“Good idea, Jim. Bill might have a lead.”
Sensing an end to the meal, the men got up and began the round of good-byes. Dorney asked, “Who wants to walk over to Piazza Navonna? We could get a tartuffo at Tre Scalini …”
“No, thanks,” said O’Toole. “I’m a moving target tonight. I wouldn’t want to put your lives in danger. Besides, at this time of evening Navonna is a little too crowded for me.”
O’Toole insisted on paying the bill.
On the way out the door, they passed two more priests deep in conversation at a table near the window. O’Toole and company hadn’t noticed them before. One of the priests, a gaunt and rather severe-looking fellow, stood up and bowed slightly toward O’Toole in that odd half bow that Italian professionals accord to each other. O’Toole bowed slightly in return. “Eminenza,” they said stiffly to each other, almost simultaneously.
Once outside, Kelleher asked, “Who was that, Mike? Another cardinal?”
“Yeah,” said O’Toole, “Alejandro Mendoza from Mexico. He is a Soldado de Cristo.”
“Really?” said Kelleher. “I hear he’s off the charts on the conservative scale. Isn’t he the guy who likes to parade around in the Capa Magna?”
Kelleher was referring to the twenty-foot-long red silk cape that cardinals had once worn when riding in procession on horseback. The cape was designed to cover the horse’s rear end.
“You know,” said Kelleher, “at least it is still serving the original purpose—covering the horse’s ass.”
O’Toole laughed. “Jimmy, you always did cut through the crap. Don’t worry, my boy, Mendoza and I are not close. We run in different circles.”
“Good,” said Kelleher. “I wouldn’t want you hanging out with his kind.” Then Kelleher added, smiling, “Before you go walking anywhere tomorrow, Mike, put on your Kevlar vest.”
“You know me, Jimmy boy,” answered O’Toole. “Faster than a speeding bullet.”
“You haven’t run that fast in a long time,” said Kelleher. He added, “See you next time you’re in Boston, Mike. Take care of yourself.”
“Nice being with you guys,” said O’Toole. They hugged and waved good-bye. O’Toole walked briskly away from the other four, crossing the Tiber River on the Ponte Sant’Angelo in the direction of the Vatican. The remaining four men strolled off toward Piazza Navonna in search of gelato.
Rome is lovely after dark, especially in May. The streetlights had come on while they were at dinner. They gave the city a softer glow. Rome is a city with layers of mystery, never fully revealed, especially at night. The murky waters of the Tiber River reflected the street lamps on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. A cool breeze came off the water.
O’Toole didn’t notice Rome’s charms tonight. He had to hurry home to call Washington, DC.
4
THE PHONE CALL
O’TOOLE LEFT THE RESTAURANT JUST AFTER 11:00 P.M. IT was just after 5:00 p.m. in Washington.
The streets near the Vatican were deserted except for a few tourists. The cardinal walked briskly, anxious to get home and catch Tracy before the dinner hour in Washington. As a former CIA director, William Tracy was much in demand on the social circuit.
When the cardinal reached his apartment, he went directly to his study. The nuns had long since gone to bed in their quarters one floor above. He closed the door to his study and locked it. Then he flipped through his Rolodex for Bill Tracy’s telephone number.
Political life in the Church is like political life everywhere. It is all about personal connections and the friend network. O’Toole was a Bostonian. Even though he had spent many years in Rome, he kept his Boston connections current with frequent calls and visits home. He always hoped that one day he might get the nod to be archbishop of his hometown.
Tracy was an old friend from Boston College High School alumni gatherings. O’Toole’s contact with Tracy had proven useful over the years.
Bill Tracy was what Bostonians call a “triple Eagle,” an allusion to Boston College’s mascot. He had gone to Boston College High School, Boston College, and Boston College Law School. As a consequence, he was hardwired to Boston, the Catholic Church, and the Jesuits. Like Boston Catholics of his youth, Tracy was ethnically and religiously clannish and deeply conservative. To him that meant you took care of your own first.
O’Toole found Tracy’s number, a 202 area code for Washington. He picked up the phone and entered 001, smiling at the thought that Italians always made much of the fact that the international exchange for the United States was “uno,” a measure of American prestige.
* * *
Across the Atlantic, the phone rang in William Tracy’s house on Foxhall Road in Washington, DC. The former CIA director was just coming in from a game of tennis on the court in his secluded backyard. His housekeeper met him in the hallway. “There is a call from Rome,” she said. “It’s Cardinal O’Toole from the Vatican. He says it’s urgent.”
“I’ll take it in my study,” said Tracy. He bounded up the circular stairs to his private quarters and closed the door. Like O’Toole, he was conscious of privacy. He knew firsthand how to invade people’s privacy, and he was protective of his own.
He picked up the phone. As a lifelong Catholic and Knight of Malta, Tracy knew the niceties of ecclesiastical address.
“Your Eminence,” he said deferentially. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”
O’Toole got right to the point. Cardinals are seldom deferential to anyone else.
“Bill, I’ve got a serious problem. I hope I can count on your help. You already know about what happened to Cardinal Manning.”
“Yes,” said Tracy. “It’s all over the news.”
“Well, there is more to it than just Manning’s murder,” said O’Toole. “We have reason to believe there is a pattern here. Someone is killing off cardinals.”
“Yes,” said Tracy. “I’ve read about the other deaths in the papers. They even talked about it as part of my security briefing last month. You might be in danger, Mike. I suggested to the regional Master of the Knights that he might want to look into this. Though I’m not sure what we could do, except give moral support.”
“That would be a good idea, Bill,” said O’Toole. “But we need something more than moral support.” O’Toole pronounced idea in the Boston way, as “idear.” Whenever he talked with someone from back home, he fell back into his North Shore accent. It was a sign of intimacy and trust.
“Listen, Bill. The pope asked me to do something. The local police are focused on their own investigations, but to our knowledge nobody is communicating with anybody else on this. What do you guys call it in government, stovepiping? We need someone to connect the dots and see if there is a conspiracy.”
“Familiar story,” said Tracy. “Our intelligence agencies still don’t communicate with each other, even after 9/11. I was talking to the DIA about this just this morning.”
O’Toole cut him off. He didn’t have time for bureaucratic war stories.
“Bill, I need your help now. Give me the name of somebody we can trust. Somebody who can carry out an investigation on behalf of the Holy See. We have our own jurisdiction on this. All cardinals have dual citizenship under international law.
“We have our own police powers. We need someone who knows law enforcement and the Church. Someone we could deputize immediately to start an investigation.”
“I assume you want a Catholic,” said Tracy.
“Helpful, but not essential,” said O’Toole. “The most important things, besides knowledge, are speed and secrecy. We need to get on this now. We are not on the usual Vatican timetable. Domani is not good enough. Also, it would be nice if our Sherlock Holmes were a practicing Catholic. A Knight of Malta would be even better. It would make it easier to sell him to the folks here in Rome. But we need somebody who is not afraid to chase down all the dark alleys. I want someone who is more cop than choirboy.”
“Nobody springs to mind immediately,�
� said Tracy. “I assume you would need to do a background check.”
“Not much time. We’ll trust you on this,” said O’Toole.
“How ’bout somebody from our own circle, then?” said Tracy. When threatened, Boston Irishmen revert to their clan identity. “Somebody from back home.”
“That would be fine,” said O’Toole. “Who?”
“What about Nate Condon? Remember his dad? Brendan, a fireman, from Charlestown. Brendan was a close friend of that fireman, Marty Fitzpatrick. I think you buried Marty’s son at St. Catherine’s years ago. Remember? That was the kid who killed himself because he was molested by a priest.”
“Oh, yeah,” said O’Toole. “Didn’t Brendan leave the Church over that?” The cardinal remembered the incident well. It was front-page news in Boston, and one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the Church in New England. He could hardly forget that terrible incident.
Tracy continued, “Anyway, Brendan’s son Nate was an FBI agent for a while. He was also a US attorney in Manhattan. Made quite a name for himself prosecuting mob cases. Now I think he is with Baker and Black in New York, a real WASP’s nest of a New York law firm. Probably making piles of money.”
Tracy paused for a second.
O’Toole asked, “Can the Church trust him? Is he as angry at the Church as his father was? I don’t need some angry Catholic working out their own vendetta.”
“I think you can trust him,” said Tracy. “After all, Nate is a Knight of Malta, so he must still be a Catholic. I saw him at his installation in the knights at the Waldorf last year. You have to be a practicing Catholic to be a knight.
“I don’t think he has forgotten his Charlestown roots. Still one of us, I would guess, Mike.” The cardinal noted the change to the familiar in Tracy’s tone. He knew what “one of us” meant. Still Boston Irish.
“OK,” said O’Toole warily. “Let’s ask him if he is interested in helping us. You call him, since he saw you recently. Tell him it is a personal favor to the pope.”
“Do you want to talk to him on the phone?” asked Tracy.
“We probably should meet face-to-face.” The cardinal paused, remembering he had to fly to Washington at the end of the week.
“Listen, Bill, are you going to that Papal Foundation reception at the Nunciature on Friday?”
“Yeah,” said Tracy. “I go every year. It’s how I’m working off my purgatory.”
“Good, I’ll be there too. I’m representing the foundation. Then I’ll certainly go up to New York for Manning’s funeral. Maybe we could arrange to talk with Condon at the Nunciature in DC. It will be less of a circus than the funeral. Ask him if he can hop a train and come down to meet us. I’ll get him on the guest list.”
“OK, Your Eminence. I’ll get the ball rolling. See you on Friday.”
“Good, Bill. See you then. Ciao.”
When Tracy hung up the phone, he took a deep breath. Even after a life as a government spook, Church intrigue still seemed more exotic to him.
Maybe it was because he was raised in the Catholic crucible of Boston. People his age still respected the Church. Tracy’s five children had walked away from the Church. Their reaction to their father’s religiosity was a mixture of derision and disdain, especially after the pedophilia scandals. Tracy’s kids could not see how anybody could take a bunch of lard-assed clerics seriously.
But the skepticism of Tracy’s children, who were probably about Nate Condon’s age, ran deeper than disgust over scandal. They also thought of religion as a grand delusion. They didn’t even think religion was worth arguing about with their father. It was just an anachronism in the old man.
After he hung up the phone, Tracy walked down the hall to the master bedroom. His house, a grand old Tudor-style home built in the 1930s, had once belonged to Lyndon Johnson, when he was majority leader of the Senate. Lady Bird’s money had bought it.
In the bedroom suite, Tracy’s wife, Peggy, was getting dressed for their evening at the Kennedy Center. “What did the cardinal want?” she asked.
Ordinarily, Peggy never asked her husband about business, but she was curious about a call from the Vatican. Even in the house of a CIA director, the servants talked. The housekeeper had told her that Cardinal O’Toole was on the phone.
“Sorry, can’t talk about it just yet,” said Bill. He added, “But it’s serious.”
He went into the dressing room to strip for his shower. “Say, listen,” he called out, changing his tone a bit. “Do you remember Nate Condon from Boston? He became a Knight of Malta last year. We met him at that dinner at the Waldorf. What was his wife’s name?”
“Brigid,” said Peggy. “She’s from Long Island. Huntington, I think. Or maybe Manhasset. They have an apartment on Park Avenue, so there must be some money in the family somewhere.”
“Do you know how to get in touch with them?” asked Bill. “I need to ask a favor.”
Peggy was intrigued to be included in a mystery. “I think I have their phone number in my cell. I had to call Brigid for the Dames meeting this year. She didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it.”
Peggy was proud to be a leader in the Dames of Malta, the female auxiliary of the knights. Her generation thought it made sense for women to be an “auxiliary” to their men. But women of Brigid Condon’s generation could not take that role seriously. To them it seemed absurd to join an organization in which they were expected to stand around while men did all the talking.
“I’ll call them when I get out of the shower,” said Bill. After a couple of minutes of hot water and soap, Bill toweled off and dressed in his tux.
Peggy came in with a glass of Woodford Reserve on the rocks. He had one every evening before dinner. She handed him a little slip of paper with the Condons’ home number.
“Thanks,” said Bill.
Even though she was curious, Peggy did not hang around. A lifetime as the wife of a spy taught her there were many things she could not know.
Tracy called the Condons’ apartment. Brigid answered. “This is Bill Tracy. I met you last year at the Knights of Malta dinner at the Waldorf, in New York.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Tracy,” said Brigid. “I remember. How could I forget meeting the former director of the CIA? What can I do for you?”
“I need to speak to your husband, Nathaniel. Could you have him call me at this number?”
“You can speak to him right now,” said Brigid. “He’s right here on the other end of the couch. We’re watching the news.” She handed the phone to Nate.
Tracy dived right in. “Nate, this is Bill Tracy. You know about the Cardinal Manning killing, of course.”
“Know about it?” said Nate. “I was there! I was standing right beside Sullivan’s casket. It was horrible. Complete pandemonium. Once the police locked down the cathedral, everyone inside was trapped for hours. We got interviewed by the police at least twice.”
No time for the whole play-by-play, Tracy pressed on.
“Manning’s death may not be an isolated case,” said Bill. “There are several other cardinals dead in the past year, under suspicious circumstances. The Vatican wants to see if the deaths are related. They want to know the who and the why. Are you interested in some international police work?”
“Whew, I don’t know,” said Nate, a little taken aback by the question. “I’ve got a lot on my plate here at work.”
“Listen,” said Tracy. “Cardinal Michael O’Toole is coming over from Rome for a reception in Washington on Friday. The pope wants the Vatican to have its own investigation. He asked O’Toole to make it happen. I suggested that you lead it. Can you come down to meet with the cardinal on Friday evening?”
“What could I do that the police can’t?” asked Nate.
“Connect the dots,” said Tracy. “The Church needs to know if there is some kind of conspiracy. Are you interested?”
“I might be,” said Nate. “I’d have to talk to Brigid. When would I start?”
; “Friday,” said Tracy. “If the cardinal approves, you’d go to Rome right away. Are you game?”
Nate looked over at his wife, wondering how he’d break the news to her. “Yes,” said Nate, intrigued by the possibility of being a sleuth for the Vatican. “I’ll hear the cardinal out, but I’ll have a lot of rearranging to do.”
Tracy jumped in and took that as a yes. “Good,” he said. “I’ll see you Friday.” He added, “Not a word to anyone except the missus. The code of omerta applies. Understand?”
Tracy used the Italian word for a conspiracy of silence. Nate caught the allusion to the Italian mob.
“I understand,” he said.
“Great,” said Tracy. “Meet me at the Papal Nuncio’s on Mass Ave. You know where it is?”
“Sure,” said Nate. “I used to bike by it when I was a law student at Georgetown. If I remember correctly, it’s just across from the vice president’s house, near the British Embassy.”
“Right,” said Tracy. “Bring a tux. There is a reception at the Nunciature. Your wife might like to come along. It will be a good cover to have her there. I’ll put you both on the guest list.”
Nate thought it odd that Brigid would be cover for him. Brigid did not rearrange her schedule for his social engagements. It was just luck that her work with the Federal Reserve was taking her to Washington that week.
“We can find a quiet corner there at the Nunciature to huddle with Cardinal O’Toole.”
When they rang off, Tracy hustled downstairs to his car parked in the circular drive in front of the house. Peggy was already down at the front door, trying to coax their two yapping Bichons back into the house.
Strange Gods Page 5
