Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

by Donna Leon

‘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 wa
s 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.’

  ‘Do your other friends – colleagues – have similar arrangements?’

  ‘A few of us, but we’re the lucky ones.’

  Brunetti considered this fact and its possible consequences for a minute. ‘Where do you change, Signor Canale?’

  ‘Change?’

  ‘Into your…’ Brunetti began and then paused, wondering what to call them. ‘Into your working clothes? If people think you work on the railways, that is.’

  ‘Oh, in a car, or behind the bushes. After a while, you get to be very fast at it; doesn’t take a minute.’

  ‘Did you tell all of this to Signor Mascari?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Well, some of it. He wanted to know about the rent. And he wanted to know the addresses of some of the others.’

  ‘Did you give them to him?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I told you, I thought he was police, so I told him.’

  ‘Did he ask you anything else?’

  ‘No, only about the addresses.’ Canale paused for a moment and then added, ‘Yes, he asked one more thing, but I think it was just sort of, you know, to show that he was interested in me. As a person, that is.’

  ‘What did he ask?’

  ‘He asked if my parents were alive.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him the truth. They’re both dead. They died years ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Sardinia. That’s where I’m from.’

  ‘Did he ask you anything else?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘What sort of reaction did he have to what you told him?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ Canale said.

  ‘Did he seem surprised by anything you said? Upset? Were these the answers he was expecting to get?’

  Canale thought for a moment and then answered, ‘At first, he seemed a little surprised, but then he kept asking me questions, as if he didn’t even have to think about them. As if he had a whole list of them ready.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘No, he thanked me for the information I gave him. That was strange, you know, because I thought he was a cop, and usually cops aren’t very…’ He paused, hunting for the proper expression. ‘They don’t treat us very well.’

  ‘When did you remember who he was?’

  ‘I told you: when I saw his picture in the paper. A banker. He was a banker. Do you think that’s why he was so interested in the rents?’

  ‘I suppose it could be, Signor Canale. It’s certainly a possibility we will check.’

  ‘Good. I hope you can find the man who did it. He didn’t deserve to die. He was a very nice man. He treated me well, decently. The way you did.’

  ‘Thank you, Signor Canale. I wish only that my colleagues would do the same.’

  ‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ Canale said with a winsome smile.

  ‘Signor Canale, could you give me a list of the same names and addresses you gave him? And, if you know it, when your friends moved into their apartments.’

  ‘Certainly,’ the young man said, and Brunetti passed a piece of paper and a pen across the desk to him. He bent over the paper and began to write and, as he did, Brunetti watched his large hand, holding the pen as though it were a foreign object. The list was short, and he was quickly finished with it. When he was done, Canale set the pen down on the desk and got to his feet.

  Brunetti got up and came round his desk. He walked with Canale to the door, where he asked, ‘What about Crespo? Do you know anything about him?’

  ‘No, he’s not someone I worked with.’

  ‘Do you have any idea of what might have happened to him?’

  ‘Well, I’d have to be a fool not to think it’s related to the other man’s murder, wouldn’t I?’

  This was so self-evident that Brunetti didn’t even nod.

  ‘In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say he was killed because he talked to you.’ Seeing Brunetti’s look, he explained, ‘No, not to you, Commissario, but to the police. I’d guess he knew something about the other killing and had to be eliminated.’

  ‘And yet you came down here to talk to me?’

  ‘Well, Signor Mascari spoke to me like I was just an ordinary person. And you did, too, didn’t you, Commissario? Spoke to me like I was a man, just like other men?’ When Brunetti nodded, Canale said, ‘Well, then, I had to tell you, didn’t I?’

  The two men shook hands again, and Canale walked down the corridor. Brunetti watched as his dark head disappeared down the steps. Signorina Elettra was right, a very handsome
man.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Brunetti went back into his office and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number. ‘Would you come up to my office, please, Signorina?’ he asked. ‘And could you bring anything you’ve discovered about those men I asked you to look into this week?’

  She said she would be delighted to come up; he had every confidence that this was true. Brunetti was, however, prepared for her disappointment when she knocked, came in, and looked around, only to find the young man gone.

  ‘My visitor had to leave,’ Brunetti said in answer to her unspoken question.

  Signorina Elettra recovered herself immediately. ‘Ah, did he?’ she asked, voice level with lack of interest, and handed two separate files to Brunetti. ‘The first is Avvocato Santomauro.’ He took it from her hand, but even before he could open it, she said, ‘There’s nothing whatsoever worthy of comment. Law degree from Ca’ Foscari: a Venetian born and bred. He’s worked here all his life, is a member of all the professional organizations, married in the church of San Zaccaria. You’ll find tax returns, passport applications, even a permit to put a new roof on his home.’

  Brunetti glanced through the file and found exactly what she described, nothing more. He turned his attention to the second, which was considerably thicker.

  ‘That’s the Lega della Moralità,’ she said, making Brunetti wonder if everyone who spoke those words did so with the same heavy sarcasm or if this was perhaps no more than an indication of the kind of people he spent his time with. ‘The file is more interesting, but I’ll let you take a look through it and see what I mean,’ she said. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’

  ‘No, thank you, Signorina,’ he said and opened the file.

  She left and he spread the file flat on his desk and began to read through it. The Lega della Moralità had been incorporated as a charitable institution nine years ago, its charter proclaiming it an organization seeking to ‘improve the material condition of the less fortunate so that the lessening of their worldly cares would aid them more easily to turn their thoughts and desires toward the spiritual.’ These cares were to be lessened in the form of subsidized houses and apartments which were owned by various churches in Mestre, Marghera, and Venice and which had passed into the administration of the Lega. The Lega would, in its turn, assign these apartments, at minimal rents, to parishioners of the churches of those cities who were found to meet the standards established by the joint agreement of the churches and the Lega. Among those requirements were regular attendance at Mass, proof of baptism of all children, a letter from their parish priest attesting that they were people who maintained the ‘highest moral standards’, and evidence of financial need.