Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“He does?” I glanced toward the dance floor, where he was chatting with Claudia.

“He’s always been ambitious. Why else would he marry Filomena?”

“You mean she’s rich?”

“No, but a good family. A step for him.”

“Maybe he married for love.”

She looked at me. “Did you?”

I said nothing for a second, thrown by the directness of it, her eyes on me.

“Yes.”

She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. “Then it’s good. You’ll be happy.” She glanced up. “I hope you will be,” she said, softer now, a kind of apology for having asked.

“So Cavallini gets seen with the Magliones. And what do you get out of it, a night out?”

“Well, a friend in the police, it’s always good. And to thank him for solving the murder. Of course, I know it was because of you. But he listened to you. Would the others have done that?”

“Do you really think this case can be tried? You’re a lawyer.”

“Not for crime. Business, you know. Contracts. Anyway, in this case I’m a Maglione. The police get the man, brava. But now the important thing-well, that it all goes the right way.”

“What way is that?”

She leaned forward, businesslike. “The best, of course, is that there’s no trial at all. He confesses, it’s an end. But if it has to be, then I want him on trial, not my father.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “A tragic mistake. My father gives him medicine-a humanitarian act, at that time even a brave one. And he thinks it’s a betrayal. Foolish, but he acts.”

“But the defense will say it was a betrayal.”

“And the more they say it, the more they make him look guilty. Vittorio says-”

“Vittorio?”

“Inspector Cavallini,” she said, surprised I hadn’t known his name. “He says this is the trap-if they talk about my father this way, it gives Moretti more motive. So maybe they won’t.”

“They have to say something.”

“They’ll say the police are mistaken. That it’s political, the government is trying to put the Communists on trial. And of course it’s true-a convenience for them, a case like this. But at least then my father’s name-” She broke off, crushing her cigarette, her mouth drawn, as if putting on lipstick had hardened it, aged her. I thought of her at the memorial service, pale, when her father’s good name had not even been in question.

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Of course. It’s my name too. That’s why it’s so important, with Vittorio. To make it all go right. So I make him feel part of the family.” Her eyes slightly amused but determined, Gianni’s face at the Monaco.

“By bringing him here.”

“Well, I’m the son but not the son. I know what people say. We go to Harry’s and I’m his mistress. Nice for him, maybe, but not for me. So I bring him here. Who will know? Some soldiers.”

“And me.”

“Yes, now you. But you know everything. You’re the other son. He thinks of you that way, you know.”

I made a noise, shrugging this off.

“You almost were.” She smiled to herself. “Maybe it’s close enough for him. He has a great respect for money.”

“Then he’s wrong again. I don’t have any.”

She picked up her wineglass. “Then she married for love too,” she said, not looking at me, casual, as if the phrase were a stray thought.

I waited a minute. “I hope so.”

She finished her wine, then looked at the dance floor. “It’s true, you’re going to America?”

I opened my hands. “I’m American.”

“You know, if things had turned out differently-if my father had lived-I think he would have offered you a place in his business.”

“I doubt it,” I said easily. “I don’t know anything about business.”

“But I do,” she said, looking up. “I know everything about our business. I was raised for it.”

A trumpeter stood up on the bandstand, holding a note, the end of the song. No one spoke, so that the moment seemed suspended. Giulia’s eyes were still, and I felt an almost physical pull, being drawn in, like Cavallini. Making us both part of the family so things would go right. The father’s daughter.

“More than Gianni did, then,” I said, trying to be light.

“No, he knew. Often he did things-because of the business,” she said, her voice remote, something she was still debating with herself.

People on the dance floor were applauding the trumpeter.

“Anyway, I’m not his son,” I said. “So-”

“But you avenged his death,” she said quickly. “I’m grateful for that.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe Moretti’s just convenient for everybody. A feather in your cousin’s cap. But what if he’s innocent?”

“You don’t believe it’s him? Why did he say he was glad, at that bar?”

“I don’t know-a million reasons. Maybe he hates businessmen.”

She put her hand over mine. “How you defend him, my father. Better than a son, maybe. You think he couldn’t have betrayed this man? He could. He betrayed everybody. My mother. Everybody,” she said fiercely, almost spitting out the words. She moved her hand away and grabbed at her glass to steady herself. “You didn’t suspect? No, like me. All my life I thought he was a good man. A moral dilemma-save a partisan? Ha, once. That he tells me about. And what about the rest of it? What was he saving then? The business? Well, he saved it for me, I should be grateful, yes? I should be grateful.”

She lifted her head suddenly, as if she’d been caught talking to herself, then reached for another cigarette, something to do. For a moment I sat still, afraid I’d startle her away, then struck the match and lit it for her.

“What?” I said gently.

“It’s in the notebooks.” She glanced up at Claudia and Cavallini coming toward us, only a table away.

“You figured out the gaps?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not now. Nothing to Vittorio.”

“But if they prove Moretti didn’t-”

“No, they prove he did.”

“They can’t,” I said involuntarily.

She looked at me, surprised, but before either of us could say anything more the others were sitting down, the table a party again.

“I dance like an elephant,” Cavallini said, laughing at himself, and Claudia politely said no, he was good on his feet, and we all drank more wine. Claudia had given me a “Let’s go” look, but now I couldn’t, not until I finished with Giulia, so I ignored it. Instead we drank, a new bottle exchanged for the old. Cavallini drummed his fingers on the table to the music. Finally Claudia got up, saying she’d promised Jim a dance, and left the table, shooting me another look. The dance was obviously a surprise to Jim, but everyone was a little drunk now and he waved a salute to me, grinning. A minute later I led Giulia onto the floor. “These Foolish Things,” slow enough to talk, my hand barely touching her back.

“What do you mean, they can’t prove it?” she said, still turning this over.

I hesitated, trying to think, feeling the sweat at my hairline. “They’re Paolo’s journals, aren’t they? He was already dead when the house was attacked. So how could they prove anything?”

“Oh, I see. No, they don’t say my father gave Moretti the medicine. But of course we know he did. Moretti said so.”

“So what do they say? You figured out the missing pages?”

She nodded. “I found the other books.”

“But he destroyed them. Didn’t you say?”

“Well, a Maglione. He gave them to Maria to be destroyed. The maid, you saw her.” Entering nervously with a phone. “Loyal to Paolo, it turns out. Maybe the only one.”

“She read them?”

“No, she doesn’t read. She can write her name, that’s all.”