Alibi: A Novel (29 page)

“I never said that,” she snapped, annoyed. “I said I was fond of him. Though why any of this should matter to you now, I haven’t the foggiest.” She put the photographs aside, unfolding her legs, restless. “I must say, you pick your moments. I’ve just buried the last husband I’m likely to have and you want to talk about his finances. Accusing me of I don’t know what. All right. So we’re crystal clear. I was never in love with Gianni. I’ve told you this. I was in love with your father. But Gianni—well, after all these years, I never expected that. And then there it was, and yes, I thought, Well, this is lucky, everything will be all right now. But I was fond of him. I never deceived him about that,” she said, her voice finally breaking. She reached for a handkerchief. “Now look. I get through the whole funeral and now I start to puddle.”

I stared at her, my mind racing, connecting dots. “What do you mean, everything will be all right now?”

“What? Oh, the money. That’s what we were talking about, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s gone now. It really doesn’t matter how much he had, does it? I won’t see any of it.” She sniffed into the handkerchief.

“So what? You have your own. We’ll go back to New York.”

But she was shaking her head. “It’s not going to stretch there. I can do it here. Why do you think I came? You can still live here. You have no idea what New York is like now, just the simplest things.”

“Stretch?” I said, looking at her, trying to follow. “What about Dad’s money?”

“I’ve been living on it. I’m still living on it—I never said anybody was
starving
.” She moved away. “I don’t know how much you thought there was. Those last years, when he was sick, it just went through your fingers. All the nurses, everything. It goes. And every year there’s less. So you have to be careful. Look, I can do it. It’s just I can do it better here. And I thought, well, you have that little trust from your grandfather—and you were always so independent anyway. I’m not going to be a
burden
, you don’t have to worry about that. But New York just eats it away. You get worried. You just keep hoping something will turn up.”

“And something did.”

“Yes, something did.” She looked at me. “I didn’t
plan
it. I went to Paris, not here.”

“I know.”

“But the way you look. So I came and it was lucky, and shall I tell you something? We would have been happy. We would have taken care of each other. He wanted to marry me so much. Why? I don’t know, but he wanted it. We would have been happy. It wasn’t just the money. I was fond of him.” She fingered the brown envelope on the couch, then turned to me. “But you never saw that. Always so—” She cut herself off, then shook her head. “You made it difficult, Adam, you really did. We didn’t deserve that, either of us.” Her voice dropped, finally out of steam, and she moved toward the door. “What shall I tell Angelina? Are you in tonight?”

“Yes, all right.”

“Not for me, I hope,” she said. “I don’t want that, Adam. I don’t mind being alone.” Her shoulders moved, a small shrug. “Anyway, I’d better get used to it.” Almost casual, making peace.

“No,” I said, trying to reassure her with a look. “Something will turn up.”

She nodded, smiling weakly. “Twice.”

After she left I went over to the couch and picked up a few of the pictures. On the beach, with her short hair, in a group. Gianni as a teenager, grinning, then as a young man, sitting with people in cafés, posing in San Marco, in a racing car with his brother, in front of the
hospital—all smiling. Giulia must have raided the family album to find Gianni as my mother would have known him, young, unattached. Even in the later pictures his wife was missing—at home, or maybe just outside the frame. Smiling, happy, exactly the man my mother described. Not the one I knew. But they must at some point have been the same. When had everything turned inside out? If it had.

My face felt warm, as if my mother’s words were stinging it. All I’d wanted to do, the start of everything, was to protect her. But he’d been rich, not after her money, not even thinking about it. I dropped the pictures, my hand shaking a little. What else had I been wrong about? I tried to think what his face had looked like when he hadn’t been smiling, when he had been reaching for me in the hall. Malevolent, or just angry, frustrated? Maybe Claudia’s landlady had wanted the rooms back. Maybe the Accademia was cutting staff. Maybe I’d killed the young man in the photograph, imagining he’d become someone else. Held his head underwater until the life went out of him because I had got everything wrong. Not just murder, murder for no reason at all. I sat for a few minutes more, my chest suddenly tight, taking in gulps of air, then went over to the phone and placed a trunk call to Rosa Soriano.

W
ell, now you have your answer,” Rosa said, tapping the newspaper lying on the folder next to her. We were at the Bauer again, at the same breakfast, except that sunshine had replaced the rain outside. “
Una cospirazione comunista
.” She smiled a little, shaking her head.

Gianni’s funeral took up half the front page, with a big picture of the casket being carried down the Salute steps, the veiled Giulia just behind, held by the elbows for theatrical effect, a scene ready for La Fenice.

“Why Communist?”

“Why not? A political killing, very convenient. You don’t scare the tourists and you get to blame the Communists for something else. You see it says here ‘rumors.’ In other words, they don’t know, but now people have the impression the Communists did it.”

“But why would they want to?”

“An old Venetian family, a doctor, a ‘savior of men,’ everything that’s good—naturally they’d want to get rid of him.” She pushed the paper aside. “Who knows why? As long as they did. So now they’re like gangsters, even worse than people thought.” She sipped her tea. “It’s not a political city, you know. Whatever’s good for business.” She smiled. “When the Allies came in—from New Zealand, did you know? Venice liberated by New Zealand—they were still serving German officers at Quadri’s. Not in uniform. Civilian clothes. They
hated to leave. One last coffee. So the waiters kept serving. That was all right. It was
after
—when the partisans acted. For the crimes, all those years. People shot. That was terrible, worse than the Germans. You see how it says here about the brother?” She tapped the paper again. “A tragic family. Again this violence. So they make the connection. Another killing, like the brother. Partisans again. Now Communists, the same thing to them.”

“But maybe it was a partisan.”

She looked at me over the rim of her cup but didn’t say anything.

“You said they acted on their own sometimes. If the trials—”

She was nodding. “Yes, it was the first thing I thought, when I heard. Like
Il Gazzettino
,” she said, giving a wry glance at the paper.

“But now you don’t?”

“A feeling only. Why now, so late?” She took the cup in both hands, warming herself. “You see, when the Germans left, there were killings like this. A season of bad blood—avenge this one, that one. You know, this happens. A part of war. But then it stops. It’s enough. And the way he was killed—”

“What do you mean?”

“So clumsy. Like a thief. With the partisans, it was a bullet. A
military
action, not a crime. Oh, such a look. You think it’s the same? It’s not the same to them. These are not criminals. Soldiers. They were fighting for their country. But the war’s over. So why now? It’s only for us,” she said, waving her hand back and forth between us, “that the war doesn’t end. With our files. For the others, it’s late.” She paused. “But also too early. You know, when I said they act, they find their own proof, it’s for justice. Because I couldn’t do it with this.” She placed her hand on the folder. “But there hasn’t been any trial. They don’t have to make their own justice yet. It’s too soon.”

“Maybe someone didn’t want to wait.”

“Maybe, but there’s no talk of this. You know I have many contacts. Old colleagues,” she said, raising an eyebrow, almost conspiratorial. “No one says anything.” She sighed. “But what’s the difference now? He got his justice anyway.”

“You found the proof?”

“Proof?”

“The fire. The house.”

She looked away. “The house, no. No proof. The dates don’t work.”

“What?”

“The man who was in hospital, Moretti, he was released October fourth. That’s the date you found, yes? It’s too early. The raid, it’s not until the fifteenth. Why would they wait? And he doesn’t come to us. A week in Verona, a safe house there. I thought at first it must be—such a coincidence, Moretti in the hospital, if he had just come from Venice, but no. First to Verona. If they tracked him, why wait?”

“For someone else to come to the house,” I said faintly.

“No one else came. Couriers, people who had been before. None of them were in the house when the Germans attacked. None were picked up later. So who were they waiting for? Of course, maybe there’s something in the German records—you know, in all the confusion, some are missing. But still, why wait? It’s not characteristic. The dates don’t work.”

I stared at her, gripping the edge of the table, stepping into the outer swirl of an eddy. “You mean he might not have done it?”

“I mean we can’t prove it. For a trial. Except it’s not a question of that anymore. He’s dead.”

“But how do we know—?” I stopped, one thought tumbling over another. “What if he didn’t do it?”

“If not the house, something else. He was a collaborator, no? Isn’t that why you came to us in the first place? He was what he was.”

“But what, exactly?” I said, mostly to myself.

She looked at me, surprised.

“I mean, we should know. Now that we’ve started.”

“But he’s ended it, Signor Miller. He’s dead. The file is closed. I can’t investigate the dead. There’s no time for that.”

“But he was killed.”

“Well, now it’s a police matter.” She paused. “That’s what’s troubling you? You feel guilty?”

I looked at her.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I know what you think. We open the file, start looking, and someone hears. Aha, so it’s Maglione, he thinks. And he decides to act. On his own. Because we started this.” She put her hand across the table, not quite touching mine. “We can’t blame ourselves for this. I make files, that’s all. The files don’t kill people. Maybe it was always going to happen. Maybe this
is
the justice. Anyway, it’s done.” She moved her cup aside, finished.

“But if a partisan killed him, wouldn’t you want to know?”

She looked straight at me. “And what? Bring
him
to trial? No. My justice doesn’t go that far. And how did he know? Because we started this. Then it’s our fault too? So we all killed him? That’s what you want to think?”

“But what if we killed the wrong man?” I said, shaky, finally there, near the center of the eddy.

She stared at me for a moment, then put both hands in front of her, fingers touching, making a point. “Signor Miller, he’s dead. If he did terrible things—well, it’s good, yes? If he didn’t, he’s dead anyway. What do you want me to do? Get proof and condemn him in the ground? Or no proof—then what? Rehabilitate him? Make a good reputation for him? In
Il Gazzettino
he’s already a hero. What more can he want? Let it go now. Close the file.”

“But then we’ll never know if he did it.”

“It’s so important to you, this?” she said. “What do you want to prove? That he deserved to die?”

I looked away, for a second seeing again the gray skin on San Michele, pasty and inert.

“Lieutenant Sullivan said it was like this with you,” Rosa said. “Personal. In Germany, every case.”

Had it been? Is that what Joe had thought? Folder after folder. “I hate to walk away. That’s all.”

“Yes, but there are so many others. The point is to make a trial. To make it known. There’s no trial here,” she said, putting her hand on the file. “Not anymore. It doesn’t matter to me how he died. There’s no trial.” She was silent for a minute, waiting, then began to gather up her things. Case closed.

“But I have to know,” I said, the words jumping out of me, trying to hold her in her seat.

She looked up at me, startled.

“Want to know,” I said, correcting myself. “I want to know what he did. So do you.”

“It’s not personal with me, Signor Miller. I don’t have the time.”

It was at that moment, everything swirling again, that I saw Cavallini, a glimpse over Rosa’s shoulder, circling into my line of vision across the room—the mustache, then the side of his face, then his back, sitting down. I craned my neck, looking around her. Was he meeting someone? No, alone. At the Bauer. Talking to the waiter now, opening a paper. Why not at work at the Questura? Unless he was at work, keeping me in sight. The one man in Venice he could trust.

“Look,” I said, dropping my voice, as if he could actually hear it across the room, “all I’m asking you to do is keep checking the German files. There has to be something, and I don’t have access. You do that and I’ll work the rest from this end.”

“Work what?”

“I’ll finish that,” I said, pointing to the file. “The hospital, the times, how it happened.” I hesitated. “The other members of the group. Not to nail them. I promise you, if it turns out—”

“Don’t promise me anything.”

“If it was a partisan, it stops here. You won’t know. Nobody knows.”

“Except you,” she said, tilting her head slightly, as if another angle might explain things. “Then why do it?”

Why. Because there had to be a reason for the bubbles in the water. But why else? Something I could say that she could believe. Over her shoulder, the waiter was pouring Cavallini’s coffee.

“Because it wasn’t a partisan. You don’t think so and neither do I.”

“No?”

“We can’t stop now. You’ve already done the spade work—now you’re just going to give it a pass? An atrocity everybody knows about? There
should
be a trial.”

“Signor Miller, he’s dead,” she said, her voice weary but her eyes
intrigued, assessing me. Think of something. Quickly. Cavallini would turn in his seat any second, make an elaborate show of coming over. Rosa’s help lost for good. I’d never know.