Facing Death

He was biding his time. In his darkened room, with its pink velvet chairs and pink-and-blue polyester bedcover, he always kept the curtain closed, never opening it to look at the ocean view. ""He was always quiet but very polite,'' Hernandez told NEWSWEEK. ""Sometimes the guests make me feel afraid. This guy didn't.'' Cunanan never made a phone call. ""He didn't argue, he didn't get drunk, he came and went on his own,'' says Roger Falin, the hotel's owner. ""He was like a ghost.''

Dinner was takeout pizza and subs, but not too much; Cunanan slowly shed the weight he had put on in the gourmet restaurants of San Diego. He kept his room so immaculate it barely needed to be cleaned, says Georgia Mae Escoe, the cleaning lady. He left his dirty towels in a bag on the doorknob so she would not have to come in. When Escoe changed his bed, she would find the linens rolled up in a tight ball. ""It was as if he was having a bad sleep,'' she recalled.

He may have been dreaming of Versace. The FBI believes that Cunanan had been obsessed with the fashion designer for years. FBI agents in San Francisco have interviewed several Bay Area witnesses who say that he frequently ""bragged'' about his relationship with Versace. Given Cunanan's propensity for tall tales, his boasts may have been idle. Still, one FBI witness in California, NEWSWEEK has learned, told investigators that Cunanan often talked about having a crush on one of Versace's boyfriends. Despite the vast gulf between them, Versace and Cunanan may have crossed paths, and not just for a moment at the opera party in San Francisco in 1990. One of Cunanan's former keepers owns a house in northern Italy not far from one of Versace's homes. Cunanan may have traveled to Italy with him; it's not inconceivable that the gigolo and the fashion czar made an acquaintance.

Versace's family and friends recoil at the idea. For all the flamboyance of his fashion, Versace was shy and temperate in his private life, say his friends. At parties he arrived late and left early, if he came at all. He drank nothing stronger than soda and wine. If Versace did bring young men into his 20,000-square-foot villa, with its gymnasium and pool and custom-designed shower large enough to accommodate a dozen bathers at a time, Cunanan was not one of them, the designer's friends insist. Cunanan was ""a five out of 10,'' says one. ""And you can find 10s all over South Beach.''

The FBI has one tantalizing lead that undercuts the denials. NEWSWEEK has learned that shortly after the Versace murder, a senior Brazilian law-enforcement officer contacted the FBI with a startling piece of information. A Brazilian woman had told local authorities in Sao Paulo that she had attended an informal get-together at the Versace mansion in South Beach the Sunday night before the murder. She claimed Cunanan was at the gathering - and she said she had still photographs and video to prove it. A Portuguese-speaking FBI agent has been dispatched to Sao Paulo to interview the woman and collect her photos and video for examination.

Cunanan came within a few minutes of getting caught just five days before Versace died. On the evening of Friday, July 11, G. Kenneth Benjamin, a cashier at Miami Subs Grill, a sandwich shop three blocks north of the Normandy, found himself looking right into the face of a man he had seen identified on the TV show ""America's Most Wanted.'' Before giving Cunanan his order (a Junior Tuna Combo), Benjamin whispered to his boss, who told him to call 911. The police operator told him to stall. But another cashier, unawares, gave Cunanan his sandwich - and the suspect walked out, heading south on Collins Avenue, minutes before police arrived.