by Donna Leon
“Did you stay there long?”
This time it was Cola who suspected lunacy. “No, no. No, I came back into the building’and told Banditelli, and he called you.”
The foreman nodded to confirm this.
“Did you walk around back there?” the first policeman asked Cola.
“Walk around?”
“Stand around? Smoke? Drop anything near her?”
Cola shook his head in a strong negative.
The second one flipped the pages of his notebook and the first said, “I asked you a question.”
“No. Nothing. I saw her and I dropped the shoe, and I went into the building.”
“Did you touch her?” the first one asked.
Cola looked at him with eyes wide with amazement. “She’s dead. Of course I didn’t touch her.”
“You touched her foot,” the second policeman said, looking down at his notes.
“I didn’t touch her foot,” Cola said, although he couldn’t remember now if he had or not. “1 touched the shoe, and it came off her foot.” He couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Why would I want to touch her?”
Neither policeman answered this. The first one turned and nodded to the second, who flipped his notebook closed. “All right, show us where she is.”
Cola stood rooted to the spot and shook his head from side to side. The sun had dried the blood that spattered down the front of his apron, and flies buzzed around him. He didn’t look at the policemen. “She’s in back, out beyond the big hole in the fence.”
“I want you to show us where she is,” the first policeman said.
“I just told you where she is,” Cola snapped, his voice rising sharply.
The two policemen exchanged a glance that somehow managed to suggest that Cola’s reluctance was significant, worth remembering. But, saying nothing, they turned away from him and from the foreman and walked around the side of the building.
It was noon and the sun beat down on the flat tops of the officers’ uniform caps. Beneath them, their hair was sopping, their necks running with sweat. In back of the building, they saw the large hole in the fence and made toward it. Behind them, filtering through the death squeals that still came from the building, they heard human sounds and turned toward them. Clustered around the back entrance of the building, their aprons as red with gore as Cola’s, five or six men huddled in a tight ball. Used to this curiosity, the policemen turned back toward the fence and headed toward the hole. Stooping low, they went through it single file and then off to the left, toward a large, spiky clump of bush that stood beyond the fence.
The officers stopped a few meters from it. Knowing to look for the foot, they easily found it, saw its sole peering out from beneath the low branches. Both shoes lay just in front of it.
The two of them approached the foot, walking slowly and looking at the ground where they walked, as careful to avoid the malevolent puddles as to keep from stepping in anything that might be another footprint. Just beside the shoes, the first one knelt down and pushed the waist-high grass aside with his hand.
The body lay on its back, the outer side of the ankles pressed into the earth. The policeman reached forward and pushed at the grass, exposing a length of hairless calf. He removed his sun-glasses and peered into the shadows, following with his eye the legs, long and muscular, following across the bony knee, up to the lacy red underpants that showed under the bright red dress pulled up over the face. He stared a moment longer.
“Cazzo” he exclaimed and let the grass spring back into place.
“What’s the matter?” the other one asked.
“It’s a man.”
3
Ordinarily, the news that a transvestite prostitute had been found in Marghera with his head and face beaten in would have created a sensation, even among the jaded staff at the Venice Questura, especially during the long Ferragosto holiday, when crime tended to drop off or take on the boring predictability of burglaries and break-ins. But today it would have taken something far more lurid to displace the spectacular news that ran like a flame through the corridors of the Questura: Maria Lucrezia Patta, wife of Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, had that weekend left her husband of twenty-seven years to take up residence in the Milano apartment of—and here each teller of the tale paused to “prepare each new listener for the bombshell— Tito Burrasca, the founding light and prime mover of Italy’s pornographic film industry.
The news had dropped from heaven upon the place beneath just that morning, carried into the building by a secretary in the Ufficio Stranieri, whose uncle lived in a small apartment on the floor above the Pattas and who claimed to have been passing the Pattas’ door just at the moment when terminal hostilities between the Pattas had erupted. Patta, the uncle reported, had shouted Burrasca’s name a number of times, threatening to have him arrested if he ever dared come to Venice; Signora Patta had returned fire by threatening, not only to go and live with Burrasca, but to star in his next film. The uncle had retreated up the steps and had spent the next half hour trying to open his own front door, during which time the Pattas continued to exchange threats and recriminations. Hostilities ceased only with the arrival of a water taxi at the end of the calle and the departure of Signora Patta, who was followed down the steps of the building by six suitcases, carried by the taxi driver, and by the curses of Patta, carried up to the uncle by the funnel-like acoustics of the staircase.
The news arrived at eight on Monday morning; Patta followed it into the Questura at eleven. At one-thirty, the call came in about the transvestite, but by then most of the staff had already left for lunch, during which meal some employees of the Questura engaged in quite wild speculation about Signora Patta’s future film career. An indication of the Vice-Questore’s popularity was the bet that was made at one table, offering a hundred thousand lire to the first person who dared to inquire of the Vice-Questore as to his wife’s health.
Guido Brunetti first heard about the murdered transvestite from Vice-Questore Patta himself, who called Brunetti into his office at two-thirty.
“I’ve just had a call from Mestre,” Patta said after telling Brunetti to take a seat.
“Mestre, sir?” Brunetti asked.
“Yes, that city at the end of the Ponte della Libertà,” Patta snapped. “I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
Brunetti thought of what he had learned about Patta that morning and decided to ignore his remark. “Why did they call you, sir?”
“They’ve got a murder over there and no one to investigate.”
“But they’ve got more staff than we have, sir,” Brunetti said, never quite certain just how much Patta knew about the workings of the police force in either city.
“I know that, Brunetti. But two of their commissarios are on vacation. Another broke his leg in an automobile accident this weekend, so that leaves only one, and she"—Patta managed to give a snort of disgust at such a possibility—"leaves for maternity leave on Saturday and won’t be back until the end of February.”
“What about the two on vacation? Surely they can be called back?”
“One of them is in Brazil, and no one seems able to find the other one.”
Brunetti started to say that a commissario had to leave word where he could be reached, no matter where he went on vacation, but then he looked at Patta’s face and decided, instead, to ask, “What did they tell you about the murder, sir?”
“It’s a whore. A transvestite. Someone beat his head in and left his body in a field out in Marghera.” Before Brunetti could object, Patta said, “Don’t even ask. The field is in Marghera, but the slaughterhouse that owns it is in Mestre, just by a few meters, so Mestre gets it.”
Brunetti had no desire to waste time on the details of property rights or city boundaries, so he asked, “How do they know it’s a prostitute, sir?”
“I don’t know how they know it’s a prostitute, Brunetti,” Patta said, his voice going up a few notes. “I’m telling you what they told me. A transv
estite prostitute, in a dress, with his head and face beaten in.”
“When was he found, sir?”
It was not Patta’s habit to take notes, so he had not bothered to make any record of the call he had received. The facts hadn’t interested him—one whore more, one whore less—but he was bothered by the fact that it would be his staff doing Mestre’s work. That meant any success they met with would go to Mestre. But then he thought of recent events in his personal life and came to the decision that this might well be the sort of case he should let Mestre take any and all credit for—and publicity.
“I had a call from their questore this morning, asking if we could handle it. What are you three doing?”
“Mariani is on vacation and Rossi’s still going through the papers on the Bortolozzi case,” Brunetti explained.
“And you?”
“I’m scheduled to begin my vacation this weekend, Vice-Questore.”
“That can wait,” Patta said with a certainty that soared above things like hotel reservations or plane tickets. “Besides, this has got to be a simple thing. Find the pimp, get a list of customers. It’s bound to be one of them.”
“Do they have pimps, sir?”
“Whores? Of course they have pimps.”
“Male whores, sir? Transvestite whores? Assuming, of course, that he was a prostitute.”
“Why would you expect me to know a thing like that, Brunetti?” asked Patta, suspicious and with more than his usual irritation, again forcing Brunetti to remember that morning’s first news and quickly change the subject.
“How long ago did the call come in, sir?” Brunetti asked.
“A few hours ago. Why?”
“I wondered if the body’s been moved.”
“In this heat?” Patta asked.
“Yes, there is that,” Brunetti agreed. “Where was it taken?”
“I have no idea. One of the hospitals. Umberto Primo, probably. I think that’s where they do the autopsies. Why?”
“I’d like to have a look,” Brunetti said. “And at the place where it happened.”
Patta wasn’t a man to be interested in details. “Since this is Mestre’s case, make sure you use their drivers, not ours.”
“Was there anything else, sir?”
“No. I’m sure this will be a simple thing. You’ll have it wrapped up by the weekend and be free to go on vacation.” It was like Patta that he asked nothing about where Brunetti planned to go or what sort of reservations he might have to cancel. More details.
Leaving Patta’s office, Brunetti noticed that while he had been inside, furniture had suddenly appeared in the small anteroom directly outside Patta’s office. A large wooden desk stood on one side, and a small table had been placed beneath the window. Ignoring this, he went downstairs and into the office where the uniformed branch worked. Sergeant Vianello looked up from some papers on his desk and smiled at Brunetti. “Even before you ask, Commissario, yes, it’s true. Tito Burrasca.”
Hearing the confirmation, Brunetti was no less astonished than he had been, hours before, when he first heard the story. Burrasca was, if “legend” was the proper word to use, a legend in Italy. He had begun making films during the sixties, blood and guts horror movies so patently artificial that they became unconscious parodies of the genre. Burrasca, not at all foolish, no matter how inept he might have been at making horror films, answered the popular response to his films by making the films even more false: vampires with wristwatches that the actors seemed to have forgotten to remove; telephones that brought the news of Dracula’s escape; actors of the semaphore school of dramatic presentation. After a very short time, he had become a cult figure, and people flocked to his films, eager to detect the artifice, to spot the howlers.
In the seventies, he gathered up all those masters of semaphoric expression and directed them in the making of pornographic films, at which they turned out to be no more adept. Costuming no problem, he soon realized that plot, similarly, presented no obstacle to the creative mind: he merely dusted off the plots of his old horror films and turned the ghouls, vampires, and werewolves into rapists and sex maniacs, and he filled the theaters, although smaller theaters this time, with a different audience, one that seemed not at all interested in the spotting of anachronism.
The eighties presented Italy with scores of new private television stations, and Burrasca presented those stations with his latest films, somewhat toned down in deference to the supposed sensibilities of the television audience. And then he discovered the videocassette. His name quickly became part of the small change of Italian daily life; he was the butt of jokes on TV game shows, a figure in newspaper cartoons. But close consideration of his success had caused him to move to Monaco and become a citizen of that sensibly-taxed principality. The twelve-room apartment he maintained in Milano, he told the Italian tax authorities, was used only for entertaining business guests. And now, it would appear, Maria Lucrezia Patta.
“Tito Burrasca, in fact,” Sergeant Vianello repeated, keeping himself, Brunetti knew not with what force, from smiling. “Perhaps you’re lucky to be spending the next few days in Mestre.”
Brunetti couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Didn’t anyone know about it before?”
Vianello shook his head. “No. No one. Not a whisper.”
“Not even Anita’s uncle?” Brunetti asked, revealing that even the higher orders knew the source of this information.
Vianello began to answer but was interrupted by the buzzer on his desk. He picked up the phone, pressed a button, and asked, “Yes, Vice-Questore?”
He listened for a moment, said, “Certainly, Vice-Questore,” and hung up.
Brunetti gave him an inquisitive glance. “The immigration people. He wants to know how long Burrasca can stay in the country now that he’s changed his citizenship.”
Brunetti shook his head. “I suppose you have to feel sorry for the poor devil.”
Vianello’s head shot up. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, disguise his astonishment. “Sorry? For him?” With evident effort, he stopped himself from saying more and turned his attention back to the folder on his desk.
Brunetti left him and went back to his own office. From there he called the Questura in Mestre, identified himself, and asked to be put through to whoever was in charge of the case of the murdered transvestite. Within minutes he was put through to a Sergeant Gallo, who explained that he was handling the case until a person of higher rank took over from him. Brunetti identified himself and said he was that person, then asked Gallo to send a car to pick him up at Piazzale Roma in half an hour.
When Brunetti stepped outside the dim entryway of the Questura, the sun hit him like a blow. Momentarily blinded by the light and the reflection from the canal, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out his sunglasses. Before he had taken five steps, he could feel the sweat seeping into his shirt, crawling down his back. He turned right, deciding in that instant to go up to San Zaccaria and get the number eighty-two, although to get there it would mean walking in the sun a good part of the way. Although the calli that led to the Rialto were all shaded from the sun by high houses, it would take him twice as long to get there, and he dreaded even so little as an extra minute spent outside.
When he emerged at Riva degli Schiavoni, he looked off to the left and saw that the vaporetto was tied to the landing stage, people streaming from it. He was confronted with one of those peculiarly Venetian decisions: run and try to get the boat or let it go and then spend ten minutes in the trapped heat of the bobbing embarcadero, waiting for the next one. He ran. As he pounded across the wooden boards of the landing stage, he was presented with another decision: pause a moment to stamp his ticket in the yellow machine at the entrance and thus perhaps lose the boat, or run onto the boat and pay the five hundred lire supplement for failing to stamp the ticket. But then he remembered that he was on police business and, consequently, could ride at the expense of the city.
Even the short run h
ad flooded his face and chest with sweat, and so he chose to remain on deck, his body catching what little breeze was created by the boat’s stately progress up the Grand Canal. He glanced around him and saw the half-naked tourists, the men and women with their bathing suits, shorts, and scoop-necked T-shirts, and for a moment he envied them, even though he knew the impossibility of his appearing like that any place other than a beach.
As his body dried, the envy fled, and he returned to his normal state of irritation at seeing them dressed like this. If they had perfect bodies and perfect clothing, perhaps he would find them less annoying. As it was, the shabby materials of the clothing and the even shabbier state of too many of the bodies left him thinking longingly of the compulsory modesty of Islamic societies. He was not what Paola called a “beauty snob,” but he did believe that it was better to look good than bad. He turned his attention from the people on the boat to the palazzi that lined the canal, and immediately he felt his irritation evaporate. Many of them, too, were shabby, but it was the shabbiness of centuries of wear, not that of laziness and cheap clothing. The city had grown old, but Brunetti loved the sorrows of her changing face.
Although he hadn’t specified where the car was to meet him, he walked to the Carabinieri station at Piazzale Roma and saw, parked in front of it, motor running, one of the blue and white sedans of the Squadra Mobile of Mestre. He tapped on the driver’s window. The young man inside rolled it down, and a wave of cold air flowed across the front of Brunetti’s shirt.
“Commissario?” the young man asked. At Brunetti’s nod, the young man got out, saying, “Sergeant Gallo sent me,” and held open the rear door for him. Brunetti got into the car and rested his head for a moment against the back of the seat. The sweat on his chest and shoulders grew cold, but Brunetti couldn’t tell if its evaporation brought him pleasure or pain.