Alibi: A Novel (44 page)

“Hey!” One of the GIs stepped forward, but Jim put his arms out, blocking everybody, not sure what was happening.

Cavallini said something more in Italian, his voice low with contempt, then raised his free hand and slapped the kid, striking his face so that one side turned, then the other. The Italians on the stools didn’t move. The GIs now looked confused—not a bar fight, something else, a practiced brutality, official. What had been there all along, behind walls, the rubber hoses and castor oil and boots, what he really was. Claudia gasped. Some heads turned, drawn by the crash of the bar stool, and the band faltered for a second, as if a shot had gone off. Then Cavallini lowered his hand, grabbing the kid by the shirt instead, and said something. He waited for him to nod before he moved him over to an empty stool and threw him on it, limp, a laundry bag, and took his hand away. When he turned to us, his face was blank.

“He excuses himself,” he said to Claudia, his voice even, but for another second no one moved, and I just stared, unsettled, seeing him now as clearly as I’d seen Giulia’s future.

We said our good-byes and then for a while didn’t say anything, walking through the quiet calles to the Accademia bridge.

“I’ve never seen him like that,” I said, still rattled.

“He’s police,” she said simply.

“Was the kid being fresh?”

“Yes, my honor was at stake,” she said, sarcastic. “So he beats him. Your friend. And you trust this man. Did you see? Like a hawk.” Her arm flashed out. “Snatch. And it’s over.”

We stopped at the top of the bridge to look down the Grand Canal, bright tonight with the full moon. Even the Palazzo Dario, usually dark, flickered with light reflecting off the marble and old glass.

“He’ll snatch us if we stay,” she said, her tone like a counterweight to the view, dark and smoky as the club.

I didn’t answer for a minute, then shook my head. “No, he has what he wants. But now he doesn’t know what to do with him. He doesn’t want to put him on trial—he doesn’t want anything to come out about Gianni.”

She turned to me. “Then what does he want?”

“He wants him to confess, and of course he won’t. How can he? So now what?”

“They can make him confess.”

“Not anymore. They’d never get away with that now. Besides, he’s got protection—not everybody there thinks he did it. Cavallini calls it office politics, but where does that leave him? He’s got himself in a box. Sooner or later he’s got to do something.”

“Look for someone else,” she said quietly.

“Then he looks like a fool for arresting Moretti in the first place. But the others are talking to people again.”

“At the hotel,” she said, worried.

“Everybody. He said they called my mother. We’re next, I guess. So we’d better be prepared.”

“Not like tonight, you mean. I know, it was wrong to laugh. You don’t think—”

“No, he thought you were a little tipsy, that’s all. Okay now?”

“They’re coming again,” she said, raising her shoulders, a kind of tremor. “More questions. What if I forget?”

“You won’t forget. We don’t
know
. We were at Mimi’s, that’s all. Just as long as we tell the same story.”

She looked down at the water. “Nothing’s changed, has it?” she
said, fingering her ring, twisting it. “We can still give each other away. Look at tonight—one slip. Oh, I know, not in court,” she said, stopping me before I could interrupt. “But that’s not everything, is it? What about the rest? We can still give each other away.”

“But we won’t. We’ll go over everything again. No surprises. By the way, what did Cavallini mean about Vanessi—that was the man at the camp? How did he die?”

“How did he die?” she said, as if she hadn’t quite heard, or needed a second to think. “I told you, he was killed.”

“Killed how?”

“He talked about this? Cavallini asked you about this?” She clutched my arm. “Why did he ask this?”

“He thought it would embarrass you to talk about it. If it came up at the trial.”

“Why would it come up?” she said, clutching more tightly.

“If it did.”

“No, something else. He’s going to bring it up. They never believed me.”

“Never believed what?”

“I knew it. I knew they wouldn’t stop. A man who killed hundreds of people. But his death they have to solve. Not the others, just his. Nothing changes.”

Her eyes were darting now, as fierce as her grip on my arm, the way they had been at the engagement party when she rushed at Gianni. I stood still, watching her, afraid of what was coming.

“They suspected you?”

“Who else? His whore.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? If they suspected you—I have to know these things. So we have the same story.”

“Why do we need a story? Do you think I did it?”

I said nothing, waiting.

She grabbed both my arms. “Do you? Do you think that? No, don’t bother. I can see it.”

“I didn’t mean—I just have to know. In case.”

She lowered her head. “You think it’s possible.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And it is, isn’t it? We know it is, both of us.” She nodded, pretending to laugh. “My wedding day. Well, my father doesn’t have to see this either. My husband, so in love with me that—” She stopped, moving away from me, touching the bridge. “You’re right, we need the same story. Which one do you want?”

“The one you want us to tell,” I said, looking at her.

“No, you pick. Here’s one—this is the one the police would prefer. We’re in Modena, in his flat. In bed. When he’s asleep, I take a knife from under the bed and stab him. No, better. He’s not asleep. He’s inside me. So of course he never suspects when I reach for the knife.”

“Stop it.”

“You don’t like it? They would, though. They always wanted it to be me.”

“Tell me the other one.”

“I came back to the flat and he was lying there with the knife in him. Who did it? Anybody. Think how many would want to.”

“You were staying there?”

“Yes, so I was the obvious one. No alibi. Like Moretti. No ball to go to that time. But no proof, either. And if it’s me, then everything comes out about him—what he did in the camp, why they hadn’t turned him over. They were supposed to do that. But they didn’t want a trial. Like Cavallini. How they stick together in the end.”

“But what were you doing there? I don’t understand.”

“How was it possible to stay with him after the camp? How could I do it?” she said slowly, as if someone else had asked the question. Then she shrugged. “Where was I supposed to go? The soldiers come and open the camp and what’s their idea? Another camp. Refugees. Then where do we go? Back to what? My father’s dead, everyone. I knew I could get money there. What was the difference, I was already a whore. And now it’s all upside down, now he’s afraid people will come for
him
, afraid of me even, that I would give him away. You know the Allies always wanted the people at the camps—not the Magliones, just people like him. So it ends up that I protect
him. I don’t say anything. Maybe I felt I owed something to him—he saved my life. I had to pay, but he did it. Anyway, I went there. And do you know what? He wouldn’t give me any money. He said he would, but always later, another time. He wanted it to be like the camp again. A prisoner. It excited him, I think, if I was a prisoner. So I had to take the money after.”

“After?”

“After he was killed. I hid it, so the police never knew. I
walked
out of Modena. I didn’t want them to know I had any money. I thought they’d arrest me if I paid for the train. So maybe they said it was a robbery, I don’t know. I thought, That’s the end of it. But I knew it wouldn’t be. And now look how perfect. Link one with the other. If she can do one, she can do the other.”

“But they can’t prove you did it.”

“What does it matter? They can’t prove Moretti did it—in fact, he
didn’t
—and they still want to hang him. Who had a better motive than me? I’m glad he’s dead.” She stopped. “Oh, that’s what the boy said, isn’t it? In the bar. So now we’re the same.”

“Nobody’s accusing you. They would have done it then.”

“Maybe your friend Cavallini gives them new ideas. It’s easy to believe.” She looked up. “You believed it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“What? That it was even worse? That I was worse? I went to him. How do you tell somebody these things? Maybe I wanted you to think—” She came over and touched my arm, then glanced at a couple passing on the bridge and let her hand fall. “Well, that was before. So what do we tell Cavallini? What story?”

“We don’t have to tell him anything. There’s no link.”

“I’m the link. I’ve always been the link—one murder to the other.”

“There’s no connection to Gianni.”

“No, not at first. At first he’s just missing. Then killed. Who knows why? But then you help them. You have to know. So now he works with the Germans, like Vanessi. Now he’s someone I would kill.” She took my arm, pressing the point. “Someone I did kill.”

I moved to the right, blocking her from the others on the bridge. “Somebody will hear.”

“Oh,” she said, flinging up her hand, “everybody hears me but you.”

She turned away and walked fast down the other side, so that we were in the campo next to the Accademia before I caught up to her and took her by the shoulders.

“Listen. He believes it happened just the way we said it did. We were there, at Mimi’s. With him. He’s part of the story. He’s not looking at us.”

She put her hand on my chest. “Then why don’t we go before he does? To New York. We’d be safe there.”

“We are safe. As long as we’re together.”

“No. At first I thought that. Now maybe it’s worse. Can I leave? Not alone. Just married and she leaves? So we stay, and every day they get closer. We’re together, but we’re not safer. She killed Vanessi, why not Maglione?” She held up her left hand, showing me the ring. “You think this protects me?”

“No, I protect you.”

“Why? Because I can tell them about you?”

I looked at her, my face suddenly warm. “But you can’t,” I said slowly. “Neither can I. That’s the point. We protect each other.” I turned slightly, away from her eyes, glancing back at the canal. In the light from the bridge you could see the waterline on the building, the mortar dark and pitted, eaten away bit by bit. “We can’t let this fall apart. Do you understand?”

She said nothing, then slowly nodded.

“All right. Come on,” I said. I reached over to take her hand, but she pulled away and walked alone, not saying anything until we’d crossed San Ivo and reached the sluggish back canal. The restaurant on the other side of the bridge had already closed, and there were no lights in the windows, just a streetlamp at either end and the bright moon.

“Is this where she saw me?”

“Yes.”

“Coming to find you. To think, if I had waited at the hotel—” She looked up. “So maybe she’s watching tonight too. Somebody’s always watching us now. Which one, do you think?”

I cocked my head at the window. “She’s not. It’s dark.”

“Maybe she sits in the dark.”

We kept walking. “Well, now she can’t see anyway. Not this far down. She didn’t see which way Gianni turned.”

“Like this,” she said, pretending to turn left at the end. “But not this way.” She turned toward Ca’ Venti. “Why not? How does Cavallini know he turned that way?”

“Because it’s the only way that makes sense to him.”

“And one day he says, What if? And he goes this way.” She started down the calle. “To us.” She grabbed the air with one hand. “Snatch. And will we be safe then? Together?”

I stopped. “We can’t walk away. We can’t let someone hang for this.”

“You’ll never save that boy. Don’t you know that? A man like that,” she said, clutching her hand, Cavallini again, “he doesn’t let go. He has his victim. What are you going to give him instead? A story?”

I turned away. “I don’t know. Let’s wait to hear from Frankfurt. Gianni didn’t deal directly with the Germans—there was always a go-between. So maybe there’s something.”

“Something what? This boy is here, right now. You want to save him? Then you have to give them someone else to hang. Another body.” She took my hands. “Whose blood do you want on them? Mine?” She held them in front of me, her hands locked around my wrists, and for a second I couldn’t breathe, trapped in the hermetic logic of it. Someone else.

I shook my head. “But not his either.”

“Then whose? Whose would be acceptable to you?” She dropped my hands. “Who are you going to give them?”

“Nobody,” I said, but quietly, not wanting to hear myself, knowing as I said it that she was right, that Cavallini would never settle for another mystery now, with the taste of blood in his mouth. He’d want a body. But he already had one. Our perfect alibi. All we had to do
was let it happen. I felt something jump in me, my skin hot. Worse than murder.

“You can’t save him.”

“We have to.”

“We have to save ourselves.”

“You don’t mean that. You’re just—” I started to walk, then stopped again and waited until she was next to me. “You don’t mean that,” I repeated. “We can’t live that way.”

“How do you think people live?”

“In Fossoli. Not out here.”

“Where it’s so different.”

I said nothing for a moment, looking at her, then nodded. “It has to be. You think no one’s watching? We are. We’re watching. Or we have to pretend someone is. Otherwise, you’re right, there’s no difference. Fossoli, out here, it’s all the same then. Is that what you want?”

“And what if it is all the same? Then what?”

“I’m not going to let him die. I can’t,” I said, an end to it.

“Then somebody else will,” she said. “It’s started now. Somebody will.”

I didn’t answer, hot again, trapped back where we’d started. Somebody would. A cat slunk by, mewling, the only sound.

We turned into the last calle, with the house door at the end. She slowed as we got near, dragging her feet. I turned the latchkey, the one that worked, not the ornate one near the knob. Angelina had left on two table lamps near the stairs, but otherwise the hall was in shadow, all the sconces dark. A bottle of champagne was chilling in a silver bucket on the side table, Angelina’s idea for our wedding night. But Claudia was looking down the hall, her arms crossed over her chest, rocking a little.