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
