Alibi

by Joseph Kanon

  “My men,” he said, blushing a little, as if he’d been accused of being clumsy.

  “Any news? About the boat?” I said, moving him away from Claudia.

  “No, it’s very difficult.” He sighed. “But not tonight. Tonight the bloodhound is not official. Just a wedding guest. The bride will permit me a dance?”

  He held out his hand, smiling, so Claudia had to raise hers and get up before she could think of any excuse not to. She glanced at me, then let Cavallini take her elbow, following him to the dance floor like someone being led away for questioning.

  Giulia took out a cigarette and waited for me to light it.

  “You really like jazz?” I said.

  “You mean, what am I doing here? Don’t worry, it’s not what you think.”

  “It’s none of my-”

  “I asked him to bring me here. He wanted to have dinner-you know, where everyone can see-and I thought, no, why not here instead. I like the music, and alone, it’s not possible for me to come.”

  “Why dinner?”

  “Oh, he said to explain to me what was happening. About my father, the man they caught. Of course, the real reason-”

  “I can guess.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said. “Just to be seen. Be helpful. You know his wife is my mother’s cousin, so he thinks he’s a Maglione. I’m the family now, the son. It’s useful for him if people think I want his counsel, that he has influence with me. You know, he has political ambitions. So it’s useful.”

  “He does?” I glanced toward the dance floor, where he was chatting with Claudia.

  “He’s always been ambitious. Why else would he marry Filomena?”

  “You mean she’s rich?”

  “No, but a good family. A step for him.”

  “Maybe he married for love.”

  She looked at me. “Did you?”

  I said nothing for a second, thrown by the directness of it, her eyes on me.

  “Yes.”

  She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. “Then it’s good. You’ll be happy.” She glanced up. “I hope you will be,” she said, softer now, a kind of apology for having asked.

  “So Cavallini gets seen with the Magliones. And what do you get out of it, a night out?”

  “Well, a friend in the police, it’s always good. And to thank him for solving the murder. Of course, I know it was because of you. But he listened to you. Would the others have done that?”

  “Do you really think this case can be tried? You’re a lawyer.”

  “Not for crime. Business, you know. Contracts. Anyway, in this case I’m a Maglione. The police get the man, brava. But now the important thing-well, that it all goes the right way.”

  “What way is that?”

  She leaned forward, businesslike. “The best, of course, is that there’s no trial at all. He confesses, it’s an end. But if it has to be, then I want him on trial, not my father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “A tragic mistake. My father gives him medicine-a humanitarian act, at that time even a brave one. And he thinks it’s a betrayal. Foolish, but he acts.”

  “But the defense will say it was a betrayal.”

  “And the more they say it, the more they make him look guilty. Vittorio says-”

  “Vittorio?”

  “Inspector Cavallini,” she said, surprised I hadn’t known his name. “He says this is the trap-if they talk about my father this way, it gives Moretti more motive. So maybe they won’t.”

  “They have to say something.”

  “They’ll say the police are mistaken. That it’s political, the government is trying to put the Communists on trial. And of course it’s true-a convenience for them, a case like this. But at least then my father’s name-” She broke off, crushing her cigarette, her mouth drawn, as if putting on lipstick had hardened it, aged her. I thought of her at the memorial service, pale, when her father’s good name had not even been in question.

  “You’ve thought about this.”

  “Of course. It’s my name too. That’s why it’s so important, with Vittorio. To make it all go right. So I make him feel part of the family.” Her eyes slightly amused but determined, Gianni’s face at the Monaco.

  “By bringing him here.”

  “Well, I’m the son but not the son. I know what people say. We go to Harry’s and I’m his mistress. Nice for him, maybe, but not for me. So I bring him here. Who will know? Some soldiers.”

  “And me.”

  “Yes, now you. But you know everything. You’re the other son. He thinks of you that way, you know.”

  I made a noise, shrugging this off.

  “You almost were.” She smiled to herself. “Maybe it’s close enough for him. He has a great respect for money.”

  “Then he’s wrong again. I don’t have any.”

  She picked up her wineglass. “Then she married for love too,” she said, not looking at me, casual, as if the phrase were a stray thought.

  I waited a minute. “I hope so.”

  She finished her wine, then looked at the dance floor. “It’s true, you’re going to America?”

  I opened my hands. “I’m American.”

  “You know, if things had turned out differently-if my father had lived-I think he would have offered you a place in his business.”

  “I doubt it,” I said easily. “I don’t know anything about business.”

  “But I do,” she said, looking up. “I know everything about our business. I was raised for it.”

  A trumpeter stood up on the bandstand, holding a note, the end of the song. No one spoke, so that the moment seemed suspended. Giulia’s eyes were still, and I felt an almost physical pull, being drawn in, like Cavallini. Making us both part of the family so things would go right. The father’s daughter.

  “More than Gianni did, then,” I said, trying to be light.

  “No, he knew. Often he did things-because of the business,” she said, her voice remote, something she was still debating with herself.

  People on the dance floor were applauding the trumpeter.

  “Anyway, I’m not his son,” I said. “So-”

  “But you avenged his death,” she said quickly. “I’m grateful for that.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe Moretti’s just convenient for everybody. A feather in your cousin’s cap. But what if he’s innocent?”

  “You don’t believe it’s him? Why did he say he was glad, at that bar?”

  “I don’t know-a million reasons. Maybe he hates businessmen.”

  She put her hand over mine. “How you defend him, my father. Better than a son, maybe. You think he couldn’t have betrayed this man? He could. He betrayed everybody. My mother. Everybody,” she said fiercely, almost spitting out the words. She moved her hand away and grabbed at her glass to steady herself. “You didn’t suspect? No, like me. All my life I thought he was a good man. A moral dilemma-save a partisan? Ha, once. That he tells me about. And what about the rest of it? What was he saving then? The business? Well, he saved it for me, I should be grateful, yes? I should be grateful.”

  She lifted her head suddenly, as if she’d been caught talking to herself, then reached for another cigarette, something to do. For a moment I sat still, afraid I’d startle her away, then struck the match and lit it for her.

  “What?” I said gently.

  “It’s in the notebooks.” She glanced up at Claudia and Cavallini coming toward us, only a table away.

  “You figured out the gaps?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But not now. Nothing to Vittorio.”

  “But if they prove Moretti didn’t-”

  “No, they prove he did.”

  “They can’t,” I said involuntarily.

  She looked at me, surprised, but before either of us could say anything more the others were sitting down, the table a party again.

  “I dance like an elephant,” Cavallini said, laughing at himself, and Claudia
politely said no, he was good on his feet, and we all drank more wine. Claudia had given me a “Let’s go” look, but now I couldn’t, not until I finished with Giulia, so I ignored it. Instead we drank, a new bottle exchanged for the old. Cavallini drummed his fingers on the table to the music. Finally Claudia got up, saying she’d promised Jim a dance, and left the table, shooting me another look. The dance was obviously a surprise to Jim, but everyone was a little drunk now and he waved a salute to me, grinning. A minute later I led Giulia onto the floor. “These Foolish Things,” slow enough to talk, my hand barely touching her back.

  “What do you mean, they can’t prove it?” she said, still turning this over.

  I hesitated, trying to think, feeling the sweat at my hairline. “They’re Paolo’s journals, aren’t they? He was already dead when the house was attacked. So how could they prove anything?”

  “Oh, I see. No, they don’t say my father gave Moretti the medicine. But of course we know he did. Moretti said so.”

  “So what do they say? You figured out the missing pages?”

  She nodded. “I found the other books.”

  “But he destroyed them. Didn’t you say?”

  “Well, a Maglione. He gave them to Maria to be destroyed. The maid, you saw her.” Entering nervously with a phone. “Loyal to Paolo, it turns out. Maybe the only one.”

  “She read them?”

  “No, she doesn’t read. She can write her name, that’s all.”

  “But she kept them.”

  “You know you forgot to take the books away, the day Vittorio called. So that night I was looking through them. The missing pages, what did they mean? And she saw me and said, would I like to see the others? My father had told her to burn them, but she thought, these are Paolo’s, the history of the family, and they’re not my father’s to burn.” She smiled. “He wasn’t the first son. She thinks that way.”

  I nodded, encouraging her to go on, but there was no reluctance now, almost a rush to get it out.

  “Once I had those, it was easy enough to guess the rest. Because I know my father’s businesses so well.”

  “His businesses?”

  “Yes, it was always about that. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. If he had believed in something-anyway, he believed in this.”

  Over her shoulder I could see Claudia signaling me.

  “You had to work with the government,” Giulia said. “Everything was like that here. Licenses. Friends.”

  “It’s like that everywhere.”

  “Yes, but here it was Fascists. And then the Germans.”

  “He sold arms? My mother said he didn’t.”

  “No, not that. One factory in Turin, it makes forks, then it makes forks for the army. Little things, not the Agnellis. Uniforms. Electrical pieces. Many things. So, the Italian army, that’s one thing, it’s still your country. But then the Germans come. Not your country, but you supply them too. Ha, one partisan. My wonderful father.”

  “He worked with the Germans? Paolo says so?” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, finally there.

  “Paolo worked with them. Paolo was perfect. The older brother. It was his name on the companies, the ones that were all ours, not just a piece. He was already friendly with them-a puppet, like everybody in the Salo government. The worse things got, the happier he is in the books. ‘I presented our proposal to Donati.’ So who is ‘our’? Him? No, my father. ‘I met with Rohrer and told Gianni that the plan had met with approval.’ His plan? No. So busy now, so important. Head of the family. Even his brother praises him, confides in him.”

  “Uses him.”

  “Yes. It’s my father who’s working with them. But no one knows that. They only see Paolo.”

  “And kill him for it.”

  She looked away for a minute, just shuffling to the music.

  “I don’t blame my father for that. Paolo did that to himself. I don’t know, did Paolo have to do everything he did for the Germans? Help them with-whatever they asked. I think with my father it would have been different. But Paolo didn’t know where to stop. He was important, he liked that. So, you know, it’s his fault too. I don’t blame my father.” She looked up. “But my father did. He blamed himself. Now I understand it, how he was when Paolo died. His fault.”

  “And now there was no one to run interference.”

  “No. Now he had to deal with the Germans himself. It was too late to back out. If he wanted to. I don’t think he did. He hated the partisans for killing Paolo. Maybe he hated the Germans too. But it was the end, they would be gone soon, and he was still safe, if he was careful. No one knew. He was a doctor, a good man. You know, when the trials came right after the war, no one even thought of him.”

  I remembered Rosa at the Bauer, her face filled with excitement, a new quarry.

  “Work with the Germans? That was Paolo, it all died with Paolo. So my father survived the Germans, then he survived you.” She waved her hand a little, taking in the rest of the room, the Allied occupation. “With his good name. My god, and now an American wife. And all the money. The money Paolo earned for him.” She looked down. “Sometimes I think I should admire him. It’s not so easy to survive. But then look what he did to Paolo.”

  “And this is all in there? The Germans he worked with?”

  “That Paolo worked with, yes. And him. I’ll show you. You have to know how to read them, how the businesses are connected.” She paused. “Are you still trying to defend him?”

  “I just want to be sure.”

  “You think I want this to be true? I wasn’t even going to tell you about them. But it was your idea, wasn’t it? Look through the papers. And what did we find? A man who sells his brother to the devil.” She paused. “And maybe Paolo had his revenge. His friend comes to the hospital. Such a small thing, and then it starts-” She drifted, following the bullet that didn’t stop, her chain of events, unaware that it had been an even smaller thing, a mere nod. I saw Gianni’s face twisted with fury in the entrance hall, thinking I was about to ruin everything because of something so small it hadn’t mattered to him.

  “So this is who he was,” she said, her voice unsteady, eyes filling.

  I glanced down at her. What I’d wanted to know, but not this way, making another wound.

  “Part of who he was,” I said, trying to salvage something.

  “Oh, because he was Papa? Well, which part do you pick? You think they’re all the same, all equal?”

  “No.”

  “No. Those people in the house are dead. Who knows, maybe others. What part was that?”

  “We still don’t know he did that,” I said. “Just because he did business with the Germans. It doesn’t prove-”

  But she wasn’t listening. “For me, Paolo, that’s the worst. His own blood. My blood. And I never would have known. Nobody would.” She looked up. “And nobody has to know now. Just the family. They can never put him on trial now. Moretti saved us all from that.”

  For a second, the back of my neck prickling, I thought how easy it would be to let it happen, let Moretti save all of us, just by being guilty.

  “But now there’s his trial,” I said. “It’ll come out.”

  “Not if he confesses,” she said, her eyes firm, not flinching, maybe the way they were when she talked to Cavallini. Family matters.

  Mario cut in on me at the end of the song, so that both girls were now on the floor with the soldiers. Behind them, others were standing with their drinks, waiting a turn. The band, surprised to find a party, didn’t even break before moving into the next number.

  “Well, I’m glad for this,” Cavallini said, watching the dancers. “I wanted to talk to you. That business at the hotel, asking questions about Signorina Grassini-I’m sorry for that. An absurdity. I assure you, not my men.”

  “No? Then who?”

  “I told you, some at the Questura, they’re not happy about Moretti. It’s politics, of course, but they don’t say that.”

  “So
they’re investigating Claudia?”

  “No, no. Please don’t upset yourself. Reviewing the case, they say. Going over everything. Why? A waste of time, but there’s Moretti’s lawyer, making trouble for them. So there has to be the pretense. Looking at everything. I tell you this because I know they called your mother.”

  “In Paris?”

  “Yes, such an expense. And for what? What they already knew in the report. If she mentions it, tell her it’s nothing-some foolishness here, that’s all. She’s well?”

  I nodded. “But what do they want to know?”

  “If I made a mistake, that’s what. A time wrong, anything. Then they can discredit me. This is typical of the Communists. But do they find anything? No. It’s just as it is in the report. No mistakes.”

  “They haven’t talked to me.”

  “They will,” he said easily. “This is how things are now. A man who has been like a partner to us. You know, if it were up to the Questore-he knows your service. But even he-”

  “I understand. They’re just being careful.”

  “Still, an inconvenience. And after all, what can you tell them? You were with me.” He laughed, a joke on the Questura.

  What could I tell them? I smiled back at Cavallini, but my mind was racing, the new questions a chance, maybe, to raise doubts about Moretti, open just enough space to let him wriggle free.

  Cavallini patted me on the shoulder, a kind of reassurance. “Well, it’s a question of patience. I tell you frankly, though, I don’t like these delays. The longer it goes on, the more this boy becomes a symbol. I told the Questore, we should move him. Jesolo, maybe Verona, a facility somewhere out of sight. As long as he’s in Venice, the parties throw him at each other. This is a crime, not politics. And look how people use it. Well, here come the ladies.”

  But they came trailing suitors, so there was another dance before they sat down and another round of drinks before I could rescue Claudia by asking her to dance.

  “If you don’t take me home, I’m going to scream,” she said in my ear.

  “I thought you were having a good time,” I teased.

  “No. You’re having a good time. All your favorite people. The police. The wonderful Giulia. You think no one can see you, with your heads like that? So much to talk about.”