Dressed for Death Read Free

red underpants
that showed under the bright red dress that was pulled back over the face. He
stared a moment longer.
     
    ‘Cazzo ,’ he exclaimed and let the grass
spring back into place.
     
    ‘What’s the matter?’ the other
one asked.
     
    ‘It’s a man.’
     
    * * * *
     
    Chapter Three
     
     
    Ordinarily,
the news that a transvestite prostitute had been found in Marghera with his
head and face beaten in would have created a sensation even among the jaded
staff at the Venice Questura, especially during the long Ferragosto holiday,
when crime tended to drop off or take on the boring predictability of
burglaries and break-ins. But today it would have taken something far more
lurid to displace the spectacular news that ran like flame through the corridors
of the Questura: Maria Lucrezia Patta, wife of Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta,
had that weekend left her husband of twenty-seven years to take up residence in
the Milano apartment of - and here each teller of the tale paused to prepare
each new listener for the bombshell - Tito Burrasca, the founding light and
prime mover of Italy’s pornographic film industry.
     
    The news had dropped from heaven
upon the place beneath just that morning, carried into the building by a
secretary in the Ufficio Stranieri, whose uncle lived in a small apartment on
the floor above the Pattas and who claimed to have been passing the Pattas’
door just at the moment when terminal hostilities between the Pattas had
erupted. Patta, the uncle reported, had shouted Burrasca’s name a number of
times, threatening to have him arrested if he ever dared come to Venice;
Signora Patta had returned fire by threatening not only to go and live with
Burrasca, but to star in his next film. The uncle had retreated up the steps
and spent the next half hour trying to open his own front door, during which
time the Pattas continued to exchange threats and recriminations. Hostilities
ceased only with the arrival of a water taxi at the end of the calle and
the departure of Signora Patta, who was followed down the steps of the building
by six suitcases, carried by the taxi driver, and by the curses of Patta,
carried up to the uncle by the funnel-like acoustics of the staircase.
     
    The news had arrived at eight on
Monday morning; Patta followed it into the Questura at eleven. At one-thirty,
the call came in about the transvestite, but by then most of the staff had
already left for lunch, during which meal some employees of the Questura
engaged in quite wild speculation about Signora Patta’s future film career. An
indication of the Vice-Questore’s popularity was the bet that was made at one
table, offering a hundred thousand lire to the first person who dared to
enquire of the Vice-Questore as to his wife’s health.
     
    Guido Brunetti first heard about
the murdered transvestite from Vice-Questore Patta himself, who called Brunetti
into his office at two-thirty.
     
    ‘I’ve just had a call from
Mestre,’ Patta said after telling Brunetti to take a seat.
     
    ‘Mestre, sir?’ Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘Yes, that city at the end of the
Ponte della Liberta,’ Patta snapped. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard of it.’
     
    Brunetti thought of what he had
learned about Patta that morning and decided to ignore his remark. ‘Why did
they call you, sir?’
     
    ‘They’ve got a murder over there
and no one to investigate.’
     
    ‘But they’ve got more staff than
we have, sir,’ Brunetti said, never quite certain just how much Patta knew
about the workings of the police force in either city.
     
    ‘I know that, Brunetti. But two
of their commissarios are on vacation. Another broke his leg in an automobile
accident this weekend, so that leaves only one, and she’ - Patta managed to
give a snort of disgust at such a possibility - ‘leaves for maternity leave on
Saturday and won’t be back until the end of February.’
     
    ‘What about the two who are on
vacation? Surely they can be called