Anonymous Venetian Read Online Free Page A

morning?’ The young man turned and glanced back
at Brunetti, then looked again at the road. The back of his collar was crisp
and clean. Perhaps he spent his entire day in this air-conditioned car.
     
    ‘No, sir. That was Buffo and
Rubelli.’
     
    ‘The report I got says he’s a
prostitute. Did someone identify him?’
     
    ‘I don’t know about that, sir.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it?’
     
    ‘Why is that?’
     
    ‘Well, sir, that’s where the
whores are, at least the cut-rate ones. Out there by the factories. There’s
always a dozen or so of them, on the side of the road, in case anyone wants a
quickie on the way home from work.’
     
    ‘Even men?’
     
    ‘I beg your pardon, sir? Who else
would use a whore?’
     
    ‘I mean even a male whore. Would
they be likely to be out there, where the men who use them could be seen
stopping on the way home from work? It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing too
many men would want their friends to know about.’
     
    The driver thought about that for
a while.
     
    ‘Where do they usually work?’
Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘Who?’ the young man asked
cautiously. He didn’t want to be caught again by another trick question.
     
    ‘The male whores.’
     
    ‘They’re usually along Via
Cappuccina, sir. Sometimes at the train station, but we try to stop that sort
of thing during the summer when so many tourists pass through the station.’
     
    ‘Was this one a regular?’
     
    ‘I don’t know about that, sir.’
     
    The car pulled off to the left,
cut down a narrow road, then turned right on to a broad road lined with low
buildings on either side. Brunetti glanced down at his watch. Almost five.
     
    The buildings on either side of
them were further and further apart from one another now, the spaces between
them filled with low grass and the occasional bush. A few abandoned cars stood
at crazy angles, their windows shattered and their seats ripped out and flung
beside them. Each building appeared to have once been surrounded by a fence,
but most of these now hung drunkenly from the posts that had forgotten about
holding them up.
     
    A few women stood at the side of
the road; two of them stood in the shade created by a beach umbrella sunk into
the dirt at their feet.
     
    ‘Do they know what happened here
today?’ Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘I’m sure they do, sir. Word
about something like that spreads quickly.’
     
    ‘And they’re still here?’
Brunetti asked, unable to conceal his surprise.
     
    ‘They’ve got to five, haven’t
they, sir? Besides, if it was a man who got killed, then there’s no risk to
them, or I suppose that’s the way they’d look at it.’ The driver slowed and
pulled to the side of the road. ‘This is it, sir.’
     
    Brunetti opened his door and got
out. Heat and humidity slid up and embraced him. Before him stood a long low
building; on one side, four steep cement ramps led up to double metal doors. A
blue and white police sedan was parked at the bottom of one of the ramps. No
name was visible on the building, and no sign of any sort identified it. The
smell that surged towards them made that unnecessary.
     
    ‘I think it was at the back, sir,’
the driver volunteered.
     
    Brunetti walked to the right of
the building, towards the open fields that he could see stretching out behind
it. When he came around to the back of the building, he saw yet another
lethargic fence, an acacia tree that had survived only by a miracle, and, in
its shade, a policeman asleep in a wooden chair, head nodding forward on his
chest.
     
    ‘Scarpa,’ the driver called out
before Brunetti could say anything. ‘Here’s a commissario.’
     
    The policeman’s head shot up and
he was instantly awake, then as quickly on his feet. He looked at Brunetti and
saluted. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’
     
    Brunetti saw that the man’s
jacket was draped over the back of the chair and that his shirt, plastered to
his body with sweat, seemed to be a faint