Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“He already has a case. That’s why it’s important to know what really happened there.”

“If it’s connected. It’s too many ifs now-there’s no time for that.”

“Just inventing witnesses.”

“Why not? The police are inventing a case.”

I said nothing. For a few minutes we pretended to look at buildings as we crossed over the bridge to Santa Maria in Formosa.

“It’s the only way it makes sense, you know,” I said finally. “If he was followed.”

“Yes,” she said, half aloud, as if it had been pulled out of her.

“What happened to the house in Verona?”

“It was betrayed. Not then,” she said quickly. “Later. Everything was betrayed eventually.” She thought for a second. “Why did they wait another day?”

“To see if he went anywhere else. When he came back to Venice, they knew he’d delivered the medicine. So it had to be that house or Verona.”

“And it had to be the house, or he wouldn’t have gone there-just stayed in Verona. So they came.” She stopped, looking away from me, toward the far end of the campo. “You know what they did? First they poured the gasoline. And then they were all around the house, with machine guns. So if you came out, they shot you. Then the matches. So you had a choice. Run out to the guns or stay inside. And of course people stayed-at least you had a chance. Nobody was burning yet. But then the smoke got you, and after that you burned.”

I looked down at her arm. “But you got out?”

She gave a weak smile. “I’m afraid of fire. I ran into the guns.”

“And they missed?”

“No, they shot me. Twice. They left me for dead. So that’s how it happened.” She turned to me. “He knows this. Carlo. He knows how his father died. And if it were you who led them there? How would you feel?”

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Claudia said.

We were in Gianni’s office at the hospital, going through a stack of blue folders.

“Anything that happened that week.”

“How do you know anything did?”

“It must have. Otherwise, it’s a contradiction. He takes in a partisan, swears his nurse to secrecy, fakes a medical report. He saves him. Why set up his son?”

“Because Moretti escaped. He didn’t know where he was.”

I shook my head. “Then why not send up a red flag right away? No, I think he meant to help him. He never changed the report. He brags to his daughter, tries to make himself look good for helping the resistance. Days go by. Over a week. And then all of a sudden he sends the boy out with some phony medicine, so he’ll be followed. That part’s right-it has to be. So what happened in between? Something happened.”

“And you’re going to find that here?” she said, touching the files.

“I want to know everyone he saw that week. Anything that might explain it.”

There was a tap on the door frame. The night duty nurse stood just outside with a coffee tray, an excuse to see what we were doing.

“ Dottore,” she said. “Some coffee. You’re working so late.”

She placed the cups on the desk, glancing at Claudia. Had she been listening? But the desk outside was empty, the nurses’ station farther down the hall. Was there anything else we wanted? Staring openly now at the folders as she left.

“So now you’re the dottore,” Claudia said.

“They call everybody that.”

“No, only the stepson,” she said, smiling to herself. “They all know. She thinks you look like him.”

“She thought the old nurse killed him, too.” I sipped some of the coffee. “We need to be him for a week,” I said, rubbing the arms of the chair, as if just touching his things could put me in his place. “Everything he did. Something happened that week.”

“With the patients?” she said, picking up a folder.

“I don’t know. Here’s his calendar. Meetings at the hospital, mostly. Then the appointments-I’m cross-checking those with the medical files. Did they really show up? What happened?” I looked over at her, an appeal. “You know how to look at these. You’re a doctor’s daughter.”

She took the appointment schedule and began shuffling through the stack to pull out files. “It’s crazy what you’re doing,” she said.

An hour later the nurse came in with more coffee. Claudia was smoking, her feet propped up on the edge of the desk and folders in her lap, and for a second I thought the nurse, almost scowling with disapproval, would protest, but she merely raised her eyebrows at me, the new dottore, and sniffed. Claudia, unaware, just kept turning pages, absorbed in Gianni’s medical day. When she reached over for her coffee, she kept her eyes on the page.

“And?” I said, lighting a cigarette, signaling a break.

“So many ulcers. Gastrointestinal, a good specialty in the war. The bad food, the fear-think how busy.”

“So he was good?”

She nodded. “Yes, you would think-”

“What?” I said, leaning forward to get her attention.

“No Germans.”

“They had their own.”

“Well, in the army. But a specialist, that’s different.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t see them.”

“You didn’t refuse the Germans, if they asked. But they didn’t.”

“Would they see a local doctor?”

“The soldiers, no. But the officers? You have to remember what it was like. It’s not a camp, it’s Venice. They sit in San Marco, take a gondola-what everyone does in Venice. Parties. With Venetians, too. How do you think my father survived? Getting rid of their babies. At least it was safer for the girls, a real doctor. They were-here. Restaurants, everywhere. It’s their city. So if you get a stomachache, why not go to the doctor? But they don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. You asked me what do I see, and I see he’s the only man in Venice who never sees Germans. Clean hands. At least in public.”

“And in private he saves a partisan,” I said, another dead end.

“A partisan,” she said dismissively. “No. He saved a friend.”

I stared at her, the words clicking into place like cylinders in a lock.

“Paolo’s friend,” I said, another click. Tennis sweaters, arms slung over shoulders. “Because he was Paolo’s friend. Wait a minute,” I said, reaching for the phone.

“What?”

“But then he sends young Carlo to where Moretti had to be.”

I asked the hospital operator to put me through to the Bauer. Rosa had just come in and, given the slightly groggy tone in her voice, must have had some wine at dinner.

“Do you never stop?” she said.

“Just one more thing. The group who killed Paolo-there was someone else, besides whoever was in the house.”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead how? I mean, in the fighting?”

“No, the Germans captured him. They killed him.”

“Which means they probably tortured him.”

She was quiet for a second. “It’s possible. But it doesn’t matter. He didn’t know about the house-where it was, anything. He was never told. It was a protection for us. And him. It couldn’t have been him.”

“But he knew who killed Paolo.”

“Signor Miller, he’s dead.”

“When he was captured-any interrogation files?”

“No. Of course we looked for that.”

“How long was he kept?”

“We think two days. They hung his body in Verona. In Piazza Bra.”

“Remember who the commanding officer was? The German?”

There was a silence, so long that I thought I had lost her. “Yes, I remember,” she said finally. “Like here. Bauer.”

“What happened to him?”

“He went back to Germany. With the other butchers.”

“He’s alive?”

“I don’t know.”