“Maybe,” said Tracy. He took a drink of mineral water. “You know, today things are different. Nobody really cares if someone is gay anymore. Even at the agency we don’t care. Not like we used to.”
Tracy chuckled to himself. Nate was surprised to hear that from Tracy.
“Check out this list of gay groups,” said Tracy. “Some of them are mad at the Church, and they are well organized in the United States and Europe.”
Nate nodded. Perhaps he was wrong about Tracy. He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of contemporary culture. Maybe Nate was the one who had cultural blinders.
Just then Nate’s mobile phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. “Sorry,” he said to Tracy as he pulled it out and looked at the screen. It was a text from Brigid. “Call me! Urgent!” Brigid was not the type to use exclamation points.
“Excuse me for a moment, Bill. Got to call the office.”
Nate slipped out of their corner table and headed out the front door of the restaurant onto Prospect Street. He called Brigid as he walked down the block, away from the ears of the people lunching at the sidewalk cafe.
“What’s up? What’s so urgent?” he asked.
“Maybe it’s nothing,” said Brigid. “Maybe I’m just being too suspicious, but I thought you should know.
“I finished some of my work, and I went downstairs to the dining room to get something to eat at the buffet lunch. I ran into Peggy Tracy leaving the dining room. She was with two men: One was dressed as a priest, and the other was dressed in regular clothes. The priest was that Father Murphy from the Soldados de Cristo. I met him last night at the Vatican Embassy when Peggy and I left you with the cardinal and Bill.
“The other guy was a layman, I assume, dressed in slacks and a polo shirt. He had very big arms, like a weight lifter.
“Peggy was very friendly, you know the obligatory kiss on the cheek and all that. She introduced me to the two men. I knew Father Murphy from last night, of course, but I didn’t catch the name of the other man. She said he was a member of the Soldados de Cristo or Reinado de Dios or something like that. Anyway, he was a big guy, sort of Latin-looking.”
“So, what’s urgent about all that?” asked Nate, irritated. He was all the way to the end of the block and turning around to retrace his steps.
“The thing that struck me was that Peggy introduced me as the wife of the man who was leading the Vatican’s investigation of the Cardinal Manning murder. That raised their eyebrows. Odd way to introduce me to two strangers, don’t you think?”
“Did they say anything?” asked Nate.
“No, just the regular sort of remark. Something like ‘Oh, yes, horrible thing.’”
“So, is that it? What’s so urgent about that?”
“Let me finish,” said Brigid, herself a little impatient. “After they left, I got my lunch from the buffet. I asked the waiter to bring me a newspaper. When he finally brought it over, I realized that I’d left my reading glasses in the room. So, I took the elevator back up to our floor. Just as I was getting off, I met that layman, the one with the big arms, who had been with Peggy. He seemed surprised to see me, and a little nervous. He barely acknowledged me. I said, ‘Oh, hello, again.’ He just grunted and then got right on the elevator.”
“Well,” said Nate, “so what?” This tale seemed to be going nowhere.
“Well, when I went into our room, your laptop was open on the desk. You never leave it open. You always click it shut when you’re done, to shut it off. Did you leave the laptop open?”
“I don’t know,” said Nate. “Maybe. It could be just a coincidence. Maybe he was staying at the hotel.”
“I don’t think so,” said Brigid. “The Soldados have a house here in Bethesda. That’s where that Father Murphy lives. Even if he were staying here, why wouldn’t he do more than just grunt hello? I had just met him. Very strange, like he didn’t expect to see me there. Besides, what is Peggy doing telling people about your investigation? I thought it was hush-hush. Do you want people to know?”
“People are eventually going to know anyway,” said Nate. “That guy on the elevator, that could be something, or it could be nothing. My laptop is password-protected, so he probably couldn’t get on it.”
“But I think he was in our room,” said Brigid. “That is something.”
“How much time elapsed between the time you saw Peggy in the dining room and when you got off the elevator?” asked Nate.
“Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes,” said Brigid.
“If he was going in our room, he probably figured he had more time since he knew you were at lunch,” said Nate. By this time he was back at Milano’s front door. “I’ll see you in an hour.” They hung up.
Back at the table he told Tracy, “My office. They were calling me back about my request for leave. Seems like we can work it out.”
Tracy nodded. The old man knew some of Nate’s partners.
They got back to the discussion, but Brigid’s call made Nate wonder about Tracy and who else might be interested in this investigation.
“Aren’t there any conservative groups who might be angry at the Church?” asked Nate. “Or what about just plain old criminals? Maybe it’s the mob. They certainly have the global reach. And they have a lot of power in Italy.”
“With conservatives in the Church the picture is murkier,” said Tracy. “The right-wingers are publicly supportive of the hierarchy. For them, the litmus test is loyalty to the magisterium. I don’t think they would kill any bishops, unless they were liberals. Hell, I might want to kill some of the liberal ones myself.” Tracy chuckled again. Nate wondered who else Bill might have killed throughout his career.
“There was a real scandal in Rome this time last year,” said Tracy. “The pope’s butler went to the newspapers with documents on corruption in the Vatican and money laundering through the Vatican Bank. The Mafia was implicated. Here are some articles. There was a monsignor who was caught flying sacks full of euros into Italy from Switzerland.”
Tracy pulled out a file of newspaper clippings. Nate saw that the Camorra in Naples was mentioned in some of the articles. He thought, certainly they could pull off murder. That’s their specialty.
“The mob would not hesitate to kill if a major interest was threatened,” Tracy said.
Nate made a mental note to ask Brigid about mob money laundering.
“What about insiders?” asked Nate. “In my experience, the most vicious players in any organization are the insiders who really care the most about the outcome.”
He continued, “If this were a Dan Brown novel, Opus Dei would be the bad guys.”
Tracy nodded but didn’t respond immediately. Nate surmised that Tracy kind of liked groups like Opus Dei. Nate knew a little about the secretive group. He knew they had their own priests. They answered to nobody but the pope. He thought they were austere, to the point of being weird, wearing hair shirts and beating themselves with whips. He’d heard a rumor that they counted a US Supreme Court Justice in their camp.
“Yeah,” answered Tracy. “They’re on the list. Them and the Soldados de Cristo.” Nate raised his eyebrows and leaned forward.
“Tell me about the Soldados,” he said.
“A pretty traditional bunch,” said Tracy. “They seem like nice, young guys. They have a house here in Bethesda. Peggy goes up there on retreat. She thinks they are just wonderful. I think she’s attracted to them because they are young and handsome.”
“Swept along by their smiles?” said Nate.
“Maybe,” answered Tracy. He signaled the waiter for their bill.
“Peggy and I met their cardinal from Mexico last year. I think his name is Mendoza. Very formal, but a nice enough guy, I guess. He has a job at the Vatican. I was impressed. He really wants to bring back the disciplined, unified, and purer church.”
“Maybe the Soldados have an agenda too,” suggested Nate.
“I don’t think so,” said Tracy. “They just seem like bright young
men trying to make a difference. Like the Jesuits in their early days.”
Nate nodded. He felt like he was being steered again. But he didn’t let on.
“What about the Vatican Bank?” asked Nate. “Money is a powerful motivator.”
“I think the Vatican Bank is a good place to start turning over rocks,” agreed Tracy. “Back in the 1980s there was a huge scandal there.”
Tracy settled into a storytelling mood.
“There was a guy, Roberto Calvi, who did a lot of business with the Vatican Bank. They found him dead, swinging from a rope under Blackfriars Bridge in London. At the time, he was president of Banco Ambrosiano, Milan’s biggest bank.” Tracy waved a hand in the air, pointing heavenward to indicate the size of Banco Ambrosiano.
“Some archbishops were caught up in the scandal. There was a guy from Chicago, Marcinkus. Ask your wife to pull that file at the Fed. He let Calvi use the Vatican Bank to launder money for the Contras in Nicaragua. I was head of the agency then, so I know it was true. We were grateful to the Church for their cooperation. Officially, we knew nothing about it, of course.”
“Of course,” said Nate with a smile.
“I don’t know,” said Nate. “If these deaths are connected, it could be some mundane explanation. What if someone has their hopes set on the next papal election? Pope Thomas is old. Someone could be eliminating rivals.”
“Certainly, the liberals don’t want white smoke for a conservative, and conservatives don’t want a liberal,” said Tracy.
“There is a real ‘nut bunch’ called the ‘Society of Pius X,’” said Tracy. “They make Opus Dei look normal.
Nate was impressed. Tracy really had done his homework.
“Those people go way past disapproval. They want schism. They’re so steamed about ecumenism. They hate religious liberty in general. They also want a new crusade against Muslims.”
It was clear to Nate that he would have no shortage of suspects. Tracy handed over the whole stack of papers to Nate, who put them in his briefcase. As he did so, he pulled out the Washington Post and showed Tracy the photo on the front page.
“Grisly thing, that fire,” said Nate.
“Yeah,” said Tracy. “Sad.” They sat there for a few seconds, remembering the horror of the scene the night before. After a brief pause, Tracy continued. “Peggy told me that a priest from St. Stephen’s, the church near the hospital, went over to GW’s emergency room to give the man his last rites. She is pretty well connected with priests, you know. Evidently the priest from the ER told some priest friend of Peggy’s that the man talked a little before he died. He seemed to be repeating the same word over and over. Maybe it was a name, not a word.”
“What name?” asked Nate.
“It was not very clear,” said Tracy. “Something like Menoza.”
Nate wrote it down. “Interesting,” he said. “Menoza.”
Nate had one more question. “Do you think any other cardinals are in the crosshairs? What about O’Toole?”
“I think all the cardinals are presumed to be in danger at the moment,” said Tracy. “It is a small but powerful club. Somebody doesn’t like them.”
Tracy threw down a fifty-dollar bill. “That should cover the tip,” he said to Nate with a grin. To the waiter he said, “Put it on my tab, Giorgio.”
They stepped out into the May sunshine. “My car is up at the university. Walk with me to Healy Hall, and I’ll drive you back to the Four Seasons,” suggested Tracy.
They continued their discussion as they headed up 33rd Street toward campus.
“What about lone wolves?” asked Nate. “It could be one or two guys on the inside. This could be the Vatican version of ‘going postal.’”
“We don’t know that much about the inside politics,” said Tracy. “The Vatican is secretive. In your files are the names of some Americans who work in the Vatican. There is a Monsignor Matthew Ackerman who works in the Congregation for Bishops. Give him a call.”
“Did the police turn up anything in the Manning investigation?” asked Nate.
“Evidently the cardinal was wearing a Kevlar vest. He must have had some reason to be afraid. He knew something was up,” said Tracy.
“Well, he was obviously right to be afraid,” said Nate. “Just before he was shot, I noticed a red spot on his forehead, like it was a laser-targeted weapon.”
“Could be,” said Tracy. “Obviously a sophisticated group if they have that kind of weapon. The police said the trajectory of the bullet indicated that it came from the balcony of the Rockefeller Center building across the street. Maybe you could find out some more once they pinpoint the location.”
They had walked up Prospect to 36th Street. Tracy lit a cigarette.
Nate said, “When I was a boy serving Mass back in Charlestown, I never dreamed there was so much intrigue in the Church.”
They stood at the top of a steep staircase that led down to M Street, the famous staircase from The Exorcist.
“No?” asked Tracy incredulously. “Didn’t you ever see the movie filmed right here? Evil has always been part of the landscape of the Church. Devils and angels are all mixed up together—always have been. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. After all, the devils are fallen angels.”
Nate nodded. Despite the spring sunshine, he felt a chill as they looked down those infamous steps.
“Come on,” said Tracy. “I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”
7
SUNDAY IN NEW YORK
ON SUNDAY MORNINGS, THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS AT least rests its eyes. For a few hours on either side of dawn, a contemplative calm blankets the streets of Manhattan, which is a blessed silence.
Nate slipped out early into that silence, walking to the 7:00 a.m. Mass at St. Patrick’s. He didn’t wake Brigid. She hardly ever went to Mass anymore. She said she was spiritual, but not religious.
Mass bored her. She told Nate once, “I left the Church more out of boredom than anger.” But there was also a fair amount of anger in Brigid. In her world, women were taken seriously. In the Church, they were not.
Brigid’s religious heroes were the nuns who had taught her, not the priests and bishops. The saints she admired were the ones who did the things that she herself did not do. They lived poor. They made lasting social change.
Nate was resigned to praying alone. He never really understood the power that the Church had over him. He associated it with his longing for mystery, peace, and order.
Ever since he was a boy, he had gone to Sunday Mass. Sometimes, he’d even gone alone when his mother was drinking and his father had stopped going. Mass was the one hour of the week that he was most at peace.
Serving Mass seemed like a significant responsibility to a boy of twelve years. It was something that older people thought was important. When they held the early Mass, he rode his bicycle through quiet streets at 5:30 a.m. The Church at dawn in the summer seemed mysterious. Back then, he’d put on his cassock and surplice in the dimly lit sacristy. The fact that he wore these odd clothes at the age of twelve made the job seem important.
Then he set up for Mass. It was the same routine each time: Light the candles. Fill the cruets with water and wine. Put out the priest’s chalice. Get the big host out and put it on the paten. Check to be sure the book was in place. Then, when he was all done, he would sit in the silence of the big church and wait for the priest, like a sentry.
It was orderly. Nate liked things to be orderly. At home there was often chaos. His parents fought all the time, especially when his mother drank. But in church, there was order. Years later, in college, he read St. Thomas Aquinas’s comment that “order is heaven’s first law.” Nate liked thinking about it that way. Order was heavenly. The Church put his life in order. And he liked that.
This Sunday, Nate was again glad for a moment of solitude. It had been a traumatic week. He had seen two people killed right before his eyes: one shot, one burned to death. He needed a moment of peace. The Church g
ave it to him.
Nate had not been back to St. Patrick’s since the cardinal’s murder six days earlier. The front entrance of the cathedral was draped in black bunting, in mourning for Manning. But inside, Sunday Masses carried on as usual. Nate went around to the Fifth Avenue entrance. He wanted to get a look at the actual spot where the cardinal fell. In the material Tracy had given him, there was a report from the NYPD that indicated that the trajectory of the bullet had been from across the street at Rockefeller Center.
Positioned on the top step of St. Patrick’s, at the great center door, Nate looked across Fifth Avenue. On an axis with the main entrance to the church was the statue of a very muscular Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, guarding the main entrance to Rockefeller Center.
As Nate pivoted a little to the right, he saw a five- or six-story low-rise building that formed part of the Rockefeller Plaza complex. On the fourth floor was a terrace that faced Fifth Avenue. The terrace was generally closed to the public. It was on the terrace that the police had found a remote-controlled, high-powered rifle mounted on a tripod, the barrel facing the front door of St. Patrick’s. The gun had a tiny camera and a laser attached to the sight. These could have been used to aim the gun with deadly accuracy.
Someone had fired the gun with the remote control, but the actual shooter could have been halfway across town, using GPS technology. It was a sophisticated setup and obviously required time and access to the terrace. It was probable, thought the police, that the shooter had positioned the gun perhaps two or three days ahead of Sullivan’s funeral. The killer would have to know the funeral schedule.
Using the remote-controlled gun, there was no need to worry about an escape route. Obviously this was the work of killers who had money and high-tech sophistication. Probably not some lone gunman.
The police had checked to see who had access to that terrace. A friend of Nate’s in the New York City Police Department told him that only maintenance people, the security staff, and tour guides had terrace keys. All the maintenance and security staff had been interviewed and accounted for. But one tour guide had disappeared. He was a foreign national from Belgium. No link had been established, but the police wanted the tour guide for questioning.
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