Alibi

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Claudia and I were married at a magistrate’s office in a ceremony that lasted less than fifteen minutes. Mimi and Bertie were the witnesses, and because there was no party, no real wedding, they insisted on taking us to lunch afterward at the Gritti. I had called my mother and told her not to come, and after a squeal of protest I think she was relieved not to have to make the trip. We’d have a proper celebration later, she finally agreed, but why the rush? Claudia wore an off-white silk dress with a coral belt that we bought in the Calle Frazzaria, off San Marco, and Bertie somehow miraculously found a corsage of hothouse flowers that set it off like a giant tropical brooch. A man took souvenir pictures after we signed the registry, and we are all smiling in them. It was not the wedding any of us would have imagined, but Venice made up for the missing bridesmaids. The weather was beautiful, warm enough to eat outside on the Gritti’s floating dock, with all the canal traffic going by. We joked that Salute, gleaming across the water with its marble icing, was our wedding cake.

“And you’re already here for your honeymoon,” Bertie said. “Think of them all, pouring out of the station. All swozzled and cranky before they even begin. Well, cheers.” He lifted his champagne glass. “ Auguri.”

“What do you suppose they do?” Mimi said.

Bertie sputtered, smiling. “Mimi, dear-”

“During the day. I mean, you don’t want to look at Tintorettos on your honeymoon, do you?”

“Gondola rides,” I said. “With accordions.”

“What does Signora Miller want to do?” Bertie said, tipping his glass to Claudia.

“Signora Miller,” she said, trying it out. “It is, now, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” Bertie said. “I’m a witness.”

“It started with you, you know,” I said. “Your party. You introduced us.”

“I wish you’d introduce someone to me,” Mimi said.

“Oh no,” Bertie said, holding up his hands. “Anyway, as I recall, Adam, you introduced yourself. Bold as brass. And now look.”

“Yes,” I said, looking at Claudia, pretty with her flowers, the bright sky behind her.

“Signora Miller doesn’t want to do anything,” she said, as if Bertie had been waiting for an answer. “She’s happy to sit right here.” She looked over the blue midday water to the palazzos on the other side. One of the traghetto gondolas was weaving its way across, graceful as a dancer on point. “I could sit here forever.”

“Yes,” Bertie said, following her gaze. “Wouldn’t it be nice?”

We finished the wine, talking idly, then Bertie excused himself, and a few minutes later I followed. In the men’s room he was leaning on the marble counter, dabbing his face with a cold towel.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes, certainly. Why wouldn’t it be?” He looked at me in the mirror, then blotted his face again.

“I mean, are you in pain?”

A longer stare now in the mirror, then a resigned look away. “Somebody’s been reading medical reports.” He wiped his hands on the towel. “It’s all right now. It won’t be soon. Does that answer it?”

“No. Talk to me.”

He shook his head. “There’s no point. If you’ve read my file, then you know everything I know.”

“I don’t know what it means.”

“It means enjoy the beautiful day outside. I intend to. And that doesn’t mean going on about things that can’t be helped. Or things that-well, things. So let me enjoy it, please. I mean it, Adam. And not a word to Grace, either. Rushing back on trains and making me a cause. I know just what she’s like.”

“Bertie-”

“No,” he said, putting his hand on my arm. “Now let’s not ruin the day. It’s supposed to be the happiest day of your life.” He looked up at me. “Hers, anyway.”

“Did you get another opinion?”

“Yes, I’ve been through all that. Gianni was a perfectly competent doctor, you know, whatever else you may think he was. If he was.” He turned away. “Find anything else in his files?”

I shook my head. “Just you.”

“Serves you right. Snoop.” He threw the towel in the wicker hamper underneath the sink. “Better go before Mimi comes in after us. Don’t think she wouldn’t.” He started for the door, then stopped. “I almost forgot. Here.” He took an envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to me. “For the happy couple.”

“Bertie.”

“I know, I shouldn’t have, but I did. Now put it away before you-know-who sees it.”

I stepped closer and put my arms around him, surprised a little when he hugged back.

“All right, all right,” he said, breaking away, touched. “It’s not a funeral, it’s a wedding. Such as it is. So let’s have a drink, and if you’re good, I’ll get Mimi away and you can have the day to yourselves.”

It took two drinks but then they were gone, taking their conversation with them. We sat quietly for a while in the sun, rocking on the wakes of the passing boats. The waiters, paid by Bertie, had disappeared inside.

“Is there anything you’d like to do?” I said. “See Tintorettos?”

She kept facing the water, squinting a little against the sunlight.

“I’d like to see my father,” she said finally. “Would you mind?”

I shook my head, waiting, not knowing what she meant.

“But it’s so far to walk. These shoes. Do you have money for a taxi?”

I patted my jacket pocket. “We’re rich. Bertie gave me a check. Where?”

But she was already getting up and walking over to the landing platform. A bellman helped her into the motorboat, then I followed, both of us sitting back against the cushions as the boat headed up the canal. The motor was too loud to talk over, so we watched the city go by, under the Accademia bridge, past the turn where Ca’ Maglione stood, brightened now with pots of geraniums on the balconies, then up the busy stretch to the Rialto, the water crowded with delivery boats. The view from Bertie’s window. What would happen to the house? I wondered. One of the assistants, perhaps, unseen but devoted, there in the end while the rest of us were kept away. Bertie’s real life, whirling in its own mystery.

We got out at San Marcuola and walked the rest of the way to the ghetto, Claudia’s high heels clicking loudly on the pavement. Away from the canal the streets became somber and dingy, and people stared openly at our clothes, the corsage almost startling here. Then up the narrow calle where her aunt used to gossip window to window, and over the bridge, ducking our heads in the low sottopasso to the open campo, as stark as before, the trees just beginning to bud. She stood for a minute, looking. No one passed us, the only campo in Venice that seemed lifeless, left behind.

“I always say I’ll never come here again, and then I come back,” she said.

We went over to a bench in front of what had been the old people’s home. She sat for a minute with her back against the wall, then leaned forward and took off her shoes.

“ Mama mia, these shoes. What?”

“ Mama mia,” I said, grinning. “A real Italian.”

“Ha, like the others,” she said, rubbing her foot. “At Signor Howard’s, speaking English. You don’t know real Italians.”

“I married one, didn’t I?”

She stared at the campo. “I don’t feel Italian here. Something else. They didn’t think we were Italian when they came for us.” She sat back, frowning. “Why do I come here? It’s always the same.”

“Maybe that’s why.”

“No, it’s foolish. But at the Gritti I thought, what am I doing here? My father can’t see me here.”

“But he can here?”

“No, that’s why it’s so foolish. But I wish he could. I thought, Today I wish he could see me. This dress. These shoes. Married. Just to show him I am alive. He never expected to see that.” She paused. “Well, did I? I never thought I’d leave that place. And now, flowers,” she said, touching the corsage. “So maybe I came to see myself. All dressed up. Show off to the neighbors.”

I lit cigarettes for us. “Maybe you will see somebody. You never know.”

She shook her head, the empty campo its own answer, then pointed across to one of the tall buildings. “That’s where it would have been, the wedding. See the windows on the third floor? There. And then after, a party somewhere. Big, with everybody. He liked parties.”

“Would he have liked me?” I said, just making conversation.

She shook her head, smiling. “No.”

“No?”

“No.” Laughing now, a private joke.

“Why not?”

“You’re not Jewish.”

“Part.”

She waved this away. “Americans. It’s different.”

“How?”

“It’s different.” She turned, a new idea. “And now me. I’m American too, yes? Passport, everything?”

“Everything.”

“I forgot about the passport,” she said. “Now I can go anywhere.”

“Almost worth getting married for.”

“He would have liked that, anyway. You know, for him, that generation, America was like a dream.” She looked again at the synagogue windows. “He would have made a big fuss. Introducing you. All the relatives.”

I kept looking at the campo, saying nothing.

“Well,” she said, moving somewhere else in her mind.

“Are you sorry it wasn’t like that?”

“Me? I’m supposed to be dead. Sometimes, at the Gritti, it’s easy to forget. Then I come here and I see it again.” She opened her hand to the square. “We’re all supposed to be dead. Not married, dead.” She paused. “And now who’s dead? The man who killed him. So that’s one thing I did for my father.”

“He can’t see that either,” I said.

“No, but I’m glad. I’m glad it was me.”

“It wasn’t you,” I said quietly.

“Yes, both of us. Do you think they’d take one of us without the other?”

I glanced at her, suddenly back in the registrar’s office. “Nobody’s taking anybody.”

“No. Well,” she said, getting up, dropping the cigarette, “not today. Anyway, such talk. On a wedding day. Of course, it’s not that kind of wedding, is it?” she said, nodding toward the windows again, where the relatives would have been.

“What kind is it?”

She ground out the cigarette with her toe. “Our kind.”

We walked toward the station, intending to get a taxi back, and in a few minutes were on the Lista di Espagna, crowded with people just off the train.

“Let’s go back there,” she said, pointing to the hotel on the side street where we’d first made love. “Do you want to?”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Not your mother’s house. There.”

The desk clerk raised his eyebrows at Claudia’s corsage, as if we were newlyweds from Maestre who’d wandered into the wrong place, but he gave us a key. Claudia was playful on the stairs, backing me against the wall on the landing, the way we’d been that first time, too eager to open the door. But the room was different, stuffy, in the back, and we had to draw the blinds against sun this time, not the cold rain that had made us feel hidden away, illicit. When she took off her clothes, first unpinning the flowers, I thought of her unbuttoning her blouse that day, the jolt of it, before anything happened. Before we were different. She felt it too, I think, that sudden moment of everything being different, because she looked for one second as if she might dart away, but then she stepped over to me, naked, and pressed herself against me, and that was the same again, different but the same.

We made love in a kind of rush, grabbing, so that our minds were free of everything but what was happening to our skin. You could feel it being pushed away, every thought crowded out by physical excitement, gathering speed, until sex was something happening to us, not in our control at all. When she came, a ragged burst of gasps in my ear, the sound seemed dragged out of her, involuntary, and then I was coming too, almost surprised by it, as if I’d been caught in some unwilled convulsion. I stayed in her afterward, not sure it was over, then finally rolled off, blinking at the ceiling, returning, still not thinking about anything. The way she’d once described it, something to prove you’re alive, just feeling it. When she’d told me it could be anyone, as long as you could feel it.

Now she was leaning over me, propped up on one arm, touching my face.

“We still have this, don’t we?” she said, not waiting for an answer, bending down to kiss me.

“You’re all red,” I said, reaching up and running my hand over the tops of her breasts, still flushed, as if she had a birthmark.

She smiled a little, feeling my fingers, her eyes on mine. “You should marry me.”

“Okay.”

“We could spend our wedding night here.”

“We could,” I said, my fingers still tracing a line across her chest.

For a second she gave in to the stroking, closing her eyes. Then she opened them again and stared down at me. “You’re not sorry?”

I shook my head, turning my hand over, brushing her with the back of it. “I’ll marry you again,” I said. “Would that do it?”

She nodded. “For all the other reasons. For those.”

I let my hand drop, then reached up with both arms and pulled her to me, kissing her, and for a while it really was the same again, but different.

We tried to sleep, lazy after sex, but the voices from the Lista di Espagna funneled into the calle, seeping through the window like dust, and neither of us really wanted to stay. Instead, like real honeymooners, we took a gondola, winding through the back canals until we lost our sense of direction, content to watch people crossing bridges over our heads, moving at their land pace while we drifted below. Sometimes they stopped to look at us, pointing at Claudia’s corsage, so that, mirrorlike, we became part of each other’s scenery. By the time the gondolier got back on the Grand Canal the sun was setting, the water gold and pastel, and he threw out his arms in an ecco gesture, as if he had arranged it for us, a wedding gift.

After the Gritti lunch, it seemed extravagant to go out, but the house in Dorsoduro felt confining, filled with ghosts, and Claudia said she wanted to do something American, so we ended up going to Lucille’s, just behind Campo San Fantin. The club had opened during the occupation, a little piece of home, and the customers were still mostly soldiers, on leave from bases in the Veneto or attached to one of the Allied offices that hadn’t yet packed up and gone. It had the borrowed, pretend quality of places like it in Germany-America till you walked out the door-and most of the locals avoided it.

When we got there, it was only half full. The band was finishing its first set, so the house lights were down, the other customers just shadows in the smoky darkness. At the table next to ours everyone was in uniform, drinking beer. Lucille, the colored singer who fronted the place, was doing “Easy Living,” trying to pass as Billie Holiday, with a flower in her hair. The soldiers next to us stared at Claudia when we sat down, someone approachable, the kind of girl who went to jazz clubs, and for a second I stiffened, then laughed at myself, a cartoon reaction: That’s my wife.

Lucille finished, and through the applause I heard one of the soldiers say, “Hey”-not flirting, trying to get our attention.

“Hey,” he said again, “remember us?” Moving his finger between him and his friend. “The island that was closed. Jim and Mario.”

“Torcello,” Claudia said, smiling. “Yes. You’re still here?”

“Last day,” one of them said. “Hey, let us buy you a beer.”

Claudia held up her left hand, wiggling her ring finger. “Ask him,” she said, nodding to me.

“What did I tell you?” one said to the other, then leaned forward, taking me in. “That’s great. When?”

“Today.”

“Today? Fucking A,” the GI said, then dipped his head in apology to Claudia. “Congratulations.” He signaled the waiter, then moved his chair closer, half joining us at the small club table. We shook hands.

“I have to tell you, I knew it. I said to him, what else would they come out here for? I mean, with the restaurant closed. We cleared out, remember?”

“I remember.”

Claudia, who seemed to be enjoying herself, shook hands with both of them.

“Mario?” she said.

“Calabrese. My grandfather.”

“Ah,” she said, pointing to herself. “Romana.”

The beers arrived, hers in a glass. She lifted it to them. “ Salute,” she said, smiling, the party we hadn’t had at the Gritti. “So they sent you here? You speak Italian?”

“Two words, maybe. My father didn’t want us to-”

He stopped, afraid of offending, and just then Lucille stood up again, this time for a comic, sexy version of “The Frim Fram Sauce,” flirting with the audience, coating each word with innuendo. Claudia tried to follow it, taking her cues from Jim and Mario, who laughed at all the right places, but inevitably her reactions were late, one step behind, foreign.

“What’s chiffafa?” she asked Mario as we applauded. “A vegetable?”

He laughed. “It’s just jive,” he said, almost shouting. The band had started playing, without Lucille, so people talked above it, the small room noisy. He pointed at Claudia’s wedding ring. “So does this mean you’re going to the States?”

“What do you think, will I like it?”

“Like it? You’re gonna love it. It’s the States.”

“Yes? Which one are you from?”

I sat back watching, not really listening. New York had everything-the big shows, everything. It never stopped, not like here, where they rolled the streets up-well, canals, rolled the canals up. Jim laughed, trying to picture this, then both soldiers turned to Claudia to tell her about things she had to see, things she’d like because they liked them. GI talk. America now a movie to them, shinier than anything they’d ever known. And why not? I smiled to myself, enjoying the breezy descriptions, Claudia’s face as she listened, pretending to be wide-eyed, the sort of girl they might want to take back themselves. There were more drinks. Mario asked her to dance, if it was all right with me.

“You’re a lucky guy,” Jim said, stuck with me now. “Want us to clear out?”

“No, she’s having fun,” I said, looking at her on the floor, doing a foxtrot with Mario.

“Some place, huh? Like being home.”

I looked at her again, my chest suddenly tight. My wife. Of course we’d have to go back sometime. But even in this ersatz version in San Fantin she seemed out of place. America was about easy happiness, chiffafa, as casual as picking up a girl in a club. I thought of the look in her eyes that afternoon as she had stared across the empty campo. What would she do with it there, her old life? Pretend it didn’t exist, like Bertie, until it started to grow inside her?

Mario finished with a surprise twirl, so they were laughing as they came off the floor. When her laugh stopped suddenly, cut off, we all looked at her, then followed her gaze toward the back of the room.

“See a ghost?” Jim said.

“No, no, sorry,” she said, sitting down. “It’s nothing.”

But my eye had caught him now too, the mustache neatly brushed, sitting against the wall in a double-breasted suit, on the town. A woman was with him, her back to us, and I tried to look away before he saw me. Not Signora Cavallini. Maybe a friend from Maestre. Lucille’s was a kind of Maestre-no one his wife knew would come here. I felt embarrassed, as if I had opened the wrong door by mistake.

“He’s coming over,” Claudia said.

I turned, expecting some version of a man of the world wink, an elbow nudge, but instead he was smiling, delighted.

“Signor Miller. So you like the jazz too? All the young people, it seems,” he said, waving his hand toward his table, where the woman had turned to face us.

Giulia. For a second I simply stared, too surprised to move, then she was nodding and I had to nod back. She was dressed for a night out, lipstick and earrings, no trace of mourning. To see Cavallini? In a place where no one would see them. But neither of them seemed disconcerted by our being there. Cavallini was taking Claudia’s hand, greeting her.

“Please, you’ll join us?”

“Oh, but-” Claudia fluttered, spreading her hands to Jim and Mario, clearly unnerved by the idea of sitting with Cavallini.

“That’s okay,” Mario said. “We were just having a beer. You go sit with your friends. I mean, what the hell, your wedding day.”

“How?” Cavallini said.

“Claudia and I were married today,” I said to him.

He looked at me, speechless for a moment, then fell back on form, taking up Claudia’s hand again with a flourish. “Signora Miller. My very best wishes,” he said, the English sounding curiously like a translation. He turned to me. “So. You didn’t wait for your mother?”

“We didn’t wait for anybody. We just thought it was time.”

“Yes, I know how that is. Everything for the family, and really you want to be alone.” I thought of his wife, an unlikely candidate for elopement. “And now here we are, more people. But at least have some wine with us to celebrate?” He glanced at the table of beer bottles.

“That would be nice,” I said, shooting a look at Claudia.

Cavallini extended the invitation to the GIs too, but they begged off, so it was just the four of us at the little table in the back.

“Giulia, what do you think? Married today,” Cavallini said, waving his hand at us, then summoning the waiter for more chairs.

“Yes?” Giulia said to me, taken aback. And then, for an instant, a look that was more than surprise, a question mark, a change of plan. “So. That’s wonderful. You didn’t tell anyone?”

“Ah, no secrets from the Questura,” Cavallini said, joking. “You see how we find you out, even here.”

I laughed, but Claudia barely managed a smile. When the chairs were brought, she sat at the edge of hers, as if she were afraid of accidentally touching Cavallini’s leg. It was an awkward table. Giulia talked about jazz, popular at the university because it had to be clandestine, almost a link with the Allies. Cavallini asked about the wedding. Finally the bottle arrived and Cavallini made a toast to our future.

“Yes, the future,” Claudia said, edgy.

“And what will it be?” Cavallini said pleasantly.

Claudia shrugged.

“You don’t know? But women always know. They’re the ones with the plan. The men-” He opened his hand, all of us feckless.

“America, I suppose,” she said. “It depends on Adam.”

“Ha, already a wife. My wife too. Everything depends on me, as long as it’s what she wants,” he said, raising his glass to Claudia.

I glanced quickly at Giulia, surprised he’d mentioned his wife. Maybe not a girl from Maestre after all.

“You could leave Venice?” Giulia said. “You know, I thought I could, and then at university I missed it. Terra firma, nothing moves. I missed the water.”

“Not everyone likes the water,” Cavallini said. “Maybe it’s different for Signora Miller.” He nodded at her new name. “When you can’t swim-”

“How do you know that?” Claudia said, off-guard.

“I’m sorry,” he said, genial. “It’s not true?”

“No, it’s true, but how do you know? You asked someone that?”

“No, no, Signor Miller mentioned it. We were talking about boats. He said you didn’t like boats, only the vaporetto.”

“She’s getting better,” I said, jumping in. “Today we took a gondola ride and she wasn’t nervous at all.”

“So you think I’m always the bloodhound?” Cavallini said, amused.

“Your men were asking questions at the hotel,” I said, explaining. “Checking times.”

“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.”

“All right, just a few more minutes.”

“What do you talk about, anyway?” she said. “Her father?”

“Actually, she was offering me a job.”

“What?” she said, the word catching in her throat, the beginning of a giggle.

“In the Maglione businesses.”

“A job? His daughter offers you a job?” she said, shaking now.

“Ssh,” I said, but she pulled back, putting her hand to her mouth, laughing, then gulping, her eyes shiny, and I realized that she was tipping out of control, pushed by drink and tension to somewhere easier, funnier.

“His daughter? His daughter wants to give you money? A reward?”

“Ssh, they’ll hear you.”

“What about me? Do I get something too?”

I pulled her close to me. “Stop it. Go to the ladies’ room-put some water on your face. I’ll get your coat.”

“And go?”

I nodded, my face against hers. “Just don’t say anything. Understand?”

“I know what job. Son-in-law. Ha, too late.”

“Claudia-”

“I know. Ssh.” She put her finger to her lips.

I got her off the floor to the ladies’ room, then stood outside for a second, shaken. Wasn’t this the way it always happened? All the answers, the cross-checked times, destroyed in a careless moment? I went over to the table for her coat.

“Sorry, but we’d better go.”

“She’s all right?” Giulia said.

“A little too much to drink, that’s all.”

“I’ll go see if-” she said, getting up.

“No, it’s fine. Good night. And thank you,” I said, taking her hand, looking directly at her, our secret.

“Yes, but I am the one who pays,” Cavallini said smoothly, a smile in his voice. He held up his hand before I could say anything. “No, I insist. A wedding gift. Here, let me tell the cameriere.” He led me away from the table, ostensibly to find the waiter but really to move out of earshot. “You see how remarkable she is. After losing a father.”

But I wasn’t thinking about Giulia. I looked toward the ladies’ room door, wondering what was happening inside. Was she talking to someone? Being sick? My forehead felt moist again, nervous sweat.

“And now more trouble. But at least we can protect her from this.”

“Protect her?” I said, distracted.

“This investigation-your Rosa. We had to start there, yes, but now it’s of no importance. He takes the medicine, he blames Gianni. What else matters?” I looked at him. Already making sure it went right. “These suspicions about Gianni. Imagine how it would hurt her.” He nodded toward the table where Giulia, alone, was lighting another cigarette.

“But the defense is bound to bring it up. They’d have to.”

“Well, if there is a trial.” What neither of them wanted now. “Let’s hope, for her sake-”

He let the rest of the thought float toward the table. She was looking out through the smoke toward the band, and suddenly I saw her as she would be, one of the ladies sitting alone at Harry’s or Florian’s. Rich, attended by Cavallini or someone like him, a curiosity, finally, for the tourists. How long would it take? Years, one layer of money at a time, the way varnish is spread over a painting to fix the colors. I squinted, as if I were really looking into crystal, waiting for the blur to clear, show me my own future, but nothing appeared, just Giulia sitting alone at Florian’s.

“These trials,” Cavallini was saying. “Who wins but the lawyers? You’re surprised I would say this? But I’ve seen it many times. One question, then another, something that doesn’t matter to the crime, and now it’s public. An embarrassment, worse. A reputation ruined-I have seen this-and for what? Think of Signorina Grassini-excuse me, Signora Miller.” He smiled, tipping his head slightly.

I turned to him, confused, not sure what connection he was making. “Claudia?”

He put his hand on my arm. “These are simple people, in the Questura. The obvious, that’s all they can see. In the end, what comes of it? Nothing. But meanwhile, it’s a trial, so they bring up everything.”

“Like what?”

“Excuse me, I don’t say this myself. I know she had a difficult time in that camp. And then to have to talk about it.”

“But why would she?”

“The way Vanessi died-you understand, these are simple people. Everything to them is suspicious. Of course, nothing was ever proven. But still they ask their stupid questions. Do they know how the person feels, to talk about this?” He gripped my arm more tightly. “A woman who has suffered that way. To talk about it, that’s not justice. That’s Rosa’s justice. Forgive me. It’s only my concern for you, how you will feel, if your wife-”

He stopped, as if enough had been said and anything more would overstep. I felt his hand, the message behind the words, literally strong-arming me, but to do what? Talk to Rosa? Get her to make Moretti confess? Did he really think that was possible, really think Moretti had done it? Or did it matter anymore? I stared at him, unable to reply, alarmed that Claudia had been discussed at the Questura. Simple people. The way Vanessi died.

“Ah, there you are,” Cavallini said to Claudia as she came out. “You’re feeling well?”

I glanced over, worried, but she was clear-eyed, herself again.

“Yes, fine. A little tired.” She moved toward the coat I held up. “Thank you for the wine,” she said to Cavallini.

“An honor.” He bowed.

We were standing near the bar, the way out, and Cavallini’s gesture caught the eye of a young Italian sitting on one of the stools. He made a sound to his friends, who laughed. Cavallini turned. “Eh,” he said, a polite warning, as if he were in uniform, not a double-breasted jacket.

“ Il conte, permesso,” the kid said, sweeping his hand in front of him.

Cavallini said something quickly in Italian, which made the group laugh, probably because it was the cartoon response they’d expected, pompous and middle-aged.

“Hey, you’re not going?” Mario, with Jim and a few others.

“Yes. It was nice to see you. Good luck.”

The Italian at the bar said something to his friends, obviously a wisecrack, because Cavallini snapped his head around and told him to behave himself.

“What about us? Don’t we get a dance?” one of the other GIs said. “I mean, who else are we going to dance with?”

“Give it a rest, Lenny.” Mario winked at us, excusing him. “Four drinks and he’s the Rockettes.”

“Come on, babe, one turn around the floor. Souvenir of Venice.”

He moved forward, reaching for Claudia, but Jim stepped in between and put a restraining arm around his shoulders. “Next time, Lenny.” Behind us, the Italian group started laughing again.

“Hey, he’s all right,” Lenny’s friend said to Jim. “Let him have a turn, what the hell.”

“The lady’s leaving,” Jim said, holding up his other hand.

“The lady’s leaving,” the young Italian said in English to his friends, in a mock singsong, then sputtered something in Italian, clearly obscene, and laughed.

I felt it before I saw it, a rush of air next to me, Cavallini’s arm shooting out, pushing the Italian off his stool and pinning him against the wall by the throat. Claudia jumped, but the rest of us froze, stunned by the animal speed of it, then the angry growl of words.

“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.

“Let’s not stay here,” she said, still in the doorway. “Not tonight. Let’s go somewhere else.”

I turned to her. “We have to stay here,” I said, touching her shoulder. “How would it look?”

She slumped for a minute, then straightened. “That’s right, I for got. We stay here and wait. Until he turns the wrong way. Except that it’s the right way.”

“Ssh. Angelina’s upstairs.”

“And we’ll be here. Waiting. We can show him where.” She pointed toward the water gate. “We can look at it every day, while we’re waiting.”

“It’s okay,” I said, stroking her shoulder. “It’s not for long. You’ll get used to it.”

Her shoulder moved under my hand, almost a spasm, as if she had started to laugh but caught it before she could be heard. I pressed down, feeling the shaking, not laughter, but she stepped away from me, walked over to the ice bucket, and picked at the foil over the cork. “She left champagne. We should open it. She’ll be offended.” Her fingers stopped, resting on the foil. “I thought you were something new in my life. A new life. Now look where we are.” She turned, looking at me. “A new prison.”

I stood still, suddenly afraid that she had seen what I couldn’t, our piece of the crystal.

“It’s not like that,” I said.

She looked at me for another minute, as if she had something else to say, then gave it up and turned back to the bucket.

“Close the door,” she said.

I reached behind me to push, and because I didn’t hold it, the heavy weight of the wood swung away from me, slamming shut with a clang that sounded like metal, loud enough to echo down the hall.