Текст книги "Alibi"

Автор книги: Joseph Kanon

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Carlo Moretti may have been legally adult, but he looked years younger, smooth and wide-eyed, barely adolescent, features that must have given him a useful innocence in his courier days. Now they made him seem childlike, a frightened boy waiting to be taken home.

Rosa was finally allowed to see him that evening, and Cavallini, improbably, allowed me to go with her, maybe as a kind of unofficial watchdog for the Questura. She had brought the new lawyer, and most of the time was spent going over what the police had said to him and what he’d replied. The lawyer took notes. The boy glanced at me from time to time, but his attitude was more bewildered than suspicious—I was no more surprising than anything else that had happened. No, the police had not used any force, just questions. Had they promised him anything? No, but they said a confession meant a more lenient sentence, if it came early, before physical evidence was collected, prints, bloodstains. They wanted to know about his boat. Given Gianni’s probable route on foot, Moretti must already have had it waiting. Where? “They’re looking for witnesses,” Rosa said, “to put you on that boat.” “But surely there was someone who could verify that you hadn’t taken one out,” the lawyer said. “You couldn’t just take a boat.” No, it was easy enough. They weren’t guarded at night. If you did it carefully, you could get out to the lagoon and no one would know. I looked away.

“Did they ask you whether he was dead when you put him in?” I said.

Rosa and the lawyer turned to me.

“Cause of death,” I said. “The official cause was drowning.”

“How do you know this?” the lawyer said, beginning to write on his notepad.

“Cavallini told me when I identified the body. Check the coroner’s report.”

“Yes,” the lawyer said, “it’s an interesting technicality. Maybe useful, the actual cause.”

“What difference does it make?” Moretti said, his voice sullen.

“Listen to me,” Rosa said. “Everything makes a difference. It’s going to be all right.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, looking down.

“We’ve found a witness,” she said. “For that night.”

“You should have told me,” the lawyer said, surprised.

“The man with the umbrella,” Rosa said, still looking directly at Carlo. “You remember, he offered you an umbrella. When you were walking. In front of the Londra Palace. By the statue of Vittorio Emanuele.”

“The man with the umbrella,” Carlo said numbly, not understanding.

“Yes, he remembers the time exactly. How wet you were. If you think, you’ll remember him,” she said, tapping her finger on the table.

He glanced at her in recognition, then shook his head. “It won’t make any difference. It’s what you used to say—don’t get caught. Once they have you—”

“That was different. That was the war,” Rosa said.

Moretti shrugged, all the answer he could manage.

“Talk to him,” Rosa said, pointing to the lawyer. “Every detail. So he can help.”

“To find another technicality?” Moretti said. “What does it matter to them? They’ve already decided. They want to put me in prison.”

“No,” Rosa said, suddenly stern, a kind of slap. “They want to kill you. That’s the punishment.”

He stared at her, his face pale, all the defiance seeping away, then rushing back in a flash of panic as she pushed back her chair and stood. “So talk to him.”

“Where are you going?” he said.

“Talk to him now. He’ll tell you what to say. I’ll be back tomorrow.” She reached over and put her hand on his. “Listen to me. You didn’t kill your father. They did. Do you think I would let them do this to you?”

He lowered his head. “And if it was my fault?”

“I was in that house too. Do I blame you? I blame them. No more. Just talk to him.” She placed her hand now on the lawyer’s shoulder, then motioned for me to get up. “Come,” she said, shooing me away with her. “Too many ears.”

The abruptness of it surprised me, so my question seemed blurted out. “Did he give you the medicine himself, or did someone else?”

Moretti looked at me for a second as if he were readjusting a dial, going back to an earlier program. “He did.”

“So you knew him?”

“No, I’d never met him. But I knew my father had been in the hospital, so I wasn’t surprised.”

“He called you himself?”

“Yes. ‘Come to the hospital. Tell your father I have his medicine’—you know, as if he thought he was at home, in bed. So I went. And he gave me the pills. ‘Does he have any fever?’ he said. No. ‘Tell him one more week with these.’ As if I knew all about it. So I said all right, and I took them and that was that.”

“And you took them to the safe house?” Next to me I felt Rosa stir, annoyed that I was going back over this.

“No, I didn’t know exactly where he was. I thought Verona. But then when he wasn’t there, I tried the house.”

“Was he surprised? To get the medicine?”

“Yes. He said it was nice of the doctor to worry, but he felt fine. Maybe somebody else could use it. It was hard then to get anything, even aspirin. But there was no label on it, so we didn’t know what it was for. How could we use it?”

“No label?”

“No. That’s when I thought, you know, He knows what my father is. He doesn’t want it found—to be connected.”

“Did your father take any?”

“Yes, one, to see what it was. He said he felt the same. It wasn’t the medicine that killed him. Not that way.”

“Not any way,” Rosa said, putting her hand on his arm again. “Are you finished?” she said to me.

“And then you stayed the night?” I said, still trying to make a picture.

“No, never there. Back to Verona.”

“Not Venice?”

“Not with the curfew. I had to leave the house after dark, so there was only enough time to get to Verona.”

“To a safe house there.”

“Yes.”

“And you’d done this before?”

“Many times,” Rosa said. “He was the best.”

“Yes,” Carlo said, “except this time.”

Rosa was still angry when we left the Questura.

“What are you trying to do, make him crazy? You can see he blames himself. And how do we know they followed him? Do they come while he’s there? No. The next morning? No, another day. So who knows? Maybe a tip. Maybe they already knew.”

“Then why did Gianni send his father medicine he didn’t need?”

She looked away, stymied. “A fine thing we did. You know, a boy who blames himself for one thing, sometimes he takes the blame for another. I’ve seen this. A confusion in the mind.” She was quiet for a minute, folding her arms across her chest as if she had caught a chill. “You know that if it’s true, it strengthens Cavallini’s hand. It gives him a case.”

“He already has a case. That’s why it’s important to know what really happened there.”

“If it’s connected. It’s too many ifs now—there’s no time for that.”

“Just inventing witnesses.”

“Why not? The police are inventing a case.”

I said nothing. For a few minutes we pretended to look at buildings as we crossed over the bridge to Santa Maria in Formosa.

“It’s the only way it makes sense, you know,” I said finally. “If he was followed.”

“Yes,” she said, half aloud, as if it had been pulled out of her.

“What happened to the house in Verona?”

“It was betrayed. Not then,” she said quickly. “Later. Everything was betrayed eventually.” She thought for a second. “Why did they wait another day?”

“To see if he went anywhere else. When he came back to Venice, they knew he’d delivered the medicine. So it had to be that house or Verona.”

“And it had to be the house, or he wouldn’t have gone there—just stayed in Verona. So they came.” She stopped, looking away from me, toward the far end of the campo. “You know what they did? First they poured the gasoline. And then they were all around the house, with machine guns. So if you came out, they shot you. Then the matches. So you had a choice. Run out to the guns or stay inside. And of course people stayed—at least you had a chance. Nobody was burning yet. But then the smoke got you, and after that you burned.”

I looked down at her arm. “But you got out?”

She gave a weak smile. “I’m afraid of fire. I ran into the guns.”

“And they missed?”

“No, they shot me. Twice. They left me for dead. So that’s how it happened.” She turned to me. “He knows this. Carlo. He knows how his father died. And if it were you who led them there? How would you feel?”

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Claudia said.

We were in Gianni’s office at the hospital, going through a stack of blue folders.

“Anything that happened that week.”

“How do you know anything did?”

“It must have. Otherwise, it’s a contradiction. He takes in a partisan, swears his nurse to secrecy, fakes a medical report. He saves him. Why set up his son?”

“Because Moretti escaped. He didn’t know where he was.”

I shook my head. “Then why not send up a red flag right away? No, I think he meant to help him. He never changed the report. He brags to his daughter, tries to make himself look good for helping the resistance. Days go by. Over a week. And then all of a sudden he sends the boy out with some phony medicine, so he’ll be followed. That part’s right—it has to be. So what happened in between? Something happened.”

“And you’re going to find that here?” she said, touching the files.

“I want to know everyone he saw that week. Anything that might explain it.”

There was a tap on the door frame. The night duty nurse stood just outside with a coffee tray, an excuse to see what we were doing.

“Dottore,” she said. “Some coffee. You’re working so late.”

She placed the cups on the desk, glancing at Claudia. Had she been listening? But the desk outside was empty, the nurses’ station farther down the hall. Was there anything else we wanted? Staring openly now at the folders as she left.

“So now you’re the dottore,” Claudia said.

“They call everybody that.”

“No, only the stepson,” she said, smiling to herself. “They all know. She thinks you look like him.”

“She thought the old nurse killed him, too.” I sipped some of the coffee. “We need to be him for a week,” I said, rubbing the arms of the chair, as if just touching his things could put me in his place. “Everything he did. Something happened that week.”

“With the patients?” she said, picking up a folder.

“I don’t know. Here’s his calendar. Meetings at the hospital, mostly. Then the appointments—I’m cross-checking those with the medical files. Did they really show up? What happened?” I looked over at her, an appeal. “You know how to look at these. You’re a doctor’s daughter.”

She took the appointment schedule and began shuffling through the stack to pull out files. “It’s crazy what you’re doing,” she said.

An hour later the nurse came in with more coffee. Claudia was smoking, her feet propped up on the edge of the desk and folders in her lap, and for a second I thought the nurse, almost scowling with disapproval, would protest, but she merely raised her eyebrows at me, the new dottore, and sniffed. Claudia, unaware, just kept turning pages, absorbed in Gianni’s medical day. When she reached over for her coffee, she kept her eyes on the page.

“And?” I said, lighting a cigarette, signaling a break.

“So many ulcers. Gastrointestinal, a good specialty in the war. The bad food, the fear—think how busy.”

“So he was good?”

She nodded. “Yes, you would think—”

“What?” I said, leaning forward to get her attention.

“No Germans.”

“They had their own.”

“Well, in the army. But a specialist, that’s different.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t see them.”

“You didn’t refuse the Germans, if they asked. But they didn’t.”

“Would they see a local doctor?”

“The soldiers, no. But the officers? You have to remember what it was like. It’s not a camp, it’s Venice. They sit in San Marco, take a gondola—what everyone does in Venice. Parties. With Venetians, too. How do you think my father survived? Getting rid of their babies. At least it was safer for the girls, a real doctor. They were—here. Restaurants, everywhere. It’s their city. So if you get a stomachache, why not go to the doctor? But they don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. You asked me what do I see, and I see he’s the only man in Venice who never sees Germans. Clean hands. At least in public.”

“And in private he saves a partisan,” I said, another dead end.

“A partisan,” she said dismissively. “No. He saved a friend.”

I stared at her, the words clicking into place like cylinders in a lock.

“Paolo’s friend,” I said, another click. Tennis sweaters, arms slung over shoulders. “Because he was Paolo’s friend. Wait a minute,” I said, reaching for the phone.

“What?”

“But then he sends young Carlo to where Moretti had to be.”

I asked the hospital operator to put me through to the Bauer. Rosa had just come in and, given the slightly groggy tone in her voice, must have had some wine at dinner.

“Do you never stop?” she said.

“Just one more thing. The group who killed Paolo—there was someone else, besides whoever was in the house.”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead how? I mean, in the fighting?”

“No, the Germans captured him. They killed him.”

“Which means they probably tortured him.”

She was quiet for a second. “It’s possible. But it doesn’t matter. He didn’t know about the house—where it was, anything. He was never told. It was a protection for us. And him. It couldn’t have been him.”

“But he knew who killed Paolo.”

“Signor Miller, he’s dead.”

“When he was captured—any interrogation files?”

“No. Of course we looked for that.”

“How long was he kept?”

“We think two days. They hung his body in Verona. In Piazza Bra.”

“Remember who the commanding officer was? The German?”

There was a silence, so long that I thought I had lost her. “Yes, I remember,” she said finally. “Like here. Bauer.”

“What happened to him?”

“He went back to Germany. With the other butchers.”

“He’s alive?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any files here on him?”

“No. Destroyed. Not that it mattered to us. He wasn’t an Italian case—he was already in Germany. Anyway, maybe it’s good. I don’t want to know what they did to Marco. What good would it do now? He’s dead. And he didn’t know about the house. So you’re wasting your time.”

“Marco. You have a last name?”

A pause. “Soriano.”

Now it was my turn to wait. “Your brother?”

“My husband. And he didn’t know where the house was. Try something else,” she said, hanging up before I could say anything more.

Claudia, who’d been watching, said nothing, waiting for me to explain. Instead I got the hospital operator again and asked her to put me through to Joe Sullivan in Verona.

The call took a few minutes, but the connection was clear.

“We’ve got a trial tomorrow and I’m down one investigator. Now you?”

“I need a favor.”

“From me? Send Rosa back and then we’ll talk. You weren’t supposed to fucking steal her.”

“She’s here on her own business. A small favor.”

“What?”

“Army still have a priority line to Frankfurt? I need to call Germany.”

“So pick up a phone.”

“Come on. The civilian lines’ll take days.”

“I can’t patch you through from here.”

“No, you make the call. Get Schneider in Frankfurt—remember him?”

“And?”

“And ask him to run a check on Bauer, SS out of Verona, probably Hauptsturmführer level.”

“You don’t have to call Schneider. I know Bauer. A real sweetheart.”

“But you don’t know his files. Rosa said they were destroyed.”

“Rosa said.”

“He captured her husband. So she took a personal interest.”

He was quiet for a minute. “She wasn’t supposed to do that. He’s out of our hands—Frankfurt’s problem.”

“Do they have him? Is he still alive?”

“No idea. What’s your interest, anyway?”

“The files here were destroyed, but the SS duped everything for Berlin, so maybe copies are still around.”

“Doubtful.”

“Or better yet, Bauer himself. If he’s facing trial, he’ll want to do anything to catch a break.”

“Like tell you all his secrets? Which one in particular?”

“He interrogated her husband. The husband told him who killed Paolo Maglione. So who did Bauer tell?”

“You want to explain this to me?”

“When you have more time. Just ask Schneider if he can lay his hands on the files—start with September 1944. I’m not sure when they captured him, Soriano interrogation.”

“Rosa know about this?”

“No. She doesn’t want to. He was tortured. Then they strung him up in the street.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. But before they did, I think he talked.”

“Which opens up another can of worms.”

“Right.”

“Is there going to be anything for us once you open it?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Because you’re not official anymore, you know. You want the army to do all this for some private deal?”

“Think of all I’ve done for them.”

“Fuck.”

I waited. “It’s not a big favor, Joe. I’ll tell Rosa you miss her.”

“Fucking drowning here, and I’ve got to waste time on this.”

“It’s a good deed. I promise you.”

“Yeah, the last time you checked on somebody, the guy ended up dead.”

“Maybe we can do the same for Bauer. Tell Schneider where he can reach me, okay? If he comes up with anything.”

There was a growl for an answer and a click on the line. I glanced over the desk at Claudia, still immersed in a folder.

“What makes you think he told them anything?” she said without looking up.

“If he was tortured by SS? They all did—even things they didn’t know.”

“And Bauer told Dr. Maglione?”

“That’s the way it makes sense. Gianni saves an old friend of the family—how could he not?—and then finds out the friend killed his brother. It explains the about-face. It didn’t matter to him whether or not they were partisans—that just made it easier to get someone else to do it for him. Keep his hands clean.”

“His new friends at Villa Raspelli.”

“Including Bauer, I’m betting. It had to be that way. We’re close now.”

She said nothing, then closed the folder. “I didn’t know about Signor Howard. I’m sorry.”

“Bertie? What?”

“He didn’t tell you? He has cancer.”

I looked at the blue folder in her hands. Other people’s secrets.

“No, he never said anything.”

She tossed the folder back on the pile.

I stared at it for a minute. Something real, not part of a story for Cavallini. Living in his jewel box, not wanting to be disturbed.

“Does he know?”

“He must.”

“God, what do I say?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. He would have told you, if he wanted that.”

Giggling about Giulia at the café but discreet about anything real—his assistants, his death.

“Do you want to do more?” Claudia said, her voice weary.

“Let’s finish.”

She took another folder. “So you can make a story.”

“We have to.”

“Do you know what I think?” she said, looking up. “When it started, I thought you wanted to prove that he was a bad man. That it made some difference to you. But now it’s—” She stopped.

“What?”

“It’s not for the police, this story. It’s for you. You want to believe it. That someone else did it.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mimi gave my mother her farewell lunch party. No one called it that—Celia was going to Paris to buy clothes and had asked her along—but all of us knew, I think, that she wouldn’t be back. They would take a water taxi to the station after lunch, slightly tipsy, and in a week or two she’d call to have the rest of her things sent on and leave me to close up the house. She had run out of reasons to stay. I had counted on her usual resiliency, but instead she’d turned listless and vague. Bertie said the trip would do her good, and in fact she seemed to rally at lunch, laughing with Mimi, her voice rising with some of its old buoyancy, but there were sidelong glances too, private moments when her mind went somewhere else.

It was a large party, too large to seat everyone in the dining room, so people passed down the long buffet table and then stood in small groups or huddled around the tea tables that had been set up all over the piano nobile. I spent most of the time watching Bertie, expecting him somehow to look different, tired, thinner, but there were no signs yet that anything was wrong. His illness, like my mother’s sadness, was locked away somewhere, not for public display.

“What’s this I hear about the police arresting somebody?” he said to me.

“Moretti’s son. You must have known him.”

“No.”

“The father, I mean. He was a friend of Paolo’s.”

“Oh, that Moretti. Well, a long time ago. Childhood, practically. But they didn’t stay friends—you never saw him around.”

“No, he became a Communist.”

“Really? Paolo’s friend?” He smiled faintly, then shook his head. “And his son killed Gianni? Why?”

“He thinks Gianni betrayed his father to the SS.”

“Gianni? You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“The police do.”

“Oh, nothing they like better than a good vendetta. And how is this one supposed to have started?”

“I don’t know. Paolo’s death, probably.”

“Paolo again,” he said, his voice resigned. “All that’s supposed to be over. And look how it goes on.”

“Somebody I knew in Germany said it would be interesting to follow one bullet, see where it finally stops. You think it ends in somebody’s body, but really it keeps going, the people he knew, the way it changes things, on and on.”

“Poor Paolo. And he was so good-looking,” he said, as if he hadn’t been listening. “Not a thought in his head, but so good-looking.” He glanced over his glasses, back with me. “No, it doesn’t stop, does it? Look at Gianni. It didn’t stop with him. Your mother’s a wreck. Clothes with Celia, the new collections. They’ll probably have to roll the two of them off the train. And the lovely Giulia—what’s to become of her? One of the vestals, I suppose, keeping the flame going. You, of course, have already lost your mind. Our little policeman. Still, I suppose if you’ve caught him.”

“I didn’t say I thought he did it. I said the police did.”

“Oh?” he said, interested, wanting to hear more.

But what more could I say? I looked at Bertie, his lively eyes, suddenly wishing that we weren’t talking about it at all, that everything was back to the way it had been before I tiptoed around everything I said. I wanted to talk about his being sick, what it would mean. Is that why he wanted us all to go away, so we wouldn’t see? When all the gossip would be beside the point, not worth the effort? But he was staring at me, not that sick yet, waiting for an answer.

“They’ve made their usual leap to the wrong conclusion, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Hm. Now you even sound like them. Never mind, I’ll ask Cavallini myself. If I can pry him away from Mimi.”

“He’s here?”

“Just. Made a beeline for our hostess. You don’t think he suspects—” He smiled to himself. “No, not possible. Celia, yes, I wouldn’t put it past her. But Mimi? Anyway, it was her party. When would she have found the time?”

“I heard that,” Celia said behind us. “Wouldn’t put what past me?”

“Just about anything, darling,” Bertie said, kissing her cheek. “Ready for the train?”

“It’s hours. Come have a drink. I never see you. Wait.” She fingered the lapels of his jacket, smoothing out his back collar. “There. Adorable. Sugar, you look more like Jiminy Cricket every day.”

“How I’ll miss you,” Bertie said.

“Adam, go say good-bye to your mother while we’re all still standing.”

Instead I went to find Cavallini, talking to Mimi.

“Something wrong?” I said.

“Oh, they want to grill everybody again.”

“So you’ll tell them?” Cavallini said, nodding to me as he spoke to her.

“Yes, yes. But after lunch. You can see, I’ve got a houseful.”

“Of course. After lunch.”

“Don’t tell your mother,” Mimi said to me. “It’s the last thing she needs.”

“What is?”

“Starting all this up again. Who was where when. I thought you’d got him.”

“We like to be certain,” Cavallini said blandly, telling me with his eyes to be quiet. “Till later then.”

He bowed to her, signaling me to follow.

“What?” I said as we headed for the stairs.

“Walk with me a little.”

“Something’s happened.”

“A witness.”

“Somebody saw Moretti?” I said, imagining Rosa leading him into the Questura.

“No. Somebody saw Dr. Maglione.”

We went out the calle entrance and walked away from the Grand Canal, as if we were headed to my mother’s house.

“Saw him where?”

“On his way to the ball. Come, I’ll show you. It’s important, where.”

We turned right on the Fondamenta Venier, bordering a canal so still it seemed to have no outlet. There was the faint, stagnant smell of wet plaster.

“She was there,” he said, pointing up. “The window looks to the bridge from San Ivo, so it’s busy here. She likes to watch the people. Of course, what she says is that she just happened to look out.”

I followed his finger to the window, then to the bridge. A few people were walking down its steps. The way Gianni would have come, turning right at the end toward my mother’s house.

“And she saw him?”

“Yes, in his formal clothes, that’s what interested her. She knew there was a big party. She wanted to see the clothes. You understand the importance of this? Now we have a time. And where. Before, we knew only that he left his house. Then what? It could have been anywhere. Now we have him seen here.”

“She’s just telling you this now?”

“She’s an invalid, she practices the economies. A friend saves the papers for her and then she reads. She says the delay doesn’t matter—anything important she hears from the street.”

“They must have talked about Gianni being missing.”

“Yes, but not what he looked like. For that, she had to wait for the papers. So now we know he came from Accademia through San Ivo. Along here, and then at the end, left to Signora Mortimer.”

He turned, facing the point where the fondamenta split, his eyes fixed in Mimi’s direction, as if he were actually following Gianni, listening for footsteps. But they would have echoed off to the right, on their way to Ca’ Venti. Without thinking, I looked toward the calle he’d really taken, then realized Cavallini had noticed and was now looking with me, thinking.

“Unless he was going somewhere else,” I said, forcing it out, waiting to see his response.

He kept looking for another minute, working it through, then shook his head. “But you called him at the hospital, yes? Go to Signora Mortimer’s. Where else would he go from here? I thought, you know, maybe a stop at the Incurabili—a doctor, after all—but he would have turned earlier in San Ivo. No, if he came this far, he was going to Signora Mortimer’s, just as you said. Now the question is, where was the boat?”

“The boat?”

“The boat is important. There had to be a boat, to take him so far into the lagoon. If he was killed here—right after the woman saw him, it would have to be, but I don’t like to tell her that—then the boat was also here. There is only this canal and that one, where it connects. It’s lucky, this part of Dorsoduro, so few. Anywhere else in Venice—” He spread his hands, indicating a web of canals. “But here they fill in the old canals. So it’s just this one.”

And what would happen when they turned up nothing? Another idea, just down the street in the opposite direction? I had to move him away.

“But he could have been put in a boat anywhere,” I said.

“It’s possible. But if he’s already hit, they don’t like to drag him far. Somebody sees.” He paused. “Of course, it’s possible he is killed after he gets into the boat.”

“After.”

“Yes. And I thought, but where is that likely to happen? Signora Mortimer’s. Boats coming and going. Moretti’s waiting with a message—he’s needed urgently. So he gets in the boat.”

“And that’s why you want to talk to the servants again.”

“Yes, everyone at the landing stage. Although I will tell you frankly, I doubt it was that way. Very risky for Moretti to show himself to so many people. It’s more likely that it happened here,” he said, pointing back down the fondamenta. “After the corner, I think, where it’s quiet. But that would depend on whether he found somewhere for the boat.” He smiled at my expression. “I can see you’re not a Venetian. It’s not so easy to tie up in this district—look, so few spaces. So we talk to people—what was free, who was gone? And if we’re lucky, someone saw. Then we have him.” He looked down the canal again toward the turn to Mimi’s. Where Gianni must have gone. “I will tell you,” he said, smiling, “some in the Questura will be surprised. There have been discussions.”

“They don’t think Moretti did it?” I said, alarmed, unaware that any doubts had been raised. Had they already started looking elsewhere?

“Well, it’s more accurate maybe to say they would prefer someone else. The kind of trial this will mean, once the newspapers—they want something simple. Not a show trial. So they’re suspicious of you.”

“Of me?”

“Making these trials. This is what you did in Germany, yes? They don’t want that here—it brings shame to people. Look at Rosa. She’s Italian and she makes this trouble for Italians. But you—I say to them, it’s not for trials, it’s personal with him. Like me. Rosa, that’s something else. But you don’t want to make trouble. Look how careful you were about Moretti. Be sure, be sure. So now maybe we can be sure. We find where he kept the boat.” He shook his head. “It’s a gift, this woman. Now we know when he was last alive and we know where to look.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance she made a mistake? Old woman, anybody in formal clothes—”

“No, no, sharp eyes, you know how they are, these women. Once she saw the picture, she knew. She identified Signorina Grassini too.”

“What?” I said involuntarily, like a twitch.

“In the funeral pictures. At Salute. That’s how I knew the eyes were sharp. She said she saw her the same night. Right here, coming from San Ivo, like Maglione. Half an hour or so later. And that’s right—it’s as you said. So I said, oh, she was going to the party too? No, no, she says, not dressed up at all. Normale. So that was accurate, because she dressed at your house, you said.”

He looked at me, the faintest hint of a question.

“That’s right. A dress of my mother’s.”

“Yes, I remember. Very beautiful. And the necklace. Well.” He raised his hand, glancing up at the building. “So, an accurate witness. Maybe watching now, who knows?”

He went on to San Ivo, and I started back along the narrow stretch of pavement where Gianni was supposed to have been attacked and bundled into a waiting boat. What would happen when Cavallini didn’t find the boat, when there were no more old women with sharp eyes? I looked to my right up the calle. But our house wasn’t visible from here—you had to make another turn, go deeper into the maze. There were no straight lines in Venice. Maybe if you lived here long enough your mind began to work that way too, seeing around corners, making leaps out of sequence, until you arrived at the right door. But Cavallini had turned left, to Mimi’s, the logical route. I looked down at the gray, sluggish water, my stomach turning. He wouldn’t stay there, though. The servants wouldn’t know anything. The boats would all be accounted for. It was personal with him. And now he had something to prove at the Questura. He’d see, finally, that it was a dead end and turn around to look somewhere else.