Alibi

by Joseph Kanon

  “I’ve already told you about that.”

  He held up his hand. “Signor Miller, please. I believe you. I’m trying to explain what other people could say. You know at the Questura they ask all these questions again. Your mother, for instance, you know they called her. So interesting. The night of Signora Mortimer’s party, she’s so anxious-where is my fiance? She telephones Ca’ Venti. And you’re there with Signora Miller, but you don’t answer. Making love, I remember you said. So you don’t answer.”

  “Yes,” I said, my throat dry, closing. The smallest thing.

  “But she calls again-did you know this? An hour later. Still no answer. Of course, it’s possible, a young man. But even I-”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But it could, if someone asked this. Where was she?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Me? Nothing. I already know the true story,” he said, gesturing at the statement again. “To look for another now-so many confusions. But someone could believe it. Unless they believe this. What you say. And what I say.” He had been staring at me, his voice smooth, explaining something to a child. Now it hardened. “Which is better for her? A woman like that.”

  “A woman like what?” I said quietly, feeling a shiver on my neck, like a draft.

  “Who could kill Vanessi.”

  “They can’t prove that.”

  “Yes, there is proof,” he said simply.

  Even my shoulder was cold now, as if my blood had stopped running.

  “Then why was it never used?”

  Cavallini shrugged. “To what purpose? Such a man-and Italian. Not German. An Italian who would do that to Italians. So many were already on trial. Why make more shame? A robber kills him, there’s an end. And you know, there was a certain amount of sympathy for Signora Miller. For her suffering. Even now I feel that. You see, it’s better to arrange things this way, so they serve a purpose.”

  He reached over for the paper, then took a pen out of his pocket.

  “What about her prints?” I said, watching him. “On the gun.”

  “There were no prints on the gun,” he said, all business. “Someone must have wiped it.”

  “And you never saw it in her hand.”

  “No, never. Only in yours.” He held out the pen, meeting my eyes now, locked on them. “You see, I’ll be her alibi,” he said. “And you’ll be mine.” He moved the pen closer.

  “Your accomplice,” I whispered, my throat dry again, squeezed shut. I took the pen, wincing as I raised my bad shoulder. The end of the maze. Cavallini kept looking at me, his eyes as cool and determined as they had been last night when he had aimed the gun. He smiled a little when he heard the scratch of the pen.

  “Good,” he said, taking the paper. “It’s for the best. I’m very good at arranging these things. You can put yourself in my hands.”

  I glanced down at them, casually putting away the pen. A wedding ring, thick, blunt fingers, oversized hands, big enough.

  “What’s that?” He pointed to the papers on my bed.

  “German testimony about Gianni. He helped them attack the safe house.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You see how well we work together. More proof that Rosa would do it. But maybe we won’t need to use it. Think of Giulia’s feelings. She’ll be so grateful if it’s finished. It’s important to put these things behind us.” A doctor’s daughter, used to keeping other people’s secrets.

  He got up and straightened the chair, watching me. “You’re in pain?” he said. “That nurse-”

  “Was there really proof? About Vanessi.”

  “Yes. Of course, even proof is a matter of-how you tell the story,” he said, glancing at Bauer’s transcript. He opened his hand. “Signor Miller, she’s your wife.” A piece of advice, let it go, meant to reassure, unaware that we had already left each other.

  He was gone by the time she came back with the nurse, so he didn’t see me avoid her eyes, not wanting to talk anymore, not even to tell her she was finally safe. I looked instead at the syringe, waiting for the drug to take effect, let me drift away from all of it.

  Bertie came in the afternoon.

  “I hope you’re satisfied. Cops and robbers. How are you?”

  “Peachy.”

  “Mm. I expected worse, I have to say. Given the papers.” He tossed Il Gazzettino on the bed. “Shootouts at the Lido. What in god’s name-?”

  “Here,” I said, handing him the Frankfurt envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “Read it. Page three.”

  He walked over to the window, reading, then looked out for a minute before folding the paper up and putting it back in the envelope.

  “Well, you would poke and pry,” he said softly, his head down.

  “You were afraid I’d find out, weren’t you? That’s why you didn’t want me-Christ, Bertie.” I breathed out. “Christ.”

  He leaned back, taking out his cigarette case.

  “It’s not allowed,” I said.

  “Oh, tut,” he said, lighting his cigarette and putting his arm on the sill, using the open window as an ashtray. “A condemned man’s always allowed. That’s what I am now, isn’t it? In your eyes.”

  I said nothing, waiting.

  “All right. I admit it’s not the sort of thing you want to see in your obituary.” He looked up. “Or have to explain, for that matter.”

  “You worked for them.”

  “I didn’t work for them,” he said. “Sometimes-well, sometimes we do things we never thought we’d do. Oh, not you, of course. You’re always on the side of the just and the good. But the rest of us. I’m a guest in this country, Adam. I stay at the pleasure of whoever happens to be running things. I don’t choose them, I just stay out of their way.”

  “Not all the time.”

  “They could have taken my passport in a second. Then what? Ship me off to Switzerland. If I was lucky. Maybe worse.”

  “Then why stay?”

  “It’s my home. Anyway, I didn’t have the luxury of sitting out the war somewhere and coming back after, bright as a penny. I didn’t have the time.” He looked down at his cigarette, then threw it out the window. “It wasn’t much, you know. We all had to report, all the foreigners, tell them where we were living, what we were up to.”

  “But they asked you to tell them a little more.”

  He nodded. “I knew the foreign community. Such as it was then. Who was still here? A few White Russians with nowhere else to go. Hungarians. Some English who’d married Italians and thought that made them Italian. Nobody. You can’t imagine how harmless it all was. They just liked to keep records, think everything was under control. Who said what at which party. Well, whoever did say anything? Nobody was hurt. And I had friends where I needed them. Of course, now it’s over, nobody wants to remember what it was like. Now it looks-well, the way it looks. Anyway, it’s over and done with.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  He looked up, apprehensive.

  “There are two people in the morgue. It wasn’t over for them.”

  “Well, I didn’t put them there.”

  “No, you just gave Gianni the names. Hers. The boy’s father. They were in that house. And now they’re all dead. You were part of it. Do you lie to yourself too, or just to me?”

  “Oh, who could lie to you? The grand inquisitor. Gave him names. If I hadn’t, somebody else would have.”

  “You’re not somebody else. You told him who killed Paolo. And people died.”

  “Adam, you don’t think I knew what they’d do. You don’t think that. That awful business with the fire.”

  “You just thought they’d round them up, and then what? Scold them? Execute them quietly? They were burned.”

  He turned away, facing the window again. “All right. They were. I didn’t know. But so was Paolo. That’s what they did to him. In that car, all charred-” He stopped, his voice drifting. “They burned him. Paolo.”

>   “He was a thug.”

  “I know what he was,” he snapped, turning to face me. “But that wasn’t all of him. Before all that, when he was young, if you’d known him then. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. There was a quality.”

  I stared at the sheet, feeling awkward.

  “I know, he was an oaf, really. Worse, I suppose, at the end. All puffed up.” He paused, catching himself. “We don’t get to choose how we feel, you know. We just do. And he never had a clue.” He looked out the window. “Sometimes I think the only thing I’ve really loved is Venice. It doesn’t love you back either. But I couldn’t lose it. So I gave Gianni the names. I was asked to do it and I did it. Satisfied?”

  “Are you? You have to live with it.”

  “What, my guilty conscience? Well, as it happens, I won’t. Not that either.” He came away from the window, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Do you know what it’s like, knowing you’re going to die? You don’t, really. It’s just an idea to you. You think you’re going to live. But when you know, things are different. They don’t matter so much anymore. People don’t matter. You find you can do-whatever you have to do. I wanted to stay in Venice.”

  “Even if people had to die for it.”

  “What, Paolo’s killers? Why not? They deserved it. Haven’t you ever wanted to get rid of someone?”

  I looked up at him.

  “What stops you? You think you’re going to live, you might have to pay for it. But if you know you’re going to die anyway, it’s-not so unthinkable. It’s easy, if you don’t have to pay.”

  “Not even afterward?”

  “Oh, afterward,” he said.

  “I thought you believed in all that.”

  “I did,” he said, running his hand over the chair now, talking to himself. “It’s odd about the Church. Just when you think it ought to come in handy, it doesn’t matter either. You see that it’s all tosh, really. All those wonderful paintings, Judgment Day this, hellfire that, puttis flying around everywhere-do you think they believed it, at the end? Lying there with some sore full of pus and not a hope in hell anything was coming afterward. Maybe. I doubt it. I think they were like me-waiting for their time to run out.” He stopped, staring at his hands. “It was just gossip, you know. That’s all it was. Except for Gianni.”

  “Except for Gianni. Why you?”

  He waved his hand. “I was his patient. Nothing could have been more innocent than my going to see him. That was important to him, that no one would suspect anything.” He made a face, uncomfortable even now. “I think it was his idea to use me. I think he told them I was dying, that I wouldn’t want to leave Venice, so I’d be-amenable.”

  “To be his messenger boy. So Bauer called you.”

  “Who? Oh no, I never met with the Germans.”

  “Then who gave you the names?”

  He glanced up at me, surprised. “Who? Who do you think? Your friend Cavallini. I reported to him, remember, as a foreigner. He even came to the house. Surely you knew.” He nodded toward the Frankfurt letter. “Or did they just tattle on me?” He peered at me over his glasses. “Are you all right? You’ve come over queer. Do you need something? Water?”

  “Why didn’t he tell Gianni himself?” I said, barely getting it out, short of breath.

  “Well, Gianni was something of a snob, you know. There was a family connection, through the wife, but Gianni wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He wouldn’t have him in the house.”

  Now sitting in the pew at Salute, family at last.

  “Gianni thought he was common,” Bertie was saying. “Police are always a little rough around the edges, aren’t they? And Cavallini-well, you ought to know. Slick as oil. It’s one thing to be on the take, everyone is over here, but he does very well for himself. And there were stories during the war. You know, the way the police could be sometimes. I never saw it myself, but Gianni was careful-maybe a little afraid of him. Said he was the kind who would get away with murder.”

  I swallowed, still gasping a little, as if my neck were being held to the wall.

  “Are you sure you’re all right? Here.” He handed me a glass of water.

  I took a sip. Always one step ahead, pulling tighter and tighter even while I thought I was slipping away. Put yourself in my hands.

  “Everybody gets away with it,” I said, picking up the beige envelope.

  Bertie moved away from the bed. “What do you want me to say, Adam? I never thought-”

  “I know. You never did a thing. Nobody did.”

  He stood for a minute, not saying anything, then went to the chair and picked up his hat. “I don’t like this very much. Kangaroo court.”

  I dropped the letter, my body sinking with it, weighted down by a nameless disappointment. Walking away from it. But what had I expected? We were all plea-bargaining now.

  “Leave, then.”

  He paused, looking down at his hat. “I’m still something to you, I think,” he said. “You wouldn’t-you’ll keep that to yourself?” He motioned toward the letter.

  “And not show it around? I thought nothing mattered to you anymore.”

  “Not to me. But you know, people don’t like to remember. There might be a certain social stigma-”

  “And that still matters to you?”

  “I live here. I don’t want to spend my last days alone.”

  His voice caught me, tentative, almost wispy, and I looked up. Not the dark figure in the transcript anymore, whispering into Gianni’s ear, just a slight old man with half-moon glasses, whom nobody ever loved back.

  “No,” I said. “It was just for me.” When I’d wanted to know. When we had gotten away with it.

  Cavallini took us to the station in a police launch, heading away from the hospital toward the Rialto, because Claudia said she wanted to go up the Grand Canal. The sun was out, bright as it had been on our wedding day, and she sat in the back, just as she had then with her corsage, not smiling this time, just taking it all in, fixing it in her memory. Cavallini and I had exchanged slings-his had been snipped away, mine put in place that morning-and I still felt a little wobbly, off-balance. He sat up front with the driver, pointing to buildings from time to time, a tour guide. Palazzo Foscari. Ca’ d’Oro. Ca’ Pesaro. The fairy-tale city everyone knew, untouched by the war.

  At the station he dealt with the porters and luggage, to give us time alone, but even with him gone it seemed we were playing out a scene he’d arranged, an ordinary couple saying the usual things on the platform: You’re sure you have your tickets. Enough money. Something to read on the train. Then we said nothing, waiting for a cue.

  “There’s not much time,” she said. “I’d better get on.” Beginning to turn, so that I saw it was really happening.

  “Don’t go,” I said. She hesitated, letting me take her by the shoulders with my good arm, facing me again. “Don’t go.”

  She smiled faintly. “I wondered if you would say it. Thank you for that.”

  “Tell me what else to say. What do you want to hear? Anything.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I can’t, Adam.” A loudspeaker blared behind us, announcing the train. “I can’t stay here.”

  “No, I fixed it with Cavallini. Even about Vanessi.” I looked down. “It’s all fixed.”

  “All fixed,” she said, and when I raised my head again her eyes were moist. “With Cavallini.”

  “You don’t have to worry.”

  “You did that for me?”

  I said nothing, waiting for her.

  “You’ll pay for it, you know.”

  “Rosa paid for it.”

  “And now we’ll pay for her,” she said quietly. “On and on.”

  “No, it’s over. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “No. Just when you look at me, what you see. And me, when I look at myself. I want to go somewhere people can’t see it. Do you understand that?”

  “We can start over.”

  She shook her head. “Not
after this. We know about each other. What happened. So how can it change?” She put her hand on my chest. “Shall I tell you something? When I asked you, what did you think, when I had the gun? And you said you didn’t know? I didn’t know either. So that’s who I am now. I didn’t know either.” She brushed her hand over her eyes. “Oh, so stupid. Well, at the station. The one place.”

  I held out a handkerchief.

  “Do you know how it used to be? My father was a doctor. He sent me to London. We were people of-standing. And now? A murderer. Shooting a woman. And I could do it. So how did that happen? I still don’t know.” She sniffled, blowing her nose. “Look, he’s coming.”

  I gripped her tighter. “But I love you.”

  She reached up, putting her hands on the sides of my head. “I know,” she said, staring at me, her fingers trembling. “But it’s not safe for me here.” She darted her eyes toward Cavallini. “Say good-bye. He’s watching.”

  I kissed her on the mouth, feeling her lean against me. “You’re my wife.”

  But she had pulled away, stroking the side of my face. “Yes. My father would be so proud.” Her voice soft, saying good-bye.

  “A rich American,” I said.

  “And that,” she said, smiling a little.

  “Here,” I said, taking an envelope out of my pocket. “My mother doesn’t have any-she just talks big.”

  “Adam, I can’t see her. How could I do that? It’s just what we say here.”

  “Take it anyway.”

  “You give me money to leave you?”

  “It’s marked. It’ll make it easier to find you.”

  She smiled, so that Cavallini, joining us, thought everything was fine.

  “So, all arranged,” he said, handing her a claim stub. “The rest is in your compartment.”

  “Thank you.”

  He bowed, kissing her hand. “It’s hard, these good-byes,” he said, “but now you must hurry.”

  I walked Claudia over to the train and held her hand as she climbed the steps. She glanced down the platform toward Cavallini.

  “Thank you, then. For Vanessi.”

  “So it’s true.”

  She made a wry half smile. “Even now you have to know. So important to you, to know. Was Maglione a good man? No, he couldn’t be. So you could be.”