Alibi: A Novel Page 23

  “You think so? Most people think my mother.”

  “Well, I never knew her.”

  “No,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. “Well, the eyes maybe. Everyone says that.”

  But her eyes had none of Gianni’s sharpness. They were soft, almost hazy, as if she had just taken off glasses and were trying to focus. “You went to San Michele,” she said, her voice flat, so that for a second I wondered if she resented it, felt it was an intrusion.

  “The police asked me.”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I am so grateful. To see him like that—” She stopped herself. “I gave your mother some pictures. From his youth. They knew each other then, before—before the others.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s a romantic story. I didn’t know.”

  “He never told you?”

  She looked down. “We didn’t talk about it, no. Well, maybe he tried.” She lifted her head, clear-eyed, no longer soft or unfocused. “You know, it’s not easy to say this. I disagreed with him about this marriage. I thought he was bewitched.”

  I smiled to myself. A word never used in conversation. Despite the perfect English, foreign after all.

  “But now, I meet her and I see I was wrong. Not the fortune hunter. An affair of the heart.”

  “Fortune hunter?” I said, thrown by the unexpectedness of it.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to say it. You know, with my father there was always that danger, so it was natural—” She paused. “A mistake. I apologize to you.”

  “No, I just meant—” But what did I mean? That she would appreciate the irony? That it was the other way around? I put out my cigarette, stalling. “I wish we’d met earlier.”

  “Yes, I apologize for that too. Of course I had examinations, but that was an excuse, really. Anyway, I didn’t come. So that was the last thing he said to me. ‘Good luck with the examinations.’ ” She looked out at the canal, where a vaporetto was passing, catching the faint sun on its white roof.

  “You’re going to be a lawyer?” I said, bringing her back to somewhere neutral.

  She smiled. “In Italy? A woman? No. They let me study—well, because of my father. But in the courtroom? They wouldn’t like that so much.” This to Claudia, who gave a thin smile back.

  “So what will you do?”

  “Oh, it was to work with my father. Like a son, you know? He used to say that to me, ‘You’re my son.’ So it’s a good thing to know, law, to run the businesses. My father used to trust everybody, and of course they cheated him. So now his son is there, a lawyer, they don’t cheat so easily.” Not soft. Gianni telling me exactly what would happen at the trial he’d never have. She stopped, smiling shyly. “I’m sorry, it’s boring to talk about this.”

  “No,” I said automatically. Businesses, not just land.

  “We should go in. It’s getting cold,” Claudia said, folding her arms across her chest and starting for the door.

  Giulia glanced into the room, still filled with people. “Yes, they can’t go until they tell me how sorry they are. It’s the form. Over and over, how sorry.”

  “Who was the woman with you in church?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “Gianni’s mother?” I said, a nervous twinge in my stomach. A child killed—nothing was worse. Not just killed.

  “No, my mother’s. She’s the only one left now.”

  I opened my hand to indicate “After you,” expecting her to follow Claudia through the door, but she hesitated.

  “Wait,” she said. “A moment. I don’t know how to say it. I want to talk more. Will you come to see me?”

  “Yes, if you’d like.”

  “It’s strange, you know, but there’s no one else. I mean, we’re not family, but we might have been. So it happened to you too, this death. Death—murder,” she said. “Murder,” she said again. “They won’t even say it. No one else will care the way we do. You’re the only one I can ask.”

  “Ask what?”

  “For your help.”

  “My help?”

  “To find the murderer.”

  I stared at her. “But the police—”

  “Ouf, Cavallini. Filomena’s husband, that one.”

  “He’s still the police.”

  “They’ll never find out. They’ll look and then they’ll stop.”

  “But you won’t,” I said quietly.

  “Never,” she said, her voice Gianni’s again, sure. “I can’t. I’m the son.” She looked at me. “And you.”

  “The way she looks at you,” Claudia said later, in bed.

  “Like a sister.”

  “Ha.”

  “Jealous?” I said, smiling at her.

  “No, careful. One slip, you say, but who’s talking? The priest, then the daughter. I thought I would scream. I thought we’d never leave.”

  I smiled again, but my mind was elsewhere, in the polished high room with the gilt furniture. Not a fortune hunter.

  “But we did,” she said, putting a finger on my chest, bringing me back. “So it’s over, yes?”

  The largest landowners in the Veneto.

  “Everyone saw us. That was the point,” I said.

  “Everyone saw us at the ball.”

  When I got home, my mother was looking through the photographs, the brown envelope next to her on the couch. I turned on a lamp and went over to the sideboard to make a drink.

  “Want one?”

  She pointed to her half-filled glass on the end table.

  “You know, I don’t remember wearing my hair this short,” she said, peering at a snapshot, “but I suppose I must have.”

  “What businesses did Gianni own?”

  “Oh, darling, I don’t know, a little of this, a little of that. Wines. He was always talking about that. Why?”

  “Giulia mentioned the family businesses. I was just wondering what they were.”

  “They own part of a bank. I expect that’s what she meant. And bits of things. He said it was safer that way, spreading out your chips.” She looked up. “Not munitions, if that’s what you mean. He wasn’t that.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Just curious.”

  “Well, the wines he used to mention. He said there was no such thing as a bad year during the war. So much demand. But I think it was more a hobby, really. The rest was through the bank.”

  “But he was rich?”

  “Darling, what a question. What’s this all about?”

  “Cavallini said he was one of the richest men in Italy.”

  “Well, the family. They always had pots.”

  “But he was the family.”

  “After his brother, you mean. Yes, I suppose. But darling, you knew all this. Anyway, what does it matter now?”

  “It doesn’t, I guess,” I said, sipping my drink. “But you knew?”

  “Well, of course I knew. He always had money. I don’t know how much exactly. I didn’t ask to see his bank balance. I’m not Peggy Joyce yet.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You might as well.” She looked away. “I admit I thought about it. Well, who wouldn’t? But I was fond of him, you know. I really was. It wasn’t just the money.”

  I hesitated, taking this in. “I didn’t know it was the money at all. I thought you were in love with him.”

  “I never said that,” she snapped, annoyed. “I said I was fond of him. Though why any of this should matter to you now, I haven’t the foggiest.” She put the photographs aside, unfolding her legs, restless. “I must say, you pick your moments. I’ve just buried the last husband I’m likely to have and you want to talk about his finances. Accusing me of I don’t know what. All right. So we’re crystal clear. I was never in love with Gianni. I’ve told you this. I was in love with your father. But Gianni—well, after all these years, I never expected that. And then there it was, and yes, I thought, Well, this is lucky, everything will be all right now. But I was fond of him. I never deceived him about that,”
she said, her voice finally breaking. She reached for a handkerchief. “Now look. I get through the whole funeral and now I start to puddle.”

  I stared at her, my mind racing, connecting dots. “What do you mean, everything will be all right now?”

  “What? Oh, the money. That’s what we were talking about, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s gone now. It really doesn’t matter how much he had, does it? I won’t see any of it.” She sniffed into the handkerchief.

  “So what? You have your own. We’ll go back to New York.”

  But she was shaking her head. “It’s not going to stretch there. I can do it here. Why do you think I came? You can still live here. You have no idea what New York is like now, just the simplest things.”

  “Stretch?” I said, looking at her, trying to follow. “What about Dad’s money?”

  “I’ve been living on it. I’m still living on it—I never said anybody was starving.” She moved away. “I don’t know how much you thought there was. Those last years, when he was sick, it just went through your fingers. All the nurses, everything. It goes. And every year there’s less. So you have to be careful. Look, I can do it. It’s just I can do it better here. And I thought, well, you have that little trust from your grandfather—and you were always so independent anyway. I’m not going to be a burden, you don’t have to worry about that. But New York just eats it away. You get worried. You just keep hoping something will turn up.”

  “And something did.”

  “Yes, something did.” She looked at me. “I didn’t plan it. I went to Paris, not here.”

  “I know.”

  “But the way you look. So I came and it was lucky, and shall I tell you something? We would have been happy. We would have taken care of each other. He wanted to marry me so much. Why? I don’t know, but he wanted it. We would have been happy. It wasn’t just the money. I was fond of him.” She fingered the brown envelope on the couch, then turned to me. “But you never saw that. Always so—” She cut herself off, then shook her head. “You made it difficult, Adam, you really did. We didn’t deserve that, either of us.” Her voice dropped, finally out of steam, and she moved toward the door. “What shall I tell Angelina? Are you in tonight?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “Not for me, I hope,” she said. “I don’t want that, Adam. I don’t mind being alone.” Her shoulders moved, a small shrug. “Anyway, I’d better get used to it.” Almost casual, making peace.

  “No,” I said, trying to reassure her with a look. “Something will turn up.”

  She nodded, smiling weakly. “Twice.”

  After she left I went over to the couch and picked up a few of the pictures. On the beach, with her short hair, in a group. Gianni as a teenager, grinning, then as a young man, sitting with people in cafés, posing in San Marco, in a racing car with his brother, in front of the hospital—all smiling. Giulia must have raided the family album to find Gianni as my mother would have known him, young, unattached. Even in the later pictures his wife was missing—at home, or maybe just outside the frame. Smiling, happy, exactly the man my mother described. Not the one I knew. But they must at some point have been the same. When had everything turned inside out? If it had.

  My face felt warm, as if my mother’s words were stinging it. All I’d wanted to do, the start of everything, was to protect her. But he’d been rich, not after her money, not even thinking about it. I dropped the pictures, my hand shaking a little. What else had I been wrong about? I tried to think what his face had looked like when he hadn’t been smiling, when he had been reaching for me in the hall. Malevolent, or just angry, frustrated? Maybe Claudia’s landlady had wanted the rooms back. Maybe the Accademia was cutting staff. Maybe I’d killed the young man in the photograph, imagining he’d become someone else. Held his head underwater until the life went out of him because I had got everything wrong. Not just murder, murder for no reason at all. I sat for a few minutes more, my chest suddenly tight, taking in gulps of air, then went over to the phone and placed a trunk call to Rosa Soriano.

  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 th
e 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?”