A second later, he looked up at Brunetti, smiled sweetly, and said, ‘I’ve never seen him before, officer.’
‘Are you satisfied?’ the other one asked and took a step towards the door.
Brunetti took the drawing that Crespo held out to him and slipped it back into the folder. ‘That’s only an artist’s guess of what he looked like, Signor Crespo. I’d like you to look at a photograph of him, if you don’t mind.’
Brunetti smiled his most seductive smile, and Crespo’s hand flew, with a swallow-like flutter, back to the soft hollow between his collar bones. ‘Of course, officer. Anything you suggest. Anything.’
Brunetti smiled and reached to the bottom of the thin pile of photos in the folder. He took one out and studied it for an instant. One would serve as well as the next. He looked at Crespo, who had again closed the distance between them. ‘There is a possibility that he was killed by a man who was paying for his services. That means men like him might be at risk from the same person.’ He offered the photo to Crespo.
The young man took the photo, managing to touch Brunetti’s fingers with his own as he did so. He held it in the air between them, gave Brunetti a long smile, and then bowed his smiling face over the photo. His hand left his neck and slid up to cover his gasping mouth. ‘No, no,’ he said, eyes still on the photo. ‘No, no,’ he repeated and looked up at Brunetti with eyes gone wide with horror. He thrust the picture away from him, jammed it into Brunetti’s chest, and backed away from him, as though Brunetti had carried pollution into the room with him. ‘They can’t do that to me. That won’t happen to me,’ he said, backing away from Brunetti. His voice rose with every word, teetered on the edge of hysteria, and then fell over into it. ‘No, that won’t happen to me. Nothing will ever happen to me.’ His voice rose up into a high-pitched challenge to the world he lived in. ‘Not to me, not to me,’ he shouted, backing further and further away from Brunetti. He bumped into a table in the middle of the room, panicked at finding himself blocked in his attempt to get away from the photo and the man who had shown it to him, and lashed out at it with his arm. A vase identical to the one near Brunetti crashed to the floor.
The door to the other room opened, and a fourth man came quickly into the room. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’
He looked towards Brunetti, and they recognized one another instantly. Giancarlo Santomauro was not only one of the best known lawyers in Venice, often serving as legal counsel to the Patriarch at no cost, but he was also the president and moving light of the Lega della Moralità, a society of lay Christians dedicated to the ‘preservation and perpetuation of faith, home, and virtue’.
Brunetti did no more than nod. If by any chance these men didn’t know the identity of Crespo’s client, it was better for the lawyer that it remain that way.
‘What are you doing here?’ Santomauro demanded angrily. He turned to the older of the two men, now standing above Crespo, who had ended on a sofa, both hands over his face, sobbing. ‘Can’t you shut him up?’ Santomauro shouted. Brunetti watched as the older man bent over Crespo. He said something to him, then put both hands on his shoulders and shook him till his head wove back and forth. Crespo stopped crying, but his hands remained over his face.
‘What are you doing in this apartment, Commissario? I’m Signor Crespo’s legal representative, and I refuse to permit the police to continue to brutalize him.’
Brunetti didn’t answer but continued to study the pair at the sofa. The older man moved to sit beside Crespo and put a protective arm around his shoulders, and Crespo gradually grew quiet.
‘I asked you a question, Commissario,’ Santomauro said.
‘I came to ask Signor Crespo if he could help us identify the victim of a crime. I showed him a photo of the man. You see his response. Rather strong way to respond to the death of a man he didn’t recognize, wouldn’t you say?’
The man in the sweater looked at Brunetti but it was Santomauro who spoke. ‘If Signor Crespo has said he didn’t recognize him, then you have your answer and can leave.’
‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, tucking the folder under his right arm and taking a step towards the door. Glancing back at Santomauro, voice easy and conversational, Brunetti said, ‘You forgot to tie your shoes, Avvocato.’
Santomauro looked down and saw immediately that they were both tied neatly. He gave Brunetti a look that would have etched glass but said nothing.
Brunetti stopped in front of the sofa and looked down at Crespo. ‘My name is Brunetti,’ he said. ‘If you remember anything, you can call me at the Questura in Venice.’
Santomauro started to speak but cut himself short. Brunetti let himself out of the apartment.
Chapter Nine
The rest of the day was no more productive, neither for Brunetti nor for the two other policemen working their way down the list. When they met back at the Questura late in the afternoon, Gallo reported that three of the men on his part of the list said they had no idea of who the man was. They were probably telling the truth, two others weren’t home, and another said he thought the man looked familiar but couldn’t remember why or how. Scarpa’s experience had been much the same; all of the men he spoke to were sure they had never seen the dead man.
They agreed that they would try the same approach the next day, trying to finish up the names on the list. Brunetti asked Gallo to prepare a second list of the female whores who worked both out by the factories and on Via Cappuccina. Though he didn’t have much hope that these women would help, there was always the possibility that they had paid attention to the competition and would recognize the man.
As Brunetti climbed the steps to his apartment, he fantasized about what would happen when he opened the door. Magically, elves would have come in during the day and air-conditioned the entire place; others would have installed one of those showers he had seen only in brochures from spas and on American soap operas: twenty different shower heads would direct needle-thin streams of scented water at his body, and when he finished with the shower, he would wrap himself in a thick towel of imperial size. And then there would be a bar, perhaps the sort set at the end of a swimming pool, and a white-jacketed barman would offer him a long, cool drink with a hibiscus floating on its surface. His immediate physical needs attended to, he passed to science fiction and conjured up two children both dutiful and obedient and a devoted wife who would tell him, the instant he opened the door, that the case had been solved and they were all free to leave for vacation the following morning.
Reality, as is ever its wont, was discovered to be somewhat different. His family had retreated to the terrace which was filled with the first cool of early evening. Chiara looked up from her book, said ‘Ciao, Papà,’ tilted her chin to receive his kiss, and then dived back into the pages. Raffi looked up from that month’s issue of Gente Uomo, repeated Chiara’s greeting, and then himself dived back to a consideration of the compelling need for linen. Paola, seeing his state, got to her feet, put her arms around him, and kissed him on the lips.
‘Guido, go take a shower, and I’ll get you something to drink.’ A bell pealed out, somewhere to the left of them, Raffi flipped a page, and Brunetti reached up to loosen his tie.
‘Put a hibiscus in it,’ he said and turned to go take his shower.
Twenty minutes later, he sat, dressed in loose cotton pants and a linen shirt, with his bare feet up on the railing of the terrace, and told Paola about the day. The children had disappeared, no doubt off in pursuit of some dutiful and obedient activity.