Alibi

by Joseph Kanon

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Claudia was hitting him on the back, trying to pull him off, but he was oblivious, lost in his own adrenaline strength, tightening his hands on my windpipe. I choked. I could feel the blocks against my back, then the wetness of the tarp. Everything smelled of damp, the slick steps, the canal. I tried to wriggle out of his grip, punching his sides, but the hands didn’t budge and now began to shake me, banging my head against the tarp. I looked into his face and found no expression at all, just a kind of strained exertion as he kept his hands in place. Beyond him there were dim lights, the gondola up on its support rack, Claudia flailing at his back, her face frantic now. She pulled on his collar, yanking his head back, and I saw, absurdly, that the white tie was still in place, but then I was choking again, beginning to feel dizzy, without enough breath to shove his body off mine. Claudia was shouting, still pounding on his back, but I couldn’t make out the words, indistinct behind the pulse in my ears and the faint wheezing coming from my throat.

  Then suddenly a look came into his eyes, hesitant, a question to himself, and I felt the hands loosen, a quick rush of air. I lay still, waiting for him to lift his hands away, and he was blinking, as if waking, still looking down at me in a kind of surprise, unaware of the shadow over him-Claudia, her face pulled tight, a paving stone in her hand now, raised high, then smashing down on the back of his head. His eyes went wide. A grunt, then he fell on me, pinning me under dead weight.

  Everything stopped, no sound at all but the soft lapping of the canal against the steps. His head had fallen to the side of mine and I listened for breathing, anything. Then the stone slid off his back onto the floor, a thunk, and I felt blood oozing down his neck. Thick, still warm. I pushed at him, gently at first, then with a heave, until he rolled off, turning onto his back. Claudia stood looking at him, shaking.

  “Oh god. I thought-” Her voice was shaking too.

  I got up and bent over with my hands on my knees, the air still coming in ragged gulps. How long had it been? One minute? Two? Like a flash of light. One flash and everything was different.

  “He was going to-” Claudia was saying.

  No, he was going to stop. But before I could say it, Claudia made a sound, a kind of frightened yelp.

  “He’s not moving. Is he moving?”

  I looked down. Eyes closed. A small pool of blood under his head. But not spreading. If his heart were still pumping, there’d be more blood, wouldn’t there?

  “Oh god. Now they’ll-”

  I shook my head, rubbing my throat with my hand. “No, it was a fight.”

  “No. No,” she said, a wail. “They’ll say I killed him. I did kill him. They’ll send me-” All in a rush, like blood pouring out. She had folded her arms over her chest, holding herself, a protection, as if someone were already there to take her away.

  I looked up, catching her eyes, the fear in them, and felt it too, a queasiness in the stomach, both of us in a helpless free fall, using our eyes to hold on. I was still breathing hard, excited, and the fear was like another surge, my skin warm with it, stronger even than sex but like it too, connecting us, because we both felt it. Her eyes were shiny with the fear, letting me in, closer than we’d ever been.

  “They’ll send me-” she said again, feebly, almost to herself, and I saw what she had already imagined, how it would look: the engagement party, a public attack, then the private killing, driven to it. Nothing else would be believed.

  I looked down at Gianni again, not moving, then back into her eyes. Frantic, the way they’d been, standing over him with the stone raised. For me.

  “We have to get him out of here,” I said.

  “Out of here. But they’ll know-he came here.”

  “Nobody knows that. Nobody knows you came here either. Nobody. We have to get him out.”

  “Out,” she said vaguely, meaning how.

  “The tarp,” I said, stepping away from his body to reach the edge of the covering. “We’ll wrap him in this.” Two pieces. One would never be missed.

  “Oh god,” Claudia said, not moving.

  “We’ll have to use the boat.”

  “The boat,” Claudia said dully.

  “We can’t carry him through the streets. We have to dump him in the lagoon.”

  “They’ll find him.”

  “Not if we weight him down. Here, give me a hand with this.”

  “But they’ll look. They’ll ask questions.”

  “We never saw him. Quick,” I said, gesturing at the tarp.

  “You’ll be in trouble too. For me. The police-”

  I went over and took her by the shoulders, still trembling under the coat.

  “I need you to help me move him. To get him on the tarp. Can you do that?”

  She said nothing for a minute, just looked at me.

  “Nobody will know,” I said, then let my hands slide away from her. “We need to roll him over. Onto the tarp.”

  “There’s blood,” she said quietly.

  “Take his feet,” I said, still looking at her.

  Then she nodded, calmer, almost herself again. She stepped to the other side of the body and bent down to grab his legs. I looked at him again. Shiny leather shoes, white tie, already dressed for burial.

  I crouched down and put my hands on his shoulders, ready to push.

  “Okay, when I say-”

  A groan, faint enough to be a sound out on the canal, then an almost imperceptible twitch in his arm. Another groan, louder this time, and Claudia made a little cry, her hands to her mouth, and jumped away.

  “Oh god,” she said. “He’s not dead.”

  A stiff body, no longer pumping blood. It had never occurred to me to check. Now I leaned over him, listening, my fingers touching the side of his neck. But what were you supposed to feel? A pulse, any movement at all. If he were alive, there’d be breath. I put my ear next to his mouth. For a second, nothing, then the faint gagging sound again. I looked up at Claudia, our eyes meeting across the body. Alive. To have her arrested, sent-out of the way. Ruin everything. I felt a slight movement in his shoulder and looked back down. Eyes still closed. A blotch of red on his shirtfront. Just dead and now alive again, unstoppable. No expression on his face-maybe the way it had been, nodding at the hospital, sitting on the terrace at Villa Raspelli, calmly leaning over my mother, touching her soft throat. Not the first time. Unstoppable, about to get away with all of it. Get us out of the way. I looked up at Claudia again, the same shiny eyes, and then grabbed his shirtfront and began dragging him to the steps.

  “Adam,” she said, but what I heard was the scrape of his clothes across the stone floor, another whispered groan. The back of his head left a smear of blood behind. Unstoppable.

  I dragged him over to the steps, then, kneeling, pushed his head into the water and held it there, forcing it down, my arms clenched, shaking. Do it. A whimper from where Claudia was standing. I felt the wet creep along my legs. Nothing moved in the water, then a few bubbles appeared, rising out of his mouth, and the body began to twitch, maybe an unconscious reaction, a last gasp. Not thrashing for life, just a series of twitches. I held his head under by the throat, hearing my own blood in my ears, watching the bubbles. How long? Then suddenly his body shook and his eyes flew open and I felt they could see me through the mirror of water, knew it was me leaning over him with my hand on his throat, choking him, until the water finally rushed in and forced out the last bubble. I held him for another minute, until nothing moved at all, then stood up slowly, my arms dripping with water. His eyes were still open, rigid now, not focused on anything. I took a deep breath and for a second expected the fear again, the free fall in my stomach, but what I felt, dazed, was the ease of it. A matter of a minute to kill. In the war we always wondered if we could do it, stick the bayonet in. And now I had, with no more effort than it would take to nod.

  I turned to Claudia, but neither of us said anything. I could hear a ship’s horn-the moist air in the lagoon was probably thickening to
fog. Easier to hide. I nodded at the wall switch.

  “Get the lights. We don’t want anybody-”

  Claudia glanced down at Gianni, his leather shoes sticking up incongruously on the water stairs, then went over to the wall.

  With only the lamps from the indoor hall, we had to work in shadows. I looked across the canal to the neighboring buildings. A few upstairs lights, the rest of the windows dark. No one seemed to have noticed anything. Even the marchesa was away. I pulled the boat around.

  I laid out the tarp, then dragged Gianni up to it by the feet, hearing thuds as his head hit the stairs. I pitched him forward so that he was sitting up, then started to take off his jacket, struggling with the arms.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We have to wipe up the blood. I don’t want to use anything here. They might miss it. That’s it. Okay, use this, then we’ll throw it in with him.”

  She hesitated for a second, not understanding, then looked at me, dismayed. I nodded. She waited another second, staring, then shivered and took the wet jacket and began mopping the floor around us as I moved him onto the tarp. We threw the jacket over him and weighed it down with paving stones, then rolled the tarp over and tied it at each end with some rope I found near the water gate. I didn’t think anyone could see us in the half-light of the room, but we worked quickly, making sure the blood was gone, then lugging the heavy bag toward the steps.

  “Here, let me steady it, we’ll just slide him in.”

  Claudia was sweating, her face flushed from the lifting, and when she looked up, waiting for me, I felt the closeness again, not fear this time, something more intimate, in it together.

  I was lifting the rolled tarp over the gunwale when the phone rang. We froze. Two phones ringing, one upstairs, one in the hall. Looking for him. Drawing attention to the house. I stood still, as if any movement might be seen through the water gate, eyes peering around the edge of curtains, curious about the phone. When it stopped, I realized I had been holding my breath.

  I took up the tarp again. “On two,” I said, and she lifted with me and he was in, the boat rocking from the sudden movement. I steadied it with my foot and reached out my hand to help her in. She stopped, a small panic in her eyes.

  “I can’t swim,” she said.

  “Do you want to stay?” I said.

  She glanced quickly at the dim entryway, then shook her head and stepped in, clenching my hand until she sat.

  “It’s cold. You’ll need a coat,” she said, motioning toward my jacket, wet at the sleeves.

  “No time,” I said, untying the boat and pushing off into the canal. “We’ll have to use the oars until we get farther out. The motor’s too loud.”

  As we floated quietly toward the Zattere, it occurred to me, a stray thought, that nothing ever changed in Venice. Muffled oars, a body taken away in the night. I looked across at Claudia. Over fans at La Fenice.

  The rain had left a heavy mist over the water. When we reached the Giudecca channel, there were a few distant shafts of yellow lights from boats and a much stronger wind that cut into my wet sleeves. I lowered the small outboard motor into the water and jerked hard on the starter cord. A sputter, not much more than a grunt. How long since it had been used? Was there even gas in the tank? Another pull. Why not just dump him here? The Giudecca was a deep channel, not one of the shallow city canals, but too near. The tides that flushed out the city could flush things back in. I imagined Gianni stuck just a few feet underwater in a side canal, waiting for the dredgers. Better to get him out into the lagoon, even if it meant rowing. But that would take hours. I pulled on the cord again. A louder sputter, as if it were choking on itself.

  “Adam.”

  I turned. A vaporetto had pulled away from its stop on the Giudecca and was heading across toward us, its headlights growing brighter through the mist. I pulled the cord again. The pilot would see us, not run us down. And then be curious-what would anybody be doing out at this hour, in the cold? A witness.

  I let the cord sit for a second, not wanting to flood the motor, then yanked it. A louder sputter, almost catching, lost under the noise of the vaporetto. The light was closer. I yanked again. A small cough, then another, settling into a series of spitting exhaust noises as the motor came to life.

  “Hold on,” I said, then let out the choke and swung us away from the approaching boat into the dark, close enough to feel a lift from its wake.

  I had no idea where to go, except away from the city, somewhere beyond the lights. The open sea, past the barrier islands, was too long a trip and in the dark too dangerous. The lagoon itself was a maze of currents and shallow water-you heard stories about visitors who ended up stuck on an unexpected mudbank. You were only safe if you followed the channel markers.

  I turned at the tip of the Giudecca and went behind San Giorgio Maggiore, putting the island between us and San Marco. It was darker here, the thick mist broken only by tiny marker lights, a few bobbing on buoys, the others on those fence posts the Venetians use to outline their water roads. If other boats were out, they’d be here too, hugging the safety of the channel, but what choice was there? In the mist, without even starlight, to drift away from the markers would be to circle in complete darkness. With a dead man in the boat.

  I glanced down at the rolled-up tarp, the first time I’d even thought about it. A dead man. Would the blocks be enough to hold the body to the bottom, or would the tides dislodge it? What if they never found him at all?

  I moved the boat out of the main channel, keeping parallel to it, the markers in sight. Boat traffic might churn up something from the bottom-this distance could give it a small margin, let it lie undisturbed. The mist was gathering in patches now, almost fog. I squinted, afraid of missing any of the markers. Behind us San Marco had disappeared, just a vague light source without definition. Claudia was bent over in the prow, looking down, arms wrapped tightly around herself, and I realized that it must be cold, that I should be shivering in my damp jacket and instead felt flushed, still excited, the boat trip somehow just an extension of the fight, not yet over. I saw my hand on his throat underwater, the eyes come open. What I’d never had to do in the war, kill a man. I swung the boat away from a buoy that seemed to have come from nowhere. Pay attention. Think later. Now just get rid of it. This was far enough, somewhere between the city and the Lido. What if he washed up on the beach? Where they’d met.

  I idled the engine, but it stalled, gave another cough, and then went quiet. Suddenly, without the throb of it, the silence around us had the quality of mist, opaque, opening up slightly for the faint bells on the buoys. There was just enough light from the marker to see her face, staring at the tarp, then looking at me.

  “Adam, if we do this, the body, it’s a crime. We can’t explain-” She looked away, unsure how to finish.

  “It is a crime. I killed him.”

  She glanced back at me, her eyes suddenly fierce. “No, both. Both of us,” she said, her voice steady. And I thought of her that first afternoon, in the hotel near the station, opening a button.

  I looked across at her for another minute, not saying anything, then nodded.

  “Hold on to the sides. Keep the boat steady.”

  She placed her hands on either side. I knelt forward, took up the front end of the tarp, and lifted it over the edge. It didn’t matter where you grabbed it. It was no longer a body, just something heavy wrapped in tarp, pushing the boat down with its weight. Claudia shifted to the other side, as if she could counterbalance the slide.

  “It won’t tip,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  And then, before it could settle, I heaved up, lifting the back end with a grunt and swinging it around until its own weight was pulling it over and all I needed to do was push, then quickly right the boat as the tarp plunged into the lagoon. There was a splash, rocking the boat. For a few minutes we just sat looking over the side, as if the body would bounce back up again, but then the ripples died down and the water was smooth
all the way to the buoy, just a gentle lap at the side of the boat. I looked around. No other boats. Claudia was still staring at the water.

  “So,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything, suddenly tired, as if the adrenaline were draining away, a kind of anemia.

  “How long before we know-if it’s down?”

  “It’s already down.”

  “What do we say? We have to think what to say.”

  “Nothing. We never saw him.”

  “But they’ll ask. Where were we?”

  I pulled the cord, grateful the motor started right away, not wanting to talk. I hadn’t thought beyond the body, getting rid of it. But of course we weren’t rid of it. People would ask, the police would be called, we would be part of it. You called him at the hospital. When did you see him last? Where were you? The body was only the beginning.

  Now I did feel the cold, the wet air hitting my face in little stings, then harder ones as the mist turned to rain again. Almost as cold as Germany, the terrible sharp wind and people fighting over pieces of coal. You didn’t think about anything except staying warm. Not bodies, not what you were doing there, just getting in out of the cold. The black water streamed past the side of the boat, pelted with rain. We’d be coming up to San Giorgio soon.

  I slowed the boat, unable to see more than a few yards ahead. Claudia hunched down under her coat, shivering, folding herself up against the rain. I followed the markers, still looking around for other boats. But who would be out now? No fishermen, no water taxis. Only someone who didn’t want to be seen, hidden by the emptiness of the lagoon.

  I wiped my eyes, feeling the cold rain seeping down my neck, the shocked alertness of a cold shower, no longer caught up in a blood heat. What were we doing? A body wrapped in a tarp, dead, not an accident. I saw the tarp sinking, dragged down by stones, deliberately made to disappear. What explanation could there be now? Claudia was right-we had to think what to say. They’d look for him. He had a daughter. Doges in the family. Why would a man disappear? They’d hear about the engagement party. They’d talk to Claudia. And somehow it would come out. Somehow. Only people like Gianni got away with murder. I felt queasy again. But she hadn’t hesitated. Both of us. There was a sudden burst of rain in my face; it was really coming down now, sheets of it. Mimi’s party would be chaos.