who’d been shot. Which meant that Moretti might have gotten away. Unless they were all still there, littered across the yards, everything gone wrong.
In our box, lights down, I tried to focus on the stage, but now even the music was drowned out by the buzzing in my head. Instead of the Cafe Momus, I was seeing the train doors closing, the smooth glide out from the platform, then the jerky stop in the yards for the light, then-then what? The worst of it was not knowing. But Bertie had been right, catching me in time, before an absurd rush to the hospital. How would I have explained that? A hunch? I checked my watch again. They’d be long gone from Ca’ Venti by now, assuming they’d ever come. Why not do what I was supposed to do, enjoy the opera? While the house sat there, open and waiting, like an overlooked piece of evidence.
“Do you want to go?” Claudia said at the next intermission.
“We should stay. See it through.”
“Scratching your knees and squirming in your seat. Do you think I’m seeing it either?” She reached over and touched me. “If Cavallini’s shot, maybe they got away. Come on. Everyone has already seen us.”
“And what excuse, if anybody asks?”
“You think only the Montanaris get headaches?”
We took the traghetto near the Gritti, standing up as we crossed, looking toward Mimi’s dark landing. I thought of the footmen and umbrellas and torches leading the guests into the hall, the jumpy apprehension I’d felt then too, not knowing if it would work.
Our calle was quiet and the door was locked, as it was supposed to be. Only a single night-light, so Angelina wasn’t back yet. I turned on the hall lights, the sconces shining all the way to the stairs. Beyond, through the wrought-iron and glass door, the water entrance was dark, maybe untouched. I walked down the hall and opened the inside door, putting my hand up to the light switch.
“No, no lights.” Rosa, crouching in a corner, a disembodied voice from a dark pile. “They might see. Help me with him.”
I went over to the pile-Moretti, with his head leaning on her. In the dim light coming from the hall I saw the cloth she was holding against him, blotched with blood.
“My god.”
“Do you have a towel? I’m using my slip. The worst of it has stopped. So not an artery.”
There was a whimper behind me. Claudia stood still for a second, her mouth open, as if she were about to scream. “What are you doing here? You said no one would be here. Lies. I knew it.” Then she took in the bloody cloth.
“A towel,” Rosa said again.
“A towel,” Claudia said, a faint echo, her eyes still wide.
“And something to clean the wound. I couldn’t leave him.”
But Claudia was already running down the hall to the stairs.
“Cavallini was shot?” I said.
“I hope so.”
“What happened?”
She indicated Moretti. “They shot him before we could get him off the train. They must have had orders. ‘If anything happens, shoot him first.’ ”
“How bad is it?”
“He’s bleeding. Not an artery, he’d be dead, but we have to get him to a doctor. He won’t make it like this.”
“When’s the pickup boat?”
She shrugged. “The link that broke. He should have been here long ago. We have to assume he’s not coming.”
“But he knew where to get you. If they break him, they’ll come here.”
“He won’t break.”
“Everybody breaks, Rosa,” I said, angry. “We have to get the boy out of here.”
She glared at me, then nodded. “Then we use your boat.”
“My boat?”
“You have to take us.”
“That was always the plan, wasn’t it?” Claudia said angrily from the doorway. “There was never any other boat.” Her voice quivering, edging toward hysteria.
“Does it matter?” Rosa said to me. “He’ll die.”
“Oh, my god,” Claudia said, “the blood, it’s all over. We have to clean it up. Before anyone sees.” She knelt and began to wipe the stone floor.
“Yes, it matters. I have to know how much time we have. Was there another boat?” I had raised my voice, almost shouting.
“Yes.”
“So, no time. Let’s get going. First him. Let me see the wound.” I took Claudia by the shoulders and held her until they stopped shaking. “You all right? Can you do this?”
“Me? Don’t you remember? I’m good at it,” she said, her voice catching. I shot her a look, then glanced down at Rosa, but Rosa was busy now, peeling off the soaked cloth. “Here, I brought some brandy. This is peroxide. For the wound.”
“That’ll kill him,” I said. “Maybe we should chance it. Bullet’s still in anyway. That’s where the real infection-”
“No, we don’t chance it,” Rosa said, taking the bottle.
“I’ll get another towel,” Claudia said, eager to leave.
Rosa gave Moretti some of the brandy, sitting him up so he wouldn’t choke, and I saw that he wasn’t unconscious, just scared and quiet, keeping his eyes closed against the pain. Shock had drained his face pale, making him look even younger, so that the stubble of beard from his days in jail seemed out of place, ink from another sketch.
“This is going to hurt,” Rosa said, pouring some of the peroxide on a towel.
He nodded and clenched his teeth, playing patient, and then the towel touched him, a searing shock, and he screamed, a yelp that raced out of the room and down the canal. Rosa clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle the scream, making him fight for air, his body writhing, so that when she finally took it away he was panting, exhausted from it, the way a seizure subsides into twitches.
Claudia raced back into the room. “Are you crazy?” she said, not really to anyone. Then she saw Moretti’s face. “They’ll hear,” she said softly. “You’ll give us all away.” She took the peroxide back from Rosa and handed her a towel. “Put this on him. Where is the doctor? How far?”
“Far,” Rosa said.
“There’s no time for that,” Claudia snapped. “Tell us where.”
“The Lido.”
“The Lido?” Claudia said. “With the police in the lagoon? What do we say if they stop us? ‘Oh, just something we picked up.’ You want to go there, go alone. Don’t kill us too.”
“I don’t know anything about boats.” She looked down at Moretti.
“Then call an ambulance. Take him to the hospital.”
“They already shot him once. You think they’ll stop now?”
Claudia bit her lip, thinking. “Can you take a bullet out? In the war, they did that. No doctors. You were a partisan. You-”
Rosa shook her head. “It’s too deep. He needs a doctor. Instruments.”
“All right. We can call an ambulance from the Zattere-we can carry him that far. No one will know.”
“About you.”
“Yes, about us. Do you want everyone caught? At least he can live. He’ll be safe there, in the hospital.”
“Was your father safe there?”
Claudia looked away, then went back to the floor, scrubbing it clean, doing something.
“Why the Lido?” I said.
“There’s a car there. They won’t know about it.”
