Joseph Kanon - Alibi

Inspector Cavallini stopped in at the end of the day, in time for drinks, but had nothing new. None of Gianni’s patients had heard from him. No accidents had been reported.

“Imagine,” my mother said, her voice flat. “You can just disappear. I didn’t know it could be so easy.”

“I’m sorry, I must ask. Do you have any thoughts yourself, signora? Something he might have said to you?” My mother was shaking her head. “Anyone who might have wished him some harm?”

I glanced up, but his eyes were on my mother, not even taking me in.

“Of course not. Why would anyone?”

“In this life, every man has his enemies.”

“Why do you think it’s someone-why not a stroke?”

“Because we would have found him by now. A man falls in the street, he would be seen. So of course the possibility is that someone put him somewhere.”

“Where?”

Cavallini shrugged. “The usual place in Venice is the sea.”

I went over to the drinks table, an excuse not to look at him. I heard the tarp splash in.

“The sea? But then-”

“Yes, it’s difficult. We cannot dredge the lagoon. A canal, yes, but not the lagoon. It’s too big. We have to wait for the sea to give him up.”

“Give him up,” my mother said quietly. “You mean his body.”

Cavallini said nothing.

After he left, I made two drinks, but my mother waved hers away. Angelina had lighted a fire and my mother sat next to it, staring, listening to the sound of the burning wood. The phone had stopped. The servants, sensing a kind of illness, had gone silent in the other rooms. I sat pinned to my chair, unable to break the quiet, feeling it like a weight around me, pressing. My mother kept staring at the fire, her eyes dull. I knew it wouldn’t always be like this, that it would pass, but while it was here, the terrible quietness between us, I felt it squeezing, worse than Gianni’s hand on my throat.

At dinner we sat at the same end of the long table. The cook had made a risotto dotted with shellfish, but my mother only picked at it, barely sipping her wine, still talking to herself somewhere else. Finally she put down the fork and lit a cigarette instead.

“Adam,” she said, “that business at the party.”

I looked up.

“You know, when Claudia-” She stopped, waiting to see if I was following. I nodded. “It’s because she thought Gianni had worked for the Germans, you said.”

I nodded again, waiting.

“That’s what you did in the army. Investigate people like that.”

“Yes.”

“And you thought so too. Because she said?”

“No, because he did. All Claudia knew is that he reported her father.”

She took this in without moving, wanting to see it through.

“So if it’s true-” She hesitated. “There would be this hate.”

“She didn’t hate him enough to-”

My mother looked at me, puzzled, then waved this away. “Darling, not her, the others. Inspector Cavallini said, who wished him harm? and I thought, well, if it’s true, there might be people-they’d wish him harm. But that was the war. I thought all that was over. I mean, who goes around now-?” She paused, taking another sip of her wine. “He’s the last, you know. His brother was killed in an accident.”

“No. He was killed by partisans. For collaborating with the Germans.”

She flinched. “What a lot you know.”

“I had his file pulled.”

“You investigated his brother?”

“And Gianni. I thought we should know.”

She looked down, flustered, busying herself putting out the cigarette. “You had no right to do that, Adam. No right.”

“Mother-”

She raised her hand to her forehead. “I know, I know. But the point, darling,” she said, taking a breath, controlling herself, “is that if he did those things, or people thought he did, by mistake or something, then they might have a reason-” She drifted off, letting me finish.

“Yes, if they thought he did,” I said, making it easier.

“It just doesn’t seem possible somehow. That he would. You know, I’ve known him, my god, all my life. Almost all my life.”

“People change.”

“Yes. But they don’t, really.” She looked down at her glass. “He was in love with me, you know, even then.”

“And you?” I said, staring across.

“Me? Oh, no. I was in love with your father. I was, you know. And then I came here-I don’t know why, really, I wasn’t looking for him-and there he is and he’s still in love with me. All those years. It’s funny, the curves life throws at you.” She raised her head. “Did he really do that? Work with them?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Maybe he had to. They forced people, didn’t they?”

I said nothing.

“But that would be a reason. For somebody to-”

“It’s possible.”

She thought about this for a minute, then started brushing the tablecloth, a nervous movement. “Oh, what’s wrong with me? Here we are burying him and we don’t know anything. He could be in a hospital somewhere, anything.”

“Yes,” I said, squeezed again, almost out of breath.

“It’s just, if he’s not-” She stopped her hand, looking at the table. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

She went to bed early, or at least went to her room. I saw the sliver of light under the door, heard the creak of the floorboards, until finally it was quiet there too and I imagined her, still dressed, lying exhausted on the bed. The fire in the sitting room had died down and I sat in the cold, wanting to go out but feeling I couldn’t leave. How long would it take to get through this? Being with her, lying to her, was worse somehow than what had happened-there was no end to it and no going back. I thought of her after my father died, holding herself together for me. You’ll feel better soon. He wouldn’t want you to be sad. You’ll have to take care of me now. All the lies for my own good.

When I woke I was hunched in the chair, cramped, and the light had begun to come in. The electric bars of the space heater, glowing orange, had been going all night, an extravagance, but the room was still cold, the damp seeping in. I switched off the heater and went to the window to see the sun come up behind the Redentore, my old early-morning view. It was going to be a nice day, shiny after the rain. A walk. Nobody would miss me if I went out now. I’d be back in time for the morning vigil, but at least with some air in my lungs.

I crossed over to the San Marco side, away from the house and Mimi’s and the last two days. The sun was already filling the great piazza. I went behind the basilica, taking the route to Santa Maria in Formosa, not going anywhere in particular, just going. Through the campo, then stopping in the street-if I kept going this way, I’d reach the Questura, where Cavallini’s clerks might still be looking through the patient lists. I turned left instead, through the narrow calle and over the bridge to Zanipolo. Past the equestrian statue of Colleoni, where Claudia had stared at Gianni. A few people were going into the hospital-nurses, maintenance men, none of them looking at the rows of arches along the facade, the mosaic Gianni had pointed out, charming a visitor. Along the fondamenta, an ambulance boat was delivering a patient to the side door, just as one had when we’d walked here, Gianni explaining why he’d had to-lying. And then I was at the end, nothing but the open lagoon and the chimneys of Murano. In America you could walk and never stop, never run out of land, but here you met yourself within minutes-a bridge, a canal, then abruptly an end, water or a blind alley.

I looked at the ambulances moored on the quay. What kind of doctor had he been? There must have been a time, cramming for exams, when it had been about saving people, being on the side of the angels. Do no harm. And a few years later he could condemn someone with a nod. What had happened in between? But doctors in Germany had taken the same oath and then nodded and nodded, killing everybody. Maybe nothing had happened, just opportunity. A matter of degree. Think of him young, on the Lido, betraying my father. Or saying he did. I stared at the water. He was off there somewhere to the right. And here at the hospital, everywhere I looked. You could walk all day and never put him behind you.