Facing Death

ANDREW CUNANAN was a great and gaudy pretender. He improved upon his breeding, his education, his employment (he had none), even his name. He created, out of his imagination, a flamboyant persona, the rich homosexual playboy who waves a fat cigar and always picks up the check. He bragged that he was the scion of a Filipino plantation owner, when his father is actually said to be a failed stockbroker on the lam. His public manner was fun-loving and generous. In private, his fantasies, pursued with leather straps and latex masks, were darker and more insistent. Cunanan's bright side craved attention. His dark side discovered that he could get it by killing.

Cunanan was a skillful fraud. He knew enough, was practiced enough, to fake his way into glittery worlds far beyond his means or station. In 1990 he was standing in a crowd of partygoers in the VIP room of Colossus, a San Francisco club, when the fashion god Gianni Versace, in town to be feted for the costumes he designed for the opera ""Capriccio,'' made his entrance. Spotting Cunanan from a distance, Versace walked over and greeted young Cunanan, who was then 21. ""I know you,'' said Versace. ""Lago di Como, no?'' Cunanan, flattered, answered, ""Yes. It is good to see you again, Mr. Versace.''

To be known by Versace! Or was it just a mistake, a confusion of attractive young men? Last week, after Cunanan had allegedly put two bullets into the back of Versace's head, the dead man's family denied any kind of prior involvement between the great designer and the small-time gigolo. The FBI is not convinced. NEWSWEEK has learned that a source told authorities that Cunanan had been at a small party inside Versace's palazzo in Miami Beach the weekend before the designer was murdered. It is not clear how Cunanan might have entered Versace's world, and the family continues to deny that he ever did. Still, law-enforcement authorities have learned not to underestimate Cunanan.

Cunanan, who liked to wear Versace label underwear, was a wanna-be in a wondrous kingdom of make-believe. Its viceroy, purveyor of $500 million a year in high fashion known for glitz, was Versace. The designer's much-mourned death last week brought attention to a funky world he helped create, the gay life of South Beach in Miami. It provoked outraged homosexuals to charge that the FBI was so indifferent to their fate that the Feds didn't bother to warn the South Beach community that Cunanan might be in their midst. The killings also brought unwanted attention to a fraternity of wealthy gay men who are not all out of the closet. Meanwhile, high-profile homosexuals from Venice Beach to Fire Island have begun looking over their shoulders at night. They may be right to be worried: late Saturday Cunanan remained at large, the target of a vast manhunt.

It may be that Cunanan began killing out of passion. Police say his first two victims were a friend and a former lover; the next two were men unlucky enough to offer, by their deaths and their car keys, a means of escape as Cunanan fled across the country. But by last week, it was clear that Versace's murderer regarded killing as a kind of performance art. Crowds formed outside Versace's house to mourn the fallen icon. Police asked local TV news stations for videotape of the scene in the days following the killing to see if Cunanan returned to admire his handiwork. As tourists gawked and transvestites wept, one fan ripped Versace ads from a glossy magazine and daubed them in the designer's blood, as a keepsake. The Feds believe Cunanan is enjoying his killing spree, taunting them with a trail of telltale evidence he is leaving behind on purpose. The growing tension of the chase may just heighten the thrill for Cunanan - and increase his determination to strike again.

To catch Cunanan, the FBI and police from San Diego to Miami are trying to understand him. There is no shortage of clues: Cunanan has flaunted his personality ever since he showed up at a high-school dance in a red leather jumpsuit. And police know he has kinky tastes: investigators found the boxes for S&M videos with titles like ""Target for Torture'' and ""Pushed to the Limit'' under his bed. Cunanan may have believed that he was infected with the AIDS virus. Michael Dudley, a part-time AIDS volunteer, told reporters that Cunanan, during a conversation about safe sex last February, jumped up, kicked the wall and exclaimed, ""If I find out who did this to me, I'm going to get them!'' But it was unclear if Cunanan really was sick or just showing off. Cunanan's life has been a psychodrama played for maximum applause - or horror. It has been one long divide between reality and fantasy, a widening and now fatal chasm.