Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“But Rosa doesn’t-”

“You think she’s your friend, but nobody’s your friend now. The police, her, it’s the same. One slip, that’s what you told me. At least it’s over with Cavallini, this business. He doesn’t need a partner anymore.”

I nodded, reluctant. “No. I have to do it without him.”

“No, you have to stop. They have somebody. Now what reason can there be for you-”

But I was only half listening, thinking of Cavallini strutting behind his desk, chest puffed out.

“We can’t just walk away. We can’t let this boy-”

She reached up, touching my arm. “Yes, walk away, before it’s too late.”

I looked at her, surprised. “You don’t mean that,” I said quietly. “You can’t.”

She turned her head, letting her hand drop.

“Claudia, what happened with Gianni, that was one thing. But this-they’ll hang him.”

“But they can’t prove he did it. We know they can’t prove it.”

“They may not have to. They might convict him anyway. They’ll try. They won’t want to admit they made a mistake. Not now. They just solved the case.”

She looked down at her foot, moving it, something to do while she took this in. “So now we have what we wanted,” she said finally, her voice distant. “A perfect alibi.” She looked at me. “Better than the party. Even better than that. Now someone else did it.” She walked away, toward the canal. “Until you show them he didn’t.”

“Claudia, he could die.”

I stopped, caught by the sound of some policemen coming out of the door behind us, their shoes clumping on the pavement, voices loud. Claudia didn’t turn, just kept staring down at the canal water, as if not moving would make her invisible. When we heard them cross the bridge to San Lorenzo, she spoke without raising her head. “So it gets worse,” she said. “Another one, unless we help him. And then what? Then who did it? And now you want me to help you. What, catch myself?”

“We’ll find them someone else.”

“Someone else,” she repeated.

“Who could have done it. Another possibility. Just so long as it’s not him. We need to make a story. Something so close to what really happened that they can believe it. Just make a little change. The way Gianni did, remember?” Walking along the fondamenta, making the truce.

“Ah. Now like Gianni,” she said, her voice tight.

I looked at her, then let it go. “But we have to know what really happened.”

She turned from the water. “We already know what really happened.”

“I mean at the safe house. It’s in Cavallini’s head now. It’s too late to use anything else. He thinks Moretti has a motive. But who else would?”

“And the nurse is going to tell you?”

“A piece, anyway. If I can talk to her.”

At the hospital, Claudia didn’t even bother to translate. On my own I might have managed some kind of conversation, helped by gestures, but Claudia and the duty nurse spoke in a rush that swept me aside, unable to pick up even the occasional word. It was easier just to lean against the glass front of the nurses’ station and watch them speak. I thought of Moretti, lying upstairs with his puncture wound. The nurse would have had to know. Now this one was writing something down, motioning with one hand, giving directions.

“The one we want just retired,” Claudia said in the high gothic hall. “A great friend of Maglione’s. He was that kind of man? With the nurses?”

“I don’t know. I never thought so.” But then, so much else had been wrong.

“And who sleeps with retired nurses? Young nurses, yes. So maybe it’s just this one’s idea.” She nodded back toward the nurses’ station. “She thinks they were lovers because he helped her find a place to live-what else could it be? After all those years together, devoted to him, what does she get? Two rooms in Castello. Put away somewhere so he can marry his American. Typical, the man does as he likes, while the woman-” She stopped, shaking her head. “And maybe, she thinks, the nurse didn’t like it. Who would have a better reason?”

“To kill him?”

“She reads magazines.”

We had left the hospital and were walking across the campo past the equestrian statue.

“And who dumped him in the lagoon?”

“She’s not that far. Still with the romance. They worked together for years, and not a hint. Only now, when she’s old and he helps her. And this one believes that.”

“Were there rumors-other nurses?”

“Of course not. He was a saint,” Claudia said, her mouth turned down. “A saint.”

“A savior of men.”

“Yes,” she said, still grim. “Except my father.”

We followed the directions through several back calles of hanging wash to a house whose plaster front had peeled off in patches, leaving irregular pockets of dark brick, like Dalmation spots. Anna della Croce was on the second floor, up a staircase that smelled of cat and listed to one side. When we rang the bell, we could hear a series of locks being turned, as if the room had been barricaded against the rest of the sagging house. Then the creak of the door, a pair of eyes peering into the stairwell. It was only after Claudia mentioned Gianni’s name that the door swung open. For a second no one said anything, adjusting to the light. Then Claudia’s eyes widened, and her whole body went rigid with surprise.

“ Voi,” she said softly.

The woman looked at her, wary again. “ Che cosa volete?”

“What is it?” I said to Claudia.

“It’s the same nurse, the one with my father. Look, she has no idea. No memory at all. I’m someone new to her. She watched them take me away, but she never saw me before. It meant nothing.”

“You’re scaring her. Speak Italian.”

The woman had drawn closer to the door, stepping slightly behind it, as if it were a shield.

“Imagine. Nothing to her,” Claudia said, her voice almost dreamy.

“Claudia,” I said, touching her shoulder. “Ask her about Gianni.”

She looked at me, coming back, then smiled wryly. “Yes, that’s right. Something she’d remember. Scusi,” she said, turning to the woman, reassuring her with a spurt of Italian that I couldn’t follow but that got us through the door.

We went into a tidy small room filled with porcelain figurines, Claudia still talking. We had gotten the address from the hospital, she was so nice to see us, it had been a tragedy about Gianni, and then I lost the thread again. I was given a straight-backed chair with upraised arms and a velvet-covered seat, formal, the kind that’s kept for visiting priests.

The nurse sat primly on the edge of the daybed, a severe-looking woman in her sixties who still seemed to be wearing a starched uniform, her eyes sharp and suspicious, even now on the lookout for sloppily made bed corners. I could see that she would never have spoken to me, but Claudia, another woman, had somehow put her at ease. Tea was made, an excuse for small talk to find out why we had come, whether we could be trusted. This time Claudia did translate, first paraphrasing their conversation, then finally with nearly simultaneous answers so that it felt as if we were all really talking.

“She’s worried about her pension. But I told her it’s to solve the murder, so that’s different.”

“Because he was a saint.”

She nodded. “The best man she ever knew. Would this hurt his reputation? And I said no, now everyone would admire him for this.”

“So it was a bullet wound?”

“Yes. She helped him remove it, just the two of them. He said he would take the responsibility-he didn’t want her to get in any trouble. Always thinking of others, you see. But of course she wanted to help him. So they took out the bullet and cleaned the wound and then she dressed it so no one else would know, not even the other nurses. Then they made out the report.”