“What do I say to you?” she said finally.
“Nothing. I was there too.”
“But this time it was just me. Not both. Just me.”
Another silence.
“And after Paris?”
“After, I don’t know.”
“You mean you’re leaving,” I said, my eyes still closed, so that both our voices seemed disembodied.
For a minute she said nothing. “When I had the gun, what did you think?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Why not?”
I opened my eyes and looked at her.
She got up from the chair. “So maybe we’re leaving each other. That’s how it ends.” She went over to the window for her purse.
“And we sign a paper and Cavallini gets away with it.”
“And so do we.”
“You didn’t kill Rosa,” I said. “He did.”
“But he can explain it. I can’t. Do you want to explain it?”
We looked at each other for a minute, then I turned my head. “She wasn’t even part of this. All I asked for was a file.”
“Yes,” Claudia said, then opened her purse. “I forgot. This was at the house. From Germany. It’s what you were waiting for, yes?”
I took the envelope. Army beige. Frankfurt. “Yes.” Thick, something more than a routine no. But late. We didn’t need another story now.
I opened the envelope and flipped past the cover note to the typed pages. Transcripts and memos. Bauer’s interview, chatty and detailed, wanting to cooperate. War stories.
“It’s there?” Claudia said.
I nodded, reading. Everything I’d wanted all along, only thought I knew. The raid on the safe house. Gianni planning it, using young Moretti. Guilty of all of it. And now that it was here, proof on paper, what did it matter? Bauer breaking Marco. Everybody breaks. Getting the names to Gianni, no longer a businessman at arm’s length, part of the chain now, link by link from Paolo’s death. The way I’d known it had to be, laid out in detail, the messenger-I stopped.
“What?” Claudia said.
I looked up but didn’t see her, just a blur. “Nothing,” I said, covering. “He did it. It’s all here.”
“It’s what you wanted? The proof?”
I dropped the papers next to me, not answering.
She put her hand on my arm. “You see. A man like that. How could it be wrong?”
I lay back on the pillow. “He’s not the only one dead now.”
She looked at me for a second, then stood up. “I’ll get the nurse. For your shot.”
She opened the door to Cavallini, but if he’d been listening, he gave no sign, just smiled and walked in as if it were an ordinary hospital visit.
“So, awake,” he said. “Now two of us.” He pointed to his sling, the bandaged arm. “But not a scratch for you-I’m sorry. I meant only to hit the skin, not go into the muscle. You’re in pain?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“Don’t be foolish. Look at his face. I was going for the nurse,” Claudia said.
“I will only be a minute,” Cavallini said, nodding to the door, a kind of permission to leave. He waited for her to go before turning to me. “I came for the statement. She explained it to you?”
“Rosa tried to kill me. Before you got there.”
“Yes. I saw it from the dock.”
“But I was a better shot.”
He shrugged. “Luckier, perhaps.”
“Why this way?”
“Why? Because it’s best. What purpose does it serve to involve Signora Miller? This way is simple. Everyone understands. The raid on the train, this is typical of her. To rescue her partner.”
“Her partner.”
“In Gianni’s murder.”
“What are you talking about? She wasn’t even in Venice when-”
“I said partner. The one who encourages, urges him to do it.”
“Why would anyone believe that?”
“Signor Miller, she’s the obvious person. I thought so from the first.” I lay back again, slightly dizzy, caught in another maze. “Only one person survived in that house, only one. Who would have a better motive? Moretti ran errands for her in the war. Again, the obvious person to turn to. The father’s son. So, together-”
“You can’t. She was a good person. A war hero, for chrissake.”
“Was, yes. Now she serves a different purpose. These are bad people, Signor Miller. Godless. Bad for Italy. It’s important for the country to see what they are like, what they are willing to do-even to their friends. Innocent foreigners, who don’t understand what they are.”
“You killed her.”
“Not according to you,” he said, nodding to the night table. “You have signed it?”
“No.”
“There’s a difficulty?”
“It’s not true.”
He sighed and sat down in the chair. “Signor Miller. True? The important thing is, what purpose does it serve? This story, a good purpose. Good for everybody.”
“Especially for you. You’ll be sitting pretty at the Questura.”
“Yes. A successful case, what I said from the beginning.” He looked over at me. “With your help. Now I help you.”
“Help me.”
“There are other stories. Things people could believe. Signora Miller, for instance. A scene at a party, so many witnesses.”
“I’ve already told you about that.”
He held up his hand. “Signor Miller, please. I believe you. I’m trying to explain what other people could say. You know at the Questura they ask all these questions again. Your mother, for instance, you know they called her. So interesting. The night of Signora Mortimer’s party, she’s so anxious-where is my fiance? She telephones Ca’ Venti. And you’re there with Signora Miller, but you don’t answer. Making love, I remember you said. So you don’t answer.”
“Yes,” I said, my throat dry, closing. The smallest thing.
“But she calls again-did you know this? An hour later. Still no answer. Of course, it’s possible, a young man. But even I-”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“But it could, if someone asked this. Where was she?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Me? Nothing. I already know the true story,” he said, gesturing at the statement again. “To look for another now-so many confusions. But someone could believe it. Unless they believe this. What you say. And what I say.” He had been staring at me, his voice smooth, explaining something to a child. Now it hardened. “Which is better for her? A woman like that.”
“A woman like what?” I said quietly, feeling a shiver on my neck, like a draft.
“Who could kill Vanessi.”
“They can’t prove that.”
“Yes, there is proof,” he said simply.
Even my shoulder was cold now, as if my blood had stopped running.
