“Then why was it never used?”
Cavallini shrugged. “To what purpose? Such a man-and Italian. Not German. An Italian who would do that to Italians. So many were already on trial. Why make more shame? A robber kills him, there’s an end. And you know, there was a certain amount of sympathy for Signora Miller. For her suffering. Even now I feel that. You see, it’s better to arrange things this way, so they serve a purpose.”
He reached over for the paper, then took a pen out of his pocket.
“What about her prints?” I said, watching him. “On the gun.”
“There were no prints on the gun,” he said, all business. “Someone must have wiped it.”
“And you never saw it in her hand.”
“No, never. Only in yours.” He held out the pen, meeting my eyes now, locked on them. “You see, I’ll be her alibi,” he said. “And you’ll be mine.” He moved the pen closer.
“Your accomplice,” I whispered, my throat dry again, squeezed shut. I took the pen, wincing as I raised my bad shoulder. The end of the maze. Cavallini kept looking at me, his eyes as cool and determined as they had been last night when he had aimed the gun. He smiled a little when he heard the scratch of the pen.
“Good,” he said, taking the paper. “It’s for the best. I’m very good at arranging these things. You can put yourself in my hands.”
I glanced down at them, casually putting away the pen. A wedding ring, thick, blunt fingers, oversized hands, big enough.
“What’s that?” He pointed to the papers on my bed.
“German testimony about Gianni. He helped them attack the safe house.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You see how well we work together. More proof that Rosa would do it. But maybe we won’t need to use it. Think of Giulia’s feelings. She’ll be so grateful if it’s finished. It’s important to put these things behind us.” A doctor’s daughter, used to keeping other people’s secrets.
He got up and straightened the chair, watching me. “You’re in pain?” he said. “That nurse-”
“Was there really proof? About Vanessi.”
“Yes. Of course, even proof is a matter of-how you tell the story,” he said, glancing at Bauer’s transcript. He opened his hand. “Signor Miller, she’s your wife.” A piece of advice, let it go, meant to reassure, unaware that we had already left each other.
He was gone by the time she came back with the nurse, so he didn’t see me avoid her eyes, not wanting to talk anymore, not even to tell her she was finally safe. I looked instead at the syringe, waiting for the drug to take effect, let me drift away from all of it.
Bertie came in the afternoon.
“I hope you’re satisfied. Cops and robbers. How are you?”
“Peachy.”
“Mm. I expected worse, I have to say. Given the papers.” He tossed Il Gazzettino on the bed. “Shootouts at the Lido. What in god’s name-?”
“Here,” I said, handing him the Frankfurt envelope.
“What’s this?”
“Read it. Page three.”
He walked over to the window, reading, then looked out for a minute before folding the paper up and putting it back in the envelope.
“Well, you would poke and pry,” he said softly, his head down.
“You were afraid I’d find out, weren’t you? That’s why you didn’t want me-Christ, Bertie.” I breathed out. “Christ.”
He leaned back, taking out his cigarette case.
“It’s not allowed,” I said.
“Oh, tut,” he said, lighting his cigarette and putting his arm on the sill, using the open window as an ashtray. “A condemned man’s always allowed. That’s what I am now, isn’t it? In your eyes.”
I said nothing, waiting.
“All right. I admit it’s not the sort of thing you want to see in your obituary.” He looked up. “Or have to explain, for that matter.”
“You worked for them.”
“I didn’t work for them,” he said. “Sometimes-well, sometimes we do things we never thought we’d do. Oh, not you, of course. You’re always on the side of the just and the good. But the rest of us. I’m a guest in this country, Adam. I stay at the pleasure of whoever happens to be running things. I don’t choose them, I just stay out of their way.”
“Not all the time.”
“They could have taken my passport in a second. Then what? Ship me off to Switzerland. If I was lucky. Maybe worse.”
“Then why stay?”
“It’s my home. Anyway, I didn’t have the luxury of sitting out the war somewhere and coming back after, bright as a penny. I didn’t have the time.” He looked down at his cigarette, then threw it out the window. “It wasn’t much, you know. We all had to report, all the foreigners, tell them where we were living, what we were up to.”
“But they asked you to tell them a little more.”
He nodded. “I knew the foreign community. Such as it was then. Who was still here? A few White Russians with nowhere else to go. Hungarians. Some English who’d married Italians and thought that made them Italian. Nobody. You can’t imagine how harmless it all was. They just liked to keep records, think everything was under control. Who said what at which party. Well, whoever did say anything? Nobody was hurt. And I had friends where I needed them. Of course, now it’s over, nobody wants to remember what it was like. Now it looks-well, the way it looks. Anyway, it’s over and done with.”
“No, it’s not.”
He looked up, apprehensive.
“There are two people in the morgue. It wasn’t over for them.”
“Well, I didn’t put them there.”
“No, you just gave Gianni the names. Hers. The boy’s father. They were in that house. And now they’re all dead. You were part of it. Do you lie to yourself too, or just to me?”
“Oh, who could lie to you? The grand inquisitor. Gave him names. If I hadn’t, somebody else would have.”
“You’re not somebody else. You told him who killed Paolo. And people died.”
“Adam, you don’t think I knew what they’d do. You don’t think that. That awful business with the fire.”
“You just thought they’d round them up, and then what? Scold them? Execute them quietly? They were burned.”
He turned away, facing the window again. “All right. They were. I didn’t know. But so was Paolo. That’s what they did to him. In that car, all charred-” He stopped, his voice drifting. “They burned him. Paolo.”
“He was a thug.”
“I know what he was,” he snapped, turning to face me. “But that wasn’t all of him. Before all that, when he was young, if you’d known him then. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. There was a quality.”
I stared at the sheet, feeling awkward.
“I know, he was an oaf, really. Worse, I suppose, at the end. All puffed up.” He paused, catching himself. “We don’t get to choose how we feel, you know. We just do. And he never had a clue.” He looked out the window. “Sometimes I think the only thing I’ve really loved is Venice. It doesn’t love you back either. But I couldn’t lose it. So I gave Gianni the names. I was asked to do it and I did it. Satisfied?”
“Are you? You have to live with it.”
“What, my guilty conscience? Well, as it happens, I won’t. Not that either.” He came away from the window, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Do you know what it’s like, knowing you’re going to die? You don’t, really. It’s just an idea to you. You think you’re going to live. But when you know, things are different. They don’t matter so much anymore. People don’t matter. You find you can do-whatever you have to do. I wanted to stay in Venice.”
“Even if people had to die for it.”
