The Third Hour

by Richard Devin

  BLOOD SPLATTERED ONTO the walls of the stairway from a gash in the Novice’s head. He grunted as the air in his lungs was forced out with every hard landing. The Novice attempted to gain control, reaching for the old railing. Missing. Trying again, before his head smashed into the stone wall at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes closed as the blur of, walls and stairs, arms and hands, legs and feet, were replaced by darkness.

  Dominic and Tonita had made it halfway down the stairs, following the thuds, grunts and groans of the Novice, when Dominic stopped, turned and retreated back up the stairway.

  “DOMINIC, WAIT.”

  Tonita was near frantic. Confused about the course of events that had just taken place, she wasn’t sure if she should follow Dominic or make a run for the street. She didn’t know if he was crazy and just attacked some priest unprovoked, or if he was protecting her. She glanced at the Novice lying twisted at the bottom of the stairs. She turned and started back up the stairs after Dominic. Two stairs later, she stopped. She screamed. Then turned around and headed down.

  Before she had taken three steps down, Dominic rejoined her.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs together, and jumping over the Novice’s crumpled body, they made their way out of the door onto the Vatican streets.

  Dominic did not let up. He pulled Tonita toward the Museum Gate.

  She almost tripped, briefly losing her balance. She steadied herself, regained her footing, and followed Dominic once again onto the streets of Rome.

  THIRTY NINE

  “DOMINIC. WAIT. WHAT are you doing?” Tonita was breathless, sweating; her hair clung to her forehead. “Dom, stop!” She pulled away from him and leaned her exhausted body against a wall of peeling yellow paint. She wiped the hair from her eyes and screamed, “What is this? Why are we running? Why did you push that priest down the stairs? Dominic? What’s wrong with you?” She concluded the rant of questions in tears.

  Dominic leaned in close to her. He was breathing heavily and his words came out in short strains. “That priest, brother, or whatever he said he was,” he took a deep breath, “believe me, Tonita. He wasn’t.” He took in another breath and blew it out slowly. “That man was going to kill us.”

  “Dom? He was there watching over the place.”

  “I know that’s what he said. But, he wasn’t. There was something about him. Evil.”

  “Dom. He was just standing there.”

  “Tonita. He wasn’t just standing there watching out for the Cardinal’s possessions or his apartment. I don’t even think the Vatican knows that he was there. They certainly did not send him.” Dominic spoke breathlessly.

  “And how, Dom? How do you know this?”

  He stepped back from the wall, pulled off a thick piece of the paint, and examined it. There was layer upon layer of paints in that little piece. Red first, then brown, with a deeper brown, over tan and then the yellows. Different layers of yellows, one under the other, from bright to faded, to the last layer of pollution covered and stained yellow. “I don’t know it.” Dominic let the paint chip drop from his hand. “All right, let me ask you a question. How did he know to speak to us in English and not Italian?”

  “Maybe he heard us coming up the stairs? And we were speaking in English, so he spoke to us in English.”

  “Possible.” Dominic went silent. His eyes wandered over the faded yellow layer of paint, stained with years of pollution. “He knew that we were with the Cardinal. He didn’t even ask us if the Cardinal was all right.”

  “Dom, he’s with the Vatican. Of course he knew that the Cardinal had died. And he must have known that we were with him when the window blew out. I’m sure everyone knows, thanks to Inspector Carrola.” Tonita sighed, extending her hand to him. “So, now what? What do we do now?” Tonita stared into his eyes.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have to know, Dom. You can’t continue not knowing.”

  “Unfair.” Dominic stepped away from her. “I didn’t ask for any of this. It just happened.”

  “Unfair is what you’re doing to me.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come along, Tonita.”

  “No, you just yanked me along.” She took a step toward him, reached out, placed her hand under his chin, and turned his face to her. “Dominic, that man could be dead back there. We’ve got to call someone. Send him help. We just can’t leave him lying at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Tonita, trust me. We don’t want to help him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s part of this. He’s part of whatever ‘this’ is...” He turned away from her. “Nothing is right anymore.”

  “Thanks. I’ll assume that present company is included.”

  Dominic looked backed at her, shook his head and walked away.

  “Now what? Where are you going?” Tonita called after Dominic. “What? Are you just going to leave me like you did that priest and the church?”

  Dominic stopped mid-stride. “Nice Tonita. Thanks,” he said without turning around.

  A long silence covered the distance between them.

  Finally, Tonita broke the silence and the distance. “All right.” She took several steps to close the gap between them. “Dominic? Meet me half way.”

  Dominic turned around, breathed out a heavy sigh, and moved to her.

  “That wasn’t too hard was it?”

  Dominic leaned into her and kissed her. His arms wrapped around her body and drew her close to him. He held her there tightly, not letting his mouth and hers part.

  Tonita responded in kind and her arms became twisted in his. After a moment, she pulled back. “Well, big boy, is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she said in her best Mae West accent.

  Dominic smiled at her. “Neither.” He lifted up his shirt revealing half of a book tucked into the waistband of his pants.

  Tonita grabbed the book and pulled it out of Dominic’s pants. “You went back into the Cardinal’s apartment to get this.”

  “Hey.” Dominic flinched instinctively.

  “Let me get this straight. You push a priest down a flight of stairs, maybe killing him because he’s going to hurt us, although he never made a move to do so. Then, you grab me, push me out of the apartment, all because of this unseen danger, and...”

  “It’s not...” Dominic tried to interject.

  Tonita held up her hand, placing it in front of Dominic’s face. “Oh, I’m not finished. You grab me. Rush me out. But then, in spite of this murdering priest who may be waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs playing dead with blood splattered everywhere, you rush back into the apartment to get this.” She presented the book to Dominic’s face. “A travel book?”

  “Well...yeah!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me?” Tonita shook her head.

  “Was that a question or a statement?”

  “A book?” Tonita asked. Then added, “That was a question.”

  “Can I?” Dominic reached for the book.

  Tonita rolled her eyes and handed him the book.

  Dominic took it, letting his fingers touch hers.

  She shook her head, turning away.

  Dominic turned the cover back inspecting the first few pages, then using his thumb flipped through the remaining pages, fanning the book. He paused, held the book by the spine, and turned it upside down. He shook it. Then, turning the book face up, flipped the pages again. And then once more.

  “Are you hot?” Tonita could not conceal the sarcasm in her voice

  Dominic didn’t respond. Instead, he flipped through the pages again. This time he stopped at a page. Watching. Studying. He bent the spine back and held the book open on the page. Then he looked up at Tonita and smiled.

  “What’s that grin for?” Tonita’s eyebrow raised and her head cocked to the side.

  “This.” Dominic let the book fall open to page seventeen, chapter three. Getting to Roswell.

  Tonita glanced down at the opene
d book; she mouthed the words of the chapter title and then looked up at Dominic. “Please tell me you’re not thinking of going there?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But we are.” Dominic nearly broke the spine on the book by folding the pages back as far as he could. Then, methodically, he began to tear page seventeen from the old binding glue. The page came away easily. “Here.” He handed the book to Tonita, keeping only the page he had just removed. He read the words printed onto the first side of the page. Considering them. Then he turned the paper over to page eighteen and read each of the words printed there.

  “You found something?” Tonita asked.

  “Not sure.” He took the page and held it at arms’ length to the sky, letting the cloud filtered sunlight pass through it.

  “Well what are you looking for?”

  “Not sure of that either.”

  “Okay. Let me try this another way.

  “Shoot.” Dominic continued to turn, twist, and flip the torn page seventeen.

  “You tore the page from the book for a reason, right?”

  “Yes,” Dominic answered without looking at Tonita. His eyes swept the page as he turned it over and upside down and up to the sun again.

  “What was that reason?”

  “This page is different.”

  “How so?”

  “I noticed it before,” he said.

  Tonita’s expression begged for further explanation.

  “When Cardinal Celent handed me the book back in his apartment. I noticed that a page or two seemed different...thicker maybe. I dismissed it then as just a fluke.”

  “And now you think that page has some information hidden on it?”

  “Yes, my dear Doctor Watson. You are correct.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Maybe. But I’m sure that Cardinal Celent was trying to tell us something.”

  “Why didn’t he just say it?”

  “I don’t know. But then that fits in with the way my life,” he paused and looked directly into Tonita’s eyes, “our lives have been going. I don’t know what to expect next.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  Dominic eyed the page again. “Sure,” he said and handed to Tonita.

  She turned the page around.

  “I did that already,” Dominic said, as she performed her inspection.

  “Yes, I know. But you may have missed something.

  Then concentrating, she read every word.

  “I did that, too,” Dominic said.

  “You’re not helping,” Tonita chastised, then held the page up to the sun.

  “And I did that.”

  “But you didn’t do this,” Tonita said, then spat onto the page.

  “Tonita!” Dominic shouted, then added, “That was gross.”

  Tonita rubbed the saliva into the fabric of the page. She glanced up at Dominic with a big smile and showed him the page. Where the saliva had dampened the page, a new image of crisscrossing lines had partially appeared.

  “You’re brilliant.”

  “Hey, all those days of candy-striping at the hospital were not lost.”

  “Oh? They teach Candy stripers to spit on things?”

  “Didn’t you ever do a litmus test, where the paper reacts to something that’s alkaline or acidic and turns it different colors? When I was a kid I got this really cool, well, I thought it was really cool at the time, science kit.”

  Dominic didn’t let her finish. “Come on. We’ve got to find some water.”

  Tonita glared at him. “Dom, we’re in Rome. There’s a freakin’ fountain on every corner.”

  FORTY

  DOMINIC LED THE WAY to Plazza del Quiriti near the small church of Saint Gioacch. The Plaza’s small fountain, extruding from the corner of an unnamed building, spat out water from the mouth of lion. Dominic eased the page that he had torn out of the book on Roswell into the cool water.

  “Careful. Don’t soak it,” Tonita said, as she watched.

  Dominic looked at her. “Do you want to do it?”

  “No way. If it gets ruined, I don’t want to be blamed for it.”

  “Then let me,” he said, as he touched the page onto the surface of the water. He watched as the liquid followed the fibers of the paper, drawing up from the underside of the page to the top side of the paper. It now revealed fully, the crisscrossing image that Dominic and Tonita had glimpsed earlier.

  “A map?” Tonita said, leaning over Dominic’s shoulder.

  “Just as I thought.” Dominic pulled the page gently from the surface tension of the water and held it against the smooth surface of the building. “It could be a map. But to where?”

  “Lots of lines. No names,” Tonita mentioned the obvious.

  “Thanks for pointing that out. I kinda noticed it myself.”

  “Just making an observation.”

  “Well then, what would you say to this?” Dominic paused for a moment, squinted his eyes, and stared at the page. “Where did the page come from?”

  “A book,” Tonita said. Then quickly added excitedly as though she had just won a prize, “On Roswell. A book on Roswell, New Mexico.”

  Dominic shot her a sideways glance. “And you think I’m weird?”

  “I do,” she said, nodding her head.

  “This is a map of Roswell. It has to be. Or at least someplace in or near Roswell.”

  “But isn’t New Mexico like a big desert?”

  “We’re going to find out.” Dominic removed the page from the wall of the building and waved it gently in the air, drying it. He quickly stopped waving the paper, and brought the page up close. “Oh shit. For a minute I thought the map wasn’t there.” He looked back to Tonita and held up the page. “It’s still there.”

  “Good thing. What if it disappeared and it wouldn’t come back?”

  “We’d be in trouble.”

  “You’re lucky it didn’t,” Tonita scolded him, smacking his shoulder for good measure.

  “We need to get on a flight to the states.”

  “How? I don’t have my passport. You don’t have yours. And we don’t have cash to pay for it.”

  Dominic winked. “Let me take care of that.”

  FORTY ONE

  TONITA PULLED THE TUMI tri-folding garment bag up close to her, resting her arm on it. She had taken a taxi from the Plaza del Quiriti to her apartment and packed, (per Dominic’s orders, “Only one small carry-on bag.”) then reported to the airport two hours and forty-five minutes later.

  She was there.

  He was not.

  She found a seat just inside. She was in luck, she thought. The chair was close to the door and it didn’t have an armrest in between it and the chair attached to it. She stretched out, allowing her legs to rest on the one seat and leaned back on the other. The soft “swoosh, swoosh,” of the revolving door at the airport terminal’s entrance, coaxed her eyes into closing. Immediately, the past day flashed in silent vignettes in her mind. Confusion wormed its way in, bringing with it doubt and wonder. For a moment she considered getting up and leaving, walking out of the ever circling airport door, heading for the taxi line, and then disappearing back to her cloistered life.

  “Right where I asked you to be,” Dominic’s voice was distant, clouded, muted.

  A softly faded vision of Dominic’s face and ruffled good looks appeared in her mind. She couldn’t leave him. Loving him had nothing to do with it. Then, she corrected herself. It had everything to do with it.

  “Tonita.”

  She heard him speak her name. Softly. And then his touch.

  “To-ni-ta.” He sang her name

  Tonita opened her eyes. “Oh, I must have fallen asleep. I didn’t see you coming.”

  “You must be exhausted. I’m sorry. But you’ll have plenty of time to sleep on the plane.” Dominic pushed her legs off of the chair and sat next to her.

  “And how, exactly, am I getting on the plane?” She rubbed her
hands over her face and stood up.

  “Come on. I’ll show you on the way.” He jumped up excitedly.

  Fiumicino was very busy and crowds lingered near the airport’s shops and restaurants. Long lines of passengers snaked around security check points and at the ticket counters. Dominic led the way to a small, unmarked office just to the side of the B Terminal security checkpoint.

  “In here.” He took hold of Tonita’s arm and guided her into the office.

  A short woman dressed in a dark suit looked up at Dominic and smiled. “Padre di buon pomeriggio, come posso aiutarlo?”

  “Good day to you too,” Dominic said. “I need two tickets on the next flight out to New Mexico in the United States.”

  “Pronto,” the clerk replied, and then stepped into a back room.

  “What do you think? They’re just going to give them to you? No money, no questions?” Tonita whispered.

  “Yep. Just that. When you have these.” Dominic handed Tonita an envelope.

  Tonita opened the envelope and pulled out a Vatican Diplomatic pass. “Why do you have this?”

  “Many of us do.”

  “Many of who?” Tonita said, as she inspected the pass. “This is real?”

  “Sure is.” Dominic took the pass from her. “Many people travel for the Vatican and most of them have one. I never actually traveled as a diplomatic emissary for the Vatican. But most of us don’t. It’s just a little perk you get with the job.”

  “Perk? You’re priests for Christ’s sake.”

  “Well put.”

  Tonita flushed. “Sorry. But you know what I mean.”

  “I know that it means we get to skip around security.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “How many priests do you see standing in line?” Dominic winked. “And I can ask for tickets on any flight. Even if it’s sold out.”

  “Who pays for the tickets?”

  “It goes to a Vatican diplomatic account for sanctioned travel,” Dominic said just as the door behind the desk opened and the clerk returned.

  “Il vostro passaggio diplomatico, per favore?” The clerk smiled as she asked.

  Dominic handed her the pass. She glanced at it and handed it back to him with two tickets.