Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

which look he saw there now. He had no idea what form it would take, but he knew it was coming.

‘Do you think he’s arranged the same payment plan for the Patriarch?’

In those same decades, he had also learned that the only way to deal with her tendency was to ignore her completely. ‘As I was saying,’ Brunetti continued, ‘the fact that he was in the apartment proves nothing.’

‘I hope you’re right, or I’d have to worry every time I saw him coming out of the Patriarchal Palace or the Basilica, wouldn’t I?’

He did no more than glance in her direction.

‘All right, Guido, he was there on business, legal business.’ She allowed a few moments to pass and then added, in a completely different voice, so as to alert him that she was now going to behave and treat this seriously, ‘But you said that Crespo recognized the man in the picture.’

‘I think he did, the first time, but by the time he looked up at me, he’d had a second to recover, so his expression was perfectly natural.’

‘Then the man in the picture could be anyone, couldn’t he? Another whore, even a client? Have you thought about that, Guido, that he might be a client who likes to dress up as a woman when he, well, when he goes to see these other men?’

In the sexual supermarket that was modern society, Brunetti knew, the man’s age made him far more likely to be a shopper than a seller. ‘That means we’d be looking for a man who used male prostitutes, rather than a man who was one,’ he said.

Paola took her drink, swirled it around a few times, and finished it. ‘Well, that would surely be a longer list. And, considering what you’ve just told me about l’Avvocato del Patriarcato, a far more interesting one.’

‘Is this another one of your conspiracy theories, Paola, that the city is filled with seemingly happily married men who can’t wait to sneak off into the bushes with one of these transvestites?’

‘For God’s sake, Guido, what do you men talk about when you’re together? Soccer? Politics? Don’t you ever hunker down and gossip?’

‘About what? The boys on Via Cappuccina?’ He put his glass down with unnecessary force and scratched at his ankle, where one of the night’s first mosquitoes had just bit him.

‘I guess it’s because you don’t have gay friends,’ she said equably.

‘We have lots of gay friends,’ he said, conscious of the fact that it was only in an argument with Paola that he could be forced to make that statement as a claim to honour.

‘Of course we have, but you don’t talk to them, Guido, really talk to them.’

‘What am I supposed to do, swap recipes or divulge my beauty secrets?’

She started to speak, stopped, gave him a long look, and then said, voice absolutely level, ‘I’m not sure if that remark is more offensive than stupid.’

He scratched at his ankle, thought about what they had both just said. ‘I suppose it was more stupid, but it was pretty offensive, too.’ She gave him a suspicious glance. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added. She smiled.

‘All right, tell me what I ought to know about this,’ he asked, scratching again at his ankle.

‘What I was trying to tell you was that some of the gays I know say that a lot of the men here are perfectly willing to have sex with them: family men, married men, doctors, lawyers, priests. I imagine there’s a great deal of exaggeration in what they tell me, and not a little vanity, but I also imagine there’s a great deal of truth, as well.’ He thought she was finished, but she added, ‘As a policeman, you’ve probably heard something about this, but I’d suspect that most men wouldn’t want to hear it. Or, if they hear it, not want to believe it.’ She seemed not to be including him in this list, but, of course, there was no way of being sure about that.

‘Who is your chief source of information in all of this?’ he asked.

‘Ettore and Basilio,’ she said, naming two of her colleagues at the university. ‘And some of Raffi’s friends have said the same thing.’

‘What?’

‘Two of Raffi’s friends at the liceo. Don’t look so surprised, Guido. They’re both seventeen.’

‘They’re both seventeen and what?’

‘And gay, Guido. Gay.’

‘Are they close friends?’ he asked before he could prevent himself.

Suddenly, Paola got to her feet. ‘I’m going to put the water on for the pasta. I think I might want to wait until after dinner to continue this discussion. That might give you some time to think about some of the things you’ve said and some of the assumptions you seem to be making.’ She picked up her glass, took his from his hand, and went back into the house, leaving him to think about his assumptions.

* * * *

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.’