“The next link?”
“We can get to Jesolo. There’s a doctor I know.”
“If he’s still alive,” I said, watching Moretti, who was breathing heavily, in a series of grunts.
“You can’t involve us in this,” Claudia said. “What can we say? They’ll think we were part of it, attacking police. There, it’s gone. What do we do with the towel?” She held it out to me.
Rosa looked up at me. “We can’t take him to the hospital. You know that. There is an obligation here.”
I glanced around the room, thinking. The police were on the water, not searching the calles. Could he walk? Mimi’s wasn’t far, a few deserted blocks away. But how could we take him there? Anywhere?
“Were you followed here?” I said.
Rosa shook her head. “No.”
“So only the pickup boat knows you’re still here.”
“Yes.”
“The police’ll be on the lagoon.”
“Maybe not so many,” she said, bargaining. “They can’t stay out all night. They have to think we went to Maestre. No one will think of the Lido, it’s the wrong way. That was the plan.”
“Yes, and look how well it’s worked,” Claudia said.
“He’s here, isn’t he? If we can get to the Lido, we can get him away.” She turned to me. “They’re not looking for your boat.”
I took in the canal steps, the boat tied to its mooring pole, barely moving in the calm water. If they were keeping watch nearby, they’d be in the Giudecca channel, not the other end. Nobody in his right mind would head for the Grand Canal, all lights and vaporetti and tourist gondolas. The way to Maestre, the mainland, was up the channel to Piazzale Roma and the bridge. That would be the way to escape, not out toward the lagoon and the open sea. Rosa was right-they wouldn’t think of the Lido. The trick would be getting past Venice itself, the curve of bright lights around the basin, without even a shadow to hide behind. A long trip in any case, too long for someone with a stomach wound, groaning between channel markers. And now they’d be hours late.
“What if he didn’t wait, the driver?”
“There’s no one. Just the car.”
“And you’re going to drive?”
“I can drive a car.”
“But not a boat,” I said to myself, then looked at her. “It’s not going to work, Rosa. You have to give him up.”
“He’s not guilty,” Claudia said. “If there’s a trial-”
“It’s too late for that,” Rosa said. “A policeman was killed.”
“How do you know? You didn’t know if Cavallini was shot.”
“I didn’t shoot Cavallini,” she said calmly.
In the silence that followed you could hear the creaking of moored boats in the canal.
“Anybody see you?” I said quietly.
Rosa shrugged. “It was dark. Maybe. Maybe they saw him,” she said, looking down at Moretti. “You understand? They don’t need a trial for Maglione anymore. Now they have this.”
I said nothing, my eyes darting around the room again-the hanging gondola, the paving stones, nothing changed, feeling as trapped and anxious as that night. Only the water. The calle entrance was impossible-someone would see, and where would we carry him? Gianni had been dead, something you could slip over the side. Moretti would have to be taken all the way, loaded into the car. If he survived the trip. And if he didn’t? I saw us pitching him into the water, a macabre repetition, everything happening all over again.
“You have to get him out of here,” Claudia said, maybe seeing it too, shivering as if she were back in the boat. “It’s not fair, to be blamed for this.”
“Go, then,” Rosa said. “Somewhere after the opera. If they come, you won’t be here. I’ll say you never knew. I came to steal the boat. They’d believe that, stealing the boat.”
“You wouldn’t even get the motor started,” I said.
“I’ll row, then. What do you want me to do? Sit? Let him bleed to death?”
Nobody said anything, waiting for someone else to move. Moretti, on the floor, fumbled in his jacket and pulled out a gun, aiming at me.
“Take us,” he said.
“Stop,” Rosa said. “They’re friends.”
But Moretti’s eyes were blunt, beyond niceties. I stared at the gun, feeling dislocated. A gun, where we used to give parties. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger.
“Give it to me,” Rosa said, holding out her hand. Then, fondly, “ Imbecile.”
He lowered the gun, not giving it to Rosa but putting it back in his pocket.
“Where did he get a gun?” I asked.
“The guard who shot him, it’s the one he used. So we took it after.”
I tried to imagine the scene in the yards, the guard slumping forward, Rosa helping the boy across the tracks, a confusion of shots, the boat racing away from the pier. Or that moment, earlier, when she’d fired at the guard. Not the first. How many had there been? Paolo and all the others. I wondered if it got easier, or if each time was like Gianni, with blood pounding in your head.
“What happened to the other guard?”
“He was ours,” she said simply.
And now the others would kill him. No end to it, the war that kept going, the only thing real to her. But not to me, nothing to do with me.
It must have been utterly still, because the doorbell, when it rang, was louder even than Moretti’s scream.
Claudia jumped. “Oh, dio,” she said, frantic, looking at the bloody towel in her hand.
Rosa sat up, rigid, clutching Moretti.
“Somebody heard,” Claudia said, a gasp.
“Angelina,” I said, “that’s all.”
“She rings? With a key?” She held out the towel in front of her as if it were alive, about to bite her.
I stood, for a moment almost dizzy, my head turning left, right, anywhere. “All right,” I said finally, pretending calm. “Get over there, behind the stones.” I stepped over to help Rosa drag Moretti behind the pile. “Get under the tarp. It’s probably Angelina. I’ll come back when she goes up. Just stay there.”
“What do I do with this?” Claudia held out the towel, panicking.
“Under here. Come on, quick. We need to see if anything shows,” I said, tucking the side of the tarp down. There was a murmur from underneath. “You okay?” I loosened the edge, letting some air in. The doorbell rang again. “Not a sound. Not a sound,” I said, grabbing Claudia. “We were upstairs. It took us that long to answer.”
She nodded and I closed the wrought-iron door. I hurried down the hall. “ Momento,” I said out loud. When I reached the door, I looked over my shoulder to see Claudia standing halfway up the stairs, patting her hair, everything in place, only her eyes startled.
I opened the door and heard the blood in my head again.
“So, home early,” Cavallini said. “I saw the light.”
“Inspector,” I said dumbly, staring at his arm, wrapped in white bandages and set in a sling. “Are you all right? At the opera, the policemen-”
“Yes, I know, poor Filomena. To worry her that way. I spoke to them. Acting like women. A scratch, and she comes for the last rites. Well, maybe wives hope for that,” he said, genial. He looked toward the stairs. “Signora Miller. Buona sera.”
She nodded, stiff.
“You enjoyed the opera?”
I stepped aside to let him in. Behind him a uniformed policeman waited by the door.
“Yes, but I had a headache,” she said, wary. “I was just going to bed.”
“I’m sorry to come like this.”
“But what happened? What do you mean, a scratch?” I said, trying to remember what I was supposed to
