Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“But they asked you to tell them a little more.”

He nodded. “I knew the foreign community. Such as it was then. Who was still here? A few White Russians with nowhere else to go. Hungarians. Some English who’d married Italians and thought that made them Italian. Nobody. You can’t imagine how harmless it all was. They just liked to keep records, think everything was under control. Who said what at which party. Well, whoever did say anything? Nobody was hurt. And I had friends where I needed them. Of course, now it’s over, nobody wants to remember what it was like. Now it looks-well, the way it looks. Anyway, it’s over and done with.”

“No, it’s not.”

He looked up, apprehensive.

“There are two people in the morgue. It wasn’t over for them.”

“Well, I didn’t put them there.”

“No, you just gave Gianni the names. Hers. The boy’s father. They were in that house. And now they’re all dead. You were part of it. Do you lie to yourself too, or just to me?”

“Oh, who could lie to you? The grand inquisitor. Gave him names. If I hadn’t, somebody else would have.”

“You’re not somebody else. You told him who killed Paolo. And people died.”

“Adam, you don’t think I knew what they’d do. You don’t think that. That awful business with the fire.”

“You just thought they’d round them up, and then what? Scold them? Execute them quietly? They were burned.”

He turned away, facing the window again. “All right. They were. I didn’t know. But so was Paolo. That’s what they did to him. In that car, all charred-” He stopped, his voice drifting. “They burned him. Paolo.”

“He was a thug.”

“I know what he was,” he snapped, turning to face me. “But that wasn’t all of him. Before all that, when he was young, if you’d known him then. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. There was a quality.”

I stared at the sheet, feeling awkward.

“I know, he was an oaf, really. Worse, I suppose, at the end. All puffed up.” He paused, catching himself. “We don’t get to choose how we feel, you know. We just do. And he never had a clue.” He looked out the window. “Sometimes I think the only thing I’ve really loved is Venice. It doesn’t love you back either. But I couldn’t lose it. So I gave Gianni the names. I was asked to do it and I did it. Satisfied?”

“Are you? You have to live with it.”

“What, my guilty conscience? Well, as it happens, I won’t. Not that either.” He came away from the window, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Do you know what it’s like, knowing you’re going to die? You don’t, really. It’s just an idea to you. You think you’re going to live. But when you know, things are different. They don’t matter so much anymore. People don’t matter. You find you can do-whatever you have to do. I wanted to stay in Venice.”

“Even if people had to die for it.”

“What, Paolo’s killers? Why not? They deserved it. Haven’t you ever wanted to get rid of someone?”

I looked up at him.

“What stops you? You think you’re going to live, you might have to pay for it. But if you know you’re going to die anyway, it’s-not so unthinkable. It’s easy, if you don’t have to pay.”

“Not even afterward?”

“Oh, afterward,” he said.

“I thought you believed in all that.”

“I did,” he said, running his hand over the chair now, talking to himself. “It’s odd about the Church. Just when you think it ought to come in handy, it doesn’t matter either. You see that it’s all tosh, really. All those wonderful paintings, Judgment Day this, hellfire that, puttis flying around everywhere-do you think they believed it, at the end? Lying there with some sore full of pus and not a hope in hell anything was coming afterward. Maybe. I doubt it. I think they were like me-waiting for their time to run out.” He stopped, staring at his hands. “It was just gossip, you know. That’s all it was. Except for Gianni.”

“Except for Gianni. Why you?”

He waved his hand. “I was his patient. Nothing could have been more innocent than my going to see him. That was important to him, that no one would suspect anything.” He made a face, uncomfortable even now. “I think it was his idea to use me. I think he told them I was dying, that I wouldn’t want to leave Venice, so I’d be-amenable.”

“To be his messenger boy. So Bauer called you.”

“Who? Oh no, I never met with the Germans.”

“Then who gave you the names?”

He glanced up at me, surprised. “Who? Who do you think? Your friend Cavallini. I reported to him, remember, as a foreigner. He even came to the house. Surely you knew.” He nodded toward the Frankfurt letter. “Or did they just tattle on me?” He peered at me over his glasses. “Are you all right? You’ve come over queer. Do you need something? Water?”

“Why didn’t he tell Gianni himself?” I said, barely getting it out, short of breath.

“Well, Gianni was something of a snob, you know. There was a family connection, through the wife, but Gianni wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He wouldn’t have him in the house.”

Now sitting in the pew at Salute, family at last.

“Gianni thought he was common,” Bertie was saying. “Police are always a little rough around the edges, aren’t they? And Cavallini-well, you ought to know. Slick as oil. It’s one thing to be on the take, everyone is over here, but he does very well for himself. And there were stories during the war. You know, the way the police could be sometimes. I never saw it myself, but Gianni was careful-maybe a little afraid of him. Said he was the kind who would get away with murder.”

I swallowed, still gasping a little, as if my neck were being held to the wall.

“Are you sure you’re all right? Here.” He handed me a glass of water.

I took a sip. Always one step ahead, pulling tighter and tighter even while I thought I was slipping away. Put yourself in my hands.

“Everybody gets away with it,” I said, picking up the beige envelope.

Bertie moved away from the bed. “What do you want me to say, Adam? I never thought-”

“I know. You never did a thing. Nobody did.”

He stood for a minute, not saying anything, then went to the chair and picked up his hat. “I don’t like this very much. Kangaroo court.”

I dropped the letter, my body sinking with it, weighted down by a nameless disappointment. Walking away from it. But what had I expected? We were all plea-bargaining now.

“Leave, then.”

He paused, looking down at his hat. “I’m still something to you, I think,” he said. “You wouldn’t-you’ll keep that to yourself?” He motioned toward the letter.

“And not show it around? I thought nothing mattered to you anymore.”

“Not to me. But you know, people don’t like to remember. There might be a certain social stigma-”

“And that still matters to you?”

“I live here. I don’t want to spend my last days alone.”

His voice caught me, tentative, almost wispy, and I looked up. Not the dark figure in the transcript anymore, whispering into Gianni’s ear, just a slight old man with half-moon glasses, whom nobody ever loved back.

“No,” I said. “It was just for me.” When I’d wanted to know. When we had gotten away with it.

Cavallini took us to the station in a police launch, heading away from the hospital toward the Rialto, because Claudia said she wanted to go up the Grand Canal. The sun was out, bright as it had been on our wedding day, and she sat in the back, just as she had then with her corsage, not smiling this time, just taking it all in, fixing it in her memory. Cavallini and I had exchanged slings-his had been snipped away, mine put in place that morning-and I still felt a little wobbly, off-balance. He sat up front with the driver, pointing to buildings from time to time, a tour guide. Palazzo Foscari. Ca’ d’Oro. Ca’ Pesaro. The fairy-tale city everyone knew, untouched by the war.