Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

by Donna Leon

  ‘Three weeks ago. He went to Ravanello and told him something was wrong with the accounts. He had no idea that Ravanello knew about it, thought that it was Santomauro. Fool,’ Malfatti spat in contempt. ‘If he had wanted, he could have got a third out of them, an easy third.’ He looked back and forth between Brunetti and the secretary, asking them to share his disgust.

  ‘And then?’ Brunetti asked, keeping his own disgust to himself.

  ‘Santomauro and Ravanello came to my place about a week before it happened. They wanted me to get rid of him, but I knew what they were like, so I told them I wouldn’t do it unless they helped. I’m no fool.’ Again, he looked at the other men for approval. ‘You know what it’s like with people like that. You do a job for them, you’re never free of them. The only way to be safe is to make them get their hands dirty, too.’

  ‘Is that what you told them?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘In a way. I told them I’d do it but that they’d have to help me set it up.’

  ‘How did they do that?’

  ‘They had Crespo call Mascari and say he’d heard he was looking for information about the apartments the Lega rented and that he lived in one of them. Mascari had the list, so he could check. When Mascari told him he was leaving for Sicily that evening – we knew that -Crespo told him he had other information to give him, that he could stop on the way to the airport.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He agreed.’

  ‘Was Crespo there?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Malfatti said with a snort of contempt. ‘He was a delicate little bastard. Didn’t want to have anything to do with it. So he took off – probably went and hit the pavements early. And we waited for Mascari. He showed up at about seven.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I let him in. He thought I was Crespo, didn’t have any reason not to. I told him to sit down and offered him a drink, but he said he had a plane to catch and was in a hurry. I asked him again if he wanted a drink, and when he said no, I said I wanted one and walked behind him to the table where the drinks were. That’s when I did it.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I hit him.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘An iron bar. The same one I had today. It’s very good.’

  ‘How many times did you hit him?’

  ‘Only once. I didn’t want to get blood on Crespo’s furniture. And I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted them to do that.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘I don’t know. That is, I don’t know which one of them did it. They were in the bedroom. I called them and we carried him into the bathroom. He was still alive then; I heard him groan.’

  ‘Why the bathroom?’

  Malfatti’s glance showed that he was thinking he’d overestimated Brunetti’s intelligence. ‘The blood.’ There was a long pause, and when Brunetti didn’t say anything, Malfatti continued, ‘We laid him down on the floor, and then I went back and got the iron bar. Santomauro had been saying that we needed to destroy his face – we’d planned it all, put it together like a puzzle, and he had to be unrecognizable so there would be enough time to change the records in the bank. Anyway, he kept saying that we had to destroy his face, so I gave him the bar and told him to do it himself. Then I went back into the living-room and had a cigarette. When I came back, it was done.’

  ‘He was dead?’

  Malfatti shrugged.

  ‘Ravanello and Santomauro killed him?’

  ‘I’d already done my share.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We stripped him and shaved his legs. Jesus, what a job that was.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine so,’ Brunetti permitted himself. ‘And then what?’

  ‘We put the make-up on him.’ Malfatti paused a moment in thought. ‘No, that’s wrong. They did that before they hit his face. One of them said it would be easier. Then we put his clothes back on him and carried him out, like he was drunk. But we didn’t have to bother; no one saw us. Ravanello and I took him down to Santomauro’s car and drove him out to the field. I knew about what goes on out there, and I thought it would be a good place to dump him.’

  ‘What about the clothes? Where did you change them?’

  ‘When we got there, out in Marghera. We pulled him out of the back seat and stripped him. Then we put those clothes on him, that red dress and everything, and I carried him over to a place at the other side of the field and left him there. I stuffed him under a bush so it would take longer for him to be found.’ Malfatti paused for a moment, summoning memory. ‘Ravanello stuffed the shoes into my pockets. I dropped one beside him. They were Ravanello’s idea, the shoes, I think.’

  ‘What did you do with his clothes?’

  ‘I stopped on the way back to Crespo’s place and put them in a garbage can. It was all right; there was no blood on them. We were very careful. We wrapped his head in a plastic bag.’

  The young officer coughed but turned his head away so the sound wouldn’t register on the tape.

  ‘And afterwards?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘We went back to the apartment. Santomauro had cleaned it up. That was the last I heard of them until the night you came out to Mestre.’

  ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Not mine. Ravanello called me and explained things to me. I think they hoped the investigation would stop if we could get rid of you.’ Malfatti sighed. ‘I tried to tell them things don’t work that way, that it wouldn’t make any difference, killing you, but they didn’t want to listen. They insisted that I help them.’

  ‘So you agreed?’

  Malfatti nodded.

  ‘You have to give an answer, Signor Malfatti, or the tape doesn’t register it,’ Brunetti explained coolly.

  ‘Yes, I agreed.’

  ‘What made you change your mind and agree to do it?’

  ‘They paid enough.’

  Because the young officer was there, Brunetti didn’t ask how much his life was worth. It would come out in time.

  ‘Did you drive the car that tried to push us off the road?’

  ‘Yes.’ Malfatti paused for a long time and then added, ‘You know, I don’t think I would have done it if I’d known there was a woman in the car with you. It’s bad luck to kill a woman. She was my first.’ It hit him then and he looked up. ‘See, it is bad luck, isn’t it?’

  ‘Probably more for the woman than for you, Signor Malfatti,’ Brunetti answered, but before Malfatti could react, Brunetti asked, ‘What about Crespo? Did you kill him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t have anything to do with that. I was in the car with Ravanello. We left Santomauro with Crespo. When we got back there, it was finished.’

  ‘What did Santomauro tell you?’

  ‘Nothing. Not about that. He just told us it had happened, and then he told me to stay out of sight, if possible to get out of Venice. I was going to, but now I guess I won’t get the chance to.’

  ‘And Ravanello?’

  ‘I went there this morning, after you came to my place.’ Malfatti stopped here, and Brunetti wondered what he he was preparing.

  ‘What happened?’ Brunetti prodded him.

  ‘I told him that the police were after me. I said I needed money to get out of the city and go somewhere. But he panicked. He started shouting that I had ruined everything. That’s when he pulled the knife.’

  Brunetti had seen the knife. A switchblade seemed a strange thing for a banker to carry on his person, but he said nothing.

  ‘He came at me with it. He was completely wild. We fought over it, and I think he fell on it.’ He did, Brunetti remarked to himself. Twice. In the chest.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I went to my mother’s. That’s where your men found me.’ Malfatti stopped speaking, and the only sound in the room was the soft humming of the tape recorder.

  ‘What happened to the money?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘What?’ Malfatti said, surprised by this sudden change of pace.

  ‘The mon
ey. That was made from all the rents.’

  ‘I spent mine, spent it every month. But it was nothing compared to what they got.’

  ‘How much was it you got?’

  ‘Between nine and ten million.’

  ‘Do you know what they did with theirs?’

  Malfatti paused for a moment, as though he had never speculated about this. ‘I’d guess Santomauro spent a large part of his on boys. Ravanello, I don’t know. He looked like one of those people who invested money.’ Malfatti’s tone turned this into an obscenity.

  ‘Have you anything else to say about this or your involvement with these men?’

  ‘Only that the idea to kill Mascari was theirs, not mine. I went along with it, but it was their idea. I didn’t have much to lose if anyone found out about the rents, so I didn’t see any reason to kill him.’ It was clear that, had he believed he had anything to lose, he would have had no hesitation to kill Mascari, but Brunetti said nothing.

  ‘That’s all,’ Malfatti said.

  Brunetti rose and signalled to the young officer to come with him. ‘I’ll have this typed up and you can sign it.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Malfatti said and laughed. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  An hour later, Brunetti took three copies of the typed statement down to Malfatti, who signed them without bothering to read it. ‘Don’t you want to know what you’re signing?’ Brunetti asked him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Malfatti replied, still not bothering to raise himself from the cot. He waved the pen Brunetti had given him at the paper. ‘Besides, there’s no reason to think anyone’s going to believe that.’

  Since the same thing had occurred to Brunetti, he didn’t argue the point.

  ‘What happens now?’ Malfatti asked.

  ‘There’ll be a hearing within the next few days, and the magistrate will decide if you should be offered the chance of bail.’

  ‘Will he ask your opinion?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ll argue against it.’

  Malfatti moved his hand along the barrel of the pen and then reversed his hold on it and offered it to Brunetti.

  ‘Will someone tell my mother?’ Malfatti asked.

  ‘I’ll see that someone calls her.’

  Malfatti shrugged his acknowledgement, moved himself lower on the pillow, and closed his eyes.

  Brunetti left the cell and went up two flights of stairs to Signorina Elettra’s alcove. Today she was dressed in a shade of red seldom seen beyond the confines of the Vatican, but Brunetti found it strident and out of tune with his mood. She smiled, and his mood lightened a bit.

  ‘Is he in?’ Brunetti asked.

  He got here about an hour ago, but he’s on the phone and he told me not to interrupt him, not for anything.’

  Brunetti preferred it this way, didn’t want to be with Patta when he read Malfatti’s confession. He placed a copy of the confession on her desk and said, ‘Would you give him this as soon as he’s finished with the call?’

  ‘Malfatti?’ she asked, looking at it with open curiosity.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  When she asked that, Brunetti suddenly realized that he was completely displaced, had no idea what time it was. He glanced at his watch, saw that it was five, but the hour meant nothing to him. He didn’t feel hungry, only thirsty and miserably tired. He began to consider how Patta was likely to respond; that increased his thirst.

  ‘I’ll go and get something to drink and then I’ll be in my office.’

  He turned and left; he didn’t care if she read the confession or not, found that he didn’t care about anything except his thirst and the heat and the faint grainy texture of his skin, where salt had been evaporating all day. He raised the back of his hand to his mouth and licked it, almost glad to taste the bitterness.

  An hour later, he went into Patta’s office in response to his summons, and at the desk Brunetti found the old Patta: he looked like he had shed five years and gained five kilos overnight.

  ‘Have a seat, Brunetti,’ Patta said. Patta picked up the confession and tapped the six pages on his desk, aligning them neatly.

  ‘I’ve just read this,’ Patta said. He glanced across at Brunetti and laid the papers flat on his desk. ‘I believe him.’

  Brunetti concentrated on demonstrating no emotion. Patta’s wife was somehow involved with the Lega. Santomauro was a figure of some political importance in a city where Patta hoped to rise to power. Brunetti realized that justice and the law were not going to play any part in whatever conversation he was about to have with Patta. He said nothing.

  ‘But I doubt that anyone else will,’ Patta added, beginning to lead Brunetti towards illumination. When it became clear that Brunetti was going to say nothing, Patta continued, ‘I’ve had a number of phone calls this afternoon.’

  It was too cheap a shot to ask if one of them had been from Santomauro, and so Brunetti did not ask.

  ‘Not only did Avvocato Santomauro call me, but I also had long conversations with two members of the city council, both of whom are friends and political associates of the Avvocato.’ Patta pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his legs. Brunetti could see the tip of one gleaming shoe and a narrow expanse of thin blue sock. He looked up at Patta’s face. ‘As I said, no one is going to believe this man.’

  ‘Even if he is telling the truth?’ Brunetti finally asked.

  ‘Especially if he’s telling the truth. No one in this city is going to believe that Santomauro is capable of what this man accuses him of doing.’

  ‘You seem to have no trouble believing it, Vice-Questore.’

  ‘I am hardly to be considered an objective witness when it comes to Signor Santomauro,’ Patta said, dropping in front of Brunetti, as casually as he had placed the papers on his desk, the first bit of self-knowledge he had ever demonstrated.

  ‘What did Santomauro tell you?’ Brunetti asked, though he had already worked out what that would have to be.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve realized what he would say,’ Patta said, again surprising Brunetti. ‘That this is merely an attempt on Malfatti’s part to divide the blame and minimize his responsibility in all of this. That a close examination of the records at the bank will surely show that it was all Ravanello’s doing. That there is no evidence whatsoever that he, Santomauro, was involved in any of this, not the double rents and not the death of Mascari.’

  ‘Did he say anything about the other deaths?’

  ‘Crespo?’

  ‘Yes, and Maria Nardi.’

  ‘No, not a word. And there’s nothing that links him to Ravanello’s bank.’

  ‘We have a woman who saw Malfatti running down the stairs at Ravanello’s.’

  ‘I see,’ Patta said, uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. He placed his right hand on Malfatti’s confession. ‘It’s worthless,’ he finally said, just as Brunetti knew he would.

  ‘He can try to use it at his trial, but I doubt that the judges would believe him. He’d be better off presenting himself as Ravanello’s ignorant tool.’ Yes, that was probably true. The judge didn’t exist who could see Malfatti as the person behind this. And the judge who would see Santomauro as having any part in this couldn’t even be imagined.

  ‘Does that mean you’re going to do nothing about that?’ Brunetti asked, nodding his chin at the papers that lay on Patta’s desk.

  ‘Not unless you can think of something to do,’ Patta said, and Brunetti listened in vain for sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘We can’t touch him,’ Patta said. ‘I know the man. He’s too cautious ever to have been seen by any of the people involved in this.’

  ‘Not even the boys in Via Cappuccina?’

  Patta’s mouth tightened in distaste. ‘His involvement with those creatures is entirely circumstantial. No judge would listen to evidence presented
about that. However distasteful his behaviour is, it’s his private business.’

  Brunetti began considering possibilities: if enough of the prostitutes, those who rented apartments from the Lega, could be found to testify that Santomauro had used their services; if he could find the man who was in Crespo’s apartment when he went to see him; if evidence could be found that Santomauro had interviewed any of the people who were paying the double rent.

  Patta cut all this short. ‘There’s no proof, Brunetti. Everything rests on the word of a confessed murderer.’ Patta tapped the papers. ‘He talks about these murders as though he were going out to get a pack of cigarettes. No one is going to believe him when he accuses Santomauro, no one.’

  Brunetti suddenly felt himself swept by exhaustion. His eyes watered, and he had to fight to keep them open. He brought one hand to his right eye and made as if to remove a speck of dust, closed them for a few seconds, and then rubbed them both with one hand. When he opened them again, he saw that Patta was looking at him strangely. ‘I think you ought to go home, Brunetti. There’s nothing more to be done about this.’

  Brunetti pushed himself to his feet, nodded to Patta, and left the office. From there, he went directly home, bypassing his own office. Inside the apartment, he pulled the phone jack from the wall, took a long hot shower, ate a kilo of peaches, and went to bed.

  Chapter Thirty

  Brunetti slept twelve hours, a deep and dreamless sleep that left him refreshed and alert when he woke. The sheets were sodden, though he had not been aware of sweating through the night. In the kitchen, as he filled the coffee pot, he noticed that three of the peaches he had left in the bowl the night before were covered with soft green fuzz. He tossed them into the garbage under the sink, washed his hands, and put the coffee on to the stove.

  Whenever he found his mind turning to Santomauro or to Malfatti’s confession, he pulled away and thought, instead, of the approaching weekend, vowing to go up to the mountains to join Paola. He wondered why she hadn’t called last night, and with that thought struck a resonant chord of self-pity: he sweltered in this fetid heat while she romped in the hills like that moron in The Sound of Music. But then he remembered disconnecting the phone and was jabbed by shame. He missed her. He missed them all. He’d go up Saturday. Friday night, if there was a late train.