“I saw it.”

The nurse, still angry, was looking from one of us to the other, listening to the volley in a foreign language.

“She’d never admit it now anyway. Ask her when this was, when the Germans came.”

Claudia said something in Italian.

“October fourth.”

When Claudia and her father were taken, when Moretti was being protected, just as everyone had said. Exact, an excellent witness. The story everyone agreed on, except for the nod. I looked at Claudia, the other witness.

I moved in the chair, stuck. Why would the nurse lie? The fake report had become a badge of honor, her war story, helping Gianni do the right thing. So we had to assume he had.

She said something in Italian, her eyes on me.

“She wants to know how you knew about the bullet wound.”

“Tell her Gianni told me.”

“Ah,” the nurse said.

“I told her you’re the American woman’s son,” Claudia said, explaining. The nurse was taking me in now, somebody in Gianni’s world, not just a foreign voice. “She wants to know if she can talk about this now. It’s no longer a secret?”

“Not anymore. Better tell her the police might ask. No surprises.”

They both got up as they spoke, the meeting over.

“She wants to know who did it.”

I shrugged. “The police think young Moretti.”

The nurse turned to me, speaking Italian, forgetting for a second to go through Claudia.

“She says, why would they think that? Dr. Maglione saved his father’s life.”

“Tell her we don’t think he did it either. That’s why we came,” I said, one more blurred half-lie.

I looked around at the shelves of knickknacks. The rooms he had helped her find. Not enough to buy anyone’s silence, even assuming there was silence to buy. And why would there be? She still thought he was a hero, and she’d been there.

“Are you finished?” Claudia said.

I nodded, feeling deflated. Finished with no next place to go, and still no way to connect Gianni to the house.

We said good-bye, a thousand thanks, most of it by rote, my mind elsewhere. Then Claudia spoke in Italian, and the nurse stopped, taken aback.

“I said to her, ‘Do you know you look familiar to me?’ ” Claudia said.

“What are you doing? Leave it.”

Claudia’s eyes flashed. “I want her to remember. I remember—why shouldn’t she?”

The nurse studied her for another minute, then shook her head. “She says maybe from the hospital. So many people come and go, it’s hard to keep track.” She looked down, her lips in a forced half smile. “So many people come and go. And I’d know her face anywhere.”

We started for the door, the nurse still talking.

“She says it’s like that in the hospital,” Claudia said, airy now, the nurse prattling. “So many people. After a while you don’t notice.” She looked at me. “So that’s all it meant for her.”

“Maybe she wasn’t there,” I said. “Right then, I mean.”

“No, she was in the ward. Or do you think it’s my imagination too?”

Could it have been? A question so faint it was almost unnoticeable, like a hairline crack in porcelain.

“Do you? Yes, it must be. The doctor would never do that,” she said, playing the nurse again.

She turned to her and said something in Italian, without translating, but it must have been asking whether she was sure, baiting her, because the nurse squinted at Claudia’s face again, then shook her head.

“Claudia. We didn’t come here for that.”

“No, to make sure he did something else. It’s not enough, what he did. But maybe he didn’t even do that. She didn’t see it. So how do you know?” Asking something else, her voice angry, all of it still alive to her, not yet just a white splotch of skin. Real, more accurate than memory.

“Because you said so,” I said calmly.

She turned away, embarrassed, so that my eyes went to the nurse at the door, watching us closely, maybe the way she’d watched things in the ward, not really understanding what they meant. People coming and going.

“By the way,” I said, “ask her if she was there when the son came for the medicine.”

“What medicine?” the nurse said.

“That he sent to Moretti.”

“Why would he send medicine to Moretti? There was no infection.”

I looked at Claudia, my head suddenly light.

“For pain maybe?”

She brushed this away with her hand. “Then? In the war? Who had such medicine? There wasn’t even enough for the ones who were suffering. Moretti hadn’t had any in the hospital—only at first, to take out the bullet. After that, no, he didn’t need any.”

“But Dr. Maglione sent him some,” Claudia said to her. “The boy said so.”

“No, it’s impossible. He didn’t need medicine.”

“He didn’t need medicine?” I said, wanting to be sure.

“No, I told you. Anyway, how could Dr. Maglione do this? The man left in the night. Dr. Maglione didn’t know where he was.”

“No,” I said, following the thought right to the house, “but his son did.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Carlo Moretti may have been legally adult, but he looked years younger, smooth and wide-eyed, barely adolescent, features that must have given him a useful innocence in his courier days. Now they made him seem childlike, a frightened boy waiting to be taken home.

Rosa was finally allowed to see him that evening, and Cavallini, improbably, allowed me to go with her, maybe as a kind of unofficial watchdog for the Questura. She had brought the new lawyer, and most of the time was spent going over what the police had said to him and what he’d replied. The lawyer took notes. The boy glanced at me from time to time, but his attitude was more bewildered than suspicious—I was no more surprising than anything else that had happened. No, the police had not used any force, just questions. Had they promised him anything? No, but they said a confession meant a more lenient sentence, if it came early, before physical evidence was collected, prints, bloodstains. They wanted to know about his boat. Given Gianni’s probable route on foot, Moretti must already have had it waiting. Where? “They’re looking for witnesses,” Rosa said, “to put you on that boat.” “But surely there was someone who could verify that you hadn’t taken one out,” the lawyer said. “You couldn’t just take a boat.” No, it was easy enough. They weren’t guarded at night. If you did it carefully, you could get out to the lagoon and no one would know. I looked away.

“Did they ask you whether he was dead when you put him in?” I said.

Rosa and the lawyer turned to me.

“Cause of death,” I said. “The official cause was drowning.”

“How do you know this?” the lawyer said, beginning to write on his notepad.

“Cavallini told me when I identified the body. Check the coroner’s report.”

“Yes,” the lawyer said, “it’s an interesting technicality. Maybe useful, the actual cause.”

“What difference does it make?” Moretti said, his voice sullen.

“Listen to me,” Rosa said. “Everything makes a difference. It’s going to be all right.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, looking down.

“We’ve found a witness,” she said. “For that night.”

“You should have told me,” the lawyer said, surprised.

“The man with the umbrella,” Rosa said, still looking directly at Carlo. “You remember, he offered you an umbrella. When you were walking. In front of the Londra Palace. By the statue of Vittorio Emanuele.”

“The man with the umbrella,” Carlo said numbly, not understanding.

“Yes, he remembers the time exactly. How wet you were. If you think, you’ll remember him,” she said, tapping her finger on the table.

He glanced at her in recognition, then shook his head. “It won’t make any difference. It’s what you used to say—don’t get caught. Once they have you—”

“That was different. That was the war,” Rosa said.

Moretti shrugged, all the answer he could manage.