Текст книги "Alibi"

Автор книги: Joseph Kanon

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We sat at the big mahogany desk in the library, a dark room that backed onto a side calle, away from the canal. Giulia had turned on the desk lamp, making the polished wood gleam. The house was as perfectly waxed and still as it had been after the funeral, maybe the way it would always be now, a convent quiet.

“But did he keep everything here?” I said, rummaging through the deep bottom drawer.

“Yes, I think so. And the albums over there on the shelf. Where I found the pictures for your mother. Maybe you should see the rest. What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Him. People he knew.”

“There’s an address book,” she said, bringing it over.

For a few minutes we looked at it together, flipping pages. “That’s a patient, that one,” she said, and so, I assumed, were the others. And friends and dinner partners and tradesmen, all Italian. But what had I expected? Extension numbers at the Villa Raspelli? Checkmarks and combination letters, a coded secret life? I closed the book.

“Any diaries, anything like that?”

She shook her head. “No, only the Maglione books, from the old days.” She pointed to a shelf behind her, scrapbooks and odd-shaped journals, some bound in leather, others in gathered-together, yellowing folios. A few boxes, meant to look like books, for stacks of letters bound with ribbon. “They kept everything. For their history.”

“It must have stopped with him.” I closed the drawer.

“Well, my uncle did the notes. I remember him writing. My father was too busy for that.”

“But letters? There must be some letters. Your mother?”

“No. They never wrote. Or they’re gone.” She looked over at me. “Before—I never thought about it. They didn’t love each other. Maybe that’s why.”

We looked at the photo albums—stiffly posed grandparents, then the Maglione childhood, Gianni and Paolo in sailor suits, the usual. Then the book from which she must have got my mother’s pictures—sunny days on the Lido in wet wool bathing suits, groups lolling in front of changing cabanas.

“Which is your mother?”

“They didn’t meet till later. Look, Luca, before he became a priest.” A plump boy with a grin, years from piety. “I don’t know this one.” Standing next to Gianni.

“That’s my father,” I said.

“Oh.” She looked up at me. “Yes, I see it now. It’s strange, our parents together. Like the same family, but not the same.”

My father was squinting into the sun, but both of them were smiling. A day at the beach, a casual snapshot, no hint at all of anything to come, their lives twisted together.

“But where’s Paolo?”

“He was always taking the picture, I think,” she said, smiling. “No, here, the tennis one. My father didn’t like tennis, so maybe it was his turn with the camera.”

I took the picture out of the album and brought it nearer, looking at it closely. No hint here either—no Order of Rome, no politics, none of Bertie’s murk. He was standing against the net in tennis flannels and a white sweater with a chevron neck, his arm draped over the shoulder of another player, both of them holding their rackets at their hips.

“It’s sad to look at them,” Giulia said, moving away. “Everyone so happy. Does that make sense?”

I nodded. “What was he like?”

“Paolo? Uno vitaiolo. You know, always for the pleasure. Tennis. Those cars. Of course, when I was a child I thought this was wonderful. Another child, you know?”

“And then?”

“And then I wasn’t a child anymore.” She turned, facing me. “He was a Fascist. You’re surprised I say that? I know. Today, no Fascists. We were all in the resistance. I think we even believe it.”

“How do you mean, Fascist?”

“Fascist. He liked Mussolini. He liked the parades, dressing up, all of that. He was on committees—you know, they liked him because of his name. Of course no one listened to him, but it made him feel important to go to meetings. And after, the tennis. So not so serious—how could Paolo be serious? And then it’s the war, and everything’s serious. He’s too foolish to see what is happening to us, that it’s a catastrophe. He thinks the king will save us, make peace with the English king. Because he’s a king too. Imagine the foolishness of it. Well.”

“And after that?”

“After that, the Germans. And Paolo? He supports the Salò government, against the CLN, the partisans. It interests you, Italian politics?”

“It confuses me.”

“Yes,” she said. “But at the end it’s not difficult. If you’re with Salò, you’re with the Germans. So Paolo was too. Sometimes I think it was good that he died, before it was a disgrace to the family. Even for my father it was too much. Paolo was his brother, so that’s something sacred to him, but it wasn’t the same between them. The Germans, that’s something my father would never forgive.”

I looked over at her, expecting irony, but she seemed utterly sincere, guileless.

“They had a fight?”

“A distance. Maybe a fight, I don’t know. I was at school. And of course I wouldn’t speak to Paolo then. You know, the students, the way we felt—I was too angry with him. Maybe ashamed, too. My own family. So I didn’t speak.” She came back to the desk and looked down at the picture. “And then after he died, I remembered him like this. When he was so nice. My father too, I think. So quiet, days like that. You know, whatever he did, still a brother.”

“What about your father, his politics?”

She smiled. “Was he this, was he that? Nothing—he wanted to survive them. That’s what he used to tell me. Stay out of it. Keep your head down. So of course we would quarrel. You know, at that age. He was afraid, I think, that I would get involved in the resistance. So many of the students—”

“Did you?”

“No. I wanted to, of course, everybody did, but in the end—I don’t know, a coward maybe. Too much a lady, my friend used to say, my mother’s daughter. So maybe she was right.”

“But not your father’s?”

“Oh, a little bit. I think secretly he admired the resistance too. But he was afraid of it. For him it was simple—the family, Venice. The Church—well, maybe that was for my mother. He believed in those things. And what was the resistance? Maybe a threat. Something else to survive. So he kept his head down. No sides.” She turned at a soft rap on the door, an even quieter opening. “Ah, Maria,” she said, “thank you.” Not surprised.

The maid, in a starched linen collar and apron, carried a coffee tray to the table in front of the reading chairs. The cups and pot lay on a white doily, also starched, as if it had been meant to match her uniform. Shy smiles and murmurs in Italian, part of the ceremony of getting the tray on the table.

“I’ll pour, shall I?” Giulia said, at once dismissing Maria and taking up the pot in her hand, poised, her mother’s daughter.

I sat on the other side of the low table. It was the funeral all over again, nothing extra, everything as it should be, sure of its own taste. Even her dress, I noticed, was suitable, black without any purple frills, a discreet mourning—mourning because I had held his head under. Now we were drinking coffee, polite.

“But it must have been hard in the war, not taking sides,” I said.

She took a sip, then held the cup in her hand, thinking. “Of course in the end you do. It’s your country. I didn’t have the courage, maybe, but I had money. So I helped with that. We were alike that way. Keep your head down, but do it anyway. No sides, but he helped the partisans.”

“He told you that?” Maybe as plausibly as he’d told it on the fondamenta, but why?

She shook her head, then smiled. “Well, I didn’t tell him about the money either. But I know. He made it a question of medical ethics—what’s the right thing to do? You know, they do this in the law school too. So it’s good training for me. But this is his way of telling me. A man is brought in with a gunshot wound, a man you know. The law says you must report all such wounds. But you know that the only way he could have been shot is in the fighting, a partisan. If you report it, the government will kill him. If you don’t, maybe it goes badly for you, for helping a traitor. The man begs you—‘Help me, don’t give me up.’ What do you do?”

“And what did he do?” I said quietly.

“We agreed that the first obligation must be to save the man.”

“Even if he’s a traitor.”

“But if the government itself is illegal—”

“And who decides that?”

“Yes, who? You see how it goes on? He liked these questions. Well, I liked them, so he would ask.”

“And how did it end, this one? What did he do?”

“Oh, he said you can make it complicated if you like, but the simple fact is, if you know a man, you can’t give him up. So I know he didn’t.”

I put down my cup. “What if you gave up someone else instead?”

“Someone else?”

“To save the first. Your friend. If you gave up someone in his place.”

She looked at me for a second, then down at her cup. “What makes you ask this?”

“It’s a question he once asked me.”

“And you think,” she said, stirring her cup, still not looking up, “this was his way of telling you something.”

For a minute we were quiet, still enough to hear the clock.

“Do you think he did that?” she said finally, sitting up straight, braced.

I hesitated, then sat back, moving away from it. “I think it was just a question.”

“It’s a terrible thing.”

“Yes.”

“Why would he ask that?”

“As a moral dilemma, maybe. An impossible choice.”

“But you can’t choose someone’s death.” She was looking at me now, her face longer, more severe, like her mother’s again. “That’s murder.” Sure, admitting no exceptions.

I said nothing, kept quiet by her stare. Then her face began to change, no longer as properly arranged as the tray, and I saw that she was distressed, waiting for me to say something.

“He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “You knew him. Do you think he would do that?”

“I think it was just a question.”

“Then why—”

“Something may have put it in his mind. Something that actually happened. The story about the partisan—when did he tell you that?”

“When? Last year,” she said, composed again, interested.

“After the war?” I said, confused.

“No. I mean the year before. Forty-four. When he came to see me. I remember he told me at lunch.”

“When was this, exactly?”

“Autumn. October, maybe.”

“Why did it come up? I mean, why do you think he told you?”

She smiled a little, shaking her head. “Maybe to make me like him. Always we were arguing then. So maybe this was his way of saying, You see, Papa’s not so bad. I’m on the right side too.”

“But he never actually said he’d done this.”

“No, but that wasn’t his way. He never talked about himself. Maybe he thought it wasn’t dignified. He was private, a Maglione. My mother was like that too.”

“Secretive?”

“No. Private,” she said, making a distinction to herself. “I never knew what he was thinking. But what does a child know? All those years, here we are in this house, a family, and I never knew—” She leaned forward, placing the cup on the tray. “Maybe a little secretive. A doctor has to be, you learn that. You don’t talk about your patients. I used to ask him things and he’d say, ‘That’s not my secret to tell.’ Always somebody else’s secret. ‘I won’t tell,’ I’d say, and he’d wag his finger, like this,” she said, demonstrating, so that I looked up, seeing Gianni. “You know the old saying.” She lowered her voice, becoming him. “Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.” She paused. “So I didn’t ask. And then it turned out he must have had one of his own.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was murdered. Do you know why? No. So it’s still his secret.”

I sat back, looking around the room to avoid her gaze. “Well, it’s safe here. There’s nothing else? Files?”

“At the hospital. His real life was there, I think,” she said, her voice wistful. “Not here.”

There was an awkward pause.

“I should go,” I said, getting up. “Maybe there’ll be something in the patient files. That’s next. He seems to have erased himself everywhere else.”

“Yes, he was good at that. He didn’t like to keep things.”

I smiled, glancing around the old library, virtually an archive.

“Oh, this was Paolo. Poor Paolo, Papa erased him too. Threw out his books. You know, he was always writing in those books—appunti for the family history, and Papa said they were rubbish. Well, what did he expect? Mazzini from Paolo? But, you know, now it just stops. Unless I write it, I suppose,” she said, her voice diffident, as if she were talking to herself, suddenly alone.

“Wait. Paolo kept notebooks and your father threw them out?”

“Not all. Just the ones with his activities. ‘What will people think later?’ he said. It was an embarrassment for him.”

“But where are they?”

She gestured toward the shelves.

“Paolo kept them here?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “It was his house.”

“Yes, I forgot. But you all lived here?”

“Of course. The family.”

“All during the time they—?”

“Yes. There was an agreement—no political talk at dinner.”

I imagined them sitting at the starched table, private, talking politely, each one whirling in his own mystery.

“Can I see them?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, walking over to the shelf. “I’m sorry. I thought, my father’s papers. It didn’t occur to me. These are Paolo’s.” She ran her hand along a line of leatherbound spines.

The books weren’t histories so much as diaries, the kind a fourteen-year-old might write, full of underlinings and exclamation marks, the world a theater with himself, luckily, at center stage. Even with my poor Italian, I could understand Gianni’s reluctance to have them fill the family library’s shelves. But here they were, not all of them thrown out. Why not?

I skimmed through a few, trying to get a sense of why these had survived. Innocuous? But here was Mussolini, a trip to Rome with friends to hear a speech, dinner afterward at the Eden—a time capsule mix. Not embarrassed here, at any rate, by the fascism or Paolo’s comments. The speech had been inspiring, Rome itself a new city. A nightclub after dinner had featured Somalian dancers. Venice now seemed a backwater, dowdy. I flipped pages. Less exalted excursions—a drive to Asolo, dinner in a villa. The Maglione history now mostly idle days. Committee meetings, just as Giulia had said. Recording it all for posterity. The war, somber fourteen-year-old’s thoughts on what it would mean. The Albanian fiasco. The Allies in Sicily. And then it stopped. Gaps here and there before, then nothing after 1943. A war with no Germans at all. But why the earlier gaps? What else had Gianni culled out?

Giulia had been hovering next to me, reading as I flipped, no doubt taking it all in more quickly. “But what do you see?” she said.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Can I borrow these? Just the last few?”

“You want to read them?”

“I want to see where the gaps are. Look, here, for instance, he just ripped the pages out. So why here and not there?”

But before she could answer there was another rap on the door, and this time Maria was carrying an old telephone with a long cord, her eyes wide with apprehension.

“Polizia,” she whispered, pointing to me, then plugged the cord into a jack behind the desk.

Had Cavallini tracked me here? I picked up the phone and then must have registered the stunned dismay I felt as he spoke, because when I hung up, Giulia said, “My god, what is it? What’s happened?”

“Cavallini,” I said, my own voice an echo, hollow. “They’ve arrested somebody for the murder.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Questura was like Gianni’s hospital—functional, even ordinary inside. Cavallini’s office could have been anywhere, a room with a desk and a phone and pale green institutional walls. There was a large map of the lagoon along with a few photographs of Cavallini shaking hands with various officials, but it still felt scarcely inhabited, as if he had just moved in, waiting for a new paint job. Today, at least, it was crowded with people—assistants delivering telephone messages, two policemen standing near the door waiting for orders, and a tall man in a suit conferring with Cavallini, stroking his chin in thought. I saw all this in a blur, my mind still numb with dread.

“Signor Miller,” Cavallini said, smiling. “Good. My superior wants to meet you.” The tall man turned to me. “I have told him how it started with you.”

We shook hands, with a few polite words in Italian, then he rattled off something to Cavallini.

“So everyone is very pleased,” Cavallini said. “I thank you for this.” He put his hand on the beige folder, Rosa’s file. “Of course, it’s a question of police work too,” he said, directing this to the tall man, who smiled blankly, clearly not following. “The one helps the other. Una collaborazione.” At this the other man nodded, said something more in Italian, and left, dipping his head toward me, almost a bow, as he went out the door. The two waiting policemen followed him.

“You see? Very pleased. So again I thank you.”

“But who did you arrest?” I said.

“Moretti,” he said, patting the file again. “Rosa shows us where to look and we find him.”

I leaned forward, holding the desk. “But he’s dead. You mean he didn’t die?”

“Yes, he died. That’s it—a vengeance killing. The son.”

“You think Moretti’s son killed Gianni? Why?”

“But Signor Miller, it’s as you say. The connection is the house, what happened there. I didn’t know this. But once you look.”

“But Rosa never said—”

“No, but she’s not a policeman, you know,” he said with a little smile, almost smug. “Still, she suspects. And she’s right. One man in that house was in hospital. His doctor? Maglione.” He held up a light blue folder in illustration. “And Maglione is working with the SS. She makes this connection.”

“But he was released days before they—”

“So she goes to see his son. She is an old friend of the father. How long was the father in hospital, when did he leave, did the boy see him—also Carlo, like the father. And of course he wants to know why, and she tells him she suspects Maglione of betraying his father. And what happens? He becomes agitato. ‘It’s my fault,’ he tells her. ‘I killed him.’ Why? Because he went to the house, so maybe they followed him. And Rosa tells him, ‘No, you were there before, people never followed you.’ He was a courier for them, you see. Imagine using a child that way. A Communist, of course, the boy too. No, he tells her, this time he was also bringing medicine for his father, from Maglione. A trap. So now it’s his fault. And Rosa tells him it’s foolishness—he can’t blame himself for this. They already knew somehow. But she’s troubled. She hadn’t known about the medicine, you see.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Some from him, some from her. So she leaves,” he said, picking up the story. “And he’s still agitato. An unstable boy anyway, according to the neighbors.” Police work. Collecting gossip, like a noose. “The father’s dead and he’s to blame. No, somebody else. Somebody still alive. This is a boy who worked with the partisans, someone who acts. What could be more natural?”

“So he had a motive,” I said. “But that doesn’t—”

“A strong motive. Very strong. It’s as you predicted—a political crime, but also a personal one.” He walked out from behind the desk, a courtroom gesture, enjoying himself. “Of course, we’re hoping for a confession. And it’s possible. This kind of case—so much remorse. I’ve seen it before. It’s a kind of relief for them.” He glanced at me, amused. “Signor Miller, such a face. We’re police, not SS. We hope for a confession. We don’t torture, we ask questions.”

“And if he doesn’t confess?”

Cavallini shrugged. “It’s still a very strong case. He has no alibi.”

“No?” I said weakly, sitting down to hear the rest.

“No. The night of the murder, where is he? Out for a walk. In that weather. You remember that evening, the rain? And where did he walk? Around. Along the Riva, then he’s not sure where. Who walks like that in Venice? Tourists.”

“No one saw him?”

“No one. Then the cine. Except the ticket girl doesn’t remember.”

“That doesn’t necessarily—”

“No, not necessarily,” he said, looking at me. “So, you act the defense? Good. We need to think of everything. But no one sees him, that’s the point. So, his word only. Next, his profession? He works on one of the delivery boats from the Stazione Marittima. Not just to Venice, also the outer islands. So, familiar with the lagoon.” He paused. “Even in fog.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “And after the murder, what does he do? We have witnesses to this, his behavior. Drunk, in the bar he goes to. With the newspaper. He keeps reading it and drinking. ‘For once, justice,’ he says—we have a witness to this. ‘What are you talking about?’ the witness says. ‘He deserved it, he deserved it,’ the boy says, ‘a toast to justice.’ And then what? Tears. Unstable, you see. More than one saw this.”

“The newspaper,” I said, almost to myself. “So this was after the body was found? Not before?”

Cavallini looked at me, uncomfortable for a second, weighing this, then decided to ignore it. “Yes, after it was found. Celebrating.”

“But why would he do that, draw attention that way? Why would he be happy they found the body? Wouldn’t it be better for him if they never found it?”

Cavallini sat back, a twitch of annoyance in the corner of his mouth. “Nevertheless, that is what he said. A toast to justice. Of course, really to himself. We have witnesses to this,” he said again, then paused. “It’s not always the logic that rules the head in these cases. A boy who blames himself, then who kills—you’re surprised he gives himself away?”

“It just doesn’t make sense.”

“But it will. Don’t worry. We will make a case.”

I looked up at him. Held together by nothing except his will. But convincing, a solution to everything, delivered by Cavallini to a grateful force.

“You’re troubled?” he said.

I shrugged, not knowing what to say, swirling again. A case any defense lawyer could pick apart, but would he? Who was the defense? What were trials like here? It wasn’t America. Maybe a different set of priorities, with Carlo Moretti, whoever he was, satisfying all of them. Gianni’s killer.

“But why?” Cavallini said. “It was you yourself who suggested the motive. You said it would be someone exactly like him. And it is.”

“It’s just—” I stopped, my heart sinking. Someone exactly like him. You yourself suggested it.

He waited, frowning a little, surprised now at my reluctance. And why should I be?

“It’s just—you know, to prove it in court, you’ll have to prove that Gianni did betray them. An informer, all of that. It’ll have to come out.”

“Ah,” Cavallini said, “I see. But Signor Miller, it’s a case of his murder.”

“But can you prove it? About Gianni?” What I’d wanted in the first place, just to know.

“Well, as to that, we only have to prove that Moretti believed it. A doctor prescribes medicine, the boy delivers it, his father is betrayed. Because he is followed? Perhaps not. But he believes it, so he acts.” He paused. “Dr. Maglione’s reputation need not be in question. Only Moretti questioned it.”

He met my eyes, an explanation that was also a bargain. Perfect in every way. Justice done. A family’s honor held intact. A promotion for him. A kindness to Giulia, to my mother. Gianni a victim, like Paolo.

“Yes,” I said, thinking, “and what if he was wrong—if we were wrong?”

“How do you mean?”

“For the sake of argument,” I said, getting up, “what if Gianni didn’t do it? It explains the gap. He treats Moretti, he releases Moretti, nothing happens. A week—longer, ten days. He prescribes medicine. Why? If he wanted to betray Moretti, why not do it earlier? Why wait? What if the son is wrong? What if Gianni never meant the father harm?”

Cavallini got up and walked back behind the desk. “Then he killed him for nothing.” Another pause. “Signor Miller, I am confused. Do you think Dr. Maglione was innocent? After all, it was you—” He let the words drift, his eyes simply curious, the way they’d been at the water entrance, asking about the boat.

“No, no,” I said quickly. “But if we can’t prove it, then it’s very difficult to prove the motive.”

“Well, that’s for the lawyers,” he said, dismissing this. “And you forget there is still the confession. Would that satisfy you?” He smiled again, a kind of tease. “It was like this in Germany? Always the proof?”

“Not always,” I said. “But in capital cases—” I stopped. “What happens in Italy? To the boy, if he’s guilty.”

“Execution.”

I looked down, suddenly winded, the air rushing out of me. Execution how? Hanging? Shooting? An innocent boy. Worse than murder. I caught my breath, aware of Cavallini’s stare. “Then we have to be sure.”

“Don’t worry, Signor Miller. We will be. Ah, again,” he said as the telephone rang. “All morning it’s like this. Excuse me.” A complaint he’d make later to his long-faced wife. A man of importance.

I picked up Moretti’s blue hospital folder and glanced at the form while Cavallini talked. A fake name, but presumably him. Date of admission, release, address, and personal information, also presumably fake. An attached chart with what looked to be blood pressure and temperature readings. Diagnosis and report, in longhand, Gianni’s familiar signature on the bottom, the attending nurse, blood type, everything except what had happened. Iniezione antitetanica. Injection against tetanus? Well, there would be.

“Still looking for the proof?” Cavallini said, hanging up.

“This is him? How did you know the name?”

“The boy told us,” he said, almost amused.

“What’s ferita puntura—bullet wound?”

“No, ferita da pallottola. Puntura is puncture. It’s very close.”

But not the same. Not reported. I held the folder for a few seconds, taking this in. You don’t report someone you know. And he hadn’t. Unless he had lied to Giulia.

“A bullet would have to be reported to the police, you know,” Cavallini said. “Even now. It’s the law.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Usually it’s a question of the medical license. Then, under the Germans, who knows?”

“So he would have reported it to his friends in the SS. But if he told the SS, why falsify the police report? It came to the same thing in those days, didn’t it?”

Cavallini nodded stiffly, not sure whether to be offended. “If it was a bullet,” he said.

“It had to be. How else would he know Moretti was a partisan? What does the son say?”

“This is important?”

“If he knew it was a bullet wound and knew Gianni didn’t report it, he’d think Gianni was helping.” Plant any doubt, some confused opening Moretti’s son might use. “Why would he think Gianni betrayed him?”

“He didn’t. Until you and Rosa suggested it,” Cavallini said calmly, not even raising his voice, no louder than a door closing. I felt blood draining from my face.

Cavallini sighed. “Signor Miller, how you worry. What if? What if? Why not a simple answer? A man betrays, his victim is avenged. It has happened a million times before. What do you want to prove? That the boy is innocent?”

I looked up. The inescapable other question—then who is guilty? I dropped the folder on the desk and walked over to the window. Below in the Rio San Lorenzo a freight boat passed, loaded with bottles. Maybe a boat just like young Moretti’s. Someone who knew the lagoon, even in fog.

“I just don’t understand why he didn’t report the bullet wound.”

“It’s a detail, yes.”

“I mean, it would be terrible if we were wrong.”

“Yes,” Cavallini said, “and for Moretti’s son. He murdered a man for this. Imagine, if it was a mistake.”

I turned, my stomach churning again, but there was no sense of accusation in his voice, no sense that it even mattered. Moretti’s son had murdered Gianni. The rest was details.

“Don’t worry, Signor Miller,” he said, confident. “We will learn everything, now that we have him.” He flipped open the folder on his desk, as if having it there were proof, something tangible.

“Is that him?” I said, nodding at the photo on top.

“Yes. The usual bad picture. So dark.” He shook his head. “Our police photographer. But we can’t let him go. His wife is—”

He handed me the photograph. Wild eyes and uncombed hair, the scowl of a mug shot, guilty just being there. But something more. Exactly the same eyes, the shape of the nose. I imagined the hair brushed over, the face clean and smiling—the same boy in a V-necked tennis sweater, his arm over Paolo’s shoulder. The son, then. So Moretti was someone Gianni knew. But what did it mean? Someone you knew, you wouldn’t turn over. Not in a moral question, anyway. But someone had. I started to speak, then caught the sound in my throat. Would it make it worse for Moretti, another connection for Cavallini to use against him? I looked up to see the inspector watching me.

“He’s just a kid,” I said, my voice suddenly distraught. I stared again at the picture, everyone’s solution to the crime.

“Yes. But not a child. A man.” Making a legal distinction. “You know, it’s often like this in police work. People like to help catch and then—” He made a snapping noise with his hands. “They realize there’s also the punishment. That’s more difficult for them. The cold feet, you say, yes?” he said, still genial, sticking his chin out so that for a half second he looked like Paolo’s hero in Rome. Not a joke in the end, either. He took back the picture. “He’s young, yes. But think of the crime. Think how Gianni would feel. Grateful, I think, for your help.”

Before I could answer, Cavallini’s door, only half shut, swung open and his secretary came in, arms held out, being pushed by Rosa, who was screaming in Italian. “Ah,” Rosa said, spying Cavallini, moving the secretary aside and wagging her finger theatrically.

He yelled back, but she cut him off, flinging her hands now. There must have been some physical resistance in the outer office, because her cardigan, usually wrapped tight, seemed a little disheveled, and her hair was spilling out of its tidy bun.

“Oh, you too!” she said, seeing me, switching to English. “What a pair. What a pair. How can you be part of this? Give me that.” She reached over for the beige file. Cavallini put his hand on it. “It’s property of the Allies. Not yours,” she said.

“And now evidence in a murder case.”

“Basta. What evidence?” She turned to me. “You see how they use everything? We investigate Maglione, not some poor boy. And now they use that, because he’s Communist. Anything to discredit the Communists. Where is he? I demand to see him.”