clearly too shocked by the circumstances of Mascari’s death to pretend to mean what they said. The widow sat through it all rigid and dry-eyed and left the church immediately behind the coffin, silent and solitary.

  * * * *

  The newspapers, as was only to be expected, went wild at the scent of Crespo’s death. The first story appeared in the evening edition of La Notte, a paper much given to red headlines and the use of the present tense. Francesco Crespo was described as ‘a transvestite courtesan’. His biography was given, and much attention was paid to the fact that he had worked as a dancer in a gaydiscoteca in Vicenza, even though his tenure there had lasted less than a week. The writer of this article drew the inevitable link to the murder of Leonardo Mascari, less than a week ago, and suggested that the similarity in victim indicated a person who was exacting a deadly vengeance against transvestites. The writer did not seem to believe it necessary to explain why this might be.

  The morning papers picked up this idea. The Gazzettino made reference to the more than ten prostitutes who had been killed just in the province of Pordenone in recent years and attempted to draw a line between those crimes and the murders of the two transvestites. Il Manifesto gave the crime two full columns on page four, the writer using the opportunity to refer to Crespo as ‘yet another of the parasites who cling to the rotting body of Italian bourgeois society’.

  In its magisterial discussion of the crime, II Corriere della Sera veered quickly from the murder of a relatively insignificant prostitute to that of a well-known Venetian banker. The article made reference to ‘local sources’ who reported that Mascari’s ‘double life’ had been an item of common knowledge in certain quarters. His death, therefore, was simply the inevitable result of the ‘spiral of vice’ into which his weakness had transformed his life.

  Interested by this revelation of ‘sources’, Brunetti put a call through to the Rome office of that newspaper and asked to speak to the writer of the article. That person, when contacted and learning that Brunetti was a commissario of police wanting to know to whom he had spoken when writing the article, said that he was not at liberty to reveal the source of his information, that the trust that must exist between a journalist and those who both speak to and read him must be both implicit and absolute. Further, to reveal his source would go against the highest principles of his profession. It took Brunetti at least three full minutes to realize that the man was serious, that he actually believed what he was saying.

  ‘How long have you worked for the newspaper?’ Brunetti interrupted.

  Surprised to be cut off in the full flood of his exposition of his principles, goals, and ideals, the reporter paused a moment and then answered, ‘Four months. Why?’

  ‘Can you transfer this call back to the switchboard, or do I have to dial again?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I can transfer you. But why?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to your editor.’

  The man’s voice grew uncertain, then suspicious, at this, the first real sign of the duplicity and underhanded dealings of the powers of the state. ‘Commissario, I want to warn you that any attempt to suppress or call into question the facts I have revealed in my story will quickly be revealed to my readers. I’m not sure if you realize that a new age has dawned in this country, that the people’s need to know can no longer be—’ Brunetti pushed down the button on his receiver and, when he got a new dial tone, redialled the central number of the newspaper. Not even the Questura should have to pay to listen to that sort of nonsense, and certainly not at long-distance rates.

  When he was finally connected with the editor of the news section of the paper, he turned out to be Giulio Lotto, a man with whom Brunetti had dealt in the past when both of them had been suffering exile in Naples.

  ‘Giulio, it’s Guido Brunetti.’

  ‘Ciao, Guido. I heard you were back in Venice.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I’m calling. One of your writers’ -Brunetti looked down at the byline and read out the name - ‘Lino Cavaliere, has an article this morning about the transvestite who was murdered in Mestre.’

  ‘No. My deputy read it last night. What about it?’

  ‘He talks about “local sources” who say the other one, Mascari, who was murdered last week, was known by people here to have been leading a “double life”.’ Brunetti paused for a moment and then repeated the words: ‘ “double life”. Nice phrase, Giulio, “double life”.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, did he put that in?’

  ‘It’s all right here, Giulio: “local sources. Double life”.’

  ‘I’ll have his balls,’ Lotto shouted into the phone and then repeated the same thing to himself.

  ‘Does that mean there are no “local sources”?’

  ‘No, he had some sort of anonymous phone call from a man who said he had been a customer of Mascari’s. Client, whatever you call them.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he had known Mascari for years, had warned him about some of the things he did, some of the customers he had. He said it was a well-known secret up there.’

  ‘Giulio, the man was almost fifty.’

  ‘I’ll kill him. Believe me, Guido, I didn’t know anything about this. I told him not to use it. I’ll kill the little shit.’

  ‘How could he be that stupid?’ Brunetti asked, though well he knew the reasons for human stupidity to be legion.

  ‘He’s a cretin, hopeless,’ Lotto said, voice heavy, as though he had daily reminder of that fact.

  ‘Then what’s he doing working for you? You still do have the reputation of being the best newspaper in the country.’ Brunetti’s phrasing of this was masterful; his personal scepticism was evident, but it didn’t flaunt itself.

  ‘He’s married to the daughter of that man who owns that furniture store, the one who puts in the double page ad every week. We had no choice. He used to be on the sports page, but then one day he mentioned how surprised he was to learn that American football was different from soccer. So I got him.’ Lotto paused and both men reflected for a moment. Brunetti found himself strangely comforted to know that he was not the only man to be burdened with the likes of Riverre and Alvise. Lotto apparently found no comfort and said only, ‘I’m trying to get him transferred to the political desk.’

  ‘Perfect choice, Giulio. Good luck,’ Brunetti said, thanked him for the information, and hung up.

  Though he had suspected something very much like this, it still surprised him by its obvious clumsiness. Only by some stroke of extraordinary
good fortune could the ‘local source’ have found a reporter gullible enough to repeat the rumour about Mascari without bothering to check if there was any basis in fact. And only someone who was very rash - or very frightened - would have tried to plant the story, as if it could keep the elaborate fiction of Mascari’s prostitution from unravelling.

  The police investigation of Crespo’s murder, so far, had been as unrewarding as the press coverage. No one in the building had known of Crespo’s profession; some thought he was a waiter in a bar, while others believed him to be a night porter at a hotel in Venice. No one had seen anything strange during the days before his murder, and no one could remember anything strange ever happening in the building. Yes, Signor Crespo had a lot of visitors, but he was extroverted and friendly, so it made sense that people came to visit him, didn’t it?

  The physical examination had been clearer: death had been caused by strangulation, his murderer taking him from behind, probably by surprise. No sign of recent sexual activity, nothing under his nails, and enough fingerprints in the apartment to keep them busy for days.

  He had called Bolzano twice, but once the hotel’s phone was busy, and the second time Paola had not been in her room. He picked up the phone to call her again but was interrupted by a knock on his door. He called, ‘Avanti,’ and Signorina Elettra came in, carrying a file, which she placed on his desk.

  ‘Dottore, I think there’s someone downstairs who wants to see you.’ She saw his surprise at her bothering to tell him, indeed, at her even knowing this, and hastened to explain. ‘I was bringing some papers down to Anita, and I heard him talking to the guard.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  She smiled. ‘A young man. Very well dressed.’ This, coming from Signorina Elettra, who was today wearing a suit of mauve silk that appeared to have been made by especially talented worms, was high praise indeed. ‘And very handsome,’ she added, with a smile that suggested regret that the young man wanted to speak to Brunetti and not to her.

  ‘Perhaps you could go down and bring him up,’ Brunetti said, as much to hasten the possibility of meeting this marvel as to provide Signorina Elettra with an excuse to talk to him.

  Her smile changed back into the one she appeared to use for lesser mortals, and she left his office. She was back in a matter of minutes, knocked, and came in, saying, ‘Commissario, this gentleman would like to speak to you.’

  A young man followed her into the office, and Signorina Elettra stepped aside to allow him to approach Brunetti’s desk. Brunetti stood and extended his hand across the desk. The young man shook it; his grip was firm, his hand thick and muscular.

  ‘Please make yourself comfortable, Signore,’ Brunetti said then turned to Signorina Elettra. ‘Thank you, Signorina.’

  She gave Brunetti a vague smile, then looked at the young man in much the same way Parsifal must have looked at the Grail as it disappeared from him. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘If you need anything, sir, just call.’ She gave the visitor one last look and left the office, closing the door softly behind her.

  Brunetti sat and glanced across the desk at the young man. His short dark hair curled down over his forehead and just covered the tops of his ears. His nose was thin and fine, his brown eyes broad-spaced and almost black in contrast to his pale skin. He wore a dark grey suit and a carefully knotted blue tie. He returned Brunetti’s gaze for a moment and then smiled, showing perfect teeth. ‘You don’t recognize me, Dottore?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘We met last week, Commissario. But the circumstances were different.’

  Suddenly Brunetti remembered the bright red wig, the high-heeled shoes. ‘Signor Canale. No, I didn’t recognize you. Please forgive me.’

  Canale smiled again. ‘Actually, it makes me very happy that you didn’t recognize me. It means my professional self really is a different person.’

  Brunetti wasn’t sure just what this was supposed to mean, so he chose not to respond. Instead, he asked, ‘What is it I can do for you, Signor Canale?’

  ‘Do you remember, when you showed me that picture, I said that the man looked familiar to me?’

  Brunetti nodded. Didn’t this young man read the newspapers? Mascari had been identified days ago.

  ‘When I read the story in the papers and saw the photo of him, what he really looked like, I remembered where I had seen him. The drawing you showed me really wasn’t very good.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Brunetti admitted, choosing not to explain the extent of the damage that had made that drawing so inaccurate a reconstruction of Mascari’s face. ‘Where was it that you saw him?’

  ‘He approached me about two weeks ago.’ When he saw Brunetti’s surprise at this, Canale clarified the remark. ‘No, it wasn’t what you’re thinking, Commissario. He wasn’t interested in my work. That is, he wasn’t interested in my business. But he was interested in me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I was on the street. I’d just got out of a car -from a client, you know - I hadn’t got back to the girls, I mean the boys, yet, and he came up to me and asked me if my name was Roberto Canale, and I lived at thirty-five, Viale Canova.

  ‘At first, I thought he was police. He had that look.’ Brunetti thought it better not to ask, but Canale explained, anyway. ‘You know, ties and suits and very eager that no one misunderstand what he was doing. He asked me, and I told him that I was. I still thought he was police. In fact, he never told me he wasn’t, let me go on thinking that he was.’

  ‘What else did he want to know, Signor Canale?’

  ‘He asked me about the apartment.’

  ‘The apartment?’

  ‘Yes, he wanted to know who paid the rent. I told him I did, and then he asked me how I paid it. I told him I deposited the rent in an account in the owner’s name at the bank, but then he told me not to lie, that he knew what was going on, so I had to tell him.’

  ‘What do you mean, “knew what was going on”?’

  ‘How I pay the rent.’

  ‘And how is that?’

  ‘I meet a man in a bar and I give him the money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A million and a half. In cash.’

  ‘Who is he, this man?’

  ‘That’s exactly what he asked me. I told him he was just a man that I met every month, met at a bar. He calls me during the last week of the month and tells me where to meet him, and I do, and I give him a million and a half, and that’s that.’

  ‘No receipt?’ Brunetti asked.

  Canale laughed outright at this. ‘Of course not. It’s all cash.’ And, consequently, they both knew it went unreported as income. And untaxed. It was a common enough dodge: enormous numbers of tenants probably did something similar to this.

  ‘But I do pay another rent,’ Canale added.

  ‘Yes?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘One hundred and ten thousand lire.’

  ‘And where do you pay it?’

  ‘I deposit it in a bank account, but the receipt I get doesn’t have a name on it, so I don’t know whose account it is.’ ‘What bank?’ Brunetti asked, though he thought he knew.

  ‘Banca di Verona. It’s in—’

  Brunetti cut him short. ‘I know where it is.’ Then he asked, ‘How big is your apartment?’

  ‘Four rooms.’

  ‘A million and a half seems a lot to pay.’

  ‘Yes, it is, but it includes other things,’ Canale said, then shifted about in his chair.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, I won’t be bothered.’

  ‘Bothered while you work?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes. And it’s hard for us to find a place to live. Once people know who we are and what we do, they want us out of the building. I was told that this wouldn’t happen while I lived there. And it hasn’t. Everyone in the building thinks I work on the railways: that’s why I work nights.’

  ‘Why do they think this?’


  ‘I don’t know. They just sort of all knew it when I moved in.’

  ‘How long have you lived there?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘And you’ve always paid your rent like this?’

  ‘Yes, since the beginning.’

  ‘How did you find this apartment?’

  ‘One of the girls on the street told me.’

  Brunetti permitted himself a small smile. ‘Someone you’d call a girl or someone I’d call a girl, Signor Canale?’

  ‘Someone I’d call a girl.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No use my telling you. He died a year ago. Overdose.’