My face felt warm, as if my mother’s words were stinging it. All I’d wanted to do, the start of everything, was to protect her. But he’d been rich, not after her money, not even thinking about it. I dropped the pictures, my hand shaking a little. What else had I been wrong about? I tried to think what his face had looked like when he hadn’t been smiling, when he had been reaching for me in the hall. Malevolent, or just angry, frustrated? Maybe Claudia’s landlady had wanted the rooms back. Maybe the Accademia was cutting staff. Maybe I’d killed the young man in the photograph, imagining he’d become someone else. Held his head underwater until the life went out of him because I had got everything wrong. Not just murder, murder for no reason at all. I sat for a few minutes more, my chest suddenly tight, taking in gulps of air, then went over to the phone and placed a trunk call to Rosa Soriano.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Well, now you have your answer,” Rosa said, tapping the newspaper lying on the folder next to her. We were at the Bauer again, at the same breakfast, except that sunshine had replaced the rain outside. “ Una cospirazione comunista.” She smiled a little, shaking her head.
Gianni’s funeral took up half the front page, with a big picture of the casket being carried down the Salute steps, the veiled Giulia just behind, held by the elbows for theatrical effect, a scene ready for La Fenice.
“Why Communist?”
“Why not? A political killing, very convenient. You don’t scare the tourists and you get to blame the Communists for something else. You see it says here ‘rumors.’ In other words, they don’t know, but now people have the impression the Communists did it.”
“But why would they want to?”
“An old Venetian family, a doctor, a ‘savior of men,’ everything that’s good-naturally they’d want to get rid of him.” She pushed the paper aside. “Who knows why? As long as they did. So now they’re like gangsters, even worse than people thought.” She sipped her tea. “It’s not a political city, you know. Whatever’s good for business.” She smiled. “When the Allies came in-from New Zealand, did you know? Venice liberated by New Zealand-they were still serving German officers at Quadri’s. Not in uniform. Civilian clothes. They hated to leave. One last coffee. So the waiters kept serving. That was all right. It was after — when the partisans acted. For the crimes, all those years. People shot. That was terrible, worse than the Germans. You see how it says here about the brother?” She tapped the paper again. “A tragic family. Again this violence. So they make the connection. Another killing, like the brother. Partisans again. Now Communists, the same thing to them.”
“But maybe it was a partisan.”
She looked at me over the rim of her cup but didn’t say anything.
“You said they acted on their own sometimes. If the trials-”
She was nodding. “Yes, it was the first thing I thought, when I heard. Like Il Gazzettino,” she said, giving a wry glance at the paper.
“But now you don’t?”
“A feeling only. Why now, so late?” She took the cup in both hands, warming herself. “You see, when the Germans left, there were killings like this. A season of bad blood-avenge this one, that one. You know, this happens. A part of war. But then it stops. It’s enough. And the way he was killed-”
“What do you mean?”
“So clumsy. Like a thief. With the partisans, it was a bullet. A military action, not a crime. Oh, such a look. You think it’s the same? It’s not the same to them. These are not criminals. Soldiers. They were fighting for their country. But the war’s over. So why now? It’s only for us,” she said, waving her hand back and forth between us, “that the war doesn’t end. With our files. For the others, it’s late.” She paused. “But also too early. You know, when I said they act, they find their own proof, it’s for justice. Because I couldn’t do it with this.” She placed her hand on the folder. “But there hasn’t been any trial. They don’t have to make their own justice yet. It’s too soon.”
“Maybe someone didn’t want to wait.”
“Maybe, but there’s no talk of this. You know I have many contacts. Old colleagues,” she said, raising an eyebrow, almost conspiratorial. “No one says anything.” She sighed. “But what’s the difference now? He got his justice anyway.”
“You found the proof?”
“Proof?”
“The fire. The house.”
She looked away. “The house, no. No proof. The dates don’t work.”
“What?”
“The man who was in hospital, Moretti, he was released October fourth. That’s the date you found, yes? It’s too early. The raid, it’s not until the fifteenth. Why would they wait? And he doesn’t come to us. A week in Verona, a safe house there. I thought at first it must be-such a coincidence, Moretti in the hospital, if he had just come from Venice, but no. First to Verona. If they tracked him, why wait?”
“For someone else to come to the house,” I said faintly.
“No one else came. Couriers, people who had been before. None of them were in the house when the Germans attacked. None were picked up later. So who were they waiting for? Of course, maybe there’s something in the German records-you know, in all the confusion, some are missing. But still, why wait? It’s not characteristic. The dates don’t work.”
I stared at her, gripping the edge of the table, stepping into the outer swirl of an eddy. “You mean he might not have done it?”
“I mean we can’t prove it. For a trial. Except it’s not a question of that anymore. He’s dead.”
“But how do we know-?” I stopped, one thought tumbling over another. “What if he didn’t do it?”
“If not the house, something else. He was a collaborator, no? Isn’t that why you came to us in the first place? He was what he was.”
“But what, exactly?” I said, mostly to myself.
She looked at me, surprised.
“I mean, we should know. Now that we’ve started.”
“But he’s ended it, Signor Miller. He’s dead. The file is closed. I can’t investigate the dead. There’s no time for that.”
“But he was killed.”
“Well, now it’s a police matter.” She paused. “That’s what’s troubling you? You feel guilty?”
I looked at her.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I know what you think. We open the file, start looking, and someone hears. Aha, so it’s Maglione, he thinks. And he decides to act. On his own. Because we started this.” She put her hand across the table, not quite touching mine. “We can’t blame ourselves for this. I make files, that’s all. The files don’t kill people. Maybe it was always going to happen. Maybe this is the justice. Anyway, it’s done.” She moved her cup aside, finished.
“But if a partisan killed him, wouldn’t you want to know?”
She looked straight at me. “And what? Bring him to trial? No. My justice doesn’t go that far. And how did he know? Because we started this. Then it’s our fault too? So we all killed him? That’s what you want to think?”
“But what if we killed the wrong man?” I said, shaky, finally there, near the center of the eddy.
She stared at me for a moment, then put both hands in front of her, fingers touching, making a point. “Signor Miller, he’s dead. If he did terrible things-well, it’s good, yes? If he didn’t, he’s dead anyway. What do you want me to do? Get proof and condemn him in the ground? Or no proof-then what? Rehabilitate him? Make a good reputation for him? In Il Gazzettino he’s already a hero. What more can he want? Let it go now. Close the file.”
“But then we’ll never know if he did it.”
“It’s so important to you, this?” she said. “What do you want to prove? That he deserved to die?”
I looked away, for a second seeing again the gray skin on San Michele, pasty and inert.
“Lieutenant Sullivan said it was like this with you,” Rosa said. “Personal. In Germany, every case.”
Had it been? Is that what Joe had thought? Folder after folder. “I hate to walk away. That’s all.”
“Yes, but there are so many others. The point is to make a trial. To make it known. There’s no trial here,”
