Alibi: A Novel (42 page)

“Signor Miller. So you like the jazz too? All the young people, it seems,” he said, waving his hand toward his table, where the woman had turned to face us.

Giulia. For a second I simply stared, too surprised to move, then she was nodding and I had to nod back. She was dressed for a night out, lipstick and earrings, no trace of mourning. To see Cavallini? In a place where no one would see them. But neither of them seemed disconcerted by our being there. Cavallini was taking Claudia’s hand, greeting her.

“Please, you’ll join us?”

“Oh, but—” Claudia fluttered, spreading her hands to Jim and Mario, clearly unnerved by the idea of sitting with Cavallini.

“That’s okay,” Mario said. “We were just having a beer. You go sit with your friends. I mean, what the hell, your wedding day.”

“How?” Cavallini said.

“Claudia and I were married today,” I said to him.

He looked at me, speechless for a moment, then fell back on form, taking up Claudia’s hand again with a flourish. “Signora Miller. My very best wishes,” he said, the English sounding curiously like a translation. He turned to me. “So. You didn’t wait for your mother?”

“We didn’t wait for anybody. We just thought it was time.”

“Yes, I know how that is. Everything for the family, and really you want to be alone.” I thought of his wife, an unlikely candidate for elopement. “And now here we are, more people. But at least have some wine with us to celebrate?” He glanced at the table of beer bottles.

“That would be nice,” I said, shooting a look at Claudia.

Cavallini extended the invitation to the GIs too, but they begged off, so it was just the four of us at the little table in the back.

“Giulia, what do you think? Married today,” Cavallini said, waving his hand at us, then summoning the waiter for more chairs.

“Yes?” Giulia said to me, taken aback. And then, for an instant, a look that was more than surprise, a question mark, a change of plan. “So. That’s wonderful. You didn’t tell anyone?”

“Ah, no secrets from the Questura,” Cavallini said, joking. “You see how we find you out, even here.”

I laughed, but Claudia barely managed a smile. When the chairs were brought, she sat at the edge of hers, as if she were afraid of accidentally touching Cavallini’s leg. It was an awkward table. Giulia talked about jazz, popular at the university because it had to be clandestine, almost a link with the Allies. Cavallini asked about the wedding. Finally the bottle arrived and Cavallini made a toast to our future.

“Yes, the future,” Claudia said, edgy.

“And what will it be?” Cavallini said pleasantly.

Claudia shrugged.

“You don’t know? But women always know. They’re the ones with the plan. The men—” He opened his hand, all of us feckless.

“America, I suppose,” she said. “It depends on Adam.”

“Ha, already a wife. My wife too. Everything depends on me, as long as it’s what she wants,” he said, raising his glass to Claudia.

I glanced quickly at Giulia, surprised he’d mentioned his wife. Maybe not a girl from Maestre after all.

“You could leave Venice?” Giulia said. “You know, I thought I could, and then at university I missed it.
Terra firma
, nothing moves. I missed the water.”

“Not everyone likes the water,” Cavallini said. “Maybe it’s different for Signora Miller.” He nodded at her new name. “When you can’t swim—”

“How do you know that?” Claudia said, off-guard.

“I’m sorry,” he said, genial. “It’s not true?”

“No, it’s true, but how do you know? You asked someone that?”

“No, no, Signor Miller mentioned it. We were talking about boats. He said you didn’t like boats, only the vaporetto.”

“She’s getting better,” I said, jumping in. “Today we took a gondola ride and she wasn’t nervous at all.”

“So you think I’m always the bloodhound?” Cavallini said, amused.

“Your men were asking questions at the hotel,” I said, explaining. “Checking times.”

“My men,” he said, blushing a little, as if he’d been accused of being clumsy.

“Any news? About the boat?” I said, moving him away from Claudia.

“No, it’s very difficult.” He sighed. “But not tonight. Tonight the bloodhound is not official. Just a wedding guest. The bride will permit me a dance?”

He held out his hand, smiling, so Claudia had to raise hers and get up before she could think of any excuse not to. She glanced at me, then let Cavallini take her elbow, following him to the dance floor like someone being led away for questioning.

Giulia took out a cigarette and waited for me to light it.

“You really like jazz?” I said.

“You mean, what am I doing here? Don’t worry, it’s not what you think.”

“It’s none of my—”

“I asked him to bring me here. He wanted to have dinner—you know, where everyone can see—and I thought, no, why not here instead. I like the music, and alone, it’s not possible for me to come.”

“Why dinner?”

“Oh, he said to explain to me what was happening. About my father, the man they caught. Of course, the real reason—”

“I can guess.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “Just to be seen. Be helpful. You know his wife is my mother’s cousin, so he thinks he’s a Maglione. I’m the family now, the son. It’s useful for him if people think I want his counsel, that he has influence with me. You know, he has political ambitions. So it’s useful.”

“He does?” I glanced toward the dance floor, where he was chatting with Claudia.

“He’s always been ambitious. Why else would he marry Filomena?”

“You mean she’s rich?”

“No, but a good family. A step for him.”

“Maybe he married for love.”

She looked at me. “Did you?”

I said nothing for a second, thrown by the directness of it, her eyes on me.

“Yes.”

She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. “Then it’s good. You’ll be happy.” She glanced up. “I hope you will be,” she said, softer now, a kind of apology for having asked.

“So Cavallini gets seen with the Magliones. And what do you get out of it, a night out?”

“Well, a friend in the police, it’s always good. And to thank him for solving the murder. Of course, I know it was because of you. But he listened to you. Would the others have done that?”

“Do you really think this case can be tried? You’re a lawyer.”

“Not for crime. Business, you know. Contracts. Anyway, in this case I’m a Maglione. The police get the man,
brava
. But now the important thing—well, that it all goes the right way.”

“What way is that?”

She leaned forward, businesslike. “The best, of course, is that there’s no trial at all. He confesses, it’s an end. But if it has to be, then I want
him
on trial, not my father.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “A tragic mistake. My father gives him medicine—a humanitarian act, at that time even a brave one. And he
thinks
it’s a betrayal. Foolish, but he acts.”

“But the defense will say it was a betrayal.”

“And the more they say it, the more they make him look guilty. Vittorio says—”

“Vittorio?”

“Inspector Cavallini,” she said, surprised I hadn’t known his name. “He says this is the trap—if they talk about my father this way, it gives Moretti
more
motive. So maybe they won’t.”

“They have to say something.”

“They’ll say the police are mistaken. That it’s political, the government is trying to put the Communists on trial. And of course it’s true—a convenience for them, a case like this. But at least then my father’s name—” She broke off, crushing her cigarette, her mouth drawn, as if putting on lipstick had hardened it, aged her. I thought of her at the memorial service, pale, when her father’s good name had not even been in question.

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Of course. It’s my name too. That’s why it’s so important, with Vittorio. To make it all go right. So I make him feel part of the family.” Her eyes slightly amused but determined, Gianni’s face at the Monaco.

“By bringing him here.”

“Well, I’m the son but not the son. I know what people say. We go to Harry’s and I’m his mistress. Nice for him, maybe, but not for me. So I bring him here. Who will know? Some soldiers.”

“And me.”

“Yes, now you. But you know everything. You’re the other son. He thinks of you that way, you know.”

I made a noise, shrugging this off.

“You almost were.” She smiled to herself. “Maybe it’s close enough for him. He has a great respect for money.”

“Then he’s wrong again. I don’t have any.”

She picked up her wineglass. “Then she married for love too,” she said, not looking at me, casual, as if the phrase were a stray thought.

I waited a minute. “I hope so.”

She finished her wine, then looked at the dance floor. “It’s true, you’re going to America?”

I opened my hands. “I’m American.”

“You know, if things had turned out differently—if my father had lived—I think he would have offered you a place in his business.”

“I doubt it,” I said easily. “I don’t know anything about business.”

“But I do,” she said, looking up. “I know everything about our business. I was raised for it.”

A trumpeter stood up on the bandstand, holding a note, the end of the song. No one spoke, so that the moment seemed suspended. Giulia’s eyes were still, and I felt an almost physical pull, being drawn in, like Cavallini. Making us both part of the family so things would go right. The father’s daughter.

“More than Gianni did, then,” I said, trying to be light.

“No, he knew. Often he did things—because of the business,” she said, her voice remote, something she was still debating with herself.

People on the dance floor were applauding the trumpeter.

“Anyway, I’m not his son,” I said. “So—”

“But you avenged his death,” she said quickly. “I’m grateful for that.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe Moretti’s just convenient for everybody. A feather in your cousin’s cap. But what if he’s innocent?”

“You don’t believe it’s him? Why did he say he was glad, at that bar?”

“I don’t know—a million reasons. Maybe he hates businessmen.”

She put her hand over mine. “How you defend him, my father. Better than a son, maybe. You think he couldn’t have betrayed this man? He could. He betrayed everybody. My mother. Everybody,” she said fiercely, almost spitting out the words. She moved her hand away
and grabbed at her glass to steady herself. “You didn’t suspect? No, like me. All my life I thought he was a good man. A moral dilemma—save a partisan? Ha, once. That he tells me about. And what about the rest of it? What was he saving then? The business? Well, he saved it for me, I should be grateful, yes? I should be grateful.”

She lifted her head suddenly, as if she’d been caught talking to herself, then reached for another cigarette, something to do. For a moment I sat still, afraid I’d startle her away, then struck the match and lit it for her.

“What?” I said gently.

“It’s in the notebooks.” She glanced up at Claudia and Cavallini coming toward us, only a table away.

“You figured out the gaps?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not now. Nothing to Vittorio.”

“But if they prove Moretti didn’t—”

“No, they prove he did.”

“They can’t,” I said involuntarily.

She looked at me, surprised, but before either of us could say anything more the others were sitting down, the table a party again.

“I dance like an elephant,” Cavallini said, laughing at himself, and Claudia politely said no, he was good on his feet, and we all drank more wine. Claudia had given me a “Let’s go” look, but now I couldn’t, not until I finished with Giulia, so I ignored it. Instead we drank, a new bottle exchanged for the old. Cavallini drummed his fingers on the table to the music. Finally Claudia got up, saying she’d promised Jim a dance, and left the table, shooting me another look. The dance was obviously a surprise to Jim, but everyone was a little drunk now and he waved a salute to me, grinning. A minute later I led Giulia onto the floor. “These Foolish Things,” slow enough to talk, my hand barely touching her back.

“What do you mean, they can’t prove it?” she said, still turning this over.

I hesitated, trying to think, feeling the sweat at my hairline. “They’re Paolo’s journals, aren’t they? He was already dead when the house was attacked. So how could they prove anything?”

“Oh, I see. No, they don’t say my father gave Moretti the medicine. But of course we know he did. Moretti said so.”

“So what do they say? You figured out the missing pages?”

She nodded. “I found the other books.”

“But he destroyed them. Didn’t you say?”

“Well, a Maglione. He gave them to Maria to be destroyed. The maid, you saw her.” Entering nervously with a phone. “Loyal to Paolo, it turns out. Maybe the only one.”

“She read them?”

“No, she doesn’t read. She can write her name, that’s all.”

“But she kept them.”

“You know you forgot to take the books away, the day Vittorio called. So that night I was looking through them. The missing pages, what did they mean? And she saw me and said, would I like to see the others? My father had told her to burn them, but she thought, these are Paolo’s, the history of the family, and they’re not my father’s to burn.” She smiled. “He wasn’t the first son. She thinks that way.”

I nodded, encouraging her to go on, but there was no reluctance now, almost a rush to get it out.

“Once I had those, it was easy enough to guess the rest. Because I know my father’s businesses so well.”

“His businesses?”

“Yes, it was always about that. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. If he had believed in something—anyway, he believed in this.”

Over her shoulder I could see Claudia signaling me.

“You had to work with the government,” Giulia said. “Everything was like that here. Licenses. Friends.”

“It’s like that everywhere.”

“Yes, but here it was Fascists. And then the Germans.”

“He sold arms? My mother said he didn’t.”

“No, not that. One factory in Turin, it makes forks, then it makes forks for the army. Little things, not the Agnellis. Uniforms. Electrical pieces. Many things. So, the Italian army, that’s one thing, it’s still
your country. But then the Germans come. Not your country, but you supply them too. Ha, one partisan. My wonderful father.”