she said, putting her hand on the file. “Not anymore. It doesn’t matter to me how he died. There’s no trial.” She was silent for a minute, waiting, then began to gather up her things. Case closed.
“But I have to know,” I said, the words jumping out of me, trying to hold her in her seat.
She looked up at me, startled.
“Want to know,” I said, correcting myself. “I want to know what he did. So do you.”
“It’s not personal with me, Signor Miller. I don’t have the time.”
It was at that moment, everything swirling again, that I saw Cavallini, a glimpse over Rosa’s shoulder, circling into my line of vision across the room-the mustache, then the side of his face, then his back, sitting down. I craned my neck, looking around her. Was he meeting someone? No, alone. At the Bauer. Talking to the waiter now, opening a paper. Why not at work at the Questura? Unless he was at work, keeping me in sight. The one man in Venice he could trust.
“Look,” I said, dropping my voice, as if he could actually hear it across the room, “all I’m asking you to do is keep checking the German files. There has to be something, and I don’t have access. You do that and I’ll work the rest from this end.”
“Work what?”
“I’ll finish that,” I said, pointing to the file. “The hospital, the times, how it happened.” I hesitated. “The other members of the group. Not to nail them. I promise you, if it turns out-”
“Don’t promise me anything.”
“If it was a partisan, it stops here. You won’t know. Nobody knows.”
“Except you,” she said, tilting her head slightly, as if another angle might explain things. “Then why do it?”
Why. Because there had to be a reason for the bubbles in the water. But why else? Something I could say that she could believe. Over her shoulder, the waiter was pouring Cavallini’s coffee.
“Because it wasn’t a partisan. You don’t think so and neither do I.”
“No?”
“We can’t stop now. You’ve already done the spade work-now you’re just going to give it a pass? An atrocity everybody knows about? There should be a trial.”
“Signor Miller, he’s dead,” she said, her voice weary but her eyes intrigued, assessing me. Think of something. Quickly. Cavallini would turn in his seat any second, make an elaborate show of coming over. Rosa’s help lost for good. I’d never know.
“But not everyone is. Whoever killed him isn’t.”
“Not a partisan,” she said slowly.
“No. And if I find him,” I said, nodding at the file, “then you’re back in business. So it’s worth a chance.”
She had leaned forward, her whole body listening. “Back in business?”
“Well, there’s always somebody else, isn’t there? Always. But nothing ever came out. Then all of a sudden you’re investigating Gianni-you know something, you’re getting close. So if you were the somebody else, it might be a good time to get rid of Gianni,” I said, rushing now, believing it myself, the way it should have happened.
“Another collaborator.”
“Who set up the raid.” I opened my palm, an offering. “Your trial.” And then, before she could say anything, “Could you get me a list of everyone you talked to, who knew you were doing this?”
Because there had to be someone who knew about Gianni, who could tell me.
“Besides you and Lieutenant Sullivan?”
“Everyone. At the hospital, whoever you talked to. It had to be someone who knew this was happening, that you were opening the case.”
“But they might have talked to others.”
“I know. We’ll follow it as far as we can.”
“Oh, we. I told you-”
“ I. You just work on the Germans. I’ll take care of that,” I said, reaching over for the file.
“You know I can’t. It’s Allied property.”
“Joe would do it for me.”
“And me? When they ask me?”
“Files get lost. Misplaced. Even the Germans lost files,” I said. “It happens. And then they turn up again. You want to know what happened too, don’t you?” She raised her hand, letting the file slide away, then pushed up her sleeve and scratched the white skin on her arm. “We both want to know.” I kept looking at her as I pulled the folder toward me.
“And you’re going to do this all by yourself? One man. Talk to all these people, in Italian. How? I can’t take the time.”
“I know. We made a deal. Just work the German side.”
“But you can’t-”
I glanced over her shoulder again. The one man he could trust. Not even an idea, an impulse, grabbing at anything, unable to stop now, the eddy in control. “Yes, I can. I’m going to get the police to help.”
We had to pass Cavallini’s table to leave the dining room, so there was no avoiding a meeting. He sprang up when we got near, as if he’d been waiting.
“Ah, Signora Soriano. They said you would be here.” He took her hand. Waiting for Rosa, not me.
“You know each other?” I said.
“Who said I would be here?”
“I telephoned your office.”
“Ah, looking for the Communists,” she said, pointing to the paper in front of him, mischievous. “You know I can’t help you with that. I don’t know any.”
“No one does,” Cavallini said, smiling back. “Sometimes, you know, I think we make them up.”
Rosa looked at him. “Sometimes you do. But they’re useful, no?” She nodded to the paper.
“Some coffee? You can join me?” He offered a seat.
“No, it’s impossible. I’m late. If I’d known-it’s important? You came here to see me?”
“I don’t like to interrupt,” he said, motioning toward the table where we’d been.
“What is it?” Rosa said, direct.
“Not the Communists,” he said, picking up the paper. “The victim. You have so much information about our Venetian citizens. I thought perhaps-you know, we have to look everywhere in a murder case.”
“Ha, so this is your help?” she said to me. “ Come due gocce d’acqua. What’s the English? Not drops of water-peas.”
“Two peas in a pod,” I said, not really following.
“Both of you, so interested in Maglione,” she said to Cavallini, then pointed her thumb at me. “Talk to him. You know I’m not allowed. Only if Lieutenant Sullivan-”
“But you can tell me-is there a file?”
She kept her eyes on him, away from the folder in the newspaper under my arm.
“A murder case, signora.”
“All right. I’ll look,” she said evenly. “But now I should go. You’re finished with me?”
“It’s not an interrogation,” Cavallini said, smiling.
“There’s a difference, with police?” she said, but pleasantly, easing her way out. “I’ll call you,” she said to me. “Good luck.” This with a move of her eyes to Cavallini.
“So you know the famous Rosa,” Cavallini said as she left.
“She works for a friend of mine. Why famous?”
“During the war, in the resistance. Brave, like a man. The Germans never got her. A Communist, you know.”
“She says not.”
He shrugged. “They all say not. So, why good luck? The peas in a pod?”
“We both asked her about Gianni.”
“Ah,” he said, noncommittal.
“Look, you said on San Michele that I could help. Maybe I can. This is what I did in Germany, with her boss. The army’s not going to talk to you-they like to keep things to themselves. But he’ll talk to me. I can find out what
