Текст книги "Alibi"

Автор книги: Joseph Kanon

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Well, 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.

“But not everyone is. Whoever killed him isn’t.”

“Not a partisan,” she said slowly.

“No. And if I find him,” I said, nodding at the file, “then you’re back in business. So it’s worth a chance.”

She had leaned forward, her whole body listening. “Back in business?”

“Well, there’s always somebody else, isn’t there? Always. But nothing ever came out. Then all of a sudden you’re investigating Gianni—you know something, you’re getting close. So if you were the somebody else, it might be a good time to get rid of Gianni,” I said, rushing now, believing it myself, the way it should have happened.

“Another collaborator.”

“Who set up the raid.” I opened my palm, an offering. “Your trial.” And then, before she could say anything, “Could you get me a list of everyone you talked to, who knew you were doing this?”

Because there had to be someone who knew about Gianni, who could tell me.

“Besides you and Lieutenant Sullivan?”

“Everyone. At the hospital, whoever you talked to. It had to be someone who knew this was happening, that you were opening the case.”

“But they might have talked to others.”

“I know. We’ll follow it as far as we can.”

“Oh, we. I told you—”

“I. You just work on the Germans. I’ll take care of that,” I said, reaching over for the file.

“You know I can’t. It’s Allied property.”

“Joe would do it for me.”

“And me? When they ask me?”

“Files get lost. Misplaced. Even the Germans lost files,” I said. “It happens. And then they turn up again. You want to know what happened too, don’t you?” She raised her hand, letting the file slide away, then pushed up her sleeve and scratched the white skin on her arm. “We both want to know.” I kept looking at her as I pulled the folder toward me.

“And you’re going to do this all by yourself? One man. Talk to all these people, in Italian. How? I can’t take the time.”

“I know. We made a deal. Just work the German side.”

“But you can’t—”

I glanced over her shoulder again. The one man he could trust. Not even an idea, an impulse, grabbing at anything, unable to stop now, the eddy in control. “Yes, I can. I’m going to get the police to help.”

We had to pass Cavallini’s table to leave the dining room, so there was no avoiding a meeting. He sprang up when we got near, as if he’d been waiting.

“Ah, Signora Soriano. They said you would be here.” He took her hand. Waiting for Rosa, not me.

“You know each other?” I said.

“Who said I would be here?”

“I telephoned your office.”

“Ah, looking for the Communists,” she said, pointing to the paper in front of him, mischievous. “You know I can’t help you with that. I don’t know any.”

“No one does,” Cavallini said, smiling back. “Sometimes, you know, I think we make them up.”

Rosa looked at him. “Sometimes you do. But they’re useful, no?” She nodded to the paper.

“Some coffee? You can join me?” He offered a seat.

“No, it’s impossible. I’m late. If I’d known—it’s important? You came here to see me?”

“I don’t like to interrupt,” he said, motioning toward the table where we’d been.

“What is it?” Rosa said, direct.

“Not the Communists,” he said, picking up the paper. “The victim. You have so much information about our Venetian citizens. I thought perhaps—you know, we have to look everywhere in a murder case.”

“Ha, so this is your help?” she said to me. “Come due gocce d’acqua. What’s the English? Not drops of water—peas.”

“Two peas in a pod,” I said, not really following.

“Both of you, so interested in Maglione,” she said to Cavallini, then pointed her thumb at me. “Talk to him. You know I’m not allowed. Only if Lieutenant Sullivan—”

“But you can tell me—is there a file?”

She kept her eyes on him, away from the folder in the newspaper under my arm.

“A murder case, signora.”

“All right. I’ll look,” she said evenly. “But now I should go. You’re finished with me?”

“It’s not an interrogation,” Cavallini said, smiling.

“There’s a difference, with police?” she said, but pleasantly, easing her way out. “I’ll call you,” she said to me. “Good luck.” This with a move of her eyes to Cavallini.

“So you know the famous Rosa,” Cavallini said as she left.

“She works for a friend of mine. Why famous?”

“During the war, in the resistance. Brave, like a man. The Germans never got her. A Communist, you know.”

“She says not.”

He shrugged. “They all say not. So, why good luck? The peas in a pod?”

“We both asked her about Gianni.”

“Ah,” he said, noncommittal.

“Look, you said on San Michele that I could help. Maybe I can. This is what I did in Germany, with her boss. The army’s not going to talk to you—they like to keep things to themselves. But he’ll talk to me. I can find out what they have.”

“So there is a file.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

But maybe he already knew. “Because I asked them to start one.”

He looked at me for a moment, then at the waiter gathering up cups. “I must get back. But it’s so nice today. Perhaps you’d walk with me? Part of the way?”

Outside, we stopped in front of San Moise, the rococo stone dark with grit even in the bright sun.

“You asked for this investigation?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know?” I said, probing.

“Your mother mentioned something,” he said casually. Known all along. Take nothing for granted.

“Then you also know why.”

He nodded. “The incident with Signorina Grassini, I think. Several have mentioned this.” Why? I felt warm, a rush of blood. Had he been asking about her? Running through his checklist, rumors and times I left the hotel and who had seen what? But the engagement party had been bound to come up. It had happened. And so had the ball, when we’d spent the evening with him, having our pictures taken. Just move the party off his checklist, away from Claudia. “An embarrassment for you.”

“And for her now,” I said, starting to walk, the narrow calle feeling suddenly like a tightrope. Keep your balance and don’t look down. “You know, when something terrible happens, you look for someone to blame. Anybody. And Gianni was there when they were taken. You don’t always think, you just—then later you realize it’s a mistake. You can’t blame someone personally. Of course, Gianni was nice about it. I suppose for my sake. So they made a truce.” The same word he’d used when he lied to me on the fondamenta, maybe a word that was always a lie. “In the end they were both relieved, I think.”

“But you asked your friend—Lieutenant Sullivan?—to investigate him.”

“I wanted to reassure her that Gianni was all right. That she’d made a mistake.”

“And did it? Reassure her?”

“Yes,” I said, looking at him, “because I didn’t tell her what they found.”

He was quiet for a minute, thinking, then stopped. We were near the turnoff for Harry’s, standing next to one of the stores. Shoes and handbags and cashmere, with Harry’s at the end of the calle, my mother’s Venice.

“But you want to tell me?” he said, a question, not a request, his eyes slightly apprehensive. I remembered the broad smile that first night at Harry’s, pleased to see Gianni.

“Yes. But only you. It wouldn’t be fair to his daughter. To my mother, for that matter. Nobody has to know. Not yet. They’re only suggestions. Not proof, suggestions.”

“What suggestions?” he said calmly.

“That he was working with the Germans. That he betrayed partisans.”

“You believe this?”

“I don’t know what to believe. People have to do things in wartime—it’s hard to judge. So maybe yes. But the point is that if he did, then there’s a motive. Why would anyone want to kill Gianni? But if he betrayed them, or if they thought he did—”

He was nodding to himself. “Yes, there were such cases. Rosa knows this. And yet she runs away when I ask.”

“She doesn’t want it to be a partisan.”

“That’s your idea, that it was a partisan?”

We started walking again, past the jewelry stores and into the deep shadow of the arcades.

“You know, Signor Miller, everyone worked for the Germans. We don’t like to say now, but what could we do? This was an occupied country. Even the police worked for them.”

“Not like this.”

“Like this,” he repeated, waiting. “There was a suggestion—”

“That he was an informer for the SS. There was a raid, an atrocity.”

“A fire.”

“So you know about it.”

“I thought it must be that. With Rosa.”

Just then we came out of the arcades into the bright open piazza, that exhilarating first moment when the space of San Marco dazzles. Even Cavallini stopped, looking across at the campanile and the domes of the basilica.

“It seems impossible, doesn’t it, that such things could happen,” he said, “where it’s so beautiful.” I glanced at him, surprised. “Look at this,” he said, genuinely moved. And in fact the piazza was spectacular, flooded with spring light, the sun flashing off the gold mosaics, the pigeons swooping up and around in the soft air. “Imagine,” he said, “to be a Maglione in this city.” He turned to me. “I hope you’re wrong, Signor Miller. So many years, and then a disgrace like this on the name.”

“I hope I’m wrong too. For my mother’s sake.”

“Yes, forgive me,” he said. We started to walk across the piazza. “I forgot what this would mean to her. I was thinking of my wife’s family. An indulgence. Do such things happen? Who knows better than a policeman? Of course you’re right—we must know. I’m grateful to you for your help.”

“Maybe we can help each other.”

“Yes?”

“I can find out what Joe Sullivan has—well, Rosa, really. But if we want to take this any further, there are hospital records to check, and I’d need your authority for that.”

“My authority? But the Allies have all the authority you need.”

“For war crimes. But now he’s dead. They’re not interested in trying a dead man. What would be the point? So it’s a police matter. Your case.”

“My case,” he said to himself, as if he were trying out the phrase. He looked up at me, a faint grin under the mustache. “And you want to be the Dr. Watson? The partner? It’s not usual, such an offer.”

“Just an assistant. If it would help.”

“Oh, I accept, I accept. An experienced investigator? For you it’s like old times, maybe. More Germans.”

“No, no trials this time. I just want to know whether he did it.” I looked at Cavallini. “And then we’ll know why he was killed.”

Unexpectedly, he extended his hand. “I am so grateful for your help. At the Questura, do they want this? To know why? With you, it’s a family matter, they say to me. You see, you can understand that. But the others? They just want it to go away. For everything to be normal. The tourists will be here soon.”

Around us, as a kind of live illustration, the waiters were putting out more tables at Florian’s, even one day’s sun an excuse to start the season. In a few days the musicians would be back, playing waltzes, and everything would be the same. I watched for a second, uneasy, even the white-jacketed waiters carrying chairs suddenly surreal. I was supposed to be one of the people sitting down for coffee, reading an English newspaper, writing postcards. Not lying to policemen, who were grateful for my help.

“Will you come back to the Questura?”

“I can’t now,” I said. “Anyway, I’d better call Joe. Get you the file.” After I’d read it first, decided what to pass on. “So we can start.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said, but the idea seemed to darken his mood again, a reminder. “I remember the incident of the house very well. Those were the worst times, near the end. I don’t know why.”

I shrugged. “The losers are desperate and the winners aren’t accountable yet. So it’s open season. It was the same in Germany. At the War Crimes Commission, most of the cases were recent.”

“War crimes,” he said. “Sometimes I think everything in the war was a crime.”

I looked at him, surprised again. “And nothing. That’s the problem. It’s war, so it doesn’t count.”

“Well, now it’s over,” he said, taking one last look at the piazza, still filling with chairs. “Now it counts.”