Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

She laughed out loud and shook her head. ‘I will never figure you out, Guido. Never.’ She placed a hand on the back of his neck, leaned forward, and took the drink from his hand. She took another sip and then handed it back to him. ‘You think when you’re finished with this, you could think about letting me pay to use your body?’

Chapter Ten

The next two days were much the same, only hotter. Four of the men on Brunetti’s list were still not at the addresses listed for them, nor did the neighbours of either have any idea of where they might be or when they might return. Two knew nothing. Gallo and Scarpa had as little luck, though one of the men on Scarpa’s list did say that the man in the drawing looked faintly familiar, only he wasn’t sure why or where he might have seen him.

The three men had lunch together in a trattoria near the Questura and discussed what they did and didn’t know.

‘Well, he didn’t know how to shave his legs,’ Gallo said, when they seemed to have run out of things to list. Brunetti didn’t know if the sergeant was attempting humour or grasping at straws.

‘Why do you say that?’ Brunetti asked, finishing his wine and looking around for the waiter so he could ask for the bill.

‘His corpse. There were lots of little nicks on his legs, as if he wasn’t too accustomed to shaving them.’

‘Would any of us be?’ Brunetti asked, and then clarified the pronoun, ‘Men, I mean.’

Scarpa smiled into his glass. ‘I’d probably cut my kneecap off. I don’t know how they do it,’ he said, and shook his head at yet another of the wonders of women.

The waiter came up then with the bill. Sergeant Gallo took it before Brunetti could, pulled out his wallet, and laid some money on top of the bill. Before Brunetti could object, he explained, ‘We’ve been told you’re a guest of the city.’ Brunetti wondered how Patta would feel about such a thing, aside from believing that he didn’t deserve it.

‘We’ve exhausted the names on the list,’ Brunetti said. ‘I think that means we’ve got to talk to the ones who aren’t on the list.’

‘Do you want me to bring some of them in, sir?’ Gallo asked.

Brunetti shook his head: that was hardly the best way to encourage them to co-operate. ‘No, I think the best thing is to go and talk to them-’

Scarpa interrupted. ‘But we haven’t got names and addresses for most of them.’

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to go visit them where they work,’ Brunetti explained.

* * * *

Via Cappuccina is a broad, tree-lined street that runs from a few blocks to the right of the Mestre train station into the commercial heart of the city. It is lined with shops and small stores, offices and some blocks of apartment buildings; by day, it is a normal street in an entirely normal small Italian city. Children play under the trees and in the small parks that are to be found along its length. Their mothers are generally with them, to warn them about the cars and the traffic, but they are also there to warn them about and keep them safe from some of the other people who gravitate towards Via Cappuccina. The shops close at twelve-thirty, and Via Cappuccina rests for a few hours in the early afternoon. Traffic decreases, the children go home for lunch and a nap; businesses close, and the adults go home to eat and rest. There are fewer children playing in the afternoon, though the traffic returns, and Via Cappuccina fills up with life and motion, as shops and offices reopen.

Between seven-thirty and eight o’clock in the evening, the shops, offices, and stores close down; the merchants and owners pull down metal shutters, lock them securely, and go home for their evening meal, leaving Via Cappuccina to those who work along it after they leave.

During the evening, there is still traffic on Via Cappuccina, but no one seems any longer to be in much of a hurry. Cars move along slowly, but parking is no longer a problem, for it is not parking spaces that the drivers are seeking. Italy has become a wealthy nation, so most of the cars are air-conditioned. Because of this, the traffic is even slower, for the windows must now be lowered before a price can be called out or heard, and thus things take more time.

Some of the cars are new and slick: BMWs, Mercedes, the occasional Ferrari, though they are oddities on Via Cappuccina. Most of the cars are sedate, well-fed sedans, cars for families, the car that takes the children to school in the morning, the car that takes the family to church on Sunday and then out to the grandparents’ house for dinner. They are generally driven by men who feel more comfortable wearing a suit and tie than anything else, men who have done well as a result of the economic boom that has been so generous to Italy during the last decades.

With increasing frequency, doctors who deliver babies in the private wards and clinics of Italy, those used by people wealthy enough to avail themselves of private medical care, have had to tell new mothers that both they and their babies are infected with the AIDS virus. Most of these women respond with stupefaction, for these are women faithful to their marriage vows. The answer, they believe, must he in some hideous error in the medical treatment they have received. But perhaps the answer is more easily to be found on Via Cappuccina and the dealings that take place between the drivers of those sober cars and the men and women who crowd the sidewalks.

Brunetti turned into Via Cappuccina at eleven-thirty that night, walking down from the train station, where he had arrived a few minutes before. He had gone home for dinner, slept for an hour, then dressed himself in what he thought would make him look like something other than a policeman. Scarpa had had smaller copies made of both the drawing and the photographs of the dead man, and Brunetti carried some of these in the inner pocket of his blue linen jacket.

From behind him and off to his right, he could hear the faint hum of traffic as cars continued to stream past on the tangenziale of the autostrada. Though he knew it was unlikely, Brunetti felt as though their fumes were all being blown down here, so dense and tight was the breezeless air. He crossed a street, another, and then another, and then he began to notice the traffic. There were the cars, gliding along slowly, windows raised, heads turned to the kerb as the drivers inspected the other traffic.

Brunetti saw that he was not the only pedestrian here, but he was one of very few wearing a shirt and tie, and he seemed to be the only one not standing still.

‘Ciao, bello.’

‘Cosa vuoi, amore?’

‘Ti factio tutto che vuoi, caro.’

The offers came at him from almost every form he passed, offers of delight, joy, bliss. The voices suggested undreamed of pleasures, promised him the realization of every fantasy. He paused under a street light and was immediately approached by a tall blonde in a white miniskirt and very little else.

‘Fifty thousand,’ she said. She smiled, as if that would serve as greater inducement. The smile showed her teeth.

‘I want a man,’ Brunetti said.

She turned away without a word and walked towards the kerb. She leaned towards a passing Audi and called out the same price. The car kept moving. Brunetti stayed where he was, and she turned back towards him. ‘Forty,’ she said.

‘I want a man.’

‘They cost a lot more, and there’s nothing they can do for you that I can’t, bello.’ She showed him her teeth again.

‘I want them to look at a picture,’ Brunetti said.

‘Gesu Bambino,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘not one of those.’ Then, louder, ‘It’ll cost you extra. With them. I do everything for one price.’

‘I want them to look at the picture of a man and tell me if they recognize him.’

‘Police?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘They’re up the street, the boys, on the other side of Piazzale Leonardo da Vinci.’