“Yes, it’s not pleasant for you, I know. Still, a great service to me.”

“Anybody could have—”

“Yes, but since it’s you, now there can be no question about an investigation.”

I looked at him, trying to make this out.

“No question of an accident,” he said, taking out a cigarette of his own.

“But it wasn’t. You said.”

“No. You saw the skull in the back? Not a fall. But how much better for everyone if it had been. So, maybe a temptation.”

“To whom?”

He shrugged. “Poor Venice. The war, finally it’s over, and they start coming back. The visitors. Not soldiers—your mother, her friends. It’s good for Venice. You look at the buildings and we—well, maybe we look at you a little. But no one comes if they’re afraid, if there is crime. A murder? Not in Venice. But now look who identifies the body—one of the visitors. Who sees it’s not an accident. So I have my investigation.”

I drew on my cigarette, my stomach sliding again.

“But surely you would have—”

“Yes, but now I can be certain. Something that involves the international community? The Questura will want to act. To solve it. Men, whatever I need. And we will solve it.”

“I hope so.”

Cavallini reached over, reassuring, and patted my arm. “We’ll find him, don’t worry.”

I nodded, feeling the weight of his hand.

“I know it’s a loss for you. But you’ll help me.”

“Me?”

“You knew his character. With a Maglione, sometimes it’s easier for foreigners than for our Venetian families.”

“But I hardly knew him. I mean, your wife must have—”

“No. A blood tie only, not a friendship. But you, your mother—” He let it drift, waiting for me to pick it up.

“Well, yes,” I said. “We’ll do anything we can. Of course.” I paused. “Do you have any idea who—”

He withdrew his hand, shaking his head. “No, it’s early for that. First we get the facts, from in there.” He jerked his head toward the morgue. “Then we look at the life. Who profits?”

“You think it’s someone who knew him? Why not a robbery?”

He smiled. “A hit on the head, grab the wallet, push him in the canal? But he still had the wallet. Also his watch. What thief leaves a watch? No, some other reason. So, who profits? You see how lucky I am to have you.”

“Me?”

“In a murder you look at everyone. Him? Him? What motive? Who profits? But with you, it’s the opposite. No profit, a great loss. After the wedding, perhaps, I would have had to suspect you too. But now you are the only man in Venice I can’t suspect.”

A trap? Another step through the looking glass? “Why not?” I said quietly.

“Why not? Who throws away a fortune? He would have been your father.”

“Yes,” I said, waiting, my voice neutral.

“Your father,” Cavallini repeated. “One of the richest men in all of Italy.”

I looked at him, then caught myself and turned to the water before he could see my face.

CHAPTER TEN

Gianni’s funeral service was held at the Salute, so close to Mimi’s that it seemed a grimmer version of the ball, with the same crowding at the landing stage, people being helped up the broad steps, all in black this time, with hats and veils. The waiting gondolas stretched up the Grand Canal, as in a Canaletto, filling up the canvas, all of Mimi’s guests and more, enough for a state occasion. When the funeral boats arrived, a cortege of bobbing hearses, people lingered on the church steps to stare at the coffin, draped with flowers. We had become part of a news story: a violent death, an old family, the foreigners who drank at Harry’s. Across the campo, people watched from windows.

Claudia hadn’t wanted to go.

“I can’t. You go.

I’ll stay here,” she said, gesturing at the rumpled bed.

We were always together now, a kind of hiding, making love in her room, wanting each other even more because no one else was part of the secret, a new intimacy. Sometimes we went out for walks and talked about it, the only ones who knew, but mostly we stayed in, sex another way of talking, something else we could say only to each other. When she held me afterward, her fingers would move over my shoulder, making sure I was still there, and I would put my arm around her as if I were folding her up in a cape, making the world go away, both of us safe.

“No. We want them to see us.”

“How can I sit there? What will people think?”

“That you’re part of the family. Cavallini already thinks it. He thinks we’re Gianni’s family. Almost, anyway.”

“Ha.”

“He asked if his wife could call on my mother. Like something out of—”

“Yes,” she said impatiently, “very Venetian. The old manners. And you trust that?”

“You’re going for her sake. He’ll expect it. He’d notice if you didn’t.”

“My god. His family. Am I going crazy?”

I put my hands on her shoulders. “Just this, then we’ll go away.”

“Leave Venice?” She reached up, grabbing my arm. “You think they know something?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing.”

“Then why?”

“Because we’re the only ones who can give us away now—if we slip, say something. So the sooner we leave—”

She looked at me, silent for a minute. “Yes, the only ones,” she said finally. Then she turned away, out of my hands. “But first this. Am I supposed to cry too?”

“Just as long as Cavallini sees you with the family.”

But in fact there was some question about where to seat us. The ushers led my mother to the front, the widow’s pew, and then stopped short, placing us a few rows behind, on the right. My mother, dry-eyed behind her veil, seemed not to notice, still enveloped in that eerie calm that had settled in after Cavallini’s first visit. But someone must have told the ushers, decided on the protocol. It occurred to me then that I had no idea who had arranged the funeral, taken care of all the details that only seem to happen by themselves. A full mass at the Salute. A gondola banked in flowers. A reception at the Ca’ Maglione. All organized, down to where to seat the almost-widow.

I looked at the front pew. Just behind, Cavallini and his wife sat next to the priest from the ball, presumably a row of relatives. But in the front itself there was only an old woman leaning on a girl, who must be the daughter, finally arrived from Bologna. Or had she been here for days, ignoring us, going about her father’s business? I noticed then that the church was divided, the faces I recognized from Bertie’s on our side, Venetians on the other, my mother separated from the family by an aisle.

I stretched my neck, trying to see the daughter’s face, but she was looking straight ahead, to the high altar, where the priest had appeared with upraised hands. We stood, and the backs of the relatives now hid her from every angle. Music echoed through the vault under the dome as the pallbearers brought the casket forward. When we were sitting again, I felt Claudia rigid against me, staring at the coffin. I put my hand over hers and looked past the altar, hoping to draw her attention away. To the left was the sacristy with the Titian ceilings, but they were lost in the space, distant and dim, while the coffin sat right in front of us, inescapable. Down in the first row, the daughter had bowed her head.

The service took hours. I had never attended a mass in Venice—for me, the churches were poorly lit galleries—and the spectacle of it took me by surprise. Busy altar boys in white surplices, Latin chants and candlelight, hundreds of people answering in unison—the whole vast church seemed to be in movement, except the women on either side of me, Claudia still rigid, my mother simply quiet, looking vaguely at nothing in particular. At one point Cavallini turned his head slowly, as if he were counting the house, caught my eye and nodded, but otherwise we were left to ourselves. Nobody stared, more interested now in the theater of public grief. The eulogy, in Italian, was long enough to cover Gianni’s entire life. A choir sang. People streamed down the aisle for Communion.