Dressed for Death

by Donna Leon

  Because he sat behind the desk in Patta’s office, the man had to be Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. But the man Brunetti saw sitting there resembled the Vice-Questore in much the same way a police photo resembled the person it depicted. Usually bronzed to a light mahogany by this time of the summer, Patta was still pale, but it was a strange kind of paleness that had been laid down under a superficial coating of tanned skin. The massive chin, which Brunetti could not glimpse without calling to mind photos of Mussolini seen in history books, had lost its jutting firmness and had grown soft, as if it needed only another week to begin to sag. Patta’s tie was neatly knotted, but the collar of the suit under which it sat looked as though it needed to be brushed. The tie was just as bare of tiepin as the lapel was of flower, creating the strange impression that the Vice-Questore had come to his office in a state of undress.

  “Ah, Brunetti,” he said when he saw the other man come in. “Have a seat. Please have a seat.” In the more than five years Brunetti had worked for Patta, this, he was certain, was the first time he had heard the Vice-Questore say “please,” other than to strain the word through tightly clenched teeth.

  Brunetti did as he was asked and waited to see what new marvels were in store.

  “I wanted to thank you for your help,” Patta began, looking at Brunetti for a second and then glancing away, as if following a bird that had flown across the room behind Brunetti’s shoulder. Because Paola was gone, no copies of Gente or Oggi were in the house, so Brunetti could not be sure of the absence of stories about Signora Patta and Tito Burrasca, but he assumed that this was the reason for Patta’s gratitude. If Patta wanted to credit that fact to Brunetti’s supposed connections with the world of publishing rather than to the relative inconsequence of his wife’s behavior, Brunetti saw no sense in disillusioning the man.

  “It was nothing, sir,” he said, quite truthfully.

  Patta nodded. “What about this business in Mestre?”

  Brunetti gave him a brief account of what he had learned so far, concluding with his visit to Ravanello that morning and the man’s assertion that he knew of Mascari’s inclinations and tastes.

  “Then it would seem that his murderer has got to be one of his, what do you call them, ‘tricks’?” Patta said, showing his unerring instinct for the obvious.

  “That is, sir, if you think men of our age are sexually attractive to other men.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Commissario,” Patta said, returning to a tone with which Brunetti was more familiar.

  “We’re all assuming that he was either a transvestite or a whore and was killed as a result of that, yet the only evidence we have is the fact that he was found in a dress and the statement of the man who took his job.”

  “That man is also the director of a bank, Brunetti,” Patta said with his usual reverence for such titles.

  “Which job he has as a result of the other man’s death.”

  “Bankers do not kill one another, Brunetti,” Patta said with the rock-solid certainty so characteristic of him.

  Too late Brunetti realized the danger here. Patta had only to see the advantage of attributing Mascari’s death to some violent episode in his deviant private life, and he would be justified in leaving it to the Mestre police to search for the person responsible and legitimately remove Brunetti from any involvement with the case.

  “You’re probably right, sir,” Brunetti conceded, “but this is not the time when we can risk a suggestion in the press that we have not explored every possible avenue in this case.”

  Like a bull at the slightest flip of the cape, Patta responded to this reference to the media. “What are you suggesting then?”

  “I think we should, of course, concentrate all efforts on an examination of the world of the transvestites in Mestre, but I think we should at least go through the motions of examining the possibility of some connection to the bank, however remote we both know that to be.”

  Almost with dignity, Patta said, “Commissario, I’m not that far gone yet. If you want to pursue this idea that there might be some connection between his death and the bank, you are free to do so, but I want you to bear in mind whom you are dealing with and treat them with the respect due to their position.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “I’ll leave it to you, then, but I don’t want you to do anything involving the bank without checking with me first.”

  “Yes, sir. Will that be all?”

  “Yes.”

  Brunetti got to his feet, pushed the chair closer to the desk, and left the office without another word. He found Signorina Elettra in the outer office, leafing through the papers in a file.

  “Signorina,” he began, “have you managed to get any of that financial information?”

  “About which one?” she asked with a small smile.

  “Eh?” Brunetti asked, entirely at a loss.

  “Avvocato Santomauro or Signor Burrasca?” So preoccupied had Brunetti been by his involvement with Mascari’s death that he had forgotten that Signorina Elettra had been given the task of finding out everything she could about the film director, as well.

  “Oh, I’d forgotten all about that,” Brunetti admitted. The fact that she mentioned Burrasca made it clear to Brunetti that she wanted to talk about him. “What did you find out about him?”

  She lay the file to one side of her desk and looked up at Brunetti as if surprised by his question. “That his apartment in Milano is for sale, that his last three films lost money, and that the villa in Monaco has already been taken over by his creditors.” She smiled. “Would you like more?”

  Brunetti nodded. How on earth did she do it?

  “Criminal charges have been brought against him in the United States, where they have a law against using children in pornographic films. And all copies of his last film have been confiscated by the police in Monaco; I can’t find out why.”

  “And his taxes? Are those copies of his returns you’re looking through?”

  “Oh, no,” she answered, voice heavy with disapproval, “You know how difficult it is to get any information from the tax people.” She paused and added, as he suspected she might, “Unless you know someone who works there. I won’t have them until tomorrow.”

  “And then will you give it all to the Vice-Questore?”

  Signorina Elettra favored him with a fierce look. “No, Commissario. I’m going to wait at least a few more days before I do that.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I do not joke about the Vice-Questore.”

  “But why make him wait?”

  “Why not?”

  Brunetti wondered what minor indignities Patta had heaped on this woman’s head during the last week to have made him be so soon repaid in this way “And what about Santomauro?” he asked.

  “Ah, the Avvocato is an entirely different case. His finances couldn’t possibly be in better condition. He’s got a portfolio of stocks and bonds that must be worth more than half a billion lire. His yearly income is declared at two hundred million lire, which is at least double what a man in his position would normally declare.”

  “What about taxes?”

  “That’s what’s so strange. It seems that he declares it all. There’s no evidence that he’s cheating in any way.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe it,” Brunetti said.

  “Please, Commissario,” she said, giving him another reproachful look, although less fierce than the last. “You know better than to believe that anyone tells the truth on their taxes. That’s what’s so strange. If he’s declaring everything he earns, then he’s got to have another source of money that makes his declared income so insignificant he doesn’t have to cheat on it.”

  Brunetti thought about it for a moment. Given the tax laws, no other interpretation was possible. “Does your computer give you any indication of where that money might be coming from?”

  “No, but it does tell me that he’s the president of the L
ega della Moralità. So that would seem the logical place to look.”

  “Can you,” he asked, speaking in the plural and nodding at the screen in front of her, “see what you can find out about the Lega?”

  “Oh, I’ve already begun that, Commissario. But the Lega, so far, has been even more elusive than have Signor Burrasca’s tax returns.”

  “I have confidence you’ll see your way clear of every obstacle, Signorina.”

  She bowed her head, taking it as no more than her due.

  He decided to ask. “How is it that you’re so familiar with the computer network?”

  “Which one?” she asked, looking up.

  “Financial.”

  “Oh, I worked with it at my last job,” she said and glanced back down at the screen.

  “And where was that, if I might ask?” he said, thinking of insurance agencies, perhaps an accountant’s office.

  “For the Banca d’ltalia,” she said, as much to the screen as to Brunetti.

  He raised his eyebrows. She glanced up and, seeing his expression, explained. “I was an assistant to the president.”

  One didn’t have to be a banker or a mathematician to work out the drop in salary that a change like this meant. Further, for most Italians, a job in a bank represented absolute security; people waited years to be accepted on the staff of a bank, any bank, and Banca d’ltalia was certainly the most desirable. And she was now working as a secretary for the police? Even with flowers twice a week from Fantin, it made no sense. Given the fact that she would work, not just for the police, but for Patta, it seemed an act of sovereign madness.

  “I see,” he said, although he didn’t. “I hope you’ll be happy with us.”

  “I’m sure I will be, Commissario,” Signorina Elettra said. “Is there any other information you’d like me to find?”

  “No, not at the moment, thank you,” Brunetti said and left her to go back to his office. Using the central line, he dialed the number of the hotel in Bolzano and asked to speak to Signora Brunetti.

  Signora Brunetti, he was told, had gone for a walk and was not expected to be back at the hotel before dinner. He left no message, merely identified himself and hung up.

  The phone rang almost immediately. It was Padovani, calling from Rome, apologetic about the fact that he had succeeded in learning nothing further about Santomauro. He had called friends, both in Rome and in Venice, but everyone seemed to be away on vacation, and he had done no more than leave a series of messages on answering machines, requesting that his friends call him but not explaining why he wanted to speak to them. Brunetti thanked him and asked him to call if he did learn anything further.

  After he hung up, Brunetti pushed the papers on his desk around until he found the one he wanted, the autopsy report on Mascari, and read through it again carefully. On the fourth page he found what he was looking for. “Some scratches and cuts on the legs, no sign of epidermal bleeding. Scratches no doubt caused by the sharp edges on,” and here the pathologist had done a bit of showing off by giving the Latin name of the grass in which Mascari’s body had been hidden.

  Dead people can’t bleed; there is no pressure to carry the blood to the surface. This was one of the simple truths of pathology that Brunetti had learned. If those scratches had been caused by, and here he repeated out loud the orotund syllables of the Latin name, then they would not have bled, for Mascari was dead when his body was shoved under those leaves. But if his legs had been shaved by someone else, after he was dead, then they would not have bled either.

  Brunetti had never shaved any part of his body except his face, but he had, for years, been witness to this process as performed by Paola as she attempted to run a razor over calf, ankle, knee. He had lost count of the times that he had heard muttered curses from the bathroom, only to see Paola emerge with a piece of toilet paper sticking to some segment of her limb. Paola had been shaving her legs regularly since he knew her; she still cut herself when she did it. It seemed unlikely that a middle-aged man could achieve this feat with greater success than Paola and shave his legs without cutting them. He tended to believe that, to a certain degree, most marriages were pretty similar. Hence, if Brunetti were suddenly to begin to shave his legs, Paola would know it immediately. It seemed to Brunetti unlikely that Mascari could have shaved his legs and not have his wife notice, even if he didn’t call her while away on business trips.

  He glanced at the autopsy report again: “No evidence of bleeding on any of the cuts on victim’s legs.” No, regardless of the red dress and the red shoes, regardless of the makeup and the underwear, Signor Mascari had not shaved his own legs before he died. And so that must mean that someone had done it for him after he was dead.

  19

  He sat in his office, hoping that a late afternoon breeze would spring up and bring some relief, but the hope proved to be as futile as his hope that he would begin to see some connection between all these random factors. It was clear to him that the whole business of the transvestism was an elaborate posthumous charade designed to pull attention away from whatever the real motive had been for Mascari’s death. That meant that Ravanello, the only person to have heard Mascari’s “confession,” was lying and probably knew something about the murder. But although Brunetti found no difficulty in believing that bankers did, in fact, kill people, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that they would do it merely as a shortcut to promotion.

  Ravanello had been in no way reluctant to admit to having been in the bank’s office that weekend; in fact, he had volunteered the information. And with Mascari just identified, his reason made sense—what any good friend would do. Moreover, what any loyal employee would do.

  Still, why hadn’t he identified himself on the phone on Saturday, why kept it secret, even from some unknown caller, that he was in the bank that afternoon?

  His phone rang and, still musing on this, still dulled with the heat, he gave his name. “Brunetti.”

  “I need to talk to you,” a man’s voice said. “In person.”

  “Who is this?” Brunetti calmly asked.

  “I’d rather not say,” answered the voice.

  “Then I’d rather not talk to you,” Brunetti said and hung up.

  This response usually stunned callers so much that they felt they had no option but to call back. Within minutes, the phone rang again, and Brunetti answered in the same way.

  “It’s very important,” the same voice said.

  “So is it that I know who I’m talking to,” Brunetti said quite conversationally.

  “We talked last week.”

  “I talked to a lot of people last week, Signor Crespo, but very few of them have called me and said they wanted to see me.”

  Crespo was silent for a long time, and Brunetti feared for a moment that it might be his turn to hang up, but instead the young man said, “I want to meet you and talk to you.”

  “We are talking, Signor Crespo.”

  “No, I have some things I want to give you, some photos and some papers.”

  “What sort of papers and what sort of photos?”

  “You’ll know when you see them.”

  “What does this have to do with, Signor Crespo?”

  “With Mascari. The police got it all wrong about him.”

  Brunetti was of the opinion that Crespo was correct about this, but he thought he’d keep that opinion to himself.

  “What have we got wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  Brunetti could tell from Crespo’s voice that he was running out of courage or whatever other emotion had led him to make the call. “Where do you want to meet me?”

  “How well do you know Mestre?”

  “Well enough.” Besides, he could always ask Gallo or Vianello.

  “Do you know the parking lot at the other side of the tunnel to the train station?”

  It was one of the few places where someone could park for free in the vicinity of Venice. All anyone had to do was park
in the lot or along the tree-lined street that led to the tunnel and then duck into the entrance and up onto the platforms for the trains to Venice. Ten minutes by train, no parking fee, and no waiting in line to park or pay at Tronchetto.

  “Yes, I know it.”

  “I’ll meet you there, tonight.”

  “What time?”

  “Not until late. I’ve got something to do first, and I don’t know when I’ll be finished.”

  “What time?”

  “I’ll be there by one this morning.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “When you come up out of the tunnel, go down to the first street and turn left. I’ll be parked on the right side in a light blue Panda.”

  “Why did you ask about the parking lot?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to know if you knew about it. I don’t want to be in the parking lot. It’s too well-lit.”

  “All right, Signor Crespo, I’ll meet you.”

  “Good,” Crespo said and hung up before Brunetti could say anything more.

  Well, Brunetti wondered, who had put Signor Crespo up to making that particular call? He did not for an instant believe that Crespo had made the call for his own purposes or designs— someone like Crespo would never have called back—but that in no way diminished his curiosity to know what the call had really been about. The most likely conclusion was that someone wanted to deliver a threat, or perhaps something stronger, and what better way to do that than to lure him out onto a public street at one in the morning?

  He phoned the Mestre Questura and asked to speak to Sergeant Gallo, only to be told that the sergeant had been sent to Milan for a few days to give evidence in a court case. Did he want to speak to Sergeant Buffo, who was handling Sergeant Gallo’s work? Brunetti said no and hung up.

  He called Vianello and asked him to come up to his office. When the sergeant came in, Brunetti asked him to sit down and told him about Crespo’s call and his own to Gallo. “What do you think?” Brunetti asked.