Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

‘I’d like to talk to you, Signor Feltrinelli. May I come in?’

‘Why bother to ask?’ Feltrinelli said tiredly and opened the door wider, stepping back to let Brunetti enter.

‘Permesso,’ Brunetti said and stepped inside. Perhaps the title on the door didn’t lie: the apartment had the symmetrical look of a living space that had been planned with skill and precision. The living- room into which Brunetti walked was painted a flat white, the floor a light herring-bone parquet. A few kelims, colours muted with age, lay on the floor, and two other woven pieces -Brunetti thought they might be Persian – hung on the walls. The sofa was long and low, set back against the far wall, and appeared to be covered in beige silk. In front of it stood a long glass-topped table with a wide ceramic platter placed on one side. One wall was covered with a bookshelf, another with framed architectural renderings of buildings and photographs of completed buildings, all of them low, spacious, and surrounded by wide expanses of rough terrain. In the far corner stood a high draughting table, surface tilted to face the room and covered with outsized sheets of tissue paper. A cigarette burned in an ashtray which perched at a crazy angle on the slanted surface of the draughting table.

The symmetry of the room kept pulling the viewer’s eye back to its centre, to that simple ceramic platter. Brunetti sensed strongly that this was being done, but he didn’t understand how it had been achieved.

‘Signor Feltrinelli,’ he began, ‘I’d like to ask you to help us, if you can, in an investigation.’

Feltrinelli said nothing.

‘I’d like you to look at a picture of a man and tell us if you know him or recognize him.’

Feltrinelli walked over to the draughting table and picked up the cigarette. He drew hungrily at it, then crushed it out in the ashtray with a nervous gesture. ‘I don’t give names,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti asked, understanding him but not wanting to show that he did.

‘I don’t give the names of my clients. You can show me all the pictures you want, but I won’t recognize any of them, and I don’t know any names.’

‘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