Dressed for Death Read Free Page B

Burrasca.’
     
    Hearing the confirmation,
Brunetti was no less astonished than he had been, hours before, when he first
heard the story. Burrasca was a legend, if that was the proper word, in Italy.
He had begun making films during the sixties, blood and guts horrors that were
so patently artificial that they became unconscious parodies of the genre.
Burrasca, not at all foolish, no matter how inept he might have been at making
horror films, answered the popular response to his films by making the films
even more false: vampires with wrist-watches that the actors seemed to have
forgotten to remove; telephones that brought the news of Dracula’s escape;
actors of the semaphore school of dramatic presentation. After a very short
time, he had become a cult figure and people flocked to his films, eager to
detect the artifice, to spot the howlers.
     
    In the seventies, he gathered up
all those masters of semaphoric expression and turned them to the making of
pornographic films, at which they turned out to be no more adept. Costuming no
problem, he soon realized that plot, similarly, presented no obstacle to the
creative mind: he merely dusted off the plots of his old horror films and
turned the ghouls, vampires, and werewolves into rapists and sex maniacs, and
he filled the theatres, though smaller theatres this time, with a different
audience, one that seemed not at all interested in the spotting of anachronism.
     
    The eighties presented Italy with
scores of new private television stations, and Burrasca presented those
stations with his latest films, somewhat toned down in deference to the
supposed sensibilities of the TV audience. And then he discovered the video
cassette. His name quickly became part of the small change of Italian daily
life: he was the butt of jokes on TV game shows, a figure in newspaper
cartoons, but close consideration of his success had caused him to move to
Monaco and become a citizen of that sensibly taxed principality. The
twelve-room apartment he maintained in Milano, he told the Italian tax
authorities, was used only for entertaining business guests. And now, it would
appear, Maria Lucrezia Patta.
     
    ‘Tito Burrasca, in fact,’
Sergeant Vianello repeated, keeping himself, Brunetti knew not with what force,
from smiling. ‘Perhaps you’re lucky to be spending the next few days in Mestre.’
     
    Brunetti couldn’t keep himself
from asking, ‘Didn’t anyone know about it before?’
     
    Vianello shook his head. ‘No. No
one. Not a whisper.’
     
    ‘Not even Anita’s uncle?’
Brunetti asked, revealing that even the higher orders knew the source of this
one.
     
    Vianello began to answer but was
interrupted by the buzzer on his desk. He picked up the phone, pressed a
button, and asked, ‘Yes, Vice-Questore?’
     
    He listened for a moment, said, ‘Certainly,
Vice-Questore,’ and hung up.
     
    Brunetti gave him an inquisitive
glance.
     
    ‘The immigration people. He wants
to know how long Burrasca can stay in the country, now that he’s changed his
citizenship.’
     
    Brunetti shook his head. ‘I
suppose you have to feel sorry for the poor devil.’
     
    Vianello’s head shot up. He
couldn’t disguise his astonishment, or wouldn’t. ‘Sorry? For him?’ With evident
effort, he stopped himself from saying more and turned his attention back to
the folder on his desk.
     
    Brunetti left him and went back
to his own office. From there he called the Questura in Mestre, identified
himself, and asked to be put through to whoever was in charge of the case of
the murdered transvestite. Within minutes, he was speaking to a Sergeant Gallo,
who explained that he was handling the case until a person of higher rank took
over from him. Brunetti identified himself and said that he was that person,
then asked Gallo to send a car to pick him up at Piazzale Roma in a half an
hour.
     
    When Brunetti stepped outside the
dim entryway of the Questura, the sun hit him like a blow. Momentarily