Alibi: A Novel Read online

  “Yes,” I said, squeezed again, almost out of breath.

  “It’s just, if he’s not—” She stopped her hand, looking at the table. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  She went to bed early, or at least went to her room. I saw the sliver of light under the door, heard the creak of the floorboards, until finally it was quiet there too and I imagined her, still dressed, lying exhausted on the bed. The fire in the sitting room had died down and I sat in the cold, wanting to go out but feeling I couldn’t leave. How long would it take to get through this? Being with her, lying to her, was worse somehow than what had happened—there was no end to it and no going back. I thought of her after my father died, holding herself together for me. You’ll feel better soon. He wouldn’t want you to be sad. You’ll have to take care of me now. All the lies for my own good.

  When I woke I was hunched in the chair, cramped, and the light had begun to come in. The electric bars of the space heater, glowing orange, had been going all night, an extravagance, but the room was still cold, the damp seeping in. I switched off the heater and went to the window to see the sun come up behind the Redentore, my old early-morning view. It was going to be a nice day, shiny after the rain. A walk. Nobody would miss me if I went out now. I’d be back in time for the morning vigil, but at least with some air in my lungs.

  I crossed over to the San Marco side, away from the house and Mimi’s and the last two days. The sun was already filling the great piazza. I went behind the basilica, taking the route to Santa Maria in Formosa, not going anywhere in particular, just going. Through the campo, then stopping in the street—if I kept going this way, I’d reach the Questura, where Cavallini’s clerks might still be looking through the patient lists. I turned left instead, through the narrow calle and over the bridge to Zanipolo. Past the equestrian statue of Colleoni, where Claudia had stared at Gianni. A few people were going into the hospital—nurses, maintenance men, none of them looking at the rows of arches along the façade, the mosaic Gianni had pointed out, charming a visitor. Along the fondamenta, an ambulance boat was delivering a patient to the side door, just as one had when we’d walked here, Gianni explaining why he’d had to—lying. And then I was at the end, nothing but the open lagoon and the chimneys of Murano. In America you could walk and never stop, never run out of land, but here you met yourself within minutes—a bridge, a canal, then abruptly an end, water or a blind alley.

  I looked at the ambulances moored on the quay. What kind of doctor had he been? There must have been a time, cramming for exams, when it had been about saving people, being on the side of the angels. Do no harm. And a few years later he could condemn someone with a nod. What had happened in between? But doctors in Germany had taken the same oath and then nodded and nodded, killing everybody. Maybe nothing had happened, just opportunity. A matter of degree. Think of him young, on the Lido, betraying my father. Or saying he did. I stared at the water. He was off there somewhere to the right. And here at the hospital, everywhere I looked. You could walk all day and never put him behind you.

  Cavallini was waiting on a chair in the downstairs hall when I got back.

  “Signor Miller, you’re out so early.”

  I stopped, hesitating. How long would every question sound like an accusation?

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Yes, it’s understandable,” he said, getting up. “Your mother, she’s very tired, I think.” Raising his eyes toward the stairs, indicating that they’d already spoken.

  “There’s news?”

  “I thought I would come myself. A courtesy. The telephone, it’s—”

  “What’s happened?”

  “A body has been found.”

  “What?” How? The rope slipping out of its knots, rocked by the tide? What if the tarp were still there, a match for the one in the water entrance? Why hadn’t I got rid of it? But then someone would have noticed.

  “You’re surprised?”

  “A body. You mean he’s dead?”

  “Yes.” He raised his eyes again. “I’ve told your mother. So at least now she knows.”

  “I’d better go up.”

  “No, she’s resting. The girl—Angelina?—is with her. Maybe now she can sleep. I was waiting for you.”

  “Waiting for me?” I said, feeling a tingling along my skin.

  “Yes. I thought—I don’t like to ask your mother, but it’s a formality. We can’t reach the daughter, you see. Another early bird, perhaps. There’s no question, I think—the same description, in evening clothes—but it’s necessary for the formality.”

  “What is?”

  “To identify the body. It should be family, but you are almost a son. And it’s not good to wait. The condition of the body—he has been in the water. You don’t mind?”

  “All right,” I said, not knowing how to refuse. “You know him. Couldn’t you just—?”

  “No, no, I am police. It must be someone else. You understand, for the formalities. And now the crime report.”

  “Crime report.”

  “Yes, he was killed.”

  “How do you mean?” I said, maneuvering through this, someone who didn’t know.

  Inspector Cavallini made a smashing gesture with his hand. “A blow to the head. So they tell me. I haven’t seen the body yet. We’ll go together, to San Michele. I’ll call the Questura for a boat. Would you open the canal gate?”

  “The canal gate,” I repeated vaguely, looking toward the damp room, the steps where I’d dragged him. “Yes,” I said, catching myself, “all right. Just let me run upstairs for a second, see if she’s all right.” To get away, even for a minute. “You can phone in there.” I pointed to the room where I’d waited the other night.

  “Thank you. And for this help. I’m sorry to ask you.”

  “He was killed?” I said again, because I should be dumbfounded.

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, not by accident.”

  “No, by murder.”

  I stared at him, no longer acting, the word itself like a jolt, what it had really been.

  “You’re sure? It couldn’t be a fall?”

  “No. Not according to San Michele. Of course, I will look myself.”

  “But who—I mean, where—?”

  Inspector Cavallini shrugged. “We only know where he was found.”

  “In the water, you said.”

  “Yes, the lagoon. A fisherman, only this morning. The body was caught on a channel marker. Otherwise—” He opened his hands.

  “So he could have been put in anywhere.” Far from here.

  “Not anywhere. You know, there are channels in the lagoon, like rivers. The tides follow a path. You can see on the charts. This was the major channel from San Marco, behind San Giorgio, out to the Lido. Usually that would mean this side of Venice. But it’s more likely that a boat took him, so the murder itself could have been anywhere.”

  “A boat?” I said, my head spinning with charts and currents—this much already known, before the body had even been identified. And then they’d find out the rest.

  “Yes, because of the distance from San Marco. It’s unlikely it would float that far in a day. Well, but this is all early, a speculation. First we must see the body. To make sure.”

  My mother was sleeping, Angelica indicated with a finger to her lips, worn out by the waiting and now able to go into full retreat. I washed my face and held on to the sides of the basin until my hands were still, looking in the mirror to see what Cavallini would see. Maybe that’s what he wanted—to watch my expression when I saw the corpse, some sly police trick. The smallest thing could give you away. But this was being jumpy. Why should he suspect anything? We’d been photographed together.

  When I got back downstairs, he was already at the canal entrance, walking by the tarp, looking up at the gondola. I felt a small tremor in my hands again, then steadied myself.

  “You don’t use the gondola?” he said.

  “No.” I opened the
gate, my back to him. On the canal, the rowboat was bobbing idly at its mooring post.

  “Ah, you’re an oarsman,” he said, spotting it.

  “Well, not in this weather,” I said quickly. “I haven’t been out yet. Maybe in the spring.” Why say that? What if somebody had seen? Any contradiction would be suspicious. Two things to explain.

  “It’s very fine, this one,” Cavallini said, pointing to the gondola. “Old.”

  I looked down at his foot, almost touching the tarp. “It came with the house,” I said. “Of course, the lucky thing about Venice is that you don’t really need a boat. You can walk anywhere.”

  He nodded, distracted, lifting up the edge of the tarp, used to looking over a room. “Yes, so many boats at Ca’ Maglione, and yet he chooses to walk.”

  “Maybe they were put up for the winter too,” I said, raising my eyes to the gondola.

  “No, no, all in use.” So he’d already checked. “Many boats,” he said, taking pride in it, a tour guide praising a landmark. “I’ve seen them. My wife, you see, was a cousin of his wife.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing what to say, what connection he felt this gave him. The endless genealogy of Venice. He was running his hand over the paving stones.

  “Yes, a very old family.”

  “Everyone in Venice seems to come from an old family,” I said, still looking at the stones. Where was the police boat?

  “Well, not all. My family, you know, were simple people. Still, Venetians, educated. But not Magliones.”

  And then he had been counting the boats in Gianni’s garage, an in-law invited for tea. I saw him for a second as he must have been—young, the curious eyes over the mustache, smiling at the long-faced girl, moving up.

  “You’re making some repairs?” he said, letting the tarp fall back.

  “The owner. We lease the house.”

  “You see those stairs?” He pointed to the water’s edge. I turned my head slowly, almost expecting to see a streak of blood. “How the sides are weak? You should make the repairs soon. In Venice—”

  “I’ll tell the owner.”

  “Yes, of course, the owner,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “Excuse me, I forgot you would be leaving.” I looked at him blankly. “After the wedding.”

  The police launch had a motor so loud that we would have had to shout over it, so we made the trip without talking, backtracking up the Rio dei Greci to the Questura, then out past Santa Giustina to the open lagoon. San Michele, the cemetery island, was the first thing you could see from this side, just across the water from the hospital—hadn’t Gianni joked about that?—the low brick mausoleums lined with dark cypresses. We were met at the dock by some of Cavallini’s men, who steered us away from the graveyard paths to the morgue. I pushed my feet one after the other, as if we were wading. There seemed to be no sounds, not even birds, a funeral quiet.

  Inside, it could have been any hospital building, white plaster and tile, except for the smell, so heavy and cloying that not even disinfectant took it away. We were led down a corridor by a man in a white coat with a clipboard. He stopped at a heavy double door and said something in Italian to Cavallini.

  “He wants to know if you’ve seen a dead body before.”

  “Yes.” How many now? Stacked in piles, left in fields by the side of the road, just left, waiting for someone to cart them away. Mouths open, limbs missing. At first you stared, shocked, and then you stopped looking. Five years ago it had been possible never to have seen the dead—a grandfather maybe, lying on a bier. Now you couldn’t count how many.

  “You know, for some it’s difficult.”

  We paused just inside the door, stopped by the cold. The body was on a gurney, covered with a sheet. His feet were sticking out, not tagged as they were in the movies, just naked and exposed. What would he look like after a day in the water? Eyes still open, staring at me? But it was Cavallini’s eyes that would be open, watching every move. Just walk over to the table. Now.

  An attendant pulled back the sheet, drawing it down, and for a terrible second I thought he would keep going, until we saw all of him, his genitals, like an unwelcome glimpse in the shower, without a towel. They had removed his clothes, so there was only skin, pasty and bloated from the water, the hair on his chest matted like bits of seaweed. Someone had closed his eyes, or maybe it was part of the general swelling, the puffy blur of a face, not peaceful, just inert. Pale lips. That gray that only the dead have, not even a color, a warning not to touch. I took a shallow breath, trying to ignore the chemical smell in the room. Gray, awful skin, pouching at the sides.

  “You can identify him?” Cavallini said.

  I nodded.

  “You must say, for the record. This is Giancarlo Maglione?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you must sign a statement.”

  But for a second I couldn’t move. I stared at the body, not Gianni anymore, just a body, utterly still, separate now, something left behind, like molted skin. We always forget what it means, becoming nothing. How long had it taken? A minute, two, water displacing air, and now irretrievable. How did the workers here stand it, day after day, seeing the gray bodies, the terrible reminders? All that we left. The frightened Egyptians thought we’d come back for our bodies if we kept them ready, with pots of barley and hunting scenes painted on walls.

  “Signor Miller?” Cavallini said, touching my elbow.

  But we never come back. This was all there was, gray skin and fluids to drain. I’d taken the rest. And then gone to a party. But hadn’t he done the same? How many times? Except he never had to see them afterward.

  “Signor?” the doctor said.

  “Yes,” I said, raising my head. “It’s Gianni.”

  “You would sign over here?”

  He was leading me away, signaling to the attendant to cover Gianni’s face. We went over to a desk, where he handed me a clipboard and a pen. A long form, as elaborate and unwieldy as lira notes.

  “Now what?” I said to Cavallini as I signed.

  “Now they make the autopsy. For the cause of death.”

  “I thought he was hit on the head.”

  “Another formality. In the case of a crime. To be precise, you know, it wasn’t this,” he said, tapping the back of his head. “The doctor says drowning. But now he has to say officially.”

  “Drowning? Why would he say that?”

  “The water in the lungs. If he had already been dead—”

  “You mean someone put him into the lagoon alive?” I said, appalled, forgetting the bubbles now, imagining him struggling in the tarp, fighting his way out.

  “They may have thought he was already dead. You know, basta.” He hit his palm with his fist, a hard smack. “Then in the lagoon. But it was the water that killed him. Of course, to the law it will make no difference. Are you all right?”

  “Maybe a little air,” I said.

  Outside, warmer than in the morgue, I lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually squeamish. It’s different when it’s somebody you know.”

  “Yes, it’s not pleasant for you, I know. Still, a great service to me.”

  “Anybody could have—”

  “Yes, but since it’s you, now there can be no question about an investigation.”

  I looked at him, trying to make this out.

  “No question of an accident,” he said, taking out a cigarette of his own.

  “But it wasn’t. You said.”

  “No. You saw the skull in the back? Not a fall. But how much better for everyone if it had been. So, maybe a temptation.”

  “To whom?”

  He shrugged. “Poor Venice. The war, finally it’s over, and they start coming back. The visitors. Not soldiers—your mother, her friends. It’s good for Venice. You look at the buildings and we—well, maybe we look at you a little. But no one comes if they’re afraid, if there is crime. A murder? Not in Venice. But now look who identifies the body—one of the visitors. Who sees it’s not a
n accident. So I have my investigation.”

  I drew on my cigarette, my stomach sliding again.

  “But surely you would have—”

  “Yes, but now I can be certain. Something that involves the international community? The Questura will want to act. To solve it. Men, whatever I need. And we will solve it.”

  “I hope so.”

  Cavallini reached over, reassuring, and patted my arm. “We’ll find him, don’t worry.”

  I nodded, feeling the weight of his hand.

  “I know it’s a loss for you. But you’ll help me.”

  “Me?”

  “You knew his character. With a Maglione, sometimes it’s easier for foreigners than for our Venetian families.”

  “But I hardly knew him. I mean, your wife must have—”

  “No. A blood tie only, not a friendship. But you, your mother—” He let it drift, waiting for me to pick it up.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “We’ll do anything we can. Of course.” I paused. “Do you have any idea who—”

  He withdrew his hand, shaking his head. “No, it’s early for that. First we get the facts, from in there.” He jerked his head toward the morgue. “Then we look at the life. Who profits?”

  “You think it’s someone who knew him? Why not a robbery?”

  He smiled. “A hit on the head, grab the wallet, push him in the canal? But he still had the wallet. Also his watch. What thief leaves a watch? No, some other reason. So, who profits? You see how lucky I am to have you.”

  “Me?”

  “In a murder you look at everyone. Him? Him? What motive? Who profits? But with you, it’s the opposite. No profit, a great loss. After the wedding, perhaps, I would have had to suspect you too. But now you are the only man in Venice I can’t suspect.”

  A trap? Another step through the looking glass? “Why not?” I said quietly.

  “Why not? Who throws away a fortune? He would have been your father.”

  “Yes,” I said, waiting, my voice neutral.

  “Your father,” Cavallini repeated. “One of the richest men in all of Italy.”