Dressed for Death (18 page)

‘I’ll see you at eight,’ Brunetti
said.

‘Tease,’ Padovani said with a
laugh and hung up.

At eight that evening, Brunetti,
freshly showered and shaved and carrying a bottle of Barbera, rang the bell to
the right of the small fountain in the Ramo degli Incurabili. The front of the
building, which had only one bell and which, consequently, was probably that
greatest of all luxuries, a separate house owned by only one person, was
covered by jasmine plants which trailed up from two terracotta pots on either
side of the door and filled the air around them with perfume. Padovani opened
the door almost immediately and extended his hand to Brunetti. His grip was
warm and firm and, still holding Brunetti’s hand, he pulled him inside. ‘Get
out of the heat. I’ve got to be out of my mind to go back to Rome in the midst
of this, but at least my apartment there is air-conditioned.’

He released Brunetti’s hand and
stepped back. Inevitably, like any two people who have not seen one another for
a long time, they tried, without being obvious about it, to see what changes
had taken place. Was he thicker, thinner, greyer, older?

Brunetti, seeing that Padovani
still appeared to be the thickset ruffian he very clearly was not, turned his
eyes to the room in which they stood. The central part of it soared up two
floors to a roof inset with skylights. This open space was surrounded on three
sides by an open loggia reached by an open wooden staircase. The fourth side
was closed in and must hold the bedroom.

‘What was it, a boathouse?’
Brunetti asked, remembering the little canal that ran just outside the door.
Boats brought for repair could easily have been dragged inside.

‘Good for you. Yes. When I bought
it, they were still working on boats in here, and there were holes in the roof
the size of watermelons.’

‘How long have you had it?’
Brunetti asked, looking around and giving a rough estimate of the quantity of
work and money that must have gone into the place to make it look the way it
did now.

‘Eight years.’

‘You’ve done a lot. And you’re
lucky not to have neighbours.’ Brunetti handed him the bottle, wrapped in white
tissue paper.

‘I told you not to bring
anything.’

‘It won’t spoil,’ Brunetti said
with a smile.

‘Thank you, but you shouldn’t
have,’ Padovani said, though he knew it was as impossible for a dinner guest to
show up without a gift as it was for the host to serve chaff and nettles. ‘Make
yourself at home and look around while I go and take a look at the dinner,’
Padovani said, turning towards a door with a stained-glass panel that led to
the kitchen. ‘I put ice in the bucket in case you’d like a drink.’

He disappeared behind the door,
and Brunetti heard the familiar noises of pots and lids and running water. He
glanced down and saw that the floor was a dark oak parquet; the sight of a
charred semicircle of floor that stood in front of the fireplace made Brunetti
uncomfortable because he couldn’t decide whether he approved of the placing of
comfort over caution or disapproved of the ruining of such a perfect surface. A
long wooden beam had been set into the plaster above the fireplace, and along
it danced a multicoloured parade of ceramic Commedia dell’Arte figurines.
Paintings filled two walls; there was no attempt to order them into styles or
schools: they hung on the walls and fought for the viewer’s eye. The keenness
of the competition gave evidence of the taste with which they had been
selected. He spotted a Guttoso, a painter he had never liked much, and a
Morandi, whom he did. There were three Ferruzzis, all giving joyous testimony
to the beauty of the city. Then, a little to the left of the fireplace, a
Madonna, clearly Florentine and probably fifteenth-century, looked adoringly
down at yet another ugly baby. One of the secrets Paola and Brunetti never revealed
to anyone was their decades-long search for the ugliest Christ Child in western
art. At the moment, the title was held by a particularly bilious infant in Room
13 of the Pinacoteca di Siena. Though the baby in front of Brunetti was clearly
no beauty, Siena’s title was not at risk. Along one wall ran a long shelf of
carved wood that must have once been part of a wardrobe or cabinet. On top of
it rested a row of brightly coloured ceramic bowls whose strict geometric
designs and swirling calligraphy clearly marked them as Islamic.

The door opened and Padovani came
back into the room. ‘Don’t you want a drink?’

‘No, a glass of wine would be
good. I don’t like to drink when it’s so hot.’

‘I know what you mean. This is
the first summer I’ve been here in three years, and I’d forgotten how awful it
can be. There are some nights, when the tide is low, and I’m anywhere on the
other side of the Canal, that I think I’ll be sick with the smell.’

‘Don’t you get it here?’ Brunetti
asked.

‘No, the Canale della Giudecca
must be deeper or move more quickly, or something. We don’t get the smell here.
At least not yet. If they continue to dig up the channels to let in those
monster tankers - what are they called, supertankers? - then God alone knows
what will happen to the
laguna.’

Still talking, Padovani walked
over to the long wooden table, set for two, and poured out two glasses from a
bottle of Dolcetto that stood there, already opened. ‘People think the end of
the city will come in some major flood or natural disaster. I think the answer
is much easier,’ he said, coming back to Brunetti and handing him a glass.

‘And what is that?’ Brunetti
asked, sipping at the wine, liking it.

‘I think we’ve killed the seas,
and it’s only a question of time before they begin to stink. And since the
laguna
is just a gut hanging off the Adriatic, which is itself a gut
hanging from the Mediterranean, which... well, you get the idea. I think the
water will simply die, and then we’ll be forced either to abandon the city or
else fill in the canals, in which case there will no longer be any sense in
living here.’

It was a novel theory and
certainly no less bleak than many he had heard, than many he himself half
believed. Everyone talked, all the time, of the imminent destruction of the city,
and yet the price of apartments doubled every few years, and the rents for
those available continued to soar ever higher above what the average worker
could pay for one. Venetians had bought and sold real estate through the
Crusades, the Plague, and various occupations by foreign armies, so it was
probably a safe bet that they would continue to do so through whatever
ecological holocaust awaited them.

‘Everything’s ready,’ Padovani
said, sitting in one of the deep armchairs. ‘All I’ve got to do is throw the
pasta in. But why don’t you give me an idea of what you want so I’ll have
something to think about while I’m stirring?’

Brunetti sat on the sofa facing
him. He took another sip of his wine and, choosing his words carefully, began. ‘I
have reason to believe that Santomauro is involved with a transvestite
prostitute who lives and, apparently, works in Mestre.’

‘What do you mean by “involved
with”?’ Padovani asked, voice level.

‘Sexually,’ Brunetti said simply.
‘But he also claims to be his lawyer.’

‘One does not necessarily exclude
the other, does it?’

‘No. Hardly. But since I found
him in the company of this young man, he has tried to prevent me from
investigating him.’

‘Which him?’

‘The young man.’

‘I see,’ Padovani said, sipping
at his wine. ‘Anything else?’

‘The other name I gave you,
Leonardo Mascari, is the name of the man who was found in the field in Mestre
on Monday.’

‘The transvestite?’

‘So it would seem.’

‘And what’s the connection here?’

‘The young man, Santomauro’s
client, denied recognizing Mascari. But he knew him.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘You’ll have to believe me here,
Damiano. I know. I’ve seen it too many times not to know. He recognized his
picture and then pretended he didn’t.’

‘What was the young man’s name?’
Padovani asked.

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’
Silence fell.

‘Guido,’ Padovani finally said,
leaning forward, ‘I know a number of those boys in Mestre. In the past, I knew
a large number of them. If I’m to serve as your gay consultant in this’ - he
said it entirely without irony or rancour - ‘then I’m going to have to know his
name. I assure you that nothing you tell me will be repeated, but I can’t make
any connection unless I know his name.’ Brunetti still said nothing. ‘Guido,
you called me. I didn’t call you.’ Padovani got to his feet. ‘I’ll just put the
pasta in. Fifteen minutes?’

While he waited for Padovani to
come back from the kitchen, Brunetti looked at the books that filled one wall.
He pulled down one on Chinese archaeology and took it back to the sofa, glanced
through it until he heard the door open and looked up to see Padovani come back
into the room.

^‘
A tavola, tutti a tavola.
Mangiamo,
^,
Padovani called. Brunetti closed the book, set it aside, and went over to take
his place at the table. ‘You sit there, on the left,’ Padovani said. He set the
bowl down and started immediately to heap pasta on to the plate in front of
Brunetti.

Brunetti looked down, waited
until Padovani had served himself, and began to eat. Tomato, onion, cubes of
pancetta,
and perhaps a touch of
pepperoncino,
all poured over
penne rigate,
his favourite dried pasta.

‘It’s good,’ he said, meaning it.
‘I like the
pepperoncino.’

‘Oh, good. I never know if people
are going to think it’s too hot.’

‘No, it’s perfect,’ Brunetti said
and continued to eat. When he had finished his helping and Padovani was putting
more on to his plate, Brunetti said, ‘His name’s Francesco Crespo.’

‘I should have known,’ said
Padovani with a tired sigh. Then, sounding far more interested, he asked, ‘You
sure there’s not too much
pepperoncino?’

Brunetti shook his head and
finished his second portion, then held out his hands to cover his plate when
Padovani reached for the serving spoon.

‘You better. There’s hardly
anything else,’ Padovani insisted.

‘No, really, Damiano.’

‘Suit yourself, but Paola’s not
to blame me if you starve to death while she’s away.’ He picked up their two
plates, set them inside the serving bowl, and went back into the kitchen.

He was to emerge twice before he
sat down again. The first time, he carried a small roast of ground turkey
breast wrapped in
pancetta
and surrounded by potatoes, and the second a
plate of grilled peppers soaked in olive oil and a large bowl of mixed salad
greens. ‘That’s all there is,’ he said when he sat down, and Brunetti suspected
that he was meant to read it as an apology.

Brunetti helped himself to the
roast meat and potatoes and began to eat.

Padovani filled their glasses and
helped himself to both turkey and potatoes. ‘Crespo came originally from, I think,
Mantova. He moved to Padova about four years ago, to study pharmacy. But he
quickly learned that life was far more interesting if he followed his natural
inclination and set himself up as a whore, and he soon discovered that, the
best way to do that was to find himself an older man who would support him. The
usual stuff: an apartment, a car, plenty of money for clothes, and in return
all he had to do was be there when the man who paid the bills was able to get
away from the bank, or the city council meeting, or his wife. I think he was
only about eighteen at the time. And very, very pretty.’ Padovani paused with
his fork in the air. ‘In fact, he reminded me then of the Bacchus of
Caravaggio: beautiful, but too knowing and just on the edge of corruption.’