The Pope's Suicide

by Steve Richer

  “This way,” Galfy said before they headed upstairs.

  They walked past the Real Time Crime Center. This was a spacious room filled with computer screens and workstations. This was the nerve center of the NYPD. Officers monitored news bulletins, surveillance footage, and coordinated with detached members of other agencies.

  This was especially true this week with the Pope in town. With so much security involved, streets blocked, and enough armed men to invade a midsize country, everyone was on their toes.

  However, the RTCC was not their destination. Deputy Inspector Galfy led the way until they entered a large conference room. It was already buzzing with activity, men and women in business suits talking animatedly to each other and in their phones.

  “All right, everyone!” Galfy bellowed. “If I can get your attention, please!”

  It took a moment, mostly for the phone calls to be terminated, but eventually each person turned toward the frail-looking man.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he continued, going to the head of the table to make sure everybody knew he was in charge. “As you might’ve guessed, everyone in this room is part of the special task force to investigate what happened to Pope Callixtus. It seems like an open and shut case obviously, but we can’t take any chances and this will be done with due diligence. I’d like to start with everyone introducing themselves.”

  He pointed around the room and people complied.

  “I am Inspector Fabian Sclauzero, Corpo della Gendarmeria dello Stato della Città del Vaticano. I mean, Vatican City Police.”

  “Special Agent Garza, FBI.”

  “I’m Special Agent Petersen, Secret Service.”

  “Hi, my name is Karen Ikard. I’m from Diplomatic Security Service.”

  “Good morning, everyone,” a man in a Tom Ford suit and South Beach tan began. “I’m Reggie Chauvin, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. I will be leading this investigation and–”

  Galfy shook his head. “Sorry sir, you’re not. I’m Deputy Inspector Galfy, commanding officer of the Major Case Squad, and this task force is under my leadership. Justice should have sent you a memo by now. However, the investigator in charge is Detective Donnie Beecher here.”

  The US Attorney was visibly seething, but he swallowed his reply.

  “I assure you that he’s the best the NYPD has to investigate this sort of thing,” Galfy went on.

  “He’s correct,” another man said. His hair was slicked back and he looked slimy. “I’m Undersecretary Crim from the State Department. It’s been deemed necessary that the NYPD be in charge. I’ll be here to supervise and lend assistance.”

  Galfy nodded. “And most of all, Beecher is impartial, which is what we need the most.”

  “Hey,” Donnie said with a curt nod.

  “We also have other members officially on the task force which have been assigned from their agencies. JoAnn?”

  This JoAnn person was a civilian assistant with long gray hair. She stepped forward and handed Galfy a sheet of paper which he began reading from.

  “We have Agent Smith from the United States Marshals Service, Sergeant Knuth with NYPD Transit Bureau, Agent McCray from ATF, Assistant Commissioner Rivers from US Customs and Border Protection, Mr. Hertzog from the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ms. Dodson from Department of Transportation.”

  Donnie zoned out as his new CO droned on. He listed even more people, from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the Office of Financial Stability. Did they really need all these people? Even the friggin’ NYPD Transit Bureau and Military Postal Service Agency? Jesus…

  “Now, these folks are just on the list and they may not be necessary in this investigation. But they will be briefed, kept in the loop, okay? JoAnn will email every one of you this list to make sure things run smoothly.”

  After Galfy was done, they spent a moment formally meeting each other with handshakes and a few words. Donnie hated this part. Being social was part of being a detective, but this was beyond his usual level of sociability. This was one step away from hobnobbing and he didn’t have time for this.

  He had an investigation to run. This was a waste of time as far as he was concerned. He would have preferred staying at the crime scene for now and doing his job. Worst of all, he could tell these people were all alpha types. They all wanted to be in charge. For them, this was career advancement.

  “Detective, can I talk to you for a moment?”

  Donnie turned and found Undersecretary Crim next to him. He looked even more smarmy up close. He reminded him of a pimp he had once booked for murdering his girlfriend’s daughter, while high on PCP and pumped with Viagra. His skin was so oily that Donnie could almost see his reflection.

  “Sure.”

  They stepped out of the conference room and walked down the hallway until they found an isolated corner.

  “What I’m about to say is really important, Detective.”

  “It’s about the case? Maybe you should tell me in front of everybody else. We’re all a big happy family task force, right?”

  Crim ignored him. “I’ve been on the phone since this thing happened. I was on my way to work when I got the phone call about the Pope. I was diverted to the airport and I flew right to New York on a private jet. The reason is that the Secretary of State wanted me to get to you first.”

  “Me?”

  “You or whoever wound up in charge of the investigation.”

  “What is it, sir? If you don’t mind, I don’t have time to have one-on-one meetings with everyone today.”

  “Detective Beecher, I’ve been tasked with telling you to do your best to rule this a suicide.”

  “Excuse me?” Donnie said, agape. “You want me to fudge results and have this be a suicide no matter what? Help me understand what’s going on here?”

  Shit, what the hell was happening? First, the Vatican people were telling him to make this a homicide, and now his government wanted it to be a suicide?

  “I’m going to paint you a picture, Detective. The US President goes to Italy and gets assassinated. What do you think happens next?”

  “We catch the bad guys?” Donnie said with a shrug.

  “What happens is that everything turns to shit, pandemonium. We want to take control of the investigation. And then what if we find out powerful people in Italy are behind this? What happens next? We can’t accuse another nation of something like this without risking outright war. NATO implodes, the economy goes down the drain, we set international relations back seventy years. What’s happening is exactly that.”

  “Mr. Undersecretary, the Vatican won’t go to war against us because of what happened today.”

  “You’re ready to bet on that? There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, Detective. You want Mexico, Brazil, Spain, and all the other Catholic countries to turn against us? What about the Philippines who we’re already having difficulties with? We cannot have a head of state be assassinated on United States soil, do you understand me?”

  Donnie took a step back. He was caught in a tug-of-war and it was the last thing he needed.

  Chapter 6

  “Listen to me,” Donnie said, coming closer again. “I never wanted this case in the first place, okay? There’s a thousand things I would’ve preferred to do today, but somehow I’m stuck with this shit. So if I’m stuck with it, I’m doing this my way. And let me tell you, political pressure doesn’t work on me. You let me do my goddamn job and you deal with the consequences.”

  “Watch your tone, Detective. You don’t want to live with the consequences if you aggravate me.”

  “And you watch your tone, Crim. You keep this up I’m gonna arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

  Donnie stomped away and returned to the conference room. Everyone was on their phone again, barking orders and feeling important. Man, why the hell was he still here? What he wanted the most was to question everyone at the crime scene himself.

  H
e trusted the officers and other detectives, but there was something reports couldn’t tell you. It was hard to read between the lines, to analyze body language. In person, you could tell when someone was lying. In a report, not so much.

  He found a coffee machine and poured himself a cup. It was a good excuse to keep himself busy and make sure none of these federal agents started a conversation with him. With his luck, there’d be someone else asking for the results to be skewed once more.

  He produced his phone and pulled up the pictures that the Secret Service guy – Wallenberg – had taken. It was the next best thing to the official crime scene photos he would get later and this one had the benefit of having the body present.

  He leaned against the wall, sipping the coffee which wasn’t half bad and unexpectedly hot. He flipped through the images and zoomed in.

  “What the…”

  He squinted when he saw it. Jesus, why hadn’t he noticed this before?

  He straightened up and went over to Galfy. “Inspector?”

  “What is it, Detective Beecher?”

  “This is my show, right? I can have anybody on my team for this?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve been given the green light for unlimited overtime, too.”

  “Good. There’s somebody I need with me. I want the nun.”

  “The nun? Why?”

  “Because I need all the help I can get to understand Vatican stuff.”

  Galfy sighed and shrugged. “All right, but don’t you want to wait until we have the ME’s report. We don’t even know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Yes we do, Inspector. The Pope was murdered.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  The class was completely silent and it brought a smile to Emma Aldridge’s lips.

  She had been told often enough that third-graders tended to be unruly, but it was rarely the case in her presence. From the corner of her eye, she saw the teacher, Mrs. Thole, look at her with a mixture of apprehension and envy.

  Emma said, “By show of hands, who here has ever met people who are in gangs?”

  Almost every hand shot up. That was disappointing but hardly surprising in this Queens neighborhood.

  “And now, who here has ever been approached to be in a gang?”

  This time, a third of the hands went up. Heavens, she thought. That was heartbreaking. These kids were nine, ten years old. Already they were being courted to join gangs? But again, she wasn’t surprised. That was par for the course and why her job mattered so much.

  “I know it can be tempting, but you have to say no, okay? And I’m not just saying that because I’m a police officer and it’s my job.” This drew laughter from the kids, as it always did. “I’m telling you this because I know for a fact what happens after you join a gang.”

  She began pacing in front of the class, making sure they were never bored so she wouldn’t lose their attention.

  “At first, they make you feel welcome. Giving you candy and soda – and even beer – and they make you feel like you’re family. They may even give you money. Everybody likes money, right?”

  “Yes!” a couple of children said at the same time, drawing more laughter.

  “But did you guys ever hear the saying it’s too good to be true? In the beginning, everything will seem wonderful, but soon you will discover that there’s a price to pay. They will make you work. It’ll be small things at first, running errands, delivering messages or packages. This is so that they can get you used to doing things for them. And by the time they ask you to do things you don’t want to do, it’s too late, they have their hooks into you.”

  “Like drugs?” a little girl in the front row asked.

  “That’s right. They’ll make you sell drugs, even take it yourself. Has anyone heard about this new drug called Russian koala or Rush-K? This is very bad, okay? You have to stay away from it and anyone who offers it to you. This is what it looks like.”

  She held up a giant cardboard picture of small pink pills.

  “They will tell you that it will make you feel good. And honestly maybe it will, the first time. But what happens is that it makes you addicted, makes you want to have more. And the more you have the less good it makes you feel. And then this happens to your body.”

  She pulled up another photograph, this one representing a gaunt woman without any teeth, and the children all went, “Eeeew!”

  Her eyes were bloodshot and her skin was almost green. It was actually a mug shot of a meth addict, but it was close enough to hopefully scare the kids into never touching drugs.

  “Officer Aldridge?” a boy in the third row said, raising his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Is it true that you used to be a nun?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Emma replied, impressed that the kid knew this. Then again, Mrs. Thole had probably shared this backstory with her class the day before.

  “And you’re not a nun anymore?”

  “No, now I’m a police officer. I think there are different ways you can help your community. When I was younger it was through religion and now it’s through police work, talking with you guys and all the neighborhood schools.”

  A girl with braces and glasses raised her hand. “Did you have to wear penguin costumes?”

  Everyone started to giggle, even Emma.

  “Those are called habits and no, we didn’t wear that in our order. We dressed in regular clothes, just like you. Let’s get back to gangs, okay? What do we say to gangs?”

  “No!” everyone shouted together.

  “That’s right! And you–”

  Emma felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She was about to let it go to voicemail, but it was the double vibration she had programmed for her precinct.

  She turned to Mrs. Thole and excused herself, then walked into the hallway to take the call.

  “Yes?”

  “Officer Aldridge, this is dispatch. You’ve been reassigned.”

  “I don’t understand. I haven’t finished this class and I still have two more presentations before lunch.”

  “It’s canceled. Go to One Police Plaza immediately. This is an emergency. Leave now.”

  Chapter 7

  Amid the lush gardens of Vatican City was Casina Pio IV, a villa which housed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Even though the sun was going down, it was no less majestic, the ornate pink stonework practically glittering as if it hadn’t been built five hundred years ago.

  Father Colm O’Dwyer thought the place beautiful and found it a shame that he didn’t come this way as much as he wished. He used to boast to everyone he encountered that the most beautiful sight on earth was Ashford Castle, in his native County Mayo. But in reality, the casina was his favorite.

  He was looking at the magnificent structure and its grounds when his phone chimed in his pocket. He knew who it was and he didn’t have to look at it but he did anyway. Sure enough, it was Cardinal Blanchet texting him, wondering where he was already.

  He picked up speed as he went around the sizable fountain and glanced at the time on the phone. That was a mistake. He didn’t see the man sitting on the edge of the fountain and ran into him.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, throwing himself to the side before knocking out the man completely. “Mi scusi!”

  Colm managed to take hold of the elderly man’s tablet before it hit the ground, but the same couldn’t be said for the two books which went flying. The iPad was playing a video of a cat banging on drums.

  “It’s okay,” he replied in English. “Thank Heaven your reflexes are better than your Italian.”

  The young priest recognized the man and froze. The long-ish white hair, the jeans and flip-flops… It was definitely Cardinal Velasquez who was kind of a legend around Vatican City for being left alone to his own devices.

  He reminded Colm of old Maloney back home, a homeless man who wandered through town but wouldn’t hurt a fly. Just a crazy ol
d man who was part of the landscape.

  “I’m so sorry, Your Eminence. I should know better than to run on public grounds.”

  “It is all right to be in a hurry, young man. It shows passion. Just as long you are passionate about the right things.”

  Colm picked up the books and put them back on the rim of the fountain. “At the moment, I’m simply passionate about not being late. My superior has a thing about punctuality.”

  He handed the iPad back to Cardinal Velasquez who smiled at the cat in the video.

  “My sister’s grandchildren. They keep sending me these videos from the Internet. Now I’m addicted to those silly cats.”

  “Yes, sir. Those videos are a good idea on a tragic day like today.”

  “Indeed,” the sixty-year-old said, for the first time looking somber and not like a former hippie.

  “I’m sorry again, Cardinal. I really need to go.”

  “I will pray you do not suffer the wrath of your superior.”

  “Thank you,” Colm said, wishing he was working for him instead of the boss he had.

  He waved and took off running again. He entered the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and found Cardinal Blanchet in the Hall of the Sacred Conversation. He stood in front of the magnificent fresco depicting a conversation between Virgin Mary with the Infant Jesus, the Infant St. John, St. Elizabeth, and St. Zachariah.

  Knowing the Frenchman, he wasn’t even admiring the artwork. He was always lost in thought. He could be looking at you straight in the eye and all the while he was thinking about something else entirely. He was wearing the traditional garments for someone in his position: a black simar trimmed it with red silk, a red sash, and scarlet skullcap.

  He turned toward Colm and frowned, his disappointment unmistakable. “Where were you?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Eminence.”

  “Come, we are wasting time.”

  They walked through the halls where Galileo had once worked and ended up in a small modern amphitheater which might have otherwise been a community college classroom.

  Two men were already there, also in their late fifties. Colm recognized Cardinal Stagnaro and Bishop Lewandowski who were both powerful prelates within the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.