“No one can hurt like a child.” She brushed her hair back, rallying. “Is that what you think? Well, darling, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Or him, for that matter. But really, I’m not Doris Duke. Isn’t it too bad? Of course I’ve told him that. But if you like, I’ll tell him again. So he can be absolutely sure what he’s getting. All right?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. You’re full of meanness today, I’m not sure why. Maybe you don’t want me to marry anyone.”

“I just don’t want you to marry him. Neither would you, if you’d stop and listen for two minutes.”

“Oh, just him. But the thing is, darling, no one else has asked me.”

“Mother—”

“So we’ll do this. I’ll tell him again I’m not rich.”

“It’s not about the—”

“And if he still wants to go ahead—just on the off chance that he’d like me for myself—will that make you feel better?” She stared at me for a second, then turned to the door. “Good. Now can I have my bath?”

After she left, I just stood there, not knowing what to do. Follow her and keep arguing? For what? More tears and stubborn indifference, past listening. What Claudia had predicted; the last thing I’d expected.

I picked up the coffee, tepid now and slightly bitter, and finished it, then stood looking at the wall, the light from the water outside moving on it in irregular flashes, out of rhythm, jumpy.

He’d tell her some story. A hysterical response to a hospital death. Who would say otherwise? Were there hospital records? Another name, she’d said. Not even a paper trail. I walked over to the window. On the side table there was a new picture—not the jaunty Zattere one on the dressing table but Gianni in a more formal pose, seated at a desk, with papers in front of him for signing. I picked up the photograph and looked at his eyes, half expecting to find some peering intensity, visible evil. But of course it was only Gianni. How easy had it been for him to point Signor Grassini out? A struggle? Routine? Something he’d done before, in the habit of informing? There wouldn’t have been only one.

I looked again at Gianni at his desk. Papers to sign. There was always paper somewhere. Almost without thinking, I slid the picture out of its frame and put it in my pocket. More reliable than memory, sometimes, the paper of a crime.

CHAPTER FIVE

I caught the traghetto that crossed the Grand Canal to the Gritti and then headed toward San Moise. A few days, Joe had said—maybe he had already gone. But the Bauer still had a Sullivan registered, and while I was using the house phone to call him, I spotted him at breakfast in the dining room facing the rio.

“Late start?” I said, going up to the table.

“Late night. You just caught me. Sit, but don’t expect too much.” He rubbed his temples, wishing away the hangover.

“Thanks.” I took a cornetti from the bread basket in front of him. “Eat something. It helps.”

“Did I call you or did you call me?”

“I called you. I need a favor.”

“Too late. I go back to Verona at fourteen hundred.”

“That’s where I need the favor.”

He raised his eyebrows over the coffee cup.

“Could you run a check on somebody? See what you’ve got hiding in the files?”

“Italian?”

I took out the photograph.

“Isn’t this the guy from the other day? You always run a check on your friends?”

“He’s not a friend.”

“Bad boy?”

“I think so.”

“What’d he do?”

“Cooperated with the SS rounding up Jews.”

“He wouldn’t be the first. They insisted, you know.”

“I don’t think it was like that. I think he helped.”

“Adam, for chrissake, if I had a nickel for everybody who—”

“I know. Frau Schmidt telling on the neighbors. This is something else. He’s a doctor. Old family. He had a choice.”

“Army?”

“No. Probably too old. Maybe too smart.”

“So?”

“So, what else? This stuff—it usually doesn’t happen just once. You know. It’s part of who you are.”

“Fascist?”

“Maybe, but not only that. I mean, what the hell, the mailman probably had a party card. Did he work with the Germans? What did he do? Sort of thing you might turn up in your files.”

“Might.” He looked again at the picture. “You have a name?”

I took out a pen and started writing. “He may have used another. That’s why the picture—in case somebody might spot him.”

“Somebody like who?”

“Come on, Joe, we worked the same street. You must have somebody just looking at pictures to see what he can see. An old partisan, maybe. Somebody looking to get even.”

Joe took a sip of coffee. “Is that what you’re looking to do?”

I met his gaze over the cup. “He wants to marry my mother.”

“Jesus, Adam, we’re not a fucking reference bureau. If you don’t like him—”

“He’s a bad guy. I just want to know how bad.”

“Look, let me explain something to you. This isn’t Frankfurt. The setup’s different here. We’re not trying to punish anybody. The Italians are supposed to be the victims, the good guys. We don’t keep those kinds of files on them. And the Italians, they don’t want to know. They settle things privately. It’s what they’re good at. Since fucking Rome. Some Fascist prick set up a partisan ambush? They don’t bother with a trial. They just stick him with a shiv some night and go about their business. You see Mussolini in the dock? Just strung him up at a gas station. They don’t want us running trials here. They take care of their own.”

“So what are you doing here then?”

“German trials. The Germans want trials. Or maybe we want them to have them. Anyway, they do. And when the evidence is here, we have to come get it. Kesselring did a lot here before they transferred him back. Just wiped people out. So things get lost in Germany, we find something else here. It doesn’t matter where he did it as long as he did it. It’s the Germans we’re after, not your mother’s boyfriend.” He put the picture back on the table.

“So let’s see, that means you’ve got the German army files—what they didn’t take. They take much?”

“Some.”

“And you’ve probably got that cross-referenced with the Salò government files—liaison reports anyway. SS? Nobody kept files like they did, we know that. So what do we have? The army worked with Italians, so there’d be sheets on them there. Secret police reports, for sure. SS would have their own little black book of informers. Somebody like Gianni, they’d probably give him a file all his own, wouldn’t they?”

Joe raised his eyes again. “Yes.”

“In other words, the German files have got practically everything we want to know about the Italians, wouldn’t you say? Except what they said to each other. And all I want to know is what he said to the Germans. What they had to say about him.”

“An Italian civilian? We’re not here for that. They’re our friends.”

“Yeah, well, so are the Germans now.”

“We’re not supposed to use the files this way.”

“What are you talking about? That’s all we did.”

“You’re not in the army anymore. And he’s Italian. We’re not supposed to—”

“Jesus Christ, Joe, the old man is lying there in a hospital bed and this guy fingers him. In a hospital bed. How much protection is he supposed to have?”

Joe said nothing for a minute, then pocketed the paper and photograph.

“All right. All I’m saying is, this isn’t Frankfurt. We may not have anything.”

“If you don’t, you don’t. I’ll bet you’ve got a Herr Kroger.” Our assistant, for whom the files were a series of live wires running from connection to connection, the whole a wonderful bright web in his brain.

“Soriano,” Joe said, nodding. “Signora. Pretty good, too.”

“Put her on it. She’ll know right away if it’s worth a little sniffing. I don’t want to tie you up with this.”

Joe grinned. “No, just use my best snoop. You don’t change.” He patted the pocket with the photograph. “You really love this guy, huh? What if I come up dry?”