Alibi: A Novel (38 page)

“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.”

M
imi 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.