"I guess so." Gianfranco knew he sounded vague. "Or would somebody in the city government have sent them out when our turn finally came up?"
Eduardo said a couple of things that should have set fire to the table. Somehow, they didn't. "It could be," he said when he calmed down a little. "Things work like that here, heaven knows. D'you think your father could find out for me if it is? He's got the connections to do it if anybody does."
"Well, yeah," Gianfranco said. "But why do I tell him that you want to know? Or even that I want to know, if you don't want him knowing you do?"
Some of the things Eduardo said this time made what had come out before sound like love poetry by comparison. He needed longer to get control of his temper. At last, he said, "Well, you're right. I wish you weren't, but you are. You don't want to become an apprentice elevator repairman all of a sudden, eh?"
"No," Gianfranco said with such dignity as he could muster. Sure enough, he didn't think much of working with his hands. He was an apparatchik's son, all right.
"Too bad." Eduardo sounded as if he meant it. But he also had some of his usual sarcastic edge back. Before, he'd been too upset for sarcasm. He went on, "You'd sure make things simpler if you did."
"Simpler for you, maybe," Gianfranco said.
"Si, simpler for me." Eduardo spread his hands. "Whenever somebody says something like that, what else is he going to mean?" Yes, he was closer to his normal self.
"Sorry," Gianfranco said. "But if f start asking too many weird questions, my father isn't the only one who'll wonder
200 Harry Turtledove
why. Before too long, some informer or other will get word to the Security Police. Then they'll start asking questions of their own."
"Do you know who's likely to be an informer?" Eduardo asked.
"I can guess some people who may be," Gianfranco answered. "Some, though, nobody'd guess in a million years. That's how things work."
How many people talked to the Security Police? No civilian knew for sure. Gianfranco would have bet no one official at the Security Police had the number at his fingertips. Handlers dealt with informers. But there were millions of them-he was sure of that. Brothers spied on sisters. Wives spied on husbands. Bosses informed on their workers-and the other way round. How huge were the archives with all those accusations, all those denunciations? Wouldn't they fill up the whole country sooner or later? Probably sooner, he thought.
Eduardo sighed. "All right. Do what you can without sticking your neck out. If you can find out, wonderful. If you can't…" He sighed again, louder. "If you can't, maybe it's time to go to San Marino."
"It's a nice place. People say so, anyway-I've been to Rimini, but never there," Gianfranco said.
"I wouldn't be going to sightsee," Eduardo reminded him.
Gianfranco nodded. He understood that. And if Eduardo found what he was looking for, he would disappear. Gianfranco understood that, too. And he himself would stay stuck in this dull old world after Eduardo had given him a glimpse-no, half a glimpse-of something so much better. Where was the justice in that?
Ten
The chief janitor of the apartment building was a large, impressive man named Marcantonio Moretti. He scratched his bushy, Stalin-style mustache as he nodded to Annarita. "Yes, it is very good to have the elevator running again," he said.
"And it's so smooth! Just like a dream!" Annarita wasn't in the drama society at Hoxha Polytechnic, but she knew how to lay it on with a trowel.
"Grazie" Comrade Moretti said, as if he'd done the work himself. He hadn't, of course. He didn't do much work of any sort. He was the chief janitor because his brother-in-law was a medium-important official in Milan 's Bureau of City Maintenance. Under Communism, capitalism, or any old kind of ism at all, whom you knew mattered at least as much as what you could actually do.
"Who were the repairmen who did the job? They ought to get commendations for the Stakhanovite work they did," Annarita said. If people really worked like Stakhanovites or anything close to it, the elevator would have got fixed as soon as it broke down. Maybe it wouldn't have broken down in the first place. But how long had they had to wait? Much, much, too long- Annarita knew that.
"Well, I don't exactly remember," Moretti said instead of saying he had no idea, though that had to be just as true.
"I'd really like to find out," Annarita said.
Comrade Moretti scratched his mustache again. Had Gian-franco said something like that, the chief janitor would have run him out of his office. Annarita was much prettier than Gianfranco. That shouldn't have had anything to do with anything, which wasn't the same as saying it didn't.
"Hey, Ernesto!" Moretti yelled.
"What's up?" Ernesto Albosta called from the back room. A moment later, the assistant janitor came out. He wasn't impressive. He was short and skinny and slouchy and had crooked teeth. He wore ratty overalls and a cap pulled down low on his forehead. But Moretti was only the front man for the housekeeping staff. If you needed something fixed, Albosta was the one to see. If you needed to find something out, Albosta was the one to ask.
"Who were the guys who did the elevator?" Moretti asked.
"I don't know where the devil they found 'em," Albosta answered. "They're not even a Milanese outfit. The fix was in somewhere-you can bet on that."
"So where are they from, then? Bergamo? Como? Pia-cenza?" Moretli named three cities not far away.
But Ernesto Albosta shook his head each time. "Farther off than that. I think Rimini. Yeah, that's right-they're called By the Arch Repairs, from the Roman one in the middle of town there." He spread his hands. "How's an outfit from over by the Adriatic supposed to get work here? Somebody knows where the bodies are buried, all right."
"Sounds like it," Morelti agreed. "Now I'm going to wonder if we've got to worry about the elevator dying on us in two weeks. If it does, I guarantee you we'll never see those worthless bums again."
"Got that right," /Ubosta said, and slouched away scratching himself.
Marcantonio Moretti nodded to Annarita. "Now you know," he said, as if he'd known himself.
"Yes. Thank you." Annarita got out of his office as fast as she could while staying polite.
Now she knew-but she wondered what she knew. She couldn't remember whether the repair truck had plates from Italy or San Marino. In detective stories, people always noticed stuff like that. She'd paid no attention, though.
Still, there was a fair chance those had been Eduardo's friends looking for him. They hadn't found him. Were they still in Milan, checking other places where he might be? Or had they given up and gone away? She couldn't begin to guess.
Neither could Eduardo when she told him what she'd learned. "That's… too bad," he said. She got the idea he'd clamped down on something stronger. He sighed. "I have to go to San Marino, then, and hope they're not watching the border."
"My family and the Mazzillis are going to Rimini on vacation in a couple of weeks," Annarita said. " San Marino would be easier as a day trip from there than it would going straight from Milan."
"Is Rimini here full of Germans and Scandinavians trying to get sunburn and skin cancer on the beach?" Eduardo asked.
"Si. Some of them hardly wear any clothes at all." Annarita sniffed. "You can probably have a good time even if you don't get up to San Marino."
"Nothing wrong with looking. When you do more than look, that's when life gets complicated," Eduardo said. "Maybe you and Gianfranco can come up to San Marino with me. What could look more innocent than a guy with his cousin and her boyfriend?"
What could give me better cover? he meant. Annarita understood that. She didn't mind. What her parents would think… was bound to be a different story. Of course, if she didn't tell them ahead of time, they wouldn't have a chance to find reasons to say no.
Italy slowed to a crawl in August. It didn't get as hot in Milan as it did farther south, but it was muggier here. Everybody who was anybody got out of town for a while. Doing business often took time-Gianfranco thought about the elevator in his building. Trying to do business in August was a fool's errand.
"It will be good to get to the beach," his father said as they packed for vacation.
"If we can get to the beach," his mother said darkly. "All those foreigners there in as little as the law allows…"
"Well, we've got the hotel reservations. The place is only a couple of blocks from the sand," his father said. "It's where we stayed last year. You liked it then, Bella."
"I wasn't talking about the hotel," Gianfranco's mother said.