Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“Had he done anything like this before?”

“No. But he knew the man. A family friend. And Dr. Maglione told her, ‘I can’t refuse him. I have to help. But no one has to know.’ ”

“He came into the hospital with a bullet wound and no one else knew?”

This involved a longer answer, filled with what sounded like medical details.

“You couldn’t tell. The wound was shallow. Not much blood. But of course the bullet had to be taken out. Maglione saw him right away-and after, all people knew was a bandage. Except for Anna,” she said, nodding to the nurse.

“Why would Moretti take the risk?” I said to myself. “If it wasn’t serious. Going to a hospital.”

“The bullet still has to come out. You need a doctor. And this one he knows. She says they were friends-Maglione liked to talk to him.”

“About what?”

A shrug. “She assumes old times. They hadn’t seen each other in years.”

“No, they wouldn’t have.”

“But the risk.” The nurse was shaking her head at the memory of it. “She was worried the whole time. But with him it was always the patient. When he found out Moretti had left, he said it was too soon. It needed more time.”

“But he discharged him.”

“No, he left. In the night. Like a thief in the night.” Hunching her shoulders, stealthy. “Because he was so grateful. The Germans came one day and he saw that it was a risk for Maglione. How long before someone found out? So he left in the night. He didn’t wait.”

“But the medical report-”

“They had to say discharged. What else? Escape? Then everything would come out. So he was ‘discharged,’ and she signed it, and that was the end. Until now.”

I went over to the window, a view across the calle to another window, shuttered. “So Gianni couldn’t have had him followed,” I said. Wrong about this too. Moretti had gone without Gianni’s even knowing. Then the report had been faked to protect him, all witnessed by a sharp-eyed nurse.

“There’s no doubt about this, any of it?”

“You don’t want me to ask her that. She’d be offended.”

“The Germans who were there-soldiers or SS?”

“SS. They were looking for Jews.”

“And did they find any?”

Claudia looked at me, but translated. The nurse nodded, lowering her head.

“There was nothing they could do. The Germans knew. Grini, maybe, the informer. That was his specialty, hospitals and mental homes.”

“But he wasn’t there that day.”

“No, but they knew. Dr. Maglione was helpless. He used to say, ‘The Germans are like wild animals. You have to be careful with them. If you frighten them, they’ll bite. You can’t get too close.’ ”

For a minute no one said anything, the only sound in the room a teacup clinking on its saucer.

“Anything else?” Claudia said.

I shook my head. “I thought there’d be something. Something she’d seen.”

“Oh, and she’d tell you? She sees what she wants to see.”

She started again in Italian, calm, almost in a monotone, so the nurse’s reaction seemed all the more abrupt, a shocked expression, head jerked back.

“What?” I said.

“I told her someone said Gianni helped the SS. That he pointed out Jews.”

“Claudia.”

“She was there, wasn’t she? See what she says.”

A flood of words, angry. I waited, watching Claudia.

“Whoever said that, it must be his imagination. The doctor would never do that.”

“She might not have seen it,” I said quickly.

“She saw everything else.”

“It’s not the same,” I said. “He wouldn’t want her to see that.”

“I saw it.”

The nurse, still angry, was looking from one of us to the other, listening to the volley in a foreign language.

“She’d never admit it now anyway. Ask her when this was, when the Germans came.”

Claudia said something in Italian.

“October fourth.”

When Claudia and her father were taken, when Moretti was being protected, just as everyone had said. Exact, an excellent witness. The story everyone agreed on, except for the nod. I looked at Claudia, the other witness.

I moved in the chair, stuck. Why would the nurse lie? The fake report had become a badge of honor, her war story, helping Gianni do the right thing. So we had to assume he had.

She said something in Italian, her eyes on me.

“She wants to know how you knew about the bullet wound.”

“Tell her Gianni told me.”

“Ah,” the nurse said.

“I told her you’re the American woman’s son,” Claudia said, explaining. The nurse was taking me in now, somebody in Gianni’s world, not just a foreign voice. “She wants to know if she can talk about this now. It’s no longer a secret?”

“Not anymore. Better tell her the police might ask. No surprises.”

They both got up as they spoke, the meeting over.

“She wants to know who did it.”

I shrugged. “The police think young Moretti.”

The nurse turned to me, speaking Italian, forgetting for a second to go through Claudia.

“She says, why would they think that? Dr. Maglione saved his father’s life.”

“Tell her we don’t think he did it either. That’s why we came,” I said, one more blurred half-lie.

I looked around at the shelves of knickknacks. The rooms he had helped her find. Not enough to buy anyone’s silence, even assuming there was silence to buy. And why would there be? She still thought he was a hero, and she’d been there.

“Are you finished?” Claudia said.

I nodded, feeling deflated. Finished with no next place to go, and still no way to connect Gianni to the house.

We said good-bye, a thousand thanks, most of it by rote, my mind elsewhere. Then Claudia spoke in Italian, and the nurse stopped, taken aback.

“I said to her, ‘Do you know you look familiar to me?’ ” Claudia said.

“What are you doing? Leave it.”

Claudia’s eyes flashed. “I want her to remember. I remember-why shouldn’t she?”

The nurse studied her for another minute, then shook her head. “She says maybe from the hospital. So many people come and go, it’s hard to keep track.” She looked down, her lips in a forced half smile. “So many people come and go. And I’d know her face anywhere.”

We started for the door, the nurse still talking.

“She says it’s like that in the hospital,” Claudia said, airy now, the nurse prattling. “So many people. After a while you don’t notice.” She looked at me. “So that’s all it meant for her.”

“Maybe she wasn’t there,” I said. “Right then, I mean.”

“No, she was in the ward. Or do you think it’s my imagination too?”

Could it have been? A question so faint it was almost unnoticeable, like a hairline crack in porcelain.

“Do you? Yes, it must be. The doctor would never do that,” she said, playing the nurse again.

She turned to her and said something in Italian, without translating, but it must have been asking whether she was sure, baiting her, because the nurse squinted at Claudia’s face again, then shook her head.

“Claudia. We didn’t come here for that.”

“No, to make sure he did something else. It’s not enough, what he did. But maybe he didn’t even do that. She didn’t see it. So how do you know?” Asking something else, her voice angry, all of it still alive to her, not yet just a white splotch of skin. Real, more accurate than memory.

“Because you said so,” I said calmly.

She turned away, embarrassed, so that my eyes went to the nurse at the door, watching us closely, maybe the way she’d watched things in the ward, not really understanding what they meant. People coming and going.