Dressed for Death (21 page)

Chapter Sixteen

A
week had passed, so the story of Maria Lucrezia Patta was no longer the sun
around which the Questura of Venice revolved. Two more cabinet ministers had
resigned over the weekend, each vociferous in his protestations that his
decision had nothing whatsoever to do with and was in no way related to his
having been named in the most recent scandals about bribery and corruption.
Ordinarily, the staff of the Questura, like all of Italy, would yawn over this
and turn to the sports page, but as one of them happened to be the Minister for
Justice, the staff took a special interest, if only to speculate about what
other heads would soon be seen rolling down the steps of the Quirinale.

Even though this was one of the
biggest scandals in decades - and when had there ever been a small scandal? -
popular opinion held that it would all be
insabbiata,
buried in sand,
hushed up, just as had happened with all of the other scandals in the past.
Once any Italian got this particular bit between his teeth, he was virtually
unstoppable, and there usually followed a list of the cases that had been
effectively covered up: Ustica, PG2, the death of Pope John Paul I, Sindona.
Maria Lucrezia Patta, no matter how dramatic her exit from the city had been,
could hardly be expected to keep company at such dizzy heights, and so life
drifted back to normal, the only news being that the transvestite found in
Mestre last week had turned out to be the director of the Banca di Verona, and
who would have expected that, a bank director, for God’s sake?

One of the secretaries in the
passport office up the street had heard in her bar that morning that this
Mascari was pretty well known in Mestre and that it had been an open secret for
years what he did when he went away on his business trips. Furthermore, it was
learned at another bar, his marriage wasn’t a real marriage, just a cover for
him because he worked in a bank. Here someone interjected that he hoped his
wife had at least worn the same size clothing; why else marry her? One of the
fruit vendors at Rialto had it on very good authority that Mascari had always
been like that, even when he was at school.

By late morning, it was necessary
for public opinion to pause for breath, but by the afternoon, common knowledge
had it that Mascari was dead as a result of the ‘rough trade’ he pursued, even
against the warnings of those few friends who knew of his secret vice, and that
his wife was refusing to claim his body and give it Christian burial.

Brunetti had an appointment with
the widow at eleven and went to it ignorant of the rumours that were swirling
around the city. He called the Banca di Verona and learned that, a week before,
their office in Messina had received a phone call from a man identifying himself
as Mascari, explaining that his visit would have to be delayed, perhaps for two
weeks, perhaps a month. No, they had not bothered to confirm this call, having
no reason to suspect its validity.

The Mascari apartment was on the
third floor of a building one block back from Via Garibaldi, the main
thoroughfare of Castello. When she opened the door for Brunetti, the widow
looked much the same as she had two days before, save that her suit today was
black, and the signs of weariness around her eyes were more pronounced.

‘Good morning, Signora. It’s very
kind of you to speak to me today.’

‘Come in, please,’ she said and
stepped back from the door. He asked permission, then walked into the apartment
and, for a moment, had a strange sense of complete dislocation that he had
already been here. It was only after he looked around that he realized the
source of this feeling: the apartment was almost identical to the apartment of
the old woman in Campo San Bartolomeo and had the look of a place in which the
same family had lived for generations. An identical heavy credenza stood
against the far wall, and the velvet upholstery on the two chairs and sofa was
the same vaguely patterned green. Curtains were also pulled closed in front of
these windows, either to keep out the sun or the eyes of the curious.

‘Can I get you something to
drink?’ she asked, an offer that was clearly formulaic.

‘No, please, nothing, Signora. I
would like only a bit of your time. There are some questions we have to ask
you.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said and moved
back into the room. She sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, and Brunetti took
the other. She removed a small piece of thread from the arm of the chair,
rolled it into a ball, and put it carefully in the pocket of her jacket.

‘I don’t know how much you’ve
heard of the rumours surrounding your husband’s death, Signora.’

‘I know he was found dressed as a
woman,’ she said in a small, choking voice.

‘If you know that, then you must
realize that certain questions must be asked.’

She nodded and looked down at her
hands.

He could make the question sound
either brutal or awkward. He chose the latter. ‘Do you have any or did you have
any reason to believe that your husband was involved in such practices?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she
said, though it must have been clear what he meant.

‘That your husband was involved
in transvestism.’ Why not just say the word, ‘transvestite’, and have done with
it?

‘That’s impossible.’

Brunetti didn’t say anything,
waiting for her.

All she did was repeat, stolidly,
‘That’s impossible.’

‘Signora, has your husband ever
received strange phone calls or letters?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Has anyone ever called and
spoken to him, after which he seemed worried or preoccupied? Or perhaps a
letter? Or had he seemed worried lately?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ she
said.

‘If I might return to my original
question, Signora, did your husband ever give any indication that he might have
been drawn in that direction?’

‘Towards men?’ she asked, voice
high with disbelief, and with something else. Disgust?

‘Yes.’

‘No, nothing. That’s a horrible
thing to say. Revolting. I won’t let you say that about my husband. Leonardo
was a man.’ Brunetti noticed that her hands were drawn into tight fists.

‘Please be patient with me,
Signora. I am merely trying to understand things, and so I need to ask you
these questions about your husband. That does not mean that I believe them.’

‘Then why ask them?’ she asked,
voice truculent.

‘So that we can find out the
truth about your husband’s death, Signora.’

‘I won’t answer any questions
about that. It’s not decent.’

He wanted to tell her that murder
wasn’t decent, either, but, instead, he asked, ‘During the last few weeks, had
your husband seemed different in any way?’

Predictably, she said, ‘I don’t
know what you mean.’

‘For example, did he say anything
about his trip to Messina? Did he seem eager to go? Reluctant?’

‘No, he seemed like he always
did.’

‘And how was that?’

‘He had to go. It was part of his
job, so he had to do it.’

‘Did he say anything about it?’

‘No, just that he had to go.’

‘And he wouldn’t call you during
these trips, Signora?’

‘No.’

‘Why was that, Signora?’

She seemed to sense that he wasn’t
going to let this one go, so she answered, ‘The bank wouldn’t allow Leonardo to
put personal calls on his expense account. Sometimes he’d call a friend at the
office and ask him to call me, but not always.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Brunetti said.
Director of a bank, and he wouldn’t pay for a phone call to his wife.

‘Do you and your husband have any
children, Signora?’

‘No,’ she answered quickly.

Brunetti dropped that and asked, ‘Did
your husband have any special friends at the bank? You mentioned a friend you
called; could you give me his name?’

‘Why do you want to talk to him?’

‘Perhaps your husband said
something at work, or perhaps he gave some indication of how he felt about the
trip to Messina. I’d like to speak to your husband’s friend and see if he
noticed anything unusual about your husband’s behaviour.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

‘I’d nevertheless like to speak
to him, Signora, if you could give me his name.’

‘Marco Ravanello. But he won’t be
able to tell you anything. There was nothing wrong with my husband.’ She shot
Brunetti a fierce glance and repeated, ‘There was nothing wrong with my
husband.’

‘I don’t want to trouble you any
more, Signora,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet and taking a few steps
towards the door. ‘Have the funeral arrangements been made?’

‘Yes, the Mass is tomorrow. At
ten.’ She didn’t say where it was to be held, and Brunetti didn’t ask. That
information was easily enough obtained, and he would attend.

At the door, he paused. ‘Thank
you very much for your help, Signora. I’d like to extend my personal
condolences, and I assure you that we will do everything in our power to find
the person responsible for your husband’s death.’ Why did ‘death’ always sound
better than ‘murder’?

‘My husband wasn’t like that. You’ll
find out. He was a man.’

Brunetti did not extend his hand,
merely bowed his head and let himself out of the door. As he went down the
steps, he remembered the last scene of
The House of Bernardo Alba,
the
mother standing on stage, screaming at the audience and at the world that her
daughter had died a virgin, died a virgin. To Brunetti, only the fact of their
deaths mattered; all else was vanity.

* * * *

At
the Questura, he asked Vianello to come up to his office. Because Brunetti’s
was two floors higher, it was more likely to catch whatever wisp of breeze was
available. When they got inside and Brunetti had opened the windows and taken
off his jacket, he asked Vianello, ‘Well, did you get anything on the Lega?’

‘Nadia expects to be put on the
payroll for this, Dottore,’ Vianello said as he sat down. ‘She spent more than
two hours on the phone this weekend, talking to friends all over the city.
Interesting, this Lega della Moralità.’

Vianello would tell the story in
his own way, Brunetti knew, but he thought he’d sweeten the process and said, ‘I’ll
stop at Rialto tomorrow morning and get her some flowers. Will that be enough,
do you think?’

‘She’d rather have me home next
Saturday,’ Vianello said.

‘What are you scheduled for?’
Brunetti asked.

‘I’m supposed to be on the boat
that brings the Minister of the Environment in from the airport. We all know he’s
not going to come to Venice, that he’s going to cancel at the last minute. You
think he’d dare come here in August, with the algae stinking up the city, and
talk about their great, new environmental projects?’ Vianello laughed
scornfully; interest in the new Green Party was another result of his recent
medical experiences. ‘But I’d like not to have to waste the morning going out
to the airport, only to get there and be told he isn’t coming.’

His argument made complete sense to
Brunetti. The Minister, to use Vianello’s words, wouldn’t dare present himself
in Venice, not in the same month when half the beaches on the Adriatic coast
were closed to swimming because of high levels of pollution, not in a city that
had recently learned that the fish that made up a major part of its diet
contained dangerously high levels of mercury and other heavy metals. ‘I’ll see
what I can do,’ Brunetti said.