them. So now the lawyers will have to save him, not the file clerk,” she said, pointing to herself.
“Help me.”
“Do what?”
“Find out what happened. None of it makes sense. Gianni faked a medical report. Why? Risked his license for Moretti, maybe saved his life. Does that sound like Gianni to you?”
“Anything’s possible.” She dropped some ashes and rubbed them with her shoe.
“Tell me about Moretti. Was he a Communist?”
“A patriot.”
“And a friend of Gianni’s brother.” She looked at me, not surprised to hear it but surprised I knew. “I saw an old picture. But he was a Communist?”
She shrugged. “Many came from good families. With them, a matter of conviction.”
“Was he involved-when Paolo was killed?”
She pulled on the cigarette, saying nothing.
“Rosa.”
“Don’t ask me this.”
“For chrissake, why not? It was during the war. What does it matter now?”
“It would matter to the son. He’s already heard enough. Let it go. It’s the past.”
“Why? It would make him a hero, wouldn’t it?”
“A hero. Do you know what that meant, in that kind of war? It’s not the army. Everything is permitted. It’s good to lie. To kill. And then it’s over and it’s the opposite.”
“Yes,” Claudia said unexpectedly. Rosa looked at her, not sure how to respond, then back at me.
“I’m not going to tell his son.”
“All right. Tell me.”
She dropped the cigarette and took a few steps toward the canal, wrapping her sweater tighter. “Paolo was a fool, but he was careful. Maybe people were careful for him. So, to get him, they had to trick him. Moretti knew him-an old friend, as you say.”
“He set him up?”
“You want to know the details? What’s the difference? He betrayed him, he helped to kill him. Paolo trusted him, so it started with him.”
“Then why would Gianni help him?”
“He didn’t know. Who was going to tell him, Moretti?”
“But-”
“That’s right. He kills his old friend and then lies to the brother to save himself. Not the way a hero acts. I told you, it was that kind of war. Anything was right.”
“Who else killed him? Who was also in the house-besides Moretti.”
“Also in the house? Just one,” she said, looking straight at me.
I held her eyes for a second, then dropped my gaze to the pavement, thinking. “So there’s no other connection. And Moretti leaves the hospital and nothing happens. Gianni helps him.”
“A wonderful man.”
“But it has to be him somehow.”
“Well, now there’s a life at stake. I have to help the lawyers. I leave the doctor to you.”
“Why fake the report?” I said, moving absentmindedly in a small circle. “Start with that.”
“You start. I have to go now.”
“Wait. What about the attending nurse? I just remembered. She signed the report too, so she must know something. Please. I need someone who can talk to her. In Italian.”
Rosa was quiet for a minute, shifting on her bad leg, physically wavering.
“I speak Italian,” Claudia said, breaking the silence.
Rosa looked at her, then nodded. “ Brava,” she said, starting to move away. “You talk for him.”
“Rosa-”
Claudia glared at me. “I’ll talk to the nurse,” she said, her words deliberate, like a hand on my arm. Let her go.
“Maybe we can get him out,” Rosa said, gesturing at the Questura. “Before they charge him.”
Without even looking at us, she headed for the corner, barely limping now, in a hurry.
“Why did you do that? She would have stayed if-”
“Yes,” Claudia said, “and then what? More detectives. You don’t want her help. Not now. The police have somebody, so why are you still looking? That’s what they’ll think, why is he doing this? And then they look at you.”
“But Rosa doesn’t-”
“You think she’s your friend, but nobody’s your friend now. The police, her, it’s the same. One slip, that’s what you told me. At least it’s over with Cavallini, this business. He doesn’t need a partner anymore.”
I nodded, reluctant. “No. I have to do it without him.”
“No, you have to stop. They have somebody. Now what reason can there be for you-”
But I was only half listening, thinking of Cavallini strutting behind his desk, chest puffed out.
“We can’t just walk away. We can’t let this boy-”
She reached up, touching my arm. “Yes, walk away, before it’s too late.”
I looked at her, surprised. “You don’t mean that,” I said quietly. “You can’t.”
She turned her head, letting her hand drop.
“Claudia, what happened with Gianni, that was one thing. But this-they’ll hang him.”
“But they can’t prove he did it. We know they can’t prove it.”
“They may not have to. They might convict him anyway. They’ll try. They won’t want to admit they made a mistake. Not now. They just solved the case.”
She looked down at her foot, moving it, something to do while she took this in. “So now we have what we wanted,” she said finally, her voice distant. “A perfect alibi.” She looked at me. “Better than the party. Even better than that. Now someone else did it.” She walked away, toward the canal. “Until you show them he didn’t.”
“Claudia, he could die.”
I stopped, caught by the sound of some policemen coming out of the door behind us, their shoes clumping on the pavement, voices loud. Claudia didn’t turn, just kept staring down at the canal water, as if not moving would make her invisible. When we heard them cross the bridge to San Lorenzo, she spoke without raising her head. “So it gets worse,” she said. “Another one, unless we help him. And then what? Then who did it? And now you want me to help you. What, catch myself?”
“We’ll find them someone else.”
“Someone else,” she repeated.
“Who could have done it. Another possibility. Just so long as it’s not him. We need to make a story. Something so close to what really happened that they can believe it. Just make a little change. The way Gianni did, remember?” Walking along the fondamenta, making the truce.
“Ah. Now like Gianni,” she said, her voice tight.
I looked at her, then let it go. “But we have to know what really happened.”
She turned from the water. “We already know what really happened.”
“I mean at the safe house. It’s in Cavallini’s head now. It’s too late to use anything else. He thinks Moretti has a motive. But who else would?”
“And the nurse is going to tell you?”
“A piece, anyway. If I can talk to her.”
At the hospital, Claudia didn’t even bother to translate. On my own I might have managed some kind of conversation, helped by gestures, but Claudia and the duty nurse spoke in a rush that swept me aside, unable to pick up even the occasional word. It was easier just to lean against the glass front of the nurses’ station and watch them speak. I thought of Moretti, lying upstairs with his puncture wound. The nurse would have had to know. Now this one was writing something down, motioning with one hand, giving directions.
“The one we want just retired,” Claudia said in the high gothic hall. “A great friend of Maglione’s. He was that kind of man? With the nurses?”
