Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

by Donna Leon

  ‘I’m not asking you about your clients, Signor Feltrinelli,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I’m not interested in who they are. We have reason to believe that you might know something about this man, and we’d like you to take a look at the sketch and tell us if you recognize him.’

  Feltrinelli walked away from the table and went to stand beside a small window in the wall on the left, and Brunetti realized why the room had been constructed the way it had: the whole purpose was to draw attention away from that window and from the bleak brick wall that stood only two metres from it. ‘And if I don’t?’ Feltrinelli asked.

  ‘If you don’t what, recognize him?’

  ‘No. If I don’t look at the picture?’

  There was no air-conditioning and no fan in the room, and it reeked of cheap cigarettes, an odour which Brunetti imagined he could feel sinking into his damp clothing, into his hair. ‘Signor Feltrinelli, I am asking you to do your duty as a citizen, to help the police in the investigation of a murder. We are seeking merely to identify this man. Until we do, there is no way we can begin that investigation.’

  ‘Is he the one you found out in that field yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think he might be one of us?’ There was no need for Feltrinelli to explain who ‘us’ were.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not necessary for you to know that.’

  ‘But you think he’s a transvestite?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a whore?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti answered.

  Feltrinelli turned away from the window and came across the room towards Brunetti. He extended his hand. ‘Let me see the picture.’

  Brunetti opened the folder in his hand and drew a Xerox copy of the artist’s sketch from it. He noticed that the damp palm of his hand had been stained a brightblue by the dye of the paper cover of the folder. He handed the sketch to Feltrinelli, who looked at it carefully for a moment, then used his other hand to cover the hairline and study it again. He handed it back to Brunetti and shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’

  Brunetti believed him. He put the photo back into the folder. ‘Can you think of anyone who might be able to help us find out who this man is?’

  ‘I assume you’re checking through a list of those of us with arrest records,’ Feltrinelli said, voice no longer so confrontational.

  ‘Yes. We don’t have a way to get anyone else to look at the picture.’

  ‘You mean the ones who haven’t been arrested yet, I suppose,’ Feltrinelli said and then asked, ‘Do you have another one of those drawings?’

  Brunetti pulled one from the folder and handed it to him and then handed him one of his cards. ‘You’ll have to call the Questura in Mestre, but you can ask for me. Or for Sergeant Gallo.’

  ‘How was he killed?’

  ‘It will be in this morning’s papers.’

  ‘I don’t read the papers.’

  ‘He was beaten to death.’

  ‘In the field?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that, Signore.’

  Feltrinelli went and placed the drawing face up on the draughting table and lit another cigarette.

  ‘All right,’ he said, turning back to Brunetti. ‘I’ve got the drawing. I’ll show it to some people. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Are you an architect, Signor Feltrinelli?’

  ‘Yes. I mean I have the laurea d’architettura. But I’m not working. I mean I have no job.’

  Nodding towards the tissue paper on the drawing-board, Brunetti asked, ‘But are you working on a project?’

  ‘Just to amuse myself, Commissario. I lost my job.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Signore.’

  Feltrinelli put both hands in his pockets and looked up at Brunetti’s face. Keeping his voice absolutely neutral, he said, ‘I was working in Egypt, for the government, designing public-housing projects. But then they decided that all foreigners had to have an AIDS test every year. I failed mine last year, so they fired me and sent me back.’

  Brunetti said nothing to this, and Feltrinelli continued, ‘When I got back here, I tried to find a job, but, as you surely know, architects are as easily found as grapes at harvest time. And so…’ He paused here, as if in search of a way to put it. ‘And so I decided to change my profession.’

  ‘Are you referring to prostitution?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘You’re not concerned about the hazard?’

  ‘Hazard?’ Feltrinelli asked, and came close to repeating the smile he had given Brunetti when he opened the door. Brunetti said nothing. ‘You mean AIDS?’ Feltrinelli asked, unnecessarily.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s no hazard for me,’ Feltrinelli said and turned away from Brunetti. He went back to the draughting table and picked up his cigarette. ‘You can let yourself out, Commissario,’ he said, taking his place at the table and bending down over his drawing.

  Chapter Eight

  Brunetti emerged into the sun, the street, the noise and turned into a bar that stood to the right of the apartment building. He asked for a glass of mineral water, then for a second one. When he had almost finished that, he poured the water at the bottom of the glass on to his handkerchief and wiped futilely at the blue dye on his hand.

  Was it a criminal act for a prostitute with AIDS to have sex? Unprotected sex? It was so long since policemen had treated prostitution as a crime that Brunetti found it difficult to consider it as such. But surely, for anyone with AIDS knowingly to have unprotected sex, surely that was a crime, though it was entirely possible that the law lagged behind the truth in this, and it was not illegal. Seeing the moral quicksand that distinction created ahead of him, he ordered a third glass of mineral water and looked at the next name on the list.

  Francesco Crespo lived only four blocks from Feltrinelli, but it might as well have been a world away. The building was sleek, a tall glass-fronted rectangle which must have seemed, when it was built ten years ago, right on the cutting edge of urban design. But Italy is a country where new ideas in design are never prized for much longer than it takes to put them into effect, by which time the ever-forward-looking have abandoned them and gone off in pursuit of gaudy new banners, like those damned souls in the vestibule of Dante’s Inferno, who circle round for all eternity, seeking a banner they can neither identify nor name.

  The decade that had elapsed since the construction of this building had carried fashion away with it, and now the building looked like nothing so much as an upended box of spaghettini. The glass in the windows gleamed, and a small patch of land between it and the street was manicured with precision, but none of that could save it from looking entirely out of place among the other lower, more modest buildings amidst which it had been erected with such futile confidence.

  He had the apartment number and was quickly carried to the seventh floor by the air-conditioned elevator. When the door opened, Brunetti stepped out into a marble corridor, also air-conditioned. He walked to the right and rang the bell of apartment D.

  He heard a sound inside; but no one came to the door. He rang again. The sound wasn’t repeated, but still no one came to the door. He rang the bell a third time, keeping his finger pressed to it. Even through the door he could hear the shrill whine of the bell and then a voice calling, ‘Basta. Vengo.’

  He took his finger off the bell, and a moment later the door was yanked open by a tall, heavy-set man in linen slacks and what looked like a cashmere turtle neck. Brunetti glanced at the man for an instant, saw two dark eyes, angry eyes, and a nose that had been broken a number of times, but then his eyes fell again to the high neck of the sweater and found themselves imprisoned there. The middle of August, people collapsing on the street from the heat, and this man wore a cashmere turtle neck. He pulled his eyes back to the man’s face and asked, ‘Signor Crespo?’

  ‘Who wants him?’ the
man asked, making no attempt to disguise both anger and menace.

  ‘Commissario Guido Brunetti,’ he answered, again showing his warrant card. This man, like Feltrinelli, needed only the slightest of glances to recognize it. He suddenly stepped a bit closer to Brunetti, perhaps hoping to force him back into the corridor with the offensive presence of his body. But Brunetti didn’t move, and the other man stepped back. ‘He’s not here.’

  From another room, both of them heard the sound of something heavy falling to the floor.

  This time it was Brunetti who took a step forward, backing the other man away from the door. Brunetti continued into the room and walked over to a thronelike leather chair beside a table on which stood an immense spray of gladioli in a crystal vase. He sat in the chair, crossed his legs, and said, ‘Then perhaps I’ll wait for Signor Crespo.’ He smiled. ‘If you have no objection, Signor…?’

  The other man slammed the front door, wheeled towards a door that stood on the other side of the room, and said, ‘I’ll get him.’

  He disappeared into the room beyond, closing the door behind him. His voice, deep and angry, resounded through it. Brunetti heard another voice, a tenor to the bass. But then he heard what seemed to be a third voice, another tenor, but a full tone higher than the last. Whatever conversation went on behind the door took a number of minutes, during which Brunetti looked around the room. It was all new, it was all visibly expensive, and Brunetti would have wanted none of it, neither the pearl grey leather sofa nor the sleek mahogany table that stood beside it.

  The door to the other room opened, and the heavy-set man came out, followed closely by another man a decade younger and at least three sizes smaller than him.

  ‘That’s him,’ the one in the sweater said, pointing to Brunetti.

  The younger man wore loose pale-blue slacks and an open-necked white silk shirt. He walked across the room towards Brunetti, who stood and asked, ‘Signor Francesco Crespo?’

  He came and stood in front of Brunetti, but then instinct or professional training seemed to exert itself in the presence of a man of Brunetti’s age and general appearance. He took a small step closer, raised a hand in a delicate, splay-fingered gesture, and placed it at the base of his throat. ‘Yes, what would you like?’ It was the higher tenor voice Brunetti had heard through the door, but Crespo tried to make it deeper, as if that would make it more interesting or seductive.

  Crespo was a bit shorter than Brunetti and must have weighed ten kilos less. Either through coincidence or design, his eyes were the same pale grey as the sofa; they stood out sharply in the deep tan of his face. Had his features appeared on the face of a woman, they would have been judged no more than conventionally pretty; the sharp angularity conveyed by his masculinity made them beautiful.

  This time it was Brunetti who took a small step away from the other man. He heard the other one snort at this and turned to pick up the folder, which he had placed on the table beside him.

  ’Signor Crespo, I’d like you to look at a picture of someone and tell me if you recognize him.’

  ‘I’d be glad to look at anything you chose to show me,’ Crespo said, putting heavy emphasis on ‘you’ and moving his hand inside the collar of his shirt to caress his neck.

  Brunetti opened the folder and handed Crespo the artist’s drawing of the dead man. Crespo glanced down at it for less than a second, looked up at Brunetti, smiled, and said, ‘I haven’t an idea of who he could be.’ He held the picture out to Brunetti, who refused to take it.

  ‘I’d like you to take a better look at the picture, Signor Crespo.’

  ‘He told you he didn’t know him,’ the other one said from across the room.

  Brunetti ignored him. ‘The man was beaten to death, and we need to find out who he was, so I’d appreciate it if you’d take another look at him, Signor Crespo.’

  Crespo closed his eyes for a moment and moved his hand to brush a wayward curl behind his left ear. ‘If you insist,’ he said, looking down at the picture again. He bowed his head down over the drawing and, this time, looked at the face pictured there. Brunetti couldn’t see his eyes, but he did watch his hand suddenly move away from his ear and move towards his neck again, this time with no attempt at flirtatiousness.

  A second later, he looked up at Brunetti, smiled sweetly, and said, ‘I’ve never seen him before, officer.’

  ‘Are you satisfied?’ the other one asked and took a step towards the door.

  Brunetti took the drawing that Crespo held out to him and slipped it back into the folder. ‘That’s only an artist’s guess of what he looked like, Signor Crespo. I’d like you to look at a photograph of him, if you don’t mind.’

  Brunetti smiled his most seductive smile, and Crespo’s hand flew, with a swallow-like flutter, back to the soft hollow between his collar bones. ‘Of course, officer. Anything you suggest. Anything.’

  Brunetti smiled and reached to the bottom of the thin pile of photos in the folder. He took one out and studied it for an instant. One would serve as well as the next. He looked at Crespo, who had again closed the distance between them. ‘There is a possibility that he was killed by a man who was paying for his services. That means men like him might be at risk from the same person.’ He offered the photo to Crespo.

  The young man took the photo, managing to touch Brunetti’s fingers with his own as he did so. He held it in the air between them, gave Brunetti a long smile, and then bowed his smiling face over the photo. His hand left his neck and slid up to cover his gasping mouth. ‘No, no,’ he said, eyes still on the photo. ‘No, no,’ he repeated and looked up at Brunetti with eyes gone wide with horror. He thrust the picture away from him, jammed it into Brunetti’s chest, and backed away from him, as though Brunetti had carried pollution into the room with him. ‘They can’t do that to me. That won’t happen to me,’ he said, backing away from Brunetti. His voice rose with every word, teetered on the edge of hysteria, and then fell over into it. ‘No, that won’t happen to me. Nothing will ever happen to me.’ His voice rose up into a high-pitched challenge to the world he lived in. ‘Not to me, not to me,’ he shouted, backing further and further away from Brunetti. He bumped into a table in the middle of the room, panicked at finding himself blocked in his attempt to get away from the photo and the man who had shown it to him, and lashed out at it with his arm. A vase identical to the one near Brunetti crashed to the floor.

  The door to the other room opened, and a fourth man came quickly into the room. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  He looked towards Brunetti, and they recognized one another instantly. Giancarlo Santomauro was not only one of the best known lawyers in Venice, often serving as legal counsel to the Patriarch at no cost, but he was also the president and moving light of the Lega della Moralità, a society of lay Christians dedicated to the ‘preservation and perpetuation of faith, home, and virtue’.

  Brunetti did no more than nod. If by any chance these men didn’t know the identity of Crespo’s client, it was better for the lawyer that it remain that way.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Santomauro demanded angrily. He turned to the older of the two men, now standing above Crespo, who had ended on a sofa, both hands over his face, sobbing. ‘Can’t you shut him up?’ Santomauro shouted. Brunetti watched as the older man bent over Crespo. He said something to him, then put both hands on his shoulders and shook him till his head wove back and forth. Crespo stopped crying, but his hands remained over his face.

  ‘What are you doing in this apartment, Commissario? I’m Signor Crespo’s legal representative, and I refuse to permit the police to continue to brutalize him.’

  Brunetti didn’t answer but continued to study the pair at the sofa. The older man moved to sit beside Crespo and put a protective arm around his shoulders, and Crespo gradually grew quiet.

  ‘I asked you a question, Commissario,’ Santomauro said.

  ‘I came to ask Signor Crespo if he could help us identify the victim of a
crime. I showed him a photo of the man. You see his response. Rather strong way to respond to the death of a man he didn’t recognize, wouldn’t you say?’

  The man in the sweater looked at Brunetti but it was Santomauro who spoke. ‘If Signor Crespo has said he didn’t recognize him, then you have your answer and can leave.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, tucking the folder under his right arm and taking a step towards the door. Glancing back at Santomauro, voice easy and conversational, Brunetti said, ‘You forgot to tie your shoes, Avvocato.’

  Santomauro looked down and saw immediately that they were both tied neatly. He gave Brunetti a look that would have etched glass but said nothing.

  Brunetti stopped in front of the sofa and looked down at Crespo. ‘My name is Brunetti,’ he said. ‘If you remember anything, you can call me at the Questura in Venice.’

  Santomauro started to speak but cut himself short. Brunetti let himself out of the apartment.

  Chapter Nine

  The rest of the day was no more productive, neither for Brunetti nor for the two other policemen working their way down the list. When they met back at the Questura late in the afternoon, Gallo reported that three of the men on his part of the list said they had no idea of who the man was. They were probably telling the truth, two others weren’t home, and another said he thought the man looked familiar but couldn’t remember why or how. Scarpa’s experience had been much the same; all of the men he spoke to were sure they had never seen the dead man.

  They agreed that they would try the same approach the next day, trying to finish up the names on the list. Brunetti asked Gallo to prepare a second list of the female whores who worked both out by the factories and on Via Cappuccina. Though he didn’t have much hope that these women would help, there was always the possibility that they had paid attention to the competition and would recognize the man.

  As Brunetti climbed the steps to his apartment, he fantasized about what would happen when he opened the door. Magically, elves would have come in during the day and air-conditioned the entire place; others would have installed one of those showers he had seen only in brochures from spas and on American soap operas: twenty different shower heads would direct needle-thin streams of scented water at his body, and when he finished with the shower, he would wrap himself in a thick towel of imperial size. And then there would be a bar, perhaps the sort set at the end of a swimming pool, and a white-jacketed barman would offer him a long, cool drink with a hibiscus floating on its surface. His immediate physical needs attended to, he passed to science fiction and conjured up two children both dutiful and obedient and a devoted wife who would tell him, the instant he opened the door, that the case had been solved and they were all free to leave for vacation the following morning.