by David Hewson
“Why can’t we go to a real place and drink beer like normal people?” Rossi moaned. “Don’t you know mathematics? Why do we have to pay twice the price to make our own sandwiches when I can get three times this quantity around the corner for half what it costs in this dump? And they do beer.”
Costa cautiously patted Rossi’s colossal stomach. It was an act of some intimacy which the big man tentatively allowed, like a lion allowing its trainer to stroke its head. “Beer makes you fat,” Costa said. “Beer makes you fart. Trust me. A partner knows. Diet is important, Uncle Luca. Particularly for a man of your age, in your… condition.”
“I’m happy where I am, thanks. And I’m not your fucking uncle.” Rossi moaned again. “And what’s with this fancy apartment in the Campo? Cops don’t live in places like that. That’s why I have to drink in a stuck-up enoteca…”
“It’s not fancy. It’s just where I like to live.”
“So you can screw the tourist girls when they’ve had too much to drink on a Saturday night?”
“No. Because I like it. That’s all.”
“Inexplicable,” Rossi declared. “So where’s the nearest painting now, huh?”
“Too many to choose from,” Costa answered. The big man looked at him as if to say: So now I know why you live here. “I didn’t know about the accident, Luca. What happened there. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Rossi grumbled. “We both have. Yesterday. Sometimes it catches you like that. You just walk along thinking, it’s not so bad, I can make it through the day. Then you just stumble around the corner and put your shoe into something that makes you realize the bad stuff was there all along and you just fooled yourself into thinking it could be any other way.”
“There’s a painting near here. It’s about that. I could show you if you like.” Rossi almost laughed.
“Me? Look at a painting?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“You won’t tell anyone? Some of those bastards take the piss.”
“It’s a deal. But I want to hear about Cardinal Denney first.”
Rossi grabbed him by the arm. “Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake.”
Costa raised an eyebrow. There was still just the woman in the place, mopping away, well out of earshot.
“You never know,” the big man said defensively.
“Know what?” Rossi shook his head.
“You don’t even get to hear the station gossip, do you?”
“Too busy doing a job.”
“Oh my,” the big man grumbled. “The kid’s a saint. Listen. You heard of the Banca Lombardia?”
“Sure.” Costa nodded. “I read it was in trouble. Bad investments. Trouble with the authorities. There’s supposed to be some mob money in it. Ours. The Americans‘.”
“Clever boy. Well let me tell you something. Two partners ago I used to share the Fiat sofa with this grown-up guy who couldn’t keep his trap shut. Probably yakked in his sleep, but the funny thing was… he was worth listening to. He’d been on temporary assignment with the spooky people in the Finance Ministry and, my, did he like to talk about all these secret stakeouts he did, and all the good-guy politicians that were really on the take. He knew all the names of the people who pulled the strings without anyone in the outside world seeing. You know what? One of them wore a red cap. Goes by the name of Michael Denney, and if it wasn’t for the fact he could hide in that place of his we’d be throwing him in the cells right now.”
“The Vatican?”
“Where else?” Rossi waited, hoping for some enlightenment. “Jesus. The bankers were just the front men. This was a private little operation that Denney spun out of some genuine Vatican venture without telling anyone.” He raised his glass, drained it. “And now it’s rapidly going bust. Liquidity problems. No one knows whether it’s going to pull through or what. Remember?”
“Yeah,” Costa conceded. “I think I read about that.”
“You read nothing. Listen to me, Nic. This Denney’s been putting his holy hands into stuff no one ought to be messing with, least of all a priest. He had offshore funds in places that don’t have offshore funds. Places anyone could put money and no one—not the tax people, not the intelligence agencies—would be any the wiser. There’s a queue of people waiting to talk to him about that. Us. The Ministry of Justice. FBI. And probably the Mafia too from what I hear. They don’t like it when the man from the Vatican does the laundry wrong. Lucky for him he can hide there trying to get the rest of us to agree that, if we let him walk out, he’s covered by diplomatic immunity.”
He paused. “You remember what Falcone said? About Rinaldi?”
Costa did. The dead man had been called to give an expert opinion on the subject only a few months before. “You think Denney was somehow paying Rinaldi to come up on the right side?”
Rossi looked around him to make sure no one else came in. “If he was it didn’t work. Maybe that’s why Denney got pissed off with him. He quit being a churchman years ago to work on the financial side. Should have filled in the right forms if he wanted to claim he was a diplomat. Too late to start whining when there’s money gone missing. A whole lot of money too. I read the file.”
Costa was struggling to make sense of this. “Why would he steal it? Why would a man like that want money?”
“Runs in the family. Denney comes from some Irish-American family in Boston. Big in bootlegging in the early days, sidekicks to Joe Kennedy for a while. Moved into politics, finance, all that stuff. But they never could let everything go. It’s in their blood I guess. He was the kid they marked out for the Church while the rest stuck with the family business. Which was all Denney did for a while too and pretty well too. Made a name for himself working the Irish ghettos in Boston. Man of the people. Didn’t seem to be an act either. Then he hit the up escalator, came to Europe. By the time he’s thirty he’s in Rome. By the time he’s forty-five he’s wearing the red cap and suddenly it’s no more listening to some local jerk confessing to playing fuck-thy-neighbor. He’s gone business, running this bank and he’s pumping the Pope’s money all ways. Into IBM and General Motors. After a while into funnier places too, companies that are never going anywhere, ever, because that’s not why they’re there. Suddenly, it’s no longer about the Pope’s money. It’s stuff coming from all over, laundered by God knows who.” Rossi stared at the empty glass. “Why the hell am I telling you all this?”
“You’re keeping me up to date on the gossip.”
“Right,” the big man grumbled. “So according to this man of mine, along comes the new millennium and Denney’s bank’s doing like all the rest of them, not good. He’s been betting on these dotcom morons. He’s been hedging this by betting on the airlines and the telecom people too. In short, he’s losing his touch. One day in September he turns on the TV and sees a couple of planes fly into a couple of skyscrapers. And what do you know? Bad turns awful. Bad turns fucking disastrous. Word is that if this bunch was out in the open Denney’d be bust and in the slammer facing some serious incarceration. Which is bad news for him and for all those mob guys who thought they were banking on something that had the Holy Writ on the cover. They are people who do not like to lose their money.”
“This man of yours knows a lot,” Costa observed.
“He was a knowledgeable guy. What do I mean 'was'? Still is."
“And he says it in such a memorable way too. Where’s he working now?”
“Probably with some dumb smart-ass kid who doesn’t believe a word he says. Do I make myself clear?”
“In a particularly obscure way. Did he get the chance to arrest someone?”
“Like who? Lombardia isn’t officially bust yet. Just 'suspended'. All the money was passing through places like Liechtenstein and Grand Cayman. Try hunting that down. The finance people had one low-grade clerk in their sights, thought he might talk too if they offered him a deal. When they went to collect they found him floating facedown in the bath in his apartment in Tes
taccio. 'Heart attack'. Very convenient. Who knows? Maybe Denney had him done. Maybe now he’s got the taste he’s offing a few more people who took the money and didn’t come up with the goods.”
“Rinaldi did come up with the goods. He said the Vatican was right. About diplomatic immunity.”
“Didn’t work though, did it? Remember, Denney has contacts. To be honest, though, my guess is they’re none too keen on him either these days. Which gives him plenty more reasons to stay behind those walls where no one can touch him. Not until the Vatican people themselves wash their hands of the black sheep and kick him out onto the pavement. Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.”
Costa was baffled. “Why not? Why would the Church tolerate any of this?”
It could have been Falcone looking at him. Rossi’s expression said just one thing: Don’t be so dumb, kid. “This isn’t about the Church. It’s about the Vatican. Another country. Like I said. Mongolia, as far as we’re concerned. Unless it’s in their interests they won’t give us anything. Maybe Denney’s in some kind of purdah now they know what’s been going on. Maybe not. Either way for us it’s irrelevant. He daren’t set foot outside the Vatican. He knows we’d arrest him on the spot. He knows some of his shady friends might want a word too. They’re too picky about their own in there to hang him out to dry. But my guess is he’s not a happy little priest. This was a guy who used to hang out with presidents. The way things are going now he’s just going to wind up a sad old man stuck in a nice comfy prison for the rest of his life. Unless he gets a fit of conscience, of course, and decides to tell us everything. Which I find somewhat unlikely, to be frank.”
Costa was adamant. “We have to check it out.”
The big man wagged a finger at him. “No! Didn’t you hear Falcone clearly enough? I shouldn’t even have told you any of this. You are not going back to that place. Understand?”
“You said it was gossip. I found out someplace else.”
“What about the painting?” Rossi asked, trying to change the subject.
“Still want to see it?”
“My glass is empty. You’re starting to scare the shit out of me. You bet I want to see it.”
Costa led him out of the bar, across the busy main road into the warren of streets that stretched between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. Rossi followed as the kid ducked into a nondescript church in one of the side roads.
“Who’d put a masterpiece in a dump like this?” Rossi demanded in the gloomy interior. “I’ve seen better churches in Naples.”
“This is San Luigi dei Francesi, big man. Here you’ve got two of the greatest works Caravaggio ever painted, exactly where he meant them to be, where he put them on the walls himself.”
“I get to see both?” He didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“One at a time,” Costa said, and walked forward to deposit some coins in the light meter. A set of bulbs came alive. Rossi blinked at the huge canvas in front of him. Most of it was set in shade: a group of men in medieval dress at a table, counting money. Three of them had turned to look at a pair of figures standing at the right of the scene. From behind came a shaft of revealing light. It burned brightly on the puzzled faces as they sat there, half-cowed, watching the newcomers.
“The Vocation of St. Matthew,” Costa said. “He’s the one in the middle, pointing to himself, as if to say, 'Who? Me?'”
“And the guys on the right?”
“Jesus, with his hand outstretched, indicating to Matthew he’s been chosen as an apostle. And by his side Peter, who symbolizes the Church which will come to be built on Matthew’s gospel.”
“So what’s this got to do with me losing it in an accident? That was your point, wasn’t it?”
Costa nodded. The big man wasn’t slow. “Look at the costumes. The men around the table are in what was, when it was painted, contemporary dress. Jesus and Peter look as if they’ve walked straight out of a biblical scene. Caravaggio was commissioned to record a specific scene but what he did was make a broader point. This is about a moment of revelation, a moment when, in Matthew’s case, he realizes there’s more to life than counting money on a table.”
“You sound like a priest,” Rossi grumbled.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“And this,” Rossi nodded at the painting, “is where you get your kicks?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” Costa thought about it. “It’s about looking for some meaning, looking for a reason to be alive. Not just working your way through the day and being glad you got to the other end.”
“That’s fine as far as I’m concerned.”
“Sure,” Costa replied. “Until you see something that says otherwise. And then you wind up working with me.”
Rossi sighed. He got the message. There was, Costa knew, no need to belabor it. “So you’re a Catholic? In spite of everything they say about your old man?”
“No. Not at all. I just like to look for meanings. It’s a hobby.”
A couple of tourists turned on the light for an adjoining painting.
It was brightness and shade again, Rossi noticed, but there was more action in this one. Some old guy was lying on the floor, dying, a madman over his body, holding a bloodied sword. There was something deeply disturbing about the work. It was dense, vivid, savage. It seemed poised on the very edge of sanity.
“Matthew’s martyrdom,” Costa said quietly. “Another story. For another time.”
“I never did work out why a religion based around love and peace seemed to involve so much killing,” Rossi grumbled. “You know the answer to that? Or do you need to be a Catholic to understand?”
“It’s about martyrdom. Sacrificing yourself for something bigger than one human being. Could be the Church. For my dad it could be the hammer and sickle.”
“Sounds the kind of thing dumb people do,” Rossi mumbled, then wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
Costa knew what the gesture meant. Rossi wanted a beer. He followed the big man outside, watched him working out where to go next.
“Listen.” Rossi’s watery eyes hooded over. “If you want to hear more about this I’ve an idea.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’re having dinner with Crazy Teresa tonight. It could be useful.”
“We? We have a date with Crazy Teresa?”
Rossi eyed him as if to say: So what?
“We hardly know each other,” Costa objected.
“It’s Crazy Teresa. Everybody knows her.”
“I meant we hardly know each other.”
Rossi seemed offended by that. “Look. I know this relationship didn’t get off to the greatest of starts. But I’m trying here, kid. I’m doing my best. And there is something in it too. She wants to talk. I know the rumors doing the rounds. There’s a touch of truth in them but it’s not gone as far as people think. I’m not eating with Crazy Teresa on my own, not tonight.”
Costa couldn’t believe his ears. “Jesus. Why should I be there?”
“She wants you. Don’t ask me why. It’s only polite. Interdepartmental relations and all that.”
“Wonderful.”
Costa couldn’t work up much enthusiasm to complain. He had nothing else to do. Maybe Crazy Teresa off duty would be a different woman.
“Is that a yes?”
“Depends,” Costa said slyly. “Are we still negotiating?”
Seven
Sara Farnese lived in the Borgo, the residential area that led from the river to the very walls of the Vatican. This was still Rome, still under the jurisdiction of the city. Yet it was impossible to ignore the proximity of the papal state up the hill. Her home was in Vicolo delle Palline, a narrow cobbled lane that ran between the Via dei Corridori and the Borgo Pio. Il Pasette, the elevated, fortified corridor which joined the Vatican with the Pope’s former fortress, the Castel Sant’Angelo, abutted her medieval, ochre-colored building.
When parties of visiting luminaries were allowed to walk down the passage, tre
ading in the footsteps of long-dead pontiffs sometimes fleeing for their lives, she could hear them through the wall and listen to their idle chatter. The commercial bustle of St. Peter’s Square and the hectic tourist trade around it were only minutes away, but in the little street and the close, narrow lanes she favored, people moved at a different pace. This was still a local quarter, residential, largely untouched by the modernization of the city.
Homes were handed down from generation to generation—though not hers, which had been bought at a substantial price.
She had acquired the second-floor apartment four years before when she finally moved to Rome for good at the age of twenty-three, putting on the professional suit of a university lecturer and, shortly after, starting to look older, perhaps more serious, than she felt. College, in London and America, was now a fading memory.
Her teenage years, spent in boarding schools throughout Europe and finally in the cold Swiss town of Montreux, seemed remote, as if they had happened to another person. She remembered boarding the steamer and meandering the great, shining expanse of Lake Geneva on her own, trying to escape the prying attention of classmates who found her distant, different. She would sit on deck for hours, overlooked by nothing except the towering crown of mountains bordering the eastern end of the glittering inland sea, peering down at her from high, like God from Heaven: some vast, omnipresent watcher over her life, detached from its emotionless daily tedium.
These were Sara Farnese’s most vivid memories, ones of physical, geographical objects: The green at Harvard. The college quadrants of Oxford. A handful of ancient streets behind the Blue Mosque in Istanbul where she could lose herself for hours, following the tangled history of Byzantium, imagining herself into its formative years under Constantine, realizing that the study of early Christianity, the subject she had chosen—or had it chosen her, she was unsure which—was one where she had a certain, distinct talent.
There were few people stored in the dark vault hidden within her head.
