Anonymous Venetian (8 page)

‘The man who was out in the sun
yesterday?’

Gallo’s calm ‘Yes, sir,’ told
Brunetti that he had heard about the incident, and the way he said it suggested
that he didn’t like it. ‘He’s the only officer who’s been assigned. The death
of a prostitute isn’t a high priority, especially during the summer when we’re
short-staffed.’

‘No one else?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I was assigned the case
provisorily because I was here when the call came in, so I sent the Squadra
Mobile to the scene. The Vice-Questore has suggested that it be handed over to
Sergeant Buffo, since he’s the one who answered the original call.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said,
considering this. ‘Is there an alternative?’

‘Do you mean, is there an
alternative to Sergeant Buffo?’

‘Yes.’

‘You could request that, as your
original contact was with me, and we have discussed the case at great length
...’ Here Gallo paused, as if to make that length even greater, then continued,
‘It might save time if I were to continue to be assigned to the case.’

‘Who is the vice-questore in
charge of this?’

‘Nasci.’

‘Is she liable to ... I mean,
will she think this a good idea?’

‘I’m sure that if the request
came from a commissario, she’d agree, sir. Especially as you’re coming out here
to give us a hand.’

‘Good. Get someone to write up a
request, and I’ll sign it before lunch.’ Gallo nodded, made a note on a piece
of paper in front of him, then looked up at Brunetti and nodded again. ‘And get
your people working on the clothing and shoes he was wearing.’ Gallo made
another note.

Brunetti flipped open the blue
file that he had studied the night before and pointed to the list of names and
addresses stapled to the inside cover. ‘I think the best thing we can do is to
begin asking these men questions about the victim, if they know who he is or if
they recognize him or know anyone who might have known him. The pathologist
said he must be in his early forties. None of the men in the file are that old,
few of them are even in their thirties, so if he’s a local, he’d stand out
because of his age, and people would certainly know about him.’

‘How do you want to do this, sir?’

‘I think we should divide the
list into three, and then you and I and Scarpa can start showing them the
picture and asking them what they know.’

‘They aren’t the sort of people
who are willing to talk to the police, sir.’

‘Then I suggest we take along a
second picture, one of the photos of what he looked like when we found him out
in the field. I think if we convince these men that the same thing could happen
to them, they might be less reluctant to talk to us.’

‘I’ll get Scarpa up here,’ Gallo
said and reached for the phone.

* * * *

Chapter Seven

They
decided, even though it was still morning - probably more like the middle of the
night to the men on the list - to talk to them now. Brunetti asked the other
men, because they were familiar with Mestre, to arrange the addresses into some
sort of geographic order, so they wouldn’t have to traverse the city repeatedly
as they went through the names.

When this was done, Brunetti took
the list he was given and went downstairs to find his driver. He doubted the
wisdom of arriving to question the men on this particular list in a blue and
white police car with a uniformed policeman at the wheel, but he had only to
step out into the mid-morning air of Mestre to decide that mere survival
overrode any consideration of caution.

The heat wrapped itself around
him, and the air seemed to nibble at his eyes. There was no breeze, not the
slightest current; the day lay like a filthy blanket upon the city. Cars snaked
past the Questura, their horns bleating in futile protest against changing
lights or crossing pedestrians. Whirls of dirt and cigarette packages flying
back and forth across the street marked their passing. Brunetti, seeing it,
hearing it, and breathing it, felt as though someone had come from behind and
wrapped tight arms around his chest. How did human beings live like this?

Brunetti fled into the cool
cocoon of the police car and emerged from it a quarter of an hour later in
front of an eight-storey apartment building on the western edge of the city. He
looked up and saw that lines of washing hung extended between it and the
building on the opposite side of the street. A faint breeze blew here, so the
particoloured strata of sheets, towels, and underwear undulated above him and,
for a moment, raised his spirits.

Inside, the
portiere
sat
in his cage-like office, arranging papers and envelopes on a desk, sorting the
mail that must just have been delivered for the inhabitants of the building. He
was an old man with a thin beard and silver-framed reading glasses hovering on
the end of his nose. He raised his eyes over the tops of the lenses and said
good morning. The humidity intensified the sour smell of the room, and a fan on
the floor, blowing across the old man’s legs, did no more than shove the smell
around the room.

Brunetti said good-morning and
asked where he could find Giovanni Feltrinelli.

At the mention of the name, the
portiere
shoved his chair back and got to his feet. ‘I’ve warned him not to
have any more of you come to this building. If he wants to do his job, then he
can go do it in your cars or in the open fields, with the other animals, but he’s
not going to do his filthy work here, or I’ll call the police.’ As he said it,
his right hand reached out for the telephone on the wall behind him, his fiery
eyes running up and down Brunetti with disgust he did nothing to disguise.

‘I am the police,’ Brunetti said
softly and pulled his warrant card from his wallet, holding it out for the old
man to see. He took it roughly from Brunetti, as if to suggest that he, too,
knew where these things could be faked, and pushed his glasses up on his nose
to read it.

‘It looks real,’ he finally
admitted and handed it back to Brunetti. He took a dirty handkerchief from his
pocket, removed his glasses, and began to rub at the lenses, first one and then
the other, carefully, as though he had spent his life doing this. He put them
back on, careful to hook them behind each ear, put the handkerchief back in his
pocket, and asked Brunetti, in a different voice, ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Nothing. We need to question him
about someone else.’

‘One of his faggot friends?’ the
old man asked, returning to his aggressive tone.

Brunetti ignored the question. ‘We’d
like to speak to Signor Feltrinelli. Perhaps he can give us some information.’

‘Signor Feltrinelli? Signor?’ the
old man asked, repeating Brunetti’s words but turning the formality into an
insult. ‘You mean Nino the Pretty Boy, Nino the Cocksucker?’

Brunetti sighed tiredly. Why
couldn’t people learn to be more discriminating in whom they chose to hate, a
bit more selective? Perhaps even a bit more intelligent?

Why not hate the Christian
Democrats? Or the Socialists? Or why not hate people who hated homosexuals?

‘Could you tell me Signor
Feltrinelli’s apartment number?’

The old man retreated behind his
desk and sat back down to his task of sorting the mail. ‘Fifth floor. The name’s
on the door.’

Brunetti turned and left without
saying anything further. When he was at the door, he thought he heard the old
man mutter, ‘Signor,’ but it could have been only an angry noise. On the other
side of the marble-floored hallway, he pushed the button for the elevator and
stood waiting for it. After a few minutes, the elevator still had not come, but
Brunetti refused to go back to ask the
portiere
if it was working.
Instead, he moved over to the left, opened a door to the stairs, and climbed to
the fifth floor. By the time he reached it, he had to loosen his tie and pull
the cloth of his trousers away from his thighs, where it clung wetly. At the
top, he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped at his face.

As the old man had said, the name
was on the door: ‘Giovanni Feltrinelli - Architeito’.

He glanced at his watch: 11.35.
He rang the bell. In immediate response, he heard quick footsteps approach the
door. It was opened by a young man who bore a faint resemblance to the police
photo Brunetti had studied the night before: short blond hair, a squared and
masculine jaw, and soft dark eyes.

‘Si?’
he said, looking up at Brunetti
with a friendly smile of enquiry.

‘Signor Giovanni Feltrinelli?’
Brunetti asked, holding out his warrant card.

The young man barely glanced at
the card, but he seemed to recognize it immediately, and that recognition wiped
the smile from his face.

‘Yes. What do you want?’ His
voice was as cool as his smile had become.

‘I’d like to talk to you, Signor
Feltrinelli. May I come in?’

‘Why bother to ask?’ Feltrinelli
said tiredly and opened the door wider, stepping back to let Brunetti enter.

‘Permesso
,’ Brunetti said and stepped
inside. Perhaps the title on the door didn’t lie: the apartment had the
symmetrical look of a living space that had been planned with skill and
precision. The living-room into which Brunetti walked was painted a flat white,
the floor a light herring-bone parquet. A few kelims, colours muted with age,
lay on the floor, and two other woven pieces -Brunetti thought they might be
Persian - hung on the walls. The sofa was long and low, set back against the
far wall, and appeared to be covered in beige silk. In front of it stood a long
glass-topped table with a wide ceramic platter placed on one side. One wall was
covered with a bookshelf, another with framed architectural renderings of
buildings and photographs of completed buildings, all of them low, spacious,
and surrounded by wide expanses of rough terrain. In the far corner stood a
high draughting table, surface tilted to face the room and covered with
outsized sheets of tissue paper. A cigarette burned in an ashtray which perched
at a crazy angle on the slanted surface of the draughting table.

The symmetry of the room kept
pulling the viewer’s eye back to its centre, to that simple ceramic platter.
Brunetti sensed strongly that this was being done, but he didn’t understand how
it had been achieved.

‘Signor Feltrinelli,’ he began, ‘I’d
like to ask you to help us, if you can, in an investigation.’

Feltrinelli said nothing.

‘I’d like you to look at a
picture of a man and tell us if you know him or recognize him.’

Feltrinelli walked over to the
draughting table and picked up the cigarette. He drew hungrily at it, then
crushed it out in the ashtray with a nervous gesture. ‘I don’t give names,’ he
said.

‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti asked,
understanding him but not wanting to show that he did.

‘I don’t give the names of my
clients. You can show me all the pictures you want, but I won’t recognize any
of them, and I don’t know any names.’

‘I’m not asking you about your
clients, Signor Feltrinelli,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I’m not interested in who
they are. We have reason to believe that you might know something about this
man, and we’d like you to take a look at the sketch and tell us if you
recognize him.’

Feltrinelli walked away from the
table and went to stand beside a small window in the wall on the left, and
Brunetti realized why the room had been constructed the way it had: the whole
purpose was to draw attention away from that window and from the bleak brick
wall that stood only two metres from it. ‘And if I don’t?’ Feltrinelli asked.

‘If you don’t what, recognize
him?’

‘No. If I don’t look at the
picture?’